LC; We are back baby!
Sonic; So soon?
Tails; You just finished our chapter!
lC; I know but I am on a roll!
Sonic; Don't you have other stories to update?
LC; Yeah, but the juices are running dry for them. So I'm taking a break and working on something else!
Tails; Well, I saw your previous schedule and I guess its for the best.
Sonic; That was her schedule? I thought it was a torture list.
LC; Yeah, updating stories within thirty days was too much. So now I have a new schedule!
Tails; Now she's going by which one interests her most and/or is in more need of updating.
Sonic; So she's going to be stuck on us for a while?
Tails; *Nods*
Sonic; Dang.
LC; Time for my story now!
Disclaimer; Warning, people in screen do not own as much Sonic as it appears.
Chapter 2; Run to Be Free.
Serina Hedgehog slept peacefully in the ruins of somebody's home. All that was left were the walls, part of the roof, and a metal box partially melted. The fires had finally run out of things to burn and had more or less burned out. The screams had stopped and the robots could no longer be heard. Maybe they had moved on.
After somehow taking down that monster she had hobbled to this house and collapsed in the corner behind the metal box. She hadn't moved since.
Ash had settled on most everything and it was ash tickling her nose that finally roused her. She sneezed and froze at the noise. When she didn't hear murderous robots coming to kill her she relaxed a little and took her bearings.
She looked out the remains of the door to see the train tracks, and the robot remains. It hadn't moved, which meant she had either killed it or it was badly broken. Either one worked for her but she would prefer dead.
She looked down at herself and grimaced. Her clothes had been soaked, stained with mud, and covered in ash. Her quills felt strangely sticky and she could feel mud stuck between the spines. Her shoes were almost falling apart.
The realization that she was an orphan hadn't hit yet and she was still able to function almost normally. She was fine except for her clothes and quills and left foot from hitting the monster. It looked swollen and she vaguely knew that she should remove the shoe or it would hurt worse.
She shuffled around the house and found the kitchen. Most of the food had burned up, but she found some warm milk and a box of oreos that had survived the fire. She ate them and drowned them in milk and felt a little better. It had been a long time since she had eaten.
She found herself in the bedroom of a child, a boy from all the blue in the room. She found a pair of brown shorts, a pair of shoes two sizes too big, and an overly large, green T-shirt.
She wanted to put them on right away but was all to aware of the grime covering every inch of her. Her fur was matted and stiff, her spines were caked in mud and ash, and she needed to clean her ankle. That meant water.
The bathroom had been largely spared and when she twisted the knob water did come out. She started to shake when she saw the liquid and she felt cold. It was only then she realized fully what had happened.
She wailed and sobbed and screamed herself hoarse. Tears came and it seemed like they would never stop. She shouted out each sibling's name, not knowing which dead and if any survived and too afraid and shaken and hurt to check. She cried for her family, for all their quietness and dissappointment in her she cried.
It might've only been an hour, it might've been a day. Eventually she found that she had laid her head down on the side of the tub and the water had somehow switched to the overhead and was soaking her naked body. It was a good thing she had put her clothes on the sink, or her new clothes would get all wet too.
She felt better after crying, and she didn't shake so much as she washed herself in the shower. She once tried to take a bath but the water pooling around her clothes nearly made her faint. It seemed showers were fine, so long as the water didn't pool higher than her ankle.
Speaking of ankles, it looked like her's had stopped swelling and wasn't as bad as she thought it was. She had no idea if it was sprained, broken, or just really badly bruised. Only that she might not be running for a while.
She dressed in the clothes she had found and looked at her reflection in the broken mirror. She didn't look much different, though she bet if she cut her quills she'd pass for a boy. Serina's hands found a knife from the kitchen and she only realized what her body was doing when the quills littered the ground all around her. She had always liked her brown quills.
Serina sat in that house, looking out the door at the robot. She didn't know what to do. She was eight years old and the world had been turned topsy turvy and she was lonely and lost. She was afraid, she wanted her mama and daddy! She would even like Noah at this point!
She was starting to realize what had happened and it scared her. They had been invaded by robots! Her family, and a whole lot of others, had been killed. Somehow, she had survived and helped two other little'uns survive as well. She wondered how Tails and Ashten were doing.
Serina the Hedgehog wasn't scared anymore.
She got up and walked outside. The robot she had killed, she realized if it was just broken the other robots would've taken it with them, was still there. She walked over to it and briefly admired the dent she had put in it's forehead.
