White Jungle had suffered. Prison Island had been the target, a chain of bombs laid on the local military base and everywhere else. The first reaction was a flurry of speed: get everyone off the island, on the boats, on the planes, out out out. The people escaped, all of them, safe by some fluke.
The landscape wasn't so lucky. Leafy Christmas-colored shrubs, hanging vines, and flowers blooming into red hearts all burned in bomb-fire. Even the enormous, proud trees that had grown there for decades fell, ashes bleeding from their fiery scars.
Officially, no one was allowed to enter the island. The damage had been too severe to allow tourists. And what used to be in a military building, GUN claimed, was of no concern to civilians. Those same civilians questioned this reasoning, and grumbled in discontent. The government had let a mad scientist infiltrate and destroy a home base, said the media. Was GUN incompetent? What are they hiding?
And so on. The PR fallout concerned military management more than a ruined forest ever would.
GUN never went back to Prison Island, then. Not even to return for their machines. Drones, programmed to explode when damaged to protect the meager secrets of their creation, patrolled as if the area was still valuable. They faithfully turned around and sent back anyone they could catch entering the area.
But only whom they could catch.
One by one, deeper into the jungle, they went offline.
Wind burst through a small field of ash, scattering it in the air. Sections of ruined earth and curved pieces of former freestanding loops dominated the landscape. A blur danced through a graveyard of titanic fallen trees gouged and scarred by fire. The wind stopped at a tree that had fallen and cracked over another. A blue hedgehog perched on the tip of the highest protrusion of a ripped half.
The view wasn't pleasant. A wrong step and he'd fall and sink into the deep, murky water below. The broken trees, as big as they were, poked a meter or so of their trunks out of the water, like unmelting icebergs. Where he expected and wanted to see green was black and burnt and dead.
Besides his own breathing, it was completely silent. The buzzing of dragonflies had annoyed him back then, but now-
His wrist trilled. Sonic started. The wood under his feet cracked. He hopped aside to the tilted truck and rotten pieces plopped into the water.
"Dang it, Tails..." He muttered under his breath, peeling back his right glove's cuff. On his wrist underneath was a chunky yellow speaker watch. Sonic breathed in and out, and then pressed the button to greet it at least somewhat politely. "Yeah?"
"Sorry, Sonic," The speaker said. It was Tails' voice, still perceiving his irritation, scratchy and apologetic. "I found the airfield. Don't know if the planes I wanted to see are here, though."
It stopped and then spoke hesitantly. "Did you find…uh, whatever it is you're looking for?"
Sonic glanced around at the rotten, scorched trees in the black water. "Not yet. I'll call when I do."
No green whatsoever. Hadn't it been enough time for something to grow back? "…Might take a while." He admitted as an afterthought. "Later, Tails."
"Later, Sonic," Echoed the speaker, ending right as Sonic let his cuff cover it again. He'd apologize later. Right now, he had something to do.
Sonic looked up and down the tree he stood on, the action fruitless. Did Eggman really have to bomb ALL of it? The hedgehog sighed in a huffy, put out sort of way and then hopped his way across the dead tree trunks to land.
It wasn't much better. The land was crumbled and dark, former level platforms now cracked and half-submerged. He walked along, glancing around at the ground, his shoes splattering ashy-black mud. Still nothing.
Well. If it was too wet for him, maybe it was too much for the plants too. He raced forward and sloshed mud in every direction. Sonic only stopped when his feet tapped instead of splashed.
Black and dry. Ashy. Long-dead plants. Nothing, again. But in the blur while he was running, hadn't he seen-?
He turned around. A thick band of ground between the dry and the sludgy, perfectly damp, was green.
A few steps and there he was. Grass sprouts poked up from the soil, weaving into each other, the beginnings of another thick carpet for the forest floor. Left and right it went farther than he could see. A patch a little on the left was a darker green, thicker with tiny leaves.
There had been short shrubs like it before, he remembered now. Sonic kneeled down and flicked one of the leaves. All it has to do is get bigger.
In another part of the grass, he could make out an oval depression in the dirt- his footprint. Oops. At least the only damage there was that those particular sprouts were a little flatter now.
He hopped to his feet and leaned back to stretch his arms. Bright blue sky greeted his emerald green eyes. That's all. Just gotta look up.
Sonic came back down and pulled back the cuff of his glove. "Hey, Tails!" He said to the yellow watch underneath. "Sorry about being snippy before. I'm good to go now."
"It's ok. Already?" Came the surprised, slightly fuzzy answer.
"Yeah! What, did you think I would be slow?" He laughed. "C'mon."
"Ha! You got me there." A chuckle came from the other end. "I'm done too. The planes aren't in good shape, but I did salvage some neat parts."
Sonic gave one last glance down the green. "Alright. I'll be there in a sec, bud."
The watch answered yes and wind burst through the black ash. A few minutes later and a plane that wasn't supposed to be there soared up and away in the big blue sky.