Disclaimer: Come on, now. Would I be here if I owned Sonic the Hedgehog's cast?
Author's Note: Er...I was watching "It Happened One Night" and I was "highed up" on some coffee again. That 'highness' gave me the absurd confidence to post.
So that means OOCs will be flying like pigs. Well alright, it's not that dramatic-because if that were the case then it would be funny. This is just a really random and really short one-shot that you kind of read when you're bored. Like, one of those scraps you keep in your documents and don't show people because it was pointless from scratch, LOL. So try not to take it seriously. Screw it, just don't period. I have more to the end of the scene, I just can't find it at the moment. Details are left vague on purpose in a way so that you can make up your own kind of backstory.
~*The Piggy-Backer*~
"You do realize this is the third time I've had to tell you you'd be fine?"- and he was getting tired of having to hold his hand out for her, too.
"And this is the fourth time I've had to tell you I know I'll be fine, but my shoes and dress won't be."
"…I don't understand," his voice resounded in her ears like it had dropped to the bottom of a barrel, but the tone of it redounded the curiosity of a child. "You've never minded before."
The naivete on his tongue almost won her for at least half a minute. It's not that she was vain or prissy, it's just...she was wearing a dress that the Commanders's wife had given her for her birthday, and she was wearing it specifically to impress the hedgehog that was standing in front of her. Today was a special day...but that special day couldn't take place because it was on the other side of a creek! To her disappointment, he wasn't even acting impressed by all the yellow pleats and lacy designs either! He was acting impossibly impossible and ridiculously ridiculous as he stood there and allowed all that dirty water to seep into his shoes-shoes that must've made him feel like he was wearing sponges right now.
The pink hedgehog, who'd blossomed from a bud to a fully bloomed rose, fingered the bottom of her dress with nausea. She leaned back to glance at the park's stone path and estimate her chances of getting away.
'Fiddle sticks. It's been eighteen years since I last remember being twelve, and he's still faster than me!' So of course he'd catch up and take her hostage across the creek anyway.
The clouds were reeling out of the day and the setting sun was waving goodbye. She wouldn't be able to maneuver in the dark once nightfall dropped the curtains. She scratched her throat, restless and secreting from the pores. For fear of being too hysterical for him, she'd try one last time to reason with the hedgehog who'd been standing patiently as water ran up to his knees. "Tried," would be the key word for her following actions: she tried to strain out a beautiful smile to fool him, but her lips looked ugly and cracked because the nerves in her mouth were jittering under the pickled sweat. She tried to be brave and open her mouth; she knew she had achieved doing that much, because her lips were hard to pry apart thanks to their attractive dryness, but the ink-black hedgehog beat her to a response-
"We're crossing."
It wasn't even a suggestion; he pretty much summed it up like it was an order! He sure didn't hesitate waddling through the water to reach up and grab her, either.
Oh well, at least she tried.
That yank on her wrist woke up her reflex to yank back, however. "Now just wait a moment! Oi, can't you do anything gently?"
The male hedgehog held his tongue long enough for his impulsive thoughts to fly straight out of his mouth, "...You're acting like that blue hedgehog."
"Well excuse me! I got all…preened up for tonight, but you never told me about having to play hop-scotch over the lake to get to the 'surprise' you set up on the other side."
"It's a creek," Shadow the Hedgehog's nose wiggled before snorting. "A lake is a large body of water. A creek is a small stream, an inlet of the sea that's narrower than a cove. With one this shallow, you can walk right through it," he looked down his knees to gesture to the stream's height.
"Alright, Discovery Channel," The pink Mona Lisa scratched the back of her neck as she stared at it, trying to lieto herself that anything Shadow said was relevant to an actual solution.
His black knees were practically wringing wet with water as the muddiness of it slopped down his ankles and dried into his fur. The depths of the so-called 'creek' were so murky she could hardly see the fish circling his ankles in a behavioral pattern that strangely reminded her of vultures.
"Oi Shadow, I think these fish like you!" Amy's eyes reflected the underwater sunlight as she watched the fish with the grin of an intrigued child.
