The Thunderbird
by K. M. Hollar
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Sonic the Hedgehog copyrighted by Sega. Sally and related characters
copyrighted by Archie comics. Serena, Slasher and other fan characters
copyrighted by K. M. Hollar. This style was derived from the Hank the
Cowdog books, by John Erickson.
_____________________________________________________________________
Hey, did I ever tell you about the time I saved Knothole from the
Thunderbird? Yeah, it happened right after I recovered from my bout
with the anti-verse, but before Mister Black Hedgehog waltzed in in
July. The Thunderbird had come east and--well, maybe I should start
at the beginning.
It started with a thunderstorm. Scary, huh? Watching a
thunderstorm on the ground has got nothing on being two thousand feet
up in the middle of one. Tails and I had taken the Tornado down to
Sapphire City to get a new set of engines. We had been saving up for
them, because it's as much my plane as it is his. I just let him fly
it 'cause I'm nice. Not every cool dude lets his sidekick fly the
plane, you know. Where was I? Oh yeah, the storm. We were on our way
home when it blew in. We tried to outrun it, but the wind was against
us, and the engines were too new to try anything interesting.
Before I knew it, it was pitch black, and I was regretting my
decision to ride on the upper wing of the biplane. Do you know what
rain feels like when it runs into you at a hundred miles an hour?
Like bullets, that's what. I was up there getting my spines torn off,
and Tails was down in the cockpit, fussing about electrical
interference. "My instruments are going haywire!" he yelled over the
general noise of wind, rain and twin jet engines. "I think we're
gonna get struck!"
Have you ever been in a cloud full of lightning? No? I hadn't,
either. All of a sudden the air was ripped into pieces by bolts of
electricity, and all my spines stood on end. The biplane jumped
around as a sound that would be called thunder by folks sitting cozily
in their living rooms wreaked havoc on my eardrums. It went black
again. Somehow I was still on the biplane, rain trying to peck out my
eyeballs, and the engines were still going. "Tails!" I yelled. "Get
us out of this cloud!"
"I can't!" Tails yelled back, and he sounded scared stiff.
"Everything's dead! I can't even see my compass!"
"Then fly us straight up," I called back in perfect calm. A
little thing like getting fried by lightning never fazed me.
Ouch. Tails pulled up so fast I smacked my face into the wing.
The rain changed directions--now it was stinging my hands like quad-
speed bees. The engines screamed. I heard the rain strike the
underside of the wings--Tails was flipping us over! I yelled at him
to level out, but he wasn't looking at me. He had the stick pulled all
the way back and was staring up at the clouds. I glanced up as we went
over backward, and saw the Thunderbird.
It didn't scare me. Huge fanged birds with lightning coming out
of their wings would never scare me. And I wasn't screaming. I was
just, uh, yelling for Tails to straighten us out. He did too, after
two minutes of screeching nosedive. And that wasn't me screeching, it
was the engines, so don't listen to Tails. He doesn't know what he's
talking about. The only time I've ever screamed was when Metal Sonic
tore my arm off. Okay, he never tore my arm off, and I've never
screamed. Period.
So we dropped below the clouds and opened the throttle. Tails
messed with the control panel and got it to come on again--I think he
beat his fists on it. We kited home like a Thunderbird was after us.
And like I said, I wasn't scared.
* * *
The storm didn't hit Knothole, which was a good thing for us. The
first thing we did after we landed was tell everybody about the
Thunderbird. I mean, that's the logical thing to call some monster bird
in a storm, right? Too bad nobody believed us. Bunnie actually laughed
at me. Sally didn't laugh, but she grinned like I'd told a corny joke.
Turns out that the Thunderbird is a mythical creature, like a unicorn,
and there are several Mobian folktales about it. How was I supposed to
know that? It's not like we're big into legends around here, and I
don't have time to read a stupid book.
Well, I guess somebody believed us. Slasher always believes me.
About the time I was ready to spindash the next person who smirked
at me, Slash walked up and asked me what I saw. I told her what it
looked like, and got Tails to tell her, too. He'd gotten a better look
than I had. Slasher is a velociraptor with wings, and she knows a lot
of stuff about the weather, not to mention other dinosaurs. I hoped
she'd come up with something, or tell me I wasn't crazy, but she didn't.
She sorta looked puzzled, and stared at the Tornado off on the
airstrip. "What do you think it was?" I asked.
She shrugged her wings. "At this point I don't know." She
walked off, and I ducked her tail.
Tails looked at me with narrowed eyes. "Don't tell me you weren't
scared of it."
"Hey, I wasn't," I told him.
"Sure," said Tails. "So what was all that stuff you were yelling
about 'get us out of here before it kills us'?"
"I never said that," I said. "You heard me wrong in the wind."
Really, there was a lot of noise at that point, and how could the poor
kid expect to understand me?
Tails gave me a Look and walked off to tinker with the plane.
Then Serena started having nightmares.
Serena's my sister. She's okay--for a girl. She can run pretty
fast, and she doesn't squeal if you throw mud on her or something. Not
that _I_ would ever do something like that, heh heh, but you get the
idea. Anyway, sometimes she has dreams about things that haven't happened
yet. I told her about the Thunderbird, and she started dreaming about
it. (She also had dreams about Mister Black Hedgehog, but she didn't
tell me about those for a long time.) She hates storms, so I guess that
helped. She told me the dreams were always the same: she was in the
middle of a meadow, and a storm would move in. Just when the thunder and
lightning were at their worst, the Thunderbird would swoop down. That
was all, but it terrified her. I never have nightmares, and if I do,
they don't scare me. That's the kind of guy I am.
We had gorgeous weather for a couple weeks. Not a cloud in the sky,
the sun was warm, and the woods turned green again. It was only April,
you know, so we hadn't had much spring yet. The trails dried out and I
got to break the sound barrier for the first time in ages. I really
missed my supersonic chao Velocity. He was so much fun to hang around,
and I wished I had played with him more in Ultimate form. I was
forgetting what it looked like. I wasn't the only person who missed
the chao. As it got warm, everybody remembered the two springs the
chao had lived with us, and the fun they had climbing trees in the
fragrant woods.
I guess I forgot about the Thunderbird, and so did Tails. I was
almost to the point where I could laugh at Serena's nightmares when we
had a storm.
Actually, it only rained. Most of the storm hit further south,
and as it turned out, so did the Thunderbird.
The day after the storm we got a message from a town down there.
Something had come out of the sky, grabbed somebody and carried him off.
They were pretty freaked about it. Who wouldn't be freaked about some
monster in the sky, other than yours truly? What scared them was that
after the storm they found the guy. Or what was left of him. Apparently
he had been a snack for something really big.
I grabbed a gun, and Slasher and I flew down to see if we could
find the Thunderbird. See, if it had killed somebody, it wasn't a
legend anymore. It was a menace.
The town was three times bigger than Knothole, and built up
against the southern edge of the Great Forest. It sure didn't look like
the kind of place where people got eaten by monsters. Slasher landed
outside the police station, and these guys in uniforms led us inside.
They looked really nervous, and I don't think it was because they were
hosting the two most dangerous dudes on Mobius.
Slasher wanted to see the body, and they led us into the room
where they had it. I don't know what I was expecting--probably some
mauled chunk of meat--but I didn't expect what we saw. All that was left
were a few bones and bits of fur. Yuck! I waited outside while Slasher
looked it over, for clues, I guess. I'm not into this forensics stuff.
After a minute she came out, as cool as a cucumber. She's used
to seeing dead animals, because sometimes she goes out into the woods
and catches a few meals. Sounds barbaric to me. Give me a chilidog any
day. I ain't no killer, and I want my food totally unrecognizable by
the time I eat it.
The sheriff or somebody came out and talked to us. I guess the
dead guy was related to him somehow. He told us that the dead guy (before
he was dead, duh) went outside for a look at the storm, and was carried
off. He was in the middle of town, too! His bits and pieces were found
in a field a mile outside of town. Slasher asked if they could show us
where they found him, and the sheriff agreed. I hopped in the cab of
a truck, Slash hopped in the back, and we drove very slowly out of town.
Cars are so boring; there's all these dumb rules about how to drive
one!
Anyway, we got out to the field about three days later, and
Slash and I jumped out for a look. None of the cops would come with
us--I hadn't realized they were all yellow chickens. They looked more
like squirrels and foxes to me.
