The Wind Chronicles of Gaea
Event Two
Holy Schnikes, Is This a Dragon?!
High school track "ace in the hole" Sonic the Hedgehog found himself falling through the sky, from the sky. His wild yowling overstretched his confusion, as well as the fact that the dark, viridescent canopies below were closing in fast. Albeit all that speed went into falling, the adrenaline coursing through his blood excited him. He was able to turn his "sissy" screams into rowdy howls.
"Yahoo! Yeah!"
He remembered the pendant in his hand and retied the string around his neck. Green umbrage was closing in fast. The altitude was so high up, he couldn't tell how much closer he was getting.
"I have no idea how I'm gonna survive this, much less land safely…but this is so freaking awesome for some reason!"
"Wah-hoo!" the hedgehog teen wailed, half-excited and half-terrified.
Seeing that he wasn't that much closer to ground level yet, Sonic decided to perform aerial tricks. Flips and spins, and twists and turns. Wisps of early-morning cloud whipped in his wake. He looked like a dancing corkscrew falling through the sky. But the earth was still getting closer and closer.
And Sonic miscalculated the fact that those spins and twists had made him plummet faster. So the ground was threatening to smash him to pieces.
"Whoops. Looks like I made myself fall even faster now…!" A nervous chuckle escaped as he scratched the back of his head. "Crap!" he bellowed now.
"Crap, crap, crap, I'm gonna die! I'm totally gonna die! Aagh!"
But then, there was a catch. As in capture from his demise. Accompanied by a sharp jarring sensation in his head. The blow put the blue hedgehog in a daze. He was able to piece together the pain in his head and whatever hard thing he landed on, though.
"Holy jeez, that felt like…?" came Sonic's peevish groan. He held his head and blinked.
Wildly, it seemed. For he found himself still in the air, over the ground that was ready to kill him.
He gawked, mouth and eyes agape. "What the hell?! I'm flying? What in the…world is…?"
Sonic sent his eyes down and found a long scarlet cushion. Around it were metallic plates, pearlescent beige in color, and it all looked like it was made for sitting in. Even though Sonic was still laying flat on it. Off to the sides of him were two wide wings, similar to a bat but not really. Better, more like. They flapped in simultaneity.
"Am I…on the back of…some kind of…creature?" the bamboozled teen wanted to know as he struggled to get to his feet. As he groped for balance, he pulled on something like a reign, and whatever's back he was on tilted violently. Sonic yelped from nearly sliding off the creature and falling to his doom again. Another reign was able to be caught in the nick of time. Consequently, the flying creature's path was able to straighten back out.
"Holy crap, that was a close one…! Whew!"
The flying beast let out what sounded like a soft, albeit aggravated, trill.
Sonic was able to find his footing on the creature's back, in between its great twin wings. Massive emerald shards were implanted into the elbows; Sonic blinked in confusion. He held onto the reigns. "Nice and taut…like a horse, right?" he figured hopelessly as a massive sweat drop fell from the back of his head.
The massive winged beast chirped in annoyance.
"Although this is clearly not a horse." An eyebrow twitched upward. "Well, umm…it's obvious you're not a horse, I take it?" he directed his wondering thought at the beast. "It looks like you're made of metal, too…so what are you exactly?" The slightly nerve-wracked hedgehog was scratching the back of his head again.
The beast's shrill cry echoed through the air, and at the height they were at, it was like the whole world could've heard it. Whatever world Sonic was on, since it did look very unfamiliar: This side of wherever he was seemed to be rousing from under the nocturnal veil, for its bluish-indigo tint was just beginning to recede.
Be that as it may, he was going to get familiar with it quite soon. Because that flying creature was soaring right at it. Sonic screamed his "sissy-girl" scream, the rush of turbulence ballooning his face.
One thing about the creature's cry was it sounded like one of a bird of prey, like an eagle. But Sonic was able to detect some type of sentience in it somehow, but was confused by it because it also sounded like a nonviolent bird, too—like a lark or a canary. Due to Sonic's instincts, however, he worried about the creature's wild flying and their fast-shrinking altitude instead. The nighttime treetops threatened to whip at his face.
The yelps of pain coming from the teenager only confirmed this: It seemed the treetops—vines, branches, and all—had a shared "disliking" for the blue hedgehog.
A broad clearing made its way closer, and the winged beast flapped to a sharp halt. Its metal talons scraped into the soil, the heavy frame skidded to a halt and unknowingly flung Sonic from its back.
"Wah-ah-ah-ah-ahh—Ouch!"
One last tree was able to have its say; poor Sonic landed front-first against its tough bark.
Upon seeing the teenager sliding down front-first as well, the creature's massive wings folded and its mischievous chirps snipped at Sonic's ego.
But Sonic's ego was out cold, just like the rest of him.
Sometime later, Sonic awakened to other avian caws and insect chirps. His bright emerald gaze was bleary from the concussion he must've suffered after hitting that tree. The low moans he let out were filled with dizziness and annoyance from the throbbing in his head. The blue hedgehog sat up and caressed his head lightly.
"Bajeebers, that dream was so wild…!"
With the hand that supported him, he felt something metallic.
The oddly familiar metal stopped Sonic mid-sentence. He groped around the metal spot. There was a peculiar warmth coming from it.
He blinked wildly. "Huh?"
Being craned in front of him was a vine branch of fruit. The berries on it were plump and fresh-looking, complete with a morning sheen and dew. They were dark bluish-purple in the fleeting darkness.
Sonic blinked, furrowing his brows and reaching up for the branch. "Grapes?" he thought out loud. But something else stopped his train of curiosity.
It derailed after he froze to look up next to him, and found a face to the very same creature from his "dream". It had four piercing green eyes, two in each "eye socket"—much like the alien war robots from iconic manga.
And Sonic could feel every single one of them burrowing into his soul.
Sweat bullets bolting down his face, Sonic greeted the creature with a, "H-Hi there…?"
The creature's eyes didn't even flinch.
"Umm, heh…a-are those for me?" He pointed at the grapes.
The beast's streamline head lowered, craning the grape cluster closer to Sonic and onto the grass patch within Sonic's crossed legs.
"Gah! Hey! Watch where you're pokin' that beak-thing of your—!"
Dread silenced the hedgehog teen this time. A staccato-like guttural sound clucked from his throat. As the creature pulled its head away, it huffed a mischievous squawk. Sonic was still gulping, but the mechanical avian beast didn't seem to care. It reclined its head back on the dewy turf. Its beige eyeshades simulated dormancy.
"Deh…deh-eh…deh-deh…deh-ehh…!" Sonic's terror wasn't letting his brain process anything that had happened correctly. There were just a couple things that bothered him in that moment of sheer speechlessness. Within it, his face paled, with eyes blanked by total whiteness. Crickets snickered their "silent" chitters in the background.
"Holy schnikes…!" the teen was able to muster an interjection under his breath. "That body type, that huge wingspan, that ferocious gaze…! This…this thing is…some kind of dragon…?"
The halfway-discovered metal dragon huffed another blunt squawk, not looking back at him.
"But…!" Then Sonic suddenly bellowed to the heavens above him, "Where the hell are my clothes?!"
A massive blue-and-white marble seemed to be floating up there too, way beyond the uppermost expanse of—whatever sky Sonic and his new alien-dragon savior were under. Accompanying it were a trio of small, different-colored moons. A pure white one seemed to orbit around the huge marble, but the other two were much closer. And one was green, while the other was red.
Holy Schnikes, This Is a Dragon!