(Disclaimer: Sonic and all related characters belong to Sega)
I'm not trying to be amazing with this story--I don't really have much of a story planned out yet, actually. But I haven't written anything in two years, and I miss it desperately. So, I will gradually begin to work on this fanfic project as a means to get back into writing again. I post it here just in case anyone's interested in reading it. (If I've miscalculated the maturity rating, please let me know)
-Blood and Metal-
Prologue.
He couldn't see. He couldn't hear. He tried to gasp but it was as if all he took in was heaviness, and he retched from the shock of it. Blood, he tasted it, felt it snake down his body as he trembled in a painful haze, and yet as he tried to wipe it from himself he found himself unable to find it—he kept reaching, straining, but there came no sense of touch. It were as though he were a formless entity hovering in blank nothing—not even blackness was there to see. Only the sense of blood in a half-formed world.
Something cold. Watching him. He felt it boring into him, reaching with something intangible into his very essence, and he tried to fight it as he always did without knowing how. The nothingness, the intangible struggle was exhausting, but something inside of him knew he must fight or die… or perhaps face something worse than death.
The invasion was reaching harder this time, slippery and cunning. He reached for it, stretching out with his consciousness, thinking faintly that perhaps he should create a barrier of protection, but not certain what a barrier was.
He should never have pondered it. That moment of thought! He lost track of the danger. Spread out wildly, searching.
Damnit! He thought. Damnit damnit damnit!
Gone. Silence. Blood. Nothing.
. . . .
Suddenly he was writhing, screaming with a body he could not find and voice he could not hear. Everything blossomed into red and heat, like liquid fire engulfing his core. The pain! Oh the pain! Teeth plunging into him and ripping out his shadow, and how he screamed as it hungrily gulped. Then it surrounded him, smothering him in a deadly embrace. He was slipping, sinking, fading…
The attacker had found him. It had won.
…And then a gentle pulse. He lay and felt it tremor his world, thmp, thmp, thmp, growing louder and faster in ears he suddenly had. He opened his mouth and felt the dull pain of cracked lips, ran a tongue over bloody teeth. A shudder passed through him as he took his first breath, felt seared lungs expand and tasted ash in his throat.
"Wwwwhhhhaa…" A faint voice carried on a raspy breath.
There was a sharp pain. He felt his body arch in shock as some foreign object withdrew from his neck, from his mind. He coughed and gagged, trembling as his senses became more focused, and he began to realize that there was something terribly wrong with himself. A sickening image of a peeled apple appeared in his mind, pulled from the hearth of a fire, and the pulsing of his heart quickened in panic.
Terrified, confused, he began to squirm despite the pain, crying out as he discovered restraints holding him down. Growing more frightened, he screamed the one word he could think of, as loud and hard as he could.
"MARIA!!" he sobbed, "MARIAMARIAMARIAMA—"
The invader. It slipped back into him, his arm this time, and it injected him with slumber. As he felt his mind begin to fog once more, he finally opened his eyes, and through the blur saw two crimson rings glowing in the dark. He fell unconscious in complete bewilderment.