So Slash and I walked out and snooped around. It was bright and
sunny, and all the grass was clean from the rain. But there was this
patch of black smack in the middle of the green, like somebody had
burned tumbleweeds. Slasher snorted. "He was here, all right. Stay
put, Sonic, I don't want the scent disturbed." I stood, fiddling with
my gun, watching her sniff around. The police must not have disturbed
it too much.
"Well?" I asked when she came back.
She looked puzzled. "Not a thing. No scent at all, except where
the remains were dropped. But I did find this." She held out a piece
of wood. I took it and realized it was solid rock. "Petrified," she
told me, as if I didn't know. "And you know how rare it is." As if I
didn't know that, either.
"Maybe he had it in his pocket," I said.
She took it from me and turned it over. "Maybe. But maybe whatever
blasted this area petrified it."
"You mean the Thunderbird has some sort of forcefield?" I asked.
She cocked an eye at me. "You tell me. Didn't you say it had
lightning coming out of its wings?"
I backpedaled. "But Slash, you know, it was real dark and the
bird was up in the clouds--I didn't see it too well--the lightning was
probably in front of it." I looked down at the burned grass. "It might
be a dragon."
"Did it have feathers?"
"I donno, it was a silhouette. But it had teeth. Big ones."
Slasher looked up at the cloudless sky. "I wonder where it goes
after a storm. I think it's time for a flight."
We checked in with the sheriff and told him we were gonna try to
find the Thunderbird. He was glad, I think. After all, has Sonic the
Hedgehog ever gone up against a monster he couldn't whip?
Slash flew around with me on her back for the rest of the day,
but we didn't find a thing. Not even a tree struck by lightning. Nothing
is more boring than wasting time. I never waste any time, running
around like I do. Even Slash doesn't waste much, even if she is slower
than me.
We turned up zilch and flew home. Tails was waiting for me, and
I could tell by the look on his face that he had something to tell me.
I left Slasher telling about the day's trip and headed off with Tails.
"Sonic," he said, his eyes bright but serious, "I was going
through the books I borrowed from Knuckles, and I found an echidna
legend about the Thunderbird!"
In that case, we'd struck pay dirt. Having a sidekick who likes to
do all the slow things you hate definitely has its perks. Tails took me
to his hut, opened a little book with yellow pages, and pointed to a
section. The language was old-fashioned, but by concentrating I could
follow it. It told about the Bird of Thunder straying from its home and
taking away the echidnas for food. They sent two Island Warriors our to
get it, and eventually they shot it down with "fire arrows". (According
to Knux, those were actually some kind of energy weapon.) But the bird
didn't die. It fought them on the ground and injured one of the warriors.
The remaining dude called for backup, and the other five warriors came
to help. It took all seven of them to kill it. Then, in due echidna
fashion, they took measurements and did an autopsy. There were lots of
drawings of guts and muscles, gross. But they still didn't know where
it came from, and they never said why they called it the Bird of Thunder.
Figures. The echidnas were so thorough about some things and so clueless
about others. Even Knux is like that sometimes.
I thanked Tails and decided to call Knux and see if he knew
anything about the Thunderbird.
He did.
It wasn't exactly hair-raising, but if I wasn't the kind of guy
to get freaked out, it would have freaked me out. Knux had seen the thing
flying inland. He hadn't said anything because he was afraid we'd think
he was nuts. He said it had been a cloudy evening, but not stormy. He
had been out watching the weather, wondering if he should lower the
island for the night, when there was a flash of lightning. And just
below the clouds there was this huge thing flying. Now, Knux gets scared
about as often as I do, and he never admits it if he was. And he told
me it scared him. Don't spread it around though, he'll kill me.
A few more days went by. It rained a little, but we didn't have
any storms. Serena's dreams started to taper off, probably because we
were all working. See, a few years ago Robotropolis was totally flattened
by this junk called Terbium. We'd been trying to clean up the rubble ever
since. The work's been a little faster lately because a few industries
got in touch with Sally about rebuilding. It seems a lot of people lost
a lot of business and moola when Robotnik took over, and they'd like to
get things restarted. Sally was totally hyper. She loves this kind of
stuff, and wants to make the rebuilt Mobitropolis more beautiful than
the original. I said fine, but she can have it. I remember Mobitropolis,
and I like Knothole better. Anyway, we were recruited for raw labor,
and were helping build stuff. The land we cleared was covered in these
little surveyor stakes with pink ribbons fluttering in the breeze.
Did you know a thunderstorm can roll in in just a few hours? I
didn't know they could move that fast. It was sunny when we stopped for
lunch. By the time we resumed work, half the sky was black. The other
half didn't take long to follow suit, and soon we were out there in
pouring rain. Serena came and found me. Like I said, she hates storms,
and we kept scanning the sky in spite of ourselves. The job boss yelled
for us to get under cover and wait it out. A storm moving that fast
would be over soon.
There we were, jammed into the cabs of tractors and trucks like
sardines. Serena and I were the only ones who didn't get sat on, seeing
as our spines make it pretty uncomfortable. We hid out in the back of a
pickup with a cover, and stared out at the pouring rain. Neither of us
mentioned the Thunderbird. I wasn't scared, but Serena was. She jumped
at every lightning flash. Odd, since she's never actually seen the
Thunderbird. I was watching her more than the storm, when she screamed
in a whisper, "There it is!"
It wasn't scary when it flew over. It was really interesting. And
I didn't cower down on the bed of the truck like Serena says I did. She
was the one who did that. But I did jump out into the rain when Tails
ran by with the camera.
Tails had been carrying a camera to work every day on the off
chance we might see the Thunderbird. It was a little waterproof deal he
wore strapped to his wrist. And fear forgotten, he was running around in
the mud, camera held to his eye, snapping pictures like fury. I had a
sudden vision of my sidekick's fur and bones strewn all over the the
ground, and ran after him. Where did the little creep get the idea to do
that, anyway? Wasn't he scared? Well, I suppose he got it from hanging
around me, heh heh, not that it's always a good thing.
The bird by this time had flown over twice and was flying off in
the direction the storm was headed. Tails was running after it, still
snapping pictures. As I got closer I heard him muttering, "Gimme a
lightning flash, c'mon, just one flash--"
Flash.
I blinked and heard the camera click.
As the thunder rolled over us, I caught up to him and grabbed his
arm. He turned and grinned at me, soaking wet and splattered with mud.
"A roll!" he yelled, shoving his dripping camera in my face. "I got a
whole roll!"
* * *
There were thirty-six exposures in that roll of film, and once we
got them developed, we realized we had a problem.
There was not one single picture of the Thunderbird.
Needless to say, Tails was devastated. The thing was, we had all
seen it. It had flown over twice, for Pete's sake! (Whoever Pete is.)
We told Rotor about it, seeing as he's our mechanic around here.
He looked all thoughtful and asked Tails for the negatives. Tails gave
them to him, and Rote loaded them up on Nicole and played them on the
holoprojector.
It turned out Tails had photographed the Thunderbird after all.
After messing with color and filter settings, Rotor showed us something
really weird. In each picture was a little ripple against the clouds. "So
the thing is invisible?" I asked.
Rotor shook his head. "I don't think it's that simple. Here, Sally,
have Nicole tell us what that is."
Sally took Nicole and said, "Nicole, please scan photographs for
unusual light patterns."
"Scanning, Sally," said Nicole.
I tapped my foot. "How long's this gonna take?"
"As long as it takes," said Sally without looking up. Man, I hate
it when she gets like that. Especially when I could explode with curiosity.
After a month or so, Nicole displayed an enlarged photo. "Scans
detect disturbance in this area," she said, highlighting the ripple.
Duh. "Possible matches: Dimension portal. Disturbance in the space-time
continuum. Radiation."
I pointed at the bird-ripple. "You're telling me that that sucker
is nuclear?"
"No," said Rotor. He has this habit of sucking on his tusks when
he's thinking. After all, he is a walrus. "The bird might actually be in
another dimension, and all we see is a reflection projected into ours."
"Sure," I scoffed, "and that explains how it can eat people.
Holograms always do that. I'll bet that's where my socks go."
Sally ignored me and stared at the photo. "That's not possible,
unless the continuum has been disrupted, or there's a portal open in the
area."
