Well, since Sonic the Hedgehog: Twists of Fate is on hiatus, and I'm even considering deleting it, here something to amuse the few dear readers who actually read my stories. Now! Disclaimer time!
Monica: Delaney, a.k.a Flames-the-Rabbit344, doesn't own, or claim to own, Sonic Underground and all it's character, plots, and so on. She does own me and the other OCs featured in the story, though. (grumbles) I better by getting paid for this…
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Prologue: Premonitions, Perhaps
Blackness….
Nothing….
A purple hedgehog wandered slowly through the seemingly empty wasteland, occasionally calling out, but knowing nothing would answer… Nothing ever did here. He had been here before, and it was always the same. It should be starting soon, like it always did. Three… Two… One…
An explosion. Then another one, and another. The earth beneath his bare feet shook as explosions and tremors threatened to tear this very place to bits. He couldn't see what was causing it, and he wasn't sure if he even wanted to. He ran, trying to look for somewhere he could take cover. There had to be something...
Then… That's when she appeared. The fire and earthquakes started to calm, and, out of the resulting silence and darkness, appeared a girl, simply appearing out of thin air, and descending to the ground. The hedgehog skidded to a halt before her, several feet away. She was a human, the hedgehog it question could see that much. And... And... There was just something, something, about her, about the force and grace in her movements, about the piercing look in her olive green eyes that seem to looking through him rather than at him, that made him, against him better judgment, stay still and not run away like an intelligent person would.
"Hello, Diamond." She spoke with an unusually calm, almost taunting, tone in her voice that Diamond practically had to force him lunges to allow him speak, and even when he did, it was shaky and soft.
"Who-who are you?" the hedgehog, apparently named Diamond, managed to choked out. The girl just smirked at his question. It was the same every time… She looked she was responding, but Diamond could hear nothing, and not just from her. The gentle wind and the faint and fading echoes from the explosions a few moments before had also fell silent.
And then, there was a horrible, painful, echoing screeching noise, so terrible, that Diamond had to cover his ear, but it did no good. The noise seemed to seep through his fingers and into his mind. Diamond squeezed his eyes shut, but then… he was falling. It was as if the ground beneath his feet had ceased to be, and there was nothing but darkness. The screeching faded away, but then there was then a wicked, twisted laugh, which was almost as bad.
As Diamond fell, his failed his arms wildly, trying to grab onto something and to stop his fall, but there was absolutely nothing. It fact, there didn't seem to be a bottom that he would hit. But, as he fell, he started here voices, voices he didn't recognize, echoing all around him. They were soft and hard to make out at first, but the longer and farther he fell, the louder and clearer they got.
"It's for the good of Mobius..."
"If you continue to disregard my warnings, you may as well throw it all away!"
"You mustn't lose hope. Remember, there is always a light at the end of the tunnel, even if you can't see it."
"Does anything ever truly last forever?"
"You will rue the day you invoked my wrath!"
"How could you do something like that?! She isn't a threat to you!"
"But, right now, the future doesn't matter much, as long as look to the present."
"Never forget...never remember"
Diamond again tried to cover ears, but again, it had no effect. He closed his eyes and, despite difficulty due to still falling, curled into a ball. This was so much… This was too much. Diamond didn't care if he died, he just wanted to hit the ground again and be over with it all. To be as far away from all this as possible… He just couldn't take it.
Diamond screamed.
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"AA-AH!" Diamond's head suddenly shot up, his pillow falling to the ground as he did so. He wildly glanced around until he realized he was back in his room, and it was all over with. He sighed and pulled his knees to his chest, hugging them tightly and resting his chin on them. "Another dream about her…" he mumbled. Suddenly, a pillow sailed across the room and smacked him in the face.
"Oh, for the love of.... Diamond! Did it ever occur to you that there are other people in this room who are trying to get some sleep!?!" A voice spouted angrily from her bed across the room from Diamond's. That was Monica, Diamond's older-by-three months cousin, and a narcissist through and through.
"Mmph!" There was a muffled grunt from above, signifying that Aleena, in the top bunk of their bunk beds, was agreeing with Monica. Aleena, named after their grandma, was also Diamond's cousin. She was a year younger than him and Monica, and was usually the nice one, but Diamond had to guess that everyone gets at least a little cranky when they're sleep-deprived. Diamond sighed.
