Cold Waters

The instinctive yelp as he fell came together with the reflexive gasp for air and the combination of both send the scorching feeling of being torn in half through Sonic's lungs.

But the short pain was quickly forgotten when the fall ended abruptly and he was smacked onto the stone-hard surface of the sea, the cold water immediately surrounding him, creating the sensation of millions of icicles piecing his skin. Freezing wetness drenched his fur, the weight of his pelt immediately coming to be what felt like tons heavier. It was as if cold hands had grabbed a hold of his ankles and were now pulling downwards to what would be a dark grave.

Struggling in reflex, Sonic's hand met something rough and he grabbed it with all his strength, pulling himself closer to it. His head broke through the surface and he spat out a mouthful of salty water. The thing he clung to turned out to be a thick rope. One of the hawsers the ships in the dock were tied with in parking position.

It led up the wall of the dock, but when Sonic tried to climb up, he realized how quickly the cold water was draining feeling and power from his arms. He kept falling back into the water, muscles already tired shivering. It was almost too much work to just hold on.

And he felt like he was still getting heavier with his fur sponging up more water with every passing second. "Hey, anybody up there?! Help!"

Sonic shouted several times without getting an answer.

The hawser slid through his fingers; the hedgehog didn't feel his hands any more. Panicking, Sonic paddled his feet as he sank underwater. Barely reaching the surface, he wrapped both arms and his legs around the thick rope, shivering and coughing.

"Help me! Help... I'm drowni..." The desperate call ended in a hard coughing fit when a wave washed over Sonic's head, the freezing salty liquid now even flooding his ears where they were folded back to press tightly against his head.

Sonic forced his nose back up and struggled to fill his empty lungs. He didn't want to die. Not like this. Not at all.

The hawser suddenly shook and the hedgehog almost lost his grip on it again as it did a short jolt upwards. He guessed the voice from above much more than truly heard something, but pricked up his ears. A bit of the water seemed to get out of them again.

There was really someone shouting. "Sonic! Do you hear me?! Sonic!"

The hedgehog spat out what felt like another liter of water and failed the attempt to look up. "Help! Get me... outta … here!"

"Hold on tight! I'm pulling you up!"

"Hu.r..r..y..." Sonic wanted to shout the reply; it only came out as a whispered gasp.

It seemed as if his saviour knew when it was time for hurrying anyway, the thick hawser started to move upwards, but not hastily quick, very slowly and cautiously. Sonic held it as tight as he could, but even though he was clearly moving upwards, he still felt it slide out of his failing grip. The water was dripping out of his wet pelt and it seemed as if it wanted to pull him along. Back down. Sonic squeezed what he couldn't feel any more, fighting against the small, tired voice in his mind that dared him to let go and relax, to stop the painful tension and release the cramps in his muscles.

But there was another voice calling through the haze of cold and exhaustion. "Hang on, I almost gotcha!", the deep voice shouted from above, reassuring as much as commanding, and finally Sonic recognized his friend. He had no idea what he was doing here, but at the very moment Sonic didn't care at all for any reasons.

Knuckles reached down from where he was crouching at the dock's edge when he had pulled Sonic into reach, took hold around his wrists and heaved the shivering hedgehog up onto solid ground. Sonic sank to the floor as a powerless heap of wet blue fur and spikes. He wrapped his arms around himself and stuttered a thank you, his voice shaking under his violent shivers.

"Sonic, what happened?! Half of the way here looks like a war took place there! As someone who can't swim, you really should stay away from places like this! How the hell did you get the idea to go close enough to fall into this basin?!" The way the words were rushing out of the red echidna showed just how alarmed he was. Usually, he didn't talk much... and he almost never spoke that quickly.

"I … didn't fall … Shadow … threw me … in...", Sonic answered weakly, still unable to catch his breath.

"Wait... Shadow? … What's he doing here?! He threw you in?! He tried to kill you?! What did you do to him?!" Knuckles was still struggling to calm himself down with admittedly limited success. "You have been fighting? All this destruction around here?"

Sonic managed a nod in reply, it seemed an answer to the last two questions, Sonic couldn't remember the ones before. Somehow all he wanted was to sleep, no matter if it was cold or hard or –

"Are you hurt? Sonic!" Knuckles put a hand on Sonic's shoulder and propped him up a bit. "Man, you're cold as ice! Come on. You can't stay here." Not getting much of an answer, the echidna finally managed to handle the effects the situation had on him. He grabbed Sonic's shoulders and shook him gently. "Nothing broken or something? Sonic! Do you hurt somewhere?!"