"Or maybe it got tangled up in a portal and is dragging it around," I
suggested, expecting them to ignore me again. Instead they both looked
at me.
"If that's so," said Rotor, "maybe that's why it seems to generate
a storm whenever it appears."
"They always come out of nowhere," I added helpfully.
Sally looked at me, but her eyes weren't focused. "That could be ...
maybe it goes in and out of the portal ... but a tear in the fabric of
space and time wouldn't attach to a solid object. And there are more of
its kind, according to the story Tails found." I had showed her the
story about the Bird of Thunder after talking to Knuckles.
"But why would it appear now?" she went on. "Has there been a
recent disturbance?"
"A couple," I said. "Chaos came out of the Master Emerald, and we
turned on that biotic machinery to make the portal to the anti-verse."
Sally's eyes focused on me. "Maybe they called it to us."
The door opened and Slasher looked in, so casual she was fit to
bust. "Busy?" she asked.
"Kinda," said Sally. "Why?"
"No reason," said Slasher, fixing an eye on me. "I just ran across
something I thought you might be interested in."
Us? Ha. She captured the whole village's undivided attention. What
Slasher found were the remains of another Thunderbird victim, barely a
mile from Knothole. Again it was in the middle of a huge burnt patch.
And again, any wood that had been too wet to burn had been turned to
stone.
There wasn't enough left of the victim to even identify species,
let alone who it was. We buried it--in a shoebox--and returned to trying
to piece together the meaning of Tails's weird pictures. Personally,
I was stumped. Even Chaos left obvious clues behind. The Thunderbird
was too much for me.
At least, I thought that until Amy showed up.
Amy's this bratty hedgehog who has a terminal crush on me. She's
about five years younger than me. Sally had told me that the Rose family
would be living in the village until they could get their business
running in Mobitropolis. Unfortunately, it didn't ring a bell until the
hedgehogs stepped out of the hovercar, and Amy shrieked, "SONIC!"
You know, I wish we'd find some pink fur and an hair ribbon in the
middle of a burnt patch somewhere. Humiliating! I tried to pry her arms
off my neck while everybody stood around and laughed. I was turning red,
which isn't a good thing, because it doesn't go well with blue. I pushed
her away, and she bounced up and down, clapping her hands and squealing,
"Sonicsonicsonicsonicsonic!"
I ran for it.
I sneaked back into the village after dark, starving, and staring
around for pink hedgehogs. I expected Amy to jump on me from out of a
tree or something, but she was in one of the rental huts with her folks,
eating dinner. Whew, I was safe. I went to find something to eat, and
had a heart attack when Serena pounced at me and imitated Amy's chant
of, "Sonicsonicsonic!" Then she doubled up laughing. "I can't believe
you're scared of her!"
"I'm not scared of her," I snarled. "I just don't need some silly
little girl worshipping me."
"Oh really?" asked Serena, looking me in the eye. "Then why do
you expect everybody else to?"
She never cuts me any slack if she can help it. But she won some
points by showing me the plate of grub she saved me when I didn't
appear for dinner. I guess sisters are good for something after all.
I hid out in my hut with the food, and Serena sat on the floor and
told me about a couple flickies that had come with Amy. "They said
they knew you," she said. "One's named Cirrus, and he hung around with
Amy a lot. He's green. Then there's a pink one named Niña and a grey one
named Nimbo. Niña said you'd know her by the name 'Gamma'."
I didn't interrupt the rhythm of shovelling food into my mouth.
"Yeah, I know her. She was one of the E-series robots."
"Anyway, they'd like to see you sometime," Serena said, picking
a burr out of the cuff of her jeans. "It's a good thing Amy's here, if
you ask me."
"Nobody asked you," I snapped, feeling the helpless embarrassment
of having Amy throw herself at me.
Serena looked at me, kinda hurt, so I asked in a softer tone,
"Why?"
"Because you won't worry about the Thunderbird so much."
Come to think of it, I hadn't given it a thought all day. As far as
I was concerned, Amy was a much bigger threat.
Yeah, right. It only gets weird from here on out. And I'm talking
WEIRD.
* * *
What with dodging Amy and working, I didn't see much of Knothole for
a while. Working all day wipes you out. You work out in the sun, sweat
pouring off you, driving nails, running power tools, shovelling wet cement.
Then you go home exhausted, and all you can think of is eating like a
horse--or a hedgehog--and going to bed. Then the next day, you're feeling
great and eager to get back to work, because the project is going ahead
of schedule! Then add to the mix a pink hedgehog who screams your name
every time she sees you, making people turn and stare. Work looks really
good, let me tell you.
It didn't rain, the weather warmed up, and work was going great
when something ELSE happened.
These three lizard things came to Knothole. They were about half
my height, and wore long cloaks with hoods, so all you could see were
their eyes shining out at you. They hopped around the village,
squeaking at people when they least expected it. Nasty little jerks,
I wish we'd run them out.
Know what they did? They ganged up on me when I was coming back
from work, sweaty and tired. "You! You!" they squeaked, standing in a
row so I couldn't go by. "You're the one!"
"I'm the man, all right," I said, not understanding what they
meant. "Outta my way, squeak-toys."
They started jumping up and down and chittering, "The one, the one!
We have found him! The one who will save us from the Bird of Thunder!"
Uh oh. That should have told me something was up. "What?"
They knew they had my attention now. They stopped bouncing, and
one said, "You are the one we've been looking for! Once the Bird of
Thunder has fed on your flesh, it will go away and leave us in peace!"
You try having somebody say that to you and see how you react.
Fortunately, I'm not the kind to take a bunch of weirdos seriously.
I shrugged them off and went on my way, and my spines were not standing
up. They had been that way all day. The lizards followed me, chittering
and gibbering. Pests. I went to my hut and locked the door to keep them
out.
But they weren't finished. Their goal was to make what was left of
my life miserable. They ran around and told everybody that I was the
Thunderbird's final victim.
Well, they did until they crossed paths with Amy. See, Amy doesn't
take kindly to anybody saying bad things about her self-proclaimed
'boyfriend'. I guess it's kinda useful. The lizards were hopping around
her, squeaking their news. "Wait," she said. "You're saying you're going
to feed Sonic to some monster?"
Too bad for the lizards. Amy's carried a mallet with her for ages.
I think she got it on the Egg Carrier. Anyway, she whipped it out and let
them have it. She felled one with a blow to the head, and chased the
leader around the village.
Served the pests right.
What with the lizards, Amy and work, I REALLY didn't see much of
Knothole. Too bad, too. If I had talked to the flickies like I should
have, things would have fallen out differently. After all, they knew how to
stop the Thunderbird and I didn't.
It had been hot for about two weeks. I mean the kind of hot that
chokes you, melts your ice cream before you can get it to your mouth, and
bakes any skin to a crispy brown. There were folks walking around with
bleached fur and skin like the crust of fried chicken. Get me? It was
hot. Work was miserable, and some of us (like Serena and Tails) wound up
with heatstroke. Not good. We took to knocking off work for two hours in
the afternoons.
The heat wasn't the problem, though. See, when we have a heatwave
like this one, the weather usually breaks with a big storm. So we
tolerated the heat and hoped it would never break.
But all good things come to an end, and one morning it was as
oppressive as an open oven. A big cloudbank built up in the northwest. As
the day passed, it got closer, eating up the blue sky. Once in a while
we heard thunder. But there was no wind, and the air was so thick you
could have cut it into blocks and sold it as mattress stuffing. We watched
the front move in as we worked, and that evening the sun set into a
fluffy thunderhead and was never heard from again.
We battened down the hatches in the village, and two words of
terror were circulated--"Thunderbird" and "tornado". We don't usually
have tornados, but they aren't impossible, and funnel clouds are spotted
once in a while. What with the thought of the Thunderbird, nobody was
happy that night.
It was hot as a blast furnace, and the storm was taking its time
about storming. I locked myself in my hut, but huts are no good in three-
digit weather with no air conditioning, so I opened the windows.
Huts are also no good when a Thunderbird and a weird religious
faction are after you.
I lay in my hammock, sticky with sweat and listening to the
thunder in the distance. I must have dozed, because the next thing I knew
there was a crack of thunder right overhead, and my hut was full of
flickering candles.
