Chapter 8: You're like a son to me

After a short calm ride from Emerald City, the party finally arrives outside the main gates of Canterlot. Getting off the train, Sonic threw his hands into his pants and sighed heavily at the place he grew up at.

"To think I ever show up here again." Sonic thought to himself, gazing at the large, rich town.

"So Sonic, since when did you grow up in Canterlot. "Twilight asked the blue pointy headed teen. "I lived here most of my life and haven't seen you around."

"Well after the disappearance of my parents, Celestia pretty much adopted me and was always taking me places due to "royal duties" and apparently she couldn't bare to leave a 5 year old kid all by himself in a huge castle with many guards. So I pretty much tagged along most of the time, which is probably why you hardly got to see me."

"What was it like living with Princess Celestia?" Rarity asked, of all people.

"Not too shabby honestly. When she's not too busy being a princess and all, me and Celeste always got to hang out and go to the park. One thing that may catch by surprise is that me and her were very close. She was so caring and amazing, just like my mom."

Flashback, 10 years ago

The little 7 year old ecstatic Sonic looked a lot different than what he does now with less hair, white basketball shorts instead of ripped up jeans, a blue tee with no sleeveless jacket/vest, and finally his mom's gold ring necklace; back then, it was very big on him. Even little, Sonic still obviously loved to run. He ran around the castle halls many many times. He was desperate to find out how fast can he really go. He wasn't aloud to leave Canterlot because he always has a terrible sense of direction and never knows where he's going. Plus, he's very little and it's Celestia's duty to keep a close eye on him at all costs. Strolling around, the little boy could take it anymore. He snuck by one of the guards standing by the front gates and made a run for it.

"The breeze feels awesome!" The little Sonic shouted running through the fields. "I never wanna stop running!"

Little did he know, he should of stopped immediately. He ran for about 10 minutes, all the way near a big, open, green field with no one around. He saw a town up ahead and went wide eyed.

"Woah! I must be pretty quick, that's for sure." He started to panic a bit, but decided to not let it get to him. Instead, he insisted on lying down near a tree to take a quick nap.

Two kids thought it was funny to walk right up to the snoozing child and kick him. One kid was 12 years old, had green hair, (god dammit, not again) jeans, a green jacket and a black shirt. The other kid was 13 years old, had purple hair, jeans, and a plain red shirt. (no one in particular, just made up)

"Hey, this is my tree you blue headed idiot, so get lost!" The green headed kid shouted at Sonic.

"Well, I don't see your name on it!" The other kid pointed to the carving on the tree behind Sonic that said "Jet" on it. "Oh, what do you know."

"So, how about you take your stupid ass out of here or else!" The young bully Jet threatened Sonic, pounding his fists.

"Or else what, you'd get a better than picking on smaller kids to make yourself look cool" The other bully grabbed Sonic by the collar and took note of his giant necklace.

"How about we take this stupid girly looking pendant thing of his? I bet my dad knows a guy we can sell this to?" Hearing these words coming from the 2nd bully's mouth, Sonic kicked him in the stomach, letting himself free with his feet landing smoothly on the ground.

"If ya want this so badly, you're gonna have to take it from me!" the young, cocky Sonic smirked, dashing away, laughing with the bullies on his tail. He was easily ahead of the two angry bulls chasing him. Sonic had his eyes closed and smiling very delightfully due to his massive speed.

"Stupid...Brat!" Jet shouted, panting heavily while chasing the 7 year old speedster.

"Ha! Ain't no one stopping the fasting thing alive!" Sonic then suddenly started to levitate, running in place with a purple glow around him. This made him open his eyes and when he did, he saw a lady with an interesting blend of hair color of light blue, pink, white etc, wearing a small tiara and a light, white dress. Sonic went wide eyed and gulped as he noticed the familiar looking princess levitating him with her magic.

"Uh..oh" Sonic said lightly. The two bullies were dead tired, but they soon caught up to him

"Ha! We got you now ya little sh-" Jet immediately stopped himself there when he saw the Princess of Canterlot standing before him.

"You were about to say?" Celestia asked the green headed sweaty bully. He didn't respond, neither did his partner. The two of them just ran away as quick as possible. This made Sonic chuckle a bit, but when he looked at the princess, he stopped at once.

