CHAPTER 1: THE ENCOUNTER
Pushing myself off the ground, I began to walk, searching for anything worthwhile. I needed a place to begin: a path that I could go on, a group of people who maybe saw me end up here, an image that would trigger a memory. If none of those things came, a home to stay in for the night would be fine. Maybe then, I would be able to rest and start figuring through what had happened to me. That didn't seem likely, though. There was not a house in sight. Each step I was taking brought more and more questions, but I simply had to throw them off. The burden of them on my back would have been impossible to carry. I needed to keep walking, to keep searching. What's shocking is that it didn't take me many hours to find something that was not a palm tree, a pond, a cloud, or a blade of grass. It just wasn't what I expected.
The only thing that I could do was stare. I had walked up to the top of a decent-sized hill when I found him. A long-haired, bright red echidna was lying motionless on a flat piece of grassland, several yards away from my location. I began to have a strange feeling as I thought through what I was seeing. As far as my eyesight could go, there was not a person or a dwelling anywhere close to him. He was just alone in the middle of a small plain there, out cold. Also, it didn't seem like he was asleep; it looked as if he had been knocked unconscious by something. SORT OF LIKE HOW I ENDED UP. Was he in the same scenario that I was in? Before I thought too hard on that question, I had to bring my attention back to the echidna's condition. Over all other concerns I could've had, the echidna looked hurt, and I had to make sure that he was okay.
My feet dashed over to where he was as quick as they could. I didn't just run, though. I ran FAST. It didn't feel like I was sprinting; it felt more like the world was passing me by, almost as if the sky, the grass, and the trees were the ones in a hurry. The adrenaline rush I had was a needed sanctuary, a short escape. Before I even knew it, I was only a handful of yards away from the echidna. (Maybe, being in this body wasn't so scary after all.) Not wanting to startle him at first, I walked cautiously towards the echidna. My eyes searched over him for any bruising or bleeding in the hopes that he wasn't badly hurt. I stopped instantly, though, just before I was about to stand above him because in looking over him, I found something that gave me chills: there were two giant spikes sticking directly out of both of his gloved fists. They were connected to him, pieces of who he was. In the moment, I was just hoping that he was not the kind of person that would punch at someone before he would think. Man, was I wrong.
Before I could wake him up, he started to move. I backed away a few feet so that he would have some more breathing room. He looked up, his purple irises staring at the same sky that I had seen moments ago for the very first time. Whispering to himself confusedly, he rolled onto his knees, soreness making his movement tough to pull off.
He then looked down at his hands, and a strong panic overwhelmed him. He kept staring at his lengthy echidna body and his spiked fists, almost as if he didn't remember being in that vessel.
"What happened to me?" he asked himself in angst. Every moment felt like another load of firewood being thrown onto a blaze of anxiety. He looked around, trying to find any sort of hint or sign of what had happened. Then his eyes caught squarely onto mine. He first looked as if he were frozen in shock. I don't think he expected to find a soul anywhere near him. His surprise then quickly burned away into a fierce look of anger.
"What happened?!" he snarled. "Did you have something to do with this?!" Though he was in pain, he was starting to get up onto his feet, still looking at me with a growing fire in his eyes. I didn't know who to feel more nervous for: me or him. I knew that at any moment, he could beat me up, but he looked to be spiraling into a complete mental crisis. I felt bad for him.
"No. I don't remember anything, either," I said, trying to show my concern. But I realized quickly that it wouldn't matter what my answer was. From the look on his face, he was going to try to beat answers out of me, even if I had none.
I backed up as quickly as I could, knowing well that he was charging up for a punch. Then without a warning, a red blur started rushing forward. The echidna had been holding back a flurry of pointed blows, and they were all now being aimed at me. The only thing that I could think of doing in the moment was to guard my face and to try to make a jump over him. I don't know why; it was just an instinctive reaction. All in a single instant, almost like it was in slow motion, I tried to jump at the same time a fist was flying right towards me. My feet barely made it off the ground right about when the punch was near to making contact…
But the punch didn't hit me. In nervous curiosity, I pulled my arms away from my face to see what was going on.
I WASN'T ON THE GROUND. My body was hovering in mid-air a few feet over the place where I had just been a moment ago. It made absolutely no sense to me…until I looked up. My twin tails, seemingly defying physics, were acting like a helicopter, spinning themselves to gain lift. I didn't even think of flying whenever I did so; it was just natural. Needless to say, I was pretty dumbfounded. Not quite as dumbfounded as the echidna, though. I turned around to where he was, and he had the most confused look on his face. He had no clue how I evaded him, which honestly, neither did I. Just to test out my newfound ability, I decided to fly a tad bit further from him.
"Come down here so I can beat some answers out of you!" he yelled out. (Called it.)
"I don't know anything about what happened to you. Please trust me. I had just found you over there a few minutes ago."
His adrenaline was on full burn. Even with what I was trying to tell him, he still wanted to fight me. Was he not listening to what I was saying? Before all-out war was about to occur, though, a voice cut through from the ground below, off to the right.
"Cool down, hothead! Did you hear what he just told you? You won't be punching any answers out of him because he has none. He's not even trying to hurt you!"
