Author's note: I have recently started school, so expect chapters to take much longer to be put out. Also, in my original author's note, I made it seem as if this was a Sonic X fic, which it is not. All the characters are based on their game counterparts set after Sonic Forces.

Chapter 5: River

Meanwhile...

THE PHŒNIX

...We sincerely trust that the influence of President Johnson may be cast in our favor, and that he may be able to defeat the machinations of the radicals in Congress; but if he cannot or does not do so, the South, we fear, is destined to endure a long period of degrading probation, or "taxation without representation," and of subordination of civil rule to martial law.

In the span of my blink, the floor must have become grown over with grass. Rather than thud off the wooden ground, I became wrapped in a grassy knoll. The shoots wrapped themselves up my suddenly dry fur legs, constricted around, and pulled my body prone on the green carpet. Even with my face pressed into the grass and dirt, no pinegrove smells or woody tastes, just the sensation of grass tendrils slithering over my fur. I would shout if I could open my mouth. Grass slithered across my cheeks sliding back and forth as it inched up higher and higher across my head.

"Aaammphfgh… ahMMMM!" Like a rabid eel navigating a pipe, the stalk forced its way into my triangle ears, filled my ear canal, and anchored itself in my head. I was trapped.

I feel could myself rising. My head pulled back as if someone had grappled my fur and yanked back. Soon my back followed the movement of my head and then my legs and feet. I was upright. Held up by my ear canals, body wrapped in grass and vines.

My feet were loose, and I could not help but start kicking in the only form of rebellion I had at my disposal. My eyes were covered, but occasionally cold light found its way inside. I kept my mouth closed.

I lurched back, the creature and I were moving. It was delicate, purposeful, a sense of destination. In a way, I felt like nothing really had changed. Wrapped up somewhere I didn't belong, following.

It squeezed. Like piano wire across my forehead and a straitjacket around my torso and tourniquets on my arms and manacles between my tails but nothing around my feet, my feet were free. The shoots in my ears pressed down harder against the walls of my innards and jabbed at my eardrum like a nervous person with a cotton swab. It was if the creature was searching for a way to my brain, probing around, searching around. Looking to taint, looking to corrupt.

The little light that would reach my eyes dulled out into a red-yellow glow.

Suddenly the slithers reversed. I hadn't realized how much my lungs were compressed until I took a breath without constriction. The cocoon which had wrapped around myself was becoming undone, bottom to top. Before long, my arms were free and gripping at the grass still engulfing my head. I struggled. Kicking violently towards unknown nothingness beneath me and pulling around my head. Not only to free myself from the clutches of the creature, but also as to not be supporting my body weight with solely my head.

Thinking fast I ripped off my right glove and began to use my claws to dig into the grass at the crown of my head. My fingers dug into the flesh of the plant. Down my hand ran a warm liquid substance but I could not stop. I reached by head, stabbing myself with all five of my exposed fingers. Another warm liquid substance ran down my hand. Cutting through plant and skin, I dragged my hand down across my face ripping through all that was in my way, including myself. Blood and plant ooze coated by hand and face. My eyes could finally reach light but my vision was obscured due to my landscaping.

Before I could slide across my lips, the plant began to relinquish its hold on my head. Parts uncoiled with audible snaps in the distance. My mouth was freed, and then my chin.

Two vines encircled my neck, the one from my left encircled clockwise while the one from my right encircled counterclockwise. Curiously, rather than slither themselves counterclockwise and clockwise respectively to let go of my neck—as I would have expected given how the plant was letting go of the rest of my head—the vines instead twisted themselves further clockwise and further counterclockwise. Surprisingly, I did not feel the additional pressure of my neck being further constricted. Infact, I did not feel anything. The two grass vines ran around under my head and snapped off in the distance. I was falling, so I began to spin my tails. And that's when I saw them: my tails.

My tails, my legs, everything below the neck really. My body falling away from me. A precious thing I lost. And then my head kept rotating so the rest of my body fell out of my line of sight. I was now looking up at the sky, the empty black sky. Before I could linger on about how it was still bright outside, my head continued to turn to face the wall I was apparently tumbling down from the top of. The entire wall was composed of uniform stairs: deep dives and then shallow landings all the way down. I turned still. The ground. It was as if the ground was climbing towards me rather than descending myself. It was unremarkable, just a rolling plain. A ways down my more aerodynamically abled body careened towards this plain. I turned. The red-yellow sky. In the center of the sky an uneven circle of primarily generic computer red, with it being encircled by sunset orange all around. I turned. The wall was entirely made of clusters of various rusting metals. The corners of the stairs where especially rusted. Red-tipped, crusted over, jagged, waiting for bloody baptism. I turned.

