Before the chapter starts, I will let you know that it does get a little more intense here. I don't get into details but there are mentions of blood and injury so just thought I'd warn you beforehand.

With that out of the way, enjoy!

Chapter 5

Sonic sped off to the cave, eager and confident in proving his worries wrong. He was just overreacting, Rosie was perfectly fine and nothing bad happened to her. He was gonna find her and they'd be reunited! He was hopeful as he skidded to a stop, listening into the cave to check if anyone was there. When he heard nothing, he slid in through the entrance.

He dusted himself off and looked around, his look of confidence quickly turned to one of severe worry. There was a few spools of bandages on the ground and he could see a trash pile of used ones. They had splotches of old blood on them and there was a broken stick next to them. Sonic guessed that it was used as a splint and that she'd injured herself somehow.

He was terrified, so many questions ran in his head. Is she okay? When did this happen? HOW did this happen? Just then, as if to answer that last question, he laid eyes on a closed bear trap. It looked like one of Crazy Carl's traps and was also covered in dried blood. She must've gotten caught in one of his traps but why was it here? Did...did she walk all the way back here with that?

Sonic started to feel nauseated at his gruesome findings, fearing for Rosie. He needed to find her and make sure she's okay. At the beginning of this whole thing he wanted to take it slow and find out more about her before finding her but if she's hurt then they need to act fast.

He decided it was time to tell Tom about the cave, he's a cop so he should be pretty good help in finding her. Sonic bolted off back to the house to tell everyone and to ask for help. Little did he know that he was being observed in the shadows, and his watcher wasn't happy with him wanting to tell others.

The girl in the shadows limped off as fast as she could. Though with having such a messed up leg she wasn't able to move that fast but she wanted to get away before they found her. She wanted Sonic to find her but she didn't want the humans to find her. He called them by name, trusted them like family, but she could only tremble in fear at the sight of those tall creatures.

She found it silly, she was afraid of humans but she's surely faced worse horrors. She's escaped from an entire army and survived! Though, she didn't escape singlehandedly, if it weren't for her adoptive mother, Vanilla, she wouldn't have been saved. She took her in and treated her as her own. She had an adopted sister too! Cream became her best friend once she was born, they grew up together and for a long time she'd pushed away the traumatic memories of her past.

A couple of years ago however, her chaos powers started to show through much stronger than before. It had always been this sort of intuition, she was able to know where certain things are or occasionally predict weather patterns. As she got older, her powers evolved into vision like dreams and being able to project visions into other peoples dreams. She began to have dreams recalling her past and made it her mission to find Sonic again.

She felt bad for leaving her family but Vanilla and Cream reassured her that they had her back. She was old enough to hold her own and if this is what she wanted to do they weren't gonna hold her back. Vanilla packed a bag for her full of pastries and fruit to hold her off until she got the hang of living on her own and she was off. Now she was limping through the forest, out to find shelter.

She couldn't go back to the cave, that's the first place they'd look. She'd just have to find somewhere else to hide out until she knew she was safe. She hated avoiding Sonic like this, she wanted to see him again, wanted to jump into his arms and hug him as tight as she could, but she can't be found by humans.

As she walked, she began to become fatigued, walking with a messily mended broken leg is a lot of work and she really didn't have much energy to begin with due to her lack of proper nutrition. She tripped and fell into a pile of leaves. She reasoned that she'd probably been walking for a while and she was at least safe for now. Giving into her fatigue, she drifted off into a deep nap.

Sonic, Tom, Tails, and Knuckles had been searching for hours and the sun went down a while ago. Tails looked at his communicator and saw that the time was 11:30 p.m., everyone was getting tired and ready to call it quits for the night. They'd searched in and around the area of the cave and found nothing, even trying to have Ozzy help with the investigation but due to the fact that he wasn't trained for this stuff he wasn't much help.

They headed off back home, Sonic feeling extremely tired but at the same time still very anxious and worried. They found absolutely nothing. Sure it was the first night but the forest couldn't be that big and if she's as injured as he worried she was they needed to find her soon. Tom looked back briefly at Sonic and tried to console him the best he could.

"Hey, I know you're scared Sonic but it was only the first night, and chances are all she has is a broken leg. Don't worry so much okay? We'll find her, I promise." Tom stated, trying to calm Sonic's nerves. He appreciated his help but it didn't help calm him much.

They arrived back home and Sonic immediately went upstairs to bed. Maddie looked over to Tom with a worried and sad look, "I'm guessing you didn't find her." Tom looked upstairs and then looked back at Maddie, "we didn't find anything and Sonic keeps getting more anxious. I think I'm gonna get up early tomorrow and start looking." Maddie nodded as she looked over to Tails, slumped over on Knuckles' shoulder half asleep. She scooped him up and took him to bed as Knuckles went to his hammock on the back porch.

