Foreword: Hi everyone. I know it hasn't been a full week yet, but I just finished writing this chapter and I really wanted to post it...so I did, lol. I have no self-restraint whatsoever xD. Anyway. As usual, I'd like to thank those who reviewed (well...the person who reviewed) for actually bothering to give feedback. It really means a lot to me, so thank you ^^ lol. And to those of you who are just inconspicuously READING the fic - I never thought I'd have to say this, but...even if it's just a three-word response, it would still be totally kickass if you reviewed. So...yeah...
I'll just give you guys the briefing on this chapter, now.
So in this installment of Obsidian, we touch up on Amy's experience through the ordeal. I couldn't just leave her and the others' fates hanging, could I? hah. Well, I hope you guys like the chapter...and really quickly: this story's first DEATH happens in the next update, so be prepared :p. This is a tragedy fic, after all, so...yeah, there are gonna be people dying. If you guys don't necessarily like that, then sorry, but this isn't the story for you. BUT! If anyone can successfully guess who will die, then I'll either:
A) Give your fan-character a brief appearance in the fic (they won't be a main character, sorry). By brief, I mean they'll appear in a chapter and either escape alive or die a horrible death. You can pick what happens, I guess...but it depends on what kind of mood I'm in, lol.
or
B) Allow you to request one specific action/thing/whatever for a character to do, and I'll write it. Of course, we'll probably have to discuss that, because I'm not having anyone do anything totally ludicrous that wouldn't agree with the general flow of the story. For example, I'm not having Shadow, Knuckles, and Sonic go on a sudden spree where they become obsessed with daisies and kissing each other. Keep it reasonable, lol.
ANYWAY, this foreword has definitely become long enough, so I'll leave you with two last things:
1. The character that dies has already been involved in the fic ("involved" meaning they've been directly mentioned or have actually been in the fic).
2. You can only guess ONE character. To make it easier, I'll tell you: it's not Sage.
If someone actually wins (especially considering the fact that people barely even review this lol), then I'll make sure to announce that in the next chapter.
Disclaimer: I do not own Sonic the Hedgehog or any other related trademarks. All original characters and the plot, however, belong to me, and you must ask for my permission in order for them to be used otherwise. PS: Lots more swearing in this chapter :p
C H A P T E R - S E V E N :
Drunken Obstruction
--
Shadow listened to the screaming for a few moments longer and then turned his back on the house, peering at the dark clump of trees with analytical eyes. Because of their closeness and the overall thickness of the foliage, he could barely make out the outline of the street beyond. From what he could see, though, the street looked clear enough. No immediate danger was present.
From beside him, Sage had risen from the ground and was staring him in the face with unadulterated determination. He only met her fierce gaze from the corner of his eye, not bothering to turn his head.
"Don't you think we should help them?" she demanded, curling her hands into fists. "They're dying, and we're just standing here doing jack shi - "
He quickly held up his hand, signaling her to be quiet. She fell silent, but looked flustered and angry at his sudden command.
The two stood there, wordless, while the agonized screaming continued on from the confines of the house. Shadow's ear twitched, but otherwise he stood completely still, lost in thought. It was only a few seconds later when he heard it. The frequency was back.
Putting his hand back down to his side, he looked to the girl, who had buried her face in her palms. "Let's go," he said, starting to walk toward the trees that fringed the edge of the yard.
Sage looked up from her hands, her face pale and her eyes distraught. She glanced back to the house, where smoke was issuing from the hole in the wall, and returned her gaze to Shadow's retreating form, silently deciding to follow him.
He stopped as soon as he reached the trees, where his figure was totally swallowed by the darkness. Sage easily made her way over to him, stopping at his side and blankly staring at the street a few yards before them.
"There's another bomb," she said surely. She turned to Shadow with an odd expression. His crimson eyes seemed to almost glow in the night, what with his fur easily blending in with the scenery. "I hear it now. I just blew it off as nothing before..."
