Chapter 1: Ben

PLEASE READ - This story is set in the modern Sonic time period/universe, but NOT Sonic Boom. It does have some chronological ties to Sonic X, but not those that are super important, and there is NO Chris, thank you very much. Do keep in mind that the human world on Earth's timeline moves faster than Sonic's, as it does in the show. Anyway, thanks for checking this out. I have a huge plot all planned out for this, and there will be a lot of twists coming. Please read and give me some reviews, I really really appreciate any and ALL feedback! Don't forget to follow/favorite this story, because I will post more chapters in the future. Thanks!

IMPORTANT NOTE: Before you leave the story for any reason, please let me know in the comments what turned you away or what didn't really appeal to you about it. I would love to know. Thanks, guys!

It was the final day of Sophomore year.

Sixteen-year-old Benjamin Gardner waited for his best friend, Jared Brooks, to finish up at his locker. To most teenagers, Ben could tell, this day was measured up to be of massive significance in their lives, yet to him it just felt like any other normal day. In fact, it might've actually been bleaker than all the rest.

All Ben had to look forward to during the summer was listening to his parents argue and/or refuse to acknowledge each other as they went about their business at home. They had been growing ever more distant, and rarely showed much affection toward each other during the day, and since he was an only child he felt lonely in the house, knowing that his parents' moods would be in no state to make him want to be around them. Ben was unaware of any family trips or reunions planned for the summer, and so the only things that could possibly keep his spirits up were hanging with Jared or playing video games, sometimes even both at once.

Ben was taller for his age. He was 6'3" and still growing. He didn't play many sports like lacrosse or soccer. His heart was mostly set on electronics and engineering. Today, however, he was wearing basketball shorts and a t-shirt. He had dark brown hair and brown eyes, and had just a few freckles dotting his face.

Jared finally closed his locker door and approached Ben standing against the painted brick wall in the crowded hallway. Jared was around 5'8", had sandy blonde hair and blue-grey eyes. The boys had similar interests, which is part of why they were such good friends. Jared, however, played soccer along with his love of video games.

"You ready to go?" Ben asked his friend.

"Yeah, man, I just needed to make sure I didn't leave any snacks to rot in my locker all summer," Jared snickered.

The two friends lived in neighboring neighborhoods, so to speak, and so Ben drove them both home after school in his tiny, old, navy sedan.

"See ya, Ben!" called out Jared as Ben stopped the car in front of his house. "Come over whenever you get some free time sometime."

"Then I'll be here all the time, dude," Ben replied. "See you later!" He watched as his friend trotted up the front porch to his house and went inside, then he left to head back to his own house.

Ben lived in a quiet neighborhood in a suburban town in the middle of Idaho. The place was nothing special, but it was peaceful and beautiful most of the year as the landscape experienced all four seasons. Yet in the summer it was just dry, yellow, and hot. Desert-like. Another aspect to not look forward to now that school wasn't there to keep his mind busy.

He arrived at his neighborhood, but stopped on the way home at the joint mailbox with the different compartments for each house on the block. He was excited for the mail today because he was expecting the latest video game that he'd ordered and couldn't wait to start playing.

He had heard stories online about the most iconic hedgehog in gaming, Sonic, actually existing and being on Earth in the past, but he knew those stories couldn't have been true. They were just fanfiction. If there was even a slight possibility that it was true, it would have happened decades ago because Ben had never met anyone who would have been alive to witness it. He had heard that those stories were the inspiration for the video games, but Ben thought they were just tales for kids. All he cared about was playing and enjoying the gameplay and stories, and that's all he needed. He had experienced everything that the Sonic Team had produced, and loved every aspect of it, especially Sonic the Hedgehog as the heroic, free-spirited character that he was. Ben was the expert on all things Sonic, and that's what he enjoyed the most during his down time.

Feeling inside the mailbox labeled 'Gardner', Ben found the stack of letters and bills that usually came daily, but he didn't feel a package. Slightly disappointed, he looked through the pile of mail that he held in his hands just in case he found anything interesting. He was surprised when he spotted a smaller letter addressed with his name. Strangely, there wasn't a stamp or even a name or address of the sender anywhere to signify that it had been mailed. And these boxes were locked by the mailman himself. Curious, he got back in his car with the pile from the mailbox and drove to his own house with a desire to examine the envelope further.

Inside, he placed the rest of the letters on the kitchen counter. His mom, Kara Gardner, was in there eating chips with store-bought salsa, reading something on her phone.

"Hey, Ben. How was school," she said routinely, without looking up.

"Fine. It was the last day today," he replied back.

