Chapter 39 PART ONE
Her Sweet Passion
Amy Rose closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The clutter in her mind faded into the background. All the distractions around her, and all her daily concerns washed away in a wave of concentration. She was ready. Her makeup was applied. It was a subtle sheer tint that served only to accent her features and not distract from them. She was wearing one of her favorite little pink dresses with a yellow bow. Her quills were combed back and wavy. A red hairband rested gently above her forehead.
She had chosen her outfit to strike a perfect balance between casual fun, and delicate style. The kind of outfit you could go to work in and still look cute in case of a chance encounter. Amy felt a rush of excitement as she focused on these positive thoughts. Here we go. Showtime.
Amy opened her eyes and held down the record button. Her phone lit up and Amy saw her own face smiling down at her. However, it was not the reflection Amy saw in the mirror at night. When the camera was rolling, Amy was not the same person. In an instant she transformed into the overwhelmingly positive, infectiously cheerful and uncomparable charismatic girl that had won the hearts of five hundred thousand loyal followers.
"Heeeeey everyone!" She announced with a flippant hand gesture and a wink at the camera. "You know what today is! The first sunday of the month and that means, patron Q&A!"
Amy talked into the phone without hardly a glance at the people casting her annoyed looks. She walked down the sidewalk with a confident skip and a smile that shone nearly as bright as the sun. "You know how it works. First come first serve, so let's hear what y'all want to know about your's truly!" Amy held a hand to her chest and batted her eyelashes.
She checked the corner of the screen. Below an icon of an eye the number twenty five thousand flashed. The chat beneath the camera was whizzing by. A question filtered to the top. "WHERE ARE MY NEW SONAMY PICTURES?"
Amy felt a slight twisting in her gut. She ignored the sensation and smiled more broadly than ever. "Y'all know how hard it is to get the fastest thing alive to sit still for a photo," Amy answered with a girlish chuckle.
A second question rose to the top of the chat. "Why haven't we seen you with Sonic lately? Is everything okay?"
Amy let out a feigned groan of frustration. "Not everything I do with Sonic has to go up online does it?"
Messages flashed rapidly on the chat. Amy could not read them all but from what she could read her followers were insisting that they actually did expect everything she did with Sonic to end up online. The third patron question rose to the top of the chat. "Did you go to Sunset Island with Sonic for your honeymoon? I heard he was there this past summer."
For a split second, Amy's persona faltered. Her smile failed and she nearly tripped while walking down the sidewalk. She recovered in an instant. "Y'all you know I was busy working this summer! Girl boss forever!" Amy flashed the peace sign to the chat. Internally however she was feeling very uncomfortable. She had expected the Q&A to focus on Sonic, which is why she had skipped the segment last month. It had been too long since she had even seen her crush and Amy had exhausted her trove of content featuring the pair.
"Where did you get that dress?" The fourth person asked. Amy was so relieved she did a little twirl to show it off. "Moon Cove Aesthetics! I got this dress there and a facial. It's an adorable little spa and shop located downtown. Who knew Station Square could be so trendy?"
Amy let out a little sigh of relief as the chat switched topics and started discussing clothes. She looked up from her phone and realized she had accidentally walked past her apartment building. Amy spun around and started back in that direction. She had to be careful where she placed her phone so as not to give her viewers a good view of where she was. Not that Amy was afraid of stalkers, but she did not want them to know she lived in the lower end of the city.
The fifth question pinged. "How was Sonic after Emerald City? He was so brave, I could not stop crying."
Amy reached the steps leading into her all brick apartment building. The front door was run down and painted a horrible yellow. She kept her camera close to her face as she opened it behind her back and slipped inside. "I think he was really hurting for all the people. My Sonic plays it tough but inside he really is sensitive. I've never been so proud of him."
Half of that was true. When she had watched the person she loved most spinning around a deadly explosion on live T.V Amy's heart had expanded with a sense of fondest affection and admiration. However, when he did not reach out to her afterwards and as Tails continued to ignore her calls that affection turned sour.
Amy carefully sidestepped up the stairs of the apartment building. The walls here were green and the paint was badly chipped. Her neighbors were sitting in the stairwell watching her with dead, cold eyes. Amy ignored them and kept her eyes glued on her phone.
"When are you coming back to Westopolis? Meeting you at Sonic Con was the best moment of my life!" Amy could not suppress the smile and the rush of dopamine that flooded her brain.