"I'm not Serina anymore, I'm Sonic." She walked through the village she used to live in and found some loose threads all over the place. She found a back pack near a broken down and empty bus. She emptied out the books and papers and started filling it with food and water and clothes instead.
If she found a body, she checked for signs of life, but was always let down. She found the rabbit boy from earlier, he had died quickly it looked like. She was stunned to find herself happy about that. Even if he hadn't suffered, he had still died!
But that was just Sonic for you. She didn't stay down for long. Even if she tried. She found a bright side in just about everything. Sonic the Hedgehog wasn't a downer.
Along the way she found an old man's cane, only slightly charred and used that to keep weight from her foot.
Eventually she remembered her map and pulled it from the pocket she had stuffed it into. It was still damp but the words hadn't run that much and she could still read it.
She did the math like her teacher had shown her and was stunned. The distance from her home to the school was twenty five miles. The distance from the place right above her home to that house by the train tracks was thirty miles.
Sonic the Hedgehog folded up the map carefully and continued her painfully slow walk in the direction the robots had come from. She wanted to find where they came from. She had to find out, if only to find out who made these robots. Who was responsible for the deaths of her family.
She travelled along the outskirts of the Great Forrest, a place she had never been to and was almost too afraid to approach.
Sonic skirted the edges of the forrest and kept a watchful ear out in case some robots saw her and decided to have a snack. Wait, could robots eat? She thought that they didn't need food, but that robot she had killed had eaten the cat woman. So did they eat?
The question kept herself busy but she eventually stopped trying to debate against herself since she had only ever seen one robot so far. She wasn't sure if she wanted to see others or not, but she kept walking.
According to her father the city Knothole was located somewhere in the winding trees. Hardly anyone ever made it there, and no one ever gave away its location to anyone else. Until now, she hadn't known why it had to be such a big secret. Now, she wondered if people were searching for that village to try and destroy it and the royal family. She prayed it stayed hidden.
On her third day of travelling she saw something that shocked her. It was a strange, moving, metal bug! Or at least, that's what it looked like! Only it moved on rubber wheels and a bad smell came from it!
The car pulled over, she assumed they had seen her, and out from the sides popped two robots!
"A mobian! Capture him!" Sonic found herself frozen this time as the first robot approached her.
"Come here little boy, we'll take you to our leader." The robot ordered her.
"Who's your leader?" She asked, deepening her voice a little so they would think she was a boy. She wasn't sure why she was pretending, but she felt a little safer if they didn't know a lot about her.
"Dr. Robotnik built all us robots and he's going to make all you mobians into robots as well." The robot said, only a few meters away from her now.
"How will he make me a robot?" She asked innocently, trying to distract the robot long enough for her to loosen the straps of her bag so she could run faster.
"Using roboticization, he will turn you into a robot and take from you all your free will." Sonic's heart began to pump that weird energy giving stuff like before.
"Well would you tell Dr. Robotnik something for me?" The robot didn't say anything but cocked its head to one side.
"Tell him this. Sonic the Hedgehog is too fast to catch." She didn't drop her bag like she had planned, but it didn't seem to matter. She bolted into the forest and belted through the trees, ducking and dodging the branches like they weren't even there.
The wind blew through her quills as she sped through the forest. She couldn't hear signs of persuit anymore and she slowed down a bit, only just now realizing that her ankle hurt. She collapsed in front of a lake but didn't even have time to shiver at the amount of water. She fell into blissful unconciousness.
Hours later the pain woke her again and she managed to blink away the tears and sit up. She had lost her cane somewhere during her retreat and now she wished she still had the hunk of wood. Her ankle had swollen up again and was very painful.
For a long time she left it alone after removing her shoes and socks, hoping the swelling would go down on its own. Eventually though she had to move to the water. Dragging herself over to the water's edge was painful and nearly turned her hair grey, but she managed to soak her foot.
It was while her foot was soaking and she was just feeling a little braver that she saw something sparkling in the water. It looked like a bracelet or something.
She was reluctant to move any closer than she absolutely had to but her curiosity got the better of her and she closed her eyes. Her hand groped in the mud for a bit until she found the ring with her fingers and pulled it out.
Sonic gasped as she was nearly blinded by its shine. It was twinkling like a star in the night sky. Holding it, she knew it had amazing power. Question was, what should she do with it?