She looked up at him, mildly shocked to hear that. "Oh, I didn't realize it was so soon for school to be out. How were your grades?"

"Good. As good as they'll ever be," Ben replied, wondering why his mom never bothered to check up with him on his grades before now.

She was looking at her phone again. She nodded. "That's good."

Ben looked at her a moment, then proceeded upstairs to his bedroom, where he dropped his backpack on the floor by his bed and shut his door. His dad was currently at work, but he knew his mom usually wouldn't bother him if he kept his bedroom door shut. He had formed a habit of avoiding his parents when he could, since they were in bad moods much of the time they were ever together.

Excited to read his mysterious letter, he sat on his bed and kicked off his shoes before sliding his finger underneath the paper fold to tear it open. A mixture of emotions ran through his head as he fingered open the flap; first surprise, then disappointment, and lastly confusion seeing as there was absolutely nothing inside.

In reality, unbeknownst to Ben, there were many things in that letter, only they were undetected as they appeared mere particles in the air. They came zooming out of their enclosure the moment the seal was broken, and headed toward the nearest living source sitting in front of them.

Suddenly, Ben felt something strange happening to him. The moment after he opened the letter he felt a prickle on the surface of his skin, a rather odd sensation. It ran across his legs and feet, his midsection and torso, down his arms, across his back, up to his neck, and over his face. It felt like the tiniest of needles pricking every inch of him at rapid succession, and he couldn't explain to himself why he felt this way. He expected it to quickly fade and disappear, like a shudder of cold, but instead the sensation intensified until he felt as though he was on fire. His fingers gave a spasm and he dropped the empty envelope onto the floor. Gasping with pain, he weakly moved to lay his burning, prickling body across his bed and had a feeling he would have the inability to get back up any time soon. He laid on his back, panting, and his shirt soon became soaked with sweat.

Ben's muscles were out of control. He was twitching all over, and he could barely control his movements, as though he was being electrocuted. The pain was so strong that it was all he could do to keep himself from screaming. He didn't want to cause his mom any worry, and he was in no shape anyway to get his phone out of his backpack to call for help.

After minutes of agony flowing through each layer of his skin, all the feeling in his body went away. The pins and needles faded, but left him completely immobilized on his bed. The numbness melted all the way from his chest down to his legs and over his arms and hands. He felt like his heart was beating out of his chest and pounding in his head from fear. He was so confused and terrified. He could feel that his arms and legs were still present, but when he tried to move them they didn't respond. He had no idea what could possibly be happening to him.

After what felt like hours but was just several minutes of complete and terrifying paralysis, Ben found that he was able to weakly inch his head from side to side. His nerves felt really tender, and he didn't want to try to make any sudden movements.

A bit more time passed, and he was able to slightly move his limbs, and later, his spine. Once feeling crept back through his muscles, Ben was finally able to sit up, relieved that the weird sensations had gone away. He took off his sweat-drenched t-shirt and sat on the edge of his bed, pondering this anomaly.

What a strange thing to happen, he thought. He took a mental self-evaluation and decided that he felt pretty normal compared to what had just occurred moments ago, but his general sense of bodily comfort was still a bit off. There was something wrong, but he couldn't figure out what it was. Then, he looked down at his bare feet hanging off the edge of the bed.

Wait, he thought, hanging? He was a tall guy, and he definitely remembered that when he sat on his bed his legs easily touched the floor. Now they were dangling about a foot off the ground, like they had become...shorter. He blinked rapidly in confusion. Yes, they were. As Ben stared in shock and disbelief at what he was seeing he also began to feel very itchy all over.

Wanting to see more easily what was happening to him, Ben immediately slid off his bed and stumbled over to his closet door, itching his legs in the process. The full-length mirror covering it revealed that he was indeed shorter. The position of the doorknob felt a bit more in the location it was when he was eight. He examined himself closer in the mirror. His bare chest looked a bit funny, his waist was a lot smaller than it usually was. His legs and arms were slightly skinner as well, he noticed.

Am I suddenly aging backwards? he thought. No, something else was happening. Utterly perplexed, Ben looked down at his legs and felt them with his hands. They felt unusually thin. He then noticed that his arms were thinner as well. He felt like some sort of stick figure.

He examined his body further, completely and utterly confused. Now something different was happening. He felt a tingle and a sensation as though thousands of insects were crawling all over his increasingly-itchy legs. He looked down and saw that the normally brownish hair lightly covering them appeared to be getting thicker and thicker, almost like fur. No, exactly like fur. It wasn't brown anymore, though, it was blue. The royal blue color became brighter and defined as more fur grew in at an alarming speed. He watched in horror, his breath failing to escape him, as it creeped all the way over his legs and feet, which were changing shape, too.

