Oblivious Child

The sun shined brightly in the sky as its rays pierced through the windows of Sonic's house. Blaze felt the sun's warmth on her eyes, the warm light prying them open. She sat up and stared at the window. From there she saw the ocean; it felt very familiar to her, almost as if she was back in her own dimension. She stood up and opened the window, the fresh air and the smell of the sea intruding in the house and the cries of seagulls echoing in the room, they were flying not too far from the window. Blaze took a deep breath before looking at the room.

She didn't really have time to explore or notice anything the night before as she had been really tired; thankfully, she had time to take her hairband off change herself into a pair of clean pajamas she found in the wardrobe next to the bed. Now that she looked at it during day time, the bedroom was actually much larger than what she thought it was. In the middle of it there was a bed big enough for two persons, on its left was the wardrobe and on its right a large dresser.

On the dresser there were two items, one was a digital clock with "8:15 AM" written on it, the other was a frame with a photo of Sonic, Tails and Knuckles together, smiling, with the red echidna holding the other two under his arms. 'They look like brothers.' She stared at the picture a few more moments before checking the drawers. Most of them were empty, or had small mechanical parts forgotten by Tails in them. Blaze opened the last one and found a toothbrush still in its sealed plastic package. She took it and moved to the right of the dresser where a door was, on it was written "Bathroom", she entered it.

After taking a bath and doing whatever she needed to do in the bathroom, she got out and went back to the wardrobe. In there was her usual clothes neatly arranged as well as her hairband. She took everything out and inspected the clothes. For the upper part, aside from the arms she had to use to block Rouge's attacks, the rest of it was quite clean. The lower part on the other hand had multiple dirt stains here and there, but it wasn't anything too bad. She had checked in the bathroom and didn't find any products to wash her clothes, she decided to head outside of her room.

Blaze ended up in a corridor, on her right was a door on the wall in front of her, as well as a dead end. There was written "SONIC" in big letters on the door. She guessed it was Sonic's bedroom. On her left there was a spiraling staircase. She went downstairs and stepped in the living room.

In the middle of it was a large sofa. There were a few items Blaze didn't know in the room, mostly what was in front of the sofa. She had never seen a flat television before, nor had she ever seen the game console under it. She didn't dwell on it too long. Blaze noticed that the kitchen was the only other room aside from the door to exit, since she didn't find anything that was looking like it could clean clothes, she headed there.

The kitchen wasn't very big but it had everything needed to make a good meal. Judging by the dusty state of the frying pans, Blaze deducted that it had been a while since Sonic had used it. A large, square shaped machine was what caught the cat's eyes next. On it there were multiple sheets of paper with instructions written on them, as well as describing what the machine was. 'A washing machine? This is just what I needed. But why would Sonic have something like that? I've never seen him wear anything other than his gloves and his shoes.' She thought.

In her dimension, most of the people of her kingdom wore clothes, mostly for practical reasons as some nights could be really cold or during the day when the sun is very strong. Blaze had actually been surprised when she first met the blue blur, not because he was half naked, but because he was running at such an impressive velocity without any protection and yet wasn't even harmed. She understood that Sonic had actually a body strong enough to withstand the speed, which also worked in his favor during fights. She remembered the first time they fought, even though she had been on the offensive most of the time, she never managed to knock him down, he would always come back with a taunting smirk, looking stronger than before.

Following the instructions on the machine and separating her clothes by color, the washing machine started to work. It would take longer, but the princess didn't want to have purple stains on her leggings. While her clothes were being washed, she decided to explore the kitchen a little more. The frying pans had much more dust than she thought. Blaze decided to clean them, as well as the little pile of slightly dirty plates and glasses next to the faucet. 'He's letting me sleep here, I can at least do this much.' By the time she was done, the washing machine finished its work as well. 'That was fast, it's also completely dry.' She pulled out her purple coat and put what was left of her clothes, white leggings and underwear, and launched the machine once more.

Soon enough, Blaze heard footsteps coming from the staircase; the worldwide hero had woken up from his slumber. With a loud yawn, the sleepy hedgehog entered the kitchen and opened his fridge, taking out a bottle of milk, only noticing Blaze once he turned around.

