Title: A Plea to Kill
Author: Borath
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: A few swear words may have slipped the net, and there's definite m-preg stuff, so if that squicks you, do click 'back' now.
Disclaimer: I own nothing in this piece except for the plot. All characters are property of the folk at Sega. I merely toy with them for my own twisted amusement.
A/N: I watched the last few minutes of 'Sonic X' the other day, and I happened to witness a particular character drawling out 'this is so lame' at the other character's antics. And I fell in love. I was a fan of the original series years ago and have only just rediscovered it now, so I hunted around ff.net a bit and garnered a little knowledge from other authors.
Basically, I'm very new to the fandom and I'm likely completely off in a lot of respects. But I did my best and really enjoyed writing this, and that's all that really matters at the end of the day, isn't it?
A Plea to Kill
They'd been standing in the clearing an hour now and neither were anywhere near getting what they wanted. Sonic was struggling to keep his temper in check against Knuckle's crude goading, and the echidna hadn't managed to incite the fight he so desperately wanted. Needed. He wouldn't win –his body's condition had degraded too much over the last four months- but he didn't want to win. He wanted one good hard punch to the stomach so that he could get on with his life and be done with this whole messy and potentially dangerous situation.
That was perhaps what infuriated him the most; the rest of them were so bloody naïve. Robotnick had, for lack of a better word, infected him with a new type of nanobot, nasty little critters that were tearing away parts of him from within and building a new biomechanical hybrid. In his body. Sonic and the others seemed quite happy to take this new condition of his as a pregnancy, but Knuckles saw it for what it really was: he'd turned into a walking bomb. Who the hell knew what would happen when it was finished 'growing' and decided to explode out of his gut in a surround-sound, Technicolor, 'Alien' fashion? Whenever that was due. He was already too fat for his liking.
His body wasn't as scrawny as it used to be, not as lithe. His strength remained but now there was extra girth to move as well as the fact that the little maggot was sucking up his energy and throwing off his balance. Knuckles liked to think that that was the reason that Sonic didn't want to fight him now; it would be an easy victory, and that wasn't good enough for the often-cocky hedgehog. He didn't want to consider Sonic's true reasons, which were frustrating and painful.
"Let's just get this over with," Knuckles bit out, lowering his head and raising up his sizable fists. It was a traditional defensive stance but he wasn't planning on using it.
Sonic for his part radiated refusal, his own arms crossed with his legs a stride apart. He didn't so much as flick a quill at Knuckle's move. "You know I'm not going to do anything."
A growl, long and low, ending with him dropping his fists in frustration. His right hand brushed his stomach as it dropped, reminding him needlessly and fuelling the fire. "You have to! I haven't killed it myself so you're going to have to help me."
He'd tried to do it himself, oh had he tried. Valiantly and creatively too. Any mission that would involve a lot of bots he snapped up instantly, disappearing for a few hours only to return with the necessary data or what-have-you relatively unscathed, bitching that the bots wouldn't hit him. Pick him up, block his path and shove him away, yes, but they wouldn't hit him. Apparently Robotnick didn't want his little toy accidentally damaged. That had pushed a few buttons in Knuckle's head. Trying to get in the way of the bots had resulted in nothing, and hitting himself was completely pointless. Regardless of how badly he wanted to, he just couldn't put the force required into a punch aimed at himself. Maybe it was just the angle…
Sonic tried approaching him again, as he would a wounded animal. The last time he'd tried to get close to Knuckles he'd gotten a very neat black eye that had almost incited him enough to do something that he didn't want to. No, he didn't want to hit Knuckles, or help him in the destructive way he wanted. He wanted to reason with him, because there was something important that the echidna was completely missing in all of this.
"Knuckles, you've got to listen to me. There's something you've gotta know and I'm not leaving until I get it through that thick skull of yours," he ventured, now only a few yards from the other and gathering confidence that the echidna wasn't going to do anything.
Rolling his eyes, Knuckles glanced up into the tree reaching out above him before springing into it, settling on one of the thick lower branches and glaring out through the leaves at the sky. He wasn't getting anywhere and he knew it, but that didn't mean that he had to listen to Sonic.
Standing under the tree directly beneath Knuckles, the blue hedgehog narrowed his eyes and clenched his fists hard. His teammate could be beyond difficult sometimes. "Amy said that the last time she checked out the ba-"
"Don't call it that," Knuckles interrupted, his voice dangerously low. "It's a thing."