I jumped to the floor, not at all startled to see my hut was now
decorated with bones, candles and other creepy things. I dove for the
door, but there were the lizards. They had ditched their cloaks, and
were barring my way. They looked like little velociraptors with long
necks. "I don't think so," the leader hissed. "The preparations are not
complete."
Who needs a sharp tongue? I have sharp spines. I spindashed them
and nailed the leader on my way to the door. I groped for the doorknob,
but with a shock realized it was gone. My hands encountered boards and
nailheads--they had barricaded me in! I spun to face the lizards. There
was a flash of lightning, and I saw they all had spines or frills on
their necks. I don't like candlelight. It's too creepy, and it made
them look like three little demons.
"Get out of my hut," I panted, wishing I sounded meaner.
The leader hadn't been hurt much, because he growled, "It won't
be yours much longer."
Would you believe me if I told you I wrung their squeaky necks and
escaped unharmed? Well ... would you believe me if I told you I might
have got bitten once or twice, but still escaped? Okay, you wouldn't,
but this is the abridged version, remember. I can tell it like I want
to. Besides, getting trounced by three skinny lizards is too embarrassing
to talk about. Nobody would believe it anyway.
Okay, so they beat me up. And they might have bit me. They made
me sit through their evil ceremony as they chanted my name over and
over, then called for the Thunderbird. I didn't believe a word of it,
and it didn't work, either, because I'm protected by somebody greater
than their forces of darkness, and it ain't Slasher.
Then, before I knew they were done, one took a club and asked me
if I wanted to go the easy way or the hard way. Without waiting for my
reply, he clonked me on the head and said, "The easy way."
When I woke up, I was tied to a post out in the middle of a
meadow, and the lizards were nowhere in sight. Like I said, we should
have run them out. A few rocks were set up in front of me like an
altar, and on top of them was my emerald belt, carefully folded, and
Slasher's whistle. The storm was pretty close by now, because a hot
wind was hissing through the grass, and the lightning was going off
like special effects.
Okay, I was starting to get a little worried. I flailed around,
but my wrists were tied to that wooden post, and a spindash would rip
my arms off. I tried to reach my stuff with my toes, but it was too far
away. Doggone those lizards! I pursed my lips and whistled, but the
pitiful sound was blown away by the wind. I can whistle with my
fingers, but that didn't work with my hands tied.
Then the wind went cold. Or maybe my blood turned to ice. No,
that would imply fear, so I guess it was the wind that changed. There
was this horrible scream, and I saw the Thunderbird again. It was
circling. And my belt was just out of reach.
Stupid lizards.
It came down like a black tent, and there was electricity sparking
from its wingtips. For an instant I saw its ivory claws, then they
closed around me, and I heard my ropes snap.
What was it like? Well, honestly I don't remember. There's a
blank in my memory right there. The next thing I can remember is flying
in the rain and being in a lot of pain. See, every time it beat its
wings, lightning flashed out of the bird in all directions, and I
was soundly electrocuted. You try being electrocuted about once every
three seconds. The only thing I thought between charges was that this
time my heart had stopped. This time I was dead.
Then it landed. I was laid across a branch with a talon in my back,
and I heard it sharpen its beak. I opened my eyes and saw its hideous
leathery head, and the crimson mottled beak. The beat was serrated like
a steak knife. I didn't have the wits to struggle, and my muscles had
been tenderized, so they were temporarily unemployed. In a minute I would
be a little pile of bones and blue spines.
Suddenly it was gone. I was alone on the branch, rain pouring down
on my poor fried back. I couldn't do anything in my liquefied state, so I
just lay there, my mind in a total fog.
Presently my body spasmed, and I grabbed the branch to steady
myself. My strength was coming back, and for the first time I wondered
how far from the ground I was. Below me was a black void. I looked up at
the angry sky. I've been in a few rough situations, and I think right
then, sitting in a tree in a storm, was the worst of all.
Then a voice screamed my name.
I looked up and saw a little bird whisk down and land on my branch.
It was soaking wet and scared out of its mind. It was the grey flicky that
had come with Amy. Nimbo, I think. "Sonic!" he screeched.
I wasn't deaf, sheesh. "What?"
He peered at me. "Great, you're alive! Sonic, you must send him
back!"
"Who? The Thunderbird?"
"Yes yes! He is from the Island of the Flickies! He came through a
flicky portal by accident and has been in our dimension ever since!" This
was rattled off as fast as the bird could make his tongue go, and it
took a second to filter down into my brain.
"You mean it's a dinosaur?"
"Thunderbirds are not dinosaurs, Sonic. When he returns, take the
band off his leg! It will send him home!"
Band? Home? Sheesh, wake up, Sonic. I wasn't exactly scared, but I
wasn't exactly coherent, either. Shock was setting in, ha ha.
Nimbo gave a squawk and fluttered off into the darkness, and I heard
the Thunderbird coming back. I guess his temporal instability had
accidently skipped him away from me. Great words, huh? I looked toward
him, and for a second all I could see was that ripple from Tails's photo.
Then it got closer and became the Thunderbird. I needed to take away his
flute so he couldn't play in the band--no, no, I needed to take off the
band. Wake up, Sonic!
It landed on the branch and folded its wings. It was a pterodactyl,
I thought. The proper name was actually Quetzalcoatlus, but "Thunderbird"
is easier on the tongue. It was huge. I scanned its thick, knotty legs.
Around one of them was a gold band with a bolt in it.
I have no idea why a band around a flying reptile's leg would hold
it in a particular dimension. I mean, who put on the band in the first
place? Metal Sonic? Hah, I'd like to see him try it. Anyway, I wasn't in
the mood or the place to question the logic of the situation. I reached
out, grabbed the bolt and turned, just as the bird seized my leg in its
beak. Yeeowch. Kind of like getting your leg caught in a chainsaw. Good
thing for me the bolt came out of the hole just then. My leg fell through
its beak, because the bird's whole body went ghost. The band was the only
solid thing about it, and it just fell off. I looked up at the Thunderbird
to see it throw back its head, spread its bat-wings and shoot lightning
into the clouds. Then its body twisted into a blur of color and disappeared
into a tiny, bright hole in the air. Then that disappeared, too.
I heard the legband strike the ground with a clang.
* * *
Hero. (her'o) A. The principle male personage, usually of noble
character, in a poem or story. B. A person of distinguished valor or
fortitude. C. An idiot who sits in a tree all night.
Wouldn't you know it, but the worst injury I sustained in the whole
thing was a headcold from sitting in the rain for hours? I couldn't see
worth a darn, and in my weakened state I didn't dare try to climb down.
That night was about seventy-two hours long, let me tell you. I had never
been so glad to see the sun rise. And it wasn't long after that that
Slasher flew up out of the trees, a flicky flying behind her yelling,
"There he is!"
I was a hero, all right.
On the way home, Slasher showed me the spot where I had been
picked up. As soon as the Thunderbird had touched the ground, its
electricity blasted the ground, burning everything under it. Did you
know that extreme voltage can turn wood into stone? I sure didn't. Slash
told me that she had found the three lizards hiding nearby, holding my
whistle and my belt and sniggering to themselves. I don't know if she
killed them or ran them off, but I never saw them again.
The Thunderbird was one of the creatures who lived in the home
dimension of the flickies on Flicky Island. When Metal Sonic created the
rift distortion to pull the flickies through, not only did he pull through
some extra debris (like Zephyer), he also pulled through a few odd
dinosaurs, like the Thunderbird. It had hung around the island for a
while, it's extra-dimensional powers disrupting things, then came east
to the mainland. The alarmed Royal Flickies sent word to their mainland
cousins, which is why Nimbo knew what to do.
Hail the conquering hero comes! I marched into the village to
cheers and fireworks and confetti ... okay, maybe I was only mobbed by my
adoring fans ... All right, all right, all that happened was my friends
ran up and asked, "Is he okay?"
All I wanted, to tell the truth, was to go to bed and get warm--
I was soaking wet, you know--but Slash marched me to the medical hut for
an exam. Sheesh, can't a guy do anything around here without folks
freaking out?
Like I said, I got a shocking cold, ha ha, but I was okay otherwise.
Sure, I had some Thunderbird nightmares, but they didn't scare me.
Nothing scares me!
Okay, maybe there IS something I'm afraid of.
They let Amy be my nursemaid.
