Word to the wise--HANG ON!

This was originally meant to be a two scene chapter, but after doing to edit, and realizing most of my latest works have been long, it's time for a breather.

And it's time I give the reason why we have a story and games to shine in this work. This idea came to me as: if I keep Sonic with the group, he'd be too much for the plot--and now the next chapter, which should be up later today. So, I needed to really split him, like we saw in the last chapter. Thanks to a good majority of my guitar heroes, and I don't mean that game, we have this chapter. And in grateful gesture:

Reverend Horton Heat: "Big Sky, Baddest of the Bad, Reverend Horton Heat's Big Blue Car, Revival, Sue Jack Daniels."

Tiger Army: "Under Saturn's Shadow, Towards Destiny+Incorporeal, Trance, Power of Moonlight,."

Brian Setzer: "Hell-Bent"

Th' Legendary Shack Shakers: "Ichabod, Iron Lung Oompha, Cheat the Hangman, Cussin in Tongues."

Course, this was also hard for NOT to see the fretboard of my guitar and trying to write this.

Disclaimer: I own nothing of Sonic and his people.

Have fun!

Anatomy of a Hedgehog

By: Mauser

How his legs worked so fast, almost anyone who has seen him in his prime–like now, leaning forward, cutting the wind with his upper quill like a razor, the ensuing dust cloud he was springing up behind him, his feet lost in a swirl of red and white–have tried to fathom how he was pumping so much energy into them without tripping. And moreover how could he see anything coming when the world around him was buzzing with motion. Passing a tree, to him it seemed like a twig in the ground with a faint blur trailing it.

Mind constantly probing and plotting; a sway to the right with his body; slowing his piston legs just a hair to make his shift in course a little smoother; a fast twist of his head to face his back then to the front, relying on his quick memory where the pursuing flying Eggbots were in the drafting rooster tail. His judge of distance was the best in the world. It had to be. His very hurtling life depended on his eyes and mind to sync speed with a coming destination, or in his case; target. Consequently the four he was towing along were still very interested in him. They had closed onto him enough that two bots maneuvered to either side of the dust cloud and Sonic was starting to make out their paint schemes. In a way that was good, but in another few feet, they would be in range to start shooting.

Then there was the very ground he was treading on. His jump to mach one propelled him a hundred miles from the camp and the fueling port in just under five minuets, only slowing down when he smirkingly laughed that old Robuttnick's flying droids couldn't fly that fast. Reasoning he had achieved distance between himself and them from the prison, he released his effortless hold on his hammering legs to lighten up on their pounding on the dried out Plain's floor. But that said floor was going to run out. Objects may be hard to tell of the size and shape, but colors in large substance changed like passing from a brick building to a wooden one while traveling in a hover car. The tan dried dirt with the occasional spread of amber grass started to become a little sallow in texture the further he stretched south. And what was worse–his cover was going to fade very soon. The sheet of lose sand that with his passing was kicked up into the hot, slamming air to his whole body under his beating feet, was beginning to sink into the fine lined canyons of what Sonic could only describe as the crocodile skin of Vector's back.

The Mobian Desert was closing. It was time to start heading back.

Peering behind his right shoulder, his green eyes let a hard squint press against his brow, reenforcing the command to his legs to increase their ballet of locomotion. "Time to turn this party around!"

Sonic swayed his torso to and fro, throwing his weight over his whirling feet, adding sidesteps to the swings between every third landing of his shoes, creating a serpentine motion to his rocketing pace. Another check to his back; his dust trail was broadening, but hardly enough. Snuffing the air, the hedgehog made his feet do more of the work, bending his ankles so the sides of his shoes could drag across the ground, sharpening his side-windings.

The last look behind his back was the clincher. With a slight lean to the left for the setup, a few heavy pounding steps shot him over to the right, holding it tight, forgetting to make it gradual but barreling toward the west. His eyes fought to look inside the turn, his head twitching every so often to the right and left, making his more protruding quill behind his head become a rudder to fine tune his balance.

"Drats!" His turn wasn't sharp enough, thanking his eyes for pointing this and a faint dark shadow out in the dust cloud. At his present rate halfway through the turn he'd be overshooting his target...that was if he could find it again in his churning tan wake of sand. Bending his body over closer to the ground, he extended his hand to the passing sandpaper paved floor, digging his fingertips on the surface. Clumps of cake like dirt trenched in his pursuit for drag. His hand began to burn from the friction that was passing through his glove as if he wasn't wearing one. "Almost there, though!" his voice echoed from his eyes, watching his hanging dust cloud that concealed his query inside it only to come directly in front of him.

