Sonic the Hedgehog
Self-Inflicted Wounds
by James Stewart
Sonic missed the old days; the days before Doctor Robotnik – or Eggman, as he was known sardonically amongst the citizens of conquered Möbius – when every day had been a long adventure, when he had spent entire days exploring the darkest ruins, the deepest jungles and the tallest mountains around the planet. But then, that bastard and his heathen army of robots had reigned down destruction upon the planet; the leaders of the world had quickly capitulated – the cowards – to Robotnik's whims, wishing to spare further devastation and loss of life: the resistance movement to which Sonic belonged was every bit as reviled as Robotnik's empire. For every act of sabotage committed by his group, the mad dictator would respond by killing a village elder. So far, the deaths of sixty-three Mobians lay entirely on the conscience of Sonic the Hedgehog.
Sixty-two of those deaths, however, weighed very little with the hedgehog; he briefly wondered how his lover, Sally, would have felt, knowing that he was glad that those traitorous leaders had been exterminated. As far as he was concerned, anyone who was not actively opposing Robotnik's rule was helping it further entrench itself on the planet. He had all but lost contact with his former best friend, Knuckles; that coward of an echidna had allowed Robotnik to install a listening post on the Floating Island, in exchange for not having the island blasted out of the sky or its precious natural resources raped by Eggman's growing empire. Rather than take a stand, the bastard had decided to give in. Sonic dearly hoped that Knuckles' long-dead ancestors were haunting his dreams, every night, never letting him forget his deal with the Devil.
Maybe he was being a bit too harsh on the echidna; after all, whatever Knuckles had done, he had not betrayed the location of Knothole to Robotnik's forces. That did not seem to matter, however, with that spy satellite buzzing overhead, it would only be a matter of time before the entirety of the Great Forest was laid waste by the mad dictator's forces and the secret sanctuary of the rebels destroyed. Whatever else might happen to the rest of the planet, Sonic had sworn that Knothole and its precious cabal of freedom fighters would never be taken by Robotnik: that would mean the end of the resistance, and the end of Möbius as a free world. The hedgehog blew out a long-repressed sigh and watched his breath form into a cloud in the cold, night air and fog up the mirror into which he was staring; he watched his reflection growing steadily fainter, wishing that things could go back to the way they had been before Robotnik.
Sonic had never questioned the necessity of the rebellion before now; he had been convinced, as had Sally when they started the whole affair, that the ends – no matter how loathsome they might appear to outsiders – would justify the means, once Robotnik had been ousted from power. The sixty-third death of a Mobian, however, had began to shake Sonic's once unbreachable confidence that he was doing the right thing: Tails the Fox, his best friend since time immemorial, had disappeared while commanding his very first mission against the empire. With the benefit of hindsight, the hedgehog could see that his friend had not been ready for such a responsibility, but with the impetuousness of youth, Tails had said he was ready. He would have done anything for me and Sally, Sonic thought bitterly. I, his best friend; Sally, who has been like a mother to him since his own parents vanished.
The execution of Tails had been shown live around the entire planet; Robotnik had ensured that all stations were broadcasting the same signal, just to make sure that everyone saw the punishment for attempting to resist has empire. The fox and three others who had made up his team – the other three had either been killed in action, or had died under Robotnik's care – had been defiant up until the last moment, when they were shot through the back by Eggman's robots. The bastard dictator did not even have the guts to do it himself. Sonic had wanted to charge straight into the heart of Robotnik's fortress afterwards; he had screamed at Sally, kicked her and shoved her, but never once did the princess falter. She held him back, stopped him from throwing his life away. He was still angry at, even now, for not having let him go; he might have died in the attempt, but it was better than sitting here, impotent and useless.