"Oh, morning Blaze, you're really early." It took him a second to realize she wasn't in her usual attire. She was wearing his old blue pajamas with clamshells motifs he usually kept for Tails, just in case. She also had her hair down; her hairband was nowhere to be seen. "Liking the clamshells?" He said with a smirk.

"Good morning to you as well Sonic. As for those clamshells…" she started observing her current clothes more closely "I was not expecting you out of all people to have clothes with drawings related to the sea on them."

The hedgehog chuckled and sat down on a chair in front of the small rectangle table that was in the middle of the kitchen. "Tails offered them to me a while ago, saying things like how it would help me fight my fear of water." He said.

"It doesn't look like it helped much." She plainly stated. "I'm still glad you have them, otherwise I would be currently talking to you while only wearing my coat." Blaze said, the hedgehog had a sly smirk on his face.

"Maybe I should keep the PJs in my room tomorrow then?"

Blaze blushed; she quickly cleared her throat, understanding what he meant. "Please be serious Sonic, when did you start using those kind of jokes?" She said,which made him let out a small laugh. The cat wasn't used of getting teased by him in that way.

"Blame it on Rouge, she had a bad influence on me." That was true, Rouge had always teased Sonic in a certain manner, after a while Sonic did get used to it and even managed to surprise her with comebacks. "You'd probably roast me like meat on a barbecue if I tried to do that anyway." The blue blur then noticed the washing machine vibrating behind his guest. "You got that thing to work?" He said, pointing at it.

She raised a brow at Sonic's reaction; it looked like he had trouble using anything slightly advanced "I just followed the instructions that were placed on it. Didn't you?"

"I did, except I ended up with a kitchen flooded with soap and bubbles. It was pretty funny though." Sonic started uncorking the bottle he had in his hands and was about to drink directly from it but stopped midway, remembering he had a guest in his house. "Sorry, bad habits kicked in." He said with an apologetic smile and took out two glasses from a cupboard placed above the faucet. "Want some?" He said as he handed Blaze one of the glasses.

"Yes please." She answered. Sonic nodded and started pouring milk in her glass and then in his own. They both drank and when they were finished, the hedgehog stared at the cat, curiosity taking over him.

"So… Do cats really get a kick from drinking milk?" He asked. He had seen multiple advertisements or cartoons where the cat drinking milk scenario played out, but he wasn't sure if that was true. After all, he had seen advertisements where hedgehogs managed to sleep on their backs on specially made beds but Sonic was sure it wasn't true after testing multiple times and ended up piercing seven so-called invincible beds with his quills.

"I'm not sure myself. In my kingdom, milk is a popular drink; on the other hand I've never been very fond of it so I wouldn't be able to explain why. If anything, I prefer fruit juices or tea."

"Not really into commoners' drink?" He teased.

"That's not it Sonic. Nobles might not drink it for this sole reason but for me…" Blaze hesitated a few moments before speaking, carefully selecting in her head the words she was about to say next "Let's just say that it brings back memories I'm not very fond of." She then became silent.

The hedgehog lightly scratched his cheek with his finger. "I guess we all have this kind of memory we just want to forget forever but that just pops back up once in a while."

Blaze didn't answer and closed her eyes. Whenever she drank a bit of milk, painful memories from her childhood would come back to haunt her. She hated it and didn't even know why she still drank the white brewage.

Sonic suddenly had an idea and his usual smirk crept up on his face. "Wait here for a minute, I'll be right back." He stormed out of the house, a strong wind following him, Blaze opened her eyes in surprise. Fifteen seconds later, Sonic was back on the same spot he was before, right in front of the cat. He had a completely new bottle in his hand. "One fresh glass orange juice made this morning with top quality oranges coming!" The blur poured down the content of the bottle in another glass and handed it to hesitated a second before grabbing it.

"You shouldn't have gone through all the troubles to get me juice made with oranges." She closely examined the inside of the glass. She had oranges in her dimension as well, but they were actually a rare kind of fruit, she wondered if it was the same here. "Is it difficult to find oranges in your world? It's not every day that I get to drink this in my dimension, are you sure it's fine for me to have it?"