Sonic laid in his bed, too distraught to immediately fall asleep. His mind was racing with worried and frantic thoughts. To drown out the thoughts he tried to think of his good memories, his happy ones. It took a while but eventually he dozed off.

xXx

The house was boarded up and Longclaw was guarding the door with a stern focus on protecting her children. Sonic and Rosie tried to keep themselves occupied, not thinking about the situation they're in. About two weeks ago was when the two hoglets snuck out and since then the echidnas had been ruthless in trying to find them.

They'd gotten close before but Longclaw did her best to detour them and throw them off their trail. Sonic still held his promise in protecting his friend and tried to keep her happy in the chaos. He'd tell her stories that Longclaw had told him and they'd color together. Every night when they'd get ready to sleep, Sonic would hug her tightly till she fell asleep so she felt safe.

Longclaw seemed to have heard something and became more laser-focused on what was outside. Once she caught sight of whatever made that sound, she went wide eyed. Soon the smell of smoke became prominent and almost instantly the house started to go up in flames.

Longclaw grabbed Sonic but before she could get Rosie, one of the windows in the house was busted open and a soldier hopped through, grabbing the girl and leaping out back through the window. "NO!" Sonic cried as Longclaw went after the echidna. During her pursuit, arrows were flying through the air aimed to bring her down. She deemed it too dangerous to go after her, as much as it hurt her she'd have to keep Sonic safe.

She turned around and started flying away from the battle as Sonic looked on in shock. "AMY! We have to go back for her! Please, we can't leave her behind!" Sonic began to cry and scream for his friend as the echidnas went out of view. Longclaw landed in a new location, a long abandoned Owl treehome. She placed Sonic down and held him, covering him with her wings.

She didn't know how to console him, she felt guilty for leaving the girl behind but knew that if she went after her, there was a chance that none of them would've made it out. At least she still had Sonic, he was safe.

All Sonic could do was sob, he was confused, angry, upset, hurt.. and especially scared. He'd broken his promise, he didn't protect her, he couldn't keep her safe. She was gone. "Please, we have to go back and find her, please!" Sonic pleaded. Longclaw knew she couldn't leave Sonic alone to find her, they could find him and take him too. "It's too dangerous Sonic, I'm sorry."

He cried harder and sobbed until he fell asleep. Over the weeks following the loss of his only friend, he became upset, he hardly ate and was almost always asleep. Eventually, the trauma became too much for him and he just woke up one day with no memory of what happened. He'd suppressed it all.

xXx

Sonic awoke with a sharp and loud gasp. He was in a cold sweat and started hyperventilating, he finally had the last piece of the puzzle...but it was worse than he thought. Those same emotions he felt the night he lost her were coming back to him and his mind was a hurricane of negative thoughts. He began to cry, gasping loudly in between sobs.

Tom had already went off to search for the girl they'd been looking for but Maddie was still in bed. She was woken up by Sonic's distress and quickly ran upstairs to see what was wrong. He was sobbing and breathing heavily whilschaptesurehis head in his hands, rocking back in forth with his eyes closed tightly.

She rushed to his side and tried to console him, "Sonic! Sonic, calm down! What's wrong, you can tell me!" He didn't stop crying but hugged Maddie tightly, sobbing out words that she couldn't make out. "Hey, hey, it's okay, just tell me what's wrong." she said as she patted his head.

He sniffled, tears still rolling down his cheeks and looked up at Maddie, "I saw it...I saw the reason why I forgot. I...I lost her." His voice broke at the last word but he continued, "the echidnas, they attacked us, they burnt our house down and they took her. Longclaw wouldn't go get her. I lost her, I promised I'd protect her and I lost her and now she's hurt again and I don't even know where she is!"

Maddie hugged him tighter, "it isn't your fault, like we said yesterday, we'll find her." He continued to sniffle and cry until he dozed off. The sun was shining through the window but Maddie covered it with a blanket and tucked Sonic in. She went down stairs to call Tom to see if he'd found anything but he called her first. She accepted the call and before she could ask, Tom spoke, "I found something."

CLIFFHANGERRRRRR!

I didn't actually expect to get onto this part so quickly but as I was writing it just felt right. The next chapter might be the last one but I might have another one after that, all I know is that this isn't gonna have many more chapters. I know it's kinda been a short story but I might make a one shot book where I just write a bunch of different things I come up with.

Anyways, if you have any critiques or just have something to say make sure to leave a review! I love reading them ^^