Sonic shook his head, drunkenly focusing to look at Knuckles. "I … d-d-don't feel my f-f-feet … or h-h-hands... And I'm really … c-co-cold..."

The echidna grabbed Sonic at either sides and pulled him up. "Get up. If you stay here, you'll freeze to death."

"Bu-t-t I'm-m ti-tired. I do-on't wan-n-na walk," Sonic protested weakly. "C-c-can't we ju-u-st stay for a m-m-moment?…"

Knuckles shook his head. "No." He pulled Sonic's left arm around his shoulders to held steady the shaking hedgehog. "How long have you been in there?"

"Where's ther-r-re?", Sonic asked back, leaning heavily on Knuckles when he found his own legs were not quite reliable as they trembled as hard as the rest of him.

The echidna got a firm grip around his back. "'There' is in that freezing water almost getting yourself killed of course. What did you think?"

Honestly Sonic had no idea what he had been thinkning. All he knew was that he was overly cold and overly tired. "Du-u-nno," he mumbled.

"How long have you been in the water?", Knuckles repeated.

"Huh?", Sonic mumbled, starting to slow down gradually. "I r-really d-d-don't kn-know… Knux?"

"You keep walking," the echidna commanded, pushing him forwards.

"I'm t-t-tired."

"No breaks. What did Shadow want here?"

"How w-would l I kn-know?", Sonic grouched, "You're g-g-getting on my n-n-nerves."

"I gotta keep you awake and walking," Knuckles answered. "You're too cold."

"If you n-need company t-t-to talk to, I s-suggest g-go and search f-f-for someone else t-to annoy and stop b-b-bothering c-c-cold and tired he-hedgehogs." Sonic struggled to escape from the echidna's grip.

"Stop struggling or I'll punch you," Knuckles threatened, tightening his hold of him.

Sonic stopped his not very successful attempt trying to get away when he found he didn't have the strength to keep messing with Knuckles. "D-d-do what y-yo-you want, Knucklehead…"

Not as expected, Knuckles didn't react with anger and he didn't punch him like he normally did when Sonic was talking to him like that. Instead, he tilted his head at the hedgehog, the look of his violet eyes taking a softer shade. "You're lucky I know you are not entirely yourself.".

"I'm not…" Sonic frowned. "I- I'm v-very much m- myself and…"

Knuckles kept shoving him forwards. "We'll discuss that later."

Sonic groaned. Somehow it seemed as if he had no chance to escape the echidna. The hedgehog stared down on his toes as they walked. He couldn't feel anything below his knees... and he was starting not to care about that any longer.

"Come on," Knuckles said in that uncharateristically soft tone, "Tails and the professor are waiting for us. We need to get you dry and warm. You'll just get sick with that wet fur."

"Hmm," Sonic gave back. Right now it seemed to him as if the echidna was chatting nonsensically like he never had before. Every question, every word was worming itself annoyingly into Sonic's ears. He didn't want to do small-talk now, he was tired and cold and still shivering and groggy and he was COLD. Somehow the only thing he could think of while he slowly walked alongside Knuckles was how nice some kind of hot meal would feel in his stomach now.

"Hm." The grunt was Robotnik's only reply to Shadow's report about the last hours.

The black hedgehog looked up at the human scientist. He was, as much as Robotnik, angry that he hadn't been successful. His mission to get a new lens to replace the broken one had failed. Miserably. Because of that blue idiot that had been so fond of interfering with Shadow's business.

But besides his anger, Shadow felt somewhat odd. The blue guy had known him. He had known his name, his chaos spears, yes, even his fighting techniques.

"Doctor?", Shadow asked hesitantly after more than a minute of silence. "Who is that blue hedgehog?"

"His name is Sonic. He's the enemy." The human's voice carried a deep growl, almost hidden in his tone, but still showing his hatred.

"Did he cause the things that happen to these Chaos Emeralds?"

Robotnik snickered. "No." He turned away from Shadow and started typing something into his keyboard. "Leave me alone now, Shadow. Since we cannot go on as I planned, I will need to think of something new."

"Hmm," the black hedgehog nodded and left the room, slowly wandering through the long corridors of the underground base, his mind swirling with questions once again. But still, he found himself unable to find answers to them.

"Looks as it's all clear, baby...", Rouge mumbled, swiftly sliding through the half open window. "No guards around... Already asleep, huh?" The bat smiled, smoothly moving across the carpet, plenty of training making even footsteps in high heeled boots almost inaudible. To Rouge's ears that was, and it was a commonly known fact that bats possessed excellent hearing.

