Miles slowly drifted back into consciousness, his weary eyes eyes which were red and puffy from sobbing opening slightly…His cheek was pressed against what must have been one of the walls at some point…He felt dizzy…and sick, like he was stuck on a rocking ship out in the middle of a stormy sea…
He could hear the buzzing of insects in his ears and the sounds of birds…Like a jungle outside…He couldn't care less though…his body ached from the multitude of bruises that dotted it from the fall…he just wanted to sleep…And his head…there was a terrible pounding agony in his head…like somebody had tossed a javelin through his temple…All the sensations making him want to just collapse and go back to sleep…
He slowly sat up, a single sore and trembling arm clutching an old oxygen pipe which was bent outwards…he pushed himself up with one arm and retched, vomiting all over the dull iron grey floor of the pod's ruins. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, hating the sour bile's lingering taste on his tongue…He groaned, turning away from the puddle of what was once the previous night's dinner.
His head throbbed and his breath came out in short shallow gasps…He hated this, he hated every second of this…he wanted to go home…to wake up from this nightmare…because that's what this had to be…just a bad dream…just to check he pinched the back of his hand feeling the sharp pain…but nothing changed…he was awake…and the situation he was in was all too real…
Whimpering slightly he opened his eyes a bit more to try and get a vague sense of his surroundings, his vision was blurry and unfocused but he could just about make out the fact that he was in the far end of the pod opposing the windows and thrusters of the other end…A water droplet then fell on his wet, rubbery black nose…and then another…and another…he looked up slightly…
He was met with the sight of a luscious green canopy…The light of the early morning sun breaking through the lush green veil…water droplets running off of the leaves and falling down onto him and the pod. He slowly clutched at the edge of the pod once more and tried to stand up…and after 30 seconds of stumbling and shallow huffs as he attempted what seemed like a Herculean task he was able to just about stand up on his own two feet.
He looked to his side, facing the back of the pod which held the window and thrusters…Only it wasn't there, just a massive opening, twisted metal and piping protruding from the rim of the hole…He stumbled his way over to the gap…a rhythmic creaking sound being heard as he felt as if the whole pod was moving under him…he looked down and it turned out to be true…it was gently swaying form back to forth…
He shuffled closer to the gap and gently peered below into the undergrowth and from what he could see the ground was…the ground was 20 feet below him…He let out a shocked and semi terrified gasp as he saw the true height of the pod and tried to move backwards…however his weight caused the pod to tip forward…
Miles screamed as he felt his body slide downwards towards the gap, desperately trying to cling onto the metal floor…he was just able to grab onto one of the protruding pipes…Getting a view of the floor below him.
"Oh shit…oh shit…" the fox whispered…However…he could begin to feel something wrong…really wrong…his hand was slipping…He whined as he tried to clutch on…peering down at the floor again…however his misfortune struck once more and his hand slipped…
He plummeted to the jungle floor, his body bouncing off of thick wooden branches, thinner ones lashing at his body and face….pain erupting all over his body like volcanoes of agony…He felt the pain flair in his nose, his back, his wrist, arms, legs…everywhere before he landed on the cold hard jungle floor…
The situation with his headache hadn't exactly improved, the whole falling 20 feet and hitting every possible obstacle on the way down was proof of that…but now there were new pains flaring up across his body…for one his nose…he turned until he was laying on his belly and coughed, fear flaring up slightly as he saw blood splatter against the dirty ground…
He winced and turned away, more blood pouring from his nose…it was hurting like hell and likely wasn't going to work properly for a while…His wrist also throbbed with pain…Looking down he saw it had grown swollen and purple…broken, almost certainly…he hated this so much…he just wanted his father to take him home…
The thought of him brought a great pain to his little heart…he had lost his father…he could have done something! He could have at least said goodbye…but no…instead he just obeyed without question…and now the one man who had ever truly cared for him was dead...He looked down at the muddied, torn red jacket given to him by his father...he didn't deserve it…not after his failure…
He ripped it off and threw it to the floor with a saddened whimper…looking at how torn and dirty it was…but it didn't matter anymore…he wasn't a Robotnik…He was a nobody once again…He should have known something like this would happen…it was obvious, why would somebody like him live a happy life?
All his life he had been an outcast, a loser, a freak, a waste of space…He may as well come to terms with the fact that he would never have a happy life…and be doomed to wonder Mobius alone…unloved…unremembered before dying alone in some alleyway, with nobody to mourn or care for him…He may as well get used to that fact and move on with his life…But first he had to get out of this jungle.
