Hiya, people! Camobamo1 here once again with a new story! I know I've been writing a lot of stories at once, but I know I'll get at least one of them done sometime, most likely Sonic: Before Heroism, but for right now, here is another story. It's basically a what if for Sonic: Before Heroism, but before you read, I am warning you that this story is very dark. In case you didn't read the summary (I don't know why you wouldn't), it's rated T for violence, swearing (no f-bombs), and use of drugs and alcohol.
Prologue
He wondered how long it had been since he was happy. Maybe five years? Or more? He honestly didn't care. The only things that seemed to bring him even faux happiness were crime and violence, and he felt no guilt after committing those acts. Even when he murdered his own uncle, he didn't feel guilty. He couldn't remember how many people he had killed in the last five years; how many times he had pulled the trigger on his pistol, grinning with a sadistic smile as he saw blood stream from his victims' heads, chests, or stomachs.
Sometimes, he would try to hide his anger at everything around him through drugs, or he would try to drown it in alcohol, but whenever he would come out of his high, he felt worse than beforehand, and he always ended up hurting someone, whether it was himself or another. For a reason even he did not understand, he felt serene when he inflicted pain, whether on himself or others, but it seemed to calm him more to injure himself.
When he would come back to his senses, which was only once in a blue moon, he would wonder how this happened to him, when he had promised himself that he would never end up like this; like his uncle, and yet he couldn't stop himself. The desperate need for pain and the frantic lust for drugs were like an incurable disease; like a sleep he just couldn't wake up from. Deep down in his subconscious slept his real self, in a place he could not be awoken often, leaving his conscious self feeling empty. He needed something with which to fill the void within him. It all led back to his obsession with drugs and pain…
He woke up in a precarious position in a dumpster, head pounding and stomach gurgling. He didn't feel well at all… Then again, he never did when he had a hangover. "What happened…?" he asked himself groggily, still slurring his words a bit. He hadn't the slightest idea what had happened to him the previous night, as the alcohol he had consumed had dulled his memory. All he could tell was that he had blood on his clothes and in his nose, and it was frozen by the cold winter air.
Trying his best not to disturb the almost-toppling pile of garbage he was on, he jumped off, but instead of landing with dexterity like he normally would, his disoriented state caused him to lose his balance when he landed, and he face-planted on the rough asphalt. However, from this, he felt next to no pain, as he had gotten used to falling headfirst onto the ground with how often he would wake up in a hangover.
He stood up, and he had to hug the wall of the building next to him to stay upright, but his stomach soon became rebellious, and he lost a good amount of food and alcohol from his stomach, granted there wasn't much food in his stomach anyway. "Why do I like getting drunk, anyway?" he inquired to himself once he was done vomiting. He honestly had no answer to that question. His mind was just too unstable for thinking like that.
He wiped his mouth of the residual vomit dripping from his lips, and that's when he actually smelled the rancid liquid, nearly upchucking again. However, he contained it and shouted, "Oh, God! Whoever has to smell that shit next isn't gonna like it!" He looked at the green fluid once again, casting a disgusted look at it, and then he walked away, grabbing anything in sight for support.
When he stepped out of the alley, he noticed nothing different about anything. The people of Christmas Island were just going about their daily lives. He doubted anyone knew who had beaten him up the past night, but he knew one thing: he was sure gonna beat the living hell out of that person… as soon as he recovered from his hangover… For now, he was just going to go to his little shack, which used to be his uncle's before he murdered him.
Nevertheless, on the way there, he encountered someone who he did not want to deal with right now. "Hey, Sonic…" He hated when he called him that. Even after he had trashed his nickname, his old friend, Vermillion, still called him that. "What do you want, Milly? And I told you not to effin' call me that." Despite not liking his own old nickname, Vermillion still preferred to be called "Milly". "Sorry, Ogilvie…" replied Milly. "It's not that I really want anything… It's just that I thought I'd say hi…" Ogilvie angrily sighed and responded, "Well, if that's all, then just go away, because I don't wanna deal with one of your rants again… I have the worst headache ever right now…"
Milly sighed as well, not from anger, but from worry. "Were you drinking again?" Ogilvie didn't even have to answer, because Milly knew what it was going to be. "My God! You're only fifteen years old! That's not good for you!" No… thought Ogilvie. I'm fourteen… Unless today is… "You know," continued Milly. "I came to say hi because it's your birthday, but you probably drank so much last night that you forgot! Why are you so idiotic?" For four years, Milly had been trying to wake up the boy sleeping within Ogilvie's body, the Sonic that Milly had been best friends with. He actually felt sorry for Ogilvie, and he always tried his best to help him, but Ogilvie didn't want his help.
"Whatever…" mumbled Ogilvie. "Just leave me alone… I don't wanna deal with your shit right now…" He began to walk away, but Milly put his hand on his shoulder, saying, "Wait, Sonic!" Ogilvie was beginning to get really irritated with him… He shrugged Milly's hand off his shoulder, but Milly grabbed his arm. Ogilvie didn't like to be touched by anyone anymore, so he turned around and punched Milly in the stomach out of anger. "Go away," he commanded. Five years ago, he would have felt guilty for doing that, but now… He just sighed and walked away, leaving Milly feeling like he was going to throw up.