The End
by K. M. Hollar
_____________________________________________________________________
Sonic the Hedgehog copyrighted by Sega. Sally and related characters
copyrighted by Archie comics. Serena, Slasher and other fan characters
copyrighted by K. M. Hollar. This style was derived from the Hank the
Cowdog books, by John Erickson.
_____________________________________________________________________
Hey, did I ever tell you about the time I saved Knothole from the
Thunderbird? Yeah, it happened right after I recovered from my bout
with the anti-verse, but before Mister Black Hedgehog waltzed in in
July. The Thunderbird had come east and--well, maybe I should start
at the beginning.
It started with a thunderstorm. Scary, huh? Watching a
thunderstorm on the ground has got nothing on being two thousand feet
up in the middle of one. Tails and I had taken the Tornado down to
Sapphire City to get a new set of engines. We had been saving up for
them, because it's as much my plane as it is his. I just let him fly
it 'cause I'm nice. Not every cool dude lets his sidekick fly the
plane, you know. Where was I? Oh yeah, the storm. We were on our way
home when it blew in. We tried to outrun it, but the wind was against
us, and the engines were too new to try anything interesting.
Before I knew it, it was pitch black, and I was regretting my
decision to ride on the upper wing of the biplane. Do you know what
rain feels like when it runs into you at a hundred miles an hour?
Like bullets, that's what. I was up there getting my spines torn off,
and Tails was down in the cockpit, fussing about electrical
interference. "My instruments are going haywire!" he yelled over the
general noise of wind, rain and twin jet engines. "I think we're
gonna get struck!"
Have you ever been in a cloud full of lightning? No? I hadn't,
either. All of a sudden the air was ripped into pieces by bolts of
electricity, and all my spines stood on end. The biplane jumped
around as a sound that would be called thunder by folks sitting cozily
in their living rooms wreaked havoc on my eardrums. It went black
again. Somehow I was still on the biplane, rain trying to peck out my
eyeballs, and the engines were still going. "Tails!" I yelled. "Get
us out of this cloud!"
"I can't!" Tails yelled back, and he sounded scared stiff.
"Everything's dead! I can't even see my compass!"
"Then fly us straight up," I called back in perfect calm. A
little thing like getting fried by lightning never fazed me.
Ouch. Tails pulled up so fast I smacked my face into the wing.
The rain changed directions--now it was stinging my hands like quad-
speed bees. The engines screamed. I heard the rain strike the
underside of the wings--Tails was flipping us over! I yelled at him
to level out, but he wasn't looking at me. He had the stick pulled all
the way back and was staring up at the clouds. I glanced up as we went
over backward, and saw the Thunderbird.
It didn't scare me. Huge fanged birds with lightning coming out
of their wings would never scare me. And I wasn't screaming. I was
just, uh, yelling for Tails to straighten us out. He did too, after
two minutes of screeching nosedive. And that wasn't me screeching, it
was the engines, so don't listen to Tails. He doesn't know what he's
talking about. The only time I've ever screamed was when Metal Sonic
tore my arm off. Okay, he never tore my arm off, and I've never
screamed. Period.
So we dropped below the clouds and opened the throttle. Tails
messed with the control panel and got it to come on again--I think he
beat his fists on it. We kited home like a Thunderbird was after us.
And like I said, I wasn't scared.
* * *
The storm didn't hit Knothole, which was a good thing for us. The
first thing we did after we landed was tell everybody about the
Thunderbird. I mean, that's the logical thing to call some monster bird
in a storm, right? Too bad nobody believed us. Bunnie actually laughed
at me. Sally didn't laugh, but she grinned like I'd told a corny joke.
Turns out that the Thunderbird is a mythical creature, like a unicorn,
and there are several Mobian folktales about it. How was I supposed to
know that? It's not like we're big into legends around here, and I
don't have time to read a stupid book.
Well, I guess somebody believed us. Slasher always believes me.
About the time I was ready to spindash the next person who smirked
at me, Slash walked up and asked me what I saw. I told her what it
looked like, and got Tails to tell her, too. He'd gotten a better look
than I had. Slasher is a velociraptor with wings, and she knows a lot
of stuff about the weather, not to mention other dinosaurs. I hoped
she'd come up with something, or tell me I wasn't crazy, but she didn't.
She sorta looked puzzled, and stared at the Tornado off on the
airstrip. "What do you think it was?" I asked.
She shrugged her wings. "At this point I don't know." She
walked off, and I ducked her tail.
Tails looked at me with narrowed eyes. "Don't tell me you weren't
scared of it."
"Hey, I wasn't," I told him.
"Sure," said Tails. "So what was all that stuff you were yelling
about 'get us out of here before it kills us'?"
"I never said that," I said. "You heard me wrong in the wind."
Really, there was a lot of noise at that point, and how could the poor
kid expect to understand me?
Tails gave me a Look and walked off to tinker with the plane.
Then Serena started having nightmares.
Serena's my sister. She's okay--for a girl. She can run pretty
fast, and she doesn't squeal if you throw mud on her or something. Not
that _I_ would ever do something like that, heh heh, but you get the
idea. Anyway, sometimes she has dreams about things that haven't happened
yet. I told her about the Thunderbird, and she started dreaming about
it. (She also had dreams about Mister Black Hedgehog, but she didn't
tell me about those for a long time.) She hates storms, so I guess that
helped. She told me the dreams were always the same: she was in the
middle of a meadow, and a storm would move in. Just when the thunder and
lightning were at their worst, the Thunderbird would swoop down. That
was all, but it terrified her. I never have nightmares, and if I do,
they don't scare me. That's the kind of guy I am.
We had gorgeous weather for a couple weeks. Not a cloud in the sky,
the sun was warm, and the woods turned green again. It was only April,
you know, so we hadn't had much spring yet. The trails dried out and I
got to break the sound barrier for the first time in ages. I really
missed my supersonic chao Velocity. He was so much fun to hang around,
and I wished I had played with him more in Ultimate form. I was
forgetting what it looked like. I wasn't the only person who missed
the chao. As it got warm, everybody remembered the two springs the
chao had lived with us, and the fun they had climbing trees in the
fragrant woods.
I guess I forgot about the Thunderbird, and so did Tails. I was
almost to the point where I could laugh at Serena's nightmares when we
had a storm.
Actually, it only rained. Most of the storm hit further south,
and as it turned out, so did the Thunderbird.
The day after the storm we got a message from a town down there.
Something had come out of the sky, grabbed somebody and carried him off.
They were pretty freaked about it. Who wouldn't be freaked about some
monster in the sky, other than yours truly? What scared them was that
after the storm they found the guy. Or what was left of him. Apparently
he had been a snack for something really big.
I grabbed a gun, and Slasher and I flew down to see if we could
find the Thunderbird. See, if it had killed somebody, it wasn't a
legend anymore. It was a menace.
The town was three times bigger than Knothole, and built up
against the southern edge of the Great Forest. It sure didn't look like
the kind of place where people got eaten by monsters. Slasher landed
outside the police station, and these guys in uniforms led us inside.
They looked really nervous, and I don't think it was because they were
hosting the two most dangerous dudes on Mobius.
Slasher wanted to see the body, and they led us into the room
where they had it. I don't know what I was expecting--probably some
mauled chunk of meat--but I didn't expect what we saw. All that was left
were a few bones and bits of fur. Yuck! I waited outside while Slasher
looked it over, for clues, I guess. I'm not into this forensics stuff.
After a minute she came out, as cool as a cucumber. She's used
to seeing dead animals, because sometimes she goes out into the woods
and catches a few meals. Sounds barbaric to me. Give me a chilidog any
day. I ain't no killer, and I want my food totally unrecognizable by
the time I eat it.
The sheriff or somebody came out and talked to us. I guess the
dead guy was related to him somehow. He told us that the dead guy (before
he was dead, duh) went outside for a look at the storm, and was carried
off. He was in the middle of town, too! His bits and pieces were found
in a field a mile outside of town. Slasher asked if they could show us
where they found him, and the sheriff agreed. I hopped in the cab of
a truck, Slash hopped in the back, and we drove very slowly out of town.
Cars are so boring; there's all these dumb rules about how to drive
one!
Anyway, we got out to the field about three days later, and
Slash and I jumped out for a look. None of the cops would come with
us--I hadn't realized they were all yellow chickens. They looked more
like squirrels and foxes to me.
