Part I: The Calling

I had everything going my way. Another year had come and gone, and the breezy, rainy spring was quickly making way for warm, pleasant summer. And, with summer would come my birthday.

I was to be sixteen this year, which isn't as big of a deal for boys as it is for girls. Boys just wanna be twenty-one so they can legally drink beer. Me? I'd only drink it if there was nothing around to drink and I'd been mulling around in the desert with no water for ten days! Putting underage drinking aside, of course…

But, anyway, summer was quickly on its way and I was awaiting my birthday. Another year older, another year wiser, and another year faster for sure! I wanted to beat Eggman before the eve of my twenty-first birthday, and that vow skidded to a halt at the front of my mind as June 23 drew nearer.

June twentieth. It was a sweltering hot day and I was glad for an ice-cold lemonade by my side and a shady tree to sleep under. Tails and Amy were a few feet away, talking under the sprinkler, and Cream was with her mom. Knuckles and Eggman I didn't have a care about, although my senses were on high alert despite the heat for either of them. And Shadow.

My dark twin was probably out in space. I opened one emerald orb and stared up past the branches into the hazy blue sky above my head. "Well," I said to myself. "At least it's cold up there."

I took a sip of my lemonade and inched up off my back spines a little. Cream and Vanilla had returned and the little rabbit was talking excitedly, her chao Cheese buzzing around her head like a bumble bee. Speaking of those fuzzy creatures, I huffed at one who thought my lemonade was a flower and tried to hear what Cream was saying. My ears could pick up different frequencies, like twin radios built in my head.

Vanilla had put on some old Beach Boys music, (or something), which was pretty catchy, but Cream was talking far too fast for me to interpret. But, from the look on my friends' faces, it was something delicious. I spied Tails lick his lips, and thought I caught the words "ice cream" somewhere along the line.

"Mmm," my stomach rumbled as a warm breeze blew like a breath of air in my face. I figured I could use a cool treat. After all, I deserved it. And, it was such an unbearably long time until lunch. I rolled to my feet and sped down towards my friends.

Tails laughed as Amy held her skirt down while I entered. Cream held to Cheese from the rough winds. "Guess you heard the part about the ice cream, huh Sonic?"

I guess that should've offended me, but it was too close to my birthday for me to get mad at my friends. So, instead, I laughed. "Yeah, I did." My belly grumbled again and I sighed, stretching lazily.

Amy hissed at me, but I could tell she adored me still. "Three more days of being fifteen to go." She told me, as if she'd been counting down the days till my birthday. Correction. She probably had.

I shrugged. "So what? Doubt sixteen'll feel any different than fifteen."

"You're getting pretty old, Sonic." Tails teased. Cream giggled.

I opened one eye. "Sixteen isn't ancient, Tails. Anyway, Eggman's still older than me by centuries." I stretched my hand out indefinitely, as if tracing it across an imaginary timeline. "Anywho, where's that ice cream?"

"You need to be patient," Amy told me.

It was not in my nature to be patient. However, I figured I would need to learn patience at some time in my life. Might as well be right now. I stretched out in the lawn chair and turned up the volume on the stereo.

Eventually, Vanilla called for us to come get it. Pretty soon, we were all enjoying a sweet and icy treat. It was mint chocolate chip, my favorite flavor, and I smiled at Vanilla before thanking her a thousand times.

"What are you hoping to get for your birthday, Sonic?" Tails asked me, licking the end of his spoon thoughtfully.

I knew enough about Tails to tell that he wanted to know if he got the right present. I shrugged. "The usual stuff. A few guitar strings, new music, you know, like that. But you need to chill, Tails." I added calmly. "It doesn't take much to please me."

That was true. I grew up a poor boy and my parents were poor before I got separated from them. So, what I'd owned while with them was very little except these gloves and shoes, which grew with me via a magic spell. My mom had been a sorcerer, so she cast a spell on my favorite shoes and gloves when I was a child. That's mostly how they managed to survive everything I'd been through.

Tails offered a small smile. I'd given him his confidence back. Amy was inside helping Cream with something, so for a while the boys could be alone with our thoughts. Summer was like my mother, in a way. Warm and soft and loving. But, don't we all feel that way about our birth months? Like they're a long lost friend, or something.

Tails yawned and I chuckled. The song "Fun, Fun, Fun" blared throughout the patio.

~16~16~16~

June twenty-second. Another hot day, but today there was rain. Ew. I really hoped there wouldn't be rain on my birthday.

Rain makes you do things you wouldn't otherwise. Like, turn to the computer or television.

I was on a popular video website, wasting my life watching strangely entertaining parodies of shows I'd vaguely heard of. The weather channel blared in the background. Why Tails was at my house, I would never know. The little fox often preferred his hill-top lair-of-a-scientist to my shabby shack. Nonetheless, he was here and gathered around my small television, twisting yarn over twin needles.