"I'm hoping I can go on another tour again this winter!" She promised with a falling feeling in her stomach. "I love meeting you all. If I had it my way I would spend every moment with you, but a girl has to work." She held up her arm and flexed as a mock sign of strength. That sent the chat into a tizzy. She saw many heart eyes emojis.
Amy stopped at the ninth floor. She backed over to her room, apartment 0923. Habit enabled her to open it while still facing her phone. She slipped inside and hurried over to her room. Amy clicked on the lights. A mural of sorts was set up behind her. The pink painted wall was choked with pictures of her and Sonic. The dressers were stuffed with plush animals. String lights hung on the walls. A painting of her and Sonic sitting by a cool lake dominated the frame. "Alright! I'm home. Now we can really get into your questions!" Amy set herself in a perfect position. She had arranged this wall with painstaking exactness. Amy ensured that she was standing in the perfect position. The lights flashed into her face and complimented her makeup beautifully.
"I heard that Sonic was at Sunset Island with another girl. A shrew named Nora. What will you do?"
Amy had not noticed the question as she had been too busy setting herself into the camera frame. She read it three times in rapid succession. Her mouth twitched. The chat was responding rapidly. Amy saw several people post surprised emojis. Some called out Sonic. Others congratulated him. Amy exhaled slowly. "I don't think your sources are correct on that one. I know my Sonic. He would never-" Amy's answer was cut off. Another question floated to the front.
"Are you even Sonic's girlfriend?"
Again the chat became a blur of rapid conversation. Amy tried to think of something to say but her mind felt blank. She stared fixedly at her own frozen face. Do something. Amy exhaled. "Of course I am! Which is why I don't get all out of sorts because of baseless rumors. Sonic has been extremely busy lately which is why I haven't been able to post as much content. But don't worry," She said with a smile and an indulgent laugh. "I know what my followers want. I'll twist Sonic's arm and get him to give a shout out! Who knows, maybe next month me and him can do a Q&A together?"
This turned the chat upside down. All the former questions were completely forgotten. Amy smiled broadly as positive comments and excited emojis rushed up one after another. She checked the corner of her screen. The number thirty thousand hovered beneath the eye icon. "Well guys that's it for now! I'll be back on later for a bit and I may even do a live stream of me playing through Sonic Land 3. Check ya later and remember, have no fear Amy Rose is here!" Amy saluted her listeners, winked, and then turned off the camera.
It felt as if she had been turned off as well. Amy's shoulders slumped forward. She tossed her phone onto her desk. She felt exhausted and terribly hungry. Her dress was pinching at her underarms and she longed to throw it aside.
Amy sighed and walked away from the mural. Her followers may have thought she lived in a comfortable, well furnished, sky loft apartment but the reality was far the opposite. The mural stood in stark contrast to the rest of the room. The walls were empty, scratched and a depressing color of mixed black and green. Amy walked slowly over to the kitchen. A stack of clutter and mail congested the single table. One rested prominently on the top. The words LATE NOTICE were inked in red on the topmost letter.
She ignored this and approached her fridge. Inside, all that greeted her grumbling stomach was a few packages of plain greek yogurt, a half eaten salad and aging coconut milk. Amy snatched one of the yogurts and closed the fridge. Girl boss. She thought solemnly as she pulled back the cover and used a plastic spoon to eat.
Amy sat at the one chair she owned and looked out towards the window. It gave her a good view of the wall on the building opposite. Thirty thousand. She thought darkly. That was almost half of what she had last year. I used up too much of my reserve content. She told herself.
After the Ark incident, Amy had been flushed with new pictures of her and Sonic together. She had used them liberally to build up her channel. However, her audience demanded more and more so Amy was constantly asking Sonic to take pictures with her. He had been patient enough at first, but when he realized what she was using them for he had distanced himself from her. Though he had never actually told her off for using him, his silence spoke volumes.
Amy dipped her spoon into the tasteless yogurt and spun it aimlessly. She missed him terribly. Not because of her failing influence among her fans, but because of his infectious optimism. Amy felt she could have used some of that right now.
