Chapter 2: Welcome to my Extremely Boring Life
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Yozia: Thank you! Quite a lot of characters will come into this, and I'll be doing some really interesting stuff with them all! :)
Wow, the reception of the first chapter was great! Thanks, everyone! I'll keep working on this for you all :D I'll probably talk about this story quite a bit on my Instagram, so follow me there if you're interested! My username is listed on my user profile. But enough of that, chapter time! *jazz hands*
Hey! The name's Sonic. Sonic Parlouzer. I'm a sixteen-year-old hedgehog, blue fur, green eyes, single if you're a girl looking for someone. I live on South Island, the least interesting place to ever actually be settled on. Including me, the population is 78. It sucks, and nobody here really cares all that much about me, but I can't exactly go anywhere else. It's a long story that I'll get into later. I don't do that badly on Boring Island. That's thanks to my friends, a group of madly funny and interesting and important people on the internet. Yeah, my only friends are on the internet. Who cares? We Skype all the time, and play video games together, and talk about our lives, and get annoyed when we call each other at midnight. It's just like in-person friendships, except we can't noogie each other. And honestly, looking at Knuckles' hands, that's probably for the best.
Well, now that I've used one of their names, I guess I'll have to introduce my friends. First on the list has to be Tails. His real name's Miles Prower, but we call him Tails, because he has two of 'em. Crazy, huh? He's a fox from a smallish town near Apotos, he's fourteen, and if he isn't just the cutest damn thing you've ever seen I'll eat my computer. I met him when he was eleven, and I swear, he was just the saddest little guy in the world. He was bullied, struggled with anxiety and depression, considered doing some really bad stuff. But luckily for him, I came along to save the day by reporting some assholes on YouTube, adding him to the group, and getting everybody to talk to him and make him stay positive. We're pretty much best friends now, and he's really turned his life around. Also, he's a coder and hacker, but he says that he never uses it to cheat. I guess I can believe him.
Hmm. Next up is Knuckles Guardian, I guess. He's seventeen, and he lives on a remote island, too, called Angel Island. It's where all of the last echidnas, like him, live. He says that the island flies and has a big magical emerald on it that glows and keeps it in the sky or something like that, but nobody believes him. He has spikes on his hands, which is kinda weird. Apparently most echidnas have them, but he comes up with a lot of trippy 'facts' about echidna-land. Last time someone said that, though, he got really mad. He kinda has anger issues, but he's a great guy when you get to know him.
Okay, getting better with the descriptions. Now I'll move onto Rouge Gunn. She's a seventeen-year-old bat from Station Square, the big city up north. I guess you could say she's good looking. Great figure, big aqua eyes, always wears really nice blue eyelid stuff (whatever it's called) and pink lipstick. I'm not really interested in romance, but I totally get why guys would be into her. She's one of the most popular girls at her school, apparently. Why she'd choose to hang out with a bunch of losers online instead of chilling with the hundred girls who want to be her friend, taking selfies or whatever girls do in their spare time, I don't know. But she does.
Then we have Silver Trigger. He's fifteen, going on sixteen, and possibly one of the most unironically nice guys you'll ever meet. He's a hedgehog, and the most important thing about his appearance is that he looks like he's got weed on his head because of his quills. About a year before he came into the group, his home city was hit by the 'Eggman Empire', you know, the group of terrorists who won't leave the world alone, which killed both of his parents and ruined his life. He lives in Soleanna, or 'Crisis City', as some people call it now. He seems like he's doing okay, but I have to say, I feel kinda bad for the guy. I'm stuck on an island with nobody to talk to, but at least my home's still standing and my parents are still alive.
That ended up being a buzzkill. Moving on, the last member of our little group is Blaze Sol. Cat, sixteen years old. She lives in Spagonia, and her family is really wealthy. Like, aristocrats or whatever. They're always trying to make her do rich-person stuff like playing tennis and drinking tea and discussing the weather with other rich people at rich person parties, but she prefers to hang out with us peasants and play games on the internet. I have the feeling that she has much less attitude and sass and sarcasm in front of her parents and their rich friends. She's also been online dating Silver for 4 months, because they are so perfect together and we all ship them.
So, yeah, that's my friends. Jeez, that took a long time. Now that you know who everyone is, I need to actually get into what's happening in my life. It's usually a pretty straightforward existence. I play video games and talk to my friends, then go and run around exploring when Uncle Chuck (oh, yeah, I'll explain who he is in a second. Be patient) needs to use my computer to put his research online, and sometimes frantically struggle through the three weeks' worth of internet school I didn't finish because I was too busy with important things like racing my virtual Chao. The latest interesting part happened when I was playing Chao Island at 3 AM last night. I met another user called Rosy_the_rascal_93, who I did a Chao Karate battle with. My Chao, a Neutral-Run-Run called Sonny, would've won, but Blaze suddenly raged loudly in my headphones and jumpscared me. Me and Rosy agreed to have a rematch when I was actually supposed to be awake, which brings me to the events of today.
