A Particular Stranger

This "stranger" belongs to SEGA, but the story belongs to me.

For those of you who've never met him, or even those who have.

The beach. The azure sky reaches calmly over the horizon to greet the dark, glittering water below. Boats line the water, sails down, drifting lazily like ducks on a pond. It's early, but the place still crawls with tourists, clamoring for a spot on the yellow sand.

One such stranger, however, does not seek such a spot. Clad in striking cobalt, this mysterious character races down the boardwalk, whipping up a wind much fiercer than the soft sea breeze that tickles the faces of the tourists. It's traveling so fast one would think it was a plane on land, but it's much too small to be such. This figure is much too fast to make out anything more distinct than a blue blur, but everyone can tell what—no, who—it is.

And his name suits him perfectly.

He races down the cobblestones, weaving in and out of the tourists, past them to a farther location, one with more rocks and fewer tourists. A few call out his name in greeting, but he runs away faster than the sound can reach him. It's this speed that makes him so famous, known worldwide for beating villains and saving the world from time to time.

Now, however, he's just on a run, and once he gets to the rocks, he stops as suddenly as he started.

They call him a hedgehog, though he doesn't look like one you'd be used to; he runs on two legs, many, many times faster than any hedgehog you've ever seen on four. In fact, his ears resemble more of that of a cat's. And he's much bigger, although a meter tall is hardly anything to us. Still, he has the signature spines of a hedgehog, six of them in his oversized head, and two in his back, which come in handy when fighting off evil. His muzzle, chest, inside of his ears, and arms, unlike the rest of his body, do not bear his signature blue; they are tan, browned from many hours running in the sun. Bright vermillion shoes with gold buckles grip his feet; these are to prevent his large feet from burning from the friction that running at such speeds produces.

He raises a gloved hand to shield his large eyes from the blazing sun above; no sunglasses could cover these enormous emerald-green orbs. They take up half his face, much bigger in proportion to his face than a normal hedgehog's or even our own. His mouth, curiously shifted to one side of his face rather than the middle, forms into a cocky grin that has both captivated fans and aggravated enemies.

Once he's decided that he's stood there long enough, he advances once more on those long, blue limbs, heading down the shore towards the water.

With every stride he throws up soft, white sand. It's hard for him to believe that this sand, according to Tails, was once solid rock, pounded over eons by the waves to turn into the smooth, confectionary-like powder similar to what Amy uses for baking cakes. As he journeys closer to the larger, more jagged rocks, the soft sand fades and its granules become larger.

Signs stand scattered about by officials, warning visitors of sudden waves sweeping people off the rocks and into the hungry water, but it's not as though he cares. He could just as easily jump to another rock faster than you could say, "Wave!" He ignores the signs and merely leaps from rock to rock, perfectly perching on each one with the grace of a cat.

It's ironic that he's hydrophobic.

Don't ask him why; nobody knows, not even himself. The answer, he thinks, would be found in some distant memory, one from a time long before his name was hailed as a blessing, but rather, as a curse, when he was considered a freak, and not a hero…The memory tugs again now as he lands on the rocks, begging to be brought out and pondered, but he pushes it aside once more. He lives in the present, not the past.

He's farther out from the shore than most likely any other tourist has gone, now standing on a lone rock, where probably only birds have perched before. His spot now selected, he sits cross-legged on the flat surface, listening to the waves beat against the base of it. There's another rock farther out, but he isn't crazy. Hydrophobia only allows him to go so far.

As the sun smiles warmly on his blue fur, the memory tugs again, harder this time. How does he not remember this place? It was so long ago, but…

He's been here before.

The crashing of the waves resonates in his deep memory, and the recollection is rising from the depths, up to the surface where his current thoughts are. It won't stop bothering him, like a dog nipping at his heels, try as he might to shake it.

So he closes his eyes and forgets. He forgets Amy, Tails, Eggman, and Knuckles…

And the recollection takes over.

The waves pound again, not gentle like in present-day, but they roar angrily in the ears of the juvenile hedgehog. He flails his skinny limbs, trying to get away. However, the odds are against him; this is a storm, he's four at most, and he cannot swim.

Here, the waves do not soothe like a lullaby like most hear it; it's a shriek, a torturous curse to die, die, die. Die, insignificant child, die.

The fluid surrounds his eyes as he flails, clouding his vision of two people, those trying to reach out and save him. His parents, maybe, who try to defy the mighty waves, calling out to their son who is drowning in the water.

He kicks his feet harder and his arms flail in a frail attempt to reach the surface. His lungs begin a tortured scream for air, and death is calling, laughing in the rushing of the water. Scream all you want, but nothing will save you now. The edges of his vision begin to turn black, and he barely hears the desperate scream of his name before everything disappears…

"SONIC!"

His eyelids fly open, and he's back in the present, the years and memories that followed between that moment and this racing past his eyes fast enough to make even him dizzy. Memories of his adopted brother and archenemy and wanna-be girlfriend and the many adoring fans and close encounters with death that he's had since then…

He stands again, looking out at the ocean one last time, now glittering innocently as if it hadn't tried to kill him all those years before.

He jumps off the rock and goes back the way he came, back to the shore, back to safety, where he can be certain about every step he takes on the solid ground.

Maybe one day, he'd conquer it. Maybe he'd jump in, learn to swim, not have to be ridiculed for being the very color of the water yet being so afraid of it.

But for now, he just smiles. What matters now is that he's here, still alive to make a difference on this planet.

Once his feet touch solid ground, he takes off again, the only thing left of the hero now being the trail of blue behind him. He darts past the crowds of people, some still calling his name, but he ignores them once more, and he disappears.

You might see him sometimes out on the street, racing by as always to some new destination, or pausing to sniff the flowers or buying a chili dog from the stand. Or maybe he'll be on the news, fighting a new robot and saving the world. But he won't linger anywhere long.

Good luck catching Sonic the Hedgehog.

A/N: Guest reviews...

kopo: Thank you! Like superhero movies, huh? I didn't think of it that way. Thanks for the insight.

Guest: No bestseller, huh? Well, I wasn't expecting it to be. I'm working on it. XD I think I have improved a lot since I started writing stories, but there's always room for improvement. Thanks.

Amelia: Thanks.