Chapter four, everybody! Last time, Peter and Sonic went patrolling. Now that they are headed back to the tower, what happens next?

By the way, just an in-universe tidbit: By the time this story takes place, Sonic has been hero-ing for five years, which places Sonic 1 in this crossover universe sometime in 2012.

gwb620: I'm glad you enjoy the interactions between the two!

Chapter Four

Sonic leapt from rooftop to rooftop as the Avengers Tower became more than a faint speck in the distance. His motions became a steady pattern of running and jumping as the human close to him swung through the city at a high speed.

The hedgehog took it easy on the kid and kept himself from dashing around at the speed of sound or faster- partially because the resulting sonic boom would likely injure the ears of those present including the citizens on the sidewalk and partially so he wouldn't fall off of a rooftop or get sent rocketing into a wall.

Keeping an even pace, the speedster made frequent glances at Peter as the kid did impressive flips and maneuvers while they traversed the city. The kid definitely knew how to use his powers, and seemed to have the experience to go with it. It was safe to say that Sonic was impressed.

As he navigated the city, his thoughts once again shifted to his friends back on Mobius, who were likely holding the line to protect the planet, but -as much as Sonic hated to admit it- very likely losing to Robotnik's forces. Considering that he got sent to another planet, all the hedgehog could do was hope that they were at least relatively okay.

The Blue Blur, for once, was completely powerless to do anything to help, and he hated it.

Sonic forced himself to think on the bright side as he hopped downwards to a lower rooftop. He'd met Peter and Stark, who were both great in their own ways, and since Stark was working on something to take him home, the Mobian was confident that he would return just in time to save the day and kick ol' Baldy McNosehair to the curb.

Besides, of all places to get warped to, he got sent to Earth, which out of all planets was one of the most familiar to him, both from the overall appearance of the planet -which was pretty similar to that of Mobius- and his experiences here.

That truck was still etched onto his memory.

Sonic turned to Peter, who had currently abandoned the swinging to run on a wall. Eventually the spandex-wearing superhero hopped off, turning to wave at the hedgehog before swinging away again. Oh, that kid was definitely showing off.

Narrowing his eyes and looking in the direction of the Tower, which was very close now, Sonic jumped down from a building he was on and curled into a ball as he quickly descended. At the last second the hedgehog planted his feet on the building and hopped off, curling up again to absorb the shock of bouncing on the ground.

After taking a moment to look up at the huge, imposing building that was the Avengers Tower, the hedgehog noticed a certain red and blue figure latching on to the building.

The figure was Spider-Man, and he was running up the wall.

Sonic's gaze darted around quickly, noticing a less tall building closer to the tower. That would do. The hedgehog zipped on over to the wall of the building, and, noticing the curious stares from the nearby civilians, flashed a smirk and a mock-salute before taking off in a burst of speed and running up the building.

Hopping off of that building when the time was right, Sonic landed on a suitable ledge before running up the tower, his arms flowing behind him as he outran the force of gravity. The mobian checked Peter's position, seeing him dangerously close to the large letter A.

"Alright, then." thought the hedgehog, his smirk widening, "Gotta go faster."

And step it up he did, increasing his speed tenfold and soon catching up to the spider-kid, whose mask lenses subtly widened.

"Not bad, kid!" shouted Sonic, his voice barely carrying over the intense wind, "But you're gonna have to step it up!"

"How's this?" retorted Peter, shooting two webs towards the top of the tower and pulling, sending himself rocketing upwards. Not one to give up, Sonic cranked up his speed even more as the duo ran out of ground and soared upwards.

"Jesus, you two." came the remark from Tony as Sonic unceremoniously barreled into the workshop with Underoos in tow, nearly crashing into him. "What's the rush?"

"Pete and I had a race back here." said the blue hedgehog, being the first one to catch his breath. "He's incredibly good at what he does, not gonna lie."

Tony hummed, aiming a smile of pride at his protege. "You two had fun playing around the city?"

"We were patrolling, Mr. Stark." groaned Peter.

That smile turned into a smirk. "Presumably, kid. Presumably."

Peter rolled his eyes, and the corners of Sonic's mouth twitched upwards before he piped up again. "So, how's the.. thing going?"

