I feel a little weird shipping Knuckles and Sticks. On the one hand, in the show they seem like they have the highest awareness of the fourth wall (Sticks has addressed the audience directly multiple times and during the robot city arc, at the end of each episode Knuckles complains about cliffhangers after the screen goes black before the credits roll in), they're both "wild" compared to the other characters (Sticks is a feral badger, Knuckles is an islander), they both play the role of the tough guy. Kind of like Danganronpa ships, I feel like Sonic ships are partially based on what character designs look cute together? Maybe that's just me.
(EDIT: 12/22/17: If you're reading this, you might notice some nice additions to the chapter thanks in part to mass-editing. Enjoy the fic.)
Normally to get Sonic to go shopping with her, Amy would have to grab him by his little hipster neck scarf and start dragging him behind her for miles, but much to her surprise he was willingly walking – not running – by her side, actively participating in a conversation with her. She talked about her renovations and how she covered all of her old furniture up with grass and he gave her constructive criticism on how to make the place better and more comfortable. She talked about Sticks giving her a whole lot of seashells that same day and he made suggestions on what to do with them.
It was nice not having him run off to do something more "fun" with the guys...
"So, you want anything to eat?" Sonic asked.
"Meh, I'm not too hungry. Just thinking about whether I should paint the walls a new color. I bought a whole bunch of textiles and I'm thinking of changing the curtains, but I don't know if I should paint the walls to match or contrast... So far I'm learning toward ocean blue curtains and maybe using all the pink fabric I got to make pillows." She blushed a bit. "I just want the urchins to have a nice place to live is all."
"I honestly don't think the hoglets are going to care about what their room looks like immediately... Wait until they can actually see before worrying about what their room is going to look like." Sonic said, pointing out that hedgehogs were born blind and likely wouldn't care about whether the living room curtains were pink or blue or some color in between.
"Good point, but by then I'd be too busy... Urchins gotta eat after all. Can't forage while blind." Amy sighed. "Well, it'll be worth it either way. I just want them to have a nice place to live for however long we live in that little house."
"Heh... Well, I can always come over and help you fix the place up."
"Um... Well... Speaking of fixing things... What happened to your back?" Amy asked, noticing now that he had quills on top of his quills.
"I got into a fight with a tree..."
Taking a pair of tweezers out of her pocket she asked. "You want me to help?"
And with a look of relief and admiration for the pink hedgehog he got down on his knees, her hands in his and he said "YES. IMMEDIATELY."
She just giggled in a cute and nonchalant way. "Fine fine. But how about you avoid fighting with trees in the future?"
"Alright." And so Sonic picked her up, dashed under a large, shady tree, and sat the lady down on the grass before collapsing into her lap with his quills facing her.
Amy couldn't help but get a kick out of him and proceeded to get rid of all of the extra quills...
And while the two hedgehogs of the group were canoodling under a tree, Knuckles was trying to find Sticks since Tails didn't want to be alone in his workshop...
He went to her burrow of a house straight away, knocking on the door. "EY! We need you at the workshop! It's urgent!"
But all Knuckles could hear was Stick's muffled voice, talking to someone... Granted nobody ever came to her house... And she didn't have a communicator so he thought that she must've been talking to someone imaginary. Or a ghost. Or some other creature invisible to anyone else other than Sticks...
He pounded on the door again. "IT'S URGENT! QUIT TALKING TO YOUR IMAGINARY FRIENDS AND OPEN THE DOOR!"
"H-HOLD ON A MINUTE!" Sticks yelled before talking to her invisible friend some more.
Knuckles backed away from the door and started doing some light stretching but just as he was about to run to the door and knocked it down, Sticks opened it up.
"I was having a very nice conversation thank you... Now what do you want?" She asked, arms folded and tapping her foot impatiently.
"See, this is why we all have communicators. It would save a lot of exposition."
"AS IF I'M GOING TO HAVE SOME TECHNOLOGY ON MY CLOTHES THAT NEVER TURNS OFF AND IS ALWAYS LISTENING!"
He sighed. "Tails is afraid of being alone in the workshop so we should go see how he's doing. He says Sonic's been acting weird. He asked me to punch him earlier so I did but then he just left..."
"What did you expect him to do?"
"Well I expected him to come back and get punched again originally but then I saw him walk off so I was doing some thinking... I need to get my hands on an emerald!"
"A what?"
"It's a shiny green rock."
"And if you get your hands on this shiny green rock, can I... hold onto it for safe keeping... maybe?"
