Chapter 21: A shattered heart screaming
The sticks of chalk bounced off the small box as it hit the floor, snapping to pieces and scattering around her feet. The door behind her swung slowly towards the its frame and closed with a soft click, trapping her inside the room with the two other people in it.
Amy could only gape, body completely frozen in place as her jade green eyes widened in an expression that was beyond the definition of 'shocked', if such a thing is possible.
This can't possibly be real.
There seated on a chair facing a worried Principal Mirrage was a woman-a hedgehog. She wore a fitting grey dress with a white scarf around her neck, her feet were enclosed on black knee-high boots. But her attire mattered not to Amy, her surprise was caused by the fact that this hedgehog also had pink fur like her. Has the same bangs that bent down between her eyes, but has longer quills, two of them curving towards her cheeks the others falling in graceful waves on her back that reached up to her hips. And those eyes, with the hue of the sky, ever gentle, ever soft, were staring at Amy in longing. Even after a decade had passed of not seeing her, she could still remember her name.
Basilica Rosevelt.
Amy could feel bibewires wrap around her heart as a child spoke in her head, it's voice low and full of sorrow and the pink hedgehog recognized it to be hers.
Mommy...
The older hedgehog's head spun to meet Amy's gaze. She rose from her seat, a sweet smile tugged at her lips. Tears suddenly brimmed her blue eyes as they continued to gaze at the other pink hedgehog in the room. She reached her arms to her.
"Amelia-"
"Back...OFF!"
Amy glowered in pure hatred and scorn towards the taller pink hedgehog, fists clenched into tight balls. Her body shook as dark thunder clouds suddenly blotted her vission. How did she know she was here? How on Mobius did she find her? And more importantly why was she there?!
"What are you doing here?" Amy demanded harshly, good manners and respect completely thrown out the window as the boiling rage was rising beyond the limit her self-control can hold back.
Mrs. Mirage frowned in outrage at her blatant display of rudeness. "Now, Amy Rose, that is not how you greet your mother."The principal scolded.
Those very words made the thunderstorm in her eyes turn into a full-blown hurricane. "SHE IS NOT MY MOTHER!" Amy roared like a savage lioness provoked by enemy.
Yet, her own words hurt her.
The principal looked utterly disappointed. Basilica's eyebrows drew together in worry. "Amelia..." Mirage began.
"Don't call me that!" She shrieked. Mrs. Mirage and the woman's image blurred in her vission. A single tear drop fell to the floor. Amy gritted her teeth, angry at herself for showing the woman that this affected her. No. She will not show weakness. She will not cry in front of her! This was not a big deal!
She jammed her eyes shut in an attempt to trap the cursed tears. But warm peach arms had already wrapped themselves around the young hedgehog, drawing her into an embrace that Amy had not experienced from her mother for ten years. Part of her melted into the affectionate act, an overwhelming feeling exploding inside her, and another was furiously shaking her to snap out of it and should not allow this. Amy succumbed to the latter.
She pushed the woman away roughly. Somehow the hurt expression in the woman's eyes made her feel guilty, but she crushed that emotion immediately.
"Don't you dare touch me!" She shouted. The dam completely broke now. Tears spilled out of her eyes in an endless flow. Amy suddenly felt weak, numb and powerless against the gaze of those soft blue eyes whose owner she's loved and admired so deeply when she was but a little girl, but now they held a force that shattered her strong will that she thought she possesed. She's a grown up now, and yet there was still this small speaker inside her that disagrees. That little child that had been longing for her mother's love.
Her chest clenched. Moments of her childhood flashed before her. Times where she was happy, times where she was with her family, and times where everything was perfect.
Amy was suffocating. She couldn't take this. If she stayed for a second longer she'd lose it.
The younger pink hedgehog turned and left the room, ignoring the shouts that followed.
"I'm terribly sorry about that, Ma'am," Principal Mirage apologized.
Basilica only smiled despondently, eyes fixed on the door. She already expected that sort of reaction from her youngest daughter, but she was not prepared for it. The mother had thought that, once she hugged that little girl of hers everything will be okay. But it seems that one simple embrace was not enough to reassemble the heart that had been shattered to pieces ten years ago when they left her to Mary Rose. If she wanted to have her daughter back, she must have to do a great gesture to make it so, and explain the reason for the deed a decade previous.
The mother hedgehog sighed.