"I've run the schematics, and a teleporter's feasible. I'll just have to make a working prototype." Sonic and Pete both nodded in comprehension and the inventor ended with.

"In the meantime, make yourselves at home." said Tony, turning off the absently playing radio. Almost as an afterthought, the man glanced at the blue hedgehog and added, "There's a guest room you can use in the tower, by the way."

Sonic's gaze snapped to him before the azure teen shook his head.

"I appreciate the offer, but I don't really need-"

"Relax, Mr. Needlemouse. When we're done making make a way home for you, it'll be easier to reach you if you're staying here." What Stark didn't tell him was that if the alien hedgehog lived at one spot he'd also be a little easier to monitor just in case something happened to or because of him, but that was a secondary point he didn't want to have to explain.

The spiky creature furrowed his brow at the nickname but closed his mouth again, seeming to think it over before shrugging and letting out a somewhat reluctant "Alright".

Tony clasped his hands together. It was at that moment that his mind helpfully reminded him of the fact that now he had two superpowered teenagers to deal with.

Oh well. He'd cross that bridge when they got there.

The next three days passed rather smoothly as Tony adjusted to the presence and quirks of his new guest in the tower and worked on getting his spiky acquaintance back home, as he was currently doing now.

Yet another dry smile appeared on the man's face as he grabbed a nearby screwdriver, for Pepper didn't exactly take easily to the idea of having an alien crash at the tower for an unspecified amount of time. Not that he blamed her, it was a natural reaction, especially after the attack of 2012.

Their new housemate himself was quite a laidback yet spunky one, and Stark's first impression of the hedgehog being full of sass definitely wasn't unfounded, as the hedgehog easily bounced back a quip or a wisecrack to every snarky comment the human threw at him. It was like having a snark battle with himself at times, and Tony didn't know many people who could snark as well as him, so the man was -mostly- pleasantly surprised. In his stay, he'd also met the bots, who had rather taken a liking to the hedgehog.

Sonic also had a habit of taking a morning run every day. Where the hedgehog went, only he knew, but he was well aware that Sonic went far and wide to sate his thirst for adventure and Tony was soon positively sure that Needlemouse was worse than the Captain. On the second day of Sonic's stay, however, Tony had fixed that problem by outfitting him with a wrist bracelet that had a GPS tracker to use if necessary, and a panic button that would alert him if the blue one got into trouble.

When they weren't working on the teleporter -as in Tony working on the teleporter and Sonic handing him tools he needed-, Tony was either examining the hedgehog's rather impressive abilities or trading life experiences.

In terms of powers, Sonic's were, unsurprisingly if he had to be honest with himself, very impressive. For starters, his speed: While Tony already knew that the hedgehog was incredibly fast -anyone could've guessed-, he'd figured out that the alien's speed easily surpassed that of sound, and while Stark hadn't been able to figure out the hedgehog's top speed as of yet, he decided to take Sonic's word for it when the hedgehog informed him that light speed was "small time".

Dealing with a FTL hedgehog aside, the hedgehog's quills were somehow sharp enough to slice through almost all types of metal while bristled -the human made a mental note to work on the durability of any future Iron Man suits he made-, and despite not having a weird tingly sixth-sense like Peter his reflexes rivaled that of Stark's protege.

Life experiences were a rather different story. Sonic, who was currently sixteen years old -a year older than Peter, in fact- had been in the hero line of work for roughly five years, taking on threats that endangered his world and occasionally this one as well. The main one he had to deal with, Needlemouse had said, was this Eggman character, who frequently came up with new plots to achieve world domination on a near monthly-to-weekly basis.

Tony did a little more asking, and that was how he found out that this "Eggman" was in reality a roboticist by the real name of "Dr. Ivo Robotnik". Tony had met the man once or twice in his days of making weapons, and many things about him were quite similar to Stark, both having created weapons ahead of their time, having a similarly intelligent yet chaotic demeanor and a preference of working with metal than with people, and even down to the emotional baggage- as an 'accident' -which Tony, after a little digging, figured out was rather man-made- onboard a space colony named the ARK had gotten his grandfather and cousin killed, among several people.