So Slash and I walked out and snooped around. It was bright and
sunny, and all the grass was clean from the rain. But there was this
patch of black smack in the middle of the green, like somebody had
burned tumbleweeds. Slasher snorted. "He was here, all right. Stay
put, Sonic, I don't want the scent disturbed." I stood, fiddling with
my gun, watching her sniff around. The police must not have disturbed
it too much.
"Well?" I asked when she came back.
She looked puzzled. "Not a thing. No scent at all, except where
the remains were dropped. But I did find this." She held out a piece
of wood. I took it and realized it was solid rock. "Petrified," she
told me, as if I didn't know. "And you know how rare it is." As if I
didn't know that, either.
"Maybe he had it in his pocket," I said.
She took it from me and turned it over. "Maybe. But maybe whatever
blasted this area petrified it."
"You mean the Thunderbird has some sort of forcefield?" I asked.
She cocked an eye at me. "You tell me. Didn't you say it had
lightning coming out of its wings?"
I backpedaled. "But Slash, you know, it was real dark and the
bird was up in the clouds--I didn't see it too well--the lightning was
probably in front of it." I looked down at the burned grass. "It might
be a dragon."
"Did it have feathers?"
"I donno, it was a silhouette. But it had teeth. Big ones."
Slasher looked up at the cloudless sky. "I wonder where it goes
after a storm. I think it's time for a flight."
We checked in with the sheriff and told him we were gonna try to
find the Thunderbird. He was glad, I think. After all, has Sonic the
Hedgehog ever gone up against a monster he couldn't whip?
Slash flew around with me on her back for the rest of the day,
but we didn't find a thing. Not even a tree struck by lightning. Nothing
is more boring than wasting time. I never waste any time, running
around like I do. Even Slash doesn't waste much, even if she is slower
than me.
We turned up zilch and flew home. Tails was waiting for me, and
I could tell by the look on his face that he had something to tell me.
I left Slasher telling about the day's trip and headed off with Tails.
"Sonic," he said, his eyes bright but serious, "I was going
through the books I borrowed from Knuckles, and I found an echidna
legend about the Thunderbird!"
In that case, we'd struck pay dirt. Having a sidekick who likes to
do all the slow things you hate definitely has its perks. Tails took me
to his hut, opened a little book with yellow pages, and pointed to a
section. The language was old-fashioned, but by concentrating I could
follow it. It told about the Bird of Thunder straying from its home and
taking away the echidnas for food. They sent two Island Warriors our to
get it, and eventually they shot it down with "fire arrows". (According
to Knux, those were actually some kind of energy weapon.) But the bird
didn't die. It fought them on the ground and injured one of the warriors.
The remaining dude called for backup, and the other five warriors came
to help. It took all seven of them to kill it. Then, in due echidna
fashion, they took measurements and did an autopsy. There were lots of
drawings of guts and muscles, gross. But they still didn't know where
it came from, and they never said why they called it the Bird of Thunder.
Figures. The echidnas were so thorough about some things and so clueless
about others. Even Knux is like that sometimes.
I thanked Tails and decided to call Knux and see if he knew
anything about the Thunderbird.
He did.
It wasn't exactly hair-raising, but if I wasn't the kind of guy
to get freaked out, it would have freaked me out. Knux had seen the thing
flying inland. He hadn't said anything because he was afraid we'd think
he was nuts. He said it had been a cloudy evening, but not stormy. He
had been out watching the weather, wondering if he should lower the
island for the night, when there was a flash of lightning. And just
below the clouds there was this huge thing flying. Now, Knux gets scared
about as often as I do, and he never admits it if he was. And he told
me it scared him. Don't spread it around though, he'll kill me.
A few more days went by. It rained a little, but we didn't have
any storms. Serena's dreams started to taper off, probably because we
were all working. See, a few years ago Robotropolis was totally flattened
by this junk called Terbium. We'd been trying to clean up the rubble ever
since. The work's been a little faster lately because a few industries
got in touch with Sally about rebuilding. It seems a lot of people lost
a lot of business and moola when Robotnik took over, and they'd like to
get things restarted. Sally was totally hyper. She loves this kind of
stuff, and wants to make the rebuilt Mobitropolis more beautiful than
the original. I said fine, but she can have it. I remember Mobitropolis,
and I like Knothole better. Anyway, we were recruited for raw labor,
and were helping build stuff. The land we cleared was covered in these
little surveyor stakes with pink ribbons fluttering in the breeze.
Did you know a thunderstorm can roll in in just a few hours? I
didn't know they could move that fast. It was sunny when we stopped for
lunch. By the time we resumed work, half the sky was black. The other
half didn't take long to follow suit, and soon we were out there in
pouring rain. Serena came and found me. Like I said, she hates storms,
and we kept scanning the sky in spite of ourselves. The job boss yelled
for us to get under cover and wait it out. A storm moving that fast
would be over soon.
There we were, jammed into the cabs of tractors and trucks like
sardines. Serena and I were the only ones who didn't get sat on, seeing
as our spines make it pretty uncomfortable. We hid out in the back of a
pickup with a cover, and stared out at the pouring rain. Neither of us
mentioned the Thunderbird. I wasn't scared, but Serena was. She jumped
at every lightning flash. Odd, since she's never actually seen the
Thunderbird. I was watching her more than the storm, when she screamed
in a whisper, "There it is!"
It wasn't scary when it flew over. It was really interesting. And
I didn't cower down on the bed of the truck like Serena says I did. She
was the one who did that. But I did jump out into the rain when Tails
ran by with the camera.
Tails had been carrying a camera to work every day on the off
chance we might see the Thunderbird. It was a little waterproof deal he
wore strapped to his wrist. And fear forgotten, he was running around in
the mud, camera held to his eye, snapping pictures like fury. I had a
sudden vision of my sidekick's fur and bones strewn all over the the
ground, and ran after him. Where did the little creep get the idea to do
that, anyway? Wasn't he scared? Well, I suppose he got it from hanging
around me, heh heh, not that it's always a good thing.
The bird by this time had flown over twice and was flying off in
the direction the storm was headed. Tails was running after it, still
snapping pictures. As I got closer I heard him muttering, "Gimme a
lightning flash, c'mon, just one flash--"
Flash.
I blinked and heard the camera click.
As the thunder rolled over us, I caught up to him and grabbed his
arm. He turned and grinned at me, soaking wet and splattered with mud.
"A roll!" he yelled, shoving his dripping camera in my face. "I got a
whole roll!"
* * *
There were thirty-six exposures in that roll of film, and once we
got them developed, we realized we had a problem.
There was not one single picture of the Thunderbird.
Needless to say, Tails was devastated. The thing was, we had all
seen it. It had flown over twice, for Pete's sake! (Whoever Pete is.)
We told Rotor about it, seeing as he's our mechanic around here.
He looked all thoughtful and asked Tails for the negatives. Tails gave
them to him, and Rote loaded them up on Nicole and played them on the
holoprojector.
It turned out Tails had photographed the Thunderbird after all.
After messing with color and filter settings, Rotor showed us something
really weird. In each picture was a little ripple against the clouds. "So
the thing is invisible?" I asked.
Rotor shook his head. "I don't think it's that simple. Here, Sally,
have Nicole tell us what that is."
Sally took Nicole and said, "Nicole, please scan photographs for
unusual light patterns."
"Scanning, Sally," said Nicole.
I tapped my foot. "How long's this gonna take?"
"As long as it takes," said Sally without looking up. Man, I hate
it when she gets like that. Especially when I could explode with curiosity.
After a month or so, Nicole displayed an enlarged photo. "Scans
detect disturbance in this area," she said, highlighting the ripple.
Duh. "Possible matches: Dimension portal. Disturbance in the space-time
continuum. Radiation."
I pointed at the bird-ripple. "You're telling me that that sucker
is nuclear?"
"No," said Rotor. He has this habit of sucking on his tusks when
he's thinking. After all, he is a walrus. "The bird might actually be in
another dimension, and all we see is a reflection projected into ours."
"Sure," I scoffed, "and that explains how it can eat people.
Holograms always do that. I'll bet that's where my socks go."
Sally ignored me and stared at the photo. "That's not possible,
unless the continuum has been disrupted, or there's a portal open in the
area."
