Author's Note. This story is designed to examine what Sonic's fight against Robotnik would be like if it more closely resembled a conflict on Earth. Further details should be obtained by reading the story. Thanks very much for your readership and any reviews you provide! The story is still being written, and your input can only help to make the story better.

Persona non Grata

a story of Mobius in four parts

Part One: Gardenia

(a rounded image of Sonic Hedgehog rolled into an impervious razor ball, face contorted in vicious joy, pistols in both hands, bordered by a snake desperately seeking to bite its own tail)

(1) Molineaux, Robotropolis, 15 Thermidor 3228. Subject Sonic Hedgehog commits aggravated assault and kidnapping.

(2) Port Orange, Robotropolis, 16 Thermidor 3228. Subject Sonic Hedgehog sings of speed, slaughter and joy.

(3) Downtown Security District, Robotropolis, 19 Thermidor 3228. Subject Snively Kolensky runs off at the mouth.

(4) Great Forest, South of Narsurpan, 19 Thermidor 3228. Subject Sally Acorn dresses to the nines and lies.

(5) Outskirts of Mills Bend, 1 Fructidor 3228. Subject Rotor Tulugarjuk has second thoughts; Subject Sonic Hedgehog hitches a ride.

(6) Ascogne-Dascogne, Robotropolis, 1 Fructidor 3228. Subject Antoine D'Coolette fights the only way he knows how; Subject Sally Acorn thinks fast and slow.

(7) Four Mounds, 2 Fructidor 3228. Subject Tails Prower learns a lesson.

(8) Racine Park, 17 Fructidor 3228. Subject Rotor Tulugarjuk gains notereity.

(9) Findrasay, Robotropolis, 25 Fructidor 3228. Subject Snively Kolensky mixes business and pleasure and business and pleasure.

(10) Uptown Hewlett, 14 Vendemaire 3228. Subject Sally Acorn deals with people and bombs.

(11) Downtown Hewlett, 14 Vendemaire 3228. Subject Sally Acorn undergoes medical treatment.

(12) Downtown Hewlett, 15 Vendemaire 3228. Subject Sally Acorn undergoes further medical treatment; Subject Sonic Hedgehog stumbles into a trap.

(13) Port Orange, Robotroplis, 21 Brumaire 3228. Subject Renee Donlevy makes a discovery; Subject Darcy Sobotka's job gets more complicated.

(14) Great Forest, Southeast of Coolette, 2 Firmaire 3228. Subject Tails Prower fails to stay put; Subject Snively Kolensky engages a janitor.

(15) Marigold, 2 Firmaire 3228. Subject Antoine D'Coolette commits a faux pas; Subject Sonic Hedgehog just says no; Subject Tails Prower is a good actor.

(16) Great Desert, West of Fennec Settlement, 3 Firmaire 3228. Subject Sonic Hedgehog visits a place he doesn't like.

(17) Marigold, 3 Firmaire 3228. Subject Griffith Varitek has a management problem; Subject Myron Catalano thinks hard and long.

(18) Great Forest, Outside Marigold, 3 Firmaire 3228. Subject Lupe Almatrican exercises two kinds of discretion; Subject Sonic Hedgehog has a misunderstanding.

(19) Marigold, 3 Firmaire 3228. Subject Emily Rabbit goes to the well one too many times.

(20) Independence University, 7 Firmaire 3228. Subject T. Baxter Posniak dances with the talking cure.

(21) Borgadan International Airport, 21 Firmaire 3228. Subject Sally Acorn makes a new acquaintance, Subject Molly Lotor leaves on a long journey.

(22) Old Town, Corukas, 30 Firmaire 3228. All is well with Subjects Sally Acorn and Sonic Hedgehog, Subjects Joshua Dursine and Snively Kolensky ask favors, Subject Darcy Sobotka undergoes a performance review.

(23) Ironlock Prison, near Wolvesforge, 31 Firmaire 3228. Subject Molly Lotor prays to Trixiana, Subject Joshua Dursine gets a promotion, Subject Amanda has a wonderful, wonderful dream.

Part Two: Burning Beard

Part Three: Search and Destroy

Part Four: Immigrant Song

(Copyright Act Admissions/Lanham Act Disclaimers. This piece infringes copyrights owned by Sega and DiC. It is not a product of Sega, DiC, or Archie Comics. All available rights are reserved.)

(1) Molineaux, Robotropolis, 15 Thermidor 3225

Our cameras were in place to witness as these wild repenomami fell victim to the terrible beast.