"There she is." Rouge pointed at their pink friend who was heading towards her and Cream. The bat blocked the path that Amy was about to pass through and the latter almost knocked Rouge to the floor when they collided. Rouge held her by the amrs.
"Whoa Amy, where we-what's wrong?" she immediately became worried noticing that her friend was crying. Cream put a hand on Amy's back, looking equally concerned.
"I-I'm sorry," Amy chocked, holding back a sob."I n-need to go."
She tried to get away, but Rouge held firmly onto the girl's arms unwilling to let whatever matter there was to be left unknown to them. "Amy, what's wrong?" she asked demanding, yet calm.
The pink hedgehog's tear stained eyes glared at her. "Let go!" She yanked her hand away, successfully releasing them from Rouge's clutches before leaving in a hurry.
"Amy!" Cream shouted hand stretched in the direction she disappeared to. "We need to go after her!"
"You two!"
They spun around to respond to the call. The P.E. instructor and coach of the school soccer team was approaching them.
"You're friends with Amy Rose, correct?" he asked the two, who nodded in answer. "Where is she?"
Rouge and Cream exchanged glances. Did Amy get into trouble with tthe coach? "She went that way, sir," Cream answered reluctantly while pointing down the hallway where Amy had run. "We don't know where she was headed."
The lupin coach and instructor thanked the both of them before jogging down the hallway.
"C'mon!" Rouge marched forward to where the wolf had went, snatching Cream's wrist and dragging her along. "We're cutting class?" the rabbit exclaimed, alarmed.
The bat's expression hardened, sharp fangs bared. "Seem's like it." She uttered coldly. "We need to find out what's going on."
Ms. Vanessa Brown, a soon-to-be Mrs. Spencer, enterred the classroom. She placed her books atop her desk, fishing her seating plan from inside the drawer for the checking of attendance. She scanned the class, glancing down at the sheet every now and then while a finger traced it, and she became confused when there were entry empty seats in the room that should have been occupied.
"Has anyone seen, Amy, Cream and Rouge?" she asked the students.
Simultaneously, they shook their heads while others accompanied the response with a verbal, 'no' or 'no ma'am'.
Sonic turned to the empty seats of the three best friends, puzzled why they weren't present. Rouge and Cream were in their first subject and Snowdrop informed their teacher during the roll call that Mrs. Mirage needed the pink hedgehog in her office.
"Where do you think those three went?" Knuckles from his left side asked. Sonic shrugged. "I dunno." But I need to find out.
Rouge punched furiously into the keypad of her phone as she dialed Amy's number. She pressed the call bottun and brought the device to her ear, tapping her foot impatiently as she waited the pink hedgehog to answer. The phone on the other line just rung.
"C'mon! Pick up!" she snarled in frustration. After a minute the call ended. Rouge gripped her gadget tightly, having the strong urge to slam it against the pavement for once being so useless. "Ugh! She's not answering!"
They were outside her house, but she wasn't home. They had already risked cutting class so they can help her with whatever issue there was, and they were not about to waste that effort because their hedgehog friend refused to tell them what the problem was.
"Where could she be?" Cream turned to Rouge, but the bat was just as clueless as her as to Amy's whereabouts.
"Let's just go," Rouge said, "maybe she' s back at school."
But when the two arrived at school, attending to the class they had that time, Amy was nowhere to be seen. Teachers kept asking them where she was since they were the closest to the pink hedgehog. Rouge and Cream had no clue where their friend could have gone. They were worried themselves. The bat and rabbit didn't even know why Amy's presence was demanded by practically every instructor in their school.
During lunch there was a widespread murmur amongst their classmates regarding the issue with the teachers seeking Amy in the cafeteria. Rouge and Cream carrying their lunch, saw Snowdrop and Vixen sitting together alone in a table at the end of the hall. They decided to join them; the snowy owl and female fox welcomed their company.
"Do you have any idea why our teachers are so eager on finding Amy?" Rouge asked Snowdrop.
Snowdrop was half-way putting a sliced apple inside her mouth. She stared at the bat. "You don't know? There's an old pink hedgehog in the principal's office saying she's Amy's mother."
Rouge spat her soda drink while Cream choked on her sandwhich.
"WHAT?!" Both exclaimed at the same time.
Vixen nodded in confirmation. "It's true. I overheard coach Rune talk about it with Ms. Vanessa."
"M-mother?" Cream stuttered and then turned to a equally thunderstruck Rouge, "I thought...I thought she said-"
"Clearly she lied." Rouge cut her off, her voice sounding cold and disappointed. Her grip on the soda can tightened, squeezing it. "We're confronting her about this later."