But he lost sight of the bots! The lingering wall in front of him was doing too a good job–"wait!" A ripple in the contour of the screen, just left of him. It had to be something large pushing through the dust cloud. Problem was was he didn't know where to aim. He knew just ahead of the ripple but where–

Ten meters, his better judgement fretting at him; he had to jump now, stopping his legs from peddling as fast as they could for acceleration and planting them in the speed that only Sonic would know just by the quaking jolt through his spine. With his legs being strong as they are to run, so were they to launch him ten feet in the air, and just before his eyes shut from getting dirt lodged in his pupils, he coiled tightly, grabbing his shins and tucking his head between his chest and knees tightly to allow centrifugal force to spin him at such a rate that as he stiffened his razor spines, he looked like one contentious blue saw.

All he could do in this second of anticipation was to spin-and-pray he'd hit something–

His coiled back slammed into something hard, but becoming soft when his revolution circled back around to his head, feeling the nerves deep in the tissue of his quills cutting through what felt like wires and other metallic hardware. He descried the change in light from the his drawn eyelids, going from bright to like being under shade then back to being outside. Head up, body unfurled and before he could get he his sight readjusted after opening his eyes, never knowing whether his sneering grin had come first, or his feet landing on the ground, but in his moment of becoming vertical, he quickly found the rhythm, accelerating his skinny legs and planting his feet on the tan, silk like ground while stealing a fast glance over his shoulder.

A sliced metal hulk was dragged out of the rooster tail, Sonic only finding the resemblances of its former flying Eggbot-self when the split in half head region of the round, shredded figure rolled in a splattered mess of parts. From the cloud itself was a hole that was becoming filled with the updraft of Sonic's kicked up wind, curling two slivers of floating dirt into nautilus shells, counter-swirling like two waves pushing away from each other.

"One down, and...well who's counting!"

Not surprising but the three Eggbots that seemed to have launched out like an over pompous actor through a drowned stage curtain, each kicking up their own wafting circles of dust, closing tightly beside one another into a flying-V off to Sonic's left, effortlessly flying beside his dust cloud. He could see all their features: their blue paint over the thin pencil lines of the metal panels making up their spherical shapes, those square, lifeless eyes that twitched to look around...and their stupid humorless grin, strengthening Sonic's conclusion that getting killed by one of these things would be like having the worst clown in all the world boring you to death.

"But they're looking mighty quick and peeved, dude."

Which brought him around; how fast was he going? It was as obvious as smoke to fire that he wasn't living up to his name. Looking forward while making a fine shift to the left, Sonic couldn't find a fixed object anywhere to pass and judge the rate of distance and how fast he'd closed on it. But the ground wasn't a steady blur. "Good clue there." And with his dull voice pointing out the trivial–and a red plasma bolt hissing by his ear that reflexively jolted his sight off his left shoulder and caught a flash from a second shot battering-ramming straight for his back–Sonic dumped whatever substance that excited the muscles in his legs to drive faster and marking the very instant to hunch his back over his stiffened abs, hardly ever seen from his round stomach, just at the moment the trailing electron filled shot passed between his ears.

The ground began to lengthen the further forward he looked with every hard push-off he cycled with his feet, only warping like a aluminum sheet back and forth when he easily executed a three-prong zigzag maneuver. It was no-holds-bar! Every little bit was needed to throw off the trailing bots with their precise aim. A small turn of his right foot and he had drifted to the south without changing his entire direction. A four degree yaw from his left and he was racing once again on the same heading. But it was these slight breaking maneuvers that were actually making his heart slam against his chest. Every diversion meant a decrease in either speed or acceleration.

"But it beats being gettin' sunburnt," Sonic reasoned in the back of his head, racing it behind him to see his progress–

He nearly jumped sideways to the left, feeling every fiber in his body pull him away just in the nick of time before not one, but a basket load of bolts punched by him and struck the rolling ground ahead of him. This time he got the pleasure of being hosed with kicked up dust, throwing his arms up over his face, shielding his eyes from being pelted. A split second passed when he chugged them back at his sides, returning to their pumping motion that could make one believe they were pistons on a screaming steam-engine.