"*sigh* I'm in trouble aren't I?" The princess carefully placed Sonic back on the ground and looked down at him with a slight grin. He didn't seem to noticed, he was too busy looking down at the grass in shame.

"Let's go for a walk, Sonic." The princess said calmly.

"Aww, but I hate walking!" Celestia then glared at him. "Ugh! Fine!"

2 minutes have passed by on their way back to Canterlot. Celestia finally broke the silence.

"Now Sonic, you know how much I worry when you go off to far outside the Canterlot walls." The princess reminded the young boy

"Yeah, I know. I just...really had the urge to run! You should've seen me, when I was running towards that field, I had speed like never before. But again, it's hard to stretch out my legs when I have so little space in Canterlot. I also am not a big fan of being cramped inside the castle."

"I understand that, but if you really want to go out far and fun, I want to wait till you're old enough to handle it easily. Otherwise, you might end up in tight situations such as forgetting how to get back, or have some very rude kids pick on you. I assume both of those types of conflict happened recently."

"Yeah I see what you mean, and i'm really sorry Princess Celestia." The princess looked at the boy walking still looking ashamed of himself.

"Sonic."

"Yea?" The boy responded without looking away from the ground.

"I want you to know that the reason I get a little carried away with being overprotective such as taking you with me on almost every business meeting or hardly bring you to your Uncle's is because, well, I'm just very attached to you; you mean a lot to me. When your father and mother disappeared that day, I was devastated. I felt terrible and without hesitating, I brought you into the castle. I knew it was going to be hard, but over the past two years, you've been like a dear son to me. I told you about my sister Luna right."

"Yeah, about how she went all evil and you had no choice but to lock her away at the moon or something."

"Exactly. I need something or someone to remind myself of my poor, poor, little sister. You were the closest thing I had Sonic. You gave me many new reasons to continue my duties as Princess of Canterlot. You really changed a lot for me these years and I wish for them to continue." She slightly began choking up, but not too majorly. Without hesitating, the 7 year old boy picked his head up and hugged the Princess tightly.

"You're the one who's changed a lot for me princess. Who else could have taken care of me the way you have. Thank you Princess Celestia" This made Celestia smile and hug him back.

"I'll tell you what, this weekend, we can both go to the Spring Falls Park and you can show me how fast you can really go. Perhaps I can help you with some new abilities." Sonic stopped hugging the princess and looked at her ecstatically.

"That would be awesome!" This made Celestia laugh at Sonic's mood and enthusiasm. The two were only 10 feet away from the main gate. It happened to be night time already.

When they finally made it into the castle, Sonic jumps right into bed, in his clothes, of course.

"You know the drill Sonic. You must wear Pajamas if you wish to sleep in your bed." In the process of changing and finding his Pjs, Sonic was complaining as well.

"But it's so much hard work!" After a quick 30 seconds,Sonic was wearing blue striped pj pants and a blue shirt with a green gem pattern design. He got back into bed, forgetting one thing and that is to take off his necklace. Celestia decided to do it for him and surprisingly, he did not resist or hesitate or anything. (If you been reading along, especially if you read chapter 5, you would understand). She would read to him, but every time his parents tried reading to him years back, he'd always get bored. Instead, she tucked him in and began to walk out of his room.

"Good night Celestia. I- I'll see ya in the morning" Sonic said said calmly, smiling at the princess.

"Good night Sonic." She smiled back, turned off the lights and softly close the door.

Present Time

"Who woulda thought you and the princess bonded so much?" Applejack stated. Everyone nodded in agreement with what the cowgirl pointed out.

"I guess you can say that." Sonic said blatantly

During Sonic's story, they ended up in town square where they were trying to figure out where to start. He pulled out the green emerald and noticed it wasn't reacting to anything yet.

"Alright, it doesn't seem to be responding to anything, but let's all split up into search parties and ask around. You never know where they would end up" Tails told the others. They all decided to separate into groups and hoped to find some information about the emeralds; Sonic went with Rainbow Dash, Twilight and Fluttershy went with Tails, and Knuckles was forced to go with Applejack, Rarity, Spike, and Pinkie Pie.

Twilight's groups decided to check along the streets as they walk by keeping an eye out.

"Oh, I hope we find those emeralds before that mean old Dr. Eggman gets ahold of them." Fluttershy said in worry.