"Sure! But first we gotta check on Tails."
"What's going on with helicopter butt?"
Knuckles turned on his communicator. "Hey buddy, we need an update. Where are you and how are you holding up?"
Tails responded. "They're gone, they've been gone for a while... But nothing FEELS right... I feel like time is vast and space is bendable! Nothing makes sense! Everyone just seems out of character!" There was a pause. "What if I'M out of character?!"
"Cool your jets man. We're on our way." Knuckles ended the call. "You coming with me?"
"Personally I kind of wanna stay in my little bunker and keep talking to my new friend beyond the fourth wall." Sticks scratched behind her ears. "I was planning on sitting the rest of this schlock out by hunkering down and talkin' to the writer about floof and snugglin' animals but-."
"Wait... YOU'VE BEEN TALKING TO A WRITER?!"
"Well yeah but-."
"CAN YOU TELL THEM TO GIVE ME AN EMERALD?!" Knuckles begged. "I mean the almost constant use of fourth wall breaking would be a drag in terms of story-telling and it's tragic that the same sense of humor is being used at every turn... But I REALLY want that emerald! Preferably a big one! So big I can sleep on top of it!"
"You're missing my point... I don't want any part of this schlock. I just wanna hunker down, sharpen my spears, things like that. Besides, I already know what's going on so why would I-?" And then Knuckles picked the badger up and put her over his shoulder like a rolled-up carpet. "And what do you think you're doing?!"
Knuckles started running straight for Tails' workshop with the badger on his shoulders. "If you already know what's going on, you need to tell Tails! AND I WANT AN EMERALD!"
"I wanna go home you echidna creep!" She somehow managed to kick him in the eye while struggling to get out of his grasp but despite him exclaiming 'ow' he just kept on running. "I KNOW HOW ECHIDNAS MATE, YOU'RE REALLY CREEPING ME OUT! IF YOU LOVE ME JUST PUT ME DOWN AND LET ME GO HOME!"
But poor Sticks was ignored and Knuckles just kept running in the direction of the workshop. "IF YOU KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON YOU NEED TO TELL TAILS!"
And coldly she pointed out: "Don't you have a communicator?"
And Knuckles stopped cold in his tracks. "OH YEAH! I do have one of those..." And he turned his communicator back on, not letting go of Sticks but instead holding onto her even harder than before so she wouldn't get away.
She whimpered, feeling helpless and genuinely fearing for her life with her newfound knowledge of echidna mating habits and knowing that Knuckles was the last of his kind. "Knuckles will you please just put me down?" But she was ignored...
"If I put you down you're going to run home or kick me again..."
"YOU AIN'T HELPIN' ME CALM DOWN KNUCKLEHEAD!"
And on the other side of the communicator all Tails could hear everything and imagined that something horrible was happening to all of his friends and that his paranoia was justified, causing him to look for large machinery to block the doors and windows of the workshop...
So many horrifying noises were coming out from Knuckle's side of the communicator that Tails imagined he and Sticks were trying to kill each other. He heard Knuckles exclaim 'you kicked me in the stomach!' while Sticks shouted that she only kicked him in self defense and from there all he heard some there was muffled yelling and footsteps and Sticks occasionally yelling something about mates.
Teammates?
Running mates?
Out of curiosity he scurried to his computer and looked up the term on the default search engine which took him to an online dictionary.
He read the multiple definitions out loud.
"Mate...
Noun...
1: each of a pair or birds or other animals. "a male bird sings to court a mate"
2: a fellow member or joint occupant of a specified thing "his tablemates"
Verb...
1: (of animals or birds) come together for breeding; copula-..."
Of course he was smart, he knew young animals came from somewhere but the thought of his friends... The people he'd known for years in addition to Sticks. It was a fact of life no one really wanted to acknowledge wholeheartedly. And currently he was both embarrassed and afraid after looking at some surprisingly graphic clip art accompanying the definition of 'mate' as a verb. The images just kept going down the page...
Wolves.
Birds.
Rabbits.
Dogs.
Cats.
Bears.
And what disturbed him the most were the graphic illustrations of hedgehogs and foxes...
It put the awful idea in his head and Sonic and Amy were – NO. He couldn't bear to think about it. Sonic was his bro. BUT EVEN BROS HAD LIMITS. The pictures of foxes too, they urked him on a personal level as the ones in the picture also happened to have yellow fur which put awful ideas in his head about Zooey and...