Like letting a new lesson become his new goal in life, Sonic peered over his right shoulder, and with the suddenness of the image hitting his eyes and piercing his brain, he barreled left, dodging a lone bolt that was birthed from the right most-bot. More dirt peppered his body as he immediately dived to the left, nearly getting skimmed by another hot plasma round across his upper arm–he couldn't even breathe out the sharp smell of ozone that stung his nostrils when he had to pile back over to the right, feeling the heat warm the skin under the blue fur of his right quill.

A jerk of his head over his left shoulder. They were still hanging on! Every burst of acceleration he thundered to his legs they were quickly matching it. And every mile he'd accumulated under every quarter minute was beginning to burn in his thighs. His feet weren't hurting–a good thanks to his thick soled red and white, gold buckled shoes–but that was soon to follow, he was sure from his fast heel to toe action.

And there lay his problem as he scoffed brainlessly at himself when he shot a glance to his feet. His shoes stirred under him like twin rocking crescents. "You idiot! Course they're gonna keep up with your sorry swine tail...you're only do'in two-hundred!"

Yet his ears were fluttering like paper in his every pursuit of speed, the tips of his quills quivering like thin metal in a hurricane, and his small tail remaining straight as the region he was pounding across in keeping his balance while taking one last look behind him at the bots. They were beginning to break up their formation, widening to either side of him and from what he quickly gathered–and why they weren't shooting–forming a broader concentration of their fire power on him.

As slim as his legs were, one would never believe how much raw energy and cultivated strength that resided in every ounce of muscle fiber and cartilage. Where most Mobians sometimes had to rely on a different source of power, Sonic's speed was as natural as his fur color. He wasn't the only Mobian with such born talents, like Knuckles who even if his egg was saturated with the radiation of the Chaos Emerald by Locke, still possessed the strength his family was known for. Aleutian showed this the most when he knocked Shadow back like a battering ram. But the rest of the world needed a handicap to get them to the stage Sonic was setting his body into.

"If only I had a power-ring!"

And with his loathing spilled the volatile fuel of nutrients, oxygen, nitrogen, and his purple blood that nearly all Mobians were known to bleed, over his tightly woven fibers of his muscular legs, Sonic exploded with a burst of acceleration so hard he had to stiffen his back to hold the assaulting G-forces at bay. He unraveled his fists into knives, still swinging them but more as paddles in the air. His pointed ears began to fold backwards on themselves, the sound whirling over the canals but miraculously never silencing the world around him. He didn't know why and like many things that seemed to work, he didn't care. His brows were slimming over his eyes, baring them like teeth of a salivating predator. He could tell he was pouring on the speed, making his smirking visage all the more apparent when he tugged an elated smile at his right cheek. Joy was becoming the extra fuel he was draining from his body that juggled his legs faster.

The sand had disappeared, leaving nothing but a gritty blur that seemed to trace minuscule lines in the dirt. His vision wasn't as vivacious with vibrating quivers now; his feet were hammering the ground every sixteenth second, so fast his skull wasn't feeling the individual footfalls. It was why he could see the passing terrain clearer...it was why the passing three plasma bolts over his head were so vivid to scare him!

"No way!"he blurted out with in scream in the assailing wind. The Eggbots were still in range of him and still struggling to keep up. But at least he couldn't see their bland smiles anymore, their figures looking like blue orbs with wings in the wake of his rooster tail.

He wasn't going to play anymore–abstract that he wasn't just ten miles ago. With a slight sidestep that shifted him vastly to the right at his current blinding rate, the blue cobalt of fur and quills called up his last secret that came to him just by subconsciously wishing for it. Lifting his feet higher, he pointed his heels to the sky before shooting his legs forward while rolling his shoe to expose his square patterned treads to the horizon. Here it was that he slammed his heal to the ground, digging the shoe like a shovel before rolling his whole foot across the ground, heel to toe, and pushing heavily on the balls of his feet to start the whole sequence all over again...creating a cartwheeling circle in the blur of his spinning shoes–

Something hot started to creep up from his back, warming his left arm slowly like he was being tossed in a fast-food pizza oven that his uncle had at his café. From his straight look to the east, he strayed his eyes to where the uncomfortable feeling was coming... "Whoa!" If the opening of his mouth didn't cause the slightest drag, he would have done it. What now possessed his head to turn to the right, making him change his footing from the unintentional left turn his quills were trying to instigate, was a plasma bolt, sulking past him in the dry, but beating air like it was trying to scamper away from him before getting caught. And to his utter, but mirthful surprise, he felt the same approaching heat sliver its way closely over his left shoulder. Turning his head with purposeful calm, like looking to Sally in a social gathering with a snide quip remark knowingly at the ready, Sonic just about laughed his fur off when he saw a second bolt was trying to take the lead.

