Disclaimer: All non-original characters are property of SEGA, Egmont and/or their respective creators.
Inescapable Past, Act 4: Half A World Away
Amy Rose shivered as the blinding light that had engulfed the two hedgehogs faded. Assuming it was a side effect of teleportation, she changed her mind as she surveyed their new surroundings. She and Shadow were in the front yard of perhaps the sorriest-looking house she'd ever seen. The roof was missing a third of its tiles and creepers covered almost half the white clapboard façade, including several windows. It also felt oddly familiar.
"Where are we?" she asked, glancing down at Shadow. Her green eyes widened as she saw the unkempt lawn he was sitting on glitter in the sