Before we get to the story, I've got some disclaimers I'd like to issue:

- All official characters and locations belong to Sega and Sonic team. Otherwise, all characters and locations belong to me.

- This story is a PREQUEL to the Sonic Movie, and to before Sonic and Tails become famous through fighting Robotnik. That's why Sonic and Tails are both younger than their usual ages. As for why Sonic is three years younger than his official age and Tails is only two, I wrote the plot of Freedom Series so that Sonic's birthday occurs later in the year than Tails' one.

- Reading Freedom Series 1 and 2 is recommended before reading this story, but it's not required. Still, if you want to get the full enjoyment out of this story, I encourage you to go back and read 1 and 2 before looking at this one.

- Now that we've got those things out of the way, enjoy the story.

FREEDOM SERIES 3: SURVIVAL

Chapter 1: Dying Flames

March 3rd, 2314 – 4:50 PM – Forest Town, Elona

A massive cloud of black smoke billowed up over the tops of the quiet houses. It was so large and so tall that it almost blotted out the mid-afternoon sun. This wasn't right at all. That cloud of smoke belonged on a battlefield somewhere far away, not here in the middle of a peaceful city.

"D-d-daddy..." Tails stammered, watching the cloud as it continued its upward spiral into the sky. His knees quaked, nearly knocking against each other from fear. Someone roughly grabbed him by the arm.

"Come on!" Sonic yelled at him. "We have to hurry Tails!"

Tails nodded to the blue hedgehog standing next to him.

"L-Let's go Sonic..." Tails said, choking out the words through the tears.

"Hang on!"

The hedgehog's feet began to move so fast, that the red sneakers made his feet look like nothing but a giant red wheel. They took off down the street with the speed of a jet fighter, Tails' feet flew off the ground due to the high speed, and he flapped in the air like a flag as he clung to Sonic's hand. Within less than a minute, they were back at the university, where the two of them had left Kyle Prower to fight the insane Dr. Robotnik and his egg pod. Tails knew his father had told them to run, but he just couldn't leave his dad behind like that. He had finally talked Sonic into going back to the college, but was it too late?

Sonic screeched to a halt outside of the college's parking lot, which was the source of the fire. The plumes of smoke were flying up from the burning husks of the parked cars, making it difficult to breathe. Tails coughed and wheezed as the smoke reached his nostrils, filling his lungs. His father Kyle was in that smoldering wreckage somewhere, and they needed to save him.

"Come on!" Sonic said as he jogged into the firestorm. "Let's find your dad!"

Tails took a look at the massive flames, terrified of getting burned to death, but the worry for the safety of his father quickly overrode his pyrophobia. He ran right after Sonic into the blaze. The two of them darted around, covering their faces with their hands to keep from inhaling too much smoke. Occasionally, they called out Kyle's name, but there was never a response.

After about a minute of searching through the blackness, Tails heard Sonic scream, "Tails! Over here!"

Tails followed the sound of Sonic's voice, and eventually saw the blue hedgehog kneeling next to a still burning corpse. He could hear Sonic sniffling, as if he were about to start crying. The hedgehog looked up as he approached, with tears about to slide down his face. Tails looked at Sonic, and opened his mouth to say 'That's Dad?' but no words came out. Sonic seemed to have understood him just fine though. He nodded to confirm that yes, it was Kyle Prower. He held up an assault rifle that was lying next to the corpse, and Tails instantly recognized it as his father's gun. There was no mistaking it, even if it was covered with black soot, dents and scratches from what was definitely an explosion.

However, as Tails glanced at the corpse, he saw that his father's body had fared much worse. Most of the red fur on the front of the body had been charred off, and the flames were beginning to melt the skin, exposing the innards. Shards of shrapnel protruded from the flesh. His blood formed a puddle on the blacktop around the body. Still worse was the face. It was frozen into a silent scream of agony, showing that he had been in horrifying pain right before the end. If it weren't for the rifle nearby, Tails might not have even recognized his father's corpse, with how much the flames had mutilated it.

Tails fell down on his knees next to the body, tears flooding out of his eyes in full force. They fell upon the flames of his father's body and vaporized into steam as they made contact.

"Dad...Dad...wake up!" Tails screamed.

Tails wanted to try to shake his father awake, but the flames were preventing him from touching the body. Despite the flames, the young six-year-old fox continued to cling to the belief that it was impossible for his father to die. Your dad wasn't supposed to die, because he was supposed to be the strongest man on the planet, right?

"Tails, he's dead..." Sonic said slowly, between sobs.

"No, he can't be!" Tails yelled at Sonic, the tears in his eyes making the twelve-year-old hedgehog before him look like a formless blue blob. "He's my dad!"

"Tails, he died," Sonic said, this time a little more sternly. "Quit pretending that he's still alive, 'cause he's not."

"No!" Tails shouted, shaking his head.