Expression softening a little, Sonic sighed a little and scrubbed at the back of his head before looking back up into the tree again. "Alright, the last time she checked 'it', she saw that there weren't any nanobots there. There were plenty when she first checked you out but there's been less and less and now there's none."
Knuckles dropped from the tree with his back turned and began stalking away from him, heading into the woods and further away from the knothole. He had not intention of listening to the shit currently being spouted by the blue hedgehog.
"Look, Robotnick failed in making this echidna-mechanic hybrid thing, but he started something that *you're* finishing. It's yours now." He was following Knuckles now, keeping a respectable distance away from the other. Knuckle's spoke without looking back at him, but then again he had a habit of doing that, usually to help get his point across.
"I don't *want* it. Why the hell can't any of you understand that?" he snarled, muscles tight as he continued walking. Once he was in the trees he stood a fair chance of losing Sonic. Even in this… state, he could still work up and through the trees far better than Sonic, who'd have no choice but to give up trying to find him and leave him in relative peace. The smaller hero never did give up on anything easily though. Just like now.
"Because we know that if you somehow do manage to kill it, you'll regret it for the rest of your life. It didn't start out in the best way, fine, but it's an innocent and it's *your* baby."
Knuckles stopped dead and whirled on the spot to face him in the same movement. Stalking back towards Sonic who stood his ground unwaveringly, he got them almost toe-to-toe before shouting his response to that. "I don't give a shit if it's innocent. It's screwing with my body and my head and I don't even want it! I'm the last of my kind, just me. I guard that forsaken spit of an island with my life and help out you and your motley crew when I can and that's where it ends. I don't do kids."
Sonic knew that the situation called for some sensitivity and compassion, but with Knuckles shouting and expletives were far better substitutes. "Stop freaking out about all of this! We're all more than willing to help you out if you'd let us, and as for it messing with your body, the hard part's over now."
Knuckles raised a corrective finger and looked at Sonic pointedly. "No, the hard part's on its way."
Quirking a brow, the blue hero allowed the corner of his mouth to twitch up in a small smirk, crossing his arms again as a shield between himself and the other. "I consider puking every meal and passing out twice a day to be trying, even if it only lasted a few weeks."
The echidna had no response to that and merely looked away, gaze twitching across between individual blades of grass as he considered. Shouting at Sonic, demanding his help wasn't going to get him anywhere, and he was the only one who could sort out his little problem despite probably being the least willing. Provoking him into a fight where he might 'accidentally' get certain parts of his body in the way of a kick or a punch wasn't working either. It was then that Knuckles quietly realised that he hadn't actually *asked* for help.
Tension visibly leaked out of his neck and shoulders, tendons flattening as his body took on the appearance of one defeated. And perhaps he had been. Exhaling slowly and resolving himself, Knuckles brought his gaze back to Sonic's own eyes, conveying his feelings through sight as well as his words. Taken back by Knuckles' completely changed demeanour, Sonic felt his arms drop and mouth open slightly.
He was oddly fascinated by all of this, a cold feeling stemmed from suddenly realizing just how badly Knuckles wanted to kill the child settling in his gut. This whole issue of abortion wasn't about pride if the echidna was so willing to push aside so much to carry it out. And he certainly seemed willing to.
"Whatever it is, it's my choice whether or not to keep it," the echidna stated, gesturing vaguely in the air with one hand and watching for a reaction. Sonic shifted, apparently uncomfortable, and nodded a little. "And I don't want to, but I need your help to do that."
This is where it got hard. Case and point conveyed, but now it was the crunch and Knuckles had to swallow a lot of pride to get the words out.
"Please help me."
The shock factor in the simple plea may have played a significant part in Sonic's assent, and the expression that accompanied it certainly had a substantial role. Nodding with his own sigh of defeat, the blue hedgehog's words were breathed rather than spoken, as if he'd rather not solidify what he had just agreed to.
"Yeah. Yeah, I'll help you."
Knuckles nodded sharply and gave a grunt of approval, walking around Sonic and back into the clearing. He glanced about himself as Sonic approached, thinking about how best to do this. Away from the Knothole, certainly, but through the woods or towards the desert, where Sonic could really get his speed up…
"How'd you want to do this?" Sonic asked tiredly, following the other's gaze.
Shrugging, Knuckles placed his hands on his hips. "I think that a sustained shock ought to do it; constant and rapid acceleration. I can't run fast enough to do any damage, but you…"
Sonic nodded in understanding. There were some things that he couldn't do, stuff that he was still getting the hang of, but he could run like no one else. He knew the physics of it, or at least felt them despite not understanding how they worked. He knew how powerful the forces exerted when breaking the sound barrier, for instance, were, and he knew the kind of damage anything faster than that could do.
