AN: Despite someone saying I should update it years ago, I never did. I lost interest for this project like I lost interest in Between Church and Diary of a Cynic. I started a lot of projects I never seemed to finish (and still do, but I'm trying to work on it).
This goes in the graveyard now. I feel bad keeping the fic up and having some people think I will update it when I know I won't.
The sun was rising slowly over the city, the light's fingers reaching the buildings and being spread across the sky. It was still a bright rosy red, with the yellow egg yolk of the sun, creating a beautiful sight. The leaves were many colors too; a bright dusty yellow, a vivid ginger orange and maroon to scarlet. I always thought the trees looked a little bit like an open flame, reminding me of the many times I had to make some fire and keep it burning so we can cook our food and keep ourselves warm. It was definitely chilly, some of us shuddering as our scarves waved in the wind, as I dug into a trash can to find my early breakfast.
I found an apple, half eaten, barely rotten as if it was just thrown away a few minutes ago. It still tasted juicy as I bit into it.
"You want some, Tails?" I said, as I showed it to him. He had a look of disdain as he shook his head no.
"Well, more for me then! Man, you won't believe at the things people throw away!" I exclaimed, as I searched deeper into the can. I didn't really find much; just discarded pieces of paper, restaurant bags that I hoped would contain maybe a little bit of a French fry, and plastic bags that flew into the wind as I inspected them. "Huh! Nothin' but this apple!"
"Sonic, you really that hungry to actually go digging in trash cans? What if, people threw diapers and all kinds of crap like that in there? Then would you eat that?" Mighty asked, unbelieving that I scraped through it, searching for any morsel of food I could find.
"Hey, you can't blame anyone who's that hungry. This apple is still good anyways, don't want it to go to waste," I mumbled with a mouth full of food.
"Couldn't you just go to any of these stores and just try to steal a loaf of bread or something?"
"I'm fast, but I'm not going to resort to stealing."
"But you're going to resort to eating out of the trash?" Knuckles replied, adding a bit of an ironic tone in his voice.
"Would rather be caught dead eating out of the trash than stealing a poor man's bread."
"Even if it was filled with snot-tissues and dog crap?"
They began to laugh heartily, as I looked at Mighty with an annoyed look. I didn't really care though; an apple is an apple and I was starving.
"How much further until we get to the Promise Land, Mighty?" Tails inquired, as he looked over his map, it flapping and folding a little because of the wind, pissing Mighty off that he muttered, "damn wind!" under his breath.
"We still got a lot of miles to go, Tails. We just ran off a few days ago, remember?"
"Yeah but…I want to get there now…" he whined a little.
"Hey, I said this was going to be a long journey and you said you were going even when I explained how the Promise Land is like, thousands of miles off. We aren't going to get there a fortnight."
"Can't we just hitchhike there or take a bus? My feet are getting sore…"
"We just got up, Tails! And no, we can't hitchhike because no one is going to stop for us, and we have no money whatsoever to take the bus. I know you're a kid, but for crying out loud, put your big britches on and deal with it!"
"He's exactly that, Mighty: a kid. So don't be too harsh on him, okay?" I reminded him, with a slightly angry tone. I don't like it when anyone yells at Tails because of something like he was getting tired.
"Okay, fine! Sheesh though, kids. You can't bring them anywhere without them whining constantly!"
The wind was blowing my green scarf softly, flapping a little as I walked near Bark, his shadow big enough to envelop me in darkness as the sun began to rise a little further. Cars were beginning to drive by us, the smell of gasoline burning my nostrils as we strolled past a man who was just getting out of what seemed to be an apartment, staring at us a little until he asked, "are you kids supposed to be at school?"
"It's a day off today, remember? Michael St. Douglas Day!"
The man shook his head a little as he kept looking at us as we continued to walk, skeptical. "Who the hell is Michael St. Douglas?"
I didn't care enough to answer him. I always ran into people, wondering if I should be at school today. And I would always come up with an excuse at the top of my head, even if it wasn't a holiday or the weekend. I didn't care. Why was it their business? So what if I haven't been at school in a few days? They don't notice me there, and even if they did, they probably won't really care. They only cared about students that excelled in sports and students who got an A on every test. I'm very fast, but yet I didn't care enough to go to track and field every Monday. It was once in a blue moon I got an A on a test too, simply because I never really wanted to study for it.
High school seemed to be a waste of time to me. I wouldn't mind it if I just simply went in, go to my classes that I wasn't exactly excelling at, maybe talk to a few people, then get the hell out. But no, high school has to be some sort of test you have to take to see how long it'll take before you go completely bonkers. Drama really isn't my kind of thing, and that's what they serve daily at high school. In mine, anyways. Sometimes I would even have to pass some stupid kids fighting in the middle of the hall just so I could get to my damn class. What was the point, anyway? Just so the teacher could see you and give you a detention or some crap like that? I'm not the smartest hedgehog in the world, far from it, but I just see it all as just that. An insanity test and a big waste of four years that you're never going to get back.