A pack of shiny-furred repens play in the tropical jungles far to the north, in the endless oceans of the equator. Chase-the-tail, tug-of-bone. They are little brown torpedos on four legs, slapping the dirt with their thick claws, biting at each other with their short, stubby snouts. The hungrier ones have their faces in the red mess of the kill, munching.

Myron Catalano was sleepily, unpleasantly drunk. The bar's atmosphere was as muggy and quietly desperate as that of the neighborhood around it, thickly scented with sticky, spilled beer. "Those fuckers, Parkman Properties?" asks Renz, sitting on the stool next to him. The white-furred rabbit's voice bashed at Myron's ears like a battering ram. "Raising your rent?

And here's the thick, scaled cable spilling out of the leafy underbrush everywhere at once, coiling around everything. The little hunter-beasts scream, squirming away, running anywhere. Then the camera zooms in on the doomed one, the one that finds itself looking the nightmare in the face.

One of the strangest phenomena natural selection has produced, a mysterious weakness in the brain of the tiny mammal. It feels the danger but cannot run, cannot move, cannot even look away, hypnotized by the snake's undulating coils.

Oh yeah, Myron thought, sneering tiredly at the bar's television. This is the most responsible nature documentary ever. Why the hell wasn't there a game on? Even a shitty game, like baseball?

"After they didn't fix your shower for like a month." Renz shook his head, apparently unable to shut the hell up. "They better give you that promotion to project supervisor or it's gonna be like an honest coder can't even live in Molineaux no more."

Myron gave a feline grimace as the dull throb in his head waxed powerful. He was twenty-seven years old, skimming above the median age for post-War Mobius. Fur the color of piss on dirt peeked from the rolled-up sleeves and unbuttoned front of the white, human-style dress shirt he wore at Gescom Systems, the software developer. Two months ago Molly left him, saying he was too much an asshole to date. A month ago, the humans that ran the phones had changed the bills from PAST DUE to FINAL NOTICE. A week ago, they pinned a note to his door saying they were jacking his rent.

Two days ago, while he was throwing rocks at swans in the park after work, the coyote had come to see him.

Its heart still beating, the beast is already being digested from the outside in, helpless to avoid feeding the monster that stalks its pack. Mercifully, only a few minutes will be spent in this paralyzed, living death before—

"I got bigger problems, Renz," Myron muttered, the natural gray traces on his wide, sagging cheekbrush seeming to give him a deep frown, old and haggard.

"Baeh," the raging anger that had seemed to fill the rabbit dissipated into a flippant, weak wave of his hand. "Problems can't finish you. They did, none of us'd be alive, right?"

You know, there was something to that, there had to be. Every moment of every day since Myron was sixteen he had felt doomed. That year Mobius had won the war against the human empire to the north; that year War Ministry decided that no, the war wasn't over until it said it was. The end of the King, the beginning of Robotnik. In this town—in Robotropolis, Myron thought, wondering how many years were left before the name would cease to sound stupid—in this town, the humans had you coming and going.

But things couldn't go on that way, he thought a few hours later as he fumbled for his keys at his back-stairs door. At least not for you personally; the law of averages said so. He bet this trouble with the coyote wouldn't pan out. "Tony" and his cronies would leave him alone. Myron might be broke and lonely, maybe he'd even have to move to the Port, but he'd be walking the streets as free a man as he could be.

He went in to his kitchen and locked up against the burglars. But that was unnecessary: when he turned on the lights, there was already a pair of cops in there with him.

"Mr. Catalano," said a lithe pine marten. Brains was a stark portrait in starched red cloth, brown fur, and a white, toothy smile. Her eyes were naturally slim and predatory, with sharp, deep brown irises in the middle. The gleaming badge on the marten's vest pocket said DONLEVY. You wouldn't be sure she was Brains if it weren't that Brawn was a dull-eyed, thick-armed badger named VALJEAN. He stood a head taller than Donlevy or Myron, the top two buttons of his creased uniform unbuttoned in the heat.

"Oh fuck," groaned Myron. Then he realized that sounded guilty. "Oh," he groaned, "fuck me."

Ravenous: that was the word for the smile on Brains. She lifted a small timestamped photo, a grainy blow-up detail of a tan-furred coyote on a street not to far from Myron's apartment. Worried blue eyes under prissily combed blonde hair, a snout that was naturally upturned and biting itself back. He seemed to be waiting for someone to tell him he couldn't be there, wherever he was. "Let's talk about this guy," she ordered.