Eventually she began pondering its usefulness in healing. It would be nice if her foot was healed so she could walk and run again.
Sonic looked closely at the ring and lifted her left foot. Carefully, she brought the ring to it and flinched at the bright light and foreign feeling. Her leg felt very warm for a second and then it was over.
Sonic gasped when she saw her ankle completely healed, but the ring had vanished. After looking around and concluding that she had not dropped it, she was forced to admit the ring must've only been good for one go.
"Too bad, that ring could've been useful." She mumbled, standing again on her own two feet and feeling all the better for it. The lake didn't even bother her so much now that her foot was all better!
She knew a little more than she did before. She knew a man named Dr. Robotnik was leading the robots and turning people into mindless metal puppets! Sonic shivered as she remembered the disappearances. Were her uncle and sister robots now? The ones that went missing?
Sonic chose to stay at the lake clearing for a while, to try and figure out what she was going to do now. She wasn't very strong, but she was fast and could get faster. She felt full of energy, despite everything that had happened. Maybe she should go for a run?
Her original plan had been to leave her bag behind so she could move faster, but she couldn't bring herself to take off the comforting weight. So she took it with her on her run.
When she finally returned to the clearing, she had been running for what felt like hours and felt good. Running always lifted her spirits, even when she wasn't running anywhere!
The next day she awoke and went to the lake to drink some water. By now so long as she wasn't actually in the water she didn't mind being around it so much.
"Another ring?" Sure enough, in the crystal clear waters was another ring! She eagerly picked up the glowing circle and thought about what to do with it. On one hand, she wasn't hurt at all. On the other, who was to say the rings were only made for healing? Just holding it gave her an energy boost!
She started running without really thinking about it, leaving the clearing and heading to the road just beyond the winding trees. Instead of stopping, she kept running long after the ring's power had vanished. Now she kept running on her own power. It wasn't as fast as she could go with the ring, but it was faster than she could usually move.
When she stopped she was well and truly lost with no idea how far away the lake of rings was. In fact she couldn't even see the forest! It was flatland as far as the eye could see!
"I got lost." She sighed, disheartened by her prospects. Oh well, maybe she would find another village or something by following the road. She turned and started walking, not feeling up to running after that little jog she had just finished.
It was nearing twilight when she heard a familiar sound. It sounded like the metal bugs the robots had been riding inside! It sounded like it was coming from behind her.
Turning around, she saw a much larger metal bug than last time. There was a whole herd of metal bugs this time! Robots could be seen through the glass window things too! The bugs didn't slow down or stop like last time, but she didn't care. She had just seen something that brought up her nearly unexistent temper.
In the wagon part of the bugs were mobians in chains. She could see kids her age, old people, and those that looked sick or hurt. There was even a crying baby hedgehog.
Seeing the hedgehog was what finally drew her anger and she could feel her quills starting to bristle. She knew where the robots were taking those people, and she would not let that happen. She couldn't let them lose their freedom!
She tossed the bag to the side of the road and took a starting stance.
"Ready," The bugs were maybe fifty meters away and closing.
"Get set," Thirty meters, the baby was still crying.
"Go!" Ten meters, and she did some heavy damage. She burst forth at top speed and leapt before impact, putting her right leg almost a foot's length into the nose of the first bug. It skidded to a halt and a fire erupted from it, she didn't notice until later that her foot was singed but not broken.
Pulling out her leg she charged the robot that had climbed out of the side felt the heat of it exploding behind her as she continued running. The next bug crumpled in on itself at impact but didn't burst into flames like the last one. She kicked off the head of that robot.
All in all she probably brought down ten robots and six of the bugs. When she was done, her shins and feet ached but weren't broken, only bruised. Then she remembered the mobians.
"How did you do that?" Sonic gasped and turned around to see a hedgehog man! She had only noticed the baby!
"I'm fast." She muttered lamely, feeling the quiet passiveness of her kind over taking her. She purposefully shook her head to get rid of the impulse before turning to help the people get free from their chains.
"What's your name?" An elderly cat woman asked her.
"Call me Sonic." She smiled, the first time in what felt like forever. She promised to herself to smile more often, because smiling made things better!
"Archie, thank the girl." Archie was the cat woman's grandson, and just about her age she'd guess. The cat boy was a deep red, but not the same sheen as blood. She had seen enough of the liquid enough by now to know.