We passed a restaurant on our way, and the smell of gasoline left my nose. Instead, I smelled something even better than that. And it made my hunger even worse.
It was a fast food joint, and I glanced at the side windows to see someone sloppily eat one of my favorite foods. It was a chili dog, a foot long, topped with meaty, juicy chili and cheese. Oh God, how I missed eating those. The smell also reminded me of fries topped with that delicious goodness, but I knew I could only look at it sadly and just move on. I couldn't ignore the rumbling the pit of my stomach continued to make; it actually hurt to look at that and realize you haven't had a good meal like it in a long time. I never did it, but Mighty would go to the local grocery stores that didn't have those detector things on them yet and steal anything he could get his arms around. Most of the time, it was just snack or canned food, although he actually had the guts to steal an apple pie once. That was probably the best meal I've had in these last couple of days. Before I ran away from home.
You probably are wondering, when I'm saying all of this: why the hell did you run away then? To be fair, I was stupid. So were my friends to pull something like this. But we had a lot of dreams and aspirations we thought we could fulfill if we did this, and they always tell you to follow your dreams, right? Well, it probably wasn't a good idea to make a pact with each other and decide to make a new life for ourselves. We were tired of the life we once had and wanted to change everything. By running through the streets and trying to get to our destination, a place we deemed: the Promise Land.
The Promise Land was another name for Station Square, an idyllic city where it seemed like everyone who went there, their dreams could come true one day. It was a beautiful city, with many palm trees swaying in the gentle, cool breeze of the summer sun. Beaches that many people flocked to, watching as the sun sunk, the kind of sight that you'd think you would only see in pictures and movies. Many opportunities, many wishes to be fulfilled as we wanted to start a new life, away from our school and away from our parents, no longer known in this city as just "Sonic, the hedgehog who's simply the table cleaner at Reginald's Restaurant". Maybe I didn't aspire for too much. I just simply wanted to live in a beautiful city, living the simple life as I'm appreciated and paid more for my job, taking care of Tails, who's going to be my adopted brother. I hated it here and just thought that if I could make it to Station Square, my life would be gold. My friends wished for the same thing.
Tails, who was a yellow fox with clear blue eyes and two tails, hence the nickname I gave him, ran away from his home and parents, despite being 8 years old, because that little guy looks up to me. He saw me wanting to get away from everything; he thought it was right for him too. He told me his parents were unfair, doing stuff that he never wanted to do. I promised him when we got to the Promise Land, I would adopt him and raise him as my own. It wasn't really a good idea for him to be with us, due to only being 8, but I let him. He was a neighbor of mine for the past few years, always wanting to come over and talk or play with me. I would just sit and tell him what I thought of everything and he sucked it all in, as if I was as wise as a professor. He is a good kid though; I like having him around. He kind of reminds me when I was a kid.
Knuckles, a red echidna with long dreadlocks, was my best friend all through high school. He's been dealing with some shit too though; he told me that he was abandoned as a child by his birth parents, being placed in foster care for a while until his grandparents adopted him. All he told me why he wanted to join us was that he was sick of them. He was kind of like me in school too. I hear that his grandparents would complain all the time that he didn't try hard enough, but I guess he just doesn't really care enough to try harder. He's a bit of a hothead though, always getting steamed up over us usually just having fun. Mighty, Knuckles, and I managed to sneak in a bar (even if we had no money to buy drinks) and we were talking about the soccer game that was being played on the TV, when Knuckles suddenly got annoyed with all of our yapping and yelling that he began to yell at us to shut up so he could watch the game in peace. We were later thrown out of the bar because they noticed us due to his screaming, and they told us that if we had no money to spend on anything, then we should get the hell out. I guess they don't even let the poor and the homeless watch TV, even if it was the biggest game of the night.
Bark was a huge, round, yellow polar bear, sporting a red cap and a green scarf. He was a good friend of Mighty's, and he's extremely quiet, not even joining in a conversation most of the time. But when he actually does talk, it's scary as hell because he has this deep, brass voice that sounds loud when he's even talking in a normal pitch. I'm not sure why he decided to follow us. When I asked him, he simply said, "There's too much stuff in the house." Maybe he means there are too many issues at his house, but he won't explain it any further and he avoids me if I ask more questions about it. He's definitely the powerful brute out of all of us though. I'm not sure what he's been eating and he probably works out every day, because I once saw him pick up a car easily, just for kicks. We had to run the hell out of there though, because the car alarm started to sound off and we didn't want to make it seem like we were breaking into it. Even though we were runaways, I didn't want to resort to stealing food or money from other people. That was Mighty's job, and he only stole food when we really needed it. No matter how harsh the streets seemed, I didn't want to become a hoodlum. It was the last thing I needed on my mind.
