This is Mewone speaking, and would like to thank PenFullofChaos819 for inspiration with his story Rise Only to Fall. The story is set a little after the events of Sonic Unleashed.

Note: Mewone does not own any of the Sonic characters besides OCs. I also do not own Sega (sadly).

"Come on," Sonic thought as he waited on the beaches of Seaside Hill Zone, "what's taking Tails so long to get here?"

As if Sonic's thoughts had summoned him, Tails appeared clad in a life jacket, driving a sleek, blue racing boat. The boat had various ridges on the edges, no doubt mimicking Sonic's blue quills.

"Took you long enough!" Sonic yelled to Tails over the roar of the boat. He then pointed to the boat Tails had commandeered. "What the heck is this thing?"

"Don't you remember?" Tails yelled back. "This is the new invention I was telling you about! I call it the Waterspout Mk. I!"

Sonic just shook his head over the chosen name.

"Well, come on!" Tails said, chucking a life jacket in Sonic's direction. "Do you want to see how this thing works or not?"

"Yeah, whatever!" Sonic said, sliding the jacket overtop of his quills, being careful not to get them stuck in the foam. Once he strapped it on tightly, he leaped onto the Waterspout and landed cleanly into one of the seats. "Let's get this party started, already!"

With that, Tails punched the throttle, sending the Waterspout forward as if it had been launched out of a cannon. Sonic wasn't prepared for the craft to accelerate so quickly, and was almost thrown off.

"Whoa!" Sonic yelled in surprise. "I thought I was the only one who could accelerate that quickly!"

"Not anymore!" Tails said with a smirk.

Within minutes, Sonic had gotten used to the extremely high speeds of the Waterspout, and he propped his foot up on the windshield in front of him. He then started to casually look around at the beautiful scenery: the nearly cloudless sky, the ruins of the adjacent Ocean Palace Zone, and the sparkling beaches parallel to them.

It was while Sonic was looking at those beaches that he saw something that caught his eye on the sand, being gently washed by the waves. It was difficult to see, due to its small size and the Waterspout's high speeds, but it seemed out of place. Sonic quickly started to rule out what the object could NOT be. It wasn't driftwood. It wasn't a fish or other sea-life. It wasn't a Power Ring. It wasn't even a spare part from one of Eggman's or Tails' machines. It was… something else.

Not something.

Someone.

"Tails!" Sonic yelled as he stood up from his seat. "Hit the brakes!" Without waiting for a response, Sonic reached across Tails' arms and jammed the throttle into full reverse.

The effect was instant.

The twin engines screamed in pain as the momentum was killed instantly, sending the nose of the craft plunging into the water. This sent a gigantic wave of sea-spray straight into Tails and Sonic, nearly sweeping them overboard.

"SONIC!" a dripping wet Tails yelled, rather miffed at Sonic's unscheduled stop. "What did you do that for?"

But Sonic was gone, already hovering overtop of the unconscious life form on the beach. He flipped it onto its back, and was both shocked and amazed at what he saw.

It was a small, humanoid vulpine; battered and bruised, but still alive. Even though Sonic could see that it couldn't possibly be more than six years old, he could tell that it was a female, since its fur on the back of her head was fashioned into a pair of crudely made pigtails, jetting out from about where her skull met the back of her neck. She was wearing a badly worn red jumpsuit, which the seawater had soaked completely through and had an unusual unworn piece on the left shoulder (apparently where a patch of some kind had fallen off), and purple shoes with a pink horizontal stripe across the top (which were also soaked). She wore gloves like Sonic, though the collars were boxy and golden. They also appeared to be made of aluminum. The most defining feature of her, however, was her fur. Besides the tip of her single tail, her muzzle, and the inside of her ears (which were all white), the vixen's fur was the absolute brightest and most vivid shade of fuchsia that Sonic had ever seen, even though it was doused with seawater, matted down, and had multiple patches of sand clinging to it.

Now, by no means whatsoever was Sonic emotional. He had been able to hold back tears in some of the saddest moments of his life. But now, looking down at this pitiful, unconscious girl, soaked by the surf and probably left for dead, he was fighting to hold back the waterworks. He reached down to touch her outstretched palm.