The raw happiness lifting the muscles in her face almost distracted him from his pursuing his argument.
Shadow's nostril's flared; inhaling deep. He rolled his shoulders back before his eyesight homed in on the straw basket she was clinging to, "...If we walk, we can carry the chocolate muffins across it without getting them wet."
Amy's smile skulked into a suspicious frown. She pretended to look up into the clouds like a clueless dolt feigning The Thinker, and tapped her chin to complete the portrait, "...You knooow~ something? I don't remember worrying about the muffins."
"..." Shadow's eyebrow ticked. He diverted his attention at the flit of his ear and closed his eyes to hide that, 'Oh shit,' look on his face.
"Oh now no wonder you wanted to do it the hard way. Your sweet tooth chose the muffins' safety over my dress's fabric."
Taking a look-see at her expression, Shadow used the logics against her, "The creek is not narrow enough. I can not jump across it without using a scrutinized spin-dash in midair, and I can't perform that 'task' while holding you-"
Amy's face darkened with a death sentencing, "Or the muffins."
Shadow chose to just edit that part out of his hearing,"...-And I do not have a Chaos Emerald to make up for the simple route of walking." Amy felt the fur rise on the back of her neck when he suddenly gave her a sarcastic, sidelong glance like he was mocking her, "But if you have the same water-phobia that blue hedgehog has..."
"Oh stop funning with such a face; you look fruity. Besides, that's not it."
...He edited that part out too. "Then it's the dress? I beg to differ; you've been perfectly fine running in that red dress of yours all those years back at the expense of panty-shots, and seven years ago you had no complaints when you led me under that waterfall in the same wedding dress you left your future mate in."
"...Now that's not fair of you. That's not fair at all. That was almost a decade ago, and the reasons…they were different." Amy was concentrated on trying to explain herself with a wet-eyed frown that shook with more feelings than eyes could hold-much like a dam that was on the brink of breaking from the water pressure.
She was sure-right before he turned his head away-that she almost won him for at least half a minute.
She was less fru-fru than what people regarded her for, yes. Under her girlish disguise, she lived for getting her hands dirty and setting out for spontaneous adventures to Edens like, "Where the Wild Things Are," but she had the common sense of any girl to know what gear to do that in, and special gifts given to you by sweet elderly women just weren't one of them. This day was meant to be gilded in treasures and a starlit night in the meadow, not wet clothes and ruined perms. Now she wished she hadn't gotten all groomed and gussied up so she couldroll in the mud. Mud would look "real pretty" on Shadow's face right now.
In the case of the abandoned wedding, that was just...completely different.
But being a boy, this hedgehog just didn't understand the value of this dress, so he was blaming it as her excuse to make up a phobia? No-that's right, he was just a boy, after all. Maybe he walked like a man, talked like a man, and thought like a man, but he was still cluelesslike a boy!
Amy held an index finger to her brow and sighed. She gathered up the bottom of her dress in both fists and finally decided, "Looky here, unless you're going to split the water in two like Moses, this dress and I aren't going. It's...it's your anniversary for when you first saved Earth before you promised Maria's oath to me, and I want to look…" A blush raspberried her cheeks, making her face look like strawberries and cream. She turned her head away with the dramatic swish of her hair, having her knuckles pressed to her lips as her eyes flushed over. He already picked up on what she wanted when she said theatrically, "…To look good for you at the end of the night, especiallyin the Commanderl's wife's dress."
In the crux of her falsely shy wording, she really meant, "I want you to take this dress apart once we get where you're trying to take me tonight, but like hell that'll happen if I'm soaking wet in mud.' She was too eccentric and aggressively enthusiatic to be shy about any level of affection, so he saw past her theatrical performance.
"And drowning this dress in - OOP!" Her croak was cut off when she felt gravity sweep her off her feet and sling her over a Herculean shoulder. Feeling her blood rush into her head at the topsy-turvy world below her, Amy crowed, "What are you doing?"
At the same time, she couldn't fight the smile off her face or the giggles that kept contradicting her 'defiance,' but all those giggle fits choked into gasps when she had to catch her dress from riding up her bottom.