It had been necessary to find another way to unleash the rage that Tails' death had driven him to; at first, Sally had been all-too-willing to entertain his passions – Sonic had long-ago learned that she would deny him nothing, just as he could never say no to any of her requests – but even she had her limits, and they had been reached far too quickly: one night, she had woken up in the middle of the night, bleeding badly; from then on, Sonic knew that he was going to have to be more careful than ever with his lover, and that he was going to have to find a new method for curbing his desire for revenge. If he could not get his hands on Robotnik personally, he would have to do the next best thing: destroy any effigy of the mad dictator he could get his paws on.
Over the course of several months, without the authorisation of the leaders of the rebellion – Sally would forgive him, he was sure, and he was too valuable to the resistance to ever be taken off-duty – Sonic began undertaking a serious of dangerous missions into the major cities of Möbius. Though they were supposedly under control by a civilian council who would answer to Robotnik, they were in fact controlled by a puppet-Eggman known as an EggRobo: drones, in the shape of Robotnik, that contained a facet of his personality. That way, they were utterly loyal to him and would ensure the cooperation – through force, naturally – of the civilian populations. Sonic had decided to destroy each and everyone of the thirty-six EggRobos who were in charge of the cities. It gave him no end of cruel pleasure, to see Robotnik's face smashed into nothingness nearly forty times.
In the end, however, it was proved to be all for nothing: Robotnik simply had more EggRobos created, and he dispensed entirely with any show of a civilian-run government; naturally, in his quest to make Sonic and the others look like the bad guys, he claimed it was due to acts of terrorism committed by rebels opposed to the duly-elected officials and offered a reward for anyone with information as to the location of the freedom fighters' base of operations. Eggman also doubled the security around the major cities, making any further forays there foolish at best. Sonic himself was also forced to spend days in hospital for his troubles, too, having injured himself seriously in multiple battles; lying there, battered and bleeding, gave the hedgehog an almost cathartic feeling and he realised how he could best deal with his frustrations over not being able to murder the ruthless bastard who had killed his friend.
Since he did not normally wear clothes, other than his prized red and white sneakers, and a pair of gloves, Sonic had to be careful about where he chose to cut; slashing his wrists and ankles had been enough at first, and he simply told Sally that he was cold when she questioned why he failed to remove his clothing at night. Very soon, however, he started to need more; it was growing into an addiction, one that was getting increasingly difficult to satiate. The shock of the cold blade, the surge of pain, the tingle of blood dripping down his bruised skin, drove away the numbness and despair the hedgehog had been feeling since the death of Tails. It was exacting from him a very high price, however: more and more often, he was having to push away his friends, who were questioning him about staying in his hut for days on end, and refusing to speak with anyone, even Sally.
Sally pushed the door to Sonic's hut open, feeling some trepidation at invading his privacy in this way; she pushed those thoughts aside with a shake of her head, knowing that she was the one person in the world who had the right to violate his solitude in this way. The first thing that she noticed, however, was a faint smell of metal permeating the domicile; seconds later, she saw a trail of blood leading from the bathroom to the bedroom. It was interrupted in a few spots, where Sonic had clearly tried to stem the floor; in a panic, Sally dashed through the house and into the bedroom, where she saw her lover leaning back against the bed, trying ineffectually to tie a bandage around a deep cut that marked the curve of his calf; on another occasion, Sally would have been happy to stare at the hedgehog's legs, but now, all she felt was revulsion.
She walked over to Sonic in silence and sat down next to him; she took the bandage from him, and applied it correctly, staunching the flow. He had already lost so much, though, and he was looking pale and breathing sharply. Sally wanted to ask him why: why had he done such a stupid thing to himself? But it was obvious, so she said nothing. Part of her wanted to hit Sonic; she wanted to shout at him, scream at him, for being such an idiot. An even stronger impulse made her put her arms around him and she just held him, crying, and wishing that she could give him his friend back. Robotnik had taken so much away from everybody on the planet; he had destroyed homes and families, entire villages, in his quest for domination. He had taken Tails away from Sonic, and now, it felt as though he was trying to take Sonic away from her.