Untamed (by RAWN)
Chapter 12: Rebel
After about ten minutes of sitting on the hard floor, Sonic became stiff and had to get up to stretch his legs.
His face still stung dimly where he had been hit, but he didn`t pay it much attention. He certainly wasn`t a stranger to pain, and a slap across the face was hardly
worth his attention. What had really been hurt was his pride. It had been degrading to just stand there without being able to do anything to prevent or do anything
about it. Granted, he had taken revenge, but the manner he had done it resembled too much of that of an aggressive pet. Somehow that thought actually brought out
a small humorless chuckle from him. "Good luck trying to tame me Baldy," he muttered smiling sarcastically.
Against hope and with nothing else to do to prevent him from going stir-crazy, he began testing out if it was possible for him to move away from the small spot he
had been confined to. He wasn`t too surprised that his body wouldn`t allow him to leave the tile, freezing in place as if paralyzed at every attempt. No matter how
hard he tried, he found that he had to have at least one foot or finger on it at all times.
Frustrated about the fact that an unlocked door was just a few feet away and the only thing stopping him from reaching it was…himself, he stomped his right foot
irritably on the green flooring, causing small cracks to appear in the cement between the tiles.
Sonic blinked, stunned at first, before the pleasure of having a light bulb moment came and a broad smile crept upon his face.
Meanwhile…
Most of the lights were no longer lit at the base, and the world was nearly pitch-black. The moon covered by a thin layer of clouds hardly provided any light at all. Not
that he needed it. His red eyes, genetically engineered to see in darkness almost as clear as in day, had no trouble leading their owner safely over the ground without
him tripping.
Shadow had sought out an open vent practically begging to be used, and cautiously approached it in case it was some kind of trick meant to lure him in.
When he had reached his goal, he took a long judgmental look at the gaping hole before deeming it a careless slip of the doctor instead of a cunningly planted trap
and climbed in. He strongly detested being reduced to crawling on all fours like some feral animal. His usual, and preferred, way of entering a place like this would
consist of a very literal way of the term 'breaking and entering', but he had a feeling that whatever sort of trouble his rival had gotten himself mixed up in was a
delicate and complicated one. Besides rushing in without thinking, like some wannabe hero he knew, wasn`t exactly his style either, he thought with a small sarcastic
hint of a smile.
Back inside…
A blue wind, too fast for any camera to detect, raced through the corridors, only stopping for a brief second at every door to check if anything useful could be found
behind it.
So far nothing had caught his attention. All of the doors looked the same, and none of them had any signs. Most of the rooms contained machinery he did not know
the purpose of. One room, which looked just as any of the other on the outside, proved to be something as 'exciting' as a well-equipped broom closet.
"How does he find his way in here? It`s like a maze," Sonic mused. He remembered that he had used an elevator to get down to the current floor he was roaming,
which meant that he wouldn`t find any of the rooms he previously had been to and knew. His best bet would be to get back up to where he knew where he could find
the saw he had used on his shackles earlier, and find out if it could get the choker off too. Even if it was far from working as he intended, the heavy square-shaped
burden he carried under his left arm served as an embarrassing reminder that it certainly worked to some degree.
There had been a camera in the elevator, so that mean of transportation was out of the question, but there had to be stairs somewhere. As often as Eggman`s
hideouts tended to get destroyed, in which the blue blur often had had a hand in, there were bound to be several emergency exits ready if such a calamity should
occur.
Eggman apparently had no use of marking these exits, probably knowing his own maze-like chunk of metal like the back of his own hand.
The fastest thing alive wasn`t slowed down more than a couple of minutes though, before he finally opened a door leading to a spiraling staircase. Wasting no more
than a second to scan the place for any surveillance that needed to be avoided, he sped upwards to enter the floor above. He quickly recognized where he was. He
ran fast down the hallway with light steps, more careful when in closer proximity to his enemy. Stopping at every corner to listen, not wanting to be surprised by a
robot. Downstairs there had been no more than two for him to evade from, but upstairs there had been a few more. All just standing motionless like statues awaiting
orders while guarding nothing in particular. Perhaps on the lookout for intruders or, Sonic mentally added, stray hedgehogs.
He was just about to rush around yet another corner when his ears pricked up at the sound of footsteps. Tensing up, quills raising defensively, he briefed through his
options which narrowed down to; run, attack, or hide.