And with a curious thought twisting his head over further, he witnessed with his egotistical self, sporting the best smile he'd felt all day, not two more but five more hissing plasma rounds inching their way towards him. Where ever the bots were that fired them he couldn't see anymore. That meant no audience to see this; also meaning Robotnick wouldn't be getting a recording for what he was going to do next.

Unlocking his reserve energy he knew he stored somewhere around his cool-blue body, he dumped it all right down to his toes. Tails had mentioned this little additive was from all the residual energies that he'd sucked into his body with every power-ring he juiced through his system coming back to haunt him in a very good way. If his little buddy's guess was "spot-on" then it was never clearer than watching the bolts starting to ease back behind him. Another tick in his head and he felt his whole body propel faster through the air. Absent now was the cool wind, steadily becoming lukewarm as the air began to turn to friction, all passing across his slim body with ease.

A warble image started to lace his sight, coming on slowly at first before looking like the surface of a lake on a calm day. Then it began to quack. Then his body. But the bolts were still trailing him, suspended in mid-air like all was still. It was all the more reason to push on; the heat grew around his body; the ground became stern in feel now, the sheet of sand was beginning to loose its hold on the terrain...and it was now starting to cone, Sonic feeling the eccentric, but euphoric rush of riding inside it. One last step and he would–

The rupturing of the sound barrier of his stretched body in the ensuing blur he created around him came as an implosion, sucking the air–and the hot plasma bolts–just a shake of a nano second inwards right before the explosion that reverberated like a shattering glass, expanding the air so harshly, so mercilessly, that the plasma fire was sent to the longitudinal winds of Sonic's own compass where his top quill marked north.

And then all was silent around him for the second time of the day.

Not even the rushing air all around him filtered into his ears and struck his eardrums; only the steady beating of his turbine feet was knocking at his skull. And what made this wonderful enthralling notion so intense every time he outran sound itself? So many people were depending on him to use his born talent to save their lives, and in many cases through the years...the world. With it passing under him like he was spinning the world under his own two legs, he reflected on how cool it was to keep up with his own image, just to run everywhere he could without hardly breaking a sweat had been the greatest and most cherished gift his parents had given him. He thought about thanking them. Thought about it...but he realized that when he'd returned from being tossed in space that he was their gift. And him thanking them for brightening up their lives, he knew they would never accept, only pouring him with kisses and hugs and telling him the exact opposite. So he let it be. And he continued to run.

But he also knew he couldn't keep up with this when he was ten seconds into his cone of silence. A glance over his shoulder revealed the flying Eggbots had become mere specks. That was a plus. His feet, however, were sending the slight pangs of aches to his displaced brain. His heel-to-toe strides began to soften from the great energies he was having to induce them with to fight the pushing wind and tension surface of the sand floor. The most irritation was indeed coming from his overworked legs. They were burning a fever from his thighs to his calves, nagging at his head to slow down or he was really going to feel them and soon.

Then the pang in his stomach started to fuss. Sonic now felt the sinking bubble of dour replace his last spent chili-dog and trying to feed on the Lemeans' sunflower slop. There was no other reason why Sonic stayed so lean than to just see the vast amounts of energy his body consumed to let him be himself. His mom and dad could keep him home, let him binge on anything of his choosing–chili-dogs galore–and do this until he's plumbed himself out for once in his existence, and on the third day, release him to watch him burn all the fat off in possibly half an hour where it would seem to take a plumped and sassy mobian four months to do.

Rolling his head back forward, Sonic began to weigh his options of what he should do: turn around and smash the rest of the Eggbots still trying to follow him, or leave them in what little dust the Plains had left and try to find Knuckles, Antoine, and the rest of the fleeing Mobians. He was starting to see green on the horizon, smiling at himself that the grassy pastures were soon coming. But something was wrong with it, though, the land seemed to be a little lower than he was. Honestly it didn't make any sense. He wasn't flying–well, except on the ground–however, it was the change in elevation that made–

Sonic only had the quickest of snap reflexes and time to see a ledge splitting his path to a halt. His eyes just about popped out of their sockets as his feet tried to brace for a scrambling stop. His stomach shot through his last meal and began feasting on the fear he just swallowed. In the final end of his enchanting run, all he could do was pile-drive his right foot on the edge he just barely slipped over and do his best to leap into the air.