His ears pricked as he heard the gentle rush of a small stream nearby and he turned to face the source of the noise…He walked over and lo and behold there was a tiny stream with crystal clear waters, Miles knew that if he followed it then he would eventually find a way out of here…With one last look back at both the ruined jacket his father had given him and the ruins of the escape pod that was caught in the canopy he sighed to himself, hoping one day he could forgive himself for getting into this situation before he turned heel and began to follow the small stream.
…...
The sun had began to dip in the sky, it's usual rich azure blue phasing into a rather beautiful tangerine orange, giving a rather attractive atmosphere over the jungle…It had been hours now…And the stream had led Miles absolutely nowhere…He was tired, boiling, soaking wet from the water that perpetually beat down on him from the canopy and hungry…
His stomach rumbled slightly as he tripped on a rock, the sudden pain causing the boy to yelp with pain…not that he wasn't in enough of it already…His wrist had gone an even darker shade of purple and had swollen to larger proportions and it was agonising for him…His nose was perpetually oozing blood in horrible red streams that stained the now dirty and unkempt white fur around his muzzle.
His body burned with the multitude of cuts, bruises and lacerations he had received from falling down from the escape pod that morning and the effects had began to take their toll as he was feeling sorer and sorer by the second…His exhaustion as well…He felt like he could collapse any second, his vision was blurry, his legs were weak and he could feel himself grow tempted at the prospect of curling up on the dirty fern dotted earth and slowly drift off to sleep…never to awake.
He felt his body grow weaker and weaker every minute, he had to shake his head to keep himself from collapsing from exhaustion, but it was getting harder and harder to do so by the second…Maybe he should just sit down…just for a minute perhaps? Maybe it would take his mind off of what was going on around him.
His vision started seeing doubles of what was in front of him, making Miles feel even more delirious and ill than he had been earlier…His tails dragged along the floor too, gathering dust and dirt in the once fluffy white and yellow fur which by now was ruffled and had slightly darkened to a more medallion yellow and greyish white…
He felt sick, he felt tired, he felt hungry and he felt a massive void in his heart...He could feel the strain the hunger, the exhaustion and the emotional damage was taking on him…And in that moment, he felt his eyelids grow heavy and eventually…everything turned dark once again…The last thing he saw before it all went black was his face falling downwards and the ground growing closer and closer to his face.
…...
The sounds of the jungle hadn't faded away as the sky had darkened to an inky, ebony black sheet dotted by tiny glowing stars, like diamonds dotting the walls of a great subterranean cavern…like the dusk of a few hours ago it was beautiful…Nigh beautiful even…However the forest was still very much awake…At least…one person was still awake…Birds squawked as a blue streak of light darted past them at unfathomable speeds, like a bolt of lighting had passed through the undergrowth…It zipped past trees, ferns, plants and animals at speeds unlike anything it had ever experienced.
However…Just as quickly as it had appeared, it stopped…A silhouette stood over the unconscious form of Miles, emerald green eyes peering down curiously at the unconscious toddler…The silhouette displayed the body of a teenage hedgehog, around 16 years old with long, sharp quills that protruded from the back of the teens head.
"Kid? Hey kid? You okay?" a teenage voice whispered to the small boy…However he was met with no reply.
"Come on kid you can't be that heavy of a sleeper surely." He spoke once more, this time slightly nudging the kid in an attempt to wake him up from his slumber…The teenager flipped him over and gasped slightly seeing the state the kid was in…It was truly shocking…
"Oh Jesus…" The teen whispered…he had to get the fox out of here…he would die if he didn't do anything, there had to be somewhere he could take the kid…there had to be something he could do…
Thoughts rushed through the teens head like cars on an empty highway, he could take him to that Knucklehead on Angel Island…No, that wouldn't do, he was 100% a powerful fighter and had nearly killed him in that temple with the Master Emerald but as someone who could not only heal but take care of a kid, especially one as young as him? That would only end in disaster.
He could take the kid over to his biggest fan, however she like the Echidna wouldn't be the most responsible person to take care of a kid, besides he was a little boy and every square inch of her house was coloured in different shades of pink and purple and he knew how much most small boys, hated that colour.
He needed someone responsible…Someone who could take care of him…and hopefully heal his many injuries. Bingo…A light-bulb went off in the teen's brain…He knew who he could take the kid too…
He gently lifted up the kid in his arms, surprised at how light the little guy was and sighed to himself…He knew what he was doing was potentially stupid and reckless…but it wasn't every day that you found a kid abandoned in the forest with no sign of family or friends nearby…so he had to take a leap of faith and get this kid to the village…He knew the risk of more or less abducting a kid to take him to the village…but he had to try…he was the hero of Mobius after all…