"I didn't go through any troubles. Oranges are pretty common here, so drink and cheer up, I don't want you to go all moody when the day just started." He said, still smirking.

"I see. Thank you for the drink then." Blaze said as she started drinking. It felt refreshing, as if she had completely woken up. She noticed she hadn't heard the washing machine's sound for a while now, it must had been finished long ago. She opened it and, just like her coat, her clothes inside were clean and completely dry. She excused herself and went back to her room to change, Sonic nodded an went to the living room, he sat down on the sofa and turned the television on to see if there were news that would catch his interest.

Short moments later, Blaze came out of her room, walking in her usual attire. She noticed Sonic sitting on the sofa and decided to sit on it as well. "I didn't know you watched television." She began, surprised at how focused the hedgehog was while he was looking through every channels that bought up news there.

"Only to see if there are accidents or crimes going on. Otherwise I'm really not into TV." He plainly answered. Silence settled in between the two, the news channel not giving anything remotely important. Considering that it was a waste of time to watch it, Blaze decided to speak up.

"In how much time will we meet Tails?" She was starting to get impatient. Blaze didn't want to come off rude, especially since Sonic was kind enough to give her a roof to sleep under while she was there, but there was a monster on the loose and the possibility that Nega might be there as well.

The hedgehog looked at the digital clock written on the top left corner of the screen, "9:00 AM" was displayed on it.

"He should be up by now. How about a jog?" He got up with a smirk and blasted out of the room, Blaze quickly followed him, managing to actually close the door on the way out, leaving the television still turned on.

The news channel was still going on when the journalist suddenly interrupted herself and looked at the camera surprised, a hand quickly gave her two new pages of text.

"…And now for today's most interesting news: the famous hero Sonic the hedgehog was spotted very early this morning with a purple female cat at the popular Don Fachio's fast food in Central City, we have gotten pictures from an anonymous tip that also came with a comment on how they ate at an out-of-sight table on the roof, which is unusual considering the fastest thing alive has the habit to take out whenever he ordered there! Stay tuned for more of the story later today."

Isolation. A word that became surprisingly quickly what the genius fox needed whenever he wanted to work on his newest inventions. Tails always thought he would be able to work at his home in peace but he had been slowly appearing on the news along Sonic.

It didn't take long before the world noticed he always had something nobody had ever seen before or saw that every time his plane appeared somewhere, it always had an impressive upgrade.

The fox slowly started receiving letters or mails from fans that had question on how much he knew about physics. Thinking it was amusing, Tails answered all of them. At first, they were mostly basic mathematics or physics and there were very few letters, as time went the amount of letters became slightly bigger each week. Biology, robotics, informatics, physics and even philosophical and chaos energy related questions.

Before he knew it his letter box was constantly full with requests from universities, research centers and companies from all over the world to explain them all of the facets of chaos energy, willing to give out millions of dollars. Almost every day of the week scientists, philosophers or even students came to his old house to be able to talk to him and while he enjoyed company, it was starting to become too much.

It wasn't a swarm like the media as they were already too busy with Sonic to have time for Tails and he was thankful for that although he sometimes did appear in newspapers, he rarely did on the big screens of the popular channels.

It was still a very pressuring environment for a soon-to-be 10 year old; he had not been ready for the sudden rise in popularity at all and decided much like Sonic to have an isolated place he could live in.

Unlike his big brother he didn't sleep every night there as he would end up way too far from civilization but he stayed there at least two to three weeks every month. He had decided to make a new laboratory in Holoska. Even if it was cold, the people from there were very friendly and nobody bothered him whenever he was in his lab and if he needed anything he couldn't find here, he could import from Spagonia or Apotos. He avoided importing directly from Central City, just in case any of his "fans" would try to track him down.

Like any other day, Tails was busy working on personal projects: He had been trying to find a way to track down Robotnik through the many robots they've destroyed, still nothing. There was no link between the robots to a home base or something similar; the only thing they did was communicate between them to coordinate attacks when needed so this meant that either the bad doctor was good at covering his tracks or there truly was no connections between the robots and him. Tails had already decided that the latter was impossible since Robotnik managed to often call for backup.

