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October 14, 1987


The sun was beginning to set as Joan O'Meara and Naoto Ohshima left the Edwards Army Hospital. They had been trying for two hours straight to get in; with everyone hanging in the lobby, demanding time in a certain person's hospital room, it was impossible. The story was too big for mortals outside of the journalist realm to even do anything about it, and the two had been ordered to leave by several nurses. They, along with several others, would not be seeing Meg tonight, perhaps not ever again.

"…..Well….." Joan rubbed her face. "What a day."
"Hai." Naoto's voice seemed distant with wonder. "Incededeibele."
"…You have to wonder if….." Joan paused. "….Come on. We've got some driving ahead of us."

The two got into the car, silent. As Joan got into the car, she looked up into the sky, then towards the hospital window where New York Times financial reporter Margaret Rye lay. The victim of a terrible accident, she should have died in a fireball effect from the crash of three WWII-era planes, but something happened. She was saved somehow.

The faded figure of a doctor was bent down next to her, along with several reporters, and Joan could only guess what they could be asking. A miracle, yes; an unexplainable one at that, but the reporters were obviously going to have a field day. Joan and Naoto, of course, did not yet know what Meg knew; they simply knew the ghost story of Scott Garnet.

"…..Heh." Joan looked out beyond the dashboard. "I guess some things can't be explained. We could only wish that the ghost of Scott Garnet was free, right?"
"…Hai."
"Forty years ago, he died. Then he lived on as Sonic - at least according to veterans' tales. He was a storybook character to me. But...I wonder….." Joan gave a chuckle. "Nah, never mind. Its crazy, but you have to wonder if the jacket was why he remained here, if he was still here. If he existed as a ghost and such."
"What do you mean, if?"
"Well, I….Naoto?"

Joan paused. The voice that just spoke didn't sound like Naoto.

"Nao…"

She slowly turned quizzically at Naoto. Her heart stopped when she saw him turned towards the back, his eyes almost bugged out. She slowly turned her eyes towards the back, and she almost screamed.

"You dropped your purse." He held up Joan's swinging bag from the tip of his pointer finger for Joan and Naoto to see. "You should be happy that I found it before the cops and reporters found me."

He sat on the back seat, his beloved pilot jacket, somehow taken from the hospital room, hanging off of his shoulders. His short blue legs were spread; one sat on the pile of books in the car, the other hung off of the seat towards the floor. His skin, with the exception of a few patches of light apricot, around his face and his hands, was a bright, almost blinding blue. The few tufts of hair on his head, and his small, seemingly sharp spikes, they were also blue. He wore a pair of bright red sneakers with whie streaks about them, though they were slightly worn from constant use.

For a moment, there was complete silence. His brown eyes looked back and forth toward the two humans, waiting for a reply.

"S……..s……"

Joan's mouth was wide open. The bottom lip bobbed up and down, trying to work with the throat box to form syllables, words, anything. Yet she could find no way to speak; there was no way to describe it. There had been no thunderous foreboding this time, no blazed trail of dust, no fuzzy shadow in the wind or fire, not even wind. He was just there.

"Hey, I don't bite." He gave a soft smile, almost like a smirk, just as Scott had once done on the day he last saw Mary. "Didn't mean to startle you like that, Joan. That's your name, right?"

Like a puppet, Joan's head bobbed slowly up and down. Slowly, in a dream-like movement, she took her purse back, her hand touching his skin, even squeezing his finger, as she slid the handle off. At her squeezing, his blood vessels throbbed under the pressure.

"Heh." Sonic slowly wiggled his finger from her hand. "Sorry. Squished my finger a bit there."
"R……..right……"

Joan looked at Naoto, who stared at the creature in total fascination. It was as if a new light struck him from looking upon the new passenger, a flash of inspiration. His face had brightened up completely.