The laboratory wing of Mobius' 'most professional secret service'. The term was a laugh in Rouge's opinion, she hadn't seen any professional spy work, beside her own of course, since returning to her home planet. As loosely as the Mobians held it with governments and laws, they did with intelligence work. Well, the only real enemy there was that could be spied on was Dr. Eggman... and considering his usual tendency to broadcast his newest schemes... the need for spies was not quite big. The so called 'secret service' mostly investigated as a sort of police, dealing with the usual stuff...

This time Rouge had not sneaked inside the agency's headquarters to perform a little trick on their security system and snatch a fancy gem or two out of their paws. She hoped dealing with Omega's problem here using some of the equipment she didn't know where else to get it from. The place was the first thing that had come to mind.

Reaching the end of the corridor, the bat's gloved fingers rushed over a panel aside the door. After three attempts, a tiny electric beep sound forced a smile on Rouge's face and the door slid open to reveal a look at the wonderful, calm night outside. The white bat took a deep breath of cool air and looked up at the starry sky. "I wonder what's taking -"

"Infiltration successful. Entrance provided. Single other unit detected. Rouge the Bat. Unit is friendly. Weapon attendance ceased."

"Whaaa!", Rouge shrieked, nearly jumping out of her catsuit. "Omega! Don't sneak up on me like that!"

"Scan of allied biological unit detects physical stress," the robot snarled, from the sound of his voice just a few feet away. "No concrete danger apparent. Checking surveillance sensory... in progress..."

Rouge shook her head, a small smile making it back to her face. "Don't worry, we're alone. You scared the shit outta me turning up out of nowhere, that's all."

"Aborting surveillance scan?"

"Yes, stop it. You're wasting your energy." Rouge pointed behind herself. "Let's get in."

"Affirmative."

Rouge's large ears flicked at the sounds of big, metal feet impacting the ground next to her, and she uselessly stared at the place the sounds originated from... of course, there was nothing she could see. What was, as the bat reminded herself, the reason for this late night visit.

An hour later, the bat was close to truly helpless. She'd tried all sorts of glasses to look through to find a way of seeing Omega, she'd tried reversing the however generated effect with magnetic fields... she'd even put an electric current through her robotic friend, of course ensuring it wouldn't hurt him - as much as you could hurt a robot - or cause any damage. Nothing had worked.

"Okay, Omega, stand right there, okay?" She stepped behind a small wall and put on her sunglasses. "Now maybe this might help..." With little hope it actually would any more, Rouge activated the X-Rays.

"High energy radiation detected," Omega stated. "Probability of hostile actions. All inferior machines must be terminated. Open fire."

"No! Wait!", Rouge shouted, but it was already too late. A long cone of flames flashed across the room seemingly out of nowhere, covering up the X-Ray machine.

"Activating laser." The sizzling beam of red light was crossing the maximum violence the casing of the generator for the X-Ray device could take, the melting skin gave free view on the interior before a couple of small lightening bolts indicated short circuits and Omega's flamethrowers finished the deal off completely.

"Oh great..." Rouge groaned and covered her sensitive ears as alarm bells started an amount of noise far above what she could stand. "Quick! Let's get outta here!" Not checking if Omega followed, Rouge hurried out of the lab, just to find that the noise level on the corridors was much worse. Pressing her thumbs as deep as she could into her ear canals, the bat sank against a wall. Suddenly getting caught didn't matter any more... if just that painful noise would go away...

When it finally started decreasing, Rouge still could only hold her aching head, but then she noticed the cool breeze on her skin. Turquise eyes flying open after being sqeezed shut in a futile attempt easing the pain found moonlight on her face and the ground moving past her at high speed. She stretched out a hand and felt along Omega's giant claw holding her.

"What happened, Omega...?", she asked, slightly confused and massaging her temples.

"The conditions exceeded your operational range. Retreat was necessary to avoid damage to friendly unit," the robot answered her directly, slowing to a stop to let her down.

"Thank you, Omega...", Rouge mumbled as she was sat on her feet.

"Are you functional again? Do you require any repairs?"

The bat shook her head. "I'm fine. It was just way too loud for me, you know?"

"Understood." Omega was silent for a moment before continuing. "Is this unit responsible for the failure of the mission?"

"What? No." Rouge smiled softly and reached to pat the invisible armor of her robot companion. "The plan didn't quite contain blowing up half of the place and triggering all alarms simultaneously... but that it didn't work isn't your fault. I was running out of ideas anyway..."

"Does a search for possibilities reversing my optical status interfere with the mission of finding Shadow?"

