My mind has finally gotten a chance to blank out. When I'm fighting or on a mission, it's always occupied with predicting the next move that's going to be thrown at me. If I get going fast enough, the world around me slows down. Makes any fight almost too easy.

You know, I never thought I'd say this, but for once, I was actually glad Doctor Tub-o'-lard had shown up. As long as I'm occupied, I'm not going to end up depressed. So Eggman's a welcome distraction when things get boring around here and I have nothing to do. It keeps me, once again, from thinking too hard. If I'm dodging around, I don't have to think about why I do things. It's so... Well, the best word I can come up with is "simple," I guess.

My legs are carrying me around the robot just fast enough to avoid damage. I bounce easily around his attacks. Jump, land, jump, land, pause, slam feet into ground to fly up, hit the machine in today's obvious weak spot, bounce away, land. It's the same routine from the last gajillion times I've fought him, but it's usually a little harder each time to hit the weak point for damage. It really just never gets old to me.

Eggman actually manages to startle me by breaking his constant rhythm enough to clip my back. He curses slightly as it misses the spot he aimed at to injure me by about a centimeter. I cockily stick my tongue out and make a ridiculous face at him. Of course, he tries to hit again, so I hop over his attack and slam his machine another time.

Tiny arcs of electricity are spitting out from under the cockpit now. I hear the electronic beep of a warning light turning on inside the still-normal cockpit. Over so soon? I backflip out of the way of the next shot and dash sideways to avoid the follow-up. After a few more shots, he decided to try the rhythm-breaking tactic again.

The blast misses me by a fortunate few inches, but I hear it slash into the forest behind me. Since I'm concerned that it could've caused actual damage, I Homing Attack directly into the cockpit, rendering the remainder of his robot into scrap metal. I run backwards and watch Robotnik flee moments before the inevitable explosion of the useless machine. I turned my head now to the forest. The sound of a cracking tree filled my ears as I raced toward the trajectory I had guessed for the projectile. The falling tree juts into my vision.

"Ah crap, there's someone under it!" I exclaimed. A dark form lay face up beneath where the tree was going to hit the hardest, if I knew my physics. Which I should, considering my fighting prowess. I curled myself into Spin Dash form and launched myself toward "it" with all my might. I popped out of my ball form to "its" immediate left and snatched "it." With impressive strength, I slammed my feet into the ground, throwing us a few feet forward and out of the tree's path. A short moment afterward, wood was all around the area and leaves were dancing just above the stump.

It took me a moment to shake off my adrenaline rush. I wasn't bad off, but I had kinda shaken myself. My vision was a little out of focus, so trying to survey anything made me woozy. Once I returned to my senses and normal pulse, I took the time to figure out who-- and what-- I'd grabbed. I could feel immediately that they were a hedgehog. Upon further inspection once my vision cleared, I found them to be female. She was covered mostly in jet-black fur and quills, with a singed-looking brown muzzle. The only things she wore were a pair of beaten-up shoes of an unrecognizable brand and light gray mismatched gloves. Her entire body seemed to be burnt, battered, and bruised. It then occurred to me that she might be dead already.

I set her down and placed an ear to her mouth. She was still barely breathing, and I could feel her weak pulse. I guess I must've saved this pretty little lady's life, I thought. She can thank me for that later. As I hefted her into my arms and ran for the ladder into the rest of Mystic Ruins, I wondered how she could've gotten hurt so brutally.

* * *

I cautiously thumped the door open with my shoulder. I didn't want to injure the burden I had worked so hard to save.

"Sonic! I'm glad you're back, but what're you holding?" a pink hedgehog I didn't recognize asked me. I nearly did a double-take; I had forgotten what had happened to my friends.

"She's hurt, real bad," was all I could think of to say at the time.

"Oh... Here, let me get the door for you," Amy said, throwing open the basement door. He ran ahead to open the now makeshift hospital door.

As I set the girl down on a bed, I saw Tails rubbing an eye in the far left bed. "Wha's goin' on?" she yawned. I turned to her.

"Eggman snapped a tree at the end of our fight, and I found her about to get thwacked with it as it fell," I summarized.

"Oh!" Tails seemed suddenly awake. "Let me take a look at her. You should go rest for now. Don't worry about her; she's in good hands!" She said the last two words proudly, thumping a fist to her heart. I couldn't help but smile at the sweetness of it.

"Awright. I'll trust ya, lil' bro... Er, I guess it's 'sis' now, huh?" I said, getting a better look at her for the first time. She did look kinda cute in the clothes she was wearing.

"Aw, c'mon, Sonic! Don't think about it! Just keep calling me what you have for the last... ever!" she said, frowning slightly before smiling. I gave her a thumbs-up as I left the room.

"Will do, Tails."



I headed slowly up the stairs to my room. I didn't really trust myself to sleep at this point, so I booted up my new computer to mess with it. I'm not so good with electronics, but I think Tails doesn't mind having to fix them. I figured that it would be a while before I could get my downloads back, so I contented myself with running the OS setup. It's another custom thing made by the inventor of the house. Sometimes I think she's almost TOO smart...

I didn't want to sleep because I had terrible nightmares the previous night. They were so vivid that I still remembered them at that point. They all centered around one theme: pain. In eight hours of sleep, I experienced countless horrors. I would feel severe, burning pain for a while, and then the scene would switch to another form of it. I was severely abused hundreds of times, and I no doubt died thousands of deaths along with them. I shuddered convulsively in the computer chair as I remembered the blood, the gore, and the feeling of having my very soul torn from my body. My only possible guess of the reasons for the torture was my guilt about Shadow. I wonder if all of those things happened to Shadow? I thought. Maybe that was why I had been forced to endure so much in my sleep. I shook the thoughts off and began to adjust the sound settings.

I stood and grabbed my headphones out of my CD player, carefully shoving the plug into my fancy high-quality speakers. I dropped in one of my favorite discs to test the volume. The first song was about believing in what you thought was right, even if it didn't seem to be. It's like my "theme," in a way, because it describes how I feel all the time. I sighed and relaxed myself into my chair as I carefully moved the slider upward until it sounded perfect to my ears.

The thing I like best about music is the fact that you can just sorta drop into it. Everything and anything you are thinking about can just leave your head, if you let it. You become the music. This numbness fills your body if you've tuned the sound just right, and you go into a trance you can break whenever you want. It has all of the benefits of drugs, and none of the side-effects.

I close my eyes for a bit, when I suddenly wake up. The music stopped, I notice. That's why I'm awake, right? But I'm still a bit tired. I look over at the clock by the front of my bed. My vision's all blurry, so I rub my eyes to clear it. The clock says... Whoa, six o' clock? I must have really fallen asleep.

A faint scent reaches my nostrils. It smells like... Plastic? Oh, the computer's been on for about ten hours. No wonder. I punched the power button and finally succumbed to my body's nagging about sleep, despite the likelihood (That word's a bit out of character for me, isn't it? Must be Shadow again...) of nightmares.