"Don't worry Fluttershy, I'm pretty sure we'll be able to find the Chaos Emeralds way before he does. I mean, come on, we already got three in one day; he practically gave them to us." Tails stated, giving less worry.

"That reminds me, when are you going to finish that plane of yours Tails?" Twilight asked very ecstatically.

"Hehe, you really are interested in that, aren't you. Well, if we don't have any luck with finding any of the emeralds here, I can go back to working on it." A thought then popped in Twilight's head.

"Not only am I very interested, but maybe we can use to as our advantage into finding the chaos emeralds. It'd be easier to find them from higher grounds."

"Hey, that's not a bad idea!" Tails was even more excited on getting back home to finish his plane.

"Will it be safe to ride in?" Fluttershy asked hesitantly.

"Of course….Well actually, I'm sort of terrible at keeping promises, but i'll be sure to test it before I have anyone else ride in it."

"Oh man, I can't wait!" Twilight squealed in glee. Tails chuckled at her heavy love for such dorky things.

Meanwhile, with Applejack's group.

"How about that way?" Pinkie asked, pointing to the right.

"We just came from there, Pinkie" Spike told her.

"How about….that way?!"

"That leads to a dead end, darling." Rarity told her as well

"How...about….This Way!?"

"Uhh, you're pointing at the sky, Pinkie."Applejack stated, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, I can't think of any more directions other than back or straight" Everyone just stared at her.

"Then, let's just go straight?" Rarity suggested in confusion

"Good idea Rare!" Pinkie jumped in glee. Knuckles was walking right behind them with his hands in his pockets, not knowing what goes on in Pinkie Pie's head.

"How did I end up with these 4?" He said to himself. He decided not to say anything because every other second, they would get into an argument. He still has yet to say sorry for his behavior. Pinkie looked behind her very quickly and stepped closer to her friends.

"Pssssst! Guys. The robot is still following us." She whispered loudly. Applejack rolled her eyes and responded to her.

"Pinkie, he's not a robot. And also, he's decidin to be so anti social that he chose to walk in the very back." She called out loud enough for Knuckles to hear. He raised an eyebrow and scoffed.

"Everytime I say something, all of you counter it with some stupid comment. 5 minutes ago, I told you we should ask this suspicious dude in a cloak if he knew anything and all you did was laugh. After that little so called joking matter, fashion snob here states I shouldn't let weird looking people get to my, in quote, 'empty minded head.'" Rarity turned around and gasped angrily at the insult she was given.

"Well I must say, that's no way to receive my respect if you're going to call a girl that" Spike stepped into the fray (of course)

"Yeah, ain't nobody's gonna insult my- uh I mean, ..Rarity like that." The little green haired boy walked up to the long red haired teen. "I may not know what exactly you did to make them so mad, but so far, you just give me scary looks, make fun of my height, and more importantly, you insulted Rarity"

"Can it, shrimp; you're not helping." Knuckles said lightly pushing Spike out of the way. "In fact, why am I even talking to any of you? All I want is to stop Eggman from taking over the world and instead of taking my advice or taking caution of certain things, i'm getting shut down by a bunch of ignorant teenage girls."

"Uh, just to be clear, i'm here too." Spike said in a calm joking matter. Knuckles clenched his fists and glared at him; causing him to back away.

"I understand I may of tore your home apart, but I was in desperate need to find those stupid emeralds. I did try asking, no one would answer me at all. So, I was left with no choice but to start literally scraping everything up till I find at least one emerald. None of you have any idea how important it is to me to find these emeralds. Instead you just poke fun and repeatedly point out my intentions on trashing the city. Even if I did apologize, insulting me and laughing at me won't get me to take those two words out of my mouth." Knuckles walked tensely passed the group. "If you need me, I'll be finding the only key to our defense against this psychotic villain" Applejack called back for him.

"Hey! Sonic told us to stick together!" He looked back at the cowgirl

"Yeah! And he told us to work together as well! I tried both of those and no of you seem to care!" The red headed teen continue to walk, ignoring anything else they had to say.

"I just don't see why he doesn't apologize. I mean, it's not like it's gonna kill him" Rarity wondered.

"*GASP* Robots...don't have EMOTIONS! Therefore he-"

"PINKIE!" Everyone shouted at her.

"What? You never know." Applejack looked forward and can see Knuckles up in the distance.