Ogilvie smiled as he kept walking, reveling in the pain he had just caused. Within only a few more minutes, he arrived at his little shack, and coming down from his hangover, he immediately took the knife out of his jacket and took his jacket off, revealing his scarred arms… All of his scars from the previous nights had healed. His wounds always healed too fast for his liking.
He undressed the rest of the way, revealing even more scars, along with bruises from the previous night, and went over to his shower, knife still in hand. When he turned the water on and let it fall on him, he smiled to himself as he rested the knife on his arm, dragging it across. It hurt… but it felt so good! He felt so calm as he watched the blood leave his body, being washed down into the drain, and it even somewhat stained is blue fur red. One could say that the blood symbolized the stress within him, but just like the blood, it would reappear inside him later.
He spent fifteen of the twenty minutes that he was in the shower cutting himself in several places, happily watching blood flow from them, and the rest, he spent washing himself off afterward. When he was finished, he had probably cut himself ten times, but with how fast he healed, the blood from the cuts had already clotted. "Dammit…" he mumbled to himself. "Just once… I wanna bleed a little more…" He just sighed and walked over to his couch, not worrying about getting his clothes on. Hell, he was anthropomorphous, and those types of Mobians didn't need to wear clothes anyway. He only wore those clothes to look intimidating.
When he sat down on his couch, however, he saw a video game case on the lampstand next to it, and it had a blue hedgehog on it that was his splitting image. "That Sonic," he started as he knocked the game off the lampstand. "is not me." And he was glad it wasn't. He didn't want to be a cocky asshole of a teenager, granted he was already quite rude, but not in the same sense. "My life's shit and it seems to be better than that would be." Or so he thought… In reality, his life was far from better than that. It was worse, but the drugs and alcohol he consumed blinded him to that fact.
He turned on the TV and watched random stuff for about half an hour, but after not finding anything that he wanted to see, he turned it off and once again headed outside, wearing his intimidating clothes. He ran as fast as he could to a little hideout burrowed away in the basement of an unused building. It was his gang's hideout, and he was entering it with the intention of staying there until he found the person who had beaten him up the previous night. He walked down, and all noises of any sort other than coughing and sniffling were quickly silenced by his appearance alone. He may not have been the oldest in his gang, and he was by far not the youngest, but he was their leader, as he was the only one to have assumed that role and not get killed.
"All right, so I've come today to see who beat me up last night, and since you were all there when it happened, drunk or not, I want you to tell me who did this and what happened. Every. Single. Part." Ogilvie couldn't stand when someone beat him up, especially when he was drunk, and whoever did it was going to get a serious beat-down. When he got no reply, he walked over to one of the tables and grabbed a cigarette, and as he lit it, he stated, "If none of you are gonna say anything, then I'm just gonna pick a random person and start punishing them." He blew a large puff of smoke and smirked. "Now, we wouldn't want that, would we?"
The youngest of the group, a small twelve-year-old wolf stood up. "It was me…" he said with obvious guilt in his voice. Ogilvie walked over to him, still smirking. "Alex, I would have never expected this from you." He blew a large puff of smoke in Alex's face, after which Alex started coughing and waving the smoke away from him. "I'm sorry, Ogilvie, but you were hurting me… bad…" Ogilvie sighed, and even though he had only been smoking it for maybe a minute, he put his cigarette in the ash tray on the table next to him, and then punched Alex across the face.
"I know you're new, but it's time you learn a couple rules about this here little establishment. First and foremost, you don't apologize for anything. Second, if you beat anyone up, you have it coming for you that the same thing will happen to you. Third and most importantly, never beat me up. But I have a little question for you. How was I hurting you? Don't mistake that for me caring. It's just that you'd need a pretty damn good reason for me not to beat you down right now." And Alex wasn't about to mistake that for Ogilvie caring.
He rubbed his cheek and responded, "Here… I'll show you." He lifted up his shirt, and almost his entire torso was covered in gashes. "Meh…" was all Ogilvie muttered before he was about to kick Alex in the side of the knee, but Alex looked up at him with pleading blue eyes resembling those of Ogilvie's late brother. And Ogilvie hesitated. For the first time in five years, he hesitated to hurt someone, but that hesitation lasted only a few seconds, as he moved his leg to where it was supposed to hit in the first place, and he heard a satisfying crack along with a fulfilling scream of pain from Alex. He had just broken his knee.
Alex fell to the floor, crying as the pain fully set in. To Ogilvie, this was just another day in his life. He had caused someone immeasurable pain, and yet it was still something normal. "Leave," ordered Ogilvie. "And don't come back until you've learned your lesson." Alex nodded, still in tears, and excruciatingly crawled out of the basement. And everyone was staring at Ogilvie once the wolf had left. "What?" asked Ogilvie. "Are you just gonna stare at me all day?"