He didn't say anything in response. The girl had finally come to terms with what was happening, and he didn't find it necessary to break what little confidence she had left. With a simple nod of his head to acknowledge what she had spoken, he stepped through the trees and onto the street, warily glancing around for any signs of activity.
Much to his displeasure, it was totally devoid of life. ...Odd. He would've thought that Amy's neighbors would have at least ventured out of their homes to see what the fuck had exploded at her house.
Something was definitely wrong.
"It's too quiet," Sage mumbled, hesitantly stepping onto the street. She craned her head around in interest, paying close attention to the handful of cars that were parked alongside the curb.
Behind them, the third explosion finally sounded with a loud BANG. Sage flinched at its sudden appearance, swiveling her ears toward the noise in rapt attention. There was a longer silence this time, then a faint sobbing started coming from the house. Only seconds had passed when the bloodcurdling screaming started up again. Shadow was fairly sure it had lessened in strength compared to before, but didn't bother to comment on it. The fact was obvious enough, judging by the morbid look that overtook Sage's face and the jerky way she turned her ears back around, away from the horrible yelling.
He then proceeded to cross the street, motioning for her to follow with a casual twist of his hand. His journey across the paved ground was completely silent, and he was virtually invisible to everything else because of the lack of contrast between his dark pelt and the pitch-black sky. Despite his near-invisibility, though, he was still on high alert for any possible danger. He was deadly determined to not screw up again, like what had happened with the first explosion in the house. One wrong move and he could end up dead.
They made it to the other side unseen, passing by a darkened streetlamp; even the city-powered lights were out. Surely the incident at Amy's house hadn't short-circuited the entire city? The idea was ludicrous, and he tossed it away as soon as it passed through his head. There had to be another cause.
The situation was an easy one to maintain his resolve in, but the stillness of the air was unsettling, nonetheless. No breeze swept over quills, the only identifiable scent was that of the grass beneath his paws, and everything was eerily silent. The scene reeked of danger, but he couldn't sense any, and that was the problem. If he didn't know what was going on, then how could he possibly hope to defend himself against it?
To Amy, it seemed like all hell had broken loose in a mere matter of seconds.
The great party she had actually succeeded in hosting had been blown apart, literally, without warning. Now everything was in absolute chaos.
Shadow had only been gone for a few minutes when there was a sudden explosion that wracked the house and obliterated the electricity. Everything had been plunged into total darkness, the music stopped working, and the entire crowd of partiers abruptly halted their dancing. An eerie silence pervaded the room for a split second, in which a swift panic overtook Amy. What had happened?
That was when someone started screaming. The sound was high-pitched, incredibly so, and was the sole trigger that led to further disaster. Whether the rest of the crowd followed the instigator's example because they were equally frightened or were just angry with the loss of the music, Amy didn't know. Either way, she knew something had most definitely exploded in or near her house. Like that sole factor wasn't enough to make her scared, it was also unknown to her as to why or how it happened, which only amplified her fear beyond rational thought.
A slight anger then slithered its way into her heart, spawned from her irrational fear and jumbled thoughts. Who cares about what happened, it vehemently hissed. How dare someone have the nerve to do something so rash!
She was at a loss for words, overwhelmed by the emotions raging within her. Frozen in place by her fear, she stood motionless on the edge of the dance floor. She didn't want to make a wrong move and get her own head blown off, or much less anything else for that matter.
Then, she was violently pushed to the side as the crowd surged forward, and that was when her anger took hold.
She felt like screaming so violently that her throat would tear from its guttural intensity, and wanted to throw a scarily-accurate punch upon the bastard who'd had the nerve to run into her. She was outright pissed, but merely managed to settle on grinding her teeth together, desperately seeking some sort of outlet for her frustration.
She cast a swift glare to the offender, on the verge of throwing the first punch when she heard a familiar voice call her name.
"Rouge?" Amy queried, sharply turning around. The batgirl was only a few feet away, tightly holding onto Knuckles' upper-arm like he was a misbehaving child. The hedgehog couldn't distinctly decipher his facial features, but could easily tell it was him just by his bulky outline.