"That was so cool what you did! The robots didn't know what hit them!" The cat boy said excitedly, his eyes shining. She tensed a little at the unexpected praise but allowed the warm feeling of acceptance cover her like a blanket.
"Uh, thanks!" She said uncertainly.
Somehow she found herself travelling with them back the way they came. She must've run even farther than she thought because it took three days to reach the Great Forest again! When they did she was tempted to leave to go on to the lake of rings, but stayed. She would never forgive herself if these people were hurt by the robots because she wanted to run faster with those rings!
Sonic, although young enough that adults normally would help carry her, carried three babies on her back. They were a litter of hedgehogs, the male hedgehog's children. They were very small and should still be nursing, however the mate had been killed. She comforted them as best she could and made them drink the milk she had brought.
Even when she was exhausted, she found strength for another smile or to crack another joke to brighten the other children's lives. She encouraged them to keep moving forward and helped them to be happy again without their families.
The man hedgehog was now carrying Archie, who had nearly collapsed after trying to walk the entire way by himself. Sonic didn't know why he would do something like that, it was silly to make yourself tired like that for no reason!
"Sonic, your very different." The hedgehog man informed her.
"I know." She had kept to the new habbit of giving small, clipped answers whenever someone spoke to her unless it was a child. She needed all her energy to place one foot in front of the other.
"How'd you move so fast anyway? I've seen rabbits who look slow compared to you!" Was she really that fast? She didn't think so. Maybe the rest of the world was just slow!
"I like running." She shrugged, focusing for a moment to readjust one of the babies on her back.
Walking was hard on just about everybody. The paths they could find were narrow and the going slow. Sometimes it felt to Sonic that they weren't making any progress at all. She usually got up early to scout ahead, to see if they were close to the mysterious Knothole village.
Today she was carrying a five year old pup who had twisted his ankle on a root. She moved as fast as she dared but kept going between the group. She'd go ahead for a little while then fall behind to look at the back. It was an instinct she didn't fight, like so many other hedgehog like urges. She just did what felt natural.
Today she was moving ahead of the group and trying to see if there was anything they could eat. They had run out of food last night and now had to slow even more to pick edible plants and stuff. The water wouldn't last for much longer either, so finding a stream was a major concern amongst the adults.
"Maybe if I got higher I could see more." She finally sighed. Climbing didn't look like a very good prospect. She had never climbed anything before, except stairs. Heights and hedgehogs along about as well as Sonic and water.
She adjusted her grip on the puppy and took a running start at a tree. There was a lot of branches on it and they were low enough that getting a good momentum should propell her high enough to reach them.
"Hold on kid!" She ordered the puppy and felt the squeezing of his pudgy arms around her neck. She reached out on arm and leapt, grabbing a branch and pulling herself up. Carrying kids helped to build her upper body strength, so it was only a little struggle to pull them both up.
"Sonic get down! You'll hurt yourself!" Someone called up to her. She ignored whoever it was and jumped to a higher branch. She looked around but didn't see much other than trees and leaves. She couldn't hear anything but the local wildlife.
A laugh burst forward as she hopped from branch to branch over the group, ignoring the calls and shouts of the people below her. How could this be dangerous? She was happy now and moving faster than they could keep up. That feeling, that she had dubbed freedom, was back with a vengeance. The constant nagging worry of falling brought up that strange feeling of energy that her heart pumped through her body. She wondered why anyone would think this was bad.
Eventually the kid told her he had to pee so she had to jump down or smell like urine for the rest of the day. The adults told her not to do that anymore and gave her Archie to carry for a little while. They thought his heavier weight would drag her down. They were just providing her more training.
Archie though, didn't care to be carried. No sooner had she moved ahead, out of supervision radius, he jumped off her and started running around. Sonic shrugged and joined him, running around and soon laughing in child abandon.
Eventually they rejoined the adults and started a competition to see who could avoid running into someone the longest. Long after Archie got tired and was replaced onto her back again, Sonic ran.
"Sonic, don't go too far!" It was a week into their forest trek and by now the adults had despaired of ever keeping the energetic young girl contained. It was like trying to hold back a flood, the pressure kept building until she broke through the barrier. Besides, her energy was refreshing.
Sonic gave a dismissive answer and took off, running at full speed up a tree and out of sight with Archie clinging to her back. They had developed a routine. She brought him up to the trees where the leaves blocked the adults' eyes, and he helped her do whatever she felt like doing.