It was fine for him though; he was built for it, for the high speeds and the exhilaration that followed. Knuckles struggled after passing the speed of sound though, and he didn't like to be pulled by Sonic much faster than that. It would definitely do damage if he dragged him as fast as he could, no doubt enough to do what was bid of him.
And Knuckles knew that perfectly well. Nodding in the direction that would eventually take them to the desert, the echidna extended a hand. "Just go as fast as you can and don't think about it."
"Right." He took the proffered hand at the wrist, noting the tense muscles through his glove. "One question though, just 'cause I never asked before: what's it feel like?"
Knuckles glanced down at himself and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, a knock against his innards causing an eye to twitch. "Heavy. It's heavy."
Knowing that that was it, Sonic gave a warning tug on the arm he held before taking off, keeping to a speed that Knuckles could match as they weaved through the trees. There was no pull as the echidna kept up easily, ducking thin whip-like branches that could leave nasty lashes at this speed. Clearing the woods took barely a minute, and then everything was clear. Flat ground and dust rising in long heated streaks behind them, Knuckles narrowed his eyes against the wind and waited, sneakers smashing into the ground over and over beside Sonic's.
The pull was gradual at first; the blue hedgehog gained a foot lead and then steadily pulled him with him. He couldn't understand the consideration, but quickly understood that Sonic didn't want two to die on this little venture. His body could only cope with so much.
Still, he lengthened his stride to keep up, being pulled when he was not touching the ground as Sonic took three steps between every one of his. The mounting heat and push of the sound barrier built in pressure rapidly about them both, a loud noise resonating out across the area when nature finally yielded.
His fur was heating uncomfortably and the muscles in Knuckles's legs began to twinge and eventually burn. He'd reached his limit now and was more or less gliding behind Sonic. The blue hedgehog seemed to be barely tiring, his body full tilt and his legs a blur. His narrowed eyes were honed on some point that Knuckle's couldn't see and he got the distinct impression that he was simply not looking at him.
The world passed in a blur and it was completely silent now, which was something of a blessing when Knuckles started screaming. The burning in his stomach and lower back had been present when the breached the speed of sound, but now it was becoming unbearable. The child couldn't take the velocity and was being shaken horribly, and the echidna could only imagine feeling it steadily disconnecting from him. The pain stole away every thought though, leaving sensation in a mute world of smeared colour. He closed his eyes against it and felt Sonic reach what must surely have been his limit.
His arms instinctively hugged in on himself when the pain retched a level where he felt he wanted to retch and Sonic felt the pull. He slowed far more gradually than he could have done, a tingling running through his body and his breath coming fast and shallow as he recovered from the sprint. They'd covered more than a few miles at breakneck speed.
When they had stopped completely Knuckles immediately dropped to his knees with a pained cough, freeing himself from the grip Sonic had about his wrist and hugging his midsection doubled over. Unsure of what to do, Sonic knelt down himself and placed a firm hand on the other's back, grimacing at the heat radiating off of him.
After a few moments Knuckles suddenly reached out a hand and put it on Sonic's shoulder, clamping down firmly and then using the smaller hedgehog to ease himself to his feet. The pain was almost blinding now and he could smell blood, his own and something else's, and he didn't want Sonic to be around him anymore. Not for a little while at least while he disposed of it.
Bleary eyed, he surveyed his surroundings for somewhere close that he could go and could have smiled when he saw that they were near another forest. It wasn't far away, realistically, but to Knuckles it looked like a long and torturous trek into the trees. Sonic was a step ahead of him though, realizing what the echidna wanted, and without hesitation collected him up and brought him briskly yet smoothly to the border of the trees. Setting him down on his feet with a large trunk within arm's reach for support, Sonic backed a few respectable steps away.
"I'll wait here."
Knuckles, ashen faced and breathing hard, glanced into the inviting shadows behind him and grimaced. His words came between gasps as he sought to keep his tone at least slightly level. He still had his dignity. "Don't know, how long it'll take."
Sonic nodded almost casually, his expression open. "Doesn't matter. I'm not going anywhere."
Nodding and flexing his fingers out at the hedgehog in what he hoped was an appreciative gesture, Knuckles used the tree to keep himself upright and then stalked as deep into the woods as he could manage. He couldn't become too immersed, as the stench of blood would no doubt attract wildlife whose company he was not in the mood for. But he wanted Sonic to keep away and if he couldn't hear him then chances were that that's what would happen. One blood-curdling scream loud enough to reach his ears though and the hero would come running.