I woke up at like 7 AM, which sucked because I got no sleep, had breakfast, and then got bored. I logged into Chao Island, because me and my friends got back into the game after not playing for a few years and now that's just about all we ever play. So, the game has a friend system, where you can add people as friends and then be notified when they're online. I was notified that Knuckles, or noodlestheenchilada69 (Tails set his account up), was doing a race with his Chao, Volcano (Neutral-Power-Power btw), and that my mysterious friend Rosy was wandering the hub world. They must have noticed I was online, because they instantly sent me a battle request. I accepted it and Sonny was immediately facing down his opponent, a Hero-Power-Run called Rose.
I entered all the commands correctly, dodged whenever I could, got a few hits in. I was going well. Sonny's health had been drained a little, but he was doing okay. Rose was only on half, so I was winning so far. There were only 20 seconds left in the battle. You have 90 seconds to fight, and if neither of the Chao are down by the end, whoever has the most health left wins. Rosy would need a miracle to beat me now. Just for good measure, I sent Sonny in to land another punch, but he missed. And then, I am not joking, Rose got in a critical hit on Sonny. She just slammed right into him. And what with her being a Power Chao, we were toast. Sonny's health halved in one go, and before I could recover, the match was over.
"No!" I shouted angrily. I pulled my headphones off and threw them. That's what I do when I get mad at video games. I throw my headphones. Just go with it. I walked over and picked them up, and plugging them in again, I opened the PM system. Ignoring the dumb warning for little kids, I typed to Rosy, HOW?
I'm just a good gamer ;) they replied. Then, immediately after: Try to improve Sonny's Swim and Power stats. Speed might help in racing, but not in battles.
Yeah, but he's a Sonic Chao. I don't wanna mess with his good looks, I wrote back. Yes, there is such a thing as a Sonic Chao. It's the evolution that Sonny has, Neutral-Run-Run. And in case you're wondering, yes, they do look exactly like me. And no, I was not named after a Chao. Actually, I've never asked why I have the same name as an evolution of Chao that looks exactly like me. Um, crap, gonna have to look into that. Jeez, that'd be pretty awkward to be named aft- why am I talking about my name?
Anyways, the conversation was interrupted when Knuckles called me on Skype. I answered him, and his face appeared on my screen. "Hey, loser, I just obliterated the computer, want to race each other?" he asked me. "Volcano doesn't suck as much at running as he used to."
"That's not saying much, Noodles," I smiled back. "Okay, I'm gonna make a race group." I clicked on the 'create group' button, set it to racing and friends only, and then confirmed it. "Alright, you scrub, join me so I can mop the floor with you in fifteen seconds."
"You've never beat a single race in less than 35 seconds, though," Knuckles complained, being a smartass of course, but I saw the enchilada come up on the list. Then, suddenly, Rosy came up underneath him. Knuckles stared at his screen. "Who's Rosy_the_rascal_93?" he asked me.
"Oh, they're this player I added to my friends so we could have a rematch. I don't wanna kick 'em, so just play with them," I explained, and started the game. "We are going to do the neutral course… with computer competitors turned off… luck mechanic on, intelligence mechanic off, cheering on, and let's do this!"
57 seconds later, Sonny had completed the course twenty seconds before Rose, and Volcano had struggled through in about 40. "Get rekt. I am the fast master," I smirked.
"You always win," Knuckles whined.
"Sonny has an S in Run and he's almost level 100. Of course he always wins," I replied, while typing to Rosy, Good game, but racing flows through my veins.
You mean it runs through them? Rosy replied, which made me laugh. "What is it?" Knux asked. "Are you really that happy that you beat me at something?"
"Saw something funny," I said, managing to contain myself. "Like your face when I won…" I burst out laughing again, and when Knuckles hung up and logged out, I laughed even harder. I typed to Rosy, You literally made me laugh out loud. Become a comedian pls.
Rose isn't very good at racing, but she'll beat Sonny in karate without trying! Rosy replied. So, who was noodlestheenchilada69?
My other friend. He literally hung up on Skype after I beat him, I explained. You on Skype?
There was a pause at the other end, like Rosy was surprised. My username's Rosy The Rascal, they eventually replied. Do you want to add me?
I quickly switched over to Skype and typed rosy the rascal into the search. Two results came up. One of them was a 63-year-old from Chun-Nan, so I assumed that wasn't them. I sent a contact request, and within a minute, it had been accepted. 'Hi! Nice to meet you,' I typed, hoping to come off as friendly.
'Hello, SuperSonicChao!' they typed back. 'My real name is Amy. What's yours?'
'It's Sonic,' I replied. 'Nice to meet you, Amy!'
'I've never had a friendship with somebody over the internet before. Do we have a conversation or what?' she asked.
"Seriously?" I said in the real world. "You're missing out." Then, in type, I responded, 'We can call if you want?'
'No, it's 9:30 pm and a lot of my neighbours are asleep. Soz,' she apologised.
'K, fair enough.'
'Actually, I have to go to school tomorrow, and I have to wake up really early. TTYL, and nice to meet you, Sonic!' With that, Amy went offline.
'Night! :D' I typed, then switched over to our group chat. 'Any of you scrubs online? I know you are, Knux.'
For a moment, nobody said anything. 'Let me sleep, it's half past nine,' Rouge finally added.
"Wow," I said out loud, and went to check through my Instagram feed instead, wondering if Amy was allowed to use her phone at school.