The voice had come from an electric blue, spiky-quilled hedgehog. He was staring right at the raging echidna just a few feet away from him. It looked like he had walked from behind a nearby palm tree to confront the sharp-fisted fireball. There was an energy exuding from him, like it was coming out of his very heart and soul. Attitude radiated from what he said; with speaking only a few sentences, I could tell that he had a personality. That characteristic in particular probably helped him to try and face the echidna. I was just glad that somebody was trying to calm him down. I didn't enjoy the prospect of fighting somebody who was as confused and out-of-place as he was. I didn't really like to fight, period, but it especially didn't feel right to fight him.
After a minute of the hedgehog and the echidna staring down each other, the echidna finally took some deep breaths and started to cool down, even though he was still visibly frustrated. At that point, I decided that it would be safe enough to try to land. I zoomed over towards the hedgehog and came down softly on the ground beside him.
"Flying came in handy, huh?" he said quietly with a slight smile on his face.
"I guess so," I replied, reflecting his grin back. "I didn't even know I could fly."
"Well, good that you figured that out in time. You would have been destroyed if you had waited a second longer."
As the situation became a little more chill, a question started rising from within me. Even if I wanted to hold it back, I couldn't. With what happened to both me and the echidna, I couldn't ignore the possibility that somebody else maybe had the same thing happen to him, too.
"Sorry to ask, but just out of curiosity, why were you over here, anyway?"
The hedgehog stared down for a second, his green eyes and his face set in a pondering look.
"Well," he began with a tinge of unsureness in his voice, "I woke up on the side of a hill over there, kind of like how Mr. Fireball did a minute ago." (The echidna gave him a tough glare.) "For some reason, I couldn't remember how I got there. Me being a hedgehog even threw me off a little bit. Crazy, right? My head's starting to clear up now since I came over here…but I'm still confused. Why are you here? Were you trying to find that echidna there?"
The hairs on my neck stood on end at the question and what it meant.
"Umm…actually…I'm here for the same reason you're here. I lost my memory, too."
"Really?!"
To make sure of where we all stood, I stepped towards the echidna since he looked then like he wasn't going to beat me into a pulp.
"And you don't remember anything about yourself or what had happened to you, either…right?"
"Of course not!" he told me.
All three of us in that moment stared at each other in bewilderment. In our heads, we were starting to realize things; we were beginning to connect dots. Almost like telepathy, we knew what each other was thinking without saying a word: none of this seemed at all like coincidence. The hedgehog then finally was the first of us to speak.
"So…NONE of us remember our pasts? And NONE of us remember being in this place or looking like we do?"
Both the echidna and I slowly nodded our heads.
"How does something like that happen?" asked the hedgehog.
"I don't know," the echidna responded, now a little more calmly, "but there's gotta be someone around here who knows something about us or what happened."
"Yeah, probably. But where should we start? I don't think there's anyone around this place."
Both of them were right. There was probably someone around who could help us out, but we needed a place to begin. As far as we could see, there was not a single house around the area nor could we see a road nearby. Well, as far as we could see from the ground. That got me thinking…
While the hedgehog and the echidna were pondering over our dilemma, I lifted off into the sky to see if there was a path close to us. Luckily, there was a dirt road several yards from where we were standing.
"Hey!" I called out. "There's a path nearby. What do you think? I could fly over towards it so you guys would know where to go."
"Fine by me," the hedgehog answered back.
"Sounds better than just standing here," said the echidna, seeming content to finally take some action.
I flew quickly over to where the path was located and waved my right arm around to signal for them to come. In what seemed like a second, the hedgehog dashed right to where I was like it was effortless. I'm not sure if I had ever seen a person or an animal move as fast as that hedgehog did. Shortly after he arrived, the echidna came in close behind.
As I was landing, I heard the hedgehog say from below, "Wait! Before we head out, we need to give each other names. I don't want to have to call you Fox and Mr. Fireball all the time."
"Okay," replied the echidna, "just anything but that stupid nickname."
"Knuckles!" the hedgehog and I exclaimed simultaneously, pointing our fingers towards the annoyed soul. We both laughed so hard for thinking of the same name like that. What else could we have called him?
"Okay." The newly named Knuckles then looked over towards me. "And what should we call YOU? Tails?"
"You know what?" I said warmly. "That doesn't have a bad ring to it. I like it."
The real problem was what we were going to name the hedgehog. We so far had named each other off of our attributes, and Knuckles and I both knew that the hedgehog was fast. But what would be a good name for him that related to his speed? Fortunately, we didn't have to come up with one; he came up with his own.
"And you guys can call me Sonic!" he announced with crossed arms and a smug look on his face. I had no clue where he came up with that, but it made sense and sounded cool. Thus, we went with it.
So before the three of us began on that long path towards who knew where, Knuckles spoke in a hushed voice, "I hope we find someone soon who can explain all of this mess."
"Well, we're not going to by just talking about it here, right?" responded Sonic. "Let's head off!"
Though nervous about what he had almost done to me earlier, I reassured my new acquaintance. "In time, Knuckles. We'll figure things out."
To be truthful, I was reassuring myself and Sonic as much as I was reassuring Knuckles. We were all confused, and our pasts had somehow run away from all of us. We had a start, though. At least, we had a beginning. Now we just needed to run and catch back the memories that had fled from us so quickly.
