Hedgehog Out Of The Water

Rummaging through the drawer, Howard Otter grunted in annoyance. "Nelly, dear? Where did you put my boots?"

His wife chuckled lightly behind him. "I didn't put them anywhere, darling. You took them off in the kitchen, so I guess they will still be standing there…"

Howard laughed. Closing the somewhat messy drawer again, the brown otter smiled at his wife. The two elders had spent almost their entire lives together, and each one knew the other one's bad habits. "What would I do without you?", he joked.

"Get lost, my dear. Totally lost." Nelly leaned against the doorframe, watching her husband pull on his thick boots and the water-proof long jacket. "And you're sure you have to go out in this storm?"

He nodded. "I have to pull the boat ashore… if the storm hasn't already taken it. You'd think an old fisherman like me would know how to predict such a weather…"

"An old fisherman indeed. Perhaps you're losing your touch?" She giggled in gentle teasing.

Howard frowned, knowing not to let her rub on him. "Never anything like that, Nelly. This is in your blood until the day you die."

"If you say so, darling. Don't be too long, I'll prepare dinner." She smiled, waving lightly when he turned to the door.

Closing it behind him, the warm cosiness of the small house was replaced with the screaming winds and hard rain of a thunderstorm. The lighthouse tower next to the house stubbornly stuck its tip into the darkened skies, the circling beam reaching into the greys and blacks in vain attempts to chase them off. A couple hundred meters below the cliff the waves were hitting the rocks hard enough to be heard clearly even over the flooding rain. Lightening bolts sizzled zig-zag lines across the almost black clouds, immediately followed by a loud clash of thunder roaring through the heavy air. Their small, thin headland growing out of South Island stuck far into the wide sea, and the shallows in front of the coast were dangerous. The lighthouse was important.

Howard pulled his collar as high up as he could, defensively ducking his head into the jacket. It didn't help much fighting in off the biting winds, and soon every part of him not covered by his jacket was drenched. Jogging along a small path, the otter noticed idly that years ago the weather probably wouldn't have felt as annoying as it did now. Maybe Nelly was right saying the two of them weren't twenty anymore. Regardless of that, he was the lighthouse keeper, even in a storm like this. Especially in a storm like this.

Additionally, a proper lighthouse keeper needed his boat, the quickest way into town. It was a principle thing, and Howard didn't want to lose it. So, he was jogging through this hostile late afternoon, heading for the small bay where the boat was kept, letting the rain soak his fur and leaning into the strong, gusty winds, trying his best not to get blown off.

Nelly was right about many things. He was a stubborn old idiot at times.

A small smile flickered on the otter's grim face at the thought as he climbed down the last few meters of sharp rocks towards the beach. Pebbles and sea shells crunching underfoot, he made his way over to the pear. His face lit up when he reached it. There it was, his boat, tossing violently against the rope that secured it in place, but so far it had managed to withstand the stormy waves.

Five minutes later Howard had pulled his precious belongings onto the stony beach. Panting lightly, the otter stood next to it and looked out over the sea. The water appeared almost black on spots. Just the fuming whiteness of the raging crests kept it from looking just like the dark grey sky above.

Standing and watching the spectacle for a moment, the otter couldn't possibly miss the dot of colour being thrown around between the high waves.

Lifting a hand to shield his eyes from the hard rain, he strainedly tracked it, lost sight of it several times, but always found it back as the waves washed it closer and close to the shore. Howard moved closer to the water, staring at the thing when it popped up behind a wave's ridge again. A red and white ring spinning and bobbing in the dark floods, holding a small, limp frame of dark blue.

"Good chaos…", the old lighthouse keeper muttered, running up to the water until he stood right next to it. Nervously shifting his weight from one foot to the other, he waited for the ring to reach the shallow water. He knew that jumping in in a blind hurry was more dangerous and stupid than helpful for anyone.