I never thought of myself to be particularly thick-skulled, but alas I am for I shattered clean through the river ice which had materialized below me. And the sheet was thick too. I had time to recognize the fact I was plowing through ice before I reached the frigid water hiding beneath. I am an okay swimmer, but like Sonic I tend to stay away from willingly getting into water. So today was really not my day. I could hardly make out the tip of my nose as my head sank into the water. The surrounding darkness made it difficult to make out if the rest of my body made it down with me. Obviously the lack of air did not particularly bother me, I did not have a set of lungs at the moment and I was still doing fine. I could not believe how loud it was in the water. The sounds of pistons pumping back and forth and serpentine belts rubbing on engine blocks bounced off water particles and into my ears.

Further and further I sank, occasionally brushing past a cold-water minnow or bumping the back of my head into a scrap of metal garbage. My eyes became acclimated to the darkness and before long I could see the sandy underwater dune I was drifting too.

Resting on the small hill of sand and soil was the rest of my body sprawled out like some sad, tired headless horseman. My tails slowly flowed backwards with the current but the rest of my body held steadfast in the ground. I could figure how this was going to play out so I just waited.

I drifted slowly through the water, my head rolling to face towards the bed of the river. Leeches dug themselves out of the ground and began swimming like scrolls in the wind towards my body. They swam underneath my head, shadowing my movement towards myself.

I reached out. My hands embrace my head. I grip between my jawline and the top of my head for the most firm hold I could have over myself. The leeches lunged out and attached themselves to my head and slither towards my throat cavity. Not wanting to risk losing my head batting the parasites away, I forcibly slotted my head onto my exposed neck stem and gave it a good twist in a neck crack motion. The connection was loose, and the moment I eased up my hands my head began to drift. I pushed back down.

The creatures crawled down my head until they reached the point where my neck meets my head. They encircled it, slithering around the slice. They lined themselves up head to tails, leaving no gap between themselves and bit down. Half their teeth stabbed into my neck and the other half stab into my head. They clamped down and immediately begin sucking away.

My first thought was not of the pain from the leeches, but rather the sudden realization I now had practically empty lungs and was going to drown. I pushed my hands down to spring myself off the ground, kicked down against the sand and aimed up. Luckily my tails were undamaged so I could use them as a bodily propeller to increase my speed upwards. I swatted away at the frigid water, bumping my head into chunks of ice which seemed purpose placed to impede my progress. Metal bits slid across my arms and legs with a piece stabbing into my side. I was too preoccupied with not drowning to worry about the metal in my side. The visibility began to increase at a rate linked with the decrease of oxygen in my body. So while everything was getting brighter, the edges of my sight began to fade.

I puffed my cheeks in and out rapidly to trick my brain into thinking I had air and made a final push forward. The cold cold cold glow let off by the ice began to penetrate through my skin, sending a bolt of frost down my back.

Instinctively, I looked back down into the depths to spot a vine climbing up towards me. It spiraled up the water to form a vine helix with grass sprouting out the edges of the monster. It coiled back down for a brief moment, and shot up like a spring. The helix straightened out like someone throwing a chain. It ignored the water, darting clean through without receiving drag or taking in water. Dodging any metal scraps or ice chunks it aimed for my head. I no longer had the energy to move.

I crashed through the ice, the vine once again around my neck. I could not even breath yet since my windpipe was in the process of being crushed. I gagged and gripped around my neck. My hands were coated in leech juice and blood from the parasites being crushed between the vine and my neck. No matter how much clawing I would do, the vine remained unharmed.

I looked down to see if I could bite any part of the vine and that's when I remembered I was currently being impaled with a chunk of metal in my side.

Without worrying about slicing my hand, I reached down and took grip of the shard. The slow methodical process of removing a puncture wound had to be sped up for me, so I hastily removed the metal scrap in a swift move. I could tell I cut both my hand up and more of my body but I could not care at the moment.