The fox sighed, he had been on this for weeks now, and he knew that the mad doctor was a genius as well but to be this good was absurd. "Right, he never managed to track me down as well." That was also true. He never did show up right in front of any of his labs or his house, Tails always managed to cover his tracks as well whenever he needed to hack into one of Robotnik's systems from far away. There was also the fact that usually the place where the hacked system was quickly ended up destroyed by Sonic and his friends. He started typing once more on his computer, not giving up.

Taking a sip from a cup of hot chocolate on the desk he was sitting in front of, Tails thought about one mails he had received from one of his fans. He had made two separate addresses, one for personal use and one he gave to a few communities he trusted. The latter ended up full fast and the fox never bothered doing much cleaning in it, but he did check it out once in a while. One time, he decided to check the mails on that address and saw one with "DR ROBOTNIK" as its subject. The sender was unknown. He was curious and opened it. Something he regrets doing now. He remembers every words of it.

"Dear Two-Tailed fox,

You are a genius. You've done many inventions and know much more than all of us; you've built machinery we can barely understand and many times helped out your friends in defeating Doctor Robotnik. He is also a genius with an amazing army, something we may not be able to defend ourselves against.

I know about what happened before you met Sonic. You were constantly bullied at your school because of your anomaly. I'm talking about those tails of yours. Nobody helped you, and it didn't help that you stood out even more thanks to your amazing brain, being at the top of all the classes when you were only so young, a six years old doing high school mathematics.
I know you quit studying as soon as you met Sonic and followed him. You've now grown up and outside of being a very young genius; you're now a worldwide hero as well. I am certain that you have more people that are envious of you than you have fans, I'm sure you think so too.

And more than once, I'm sure you've thought about getting revenge, revenge against those bullies, against the people that didn't help you out and against the people that hate and envy you right now.

You could forge an army and fight the planet on your own.

But then there's Sonic, he's the only one you can truly trust because you think that as long as he's more in the spotlight than you, he will never get jealous of you right?

What would happen if Sonic were to disappear, or worse, lose his place and start envying and hating you just like the others?

Would you go crazy and turn your back on everyone? Would you make everybody submit to you just to get the respect you've always desperately wanted?

Would you become the next mad doctor?"

He had quickly found out that this email came from one of his teachers from his old school, the history teacher more precisely, a man that preached constantly about the value of hard work. No wonder he didn't like Tails.

He didn't give an answer, he simply closed it. He had stopped breathing for a second after reading it. Everything in it was true and was possible.

With Sonic, he thought he could forget his past and start completely new, that nobody would bother him anymore. He knew it was foolish, he always had. "This is ridiculous, I would never become like Eggman, never! This teacher is the one trying to make me mad! This guy has some nerves!" He raised a fist and hit the desk; it was strong enough to make the nearly full cup fall. The sound of glass breaking snapped Tails out of his anger. "And he managed to do so multiple times already… I need to calm down, I should just forget about this message."

He sighed once more and stood up; he needed to clean the mess he had just made. He went to grab some sheets to clean but suddenly heard a knock on the door. "It's early; I wonder who this could be." Tails opened the door; a blue hedgehog was standing in front of it with a bright smile on his face, a lilac cat just behind him.

"Yo Tails!" Sonic said.

If there was anything Blaze hadn't expected about Sonic's jog, it was the fact that they actually raced through a whole country to get to Tails. She was sure it had taken at least 45 minutes to end up in front of his door and that was while going at full speed. She was also sure that the hedgehog took the longer paths on purpose as well, he hadn't even broken a sweat and even if Blaze was looking fine, she still wanted to take a small break.

After they entered the icy zone, she noticed Sonic wasn't going quite as fast anymore, she guessed he was starting to feel cold. The cat was glad they finally arrived to Tails' location, although she was surprised to know that he lived so far away, not really understand why either.

"Sonic!" The fox excitedly said with a huge smile on his face.

"Hey buddy, surprise visit of the day! Guess who's come with me?" The blur answered.

"First of all, don't stand there in the cold, come in! Who'd you bring with y- What the, Blaze?" Tails stared at her in surprise, she was probably the person he expected the least. The surprised expression quickly turned back into a smile. "It's great to see you! How have you been? What about Marine?"