"Yeah, follow me!" Rouge called, disappearing into the crowd. Amy started after her, taking care to forcefully shove the unlucky mobians who crossed into her path.
She followed Rouge's dark outline to the edge of the room, her stomach boiling with fear and anger. Everyone screaming and writhing around her did nothing at all to help improve her mood.
She finally emerged from the most chaotic part of the crowd with a scowl on her face. The guests were all frantically trying to locate an exit, and everything was a mess. Some had tripped and fallen in their sloppy attempts to leave, while others had actually started fighting with one another. The sounds of onlookers cheering on the participants of such fights were clearly audible to Amy, who couldn't understand how the hell people could be purposefully hurting each other in the current situation. Didn't they know what was going on?
A small sense of relief quelled the anger bubbling in her as she saw Rouge, Knuckles, Tails, and Sonic all huddled against the nearby wall. She jogged briskly over to them, happy to have found them before anything tragic had the chance to happen...other than the blast, of course.
As she neared them, what looked to be a break in the wall drew her attention. The dark silver handle-like object on its side appeared to almost be floating in the darkness. A door?
Amy was fairly sure it led to the kitchen, but through all the chaos and with her heart nearly beating in her throat, she couldn't be positive. Her thoughts were racing and her mind was a jumbled, confused mess. The locations of everything in her house, including doors, seemed unable to come to her while she was in such a panicked state. It almost felt like she was forgetting, blindly fishing for the memory even as it floated away.
She directed her attention to the door and yanked it open, swiftly motioning the others inside. Rouge went first, forcefully dragging Knuckles along, and Tails followed in quick succession, struggling to support all of Sonic's drunken weight on his shoulder.
As soon as they had passed through, Amy did the same and brought the door with her, slamming it shut as she stepped into the new area.
The first thing she noticed upon entering the room was that her fluttering, disconnected thoughts had been right. That door did lead to the kitchen, and now she was standing in it, hardly able to see the black-marble counters that lined the room. She could, however, see her friends standing nearby in a tense silence. She could still plainly hear the entire ruckus going on in the other room, but they were closed off from that now, in their own, quiet world. It felt weird, almost alien, to not hear people screaming directly in her ear...but it was definitely a welcomed change.
A twisted smile curved her lips as she noticed this. There was absolutely no chaos or fighting in this room whatsoever, and despite the thick tension pervading the air, she felt...happy? Or was she relieved? She couldn't tell, but she knew she felt better, regardless.
"What's with all the screamin'?" Sonic sloppily asked through the silence. "And why the hell are we in here?! The party, obviously, is in the other room."
Tails, who was still supporting him on his shoulder, cast him a worried glance as the hedgehog sharply lifted his head and accidentally collided with the bottom of the overhanging cabinets. Accompanying the dull thud made when his head smacked the edge of the wooden structure was an abrupt exclamation of "Ow," and Sonic instinctively clutched his head and let out a pained moan.
From a few feet away, Knuckles chuckled. "Idiot," he commented, looking at Sonic as though he was inferior.
Huffing and rolling her eyes at their childish antics, Rouge relinquished her hold on the echidna's arm just as Sonic shot him a dirty look and called him a stupid neanderthal. The bat kindly grabbed Tails by the collar and brought him over to Amy, mumbling under her breath about "leaving the dunderheads to fend for themselves."
Without the sturdy aid of Tails' shoulder to help support him, Sonic stumbled and nearly crumpled to the ground, but managed to grab hold of the edge of the countertop at the last moment. Knuckles laughed at his expense once again, and the two then engaged in a staring match, their eyes narrowed in anger. Only a few seconds had passed when they simultaneously started bickering, causing Tails to glance back at them in concern.
"Just let them be," Rouge said to him, her tone soft and consoling. For as long as Amy had known her - or could remember, for that matter - Rouge had always seemed to go out of her way to be nice to Tails. She didn't exactly know why the bat acted like that, but often assumed it was because of the age difference between her and the fox. Tails was so young he could be considered as a younger brother - or, at least, that's how Amy regarded him.
