PROLOGUE
The sun had just found its way into a bedroom window of the spacious Hedgehog Estate when the sole occupant at that morning hour had just woken. With a yawn and a stretch, the blue hedgehog boy sat up and turned, his bare feet coming to rest on the plush red carpet with a quiet thump. Sonic Maurice Hedgehog, age five, was at the same time the most mature, yet irresponsible boy most Mobians had ever met. "Shoes..." he mumbled, still drowsy as he reached under his bed to feel for the special frictionless shoes his uncle had given him for his birthday. As his fingers hooked under the buckle of one, his hand felt the crumple of paper inside as he pulled it out from under the bed.
Sure enough, Uncle Charles had left him a note in his shoes again. It was the first thing he reached for in the mornings, so his uncle had found out he was more likely to read the note first thing in the morning if it was in a shoe instead of on the nightstand, or the mirror. The blue-quilled hedgehog boy rubbed the drowsiness from his emerald-green eyes and unfolded the brown parchment with a soft rustle, reading it aloud to himself.
"My boy,
Don't forget that you have class at six-thirty sharp. Rosie will be furious with me if she has to keep the class waiting on you one more time. There's five mobium on the nightstand to get you a bite at the market on your way. Please don't turn up late for class... again.
Uncle Chuck"
Sonic sat the note on his nightstand as he grabbed his white gloves off it and slipped them on, tucking the large copper coin that was with them into a pocket on the back of one of his gloves. "What time is it, anyway?" He asked himself rhetorically, stepping into his red and white shoes as he bent over to fasten the buckles. A quick glance at the clock on his wall woke him up better than anything else could this particular morning; class was starting in less than a minute!
"I overslept!" Sonic burst out of his room, rolling and tumbling down the long, carpeted foyer staircase as he struggled to get his other shoe on. He stumbled up to his feet, shoes buckled as he raced into the main hall and out the large double doors of his uncle's estate. "Oh, man, Uncle Chuck's gonna ground me for sure if I don't juice out of here!" Though his uncle frowned on what the hedgehog referred to colloquially as 'juicing', the young hedgehog had a feeling he'd disapprove even more if Rosie told him about his nephew being late to class again. Thanks to his frictionless shoes, and a strange natural talent for sprinting, Sonic burst into a breakneck running speed, rocketing out of the estate grounds and vaulting over the metal gate in a blurring fast motion, running for his classes as if his social life depended upon it. "I'm gonna be-"
Elsewhere, in the city's Market Square, a fruit vendor was doing his best to attract early-morning shoppers. "Come one, come all!" The middle-aged badger shouted, waving an arm and pointing to his fruit stand. "Fresh apo fruit right here! Hand picked from the Garden of Life just this morning, get them while they're ripe!"
His pitch managed to attract a customer, a teenage squirrel girl who greeted him and began digging in her money pouch. "How much are they, today, anyway?"
"Just five mobium each, ma'am." The vendor tipped his blue cap to her... then perked an ear. "Say, do you hear something?" he inquired, as he held out one of the smooth red apo fruits for her.
"No, I don't hear any... wait, what IS that sound?" both she and the fruit vendor turned to look down the cobblestone street to see a rising cloud of dust rapidly approaching, with a faint voice of a young boy growing louder as it approached.
"laaaAAAaaaate!"
The voice became louder as a blue streak ripped by them, sending loose street debris and dust scooting down the path in its wake.
"What was THAT?" the merchant badger asked, picking up his cap from the ground. As the young boy's nasal voice faded away into the distance. "Hey! Where'd that fruit go? I had it in my hand just a..." The red fruit in his hand had vanished. In its place was a five-mobium coin.
Sonic sped through the city, rocketing down side streets and alleyways, bouncing off of buildings and weaving through the bustling morning crowd at hundreds of miles an hour as he ate his apo fruit, winding up his arm and pitching the core into a trash bin as he passed one by, the sudden clang of fruit striking metal startling a passerby. "Yaaaaahoooooo!" He was getting close now. He could see the clock tower at Castle Acorn, and its face showed that he still had almost half a minute left. He turned on a dime without losing any of his breakneck momentum, leaping off a wall and onto a set of rooftops, undoubtedly waking up the residents below him as his blurry feet hammered along their roofing tiles on his way to the Forum Gardens and the observation tower where his teacher was likely waiting on him.
Meanwhile, in the cosmopolitan city's Central Forum, Mobotropolis' most brilliant minds, Sonic's uncle among them, were assembling for an emergency meeting.
"Oh yes, I think this meeting will be well worth the short notice." Another blue hedgehog, Sonic's Uncle Charles, attempted to assuage the early morning bitterness of his colleagues as they filed to their podiums for the meeting. "We're very close to a major breakthrough, and I am positive that my-" The old hedgehog abruptly fell silent, putting on his spectacles to look at the glint on the distant rooftops that had caught his eye. "Oh, no... here he comes, save the papers!" Sir Charles scooped up a handful of blueprints and clutched them tightly to his chest, closing his eyes and gritting his teeth as another of his colleagues, a squirrel in a white coat, comically threw himself upon a large stack of papers.
A split-second later, Sonic the Hedgehog tore through the Central Forum at the speed of sound, the shock wave in his wake sending papers and models blowing and rolling about the forum.
Once the roar of air passed them by, Sir Charles stood up and fixed his windblown quills and clothing, looking sheepishly back at the other forum-goers, one of which put a hand on his shoulder, and looked him square in the eye. "Please make him stop doing that."
"Five seconds!" Sonic exclaimed, looking up the tower at the clock as he raced straight up the sheer face of the structure, counting down the seconds he had left to reach the top. If he was a second late, Rosie would show him no mercy this time.
"Five seconds." Atop the Clock tower, on an observation level a few feet below the towering clock face, a young ground squirrel girl of similar age to Sonic, but dressed in a lavish gown and tiara looked up at the massive clock and smiled to herself. "He's going to be late again, Rosie."
Next to her, an aging chipmunk in a long red robe sighed and shook her head slowly. "Why is that boy always late..."
Suddenly, a blue flash shot up past the railing of the tower, landed on the massive minute hand of the clock, and slowed down as it slid down the steep angle of the hand, landing beside the two and unrolling to reveal the blue hedgehog just moments before the tower gave out six long chimes and a shorter one. "Way past cool! I'm the best!" Sonic thrust his arms in the air as he began to catch his breath.
Rosie stared at him incredulously. "Sonic, how in the world did you... oh no! Surely you didn't!" She looked down at the chaos in the Forum Gardens as the people far below ran about collecting their windblown papers and equipment.
"Hey Sally!" Sonic exclaimed. "I did it!"
The young princess joined her matron in looking down and marveling at the sheer havoc the hedgehog had wrought in the Forum Gardens yet again. She giggled and shook her head. "Boy did you ever, Sonic."