She was cold. Ice cold. Sonic couldn't believe that someone that cold to the touch could still be alive and breathing. As a gift of respect, he began to brush off some of the sand clinging to her fur gently with his hand.

After Sonic had brushed away one of the patches of sand, he thought that he saw the girl's mouth twitch, as if she was responding to his touch.

"…Hello?" he asked her calmly. "Anybody home?"

The most pitiful whimper Sonic had ever heard escaped the young fox's mouth. Gradually, so slowly that Sonic didn't even notice it at first, the little girl's eyes began to creak open and stopped halfway up. Her eyes were sky blue, much like Tails'.

Sonic breathed a sigh of relief as he stood up. He then turned around and waved to a still soggy Tails, who was attempting to purge the ballast tanks and the twin engines of the Waterspout.

"HEY, TAILS!" Sonic yelled, instantly getting Tails' attention. "GET OVER HERE, I FOUND SOMEONE!"

Tails looked shocked at the news. He then flung the Waterspout's anchor overboard, and began to run down the beach as fast as his twin tails would propel him. When he arrived at the site of the little girl, he became rather solemn just looking at her.

The girl was sitting up now, and she was shaking like a leaf in a hurricane, her arms and legs curled up into her chest in a futile attempt to stay warm.

"Poor thing…" Tails said in a very sad voice. "She's chilled to the bone." He pointed to the anchored Waterspout. "There are some extra blankets on the ship. They're in a pelican case, so they should still be dry."

Sonic shook his head as he looked back down at the fuchsia-colored vixen, whose teeth were now chattering like a skeleton from the cold. "Tails," he said, "We can't just leave her out here all alone. Who knows what will happen to her?"

"Good point… hmm… maybe we could take her with us to town and see if anyone recognizes her?"

"That's actually not a half-bad idea, Tails." Sonic turned back to the girl, who was looking up at them pathetically. "Can you walk?" he asked her.

The girl, still shivering, nodded her head yes. She stood up shakily, but was able to walk to the anchored Waterspout without assistance. However, she seemed reluctant to get into the water in order to climb aboard the craft.

"I don't think she likes water," Tails noted.

"If I were that cold, I wouldn't like it much, either," Sonic remarked. He then got a great idea on how to bypass this little obstacle. "Hey, Tails, do you think you could fly her into the boat?"

"No problem!" Tails said as he started to spin his twin tails like a helicopter blade. In no time, he was hovering overtop of the smaller fox, who seemed interested in the fact that he could fly.

"Grab my hands and I'll lift you into the boat," he said to the girl.

The vixen made no movement, besides her shivering and following Tails intently with her eyes.

Tails smiled. "Don't worry," he consoled her, "I've done this before."

This seemed to kill any fear the fuchsia fox had of him, and she readily reached her hands out for Tails to grab them. It took Tails almost no extra effort at all to lift her; she couldn't have weighed more than half of what he did. When her feet touched the deck of the ship, she instantly sprinted over to Sonic and, to his surprise, hugged him.

"Thank you," she finally said; the first words she had said to Sonic or Tails since she woke up. Her voice reminded Sonic of Amy, though higher (but not as high as Cream's) and a lot more innocent.

Tails chuckled and pulled the Waterspout's anchor in. "Looks like you made a new friend," he said.

"Yeah," Sonic agreed as he wrapped the blankets around the fuchsia fox. "I guess I did."

About a half-hour later, the young kit was fast asleep with her head resting on Sonic's shoulder. Sonic couldn't help noticing that there was a quaint smile on her face as she dozed.

"Hey, Tails?" he asked Tails, his gaze not leaving the young fox's content expression. "Do you know what's the odd part about all this?"

"What?" Tails asked. Ever since the girl had fallen asleep, he had been asked to run the Waterspout at a lower volume.

"This girl practically loves me, and I don't even know her name."