Without a moment to spare I brought the makeshift knife between my torso and the vine and sliced forward. The metal slid almost a quarter of the way into the vine, causing the creature to rapidly convulse, shaking me back and forth in the air. It tightened its grip around me in its last ditch effort to kill me. But I was not going to have it, I could not have it. I slid the scrap back and forth in a saw motion, all the while applying pressure forward. My vision was failing but my arms were not.

The vine shook and slammed me into the ice below, lifted me up and did it again. I could not drop the metal, so I squeezed down harder into the jagged tool. Green and red painted the ice beneath us and reminded me that it was it or me.

With the back of my head pounded into the ice, the creature began to slide back into the chilled water with me in tow. My feet were facing towards the water, so when the vine began to recede it snapped my body upright before then sending me face down into the frozen ground.

As the water approached, I slid my free hand down across the vine to find my cut mark. My finger slipped into the oozing crevasse leaking out goop. The various fluids made it difficult to position the knife in place, but that was not going to stop me. With one final slice, I cut through the vine. Both ends thrashed about from being cut through, but I was free.

My momentum still carried me into the water, with my back plowing into the corner of the ice. I was pumped full of adrenaline by this point, so the pain did not bother me. Like a drunk scuba-diver I tumbled into the water.

I breathed out a sigh of relief, and I must have forgotten I was in a river since I breathed back in and filled my mouth with water. I swallowed and resurfaced.

The metal was still attached to my hand even when I was fully unclenched, so I had to pull the shard out with my free hand. I tossed the soaked metal down into the water and watched it tumble into darkness. Remembering what was down there, I latched onto the icy edges and pulled myself up.

Once above, free of any water prison or a mephistophelian creature, I realized how screwed I was. My hand was flayed and my torso had an extra hole in it. And at the same time I was going into shock and the starting stages of hypothermia.

I sat down and covered my bleeding side with my bleeding hand to temporarily fix two problems.

"...Smoke?" On the edge of the frozen river were trees. Ferns, spruces, pines, the whole deal. They were all on fire. Their trunks were essentially replaced with flames, their leaves dancing away ablaze. Both sides of the river, the same patterns of trees, all in perpetual flames. The cliff I had fallen off of was nowhere in sight, the horizon was rather the frozen river or lit trees. Excluding the hole in the river and the graffiti of fluid splattered about, there was perfect symmetry between the two sides.

And then there was me, dying alone in the middle of a classical representation of Hell.

There was no chance I could stand, so I leaned onto my knees and began to spin my tails to slowly slide myself across the ice towards the fire. The friction between my legs and the ice was low, so in no time I was off towards the warmth.

Soon it was less holoska and more skin melting. In my greed for heat, I failed to slow myself down before it was too late. I planted my free hand on the edge of the river but all that did was spin me around so I flew into the trees backwards.

So there I was, falling backwards into a flaming forest. Bleeding all over, unable to properly breath. A skin bubbling heat surrounded me and smoke filled my eyes and mouth. At least I didn't have a metal chunk inside me or a monster strangling my neck or my body falling away from me. I hoped my head would hit the tree so hard I would knock myself out so I would not have to experience burning to death. Here I went.

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March 12, 1938

SPANISH TROOPS ENCIRCLE TOWN

Hendaye, France, (at the Spanish frontier) March 12 (AP)—Spanish insurgent troops encircled the town of Quinto tonight, between Belchite and Hijar, on the eastern drive to split the government-held seaboard.

Without any warning, Tails' head slammed back against the crate of dry food him and Amy were chained to.

"Ow!" exclaimed Tails, shattering the silence of words which had been present in the hold of the ship. Amy shot up from her exhaustion based nap and flung her head around to find the cause of both the voice and booming noise of head against empty crate.

"TAILS! You're awake! Thank goodness, I was really getting worried there." She was both happy to see that tails was fine and happy to have someone nice to talk too. "Is your head okay? It sounded like you hit it pretty hard."

He did not pay attention to his head. Instead, Tails looked down at is hands, rotating them around and examining them. The chain jiggled, Tails did not notice. He felt his torso with one hand and felt around his neck with the other.

"Hey, you alright Tails?"

"Oh, uh yeah, I'm fine. I was just having a weird dream, that's all." He rested his head back against the wood and began to look around. His eyes darted back and forth from crate to wooden beam, and then to the shackles around his arms and legs. Blankly, he pulled his hands back and forth causing the chain to snap into a straight line. "Amy?"