"Robotnik must have got him," Sonic said angrily, clenching his fist. The tears dried from his eyes. "I should have stayed and helped him! Instead I ran away and let him die! I feel like such an idiot!"

Sonic stood up and kicked the side of a car nearby. However, as his foot hit the metal body, an explosion erupted from the opposite side of the vehicle. It wasn't very big, but it was enough to send Sonic and Tails tumbling to their feet. Tails slowly stood up, and looked at Sonic. The hedgehog looked totally surprised that one simple little kick could make an explosion that big.

However, surprise gave way to terror as they heard the sound of a familiar jet engine from inside the flames. Robotnik emerged from the clouds of black smoke in his small personal ship. He must have been the one who caused the explosion. A devilish grin crossed the doctor's face as he looked down at the two youngsters. The light from the flames of the burning cars reflected off of Robotnik's glasses, making him look like a demon with fire in his eyes. The doctor and his ship appeared to be in mint condition despite the surroundings, which meant that the fight between him and Kyle had been more of a slaughter rather than a battle.

"You think you feel like an idiot now Sonic," Robotnik said. "Just wait until I tell you this. Kyle, that fool, gave up his pathetic life just to give you a minute at most to escape me, and by coming back here you've even thrown that away. Yes, thanks to you, Kyle's death was nothing but a complete and utter waste!"

Sonic clenched his fist, his fingers digging into his hand so deeply Tails wouldn't be surprised if blood started to seep out.

"Damn you!" Sonic screamed.

Tails watched as the scene unfolded before him. Sonic leaped towards the ship the mad doctor was flying in, curling into a ball and preparing to smash into it like a wrecking ball. Before he could reach the human's ship, he was shot down by one of Robotnik's laser cannons. The hedgehog screamed as he crashed to the ground. Sonic held one hand to a bleeding hole in his leg, as he moaned out his anguish. He gazed up at Robotnik with the most intensely hateful gaze Tails had ever seen in his life. Sonic looked like if he could, he would tear Robotnik apart with his bare hands, limb from limb.

"I was expecting more from Swift Hedgehog's son," Robotnik haughtily said. "Oh well, not that it matters much to me. Say hello to your dad for me, Sonic!"

Sonic growled, and then he started to get up despite his leg injury. Before he could stand up again though, a hail of laser fire from Robotnik's ship tore into his body, the assault so violent and sudden that he was literally torn to pieces. Tails looked away as his adopted brother's body fell...no...splattered to the ground. The fox felt like he was going to throw up, between the choking flames, the emotional blow from the loss of his family, and the gruesome scene he had just witnessed.

"And now fox boy, it's time for you to join your own father as well," Robotnik coldly said.

Tails turned around and looked up at the mad doctor, the doctor looking back at him with those devilish yellow eyes produced by the fire's light. Robotnik brought the laser gun to bear on the child's forehead, and fired. The fox briefly felt the laser tear through his skull and into his brain. Then there was a blinding white light, and then darkness...nothing more...

Tails jerked his eyes open, jumping up and hitting his head on the low ceiling of the cardboard box he was sleeping in. He frantically gazed around the blackness of the inside of the box, expecting to see those glowing devil eyes looking at him again, but he saw nothing. He moved a hand across his forehead, and felt no laser hole. All Tails felt was the three hairs he usually liked to have sticking out of his forehead.

It's okay...it was just that nightmare again...

This time though, for some reason it felt a lot more real than it had the other nights. So real, in fact, that Tails actually did feel sick at his stomach, like he had in the dream. He realized he was rapidly approaching the danger zone, and hurriedly jumped out of his cardboard box. He only just got out in time as he took a deep breath and threw up last night's dinner all over the alleyway. As Tails coughed up the last of it, he heard Sonic's box rustling as he struggled to get out of his own "room". Sonic walked over to Tails and put his hands on his shoulders.

"Hey, you okay?" Sonic whispered.

Tails nodded, trying to cough the rotten taste of his vomit out of his mouth.

"Come over here," Sonic said, walking over to a small water faucet sticking out of the brick wall on the other side of the alley. "Drink some water."

Sonic turned the rusty valve with one hand, the old handle squeaking as the water came pouring out. Tails cupped his hands underneath the faucet to collect the water, and brought it up to his mouth. He gulped it down and it was freezing cold. Some of it tricked down his neck and chest, making him shiver. Tails was more intent on getting that terrible taste out of his mouth though, as he drank several more handfuls of water from the faucet. After he was done, he brushed a hand across his neck and chest fur, trying to get it dry. As he finished doing that, he saw Sonic turning the handle back, cutting off the stream of water.

"Did you have that nightmare again?" Sonic asked.

Tails just nodded his head.

"It must have really been bad if it got you this sick," the hedgehog said. "Remember though, what you saw didn't really happen. See? Both of us are still here."

"I know," Tails said.