Then finally, there was Mighty, a red and black armadillo, who was considered our leader and actually planned out this whole entire trip. He was a good friend of Knuckles and he relayed what he was planning to me, and it got relayed to Bark and Tails, starting this whole mess. He didn't want to run away because he had a difficult life. He only wanted to go to the Promise Land because he had dreams of being a star there, living the good life. His parents definitely weren't going to allow something like that, so he told Knuckles this huge plan of trying to get there, printing off a map and taking whatever money he had left for this trip. We became flat out broke a few days ago, however, and I don't even remember what we even spent the money on. It could've been food, it could've been a short bus trip, it could've been on a bar tab or even a few packs of beer. Of course, we didn't offer Tails any, but there were times where Mighty would salvage what he could by panhandling on the street and buy a few beers once in a while. Knuckles, Bark, and I only drink maybe one or two, but we knew when Mighty had too many when he starts boasting about being rich and successful when he gets to the Promise Land like a lunatic, even screaming it at the top of his lungs. The last time we had the "Beer Campfire Gather", Knuckles yelled at him to shut up and punched him in the face pretty hard. That's why we really don't do that sort of thing that often, but some days Mighty insists on it, even using whatever money we were planning to buy food with he'll spend it on cheap beer that tastes like piss.
"I can't help it, guys, I'm starving. When we went to that restaurant a few minutes ago it didn't really help my situation out at all…" I stated, gripping onto my stomach, feeling like it was going to explode.
"There's a trash can over there, Sonic," Mighty said as he pointed to it, still walking. He didn't want to waste any time and didn't care that I was suffering from my hunger.
"Do you have any money?" I questioned him, with seriousness in my voice.
"Nope." He continued to walk further down the street.
I stood there, feeling this war that was raging in my stomach. I began to grip it again, staring at my friends who were ignoring me, except Tails, who began to eye me, thinking he should see what was wrong with me.
I clutched my stomach tighter. It was beginning to hurt. I knew that Mighty had money. I saw him panhandling last night. I'm sure someone gave him at least ten dollars. When there was a 16 year old, homeless, begging for money, you usually couldn't resist, hoping that they would use the money to buy food. Not Mighty. If he could only get a small amount, he usually spent it on booze.
"Sonic? What's up?" Tails went up to me, looking at me. But he got scared, because he knew I was fuming. He knew I was pissed. I wasn't going to let this boozer deny me some actual damn food that didn't came with ashes and cigarette butts on it.
Before Tails could stop me, I swiftly got up to Mighty, grabbing him as tight as I gripped my stomach.
"I know you have money, Mighty! Give it to me now! You aren't going to spend it on cheap ass booze again!" I screamed at him, my wrath fueled by hunger.
"Sonic, I swear, I don't have any money! Get the hell off of me!"
I began to shake him radically, all of us hearing the coins dropping on the concrete, some dollar bills also falling on the ground. Knuckles picked up the money, counting them.
"Mighty, you have 20 dollars. You're such a damn liar…" Knuckles was ready to punch him again, until Bark put one heavy hand on him, stopping him.
"I knew you were lying!" I cried. "I saw you panhandling last night! I'm sure you got 20 bucks off of that, you drunk!"
"Okay, fine! We're going to find a store and buy what we can on food!" I let go of my grip, Mighty still looking at me intensely. "Geez man, you didn't have to get all psycho on me."
"It's because I'm sick of you wasting the money on booze when some of us need some food! You have a problem!"
"Hey, don't say that! Don't say that again! I only drink once in a while, you know…" He was getting closer to me, until Bark used both of his hands to separate us, stopping what would've been a fist fight.
"Okay, whatever! We're going to get food, maybe use whatever's left to get a bus if we get there on time, all right? Happy now?"
I glared at him for a while, still pissed off at him for lying, then I began to back off, taking myself to the back of the line with Tails. I said nothing as we began to walk again, Mighty using his map to find the nearest gas station.
I began to calm down little by little, walking a little faster than usual to get the steam out. I glanced at Tails who was trying to catch up to me, holding onto something silver. "Sonic!"
"Yeah?" I turned around and stopped.
"I should've given this to you earlier because I was holding onto it for a while, but I think you need it more than me…" He unwrapped a piece of aluminum foil, revealing a chocolate bar that was half-eaten, but was surprisingly not in melted condition for him holding onto it that long.
I took it, glancing at him for a while. He still looked concerned, as if I was still angry over what happened earlier.
"Thanks buddy." I ruffled his hair, showing him that I appreciated it. He smiled, happy that I wasn't mad anymore.
We began to walk again, further onto the streets. The wind kept blowing in my direction, as if telling me where to go. And I was going there. Whatever it took me to reach the Promise Land.