Somewhere beyond East Mobius High School, on a somewhat abandoned house outside the rusty gates a black-colored SUV was parked under a large tree. Yellow, orange and red leaves fell in a shower of colors atop another pink hedgehog. She wore a white long-sleeved blouse beneath a dark-blue vest where the red tie around her neck and underneath her collar was tucked. Her red skirt swayed gracefully with the breeze of the late afternoon, long-white socks not as pure in color as they are in the ealier time of day, because they were now washed with the setting sun's golden shade. Black shoes scrapped against the hard pavement as the younger hedgehog saw Basilica walking towards her.
"So?" She looked at Basilica with those expectant blue eyes she inherited from her.
The mother sighed as she shook her head. "She can't be found."
The younger hedgehog dropped her gaze, crestfallen. "She's hiding from us," she concluded.
"We can't really blame her, Andrea." Basilica told her oldest daughter.
Andrea leaned against the car parked behind her. She looked up to the yellowish sky, watching clouds sail above like ships in a golden sea. She drew a deep breath and expelled it immediately. "Ten years passed and she's still stubborn. I thought being given a different upbringing she would have changed. But I suppose it's already in her blood. That girl." She shook her head in disbelief.
"Mirage told me she goes by a different name," Basilica said and then chuckled, "Amy Rose. Not much different from her real one, hmm?"
Andrea shifted her gaze to her mother, a confused expression carved on her face. "Why are you taking this so lightly, mother?" she asked. "Shouldn't you be worrying that Amelia might not come with us?"
The older of the two hedgehogs looked away, her charming features suddenly acquiring a sorrowful look. "I am worried." She admitted. "We are not here to take her, remember? Our reason is to mend the bond lost a decade ago."
Andrea sighed and closed her eyes, wrapping her arms around her torso. "Which appears to be a rather difficult task than we expected."
Silence fell between the two for awhile.
Basilica proceeded to the car, opening the door to the drivers seat. "But there's nothing we can do now. We can only hope that we'll make progress tomorrow." She had just placed one foot inside the vehicle, when she heard a loud call from behind.
Basilica and Andrea turned around and saw a rabbit and a white bat heading their way.
Amy dropped on her knees and hands when she reached the edge of the woods, finding herself alone facing a mockingly beautiful autumn sky high atop a cliff.
Her tears kept flowing freely, and it had been awhile now. Did she have an endless supply of them? Where did they all come from? She thought all these tears had been used up when she cried about the same issue ten years ago!
Ten years ago...
She couldn't believe it. Her mother was there, right in front of her, happy to see her and the older pink hedgehog was just as beautiful as the last moment Amy saw her. And the dress she wore...it was the same color as the one she had on when they left her that day. Was it some cruel joke the universe played to make the scene so painfully similar to the time where she was given away? Only this time, instead of surrendering her to a person she hardly even know, her mother comes to retrieve her. It hurt, it hurt so very much.
Had she done so great a crime to deserve this sort of cruelty?!
Amy dug her fingers into the ground, breaking the soil like an earthworm slithering its way into the bottom of the earth. She closed her fists, scooping a portion of the soil in her hand.
She was angry and happy at the same both emotions be present at once? She was angry at her mother for leaving her ten years ago to a complete stranger, never once visiting her or called or sent a letter to tell her that she was missed! And she was happy because...after all this time, even when a decade had passed, her mother still remembered her, she still consider her as a daughter...and she came to see her. Would that also mean she was still loved?
She threw the dirt at the edge of the cliff and screamed, screamed at the top of her lungs.
She poured all of her misery and burden into that one act. She screamed and screamed very loud and she will do so until she had no more voice.
For Amy just know how to drown all this despair. All she can do was scream.
Evening. Lights were blazing bright on large establishments and buildings. The city was bustling with activity. So many mobians, young and old, strode along the streets, free of troubles.
Unlike a blue hedgehog who happened to zoom by between strangers, startling them.
He raced through the road still in his school uniform, face contorted into a scowl. The car he was following swerved to the right and the blue hedgehog did likewise when he encountered the turn of the road as well. He carefully avoided the other transportations that came his way, while maintaining a short distance between him and the car up ahead.
This was very unexpected. He never saw it coming.
You are going to lose your chance...
Sonic hated how that voice in his head was right.
Not really what you were expecting, huh?
Reviews are very much appreciated :D