She had an inkling that Rouge thought of him the same way...maybe like the little brother she never had? She didn't know if Rouge even had a family, much less a younger brother. In all her years of knowing her, they hadn't bothered discussing it. And though she didn't know Rouge as well as she knew Cream, or even Blaze, it still left her feeling a bit odd (maybe empty? She couldn't comprehend the full weight of her emotions anymore) that she didn't know part of her friend's history...and a major part, at that.
"Of course the guys choose the worst night to get drunk for the first time," Rouge mused aloud, breaking Amy from her train of thought.
The hedgehog nodded her head in response, the previous happiness she'd felt suddenly gone. "Do you know what happened?" she asked, her eyes flickering toward the door behind her. She didn't directly mention to what she was referring, but she figured it was obvious enough in the context of the situation.
Rouge leaned against the countertop behind her in response, her brows furrowed in thought. "I can't say for sure, but it sounded like some sort of explosive," she said.
"It was an explosive," Tails affirmed. His voice was confident, but when she looked at him, Amy noticed that his face was distraught and his blue eyes were pained. The whole ordeal they had hopelessly fallen face-first into must have drained his spirits, as well. "Not a powerful one, but an explosive nonetheless. Depending on where it went off, it should've caused minimal damage."
"Do you think it was Egghead?" Rouge questioned.
"I don't know," Tails responded. "He's never resorted to bombing us at home before this, and when he does something, he usually makes a big scene."
"And this isn't a big scene?" Amy retorted, placing her hands on her hips. An explosive detonating near her house was more than a big enough scene, in her opinion.
The fox sighed. "No, that's not what I meant. What I was saying was that when Eggman actually bothers to try and kill us, he'll usually invade the city with his robots or launch an airship attack on G.U.N. A mere house bomb doesn't fit the pattern," he explained, tiredly scratching his head.
"So you don't think it was him?" Amy asked, searching for a solid answer.
Tails shook his head. "Not exactly. I don't know who did it; I was just saying that it didn't fit Eggman's usual attack pattern - "
"AHH!" A sudden shriek ripped apart the relative quietness of the room, and Tails and Amy turned to see Rouge on the floor, tightly clasping her hands over her ears and squeezing her eyes shut. She looked to be in pain.
"What's wrong?" Amy hurriedly asked, bending down beside her and resting a hand on her shoulder. Rouge flinched at her touch and Amy pulled away, watching as the bat fiercely grit her teeth together. It seemed to the hedgehog that her friend was trying to prevent herself from screaming again, but what could possibly be wrong?
Amy received her answer moments later, when Rouge lost her resolve and screamed, "Make the noise fucking stop! It's terrible!"
"Pfft, what noise?" Sonic stupidly asked. Rouge's plight had caught his attention, and he had disengaged from his quarrel with Knuckles and drunkenly staggered over, using the countertop for support. "She's gotta be crazy, 'cause I don't hear nothin'," he slurred, accusingly staring at her.
Knuckles slammed his fist down on the counter in response, and Amy audibly heard it crack under his immense strength. Instead of cussing out the drunken echidna, though, she directed her gaze elsewhere and pretended it didn't happen. What with all the hellish ludicrousness that had occurred so far, she wasn't sure she'd be able to deal with any more.
"Hey!" Knuckles barked, narrowing his eyes at Sonic. He stalked over to Rouge, whose very limbs were practically trembling in pain, and stood in front of her protectively. Though he was a lot steadier on his feet than the blue blur, his journey over to the batgirl was made in a disjointed and unnatural-looking fashion. When he spread his arms out beside him and glared the drunken hedgehog in the face, he dangerously tipped to the side, but managed to re-obtain his balance and continued trying to look menacing.
"She's not crazy," he darkly protested. He stared at Sonic for a few more seconds before turning around and stooping over the bat. Amy and Tails cautiously watched him, subtly backing away from the scene when Knuckles started petting Rouge's head. "She's just sad she didn't get to dance with me," he said goofily, wrapping his arms loosely around his female rival's torso.