The minute it took until the striped ring got itself stuck between rocks in the shallow water felt like a lifespan. Finally ignoring common sense's warnings, Howard waded through the still near hip-deep water, with just a detached part of his attention looking out for the waves pulling the soil from under his feet. The otter fearfully looked at the stranded one, his face paling a little more upon realizing it was a child, clearly not older than five or six. It was a hedgehog, the blue quills heavy with wetness and almost matching the sea's dark shade. The little body draped powerlessly over the plastic ring, arms across it, but the head rested above the water surface.

Praying to the God of the Seas he'd never actually even believed in, Howard reached out, grabbing the child under its armpits and lifted it up, hurrying back onto currently not so dry land. Carefully laying the small form down, he had little hopes when he started searching for signs of life, but it seemed the little hedgehog meant to surprise him. He had to get this kid out of the cold. Opening his jacket and scooping up the hedgehog, Howard found he was surprisingly light, and not so surprisingly spiky. It took him some efforts moving the little body under his jacket so he could hold him securely, then he hurried back to the lighthouse, into the warmth and to the care of his wife.

"We brought him here in the next morning. We tried finding out who he is, but he is either too small or doesn't remember much. At the moment we have just a name that sounds like it's not a real name but a pet name of sorts. Who calls their kid Sonic?" Nelly sighed.

A strained frown was digging itself into Knuckles' brow as he tried to digest the story, and fit it into what he knew about Sonic. Suddenly he realized that he knew very little about the blue hedgehog, even after all this time they knew each other. Sonic had rarely mentioned his childhood to Knuckles... Okay, Knuckles didn't talk about his childhood to Sonic either, but Sonic was the talkative one of them... And now Knuckles was left wondering why Sonic never talked about his past. Maybe because there wasn't much past to talk about?

Finally noticing Nelly was staring at him, the echidna struggled to find something to say that wouldn't be suspiscious and finally settled for a question. "He doesn't remember what?"

The woman nodded. "We don't know. Traumas, especially in so young children, can result in a case of memory loss, affecting the traumatizing event. He couldn't tell us how he got to be in the sea. He might remember something later, but nobody can tell how much and what."

Knuckles looked down on his feet. "Anything about his family?"

"Apparently he was with his parents. No sign of them yet, though." Nelly's soft gaze briefly flicked over to the sleeping hedgehog in the next room. "He speaks of an Uncle Chuck, but without a surname it will be hard to find him. The police have tried, but not near all Mobians are officially recorded. As it is, no-one seems to know much about a little hedgehog called Sonic. If that even is a real name." Nelly sighed. "Who knows? He's likely too small to know most of the important things. He's only five." She paused for a heavy moment of utter silence. "The only thing the investigation came up with is that during the storm a ship sunk about 80 miles offshore of South Island. As far as we know, there are no survivors… other than little Sonic in there. The police said the ship came from a place called Christmas Island, an isle popular to many people. Maybe he's a Christmas Island native. Maybe his family was just on a holiday trip there. Ferries are always full, and tourists come from pratically everywhere on Mobius." She let out a deep breath. "Nothing that helps us." Her eyes wandered over to the still Knuckles sitting next to her. "Can you?"

The echidna looked into her expectant face for a moment, then lowered his gaze. "I'm sorry… I wish I could."

She nodded understandingly. "Well, that's not your fault."

Knuckles inclined his head, remaining silent. She was right. It wasn't his fault. He couldn't just go and tell her he was a time traveller that would get to know this little orphan in six years from now. Impossible. Most likely she wouldn't believe him, and if that little Sonic saw him, he'd probably recognize him later when they actually met. Telling her he knew Sonic would maybe cause one of these paradoxes Sonic, the older Sonic, had said they had to try avoiding if they didn't want to change history's course in unpredictable ways.

And anyway, what did he know that could be of help for this little blue hedgehog in the room across of him? He thought Sonic had mentioned an Uncle Chuck once or twice, but Knuckles had never met him, let alone had any idea where to find the guy. No, Knuckles knew nothing helpful about Sonic at all, and for reasons he wasn't entirely able to pinpoint, the notion stung uncomfortably. If at all, what Nelly had just told him had been new to him. He had learned something totally unexpected about Sonic today, something that seemed to explain even his sometimes so idiotic hydrophobia.

