New Year
Characters belong to SEGA
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New Year, a time for many to express general cheer and extreme merriment while welcoming in the next collection of 365 days, or 366 depending on whether there would be a leap year or not, with a loud and apparently festive bang. Why extreme levels of noise, excessive alcohol within one's system, and so called ipretty/i explosions were deemed as an appropriate method of celebration was simply beyond one being's comprehension. If such a time was meant to be a clean slate, a new attempt to better one's self in a variety of ways, then why did they insist on being so obnoxious? The loud, unavoidable sounds of screeching bangs, high-pitched squeals and drunken giggles tended to pierce through even the thickest of walls practically screaming for all the world that there were people having fun outside, the everyone should be standing within a crowded huddle with necks craned to the skies to watch clocks and the colourful explosions which would follow a joyous and generally collective cheer.
Immediate and constantly unwanted neighbours were enough of a problem; their cries in slurred dialect would predictably creep through the glass and into every room of each building within the celebrating road's radius. The pointlessly raised voices would linger, growing in volume until the very small hours of the next morning, before dying out ever so slowly as people retreated back indoors with a select few breaking off into arguments fuelled solely by an amount of ingested alcohol too great to be healthy. As though the people around the sanctity of a certain individual's dwelling weren't problematic enough, there was one specifically large pest and festive annoyance which popped up seemingly with the lone goal of being a nuisance. No amount of effort placed into trying to get away from him would be worth it, that realisation alone had been another to pinpoint the fact that there was simply no chance of winning against a determined force like that, there were two losing options on offer and those alone. Resist throughout the whole ordeal and just draw more attention to his very being or go along quietly and accept a loss without a fight.
Neither option had been appealing in the past nor were they suddenly appealing at that point in time. There was one trick left to try, he'd attempted it in the past with little success but a repeat of a stunt could prove to be an escape on that occasion, there was nothing to lose from attempting it.
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Running away was a sign of weakness in his mind, a cowardly act from an individual who simply couldn't handle what they had brought upon themselves. And yet there he was, travelling through a heavily tree ridden area in the absent hope that he could avoid being dragged into another so called 'party' with all of its frustratingly headache-inducing noise. He just needed somewhere quiet and out of the way from the rest of the nearly community he had been positioned within for the sake of observation. He let out a frustrated sigh, sounding more like an agitated growl than had been intended, if he'd kept an eye on that item then there wouldn't have been a need for the extensive running, it would have been one fluid movement to transport away to a place that was surely absent of the annoy festivities currently threatening to overflow. Without a second thought the travelling hedgehog form leaned just a fraction further into the skating movement in an attempt to become a little more streamlined, to move a little faster, to cover a little more distance within the long run. The mere thought of how much noise could be awaiting his return was enough to send a shiver down his spine, he simply couldn't face that high of a volume combined with the abrupt bangs which had the ability to set him on edge without certain pests further fraying his nerves.
A typically unnatural sound was caught by his ears, causing a sudden stop and slight swerve to avoid skidding straight into a rather large tree with painful looking lower branches. The hedgehog adjusted his stance, ears swivelling in an attempt to make out exactly what the sound could be, it was too early for the explosives to have begun and yet he would have thought that it was likewise far too late for someone to be wandering around. Excluding himself, of course, but he had a perfectly valid reason for being away from others at such a time.
The sound grew clearer, moving closer with a seemingly sure-footed running pattern, his face fell for a fraction of a second before a scowl firmly fixed into place. It couldn't be, there was no way he could have found out about the repeated flight decision so soon, surely it had to be someone else dashing through the trees. Someone he had no connection to, an individual who had simply taken to running for the sake of reaching a nearby destination in time for whatever party they were likely hosting. That had to be it.
It soon became clear that there was to be no such luck. An annoyingly familiar voice was calling out specifically for him, a certainty held within that voice which spoke of how he knew that his intended target was within hearing distance. The hedgehog weighed his options, keep running and risk an injury given his now divided attention or simply stand still and wait to inevitably be found and pulled back to see all of those friends. One step. Two steps. It was worth the risk, the worst that could happen was an injury and that on its own would be a potential escape from the overrated celebration. The question now was about how long he could evade a certain blue furred creature at a game which could potentially have been self-stacked against him, nature against science in more than one sense of the word.
Swift movements, skating between the trees at a reasonable pace, slower than he would have liked due to a simple lack of experience with dodging obstacles with so little space between them. An inconvenience which would have to be improved upon as soon as he had time to do so, he couldn't allow for such a lack of experience to cause his likely downfall on more than one isolated occasion. His closely following opponent no doubt now had the advantage, he could hear the rapid footsteps growing closer without so much as a slight decrease in speed to indicate a turn of some degree. Soon enough he could hear the voice.
"Hey! Shadow!"
It seemed to bounce between the tightly packed tree trunks and echo around his ears, too close for comfort. The hedgehog's scowl deepened as he pushed for a little boost of speed, needing to put some distance between his follower and his own tail, he'd already decided to risk an injury for the sake of avoiding all of that unnerving chaos there was no sense in giving up when until he absolutely had no other choice. By the fact that the ground was slowly being to slope underneath his skates, the incline being sensed more than directly felt, he was fairly certain that the time he was depending upon was rapidly coming to an end. If memory served right he would end up being caught between a blue hedgehog and a less than friendly jump, and it wasn't so much the distance between stable ground which made the latter option seem like a dead end, no, it was the fact there would likely be people setting off those irritating explosions from the base in a childish attempt to see who's firework went higher with the cliff as a natural measuring point.
The trees began to thin out; the slope reaching its peak, the hedgehog flicked his ears around while continuing to press forward. He couldn't hear his foe, no footsteps crashing through trees after him, everything pointing to the possibility that the other had given up and gone elsewhere, noted that the whole ordeal was going to be fruitless and gone back to his friends. Carefully slowing his pace and turning just enough to sweep a decent gaze across the slowly fading mass of trees; it was too simply, the other was known to pursue things of interest for far too long after all.
"Wondered when you'd get here."
If he had been anyone else, the hedgehog would have leapt out of his skin and potentially fallen over from a lack of balance, as it was though he simply swung around with the intention of hitting the other who had appeared from seemingly nowhere. His fist was caught before it could make contact with the other's muzzle, both pairs of ears swung immediately in the direction of an exceptionally loud firework, no doubt the first of many soon to be filling the air. The blue one seemed to notice that something was off almost immediately when his attention swung back to the hedgehog he still had a grip upon, the familiar frown seemed to be in place and yet... There was something off about him, something unstable, and something generally tense, highly agitated.
When another loud bang hit the sky, it became all too clear to him as to why the other had been so set on avoiding the party for bringing in the next year. When he had said that he disliked fireworks and loud bangs, he hadn't been joking or the more common act of lying to get out of unwanted situations. He really didn't like them.
Blue smiled very slightly before promptly beginning to tug his rather reluctant company onwards, fully intent on keeping the other company somewhere quiet. Regardless of whether he was wanted there or not, it wouldn't hurt to spend the next few hours helping someone out instead of living it up and ignoring the problem at hand.
A small mumble caught his attention, the other hedgehog firmly looking elsewhere as though he hadn't just muttered a small phrase which made him seem just a little more capable of social functioning. The calmer one let his gaze glance over the anti-social one for a few moments before turning back to focus on avoiding trees.
"Happy New Year to you too."