"D'oh, Shadow!" Her breasts didn't feel too great being squished against his hard shoulder.
"Settle down. I'm preventing you from getting wet," Shadow adjusted her on his shoulder by her squirming legs and grabbed the basket of muffins.
'Oh he made sure he wouldn't forget that, now didn't he?'Amy flatly watched the shimmering water dance down stream as he crossed the creek.
The catcalling birds in the trees sounded like they were laughing at her. If he wanted to carry her, why couldn't he do it with the chivalrous charm of Sir Lancelot and hold her bridal style? What was she, a backpack? For now she'd just tell herself it was because he was lugging a basket of appetizers in the other hand, so maneuvering a more romantic atmosphere wasn't adjustable. Dangling like a bored puppet over his shoulder, Amy watched the water slop and slosh up his knees as his legs beat against the steady current. The stubborn pout in her lips beamed up into a smile at the fish that were following the ripples Shadow's treading had left behind. 'Like mice drawn to a flute.'
"Mmph! My hair," She teethed on her lip when she noticed her ringlets dipping into the water's muck; Cream had just finished dollying it up an hour ago.
She twisted his fur in her fists, persistent on not making a fuss out of it for him, but she felt her heart return to her chest when he gathered the pink locks off his back and flung them over his shoulder, just to end up grunting when the wet ends slapped him in the face. Amy snickered like a fox as she peeked down at his head. Baffled beyond belief, Shadow furrowed an eyebrow as she threw her head back, shoulders laughing up and down with the valleys of her hair still glistered in water. The moment sufficed a vision of carefree innocence that'd clung onto each and every strand of her personality - but, he wouldn't be won. Not even for half a minute.
Slicking those strands off his face with the back of his thumb, Shadow muttered, "Why are you so playful? A moment ago you were quite theopposite."
"Well this is the first time in years I've ever had a piggy-back ride!" She chimed, her mood on the situation having flipped the script in about ten seconds.
"…I beg your pardon?"
Amy cocked her head and wiggled her toes, staring at the striped, glossy black quills that bounced in step with him. "Piggy-back ride!"
"I'll have you know, this isn't piggy-back, this is...this is..." Shadow flicked a remaining strand out of his mouth with his tongue, embarrassingly having to spit out the pink hairs that were still pasted to his muzzle. "This is simply...-plah-hold on a second -…this is simply me avoiding complications."
"I know what a piggy-back is you big prejudice," Amy slapped his shoulder jokingly. "I remember my father taking me for a piggy-back ride!"
"And he carried you like this?"
"That's right. It's fun to children."
"Matter of fact, this is good practice for you too, because if we ever have a litter of hoglets-"
-Woah, hold the phone! Way too early!
But either Shadow didn't hear it, or he was an expert upon recovery, "A piggy-back ride is when you carry someone on your back with their legs tucked under your armpits, and this isn't that."
"Nooo~, a piggy-backride is when you carry someone on your shoulder, too. This is the proper piggy-back style!"
"You show me a proper piggy-back ride and I'll show you Neverland."
"Does that really exist? Wha...hey now, are you saying I wouldn't be able to show you one because I don't know what one is?" Amy kicked her legs to amuse herself, thoroughly humored by how they were having a debate about the most insignificant thing in the world.
"If this is how your father piggy-backed you, then he's obviously not a proper piggy-backer."
"My father was a great piggy-backer, probably the best you'll ever meet! I could phone him right now and he'd give you a piggy-back ride, Mr. Darcy," she emphasized a pompous, British accent on the pet name she often dubbed him under. "Don't be such a pride and prejudice-OW!" Amy squealed out when she suddenly felt a hard pinchon her bottom shut her up.
She could picture it in her head now; that satisfied smirk curling on his lips with those scandalous eyes of his closed in triumph for leaving her speechless.
"Oooh, you...! BIG trouble! You are in BIG trouble!" With a squirm and a fuss, she snatched the basket from his grasp as he mumbled a confused, "Mmph?" and clouted him in the back of his shn.
…Unfortunately, that little taste of vengeance backfired.
[- SPLASH -]
"M-My DRESS!"
…The muffins!