"No, it's not my fault, but that doesn't help him, either." He stood up and sighed upon glancing at the sleeping hedgehog, feeling an unfamilar pang of pity. He didn't usually pity Sonic. There was never any need for that... He was Sonic. Anything like pity was out of place there. Still, he looked so... tiny...

Nelly stood up as well, her hazel eyes resting on Sonic even as she spoke. "No."

"Who will take care of him now?", Knuckles couldn't keep himself from asking.

"Hopefully some family will be found. If he's got an uncle out there, we'll find him. I'll find him." She sighed. "I have to. And he better be enthusiastic about raising his little blue nephew." A little, but fierce smile pushed the gentle concern off her face and Knuckles realized she wasn't merely as caring as she'd appeared so far, but could probably get her ways across pretty well if she wanted to.

A small smirk formed on his face as well and Knuckles nodded, not mentioning he would probably win the bet that this particular little hedgehog would be a pain to bring up. "Yeah. Anyway, I'm sorry I couldn't do anything useful."

The purple otter nodded, the warmth quickly pooling back into her eyes. "It's okay. Thank you anyway."

Knuckles shook his head. "I wasn't of any help, was I?"

She shrugged, offering him a smile he didn't think he deserved. "It was good talking about it, I think. You're a good listener."

The echidna blinked. "You're the first person ever saying that."

Nelly appeared surprised. "Really? Well, someone's gotta start it, right? There's a first for everything."

"I guess so, yes." Knuckles nodded awkwardly, suddenly remembering he should perhaps be going. "Oh, could you still tell me which way out of here is again?" A sheepish smile fought its way to his face.

He earned a smile back. "Of course."

After hearing out her directions and saying his goodbye, Knuckles briefly looked at the little blue hedgehog one last time. Good luck, little guy. See you in six years on my island, and then I'm gonna punch you in the face. A smile dashed over his features at the thought. But you know, we'll both get over it. It won't be the last time, anyway. You're too much of an annoying brat at times.

Crawling out from underneath the machine, Tails wheezed out a deep sigh. "That was the last screw to tighten I think," he said, turning the screwdriver around in his hands and looking over to his raccoon friend.

Archibald's eyes lay fixed on the machine and he shot Tails just a short glance at his words. "Doesn't look too bad for improvised, doesn't it?"

Nodding his head in a small onset of pride, the two-tailed fox cast his eyes over their work again. In less than nine hours they had gotten it up from blank papers over blue prints to finished and hopefully functional. Now it filled up a good third of the large laboratory. In the center of layers of electrical wires, capacitors and Tesla coils about the size of Tails himself sat a large ring, three meters in diameter, the metal material it was made from glazing in polished silver.

Connected by probably miles of cables to the observatory's equipment, this ring was the most vital part of their creation. A loop antenna of a kind never build before, not even by Robotnik. The only machine ever created to track down a chaos field impulse, hold on to it and redirect it to its center. A programmed chaos control…

If it worked.

If not... Tails bit his lip. He didn't want to think about that. Nobody could tell where Sonic and Knuckles were at the moment, or worse, if they still were...

The feeling wasn't exactly new to Tails, but that didn't make it any better at all. He had been through several occassions of Sonic or another one of his friends had been missing, or thought dead. He would never get used to it. He didn't want to. Everytime again, he hoped deeply he would never go through this horror again. The waiting, the often useless attempts to find out where his missing friends were, if they were alright, and the equally often useless attempts to help them.

Sometimes, Tails felt like it was his fault they didn't get back quickly. Sonic never got lost in normal situations. Every now and then, Tails wished the hedgehog would just lose his directions on the way home and end up in some part of a city he didn't know, asking around for a map. No, Sonic never got merely lost. He always ended up shooting himself into space, got stuck in parallel dimensions, or was almost killed by giant robots and monsters that looked like they came right from the bottom of hell. Tails wanted to help. He hated knowing Sonic in danger and being of no use to him.