Sonic and Blaze entered the house, Tails closed the door behind them. "It's good to see you as well Tails, I've been doing fine. Marine is as active as ever." She answered him.

"Typical Marine!" The fox smirked. Blaze stared at him; it had been a year since she had seen him. He looked the same but wasn't as small as before.

"You've become taller." She stated.

"Of course, I'm nearly 10 years old now!" He proudly stated before opening another door leading to a bigger room "You guys can go sit on the couch of the living room; I'll make a few hot drinks. What would you like to drink Blaze?" He asked.

"Any kind of tea will do, thank you." She said, to which the fox nodded as he went to the kitchen. Sonic jumped on the couch and sat down. He started rubbing his arms quickly to try to make them heat up faster.

"Man I'm freezing, I know I shouldn't run too fast when it's cold but I can't help it. Sliding on those frozen rails were totally worth it though!" Sonic said. He turned his head to stare at Blaze who looked perfectly fine. "Aren't you cold?" He questioned.

"Not much. My powers keep me warm enough through low temperatures." She answered.

"Oh right. Your powers… Hmm…" Sonic had stopped rubbing his arms and pondered for a moment, still staring at her.

"Is something the matter?" She pondered, unsure of what Sonic was currently thinking.

"…Ever tried to warm someone else up?" A smirk appeared on his face while Blaze looked confused.

"No. Why?"

Sonic stood up and pointed at himself with a finger. "Alright, then it's time you try this out, heat me up!"

The cat blinked but then shook her head. "I'm sorry Sonic but I'm not doing this. I might burn you by accident."

"A little fire doesn't scare me."

"I've never done this before; I can't guarantee your safety."

"There's a first time for everything! And hey if I catch on fire I can just run outside and roll in the snow. You'll have to heat me up once more though." Sonic's confident smirk only got bigger.

Blaze sighed; there was no reasoning with him. "Fine, don't blame me if something does happen." She stood up from the couch and approached the hedgehog. "To heat you up without burning you or anything around us, I'll have to be very close to you. I need to make the flames strong enough to have an effect while at the same time keep them weak enough so that you won't catch on fire." She explained, Sonic nodded, the explanation had been simple enough for him to understand everything. Blaze carefully placed her hand right in front of Sonic's chest. It started to glow lightly. "Are you feeling anything?" She wasn't sure if it was hot enough for the hedgehog. He shook his head.

"Nope, you can definitely go higher." He said. The cat nodded, her hand glowed brighter. "Oh yeah now THAT is the perfect temperature."

Blaze had a small smile on her face, she was slightly proud of her accomplishment. She never had the occasion to use her power to help somebody else outside of battles.

"Think you could manage to heat up my whole body, rather than part by part with your hand?" He asked. As nice as it was, the hedgehog felt slightly weird being very cold on some parts of his body while being warm on the other parts at the same time.

"I believe I can do that, but it seems much more difficult. I will have to mirror your stance while controlling the fire to make sure it warms up your body equally. It would be like managing multiple small different flames rather than spreading out one unique flame." She paused, trying to calculate the right distance. "It looks like I'll also have to be even closer than what I am right now to avoid burning the room as well."

"Ready to try it out?"

Blaze nodded and stepped closer. They were only centimeters apart, Blaze could slightly feel Sonic breathing, she ignored it and concentrated on her task. She took the same pose as Sonic before asking him to not move. Closing her eyes, the cat focused on her body, starting with her legs then going up, making the chest and head areas slightly colder than the arms and the legs. She was starting to glow slightly while Sonic was enjoying the warmth coming all over his body a lot.

Tails had taken more time to clean up the glass he had previously broken by accident, the liquid had fallen on some wires and he had to quickly clean those as well to avoid future accidents. Two minutes later, he entered the room with the warm drinks on a plate and saw what was happening without really understanding anything. He noticed how close to each other the duo was and felt slightly uneasy. Blaze stopped glowing as both the cat and the hedgehog looked at Tails' direction, Sonic having a very relaxed smile on his face, Blaze with her usual stoic face.

"Er… Did I interrupt anything?"