"Sorry, sorry." He retrieved his pillow from the floor, set it down on his bed, and down laid his head back down on, but he knew better than to think that Monica was down. Monica, rhetorically speaking, was never done.
"Jeez, Di. I honestly doubt 'sorry' is cutting it anymore. It's the third time this week. And that's just this week. You're driving me nuts! A girl like me needs her beauty sleep!" Monica, by the looks of it, was in rant-mode again, and wasn't paying much attention. Diamond quickly took the opportunity, and snatched up a plush kitten sitting on the floor near his bed and hurled it at the ranting hedgehog.
"I should say you do!" Diamond snapped, and laid back down to sleep, pulling his thin, fuzzy blanket up close.
"WHAT WAS THAT?!" Monica half-shouted, trying to come across as angry but still not wake anybody else. This time, it was Aleena who took the liberty of shutting he up. The little yellow hedgebat snatched up he huge stuffed giraffe and threw it at her talkative cousin. "Go to sleep, Moni!"
Diamond chuckled to himself as her heard his self-obsessed cousin give an uncharacteristic growl at the mention of her nickname. But soon, all three of them drifted off to sleep.
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There was a strike of lightning, closely followed like a lost puppy by an echo of thunder. The light and noise probably woke several sleeping students at Floating Isle First High Academy For Girls, but one girl was already awake, staring wide-eyed at the storm-torn sky. That girl was Josephine. She was also Monica, Diamond, and Aleena's cousin, but she had been sent to a boarding school, relatively far from Mobotropolis, the city that they called home.
"There shouldn't be a storm, the weather report said it would be clear…" the rose-furred hedgechidna muttered under her breath, shaking her head worriedly, then gazing back up at the unpredicted, raging storm. A soft murmur rose from the other side of the room. Josephine's roommate, Lucille LaTour, sat up in bed.
"Ya say somethin', Josie?" the golden-furred mink asked. Josephine, glanced across their shared room, and gave her head a little shake. As far as Josephine was concerned, there was no need to add another problem to her eternally-nervous roommate's list of worries.
"It's nothing, Luce, go back to sleep." Josephine said, though the faraway look in her violet eyes did not escape her friend's notice. Lucy propped a pillow up against the headboard of her bed and leaned against it.
"Somethin' up?" Lucy inquired. Josephine shrugged tiredly, her eyes were glued, once again, to the ominous storm clouds as the sky seemed to split as another bolt of lightning flashed across. Each lightning bolt almost seemed to grow a little to her window; Josephine hardly even flinched. Scared of fire? She ask mentally. Hardly.
"I-I'm just thinking…" Josephine heaved a sigh, and finally tore her eyes away the blacks and grays that almost completely covered all of the sky. She crossed her arms behind her head and let herself fall back down on to her pillow, staring up at the white-washed ceiling. She tried to push aside her growing feelings of dread, but they still pressed on, eager to haunt her dreams as soon as she closed her eyes.
"Homesick?" Lucy's concerned voice quickly snapped her lost-in-though friend away from her mental conflict, and back into reality. Josephine nibbled on her bottom lip a little before she nodded and gave a hesitant reply.
"Y-yeah, I-I guess so." Technically, it wasn't a total lie. Right now, Josephine really wouldn't mind a little comfort from her extensive slew of relatives. Josephine had a rather large house family, with her parents, three uncles, three aunts, three cousin (two older, one younger), and grandparents.
"Well, that's norm'. I, thankf'lly, get to see sissy durin' class, but I would really 'ppreciate seein' Mum and Pa a lil' more of'en." Josephine had always liked the way Lucy talked. She had a habit of slurring over her words when she spoke that always cheered Josephine up at least a little bit.
"I guess so..." Josephine said, managing a little smile as she responded. Lucy set her pillow back down on her bed and flopped down to go back to sleep.
"'Night, Jose." The mink girl muttered.
"Goodnight, Lucy." Josephine answered, and, in a few short minutes, she heard her roommate snoring softly. Josephine smiled, rolled over, and pulled her blanket up close. But, she still felt unable to shake over the odd sense of dread that persistently tugged at the back of the hedgechidna girl's mind. And, even as she drifted of to sleep, a single though still loomed in the back of her mind.
Somethings coming…
As the two girl slept, one of the few visible stars in the stormy night sky suddenly glowed much brighter than the others, before it suddenly flickering like an old lightblub, and completely went out.
Yes, something was coming.