Essentially, that was what he usually felt like. Sonic ran off and something awful happened. Then, Tails struggled to help him, somehow, someway. Sometimes, he found a way. Most of the time Sonic managed to come back on his own at some point, thankfully alive and in one piece, more or less. It was the less that worried Tails sick. He wanted to help. He wanted to make sure his best friend and only family member would come back, without getting half killed or anything equally horrifying.

Unfortunately, like most times, all he could do was try. Try. Sometimes it seemed such a pathetic thing.

There was nobody to guarantee him their chaos control antenna machine would work as intended. They thought it would, but it was a prototype. Something the world had never seen before. When they activated it, it would be little more than a test run, a blind shot in the dark.

Tails hated the idea they were basically shooting at Sonic and Knuckles, but there was nothing much he could do. There was just one chance. They would have to take it.

Shaking off his thoughts, Tails focused back on the professor, struggling to stay professional and occupy his mind with something else but worries. "How are our programs?"

"Online and functional, as it seems." The yellow raccoon pointed at the screen, skipping on the long pause and the depressed notion Tails was sure was as clear on his face as painted there in the brightest neon colors.

In a way, Tails was glad the professor didn't press him to talk about what was obvious anyway. Instead, he found a hand on his shoulder that offered a friendly pat. Nothing like a brotherly hug from Sonic, but it felt warm and a tad bit reassuring. He gave the raccoon a grateful smile.

Archibald smiled back, squeezing his shoulder again, then returning his look to the screens. "We got clear track of both fields."

Tails nodded, deciding to be happy with that bit of good news at the moment. "Perfect. Let's hope we keep them. How long to the next peak?"

"Thirteen hours. We might as well take a break, Tails."

If he was being honest with himself, the young fox knew he needed one. He was beyond tired by now. There wasn't anything he could do at the moment anyway, so he reluctantly agreed.

A white-gloved hand was waved in front of his face. "Knuckles?! Hey, Mobius to Angel Island, come in!"

Snapping out of his thoughts, the red echidna stared at Sonic, standing next to him on the pavement just in front of the hospital. "What?"

The blue hedgehog tilted his head at him, a slight frown on his face. "Are you okay? You kinda zoned out on me there!"

For another moment Knuckles could only stare at the hedgehog. What should he say to him, anyway? That he'd just seen a ten years younger version of him and was contemplating to never make any jokes on his hydrophobia again? What would Sonic do? Run back in there to see it himself? Knuckles couldn't let him do that, so he better kept his quiet.

"Knuckles? Hello?" Sonic walked in front of him, watching him with a look of rarely seen worry.

The echidna was well aware he was expecting an answer, but his brain was still busy noticing Sonic had grown to more than twice the size he'd apparently once been. It wasn't like Knuckles saw children every day, let alone get shown how one of his friends had looked like as a little kid. He was somewhat lost for words. "I.. I just got some stuff on my mind, I think. This whole time travel thing…"

"Uh-hu." Sonic nodded, visibly relaxing when Knuckles finally answered him. "And your first encounter with hospitals."

"Yeah, that too." Knuckles smiled, doing his best to shove his thoughts aside. Hoping it might help, he finally focussed on their surroundings.

Usually, Knuckles would have rated the air on the streets of the city as stinky. Right now, it felt fresh as paradise as he closed his eyes for a second, deeply filling his lungs with it, more than glad to get the smell that had occupied all the corridors and rooms of the building out of his nostrils. How where people supposed to recover from illnesses and stuff in that atmosphere? The brightly white furniture and all those people rushing around didn't actually help making the place any more comfy to stay at… Once again Knuckles was stricken by the thought of how weird the surface dwellers were. But as it seemed, at least their healers knew their medicine. His arm had gotten to the decision to throb dully, but it was bearable.