Rouge, who had fallen silent sometime through the ordeal, suddenly snapped her eyes open and swiftly punched Knuckles across the face. The echidna recoiled with a yell and backed into Sonic, who lost his hold on the countertop and toppled over. The two fell to the floor in a tangled heap, Knuckles clutching his nose in pain while Sonic screamed at him to "get the hell off."
Amy rolled her eyes in annoyance - her mood hadn't improved since the first time Sonic and Knuckles had started bickering, and this wasn't making it any better. Before she could scream at them to shut up, Tails distracted her by suddenly gasping. When she looked over to him, she saw his eyes were widened in realization and he was standing oddly still.
"I hear it now," he said cryptically. "There's a frequency. It's really high-pitched, and really faint, but it's still there. We can barely hear it, but it must be clear to Rouge," he continued, "and insanely loud. That's the problem."
Amy nodded her head in understanding - she knew that Rouge was extremely sensitive to loud or high-frequency noises, but was at a loss for what to do. How would she be able to assist her if she could barely hear the damn sound herself? And, more importantly, how would she be able to stop it if she had no idea where it was coming from?
"Worst of all, I've no idea what might be causing it," Tails said, voicing her unspoken concern. "Noises like that usually only originate from technological devices, especially if they're being turned on or off, or charging up -" He trailed off and turned to the pink hedgehog with a frantic dread. "Amy! There's another - !"
A booming explosion abruptly cut him off, and he ducked to the floor for safety, prepared for the worst. Sonic and Knuckles both screamed out in fear and Amy covered her head with her hands from her place on the floor. She was fully expecting to have the entire kitchen explode with her in it, but she didn't feel any fire singe her fur or any shrapnel spiral out of control and cut her flesh. Seconds passed in the tense silence of the blast's aftermath, and she cautiously looked up from the floor.
The kitchen was completely intact. Everything looked as it did before the explosion, and she and the others weren't dead or fatally wounded. The destructive incident must've gone off somewhere else in the house.
The chaotic screaming that had been raging in the other room immediately caught her attention as it pierced the silence. She realized that all the mobians trapped inside must've been subject to the explosion...and now they must be screaming out of actual fear. Those assholes who had all been complaining about the lack of music must've just figured out what was actually going on.
"Amy, we need to get out of here!" Tails exclaimed, his face a mask of fear.
She hesitated at his call, unsure of what she wanted to do. She was torn between leaving and helping the other mobians - it felt like there was someone in there that she needed to get, but she couldn't remember who. She silently, desperately wracked her brain for an answer, not wanting to make a direct decision about what to do.
Her mind was made up when Rouge started screaming again, pushing her ears tightly to her skull and writhing about on the floor. Her pain could only be caused by one thing, the one thing they had previously failed to notice until it was too late -
"Let's go," Amy commanded, helping Rouge off the ground and briskly walking to the far end of the room, where there was a window. Tails urged Sonic and Knuckles off of the ground, but Sonic accidentally bumped into Knuckles and the echidna defensively pushed him, growling in anger. The hedgehog pushed him back, and they proceeded to engage in a shoving match before even taking a step toward the window.
"STOP FIGHTING AND GET THE FUCK OVER HERE!" Amy screamed. She was at her wit's end and was not going to take any other bullshit from her drunken companions, especially because the situation was a dire one, and she wanted to escape it before anything else horrible happened.
At her call, the two stopped bickering and stared at her, shocked at her exclamation. She didn't bother paying attention to them, only turned back around and sat Rouge down on the table that was next to the window. She quietly picked up one of the quaint wooden dining chairs settled nearby and violently slammed it against the window, shattering its glass. Then, in a haphazard manner, she waved the chair around in the now-open space, clearing away any jagged pieces of window that remained in the frame.
Once it looked relatively safe, she tossed the chair to the ground, glanced over her shoulder at the others, and decisively said, "Let's go."