"Or maybe it got tangled up in a portal and is dragging it around," I
suggested, expecting them to ignore me again. Instead they both looked
at me.
"If that's so," said Rotor, "maybe that's why it seems to generate
a storm whenever it appears."
"They always come out of nowhere," I added helpfully.
Sally looked at me, but her eyes weren't focused. "That could be ...
maybe it goes in and out of the portal ... but a tear in the fabric of
space and time wouldn't attach to a solid object. And there are more of
its kind, according to the story Tails found." I had showed her the
story about the Bird of Thunder after talking to Knuckles.
"But why would it appear now?" she went on. "Has there been a
recent disturbance?"
"A couple," I said. "Chaos came out of the Master Emerald, and we
turned on that biotic machinery to make the portal to the anti-verse."
Sally's eyes focused on me. "Maybe they called it to us."
The door opened and Slasher looked in, so casual she was fit to
bust. "Busy?" she asked.
"Kinda," said Sally. "Why?"
"No reason," said Slasher, fixing an eye on me. "I just ran across
something I thought you might be interested in."
Us? Ha. She captured the whole village's undivided attention. What
Slasher found were the remains of another Thunderbird victim, barely a
mile from Knothole. Again it was in the middle of a huge burnt patch.
And again, any wood that had been too wet to burn had been turned to
stone.
There wasn't enough left of the victim to even identify species,
let alone who it was. We buried it--in a shoebox--and returned to trying
to piece together the meaning of Tails's weird pictures. Personally,
I was stumped. Even Chaos left obvious clues behind. The Thunderbird
was too much for me.
At least, I thought that until Amy showed up.
Amy's this bratty hedgehog who has a terminal crush on me. She's
about five years younger than me. Sally had told me that the Rose family
would be living in the village until they could get their business
running in Mobitropolis. Unfortunately, it didn't ring a bell until the
hedgehogs stepped out of the hovercar, and Amy shrieked, "SONIC!"
You know, I wish we'd find some pink fur and an hair ribbon in the
middle of a burnt patch somewhere. Humiliating! I tried to pry her arms
off my neck while everybody stood around and laughed. I was turning red,
which isn't a good thing, because it doesn't go well with blue. I pushed
her away, and she bounced up and down, clapping her hands and squealing,
"Sonicsonicsonicsonicsonic!"
I ran for it.
I sneaked back into the village after dark, starving, and staring
around for pink hedgehogs. I expected Amy to jump on me from out of a
tree or something, but she was in one of the rental huts with her folks,
eating dinner. Whew, I was safe. I went to find something to eat, and
had a heart attack when Serena pounced at me and imitated Amy's chant
of, "Sonicsonicsonic!" Then she doubled up laughing. "I can't believe
you're scared of her!"
"I'm not scared of her," I snarled. "I just don't need some silly
little girl worshipping me."
"Oh really?" asked Serena, looking me in the eye. "Then why do
you expect everybody else to?"
She never cuts me any slack if she can help it. But she won some
points by showing me the plate of grub she saved me when I didn't
appear for dinner. I guess sisters are good for something after all.
I hid out in my hut with the food, and Serena sat on the floor and
told me about a couple flickies that had come with Amy. "They said
they knew you," she said. "One's named Cirrus, and he hung around with
Amy a lot. He's green. Then there's a pink one named Niña and a grey one
named Nimbo. Niña said you'd know her by the name 'Gamma'."
I didn't interrupt the rhythm of shovelling food into my mouth.
"Yeah, I know her. She was one of the E-series robots."
"Anyway, they'd like to see you sometime," Serena said, picking
a burr out of the cuff of her jeans. "It's a good thing Amy's here, if
you ask me."
"Nobody asked you," I snapped, feeling the helpless embarrassment
of having Amy throw herself at me.
Serena looked at me, kinda hurt, so I asked in a softer tone,
"Why?"
"Because you won't worry about the Thunderbird so much."
Come to think of it, I hadn't given it a thought all day. As far as
I was concerned, Amy was a much bigger threat.
Yeah, right. It only gets weird from here on out. And I'm talking
WEIRD.
* * *
What with dodging Amy and working, I didn't see much of Knothole for
a while. Working all day wipes you out. You work out in the sun, sweat
pouring off you, driving nails, running power tools, shovelling wet cement.
Then you go home exhausted, and all you can think of is eating like a
horse--or a hedgehog--and going to bed. Then the next day, you're feeling
great and eager to get back to work, because the project is going ahead
of schedule! Then add to the mix a pink hedgehog who screams your name
every time she sees you, making people turn and stare. Work looks really
good, let me tell you.
It didn't rain, the weather warmed up, and work was going great
when something ELSE happened.
These three lizard things came to Knothole. They were about half
my height, and wore long cloaks with hoods, so all you could see were
their eyes shining out at you. They hopped around the village,
squeaking at people when they least expected it. Nasty little jerks,
I wish we'd run them out.
Know what they did? They ganged up on me when I was coming back
from work, sweaty and tired. "You! You!" they squeaked, standing in a
row so I couldn't go by. "You're the one!"
"I'm the man, all right," I said, not understanding what they
meant. "Outta my way, squeak-toys."
They started jumping up and down and chittering, "The one, the one!
We have found him! The one who will save us from the Bird of Thunder!"
Uh oh. That should have told me something was up. "What?"
They knew they had my attention now. They stopped bouncing, and
one said, "You are the one we've been looking for! Once the Bird of
Thunder has fed on your flesh, it will go away and leave us in peace!"
You try having somebody say that to you and see how you react.
Fortunately, I'm not the kind to take a bunch of weirdos seriously.
I shrugged them off and went on my way, and my spines were not standing
up. They had been that way all day. The lizards followed me, chittering
and gibbering. Pests. I went to my hut and locked the door to keep them
out.
But they weren't finished. Their goal was to make what was left of
my life miserable. They ran around and told everybody that I was the
Thunderbird's final victim.
Well, they did until they crossed paths with Amy. See, Amy doesn't
take kindly to anybody saying bad things about her self-proclaimed
'boyfriend'. I guess it's kinda useful. The lizards were hopping around
her, squeaking their news. "Wait," she said. "You're saying you're going
to feed Sonic to some monster?"
Too bad for the lizards. Amy's carried a mallet with her for ages.
I think she got it on the Egg Carrier. Anyway, she whipped it out and let
them have it. She felled one with a blow to the head, and chased the
leader around the village.
Served the pests right.
What with the lizards, Amy and work, I REALLY didn't see much of
Knothole. Too bad, too. If I had talked to the flickies like I should
have, things would have fallen out differently. After all, they knew how to
stop the Thunderbird and I didn't.
It had been hot for about two weeks. I mean the kind of hot that
chokes you, melts your ice cream before you can get it to your mouth, and
bakes any skin to a crispy brown. There were folks walking around with
bleached fur and skin like the crust of fried chicken. Get me? It was
hot. Work was miserable, and some of us (like Serena and Tails) wound up
with heatstroke. Not good. We took to knocking off work for two hours in
the afternoons.
The heat wasn't the problem, though. See, when we have a heatwave
like this one, the weather usually breaks with a big storm. So we
tolerated the heat and hoped it would never break.
But all good things come to an end, and one morning it was as
oppressive as an open oven. A big cloudbank built up in the northwest. As
the day passed, it got closer, eating up the blue sky. Once in a while
we heard thunder. But there was no wind, and the air was so thick you
could have cut it into blocks and sold it as mattress stuffing. We watched
the front move in as we worked, and that evening the sun set into a
fluffy thunderhead and was never heard from again.
We battened down the hatches in the village, and two words of
terror were circulated--"Thunderbird" and "tornado". We don't usually
have tornados, but they aren't impossible, and funnel clouds are spotted
once in a while. What with the thought of the Thunderbird, nobody was
happy that night.
It was hot as a blast furnace, and the storm was taking its time
about storming. I locked myself in my hut, but huts are no good in three-
digit weather with no air conditioning, so I opened the windows.
Huts are also no good when a Thunderbird and a weird religious
faction are after you.
I lay in my hammock, sticky with sweat and listening to the
thunder in the distance. I must have dozed, because the next thing I knew
there was a crack of thunder right overhead, and my hut was full of
flickering candles.