"So….niku?"
"If that's what you want to call me." Sonic stretched onto the backseat. Both of his sneakered feet landed on the books while his head rested near the window. He rubbed his nose and rubbed his back spikes to adjust them to the car side. "Most people call me that. They say I can break the sound barrier and overcome the resistance of the sonic wind factor. When I do that, there's a sonic boom. There's some truth to it," He smirked again. "Whether or not you want to believe it is your choice."
"….Scott."
"Hmm?"
"You're-"
"Dead? Not really." Sonic closed his eyes as he propped his hands under his head. "If that were true, why, how could I have come back for my jacket? Couldn't leave the States without it. Kind of forgot it back in Rome, then it takes me almost half a century to find it!" One of his hands produced the SONIC name decal and the silhouette patch, both tattered and with burnt edges. "Ah well. The stitches on this burned up, but at least I was able to save them."
"…..seat belt."
"Huh?"
"Please…." Joan was still not sure if what she was experiencing was real. "Please put on….your seat belt."
"…Oh. Right."

Abruptly, the hedgehog sat up, his hand on the seat belt. With a movement quicker than lightning, he clasped it in. When he did this, a loud sound came from his stomach, and he grinned sheepishly.

"Uh, say…not to be a jerk about all this barging in and stuff….you wouldn't happen to have some food here, would you? I'm kind of hungry, and you can only live on scraps for so long."

For the first time since seeing him in the back, Joan gave a chuckle. She put the car into drive and out on the radio. The guitar rift of Pink Floyd began to drift into the speakers.

"So, so you think you can tell……heaven from hell….." The sound of Roger Waters' voice then filtered in. "Blue skies from pain….can you tell a green field…."

"We'll get some food on the way. We have a ways to go before San Francisco, either way."

A braggart, her mind recalled the first SONIC book, long forgotten by many others, as she began to drive out of the hospital parking lot. He could be braggart, heroic, and cocky, but in truth he was innocent and good with a heart of gold. Everyone knew of him, but few knew that with all his actions and feats, he truly had no real mean bone in his body. Because he truly existed to help people and be a friend, to put himself in danger when no one else would. But even then, he was nothing more than a little blue hedgehog to some.

"Did they get you to trade….your heroes for ghosts? Hard ashes for trees? Hot air for a cool breeze? Cold comfort for change?…"

The sun was beginning to dip behind the hills as the car drove onto the main base road, past the airfield and out into the open desert. Joan and Naoto said nothing; however, they wore smiles on their face, smiles as bearers of an incredible secret that only they (and, to an extent, Meg) truly knew of.

"…..walk-on part in the war, for a lean role in a cage?"

There was nothing to interrupt the scenery as it dashed by him, so Sonic squirmed in the seat belt. After he managed to turn himself enough, he pressed his nose and hands against the back window. It gave him a panoramic view. The silhouette of the desert landscape, the colors that it created, seemed to go on forever, making the desert look as if there was no end. The purples and oranges of the clouds that hung high up accented the sinking sun in the western sky. As Sonic looked towards the eastern horizon, the colors became darker until they had all become blackish blue, with only the dim stars to light the sky beyond that point. He gave a smile of remembrance, to a day long past, back to a time when things had been a little simpler, when he took his last good look at a desert sunset with the girl he loved. This treat was just an extra to him; it was good enough to finally be able to begin his real work, now that he had his jacket back.

"How I wish, how I wish you were here…"
"Beautiful," he murmured.

Nodding with a smile, he turned back towards the front. He crossed his arms, looking back and forth from Joan to Naoto.

"…..Hey say, Naoto…."
"Hai?"
"Where do you live?"
"Tokyo."
"Never been." He had an idea of where to start, and he had the feeling Naoto knew it. "So, I'm sure the Japanese countryside is rebuilt by now."
"It is pedeity." Naoto took out a small pad and began to scribble in the dark. "Tokyo City, it have neon light and many building, different from before. Very hekek…..hehek…?"
"Hectic." Joan spotted another McDonald's. "Here we can get off for food…. ."
"Hectic, huh?"
"Hai…..but beiauteifoul and….colaful at night."
"….Hectic and pretty…."

Sonic's smile returned. Somewhere within his hedgehog body, he could feel the human urge to go for the opportunity. His life, even now, after all of the changes, wasn't going to be the same again.

"Sounds nice."