"I think they are glad we're gone in there," Sonic spoke up again. "I guess they think we're nuts."

"Doesn't matter what they think, but it seems you were right. They did not bad at the doctoring," the echidna noticed.

Sonic smiled. "It's their job, Knuckles, they do it all day."

Knuckles looked over to his friend. "Hm. I'm happy to be out of there again."

The blue hedgehog chuckled. "Nobody's fond of hospitals, I guess. That goes for you as much as for everybody else. You are maybe less different from us non-Angel-Island people than you think."

Knuckles frowned. "Hmm," he grunted doubtfully.

Sonic grinned. "Come on and let's get somewhere more comfortable, what do you think? I think we deserve it. It was quite a day, and I'm hungry."

"You're always hungry, hedgehog." Knuckles earned a mockingly hurt look and tried to irgnore it. That was his usual reaction to it, anyway, but it seemed he was having a weak moment right now. His stomach felt weird, and he decided to take it as hunger and not as 'I'm about to be sick'.

"Actually, that sounds not too bad," he allowed, "I've had nothing all day."

"Let's find ourselves a nice place to hang out then." Sonic started walking along the street, but stopped when Knuckles didn't follow.

The echidna was frowning again, disturbed by the hedgohog's sudden display of relaxation. "Are you sure we should be just walking around in public here?"

Sonic shrugged casually. "Why not? It's five years before Eggman turned up. Nobody ever heard of Sonic the Hedgehog or Knuckles the Echidna from Angel Island. The mere existence of your place is still somewhat of a mystery. This is one of the first times in our lives we can walk along the street without anyone recognizing us at all and no robots turning up to hit or shoot us. We should enjoy it!"

Processing the thought, Knuckles could only agree. Sonic was right. "You got a point." Knuckles nodded stiffly and quickly moved to catch up with the hedgehog.

The hedgehog laughed. "No reason for hurrying," he said and shot him a smiling side-glance. "We don't have to rush anything, do we? There are no enemies stealing our Emeralds right behind the next corner."

Knuckles tilted his head at Sonic, finally managing to find his dry tone back. "We don't have any. If we had any, we might be closer to getting back home."

"Do you always have to be so negative?" Sonic shook his head, ears twitching. "Really, we're stuck in a strange time, weird stuff happens and you got your arm busted. We need a bit of good spirit. You could at least try, you know?"

"Uh." The red echidna ran his flat left hand down his long spines, not sure why he felt suddenly embarrassed. "Sorry?"

"I don't really mind, I guess," the hedgehog assured, grinning good-naturedly. "It's who you are. And everybody needs to be himself, so you're just fine."

Knuckles smiled, although he didn't know why he did. He didn't really follow Sonic's logic in the last few sentences of their conversation, but for once he thought he had not been trying to insult him, his Emerald or his ancestry. For a moment they walked in companionable silence along the traffic-stuffed road, then the echidna remembered another thing that had stuck out to him. "Sonic?"

"Hmm?"

"What's tetanus?"

"An illness, kind of an infection you can get when injured," the hedgehog explained simply, not giving Knuckles any chance to determine if his question had been stupid again now or not. "It was pretty dangerous in former times and many people died on it, today you get such a small shot against it and that's it. In the past, I guess you could get a bad fever or catalepsy."

Knuckles nodded. "Then I think I know what we're talking about. Why do you use so weird words down here?"

Sonic laughed. "Dunno. Sounds stylish maybe… Or it makes people feel smart. Like when Tails says things like electro-muon-plasma-" He ran out of words to add to his chain at that point and decided to finish with a "thingy".

Knuckles raised an eyebrow. As he thought before, the surface people were odd… In the past as much as in the present time.

"So? How do you like it?" Dropping leisurely into a chair, Sonic gestured around. The small restaurant was situated at a small square, just a narrow street separating them from the beach. The ocean twinkled as a sea of sapphires and the sky above was a flawless coat of cyan.

"It's nice alright," Knuckles agreed, sitting himself across of Sonic, carefully resting his arm in a position approaching comfortable. "You seem to know the place pretty well."