The onrush of air slammed at his body, Sonic finally feeling it in his moment of blank terror. Deafness was reborn with the screams of the air passing over his ears, the ground beneath him shortening at a drastic pace, revealing the half moon incline that looked like a large banked turn for mammoth machines, never knowing he was shouting his revelation until sound caught right back up with him during his seven second moment of flight.

"WHHHOOAAAAAHHHH!–" He thought his intestines were going to be coming out his month when his feet landed flat and hard on the ground. Sucking in the concussion, Sonic quickly leaped back into the air, twisted his body sideways to the left, tilted away his hurling direction, and planted his feet into a grinding skid. Clumps of brown dirt perforated the air, speckling Sonic when his passing shoes grounding them up and spat them at his head.

A sudden tightness in his lungs caught his breath short, forcing him to expel it to retry to breathe again...all the while his eyes remained focus on the approaching body of water. "Who put that there!?"

There was no time to start pumping his legs. In the blink of his pivotal fear he was already skidding across it, spurting up a geyser from his hurtling body, crossing the muddy, glass smooth surface of an oasis until the other side of the hundred meter wide body of water dragged under his feet, throwing him into a complete stop. Water fell like rain, whooshing its great majestic mist in the air until gravity seemed to catch every molecule and pulled it down. The setting sun showed a rainbow in the beads, making Sonic chuckle just slightly about his little art decor while something at his brain started to run back to him, screaming.

"Oh, yeah!"

Planting his right hand on the ground and lowering himself, he kicked his feet high in the air like a seesaw, then engaged his legs into a run on a imaginary surface. When gravity pulled down the pendulum, his racing feet slammed the ground and just before he ran over his hand, he pulled it up just in time before his whirl-winding feet catapulted him over a hundred miles per hour on his tenth step. He screamed back across the pond where his speed turned the liquid surface tension into something feeling like concrete under his shoes. Again, he shot up another geyser that trailed him all the way across. He pushed harder once he reached the surface, aiming dead-on at the steep sand incline. Ground turned to sky and his feet felt the deadness of air when he shot up like a cannonball, rolling his body over to watch the ground leave.

The Eggbots were a little late. He was teething on the hope he'd take out the center drone, but his second jump to mach one had put too much distance between him and them. The good thing in all this; they were still very interested him when the bot that had drifted over his right shoulder some thirty or so miles ago was the first to pass under him in what he imaged what he looked like to them at a standstill. A half second passed when the left bot rocketed under him.

His body was becoming one with gravity, his air-time was beginning to end and the center bot was just about to meet its.

As if he were about to juice with his feet on the ground, Sonic twisted his body across his right hip and with a trigger from his brain, sent a serge of energy that coursed through his body and fueled his muscles, and fired him straight to the ground as if he'd just kicked off from an invisible ceiling. His timing couldn't have been more perfect. When it all seemed that Sonic was going to pile straight in the side of the incline, the center Eggbot passed right underneath him. The hedgehog only had split second to tilt his head forward.

His skull connected with the metal hull with a severe TRANNG, driving him and the bot straight to the ground. Rodent and machine slammed on the lower side of the incline. Sonic pushed off and leaped into the air, watching the devastated careening of the bot spinning its wings, panels and parts as its momentum flung its mass away across the rough ground, coming to a splashing stop when it somersaulted to the oasis.

Sonic however landed with a little more grace, but he was already beating feet. His hang time and press-box view of the second Eggbot's fileting demise gave him just a sufficient span of time to pick out his next target. The Eggbot that passed him on the right was banking hard into a left turn, powering its internal thrusters to gain precious speed. But Sonic already had his, trucking a quarter mile straight to cut off the bot's turn.

The bot started to level, and Sonic started to jump, throwing his hands at the left wing of the flying drone and snagging it. A tug of war of inertia ensued for a fugitive breath. The bot's strength was challenging but it didn't match Sonic's sheer cobalt drive so that when he latched onto the wing, his momentum threw the bot into a dead-spin like a cranked up ceiling fan. For two revolutions the hedgehog held on, then letting go and rolling into a back spin that cushioned his fall to the ground a little smoother than the first time.