Dropping to his knees feeling distinctly faint, Knuckles thought desperately as to how exactly to do this. However he positioned himself it hurt and it wasn't as if he had any experience in this, even with women. Living alone for the vast majority of his life had meant one or two things like this being left out. Rolling over and up from his back, he slammed both fists into the ground in an attempt to shock his mind into thinking coherently. His pronounced knuckles sunk satisfyingly into the ground and a ripple ran through his stomach but nothing else happened. This felt more comfortable though, more right.
Lowering his forehead to the ground as he sought to get in a decent breath, Knuckles caught sight of a steady stream of blood running down and dripping off the end off his lowered tail, the fluid collecting in neat puddles just past his knees. Groaning, he clenched his jaw and eyelids shut and gently tested the muscles in his stomach. Tensing them caused the pain to mount incredibly but instinct was yelling that that was what was required. Damning Robotnick to hell for a final time, Knuckles made his first attempt at pushing.
****
Sonic had been listening intently since Knuckles had disappeared into the undergrowth, more than ready to help in any way that he could if he heard a sound that denoted the requirement of such an action. The more logical part of his mind knew that the echidna had gone into the woods and away from him for a reason though, and that was what kept him in the same spot when he finally heard the pained sounds.
They were relatively quiet; suppressed, noises that were not meant to be heard, and they made Sonic's skin itch. In traditional waiting-room style, he began to pace the border of the woods, hands wringing behind his back and his eyes focussed on the ground. His agitation mounted over the next twenty minutes, his mind coming up with more reasons for why he should disregard Knuckles's wishes and search for him with every passing second. When he got to 'he could die', not even single-minded pacing could keep him in the clearing.
He got only a few meters into the trees when he sense movement ahead of him. Ducking back out of habit, Sonic watched through a thick bush as Knuckle's emerged from the scrub, pulling off soiled gloves as he walked. Sonic had never seen his bare hands before and he couldn't help but stare for a few seconds now.
The protrusions of bone were exactly that; bone. Uncovered and darkened in colour, they angled out of his hands ribbed and slightly blunt but none the less deadly. His hands were shaking now, the quiver ceasing abruptly when Knuckle's fisted them when Sonic emerged. Their gazes met silently for a moment before the echidna's hardened considerably. That was it. Shields up, walls fortified, no more emotion leakage for Knuckles. Not for now at least.
Walking at a pace he could manage with the least discomfort past Sonic, he put a bare hand on the blue hedgehog's arm when it looked like the hero was going to venture into the bushes he had just emerged from. "Just leave it."
Sonic didn't take his eyes off of the spot. Knuckles sighed with a genuine weariness, his body throbbing angrily and shrieking white fire where his flesh was torn. Exerting a little pressure on the arm, he motioned out of the woods and towards the Knothole.
"Come one; they'll be wondering where we are."
They walked slowly, Sonic matching Knuckles's laboured pace without comment. That wouldn't be fair. He was feeling extremely tentative now and had decided that silence was perhaps the best course of action; he was less likely to put his sneaker in his mouth that way.
When the woods were behind them and it had become quite clear that Knuckles was going to have to begin resting at regular intervals, he ventured a thought quietly. "I can get us back fast. Then you can get some sleep, and maybe some colour."
Knuckles grunted his assent, more than a little distracted by the collection of black spots that were gathering and slowly condensing in his field of vision. Everything was pain and tiredness, but the waves of sensation from his body were doing a good job of distracting his mind from other niggles along the lines of morality and lineage. He didn't want to begin speculating on such things when the corpse was still warm, still where he'd left it.
Sonic caught him barely a microsecond into his fall, blacking out being a mercy to the echidna at this stage, and gathered him up in his arms. He settled on a moderate speed, deciding that he'd risk too much now if he jostled Knuckles too much in this condition. He still needed to be fast though, to get him to Amy and make sure that he was okay before he woke up.
And that thought made him want to slow down a little. He didn't think that he wanted to be there when Knuckles woke up; he doubted that anyone would. But they would be. They'd be there for him, even if he did decide to vanish for a few days and sleep in a tree.
They'd be there.
*** End ***
Wow. That was quite fun actually. Corny ending, yeah, but I figured that it matched the tone. My first Sonic fic so please be gentle, and I'd appreciate any and all feedback on this one. Thanks!