"M-my… name?" The young kit's voice pierced the conversation for the second time since Sonic discovered her. Her sky-blue eyes creaked open, as if she had been listening to the entire conversation. "I-I…" she stuttered, trying to think.

Sonic looked down at the girl, who seemed to be turning her memory inside out trying to recall her name. Finally, she gave up trying, and let out a pitiful sigh.

"I can't remember anything…" she admitted.

Sonic's eyes widened. "Nothing?" he questioned.

"N-no… the last thing I-I can remember is when you woke me up on the beach." One of her ears perked up, as if she heard something over the engine noise. "Did… did you hear that?" she asked, stiff as a board.

Tails' ears perked up as well. "I do hear something," he stated. "It sounds like… kitchen knives?"

Sonic, whose ears were not as sensitive to sound as the foxes', took this as a warning and began scanning around the craft for any sign of danger. The only thing that seemed out of the ordinary was a school of fish in the Waterspout's wake. That alone still wasn't too out of the ordinary – until one of them leapt out of the water. Sonic gasped at what he saw.

They weren't fish at all.

They were ROBOTS.

"CHOPPERS!" Sonic screamed. He flopped down into his seat and strapped himself in. He then turned to the little girl. "Hold onto me for dear life," he ordered.

The young kit obliged willingly, and wrapped her arms around Sonic in a death grip.

Sonic then turned to Tails, who was looking at the school of mechanical Choppers behind them. "Floor it, Tails!" he yelled.

Tails gave Sonic a thumbs-up before slamming the throttle forward as far as it would go, sending the Waterspout careening forward in an insane burst of speed. The Choppers, however, weren't about to give up the chase that easily. They began to swim even faster than before, making them look like tiny torpedoes with teeth.

Sonic, noticing that the Choppers were still on their tail, showed signs of panicking. "Come on, Tails!" he commanded, his arm wrapped around the fuchsia kit beside him. "Go faster!"

"This is full throttle!" Tails shouted back.

"I don't care! Just get us away from… look out!"

The chase had made the craft stray into Ocean Palace Zone, and Tails narrowly avoided crashing into a large pillar rising out of the water. Tails had no time to relax, though, since more ruins were rising out of the water in front of them. He cleared two more ruins easily, but cut the third turn wide, sending up sparks as the side of the
Waterspout scraped the rocky face of the walls surrounding them.

"EEEEEEEK!" the young girl screamed as the sparks flew around her.

Even with all of this fancy power steering that Tails was doing, the Choppers were now less than five feet away from the Waterspout. In fact, one of the robotic piranhas actually leaped out of the water and began gnawing on the craft's stern.

"Hey!" Sonic shouted to the fish. "Get lost!" He then proceeded to punch the living daylights out of the Chopper, before it released its grip on the Waterspout's stern and fell back into the water.

"Sonic!" Tails yelled, frantically swerving back and forth to avoid the ruins rising up in front of them. "Time to initiate Plan B!"

"Plan B?" Sonic questioned. "What the heck is Plan B?"

Without answering, Tails flipped up a glass case that held a yellow and black striped button. As soon as he pressed the button inside, Sonic heard a horrible grinding sound from inside of the Waterspout. Just as he was thinking that Tails had gone insane and pressed a self-destruct button, a pair of wings began to emerge out of the sides of the Waterspout. At the same time, two already-running jet engines rose out of the sides of the passenger compartment, and a tail/stabilizer combo appeared near the back of the craft.

Sonic was dumbfounded. "This thing is a PLANE, too?" he asked, not believing what he was seeing. It might have been his imagination playing tricks on him, but as soon as Sonic uttered the word "plane", the little girl's grip seemed to tighten and her eyes seemed to widen in fear.

Tails again took no heed of Sonic's question. "Get ready to fly!" he said as he pulled back on the steering wheel. Suddenly, the Waterspout lifted itself out of the water, narrowly avoiding both another jumping Chopper and a ruin that rose out of the water in front of them. The school of Choppers, however, was not quick enough to dodge the ruin that just appeared, and promptly plowed headfirst into it, smashing them all.

"AAAAAAAAH!" the fuchsia fox screamed in terror as she felt the Waterspout go airborne, her eyes squeezed shut in fear.