Sometimes they ran ahead and took a nice long nap. Others they searched until they found food or water for everyone. On days like today though, when food and water supplies were high, they searched for Knothole.
"Hey Sonic, what's your real name?" Archie asked after ten minutes of tree jumping.
"What do you mean?" She asked, honestly confused.
"I heard uncle Bradley say that Sonic isn't a hedgehog name and your a hedgehog. So what's your real name?" He explained. Sonic frowned at the name Bradley. Was that the name of the male hedgehog? She hadn't bothered learning it.
"Sonic's who I am." She liked the name Sonic, it was fast! She enjoyed being fast! One day she'd live up to her name and travel at the speed of sound! Then nobody could make her stop running!
Sonic looked down between the branches and screeched to a halt. Ignoring Archie's complaints, she doubled back to what she had just seen. She dropped to the forest floor to get a closer look.
Sonic the Hedgehog had found footprints.
"Those aren't ours, there aren't enough." Archie supplied helpfully. Sonic set him down and went to get a closer look. The prints were heavy set, an adult's print. They were wearing boots too, all of them! There looked like there was a whole bunch of guys.
"Wanna follow'em?" Sonic asked the cat boy. He nodded happily. He wouldn't tell her but he had a crush on her for saving everyone from the robots.
Sonic didn't take to the trees this time, she just followed the trail along the ground. She moved at speeds that blurred her surroundings, making everything a bright, vibrant green color until she came to a halt.
The reason for her rather sudden stop? She stepped into a trap.
Sonic cried out in pain and shock and fell, inadvertently tossing Archie ahead of her when she hit the ground. Archie leapt up and backed away in surprise when he saw the scouts who's camp they had stumbled on.
"Leave him alone!" Sonic cried out when the men lifted spears to the intruders. Her leg was bloody but that energy stuff was flowing with her and she instinctively knew it was numbing the pain.
"Their just kids." One of the guards said uncomfortably. He himself had set the trap earlier to try and catch some dinner for him and his peers.
"Sonic! Are you okay?" Archie asked desperatly, trying to use his little hands to pry open the steel trap. Sonic figured she was lucky her leg hadn't been snapped off!
After the guards removed the trap and treated her leg, they interrogated them. Or at least, they tried to. Sonic was grumpy because of the pain in her leg and Archie was po'ed because Sonic had been hurt.
"Listen kids, we're royal guards from Knothole village! Now tell us why you are in the forest and where your families are!" The head guard finally yelled. Sonic and Archie exchanged looks.
"We'll tell you everything you want to know if you agree to let us and our "families" come into Knothole and you escort us there personally!" Sonic suggested shrewdly. Of course, the guards figured that since the kids had been on their own that it was probably just a few adults and a couple kids. When Sonic led them (Very slowly and painfully might I add) to where the group had taken a break, she laughed at the faces of the guards upon seeing their disbelieving faces.
Sonic the Hedgehog decided she hated to wait.
First the guards made her wait by saying they had to count everyone and make a list of who they were, where they came from, and names! Then she had to wait as the little kids were distributed for carrying! Then she had to wait for them to finish eating! Then she had to argue for twenty minutes on why her hurt leg wasn't so bad that she couldn't walk!
"I don't like being carried." Sonic grumbled from her forced seat on the head guard's back. He had apparently gotten tired of her argument and plucked her up before she could do anything to stop him. Not that she could run anymore, because of his stupid trap! Who put traps where little girls might run into them anyway?
"Your a kid, kids get carried." The guard retorted.
"I can run faster than anybody else and take down evil robots, but until I turn ten I have to be carried?" He nodded in answer. He didn't like this anymore than she did, she was small for her age but heavy!
DNE FO SIHT RETPAHC OS OUY DLOUHS EVEAL EM ENOLA WON!
LC; Tell me if you can read that!
Sonic; What is that? French?
LC; Nah, its just mirror writing. I read somewhere that Einstein wrote in his journals in mirror writing so nobody could steal his ideas!
Tails; Wow, that's pretty clever!
LC; Yeah, I'm thinking about writing a report for school in mirror writing. Just to annoy my teachers!
Sonic; Won't they give you a bad grade?
LC; Nah, if the writing's neat and in english then according to the rule book they must accept and accurately grade all work!
Sonic; You don't like school do you?
Tails; You seem way to happy about annoying teachers.
LC; School is just seven crappy hours of our lives!