Rouge shook her head and smiled again. "You're worried we can't get you back to normal, right? Aww. I'm sure, we'll find Shadow and turn you visible again... I just don't know how at the moment, so we'll concentrate on Shadow from now on, okay?"

"Acknowledged." Rouge could hear the unmistakable sound of the robot nodding his head. "Clues for Shadow's current location are still not available."

Rouge's hands fisted at her sides. "We gotta search better then."

"Ouch," Sonic mumbled, forcing himself to breathe in the hot, steamy air.

"What's 'ouch'?", Knuckles' voice asked from outside the shower he and Tails had forced Sonic into.

Right then Sonic hadn't cared at all what the others were doing to him. He did now. "I feel like I'm in flames. All over!"

"Good," was Knuckles only reply, and right now he sounded to Sonic as if he was lacking any form of sympathy for poor aching hedgehogs. "I'll see what the professor and Tails are doing to the tea."

Sonic turned off the water as soon as the annoying echidna was gone and quickly got out of the shower, grabbing a towel off a wall rack and eagerly rubbing the remains of far too hot water out of his fur. Being dry again would have been a great sensation on its own, but it didn't take away the pain like fire that was burning his entire skin. Somehow he wished it would have stayed numb.

The blue hedgehog slowly walked out of the room and then followed the sounds of voices along the corridor. His bare feet hurt each time they tipped the floor. Sonic entered a room and stopped in relief at the soft feeling of carpet under the momentarily so sensitive soles of his feet.

"Hey Sonic!", Tails called. "Come sit on the sofa, we made some tea!"

Sonic flopped into the couch at Tails' side and the fox handed him a big mug. The hedgehog sipped at the tea. It was almost as hot as the shower, but still felt a lot better.

Tails stood up and unfolded a blanket, wrapping it around Sonic's shoulders. "Here ya go."

Ah, that was better. "Thanks." Sonic smiled a little and took another sip of the tea.

"You feel your feet and hands again?", Knuckles asked from where he half sat on, half leaned against the armrest of an armchair.

"More than I'd like to." Sonic looked over at him past the rim of the mug, but the anger and annoyance he'd felt towards the echidna just a couple minutes ago were abating quickly now that he was getting warm. He was beginning to think he'd been stupid arguing with him.

A small understanding smile wrinkled Knuckles' lips as he acknowledged not only the words but the softening glance of the hedgehog as well. "It'll go away. You'll agree with me that this is better than risk having them stay numb forever of frostbite."

Sonic nodded, a shudder running down his spine at the thoughts of something like that. "I like burning," he muttered sarcastically.

"Sonic? Ah, there you are!" The white coated raccoon entered the room, waving something in his right hand and smiling as proudly as if he'd just unearthed a treasure after days of work. "Here, I found some warm socks you can have until your stuff is dry, found them in my cupboard, I wondered for a while what I kept in there, thought it could as well have been the candies, but it was good that it wasn't the candy, but the socks, 'cause you can use socks much more than candies right now, can't you? You know, I'm so horribly chaotic, but chaos is an accepted concept in physics, so–"

"Professor?", Tails interrupted. "Why don't you give Sonic the socks?"

"A brilliant idea, Tails. You and me, we should be working together more. Sonic." He passed the socks to the dumbfounded looking hedgehog and brushed some of his wildly growing long fur out of his brow before righting his glasses.

"Eh, thanks, Professor." Sonic put the mug with the still steaming tea on the small couch table in front of him and leaned down to put on the socks. He turned one of them around in his hands with another baffled look, taking in the checked pattern in green, red, orange and brown, briefly wondering what kind of drunken idiot had designed these things, but his bare feet were getting cold again and so he shrugged off the small doubts of vanity that said he couldn't possibly let such an outstanding object of misguided taste near the two fastest feet in the universe. He simply didn't want them to be the two fastest icicles in the universe instead.

When Sonic sat back upright, he spotted Knuckles' grin. "Is that the new fashion, Sonic?"

"This is what makes me so special, Knux." Sonic grinned back, taking the mug again. In spite of their funny look, the socks were warm, the blanket was too, and with the pain slowly easing away, the hedgehog felt much better already. Almost comfortable.

"Huh?" Knuckles frowned.

"I don't look stupid if I wear freaky socks, they look cool once I wear them because of me." Sonic took a long, pleasurable sip at his tea.

"Ah yes." Knuckles rolled his eyes in annoyance, then turned to the professor and Tails. "So, now that Sonic is feeling normal again, can we get to the interesting part?"

The scientist had followed the byplay without much interest, but now that Knuckles asked for his work, he nodded fiercely. "Of course."