Chapter 2: The Mysterious Disappearance of a Hero
Sonic sped towards the tower across the lake, his speed increasing with each step. Robots slowly rolled out to meet and stop him. Bullets flashed out of the barrels in attempts to bring Sonic down before he could reach their master. He just laughed and continued running.
"Is that really the best you Badniks can do?" he mocked, "Robuttnik has really let his work go downhill." He rolled into a spindash and crashed through the robots before they had a chance to move. He continued to run through to the tower, barreling through any robots that tried to block his path. He turned inside and ran right back out the other end. A giant spring flung him high into the air and into the nearby forest. "His traps are still pretty good though," his voice trailed off.
"Sonic!" Tails exclaimed. Tails turned the Tornado towards the forest and flew after him. He shot a Power Ring out of the bottom of his plane just as Sonic hit the trees.
Sonic grabbed it and came rushing back to the tower. "Thanks little buddy." Faster and faster he approached Eggman's base until he crashed through the wall.
"S-sonic! What are you doing here?" a startled Eggman asked. He put the Chaos Emerald he'd been holding into the large machine in the center of the room. "No matter. Get him!"
Several robots began to shoot at Sonic. He ignored their fire for the most part, and jumped in front of Eggman. Just as the robots had locked onto his position, he ran to a small containment chamber that held Cream and Cheese captive.
"Wait, stop shooting!" Eggman screamed as hundreds of bullets came rushing towards him. He ducked out of the way and the shots his machine. There was a huge explosion and they were all engulfed in light.
Outside of the tower stood Knuckles, Amy, and Tails staring at the spectacle in awe. "What is that?" Amy asked no one in particular.
"Chaos Control," Knuckles replied.
And slowly the light of the explosion crept toward them.
...
"You told him what!" Manic raged. Sonia had let slip just before dinner that Sonic wasn't going to be coming. Her ears drooped in guilt.
"I told him he could go for a run. I didn't think he'd be gone this long," she explained.
"What're we gonna tell mom?"
Sonia sat dumbfounded for a moment. "I never really thought it through that far."
"Well it's too late to do anything else now. We're going to have to tell her," Manic tried to hide it, but he was quickly becoming scared. Sonic hadn't come down to dinner in almost two months and there was no telling how Queen Aleena would react to him not coming again. The two siblings opened the door and stepped into the dining hall. There were three large window set into one wall and a thin table stretching from one side of the room to the other. Their mother turned to greet them.
"Manic, Sonia, how lovely that you could make it!" she exclaimed as she hugged her children. They knew it was just formalities, but they were glad she greeted them this way. "Where is Sonic?" she asked. And there was the question they were dreading.
Sonia looked over to Manic and began speaking first, "Well you see mother…um… Sonic came to me in my room a few minutes ago and said he wouldn't be coming to dinner. He went on a run somewhere."
Queen Aleena stepped away from her children. She placed both her hands on the table and her shoulders began to tremble. "Call for someone to go find him. I won't stand for his not coming any longer. I try to give you as much freedom as possible without putting you in danger, yet he continues to defy me." One of the servants stepped from the room and returned shortly with a young guard.
If he could be called a guard, he hadn't quite completed all of the qualifications. He was just under three feet tall, and his face made him look to be about twelve years old. He wore the usual guard apparel with the exception of earring in his left ear that he was doing a poor job of concealing. He performed the customary greeting when in the presence of the royal family, or at the very least, attempted it. Rather, he fell face first on the floor. He scrambled to his feet as quickly as possible and his muzzled immediately took on a red tint.
"Cyrano reporting for special duty your Highness," he stuttered. His accent sounded slightly foreign, but it was difficult to place.
"Good," Aleena replied, "I need to go out to look for Prince Sonic. It seems he has managed to escape again."
It looked for a moment as if Cyrano would pass out from excitement. "Thank-you your Highness, I won't let you down." He saluted, turned, and walked to the door. That was his plan at least. He tripped on his pant leg halfway there.
After he had left, Sonia, Manic, and Aleena sat down to eat dinner. The room was completely silent except for the sounds of forks and spoons scraping against plates.
...
Cyrano had gone back to his quarters and changed into his street clothes. He knew exactly where he was going to look first, and he couldn't let who he would find there know he was acting on special orders from the queen herself. Excitedly he grabbed a motorcycle from next to the door and rode it out of the city in the direction of the Great Forest.
His trip was long and uneventful, but at least he didn't hurt himself. He left the bike at the edge of the woods and walked into the forest. "I wish it wasn't nighttime," he said to himself. He looked around for the distinctive knothole that was the entrance to Knothole village. He found it after a few minutes of searching and looked inside reluctantly. "The Queen ordered me to find Sonic… Then that's just what I'll do!"
Cyrano threw all caution to the wind and jumped inside. He started screaming before he'd really even started down. He shot out the other end of the slim tube and was glad to have landed in a pile of something soft. He struggled to his feet and looked around in wonder. It was even better than he'd imagined. Suddenly he heard a sound behind himself and turned in surprise. He looked just in time to get a boot to the face.
"Who are you?" the boot's owner asked him.
"I'm Cyrano. I came upon the request of Quee… of a friend. They told me to seek out someone," Cyrano lied.
The owner of the boot helped him up. "Well I'm Princess Sally, leader of the Freedom Fighters in this region. If you need help, I'll be more than happy to provide it," Cyrano let out a sigh of relief, "but we have a little problem ourselves."
"Really?" Cyrano asked, his worry quickly returning.
"I just got back from a mission with Sonic and a few other Freedom Fighters. They went on to Eggman's base, but never came back out. I got tired of waiting and came to see if they'd turned up back here yet." Cyrano's heart dropped so low that it practically left his body.
"I'll help you look."
The search ended in Cyrano being near tears. He had been right about who Sonic was with, just not the where.
Sally said, "They must have been taken captive then." She reached for NICOLE and typed something on the small keyboard. "NICOLE, can you bring up a map of the tower Robotnik was using as a base?"
"YES SALLY."
A holographic map floated in the air above NICOLE. Cyrano stared at it intently hoping that maybe Sonic would appear out of nowhere and declare that it had all been some sort of practical joke. He didn't.
"That's odd," declared Sally.
"What? What's odd?"
"There's no place to keep prisoners. He couldn't have taken them captive."
"Then that means…"
...
"P-pool? Uh-oh…" Sonic fell from the sky and landed in a square swimming pool several hundred feet below. He quickly sank to the bottom. There was a house not far from the water, and the splash had woken up a boy in a second story bedroom. Sonic attempted jump out of the water, but all his efforts were to no avail.
The boy rushed down the stairs and to the poolside. Without even stopping to think, he jumped into the water and grabbed Sonic by the arm. Immediately after being pulled out, Sonic started to cough and vomit all over the side of the pool.
"Are you okay?" the boy asked.
"Yeah, I think so."
"You can talk?"
"Of course I can talk," Sonic told him.
"My name's Chris. What's yours?"
"My name's Sonic. Sonic the Hedgehog."
_
AN: And so ends chapter two. It's pretty short, but there's a lot going on. Here is becomes a bit more evident that I'm following the storyline of Sonic X, but don't worry, it'll start to get different later on. Also in this chapter, the character of Cyrano is introduced. He's not quite a fan character. This is the only thing I've done where he appears. Like Antoine, he speaks with a French accent. He'll show up more later too.
Once again, save for Cyrano and the parts of the plot, I own nothing.
