Sonic: Fall to Darkness
Chapter 13
Memories
The blue blur had been slowed to a snails pace since his loss against Metal Sonic. He knew the world was slowly but surely coming to an end, but he saw that there wasn't a chance of victory if he were to fight it. As Sonic sluggishly stepped up the side of a steep hill, he kept wondering how his old home town has been doing without him. That very place he pondered about was his destination. He hadn't been there for years, and only stopped in for a day or two on the rare occasion he passed it. As he crested the hill, e found that it had changed much since he was last home. The town was under attack.
"What?!" Sonic peered over his home town, slowly burning to the ground and under siege by an army of Metal Sonic prototypes, from Silver Sonic to Mecha Sonic. Sonic acted on his old instinct and tore the ground to shreds as he sped down the hillside. The dozens of prototypes instantly detected Sonics movement and dropped what they were doing as they all turned their heads toward their new target. As Sonic reached the bottom of the hill, he froze in place as he stared into the fiery red eyes of the Silver Sonic prototype. The prototypes expected Sonic would barrel into them at full speed, but saw this as an advantage.
A Mecha Sonic prototype opened the machine gun built into its arm and prepared to fire, just before its barrel was bent by a flying rock. As the gun fired, the round bounced back into its ammo cartridge and every bullet in its arm was set off, immediately blasting its arm off. The machine reached over and grabbed the stump hanging from its right shoulder, and gazed to its left where the rock came from. Sonic looked in the same direction and smiled wide as he came to see two very familiar faces.
"Manic! Sonia!"
"What took you so long bro?" The rose colored hedgehog girl leapt into the air and came crashing down on one of the Silver Sonic prototypes, crushing its internal engines and causing a sudden fiery explosion. As the armless Mecha Sonic gazed into the flames, Sonia leapt out and landed a single punch to its face, breaking the machines neck and causing its head to go flying across the town.
"We almost thought you forgot us!" The green hedgehog in an orange vest raised his arms and the ground underneath two of the prototypes began to lift, just before they both found themselves crushed between two sheets of solid stone. Sonic decided it wasn't right to let his siblings have all the fun. His fear quickly melted away as he boosted into the fray, crushing three of the machines in a single dash, and suddenly realized as he came to a skidding halt, that there was another directly behind him. Before he stopped skidding, Sonic leapt backwards and landed on its head, then boosted himself off, crushing the Mecha Sonic against the ground, and landing on top of a group of three with a mighty stomp, crushing them all without any real attempt.
Sonic calmed down for a moment, but only just before Manic stepped up next to him and tapped his shoulder, pointing to another enemy standing behind Sonic. As he swiftly turned around, he found himself staring into the eyes of a prototype of the original Metal Sonic. The same one he had fought on Little Planet fourteen years prior. Sonic froze in place once again as this image melted in his mind, reshaping into the real Metal Sonic, the only one who had ever beaten him. Before Sonic had the nerve to react, he was kicked in the stomach and sent crashing through the wall of a burning house. As he slowly got up and looked around, he recognized a picture sitting on a table next to him. It was a picture of himself, Sonia, and Manic, all sitting together under the big oak out back, with Amy Rose sneaking up in the background. It was his parents old house. His childhood home. And now Metal had the nerve to burn it down. As it slowly collapsed around him, Sonic completely ignored the sounds of Manic and Sonia struggling against the prototype outside. He simply picked up the picture as his memory went back to that day….
"Manic, come here bro! I wanna race!" The young Sonic stood in position by the tree, facing down the path toward town hall.
"Fine, I know you're gonna win, but just for old times sake, ok?" Manic got into position, then stared at Sonic inquisitively as Sonic began to chuckle a bit.
"But this time bro, I'm gonna use my TRUE speed!"
Sonics memory skipped for a moment, the memory blocked out mostly from that point, but one thing he clearly remembered. Only a few moments after he had used his true speed, everything he had passed was in ruins. The citizens of Knothole thought he was a monster. They forbid him from ever using his true speed again and restrained him from using it. Then it all came back to him at once.
"SONIC, WE NEED A LIL HELP OUT HERE!" Manic was held tight in the prototypes grasp, and was quickly thrown to the ground a few yards away. Both Sonia and Manics eyes widened as they began to back up, away from the machine. But they weren't backing away because of him. They were backing away because they had seen what Sonic had just done. His blue spines flared to the heavens and Sonic was suddenly across the field and the Metal Sonic prototype fell to pieces as Sonic quickly returned to normal in the blink of an eye. Nobody but those three knew how Sonic had done it. And soon, Metal Sonic himself would experience true speed.