"Yeah? Oh right, we got captured. This is some military boat. They say if we try anything they'll shoot us because they think we're aliens." She let out a half hearted chuckle at this thought.

"The guys over there" she motioned towards two armed guards sitting at a table across from them, "say we are going to Alexandria and ignore everything else I say. I have a suspicion they don't like us." One of the two had his head down, presumably sleeping. The other was thumbing through a softcore magazine he must have snuck onto the boat, and was ignoring the conversation the two were sharing.

"Humans?"

"Yeah, but not the ones that used to be on our planet." The magazine man's face scrunched up. Amy realized she could have worded that better.

"Hmm, we must have traveled through dimensions. If these humans look the same but they have never seen a talking hedgehog before, we might share a common heritage but a clear moment of division." Tails eyed the man up and down. There was no doubt in his mind that these humans were the same as the ones that used to live on their planet.

"Maybe the emeralds wiped their memory?"

"I couldn't tell you. Hopefully this will all make sense one day. And hopefully we can find Sonic." The man pulled out a cigarette and lit it. He exhaled up in the air and watched the smoke dissipate in the dim light above him.

Amy just smiled faintly, nodded, and sounded off without opening her mouth.

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It was dark and the ground was cold. The clearing that Sonic had passed out in was largely unchanged since the morning. The bird noises had been replaced with cricket noises, the river still ran, and a hedgehog was still lying on the floor.

"Mmhm…" Sonic's lips smacked against each other, he could not stand their dryness. His head hurt and his eyes were heavy, but he slowly leaned forward to sit upright.

He looked at his now closed wound and admired his work for a moment.

"Hey, not too shabby. How does moving it feel ye-!" A burst of motion started tumbling through his stomach towards his mouth. Sonic twisted his back to the side and lurched over, and began to vomit. His rookie liver was not used to being needed, it seemed.

Once he finished, Sonic fell back against the ground and looked up at the sky. A sole dark cloud filled the sky, its rolling hills blocking out any chance to see the moon. He traced along the curves of the cloud with his eyes, imagining himself running down its hills, curling up into a ball at the tops and rolling down. Sonic remembered that clouds were made of water, and his imaginary self fell through the surface to never to be seen again.

"I gotta get going." He sat up again, and carefully placed his hand from his newly stitched arm on the ground. He applied pressure to see if it was still hurting. It was, but nothing unmanageable anymore.

Once on his feet, Sonic brushed off the dirt and grass which had stuck into his quills while he was passed out. Sonic made his way to where the fire once was and pulled out a half burnt stick. He found a large rock on the ground and stood over it.

Wielding the stick like a brush, Sonic drew a crude picture of himself out of charcoal on the stone.

"Okay, so I'm... somewhere. And also somewhere… " he drew an egg-shape on one side of him, and an outline of an emerald on the other side. "...Is Eggman and the Chaos Emeralds." Carefully, he drew two small circles on the egg to represent Eggman's glasses. He filled in the Emerald with charcoal black, and then wrote '* 7' next to it.

"Likely, Eggman will be looking for the Emeralds also. So really, it doesn't matter if I look for the Emeralds or Eggman first, find one and I'll run into the other. Eggman shouldn't have any of his 'bots, so I don't need to worry too much about him for now." At the corner of the stone, he drew the outline of Tails and Amy's faces. "And are they here? There must have been some sort of explosion, and Tails would've known what it was. And if Amy wasn't dropped off yet, she would've come along. They'll come looking for me first."

Sonic thought for a second, trying to schedule an itinerary for himself.

"If I can find just one Emerald, I can track down the rest…" Sonic drew a circle around the Emerald, and then exed out Eggman. "...And if Tails and Amy find an Emerald, I'll run into them. So it's settled, look for Emeralds, beat up Eggman if I see him, nab Tails and Amy if they're here, and go home."

Sonic smiled at the idea that he just made a plan, but it did not last long.

"Great, now I need to find an Emerald." He brought his hand to his face, deeply groaning at the prospect of tracking an Emerald down by himself. "I should have paid more attention whenever Tails or Knuckles tried to teach me about how the Emeralds spread themselves out. Something about population centers and energy loss. I need to find a computer."

Finished with his art, Sonic tossed the stick back to where the fire once stood, and ran back into the forest.