Sonic shrugged. "I grew up around here."

"Where'd you live? Just asking so we don't run into you or something…" From the very corner of his eyes Knuckles watched his friend suspiciously.

The hedgehog had grabbed a piece of paper lying on the table and seemed more interested in reading it than listening to Knuckles. "Almost outside town, at my Uncle Chuck's." He was silent for a moment before looking up from his paper. "It was nice there."

"Your uncle?" Trying to pretend a bit of disinterest, Knuckles studied his cast.

"Yeah," Sonic willingly replied, still utterly clueless. "I once asked what had happened to my parents and they told me they died in a bad accident. I didn't ask much. I was happy. I had my own room, a swing in the garden and all that stuff you love when you're small. Of course, there was stuff he did I didn't enjoy so much." Sonic chuckled a little at the memory. "Him insisting I took bathes every so often, or my going to school for example. By now I think it was good he forced me to, kinda. A kid's gotta learn reading and stuff, right?"

Knuckles smiled, briefly looking up at Sonic. "I suppose so. Strange fit of common sense coming from you."

Sonic laughed. "It's not like I don't have any of it. Just not very much, and I rarely listen to it." For a moment he watched his fingers drumming onto the table. "No, I think I was pretty lucky I had him. Everyone needs a place to come and go whenever you need. He never complained… You know, even when I was small, I sometimes just had this feeling of… having to go. Not because the place wasn't nice, it's about the going itself. There's always been something driving me away, not necessarily for long, but away. Seeing something else, just… moving, running. I dunno what it is, but it's always been in me. Not many people understand. Tails does. And my uncle did. I explained it once and he just understood. He understood a hell of a lot of things…"

Knuckles just looked at him. They didn't talk often, Sonic and him, and even more rarely on things so personal. Trying to take in what the hedgehog tried to explain, Knuckles wondered for a moment if Sonic felt something that could be compared to his need of returning home to Angel Island after a time spend elsewhere… just the other way around. "What happened to him?", the echidna asked, finally stopping to examine the white cast on his arm.

"Robotnik happened." The smile quickly vanished from Sonic's face. "It's probably the only thing I will never forgive him. That he builds robots trying to toast me, electrocute me or cut me apart… okay. But not that…" His gaze dropped down onto his hands.

"… I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked." Knuckles uncomfortably shifted his weight. It wasn't often you could look behind Sonic's casual demeanour, and it was intimidating to say the least.

"Nah, it's fine. Been a long time, huh?" Sonic looked back up at him, a small smirk already fighting off the seriousness. "And it's a thing we all share. Tails never had a family before I found him, I lost mine, and you… you don't remember your folks either, do you?"

Knuckles shook his head. "No. I've always been by myself up there." He tilted his head, realizing he'd never contemplated the parallels between them. "What about the others? Cream's got her mum… What's with Amy?"

Sonic shrugged. "No idea. I have never really talked to her about stuff like that. She's just kind of... there, running after me. Now that I think about it, I have really no idea what she does when she's not following me around. Maybe she has a family after all. She's got a last name..." The blue hedgehog shrugged again, reaching for the paper again. "Now if you ask me, that was enough of the serious talk for today. This whole time travel thing blows my head bad enough…And I'm gonna starve if I don't get anything soon."

The red echidna chuckled, half-heartedly cursing himself for this anew moment of weakness as he gave in. "What's on the menu?"

Speedy's note: Sonic's past is a thing that was never really touched in the games at all. It's kind of funny once you think about it. They have backstories for Shadow, for Tails, we even know more about Eggman's past and family than we know about the main protagonist's. I've been resisting to write anything on it for more than four years, but I couldn't resist a little shot at it forever. This is a time travel story. I pretty much gave myself carte blanche for all sorts of things like that.

Also, greetings to Kelvin, if you happen to read this. Just for the record, there's food to add to my fail count. ;) In all honesty, they deserve it, don't you think?