In a way, Robotnik was a twisted mirror of Tony, what he could've become if he used his intelligence and inventions for... Less than altruistic purposes.

Sonic had said that they had their first encounter with each other on some place in his home planet called "Green Hill". Robotnik at the time was searching for a bunch of mystical gems called Chaos Emeralds and kidnapping animals to use as power sources for his machines while he did, which forced Needlemouse to go after the roboticist and singlehandedly stop his schemes and break his machines.

Among many other things, some info Tony had caught was that the unexpected and mysterious flooding of Station Square that happened in 2014 was in reality caused by a creature called Chaos, who had absorbed a load of the energy from the Emeralds. Apparently the fight only lasted a few minutes because Sonic had juiced up on the leftover energy and neutralized the energy in the vengeful being.

Tony himself had been at the aftermath of the flood -in an Iron Man Suit of course- to help rescue anyone caught in the midst of the disaster. Unfortunately, while there were survivors, there were many casualties.

Flashbacks to Sokovia plagued his mind and Tony shook his head to oust them, linking together a few wires as he worked.

At this point Stark was fully convinced that the hedgehog was either an adreline junkie or had what he liked to call Complusive It's Fine Syndrome -the inventor pointedly thought of Pete-, for while he described most of these events with the same energy of a person describing their trips to the park, these things weren't exactly fun and harmless, especially not Robotnik, who had done some messed up things, including, but not limited to, carpet bombing an island twice, using Sonic's DNA to create a robotic replica of the hedgehog which was designed specifically to kill him, and frequently creating or releasing WMDs to sic on the hedgehog.

The hedgehog had also told him about his friends and fellow heroes back on Mobius -for that was what his world was called-, and the blue needlemouse had told him about such friends as Miles "Tails" Prower, his adopted brother who was also an inventor kind of like the human -which explained how someone who was so used to technology trying to kill him didn't seem to have much issues being in the techno-haven that was the lab-, Knuckles The Echidna, who guarded a giant rock that could neutralize the energy of the Chaos Emeralds and had anger management issues that rivaled those of Bruce, Amy Rose, a hammer-wielding girl with a... massive crush on Sonic, among others.

Tony had also shared some of his experiences, and that was how Sonic found out that Tony Stark was Iron Man.

"Boss," came the voice of FRIDAY, interrupting the genius billionaire philanthropist from his work, "Sonic has pressed the panic button on his communicator."

Tony's gaze snapped up in alarm and he put down his tools.

"FRIDAY, get the suit ready for me."

When Tony, decked out in his Iron Man suit, arrived at his spiky friend's location -which FRIDAY had helpfully shown on the suit's interface-, he was greeted by the sight of Sonic being held in a chokehold by a blue... creature which was a head taller than the blue hedgehog and decked out in a cape. A quick glance at the metal claws revealed that it was a robot.

Not wasting time, Iron Man landed on the ground and held his hands out, executing a dual-handed repulsor blast which sent the robot flying off of the hedgehog, who crashed to the ground.

Stark made over to the hedgehog, extending a hand which Sonic took, helping him up. Not one to miss a quipping opportunity, Tony spoke up:

"Really, Needlemouse? Didn't I tell you to not get in trouble?"

Sonic merely rolled his eyes and focused his gaze on the blue robot who had collided with the wall but was quickly recovering. "That's Metal Sonic. Usually he looks somewhat more like me and less like a blue starfish with legs."

"Fair enough." replied Tony, training his repulsors on the robot. "What else should I know?"

"He copies abilities too, and he uh... Kinda copied mine before you got here."

Tony glanced at the hedgehog who gave him a sheepish look. Unfortunately, that was all it took for Metal to barrel into him with a powerful kick that sent the human flying backwards.

"You have interfered with my mission objective." came the deep voice of the robotic hedgehog. "I will make your death quicker than that of my copy."

Tony, absently noting that the robot could speak, quickly braced himself with his flight stabilisers and charged forward at the robot as Sonic curled up into a ball and did the same.

Well, that escalated quickly. Now they have to deal with Metal Sonic. Neo Metal Sonic in fact! I will admit that the IDW Sonic comics kinda inspired me to put him in.

Please leave a review, And I'll see you next chapter!