"What's it saying?" I asked, studying the cords of a popular song and grabbing my own beautiful custom-made guitar by the neck.

"Hmmm," Tails murmured, looking up from his busywork. "Rain's supposed to stop tomorrow."

"Good!" I sighed in relief. "Hope they're right." My fingers pressed against the frets and familiar old strings of my beautiful red and white guitar. Its belly curved over my thighs like a loving girlfriend.

"And what if they're not?" Tails quizzed factiously.

"I will personally go over to the station and strangle them." I answered decisively, my fingers flying up and down the strings, pressing them against the neck every time I needed to strike a note. The guitar wasn't plugged in, so the notes made a hollow, dead sound as I played.

Tails chuckled. "You wouldn't!"

"Not really," I said thoughtfully, biting my lip as I tried a new note, "but I'd sure give 'em hell."

"You would." Tails answered affectionately.

I nodded, my quills falling over my shoulders, making the strings hard to see. It didn't matter. I knew the cords by heart and this guitar was my old friend. It'd been with me since the beginning and it would be with me to the end. "Of course I would. It's me."

"Girls call it Sweet Sixteen. Wonder why that is."

I shrugged. "It's coming of age, I guess. Most cultures…" I stopped, for I was about to let my infinite knowledge get the better of me. You see, I only pretended to be stupid. "…coming of age for girls was sixteen. They could marry and stuff at that age."

Tails said nothing for a long while. He knew all too well about my being a natural genius and that I didn't let it out too often. How did this happen, you ask?

I'd been a loner basically since my life began. I had two short years with my parents before Eggman herded me like a sheep into the great wide world. I learned through trial-and-error the ways of the wilds and grew to love it. I'd perfected my power, then.

Finally, Tails sighed and continued on with his work. "You know, if you really tried, Sonic, you could be an inventor."

"That's not me, Tails. I'm a man of action, and I can't be stuck in one place for long." My fingers slipped over a fret and I stomped my foot in frustration.

"I heard that." Tails added shortly after my foot hit the ground.

"I never mess up that cord!" I growled darkly.

"Maybe you need some food." Tails suggested.

I wondered if that was it. It was easy for me to lose focus when I wasn't in a life-or-death fight…and even easier if I was getting hungry. I slipped one hand behind my guitar and ran my thumb down my midsection. Now that food was in the front of my mind, I realized I could use a snack.

Tails chuckled when he saw me walk towards the kitchen.

Ignoring the discontent in the back of my mind from being watched by Tails in the next room, I popped a piece of meaty pizza into the microwave, set the time and pressed start. I cracked open a soda can and downed about half of it while waiting for the pizza to be done. Now that the smell of it was beginning to fill the air, I began to feel hungry, my stomach softly grumbling as if talking to itself.

I ignored the tightness in my throat and the shiver of delight that rushed down my back when the pizza was done. Proudly, I returned to my seat by the computer and went back to the video-sharing sight for some "dinner theater".

Tails had changed the channel to some nature program and had traded the yarn for a sketchbook. Obviously, he was looking for something in that nature program. I happened to take a glance at it and quickly looked away.

A vast grassland.

It made me homesick, made me long for the road, my aching legs, the wind in my face, the bugs in my teeth, anything! Dismally and almost losing my appetite, I turned back to watch the video on the website.

I studied the way the lead guitarist strummed the cords, my mind automatically slowing it down so I could watch every strike. The sponge that was my conscious mind soaked up the information while my subconscious nagged me to eat the pizza. I swallowed another bite, but found that the grassland image had really hit a nerve. I sighed and pulled my legs up to the chair, crossing them indignantly and setting the pizza aside.

Tails looked back at me and spied the pizza lying uneaten beside me. "Lose your appetite?" His voice was really very surprised. There were very few things that kept me from eating.

"Homesick," I mumbled, lending my chin to one gloved hand.

"Oh," Tails turned away. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean…"

"It's fine," I interrupted, "just fine. I'm not really hungry anyway." That last part I had to chew on. Could I really bypass the temptation?

Both eyes rested on the pizza. It actually didn't look so bad. I shouldn't be miserable, I told myself. Make the most of fifteen. I nodded, making a mental decision, and took a huge bite into the slice of rich, meaty pizza.

After all, it just wasn't like me to mope.

~16~16~16~

June twenty-third. Happy birthday to me!

Eggman was so nice to come and congratulate me on my birthday. Yes, of course he tried to kill me, but it's only natural. After all, he knows as well as I do of my vow to defeat him for good before the eve of my twenty-first birthday and how good I am at keeping promises.

So, I'm beating him up, right? But, there was a weird calling singing to me from the far east. I didn't like it.

Sailing up into the air, I dove down towards the machine, curling into a saw blade as I did so and tearing through the glass window and shattering the systems. Eggman was forced to retreat, and I let my friends work clean-up. My mind was still on that calling from the east. The wind blew past my ears, singing to me for help.

My mind was made up. Tomorrow, I was going east.