She looked down at the mail gathered on her table and pushed it aside. A newspaper that looked several months old was gathering dust at the bottom of the stack. Amy retrieved it and smoothed it out. On the bottom of the front cover was a picture of her and Sonic. The headline read, My Adventure in Space with Sonic the Hedgehog by Amy Rose. A snippet rested beneath the headline. While the rest of the world waited with bated breath to see what their governments would do, one hedgehog decided to take matters into his own hands. With the world's freedom at stake he-
The rest of the article continued on page fifteen. Amy did not turn there. Instead she lingered on the print of her name. Before the Space Colony Ark, Amy had not known what she wanted to do for a career. Ever since she had read the prophecy about her meeting a blue haired hero faster than the speed of sound, all Amy had ever really cared about was Sonic. When the prophecy finally came true when she met Sonic at Little Planet, Amy thought she had figured out her life.
However, that was not meant to be. Sonic and she were too young and Sonic was not interested in her anyway. For the next couple of years, Amy got by with odd jobs but her only true passion was tracking down Sonic and trying to be involved in his life. This desire had gotten Amy involved in several adventures. For a while, Amy had been satisfied with trailing after Sonic and involving herself in his adventures, but over time she started to understand that she needed to create a life of her own. The prophecy that had led to Little Planet had dominated her life for too long. It was time she decided her own course.
Sonic had been her passion for so long, Amy was not quite certain who she was without him, and what she really wanted to do. After the Space Colony Ark, she had been approached by the newspaper and asked if she would be willing to write something about the event. Amy had promised to try but had thought little of it. To her surprise, Amy found the experience to be extremely enlightling.
For the first time, Amy went days without thinking about Sonic at all. She poured herself out on the piece and when it was finished the newspaper had been overjoyed with her skill. Amy could still remember that feeling of pride and sense of accomplishment when she had first received the newspaper with her article featured in it.
The editors were so impressed in fact, they contracted Amy to write four more articles about her adventures with Sonic. However, she never got to publish even one. When she turned in the draft detailing the story of breaking Sonic out of a G.U.N controlled prison she received a cease and desist letter in the mail. Amy tried contacting her editors but they all ignored her calls. She reached out to different agencies and media outlets but they all avoided her like the plague. As quickly as it started, her writing career was over. All because she had the nerve to write something that would have painted G.U.N in a negative and incompatent light.
The injustice of it still stung. Amy felt a rush of anger and she balled the newspaper up and threw it across her room. Her failed writing career had led her to further her already growing social media influence. However, that proved a dead end as well. While she had managed to build a steady platform, very few companies were willing to promote her. They knew they would fall on the wrong side of G.U.N's favor if they were to support Amy.
Amy rose from her chair and paced the room. She had not finished her yogurt and was still starving but she knew she could not eat. It was imperative that she still fit into all the cute dresses she still owned because she could not afford new ones. Her only source of steady income was her patron's but that did not cover all her expenses. Amy had been so enamored with the idea of becoming a writer she had invested all her savings into classes. Now she was burdened by the debt, unable to turn what she had learned into the profit she could use to pay it back.
What would Sonic do? She wondered. Would his eternal oppostim shine through all this darkness. Was Amy simply not as strong as he was? Almost against her will, Amy wandered over to her phone. Her hand shook as she turned on the screen. Dozens of notifications awaited her, but none of them were the one's she longed for. Tails had still not returned her calls and of course, Sonic did not even own a phone.
Amy loathed her weakness. She had meant to stand on her own two feet, but right then she felt nothing in the world could cheer her up like he could. Amy gazed longingly at all the pictures of them together. Almost none of them were real. Most were fan arts or photoshops made by her followers. The only real photo was a small frame resting on her desk. Amy picked it up. She was smiling broadly at the camera. Sonic was almost walking out of frame. Amy had never seen herself looking so happy. She wondered if she would ever feel that way again.
THUD! Amy jolted in alarm. The photo slipped out of her hand and landed with a crash. She watched her apartment door shudder from a second impact. THUD! She risked an instinctive glance at the closet door in the living room. THUD! Amy let out a yelp of fear and started racing towards it.
SMASH! Something broke through the living room window. Amy had a brief glance of a small metal canister rolling towards her. Before it could explode, Amy dived backwards into her kitchen. Pfft! The canister popped, ringing Amy's ears and covering the apartment in dense smoke. Amy's throat burned and she felt her head going dizzy. She crawled on her kitchen floor and reached for a rag. Holding her breath, Amy flipped on her faucet, wet the rag and then covered her nose and mouth. She inhaled slightly and felt the dizziness in her head fade slightly.