Everyone resumed what they were doing, whether it was drinking or playing cards or whatever. They were all scared of him; even the ones who used to be the most feared on the streets were afraid of Ogilvie. When everything seemed calm enough, Ogilvie walked over to one of the tables and asked, "Any stuff today?" What did he mean by stuff? He meant drugs. "Nope," replied one of the gang members. "Our dealer said he was out, and that he'd have more tomorrow." Sonic clicked his tongue and sighed. "Aww! And I wanted to get high today!" he pouted in the style of a young child.
He and the two people who were at that table were the only two in the gang who had actually tried a drug in their lives, and while he could tell from their twitching that they were already starting to need another dose, he never actually got addicted to anything. He could go days without any type of drug or liquor and he'd be fine, but whenever he could get his hands on something, he always got a sense of false happiness. He had wanted to get high, but he could wait another day.
After that, though, he had no business in there, so he just walked out, and when he did, he saw Alex still crawling away, and he was about two blocks from the building. "Just how damn slow are you, Alex?" he yelled in Alex's direction, and when he received no reply, he just ran back to his house, happy to have finally found out who had beaten him up last night. He once again took off his clothes, but this time, instead of sitting down and watching TV, he just went straight to bed. He walked over to his bedroom, which still had bloodstains on the wall and carpet from when he had killed his uncle, and smiled at those very stains.
"How ya doing in Hell, Frank?" he asked the blood before climbing into his bed. He quickly drifted off to sleep, and he had the strangest dream when he did…
"C'mon, Tails, what's the surprise already?" asked Ogilvie. He had no control over what he was actually saying. He was just observing through his eyes. "Can't you see I'm getting antsy?" An orange fox laughed and responded, "Just wait a few more seconds, all right, Sonic? We're almost there." Sonic? What kind of dream was Ogilvie having? He recognized the name Tails from the old Sonic video games he used to play, but why was he dreaming about video games.
Tails was leading him down a flight of stairs, and he was about to open a door when he asked, "Ready?" Ogilvie, or rather Sonic in this dream, started jumping up and down and replied, "Am I ever! Just open the freaking door already!" Tails smiled and opened the door, revealing a pitch black room, and the only light being let in was from the open door and the small crack in the garage door of the large room. Tails ran into the room, and not long afterward, Sonic flipped on the light switch, and everyone in the room yelled, "SURPRISE!" But honestly, Sonic wasn't really that surprised. Nevertheless, he was still touched. "Happy fifteenth birthday, big bro!" exclaimed Tails as he ran up and gave Sonic a hug.
However, that's when Ogilvie realized that he couldn't possibly be dreaming of video games, as there were several people he didn't recognize in any way, shape, or form in the room. While Ogilvie himself was pondering this, Sonic returned Tails' hug, and then he ran up to an old red fox, embracing him as well. He released the red fox and said, "Thanks, Uncle Paul. Thanks, Tails." Tails winked and held two fingers out before asking, "So were you surprised, Sonic?"
Sonic sighed and replied, "To tell the truth, li'l bud, no…" And Tails' ears fell, and his smile immediately turned into a frown. "But that doesn't mean I don't love this more than anything else in the world!" Tails' ears and frown immediately perked back up. "You mean that, Sonic?" asked Tails. Sonic nodded and gave him a thumbs-up. "This is the first birthday I've celebrated since I was ten. Thanks a bunch, big guy!" How did this Sonic have that kind of similarity with Ogilvie? He hadn't celebrated a birthday since he was ten, either.
Ogilvie watched the rest of that party in his dream, still wondering what kind of dream that was…
He woke up and looked at the alarm clock by his bed. It said 3:42, and he had gone to bed at 1:15. It just so happened that the dream he was in spanned that amount of time as well. Was it more than just a dream? It was unbeknownst to him, but in a world where he had made a different choice five years ago, that was what was currently happening.
When he was watching that event, however, he felt happiness swell up within him, and for the first time in a while, the true Ogilvie was awake. Sonic was awake. And he was crying. "Oh, God! What have I been doing?" he asked himself. "I need to go apologize to Milly for what I've done! And I need to tell Alex I'm sorry!" But Ogilvie was starting to regain control, and he started to argue with Sonic. "No! I don't need to do anything! I can do whatever the hell I want!" Sonic put his hands on his head and screamed in agony, "Get outta my head! I don't want you in my head anymore!"
"But you know I'm not gonna get out!" exclaimed Ogilvie. "So stop your whining!" Sonic started hitting his pillow, constantly yelling for Ogilvie to get out of his head. "You bastard! Just get out!" And that was the last thing Sonic said before he was finally shoved back into the part of his mind where Ogilvie wanted him. "Finally… I couldn't deal with anymore of that shit…" Just because not having Sonic there made him feel empty didn't mean he didn't like feeling empty…
Dark, huh? It does get a bit darker, but no worries, right? Hope somebody's reading this!
-Camobamo1
