Possible titles for this chapter: Backflash, Turning Point, What Happened Last Night, Who Was In My Room Last Night?
NOTE: I know it's been a full eight months since I updated this fic and intended to stop here and call it part one, but I figured I'd keep it going because I feel like the fitting of the next few chapters in the storyline made a part two unnecessary. I also got Madden NFL 25 today.
WARNING: From this chapter forward, I will make sure to include much more Sonic, involve many more actual characters, and change POV quite frequently. Like right now. Read at your own risk.
What happened last night?
I'd been instantaneously engulfed by that waking-up-after-a-long-drunk-night sensation for six hours. My vision was blurry, my head throbbing like crazy. But at the same time, I hardly even felt like myself. I felt like I should've been taller. I felt like I shouldn't even remember my own name.
But I did.
I found myself hyperventilating from the recurring backflashes of something...
Visions of my past, perhaps.
Visions of running from the goofy man with the gun alongside an animal.
Visions of getting it to safety, putting my own life at risk.
Visions of the rounded disk piercing a hole through my body. Reliving that moment all over again, blood pooling on the floor, slipping into a world of black. Shouldn't there have been more to the afterlife than complete blackness?
I would never have been more horrified of such an incident than now, while reminiscing the circumstances of my "death". I was all the more disturbed at the theory of my return that struck me like that bullet, at a point at which I'd expected it, somehow.
For a minute or so, that alien sense made me numbly uncomfortable about someone else taking notice of my paranoia and looking at me as if I were a freak on a leash. I almost had a nervous breakdown from the intruding sight of countless animals! But then again, I was just fine with that, since I had no real friends and I would've hated the presence of any human I'd never met.
As I made out some teenage-ish skateboarders and bikers (and the small bunch on hoverboards), the apparent absence of humanity quickly gained on me. This could never be the blue planet that I'd always dreamed to see. Or maybe they had been overridden some time ago. Either way, where was I?
Two hours ago I'd made the mistake of letting my name slip out. He seemed like a nice guy. All the paranoia I'd experienced in the last six hours slowly receded as we exchanged our identities. He'd been tensing up ever since my blatant panic attack, when I stupidly (and uncontrollably) held onto him in a weird manner. But who could blame him? I'd never had a love interest either. Not even that one guy from my past life. Whatever his name was.
"Maria?" someone snapped, signaling that the time for reminiscing would be postponed. "You feeling ok?"
I looked the red hedgehog in the eyes as I contemplated my response. I was usually bad at promptness. However, based on the not-so-serious look on his face, he was in no rush.
"I don't know. A little lost..." Correction, I was as lost as lost could possibly get. Because no one who'd been given another chance at life after who-knows-how-long would ever be able to find his or her way around this over 9000. Ever. "Maybe a bit lonely..." Uh, problem?
"No problem. You can meet my friends." His straightforward tone hinted an assured sense. "They're cool. They like making friends." I hope so.
He must've gotten the hint that I didn't want to answer his remark. He scrambled to the edge of boring and reached his hand out for the handicap seat in front of him (he busted his feet some time earlier). I pushed it the slightest bit in his direction, and he secured his left hand on the push handle, or whatever.
"Thanks," he replied simply. "I'm getting out of here."
"Me too," I snapped.
After blankly staring through the window for a while, I suddenly realized how hard it had to be to get him secured into the wheelchair.
"Oh gosh, I'm sorry. I guess I should've helped to get you on that..."
"No, it's fine," he interrupted, "although my upper body strength is really weak. Heh."
Upon hearing that, I wiped my already sweaty forehead in relief.
"Maria? Where's your other glove?"
Six hours earlier...
"DAMMIT!"
The Game was inevitably over for the red hedgehog sporting the hilarious hairstyle... so he started doing the Rickroll'd dance.
He had no outside help from his blue ally/rival, who wasted his precious-no-more time battling the robotic monster that dominated this Game, oddly resembling the Death Egg boss from his second game... but appeared to be auto-piloted.
He knew he'd never muster the courage to get in the Game for once and do the one thing he'd wanted to do since the incident that flopped Generations (yet another example of a fan character ruining a terrific plot and leaving the actual characters unemployed all this time), that the blue blur would actually second for once in his twisted, yet ultimately everlong life. At the thought of the earlier incident involving his near-death and troubled return, he could barely come to accept the fact that he wouldn't be ready — perhaps his Mobian peers were right all along. He'd be risking too much in his troubling attempt to fulfill the troubling chance at life that some divine being (probably an echidna girl inspired from ancient Egyptian culture) had predestined for him.
He had to get rid of the remarkably fake Chaos Emerald.
Out of frustration (and a reinvigorated will to unlock unheard of riches) he pulled the emerald from his right pocket, wound his throwing arm back behind the tips of his quills, and flung the cursed thing out of his sight. The gem soared within the low-res video game atmosphere, pushing back a trail of pixels.
"Good riddance," the little pincushion said to himself. At this level, logic was telling him to get out of there. His first thought was to linger anywhere not within perceivable range of the gem. Otherwise, the threat of a Game Over was imminent, but in a way that would later be evidenced by a giant vortex threatening to swallow the Game into oblivion, that would translate to every player's instant doom.
Sure, he'd always been eager to join forces with a band of Mobians after a disturbing incident from five years ago that he'd rather not talk about, but the true evil force that awaited anyone's first attack had much more bad-guy experience than it looked at first glance.
Unbeknownst to a certain teen rager, the answer to the true Game within this Game lay well hidden within the powerful stone in which it was concealed. The artificial atmospheric pressure quickly gained against the jewel, however, and the resulting reaction would unleash its dark energy in the midst of the internal destruction that forced all players to turn back when they could or be sucked into eternal nothingness.
Somehow, he knew...
This Game was no longer a game.
Of course, there was still the question of what the motivation behind said MMORPG could possibly be, if it wasn't entirely for gaming.
In any case, the imminent discovery of this curious answer was bound to alter the circumstances for everyone.