"It's okay!" Sonic comforted her, patting his hand on her back. "We're away from the bad robots now. See for yourself!"

"Not until we're back on the ground!" she cried, her grip so tight on Sonic that he thought that he wasn't going to be able to breathe.

True to her word, the kit didn't open her eyes once until Tails had landed the Waterspout on a small lake nearby Emerald Town, and that was a full fifteen minutes away. When she did open them, Sonic could see tears welling up in them, obviously from sheer terror. She was trembling violently, and her ears were folded back in fear. He wondered why she would be so afraid of airplanes.

"Please…" she pleaded to empty air, "please don't make me fly again…"

"It's okay," Tails tried to soothe her, "We're on the grou-err… I mean, water now."

Whether Tails' technicalities made any difference or not, the little girl burst into tears, soaking her now-dry muzzle once again.

Sonic sighed as he lifted her onto dry land, while she still bawled as hard as ever. "Come on," he said as he clambered out of the literal flying boat. "Let's see if we can find what to do with you."

Her crying slowed to a small leak when she heard Sonic's voice. Sonic noticed this, and guessed to himself that his voice probably comforted her. As the trio walked toward their friends' houses, he took note of how she looked now. She wasn't shivering violently from the cold anymore, but her red jumpsuit was, amazingly, still damp. Her fur still had patches of sand in it as well.

"Um, Tails… right?" she said to Tails, trying to recall his name. Her ears were pointed straight up in the air, a sign that she was listening to some unknown noise. "I think you left the boat running."

Tails looked at her cockeyed. "What are you talking about?" he asked. "I have the key right here." He threw the key up out of his hand so that it caught the light, before letting it fall back into his open palm. "See?"

Her ears folded back in fear at the response. "Then," she gulped, "what's that engine sound?"

Sonic raised an eyebrow. "Engine noise?" he questioned. "What are you-?"

As if to answer said question (or rather, un-said question), a large, chrome plated hoverbike roared out from behind the trio, nearly crushing them all. The little girl froze in fear when she saw what was driving it.

The pilot of the chrome and blue hoverbike was a large, humanoid robot. It had no skin, or even armor plating for that matter, so every wire, gear, spring, bolt, and piston shone in the sunlight. Its only decorations were a small, star shaped piece of gold over its robotic chest and a metal mockery of a police officer's hat, embellished with the Eggman Army crest. Its visor had been fashioned to look like a pair of sunglasses, and in the middle of each "lens" was a glowing red eye.

"Targets acquired," it rasped in a static-infused voice. "Preparing to terminate."

"RUN!" Sonic screamed as he grabbed the fuchsia kit's arm and began to book it down the street, with Tails nipping at his heels. The girl, not prepared for the sudden burst of speed, began to stumble, trying to keep up the pace with the world's fastest hedgehog. Sensing that its targets were trying to escape, the robotic sheriff flipped on a pair of blue and red flashing lights.

"HALT!" it commanded. Seeing that it was being ignored, the robot revved the engine on its hoverbike and shot after the "suspects".

Normally, Sonic would easily be able to outrun this metal mockery of a police officer, but since he also had to tow the fuchsia kit behind him, the robo-cop began to gradually gain on them.

"Sonic!" Tails yelled over the wind, noticing that Sonic wasn't running as fast as usual. "What's wrong?"

"It's hard to run as fast as I normally do with Miss Fuchsia here dragging me down!" Sonic said, making up a name for the girl on the fly.

The purple kit didn't like the idea of her being the reason that the robotic sheriff was going to run them over. "I know I can run faster than this," she thought as she stumbled behind Sonic. "But how?" For a reason she didn't even comprehend, she glanced down at her right glove's collar. Suddenly, her surroundings completely changed, from a high-speed chase in Emerald Town to her standing still in a metal workshop. Even though she still felt as if she was still being pulled by Sonic, still felt the wind rushing by her, and still felt as though she was about to trip and fall face first on the pavement, her hands and feet appeared motionless.