"Oh , mother-fuck—"

They sat at his kitchen table and Myron told them everything. Gescom had gotten a government construction subcontract on a building on the south side. Gescom's job was to implement computerized aspects of the plant's security's system—

"Wait, wait," the marten interrupted: "The swatbot factory in Ascogne-Dascogne, by the university? The one that got blown up two years ago?"

Myron wished he wore his head-hair longer than his fur, so he could get a good grip and tear it out by the roots. "I didn't tell them anything!"

There wasn't anything to tell. The coyote—Tony, he said his name was—asked about the factory. Asked what sort of work he'd done, if he'd like to talk about it more some time, hinting that there was money in it. But he hadn't said anything, anything at all, and he hadn't heard from Tony or anybody like him since, and he wasn't going to—

"Why didn't you report Tony to us?" the marten accused with a cold frown.

"I—" Why hadn't he? "I was afraid," Myron decided. That was a good answer.

The marten smiled—no, she smirked, shaking her head. "Now what do you have to be afraid of, Mr. Catalano?" she asked. "We'd like to know."

Myron felt sweat slowly matting his neckfur, felt a humiliating need to loll out his tongue and start panting right in front of them. The badger stared, the marten's eyes pierced deeper and deeper into his own. This couldn't be happening to him, not this on top of everything else. He was just a normal guy; he was no troublemaker. Couldn't she see that?

The marten turned to her partner with a shrug. "I guess we're done here."

Myron sighed in relief. Later he'd be angry at them, but for now all he could feel was the shivery, weak feeling of disaster averted, and then the painful bite of the badger's gunmetal handcuffs on his wrists.

". . . No," he said stupidly as the badger wordlessly hauled him to his feet. "But you said—Officer Donlevy—"

"You don't want to talk, you can sleep at the station," the pine marten explained, turning off the lights as the badger hustled Myron out the door.

"No!" Myron squealed as they descended the stairs. "I've told you everything! Why would I lie? If you arrest me I'll get fired! I'll be out on the street in the gods-damned Port, I'll, I'll, I'll . . . ." The marten paid no attention.

Myron was going to get fired, evicted. He'd never come back to his place again. He'd wind up in the worst parts of the Port, and a guy like him—

"I won't live," Myron breathed as they reached the bottom of the stairs. It was insane, but he could feel the end already on him. Why shouldn't he die for no reason? It happened to lots of others, every day. "You've killed me," he almost wept as they took him towards the street.

Officer Donlevy turned her face to him in the light of an overhead bulb. The half-shadowed monster was smiling as she dragged him into darkness. "Shut up," the marten said cheerfully right as four white-hot knuckles rocketed into her face. Then again, from more angles, a blur of blue and white.

Even before she hit the ground the hedgehog's eyes had turned to the other one, Officer Valjean. The badger's hand flipped the holster-latch for his pistol.

Rookie mistake. Less than four meters away you got a knife or nothing. Sonic always had a bunch of knives. If he got pissed they'd stand up all along his back, ready to rock, natural-like. They wanted to rock with this one, but his legs wanted it more. He used the lynx as cover, threw himself into a hand-plant on the cement walk and swung his legs low under the cop's thick knees, like an axe taking a chunk out of a thick-ass tree. They didn't take a chunk out of anything, 'course, just drove a clean break through both the shinbones with a nice sharp crack.

Sonic flipped back onto his feet while the badger hit the cement and flopped like a bass. The hot air was full of his screeching, like a cheese grater against a chalkboard against Sonic's goddamned eardrums.

"Shut up!" he bellowed, kneeling on the guy's chest and swinging his right into the guy's face. His right liked that, so he did it a few more times. "Shut up shut up shut up shut up, you whining freak!"

The badger got quiet and still. Alright. What the hell was he doing here? He looked up at the lynx. Oh yeah.

"Hey there, cat," the hedgehog said.

Myron couldn't move. He'd killed them; the maniac had killed two people for no reason—

"Here ya go." A keychain bounced off Myron's chest and landed on the cement. The hog looked down at it, then frowned up at Myron. His blue quills rose and fell like some wave sent by a hurricane under the horizon. Everything about the kid was sharp, his narrow green eyes, his razorcut mouth, the thin furless legs sticking out of his blue runner's shorts, ending in spearlike red-toed shoes. He snatched the keys from Myron's feet and grabbed his wrists. "C'mon you little bastards, come on . . . . there." The cuffs popped; Myron's wrists were free. "Alright cat, time to get you down to the Woodwharf—hey. Where you going at?"