"Maybe if we all weren't in one huge group trying to bash on him, one of us can go catch up with to see what's-" Before she could even finish, everyone besides her said in unision.

"Not it!" She looked back at all of them, crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow.

"I didn't say now!"

"It's now or never. It doesn't seem like he's gonna get friendly any time soon from the looks of it" Spike pointed.

"And i'll admit, maybe we were a bit too harsh on him. Sure he was a jerk, but he did attempt to reason with us." Rarity took note of Knuckles' complaint.

"That is true...Alright, alright, i'll go up to him. Just remember to keep an eye out for anything suspicious" And with that, she was gone, running after the tensed up teen.

Rainbow Dash was flying from above while Sonic was jumping around, searching through dumpsters.

"Anything yet?" She called out to the teen who was making a huge mess in the trash. He poked his head up while spitting out a piece of plastic

"Nope. Nothing. Not even a response from the emerald either." He jumped out of the dumpster covered in complete garbage.

"Ya know, you might wanna take a shower as quick as possible." She suggested in a joking manner.

"Yeah, no kidding. But hey, it calls for drastic measures." He ran in circles around 50 times in about 10 seconds to get all the junk off him. Surprisingly it worked, however it didn't do much for the smell. The two speedsters were walking along the road, not worrying about the emerald for a bit. Rainbow Dash decided to bring back up an earlier topic.

"So tell me, how come you're in such denial about this whole hidden element thing right after we assume that you could possibly represent it" Sonic sighed and flew his hand through his long spiky blue hair.

"It's not that I don't believe it; it's just that I want nothing to do with it."

"Huh? Why not?" She was very confused by his answer.

"I just don't want the responsibility or the attention or the hero title. I just wanna be a somewhat normal teen."

"Honestly, when I found out I was the element of loyalty when Twilight and the rest of us fought Luna during her 'nightmare days', I was stoked. But at the same time, I was kinda confused. Don't get me wrong, I love getting all the attention because, well, i'm awesome obviously, but i was a bit skeptical about being part of this harmony squad. I love my friends, but it just felt weird to me. In the end, I got used it and realized that this element meant something even more." She then nudged Sonic's side. "And trust me, you'd definitely fit perfectly for the element of courage."

"I guess. We might as well ask Celestia about it anyway." Rainbow Dash noticed Sonic still had a piece of dirt on his cheek.

"Hey blue head, you still got some leftovers from your dumpster dive."

"Oh really? Where?" Instead of pointing it out, she licked her thumb, got ahold of Sonic with her other hand and tried to wipe up the smudge off his face. "Eww. Dash!" She rolled her eyes at him

"Oh, grow up. What, Celestia never did this to you?"

"Yeah, when I was 5!" Instead of struggling, he just let her finish cleaning the dirt off of him.

"There. All better!" She let go of him while Sonic took his left hand and wiped his cheek.

"Pffft! Thanks Mom." He said sarcastically. She snickered at the whining as they continued to walk down the road. Surprisingly, Sonic wasn't getting too bored from walking. Apparently talking to Rainbow Dash kept him distracted from the misery of not going high speed. Suddenly, the emerald inside Sonic's pocket started to glow. He pulled it from his pants and started examining it.

"Dash, look! It's reacting to something; probably another emerald."

"If so, then where can it be exactly."

"Well, for sure it's not in the dumpster." As he looked around, Rainbow Dash saw something step into the Neverfree forest and the glowing stopped.

"I think I know where it is, come on!"

That's a good point to stop. Starting to getting back on track. Hope you like what I did with bringing Sonic's childhood. I plan to branch it out a bit and show more. Anyway, let's get into some

Trivia Time:

Shout out to SonicTeam756 and Skyler Hope Universe. Last questions were In the original game, what was Shadow's main purpose for creation? Professor Gerald created him to find a cure for his granddaughter Maria. The other question was what did hasbro change Derpy's name to in the beginning of Season 2. Answer was Ditzy Doo (Stupid Soccer moms, ruining all the fun) Alright, new questions.

-A challenge in Sonic the hedgehog appeared on a video game 'game' show in the 90s. What was that game show called?

-Oh My, I seem to have a Little problem, I can't come up with another Pony question….uhhhhhh….who's the name and animal of Pinkie Pie's pet?...that's all I got.

That about wraps up this chapter here folks. See ya in the next one.