He felt prickling under his loosening basketball shorts and watched in the mirror as the blue fur appeared to climb up his back and around his neck and shoulders. His skin was becoming harder and harder to see with each passing second. Soon, his entire body was blanketed with a thick layer of short blue fur, except for a patch on his torso and his arms which remained bare, with a small amount of lighter hair covering them, like normal.

Ben stood in utter perplexity, staring at his lower body in the mirror. Afraid to look directly at his face, he began to grow hot, and suspicious he could guess at what was actually happening. He covered his face with his hands, not wanting to witness any more of this bizarre experience. Yet, he felt an itching on his forehead. His whole face in fact felt different under his fingers. Soon curiosity overcame his terror. He slowly opened his eyes and lowered his hands, looking back at himself in the full-length mirror.

He first noticed that something was weird with his eyes. He examined them, and then suddenly realized that instead of their normal brown they were bright green.

My eyes aren't green! he thought, panicking. He looked at his head as a whole. It seemed huge, or maybe that was just the effect of his hair because it was becoming thicker and longer, growing straight out the back of his head, changing color. The dark brown hair on top was becoming devoured by blue fur as well. He stared again at his eyes as they grew in size, becoming teardrop-shaped, slanting inwards. His newly green-irised pupils were becoming elongated in the process.

Ben felt something tickle his sinuses. He focused on his nose and saw it move and shrink. It began to curve upward, becoming shiny and black. It now stuck out of a small muzzle that his lower face was becoming. He stared at his nose in the mirror, and reached up to feel it with a finger. It was too bizarre.

His cheeks had remained skin-colored and bare, nearly like they were before, and his lips were smaller. His teeth and the inside of his mouth were different when Ben felt them with his tongue. His teeth felt slightly sharper, and his canines were just a tiny bit longer.

The rest of his face around his eyes felt itchy as it grew the same cobalt blue fur like the rest of himself. He reached up to scratch his temples and felt the coarse fur that now covered his forehead.

Too in awe, Ben noticed his ears begin to move. He felt them with his hands as his ears changed and slowly slid upwards, becoming pointy and triangular as they settled into their new position on top of his head. Blue fur covered the outside of them. He heard a popping noise inside his head and suddenly all sound became so much clearer. He could pick up all kinds of noises from inside the house. He heard his mom toss a dish into the kitchen sink downstairs, and a mouse somewhere in the walls of his bedroom.

Ben felt his head continuing to gradually gain weight and he panicked as the longer blue hairs on the back of his head stiffened and rose up to stick out, as though gallons of hairspray were being sprayed on them. It wasn't long before they became bristly cobalt spikes that clumped together, creating about six clumps protruding from his skull, each consisting of hundreds of the individual ones. He felt something weird with his upper back and turned his body to see better in the mirror. He saw more of those thicker pointy hairs growing out, which also clumped into two shapes almost like shark fins.

Ben moaned in panic and he felt the base of his spine being stretched, as if a hand had grabbed it and was pulling hard. He cried out in pain, and keeled forward, the new weight of his head off-setting his balance. He teetered and waved his arms in circles to try and prevent himself from falling over, but failed. Yet, instead of landing on his face he somehow ended up easily rolled into a ball on the floor.

How did I do that? Ben unclenched his arms from his blue-furred legs and stood back up unsteadily, not yet used to the different weight balance.

He felt something poking the seat of his pants. He let down his loose shorts and boxers which fell to the ground. Looking at his furry backside, he saw a short, pointy blue tail poking out from the base of his spine.

His feet and hands looked slightly disproportionately large compared to the rest of himself, but it didn't look bad. He was now completely devoid of clothing, but being petrified in awe and covered with fur, he wasn't worried about it.

Ben gaped in utter shock and bewilderment as all the changes seemed to come to a halt.

He stared wide-eyed at himself as a whole in the mirror, discombobulated at what had just happened. In his mind thoughts gushed through his head, too many to focus. From those thoughts he recalled that growing from his head and back were quills and that he had just completely changed species, but they quickly vanished as his mind became hazy.

It was then that Ben suddenly began to feel extremely light-headed, dizziness overpowering all thought. His sharper hearing now felt like it was being stifled by cotton, and he keeled forward on the floor, having fainted.

I hope you liked that so far! The next chapter will head in a completely different direction, but it will explain things, so keep checking for updates, or follow this story to easily receive email updates for each chapter. Thanks for reading, and I really hope you enjoyed it. I love reading reviews, so feel free to criticize all you want!