Myron heard the bemused cry in the air behind him as he ran for help, for the police, his eyes exploding out of his head, the world tilting under his drunken feet. He checked over his shoulder as he ran up the alley to Adama Street. Had he lost the maniac? Maybe, he thought with relief as he ran straight into a brick wall and stumbled back, his heart seizing, because it wasn't a brick wall. It was the hedgehog, spiny and murderous.

"How," Myron muttered weakly. "How did you—so fast—?"

He flinched and closed his eyes as the hog's gloved hand grabbed his right wrist and pinched it tight. No murder came, though. The hog just slapped his wrists in the cuffs again.

"Clown," he muttered as he hooked an arm around Myron's elbow and dragged him south. "C'mon, cat. Let's go for a stroll."

"You with me, Marcel? Look up here, look up here."

"Keep talking to him; that'll help," the EMT muttered, turning a penlight on Marcel's eyes, holding the lids open with his thumb.

"I know—We're going to get that son of a bitch hedgehog, Marcel," Renee said through her fat lips, a raised welt on her cheek pressing her right eye closed. Valjean was a paper guy, from Frauds. He hadn't had a chance once she went down. It was a hard education in street work, and she wanted to continue it: "We don't let perps touch officers. He's not going have four limbs and a head by the time he gets to the station. You have a preference?"

"My leg." The badger's groan was quiet, dazed. Almost calm. "My leg."

"He's up, he's talking," the EMT announced, his undulating squirreltail betraying his agitation while his voice was as dispassionate as a PA announcement. "Get him into the ambo, we're gonna need heavy PKs—"

"Marcel." Renee elbowed her way between the paramedics and grabbed his huge hand. "Marcel; it's Renee. You're gonna be alright, big guy. You're not losing blood; you've just been knocked around a bit."

"Where are the police? Not you, you worthless cur, the witnesses."

Renee tried to look back at the crime scene tape that marked off the walk-up. She'd heard that reedy voice before: on the news, speaking from a podium with the seal of Internal Security Office, the antiterrorist service attached to the Mechanized Army. She saw a flash of green before Marcel's furry grip jerked her along with the stretcher.

"Renee?" he groaned. "Renee, I'm hurt. Renee."

"Just stay awake," she said. "I've got to go for a moment."

"Renee," Marcel grunted, clutching at her fingers as they wormed out of his grasp. "Renee, don't go—"

"You'll be fine," she said to no one as she walked back into the flashing red and blue lights and saw him in the flesh. Shorter than she expected, maybe five foot five, but still the almost-bald scalp (though he was apparently only thirty-five) with its ring of harshly trimmed steel-gray hair, the protuberant nose, the sharp blue eyes. He even wore the polished green dress uniform—Renee had suspected he might wear something more comfortable when he wasn't in front of the cameras, but apparently not.

"Captain Kolensky?" she asked as she ducked the yellow tape.

His gaze snapped over to her, as did that of a light-skinned, dark-haired human woman in a gray human dress-suit, about the same age. It took him a moment to stop talking to the officer-in-charge, though: "—you incompetent bastard, I've got a situation—who the hell is this?"

"Officer Renee Donlevy, RPD Political Division," she answered with a salute.

"Yeah, that's her. The other one's in that ambo," the police sergeant said, pointing as it pulled away. He sounded relieved.

"Hmm," Kolenksy hummed, turning up his nose at her gloved hand with a sniff. "So you're the one who lost the hedgehog."

"It's the lynx, Myron Catalano, that you should be interested in. Before he was kidnapped he offered us a solid lead on a plan to bomb—"

"Miss—" the human interrupted with an unctuous smile that quickly turned into a gritted-teeth squint as he tried to read the name-badge above her uniform's breast-pocket. "Miss policewoman, let me explain something to you. I decide what I am interested in. You are part of this investigation as a witness. You tell me what I want to know about the hedgehog's whereabouts, and then you shut your little snout."

"The Woodwharf Tap," she answered.

"What?"

"I wasn't all there, but he said something about the Woodwharf," Renee replied. "It's a dive down in the Port, a little ways away from the river on Armitage."

"How do you know so much about it?" the human scowled suspiciously.

"I used to work VC—I mean, Violent Crime, sir."

"Hmm," Kolensky droned, scrutinizing her with a look of faint disgust. "Spitz, find out where this . . . dive is, and get me every swatbot we can beat out of RPD."

"It might be simpler just to have Officer Donlevy take us there, Snively" the human woman replied with equanimity.

"I won't let you down sir," Renee agreed, giving another sharp salute.

For some reason Renee couldn't fathom it all seemed to fill Kolensky with barely-suppressed fury. "Come on," he muttered, stalking to an unmarked white van.

Edited VT2 - 2007