I jumped to the floor, not at all startled to see my hut was now
decorated with bones, candles and other creepy things. I dove for the
door, but there were the lizards. They had ditched their cloaks, and
were barring my way. They looked like little velociraptors with long
necks. "I don't think so," the leader hissed. "The preparations are not
complete."
Who needs a sharp tongue? I have sharp spines. I spindashed them
and nailed the leader on my way to the door. I groped for the doorknob,
but with a shock realized it was gone. My hands encountered boards and
nailheads--they had barricaded me in! I spun to face the lizards. There
was a flash of lightning, and I saw they all had spines or frills on
their necks. I don't like candlelight. It's too creepy, and it made
them look like three little demons.
"Get out of my hut," I panted, wishing I sounded meaner.
The leader hadn't been hurt much, because he growled, "It won't
be yours much longer."
Would you believe me if I told you I wrung their squeaky necks and
escaped unharmed? Well ... would you believe me if I told you I might
have got bitten once or twice, but still escaped? Okay, you wouldn't,
but this is the abridged version, remember. I can tell it like I want
to. Besides, getting trounced by three skinny lizards is too embarrassing
to talk about. Nobody would believe it anyway.
Okay, so they beat me up. And they might have bit me. They made
me sit through their evil ceremony as they chanted my name over and
over, then called for the Thunderbird. I didn't believe a word of it,
and it didn't work, either, because I'm protected by somebody greater
than their forces of darkness, and it ain't Slasher.
Then, before I knew they were done, one took a club and asked me
if I wanted to go the easy way or the hard way. Without waiting for my
reply, he clonked me on the head and said, "The easy way."
When I woke up, I was tied to a post out in the middle of a
meadow, and the lizards were nowhere in sight. Like I said, we should
have run them out. A few rocks were set up in front of me like an
altar, and on top of them was my emerald belt, carefully folded, and
Slasher's whistle. The storm was pretty close by now, because a hot
wind was hissing through the grass, and the lightning was going off
like special effects.
Okay, I was starting to get a little worried. I flailed around,
but my wrists were tied to that wooden post, and a spindash would rip
my arms off. I tried to reach my stuff with my toes, but it was too far
away. Doggone those lizards! I pursed my lips and whistled, but the
pitiful sound was blown away by the wind. I can whistle with my
fingers, but that didn't work with my hands tied.
Then the wind went cold. Or maybe my blood turned to ice. No,
that would imply fear, so I guess it was the wind that changed. There
was this horrible scream, and I saw the Thunderbird again. It was
circling. And my belt was just out of reach.
Stupid lizards.
It came down like a black tent, and there was electricity sparking
from its wingtips. For an instant I saw its ivory claws, then they
closed around me, and I heard my ropes snap.
What was it like? Well, honestly I don't remember. There's a
blank in my memory right there. The next thing I can remember is flying
in the rain and being in a lot of pain. See, every time it beat its
wings, lightning flashed out of the bird in all directions, and I
was soundly electrocuted. You try being electrocuted about once every
three seconds. The only thing I thought between charges was that this
time my heart had stopped. This time I was dead.
Then it landed. I was laid across a branch with a talon in my back,
and I heard it sharpen its beak. I opened my eyes and saw its hideous
leathery head, and the crimson mottled beak. The beat was serrated like
a steak knife. I didn't have the wits to struggle, and my muscles had
been tenderized, so they were temporarily unemployed. In a minute I would
be a little pile of bones and blue spines.
Suddenly it was gone. I was alone on the branch, rain pouring down
on my poor fried back. I couldn't do anything in my liquefied state, so I
just lay there, my mind in a total fog.
Presently my body spasmed, and I grabbed the branch to steady
myself. My strength was coming back, and for the first time I wondered
how far from the ground I was. Below me was a black void. I looked up at
the angry sky. I've been in a few rough situations, and I think right
then, sitting in a tree in a storm, was the worst of all.
Then a voice screamed my name.
I looked up and saw a little bird whisk down and land on my branch.
It was soaking wet and scared out of its mind. It was the grey flicky that
had come with Amy. Nimbo, I think. "Sonic!" he screeched.
I wasn't deaf, sheesh. "What?"
He peered at me. "Great, you're alive! Sonic, you must send him
back!"
"Who? The Thunderbird?"
"Yes yes! He is from the Island of the Flickies! He came through a
flicky portal by accident and has been in our dimension ever since!" This
was rattled off as fast as the bird could make his tongue go, and it
took a second to filter down into my brain.
"You mean it's a dinosaur?"
"Thunderbirds are not dinosaurs, Sonic. When he returns, take the
band off his leg! It will send him home!"
Band? Home? Sheesh, wake up, Sonic. I wasn't exactly scared, but I
wasn't exactly coherent, either. Shock was setting in, ha ha.
Nimbo gave a squawk and fluttered off into the darkness, and I heard
the Thunderbird coming back. I guess his temporal instability had
accidently skipped him away from me. Great words, huh? I looked toward
him, and for a second all I could see was that ripple from Tails's photo.
Then it got closer and became the Thunderbird. I needed to take away his
flute so he couldn't play in the band--no, no, I needed to take off the
band. Wake up, Sonic!
It landed on the branch and folded its wings. It was a pterodactyl,
I thought. The proper name was actually Quetzalcoatlus, but "Thunderbird"
is easier on the tongue. It was huge. I scanned its thick, knotty legs.
Around one of them was a gold band with a bolt in it.
I have no idea why a band around a flying reptile's leg would hold
it in a particular dimension. I mean, who put on the band in the first
place? Metal Sonic? Hah, I'd like to see him try it. Anyway, I wasn't in
the mood or the place to question the logic of the situation. I reached
out, grabbed the bolt and turned, just as the bird seized my leg in its
beak. Yeeowch. Kind of like getting your leg caught in a chainsaw. Good
thing for me the bolt came out of the hole just then. My leg fell through
its beak, because the bird's whole body went ghost. The band was the only
solid thing about it, and it just fell off. I looked up at the Thunderbird
to see it throw back its head, spread its bat-wings and shoot lightning
into the clouds. Then its body twisted into a blur of color and disappeared
into a tiny, bright hole in the air. Then that disappeared, too.
I heard the legband strike the ground with a clang.
* * *
Hero. (her'o) A. The principle male personage, usually of noble
character, in a poem or story. B. A person of distinguished valor or
fortitude. C. An idiot who sits in a tree all night.
Wouldn't you know it, but the worst injury I sustained in the whole
thing was a headcold from sitting in the rain for hours? I couldn't see
worth a darn, and in my weakened state I didn't dare try to climb down.
That night was about seventy-two hours long, let me tell you. I had never
been so glad to see the sun rise. And it wasn't long after that that
Slasher flew up out of the trees, a flicky flying behind her yelling,
"There he is!"
I was a hero, all right.
On the way home, Slasher showed me the spot where I had been
picked up. As soon as the Thunderbird had touched the ground, its
electricity blasted the ground, burning everything under it. Did you
know that extreme voltage can turn wood into stone? I sure didn't. Slash
told me that she had found the three lizards hiding nearby, holding my
whistle and my belt and sniggering to themselves. I don't know if she
killed them or ran them off, but I never saw them again.
The Thunderbird was one of the creatures who lived in the home
dimension of the flickies on Flicky Island. When Metal Sonic created the
rift distortion to pull the flickies through, not only did he pull through
some extra debris (like Zephyer), he also pulled through a few odd
dinosaurs, like the Thunderbird. It had hung around the island for a
while, it's extra-dimensional powers disrupting things, then came east
to the mainland. The alarmed Royal Flickies sent word to their mainland
cousins, which is why Nimbo knew what to do.
Hail the conquering hero comes! I marched into the village to
cheers and fireworks and confetti ... okay, maybe I was only mobbed by my
adoring fans ... All right, all right, all that happened was my friends
ran up and asked, "Is he okay?"
All I wanted, to tell the truth, was to go to bed and get warm--
I was soaking wet, you know--but Slash marched me to the medical hut for
an exam. Sheesh, can't a guy do anything around here without folks
freaking out?
Like I said, I got a shocking cold, ha ha, but I was okay otherwise.
Sure, I had some Thunderbird nightmares, but they didn't scare me.
Nothing scares me!
Okay, maybe there IS something I'm afraid of.
They let Amy be my nursemaid.
The End