CRASH! The door to her apartment broke open in earnest. She heard boots stomp on the ground as a dozen people rushed inside. At the same time she heard a Smash! The living room window was broken again. Heavy thuds signaled the arrival of more people in her apartment.
Amy slunk further into her kitchen. She was still concealed by all the smoke but that would not last forever. "Where is she?" A gruff voice called. "That smoke should have knocked her out."
Amy reached the wall of her kitchen. She shimmied to the side and wondered if she could try and fit between the fridge and the counter. Sunking in her stomach, she made the attempt. Amy had one arm in when her apartment betrayed her. She accidentally knocked the counter causing one of her dishes to fall. It landed with a dull crash. Boots stormed towards the sound in an instant. Amy saw dozens of little lights flashing in front of her face.
Her heart was beating frantically in her chest. The smoke cleared. Her kitchen was full of men in black armor aiming rifles directly at her. There was a click and a smaller puff of smoke filtered through the air. The gunmen parted to allow a small but heavyset man to walk into the kitchen. He had dark olive skin and he took a long slow puff from a cigar. "You're quite industrious aren't you?" The man smiled and gestured to the rag covering Amy's face.
Amy let the rag fall and removed herself from the tight space between the fridge and counter. She faced the men and tried her best to twist her expression into one of grim defiance. "Who are you? And what are you doing in my apartment?" She tried to sound threatening and impressive, but her high girly voice sounded silly compared to the man's smooth droll.
The man held out a badge. It was a simple G, but Amy knew at once what that meant. "My higher ups think they can make us of you. Though I really can't see why." He gestured at Amy's recording room. His large coin-like eyes widened with disgust. "Sometimes I can't believe the lengths people will go to to try and look successful." He snapped and four of his armed henchmen rushed forward. They grabbed Amy by both arms and dragged her over to the living room. Again her gaze was drawn towards her closet. If I could just…
Before she could finish her thought, Amy was thrown down hard onto her chair. Her hands were pulled behind her and locked with cuffs. "If you're looking for Sonic, I don't know where he is!" She snapped.
The man ignored her and took another long puff out of his cigar. "O believe me, we know." He shot another disgusted look at her shrine in the other room. "I told them you were useless. I told them that he didn't care about you. Your reputation as his girlfriend was one that you had completely made up in some delusional hysteria, but they insisted that we need you. So here we are." The man continued to pace and look around at Amy's shabby apartment.
Everytime he took his eyes off her, Amy glanced back at her closet. "Then what do you want?" She asked.
"You. I'm afraid to say, you will be coming with us Miss Rose. Though…it isn't like you will be missing much will you?" He chuckled to himself and tossed his half finished cigar on the ground. He stomped it out on Amy's carpet. "As soon as we get the go ahead, we will take you to the roof and fly you out of here."
"My neighbors will have heard," Amy retorted. "They'll know I've been taken."
"And what will they do then? Will they phone the police? The police will take a matter like this straight back to us. You foolish little girl. We can do whatever we like."
"Sonic will come for me! And there's nothing you can do to stop him. He doesn't care how important you think you are!"
The man stopped pacing. He crouched so he could look Amy straight in the face. "I'm counting on it." He tried to intimidate her by flashing her with his most gruesome smile. However, Amy responded with a smirk of her own.
"So that's why you're here. You want to use me as bait to get Sonic."
The man drew back. His eyes flashed with annoyance. "Enough talk."
Amy looked around the room. The men still had their guns primed on her, but none of their fingers were on the trigger. "If you want me as bait then you need to be able to prove that you have me and that I'm still alive."
"Shut up!" The man growled.
"No." Amy jumped up. The men converged around her but as she had guessed they did not dare shoot her. The man looked alarmed but recovered when he remembered Amy's hands were still bound behind her back. Amy leapt into the air, tucked her knees up to her chest, brought her hands down below her feet and straightened up.
"Get her!" The men charged but Amy slid beneath them. She opened up her closet, reached inside and retrieved her Piko Piko Hammer. SLAM! Turning blindly, Amy brought the weapon down with all her weight behind it. The G.U.N soldier's eyes whirled out of focus and he fell backward. His fellow troops fell back in alarm.
Amy adjusted her grip on the hammer. Her hands were still connected by the wrists but that was only a minor handicap. The G.U.N leader's face was transfixed in an expression of complete shock. Amy slid one foot forward and lowered herself into a combat ready stance. She wasn't going anywhere.