The actual event was only slightly different from what Tails saw in his nightmares. At the start of the dream, his mother Natalie had just finished a de-roboticizer that she had been working on. His dad Kyle had been roboticized during the Robotnik War six years ago, and he had been stuck in a robot body for all that time. However, right after his de-roboticization was complete, Robotnik blew up the lab, and Natalie was killed when a part of the ceiling collapsed on top of her. Kyle told Sonic and Tails to run away to safety while he fought Robotnik, and they did that. However, Tails was terrified for his dad, and he convinced Sonic to take him back to the college. When they got there, all the cars in the parking lot were on fire, and Kyle's burned body was in the middle of them.

This was where the dream broke off from what actually happened. In the dream, Robotnik came back and killed him and Sonic. However, in reality, they saw Robotnik's badly-damaged ship burning on the ground, near Kyle's body. Robotnik himself was nowhere to be found, so the two of them figured he was still alive. They went to the airport and took off in a plane that belonged to Sonic's late father Swift, called the Tornado. They had been flying all over Planet Freedom since then, looking for a new home where they would be safe from Robotnik. If they just stayed in Forrest Town, Robotnik would surely be back for them. They hadn't been able to find a new place to live yet.

Why did we have to be the only ones to live? Why couldn't my mom and dad have lived too?

It seemed like a million years had passed since he had seen his parents dead, when in actuality it had only been nine days. Nine days ago, he was still worried about turning in a science project on time, he never had to think about whether or not he was going to eat that night, he still had a real room and parents he could come home to, and he had thought that the terrible Robotnik his father had told him about was dead.

It was amazing how much his life had been changed in just a few minutes on that day. It wasn't supposed to happen that fast. Now he and Sonic were homeless, and unsure of what to do. Their dread continued to increase with every day. Their supplies were almost completely used up, the Tornado was nearly out of fuel, and they had no money left. Running around on foot with an empty stomach sure didn't sound attractive, but before long they would have no choice but to do it.

Tails had thought everything was going to be okay when Sonic told him that they were going to get through this, no matter what. Tails believed him, because Sonic had helped him when he was in trouble a lot of times in his life. However, he was starting to realize the cold, hard reality of the situation they were in. It wasn't as easy as Sonic made it out to be. He no longer had a nice warm bed to sleep in at night, the two of them had to scavenge in garbage cans for food, and worst of all both of them had no family left now.

"We should have stayed with Carrie," Tails mumbled. "Then we would have still had beds to sleep in."

They ran into a friendly white wolf named Carrie Strafer about a week ago, and she had shared some of her supplies with them, but she was gone now. They had left her at her new home in Nedlo, the capital city of Tneicna. Sonic had said that the two of them should go find their own home rather than stay with her, but he was starting to regret that decision. They couldn't just fly back to Tneicna again either, because there wasn't enough fuel left in the Tornado to do that.

"I know Tails," Sonic said. "It was a stupid idea to just leave her. I didn't think things would get this bad."

Tails nodded. He looked up at the sky above the tops of the buildings around them, but saw nothing but black clouds. There wasn't a single star out tonight. The sky had been like that ever since they had arrived in this place.

That was about five hours ago. They had decided to touch down after the Tornado got down to about one eighth of its fuel tank capacity. The first place they saw that could serve as a suitable makeshift runway was an open field in the middle of a forest. After hiding the Tornado behind a bunch of trees and covering it with loose branches, they took off walking. They had seen a city in the distance as they were coming down to land, so they decided to go there in the hopes that they could find food.

When they had entered town, nobody was running around on the streets, and there were very few lights on in the windows they saw. So, the two of them had tried their best to go to sleep, since they couldn't see much of anything in the dark anyway. It felt like the whole city reeked of shadows and loneliness. The only light in the alleyway came from a flickering caged light bulb above a nearby doorway. It felt like they were standing on a small island of light in the middle of a sea of darkness. What made it all the more worse was that neither of them had any idea where this city was, exactly.

"I don't like this place Sonic," Tails said. "It's really scary and dark, like a cave with a monster in it. Why did we have to come down here? I don't even know where in the world we are. "

"Who knew where that warp zone would take us?" Sonic asked. "Don't worry Tails, I promise we'll leave this place today when it gets bright again."

"You promise?" Tails said.

"Yeah," Sonic said, flashing him a thumbs up sign. "We'll leave after we sleep a little bit longer."

Tails' face brightened up a little.

"Let's go on back to bed," Sonic said with a grin. "The sooner we go to bed, the sooner we can wake up again and get out of here."

"Okay Sonic," Tails said, smiling back. "See you in the morning."

Even though they were still in a lot of trouble, Sonic's little promise of getting out of this dark and dreary city had really helped to brighten Tails' mood. It couldn't be soon enough that they left this place. Sonic climbed back into the box he was sleeping in and Tails did the same. The young kit curled up into a ball, trying to keep in as much body heat as he could.