He stopped, wanting to smash his computer on the floor and never touch technology again, maybe become like Sticks and live in a cave surrounded by nature and talking about the mind readers from beyond the stars armed with gene bombs to destroy the planet until every organism melted down into a primordial ooze...
"I don't even wanna know anymore..." He said solemly to himself, about to walk back to his hidey hole of sheet metal in the corner when there was suddenly a large BAM trying to knock the door down.
And just outside Sticks had wrestled Knuckles to the ground, sitting on top of him and hitting him with a rock in what she claimed was self defense but looked more like assault as Knuckles tried to protect his nose and eyes by blocking with his arms.
"Don't you DARE grab me like that again echidna creep! You know how scared I was?!" She continued to swing the rock at him but swing after swing her attacks were getting weaker and weaker and all she wanted to do was go home and talk to the writer of this weird and miserable little fanfic about how she now hated them and wanted to see them get crushed by a tree and berate them on how they were probably a closeted furry – a term Sticks herself just got acquainted with earlier that day.
And when her attacks stopped completely and just turned into crying Knuckles sat up, hands on Stick's shoulders. "I know I'm not the smartest... But whatever you're upset about was caused due to a misunderstanding."
"Ya know I'm not even sure anymore... First the fourth wall was eviscerated... And then YOU-!"
"Are going to get an emerald! You said you wanted to get an emerald right?" Knuckles – big lug that he was – tried to defuse the situation. "Well, after all this is over and we talk to Tails, why don't we look around the island to find one?"
"You better not be lyin' to me..."
"I'm not. I want to find some too. And you like shiny things."
"I do like shiny things..." And she pondered it for a moment. "Deal." And she hugged the echidna as hard as she could.
Unlucky for Tails he opened the door at that exact moment and he suddenly got horrible flashbacks of the images he saw online – suddenly thinking the badger and the echidna were 'mating' right on his door step...
And so he just retreated back into his corner...
Chapter 4 end
Yeah so Tails is pretty much the kid who discovers what sex is and who's then horrified by the action because they ended up learning about sex in the wrong way (my definition of 'the wrong way' being by looking at porn straight away or relying on fanfic for sex ed rather than having a formal talk about it with parents, doctors or with a sex educator in a school). I don't see Tails being a very sexual character. He's too innocent and cute and his tails are so FLOOFY...
But since Boom is a much more self aware show and it seems like they aged all of the characters up to some extent I think Tails is probably somewhere around 12 - 14 in Boom and that seems like the prime age to mess with in terms of discovery... For better or worse...
As much as this fanfic is meant to be a comedy (as well as what would happen if I got to write an actual Sonic Boom episode), it is sort of meant to poke fun at as well as commentate on different aspects of sexuality and sexual discovery in a comedic sense.
Animal Trivia for chapter 4:
Baby hedgehogs are actually born blind! They'll be able to see around 2 weeks after they're born. Granted several baby animals are born blind or with their eyes closed, but with hedgehogs in particular this just put the cute image in my head of Classic Sonic running around blindly while bumping into everything - like those toy hamsters that were popular years ago that had the button on their nose that would make them turn in a random direction to make them look like they're real hamsters running around. If i'm not mistaken I THINK they were called Zu-zus? I know my little cousin had one but it's long been donated...
And that ends the hedgehog mating trivia... This chapter has a lot of echidna mating trivia!
If you're also wondering why Sticks mentions knowing how echidnas mate and why she's freaking out so much it's because male echidnas – in addition to having four headed penises – are also known to rape female echidnas before they even wake up from hibernation. How this apparently works is that the males tend to wake up about a month earlier than the females and immediately jump on top of them. The female could wake up and realize they're mating but they won't be at a normal body temperature and it's more than likely they'll just return to hibernation again so for them there's not a clear distinction between hibernation and reproduction... In addition multiple males will attempt to mate with a single female at once (so basically an echidna orgy). The reason for that is because there a more reproductively active males than females and female echidnas don't reproduce every year...
Poor Tikal and Shade man...
Of course this fanfic isn't going to get into that horrible territory with Knuckles doing anything unspeakable to any of the females in the franchise, but this little piece of trivia makes echidnas even weirder... Although what's most funny about me doing all of this pointless research into animal mating habits is that based on actual echidna mating habits: Knuckles is actually close to his real life animal equivalent (minus the implied echidna rape of course). Due to the fact that real echidnas have trouble mating, it actually makes sense for the echidna character in the franchise to be "the last of his kind".
Enough Trivia:
Next chapter: more SonAmy, less Knuckles and Sticks and Tails trying to maintain his innocence.