"What the…?" she thought. Without her wanting it to, her left arm reached over and pressed a hidden button on her right glove's collar. Suddenly, wheels began to fold out from her shoes (three inline wheels per shoe), transforming them into roller skates. As swiftly as it had begun, her surroundings changed again, back to the high-speed chase in the town, with her still stumbling behind Sonic.

By this time, the cop-bot had gotten dangerously close to Sonic and Co., and the front end of the speeder was a mere fifteen feet away from their heels.

After the little girl had regained her senses, she struggled to pull her loose right arm up to where Sonic had pinned her left arm so that she could see if the button she had seen was real. It took every ounce of strength she had to pull herself up so that her left arm could press the button on her right collar (if it even existed), and multiple times she stumbled again, and all of her hard effort was wasted. Determined to help Sonic out, she tried one more time with the last amount of her arm strength. Only inches remained between her left index finger and her right glove's collar when…

Click.

The button WAS real. She'd pressed it. A smile of relief spread across her face as the wheels began to extend out of the bottom of her soles. When the wheels were fully extended, she began to start skating, as if by instinct. It took a lot of work at first, but she soon felt herself getting into a sort of pattern. Left… then right… then left again… faster and faster and faster all the time… and when she felt that she was going fast enough to keep up with Sonic, she broke his grip on her arm.

The instant Sonic felt the girl break off from him, he felt a wave of despair crash into his heart. That is, until he saw a six-year-old fox roller skate in front of him, a big grin of happiness on her face.

"WHAT?" Sonic yelled, startled at the sight.

"Come on, slowpoke!" she taunted him ash she skated even faster away from the hedgehog. "Catch me if you can!"

Now it was Sonic's turn to smile. "You wanna make that a bet?" he remarked as he sped after her, Tails following behind.

Who could blame the little girl for being excited? In the entire time she could remember, Sonic and Tails had controlled what she had done. This was the first time she was in control of her own actions. It was exhilarating. It was liberating. It was…

"Look out!"

Tails' voice shattered her sense of happiness as a small stone bridge came into view. The only path underneath the arch bridge was a mere three feet in height and diameter.

The fuchsia kit covered her eyes in fear. "Waaaaah!" she screamed as she coasted underneath of the bridge, with Sonic and Tails right behind her.

The robot, however, was much too large to be able to fit through the tiny gap, and was instead flung from its bike as it crashed into the stone bridge.

"ERROR! ERROR!" it screamed as the sheriff plowed face first into the pavement, igniting its fuel source. The resulting explosion completely demolished the robot, as well as most of the road. The only recognizable part left was its dented, charred "police hat".

"YES!" Tails exclaimed, throwing his fists into the air in celebration. "We did it, Sonic!"

The little girl snowplowed to a stop, sparks flying out from under the wheels of her skates. Just by the grin she wore, Sonic was surprised that she was the same little fox that he had found on the beach an hour earlier. In fact, now that he noticed it, her suit wasn't even the slightest bit damp.

The kit bowed her head as Sonic coasted to a stop in front of her. "…Sonic?" she said, in the same voice that she had thanked him with earlier. Her eyes were closed, as though she was in deep thought.

"Yeah?" the hedgehog responded as Tails screeched to a halt behind him.

"Do you remember that name you used for me earlier?"

"Miss Fuchsia?" He waved her off with a flip of his hand. "Don't worry about it. We'll find a better name for you…"

"No. I like it."

Sonic shot the girl a look. "Isn't it, you know, a little wordy?" he asked her.

"No, silly! 'Fuchsia.' That's my name."

Sonic smiled. Fuchsia. Somehow the name suited her. Actually, he wouldn't be surprised if it was her real name.

"All right, Fuchsia," he said to the purple kit, motioning her and Tails towards Tails' Lab. "Time to figure out what to do with you."

Whew, that was exhausting. In case you haven't noticed, the OC I mentioned is Fuchsia the Fox. If you did notice, well, you win an e-cookie! If you didn't, well, get some glasses or something.

Let's hope I can get the next chapters out in a reasonable timeframe. Until then, please review!