Head up, eyes around, and legs already pounding forward, he took a bead on the struggling, spinning Eggbot. He stiffened his quills for good measure, his back muscles tugging at the cartilage that molded his physical make-up into the worst weapons on anyone's anatomy. Ten feet saw a devious smile from his face. Five feet and he was ready to pump his legs for the jump.

Three feet from his prey erupted with red plasma bolts chewing up from right to left the dirt straight in front him, making him dash right and through the hanging singed spouts of dirt.

Checking over his right shoulder, Sonic swallowed deeply as the lone sober bot he neglected to ferret out in the wide expanse of the clear sky– "Stupid hog, stupid hog!" –had doubled backed on him and was rotating like a clock jewel with its plasma barrel ready to chirp its loud voice of supercharged electrons. Heat licked at Sonic's back and the pounding discharge barks of the cannon mauled behind him. He didn't have to look back but forward, knowing the line that the bots were eating up to get to him.

Forcing a lean from ever inch of his body, Sonic rounded a hard right turn, approaching the incline at a sloping angle. Never thinking twice, hedgehog and bank met. His speed wasn't blinding but it was giving the Eggbot a good workout in its CPU. Sonic traced the incline, following its crescent shape; popping thunders chasing him ever closer. Legs to the limits of his endurance, arms beating the air like a punching bag, drawing on the centripetal force he was creating and inching further up the bank to keep his speed up in the turn.

A fast look behind him. The bot was about to get lucky. Not only was it keeping in turn with Sonic, but it was slewing in his direction as well, closing with every plasma shot at his back. Bringing his gawking, panic filled eyes back forward, Sonic for once was beginning the jump from the half-pipe to open land again. His legs were burning like an oven, his arms were becoming stiff with muscle aches. And did he just feel his lungs laboring for a breathe? This had gone from fun to, "I wanna go home and cry for Sally's forgiveness for this stupid idea," and very soon.

But from his ambition for amusement came his cheat against the hangman. The bot he'd spun was slowly coming out of it, its program thrusting for a target. Where its careening spin had stopped was centered on Sonic's wall-running trick across the large incline. Barrel up, weapon charged, the bot started to pour on the fire. Unbeknownst to it until it computed the mistake and miscalculation was that the harsh spin threw its instruments and sensors out of calibration, causing its low stream of shots to aim clear off to its left. With a simple binary code to run its diagnostics, be alerted to the system failure, and a quick fix to its lone stray eye looking too far to the right, the simple fix from point to point was to swing its torso around for the correction and to keep spinning to terminate CODE: PRIORITY ONE!

Sonic jerked his head back with his face becoming bathed in a dire sweat as his ears cringed at the sound of the second Eggbot's plasma cannon being discharged, this time not seeing his death come as a double whammy, but to witness the blue Eggbot closing on him with being hit by shots raking from the side and back by the dizzy Eggbot with a severe hangover. Sparks bled from its hulk, suffering through four more bolts before its internal cooling system couldn't handle the overheating, and exploded like a plastic bag being popped; metal panels tossing from the eruption of fire but leaving the bot's spherical shape partly intact, dropping to the ground like a bowling ball.

The show was over, Sonic concluding this when he turned his body a small degree and ran off the incline like a surfer calling a wave quits. He didn't stay long in the air, in fact he was already on the ground, throwing on the speed as he took stock of his bearings.

Grass. Dead tawny grass hurled past his ankles, and his footing wasn't agreeing with it at all. If he was primed and rested, he couldn't care a hair on Snively's head about it. But his muscles in his legs were on fire, crying out murder and censored oppression from the tyrant that was pouring on the abuse without care or remorse. He was doing his best to shrug it off though, reminding him that he has felt worse. When Geoffrey St. John was chasing after him with heavy shackles at his feet and wrists, he'd never knew he could tire so quickly. It didn't help he couldn't rest.

It didn't help that he was framed for Sally's murder either!

But here he was, running officially for his tired life–again--watching his back for the lone bot to rise over the horizon and resume its relentless chase. "Yeah...who's counting."

His eyes were; one! It was already picking up speed, its round hulk lumbering low across the grassy plain with a centerline cutout right to Sonic's shoes. The hedgehog swallowed his grief and ego. It seemed his barbs had now embolden the bot, the machine was barreling faster than he could accelerate. The blue paint began to fade into color, then those white outlines of its broad, stained smile...and lastly to Sonic's throbbing head:

"Stupid eyes."

He was running out of tricks, if he had any left, in his bag of coolness and flashing speed. All he could do for awhile is dodge the hunk-of-flying-junk's shots and hope he was going in the right direction to get Knuckles' help–and hold his tongue that he needed it.

Wide eyes and a tilt to the right, that he swore pulled a muscle, spared his hide for maybe another mile. The grass was becoming islands from steams of dried clay that fingered throughout the plain now. Maybe he could stir a fire and get the Eggbot lost in it? "Ah, check that Sonic...it don't have legs and it's gettin' pretty sporty."

Ducking and ducking fast saved his head this time. Four bolts spread through the space above his ears and harmlessly kept going, fading out of sight. No time to breathe or think, Sonic for a good measure slid left; three bolts flared the grass he was just about to run across. He tried to pump his legs faster but the strain was starting to infect his lungs and will power now. A single bolt saw to that for sure, igniting the ground just three steps in front of him, catching him under the hot fingers of its fire.

"Well, this it dude. Nice knowing yeah, and thanks for the serious bruise coming!"

Shutting his eyes, still making an effort to be a moving target, Sonic thought to give out a last whisper for a prayer but figured he was going to need the oxygen to keep his legs churning underneath him. He might wince. He might hurl across the ground for twenty miles...nah, he wasn't going that fast. But all jokes aside, he didn't want to see it coming. No matter how much he thought Robotnick would love to see his face just as he the bolt plunges straight into his back–or if the bots good, his head–Sonic didn't like surprises. So in due course, he swirled his mouth and readied his tongue for his grand pubar of a stage exit in life.

Then a strange question hung over his head...why hadn't the bot killed him already–

Sonic turned to force his tongue and maybe an answer...and to his absolute utter surprise the bot was scrambling in a hard bank to the left, throwing its emergency thrusters just under its hover plate to slow for a sharper turn.

Four larger blue pulse comets throated across the sky high above Sonic's head. Their marks were dead center, all four impacting under rippling explosions on the bots metal skin, disintegrating the machine in a uneven ball of fire and spreading black smoke. Sonic's head snapped and nearly got decapitated when the oval-shaped fuselage, wearing what he always thought were a set of cyclops sunglasses, pulled up sharply from its strafing dive.

He nearly wanted to keep going and never stop, calling the save a second chance from a mistake upon hearing the groaning, laboring hum of Robotnick Prime's Hoverbot powering for a turn, circling him. It might have been two years ago since the fall of the first evil doctor, but it had been well over two years that he learned to fear the sound of those engines. Listening now, and finding his eyes were very concentrated on the Hoverbot's single cannon posed at the top of the ship, forgetting how large the thing was in retrospect to the new ones he was learning to smash, Sonic didn't know whether his bones were shaking because of his muscles quivering from being used way too long, or the residual fear of wanting to scoot and doing it now.

But he'd stopped...a long time ago, but all he knew now was that he had stopped.

A breath of air expelled from his lungs in relief. The Hoverbot was living up to its name, steadily turning its back on Sonic while extending its twin landing skids and exposing the rear door to him. The landing had a cushy look to it, never bouncing, never swaying to either side. It was a moment before the door slid open and out from the shadow of the entryway came a fox wearing a blue tunic...looking with a murderous eye at him. Just the eye patch scared him enough to want to run away and get lost for a few days.

"Sonic?" came Amadeus' narrowed voice.

The hedgehog held his ground for a pause, looking around him as if he had a double to sacrifice, before devising up a sauntering stride toward the displeased fox. He tried to look innocent, playing on that Amadeus' didn't know him well enough to know he wasn't at fault with anything.

This hatched plan died when Tails stepped out beside his dad. "Hey Sonic, left anymore for us?" Tails asked brightly.

His face was as deadpan as a board with his eyes fighting not to roll. "What took you so long, 'Little Buddy?"

Hope this was fast and exciting! One thing I did, and was worried--and still am--is inserting a bit of Sonic's bravado voice in the narrative, in a way, making it like he is telling the story. Hope it didn't kill it.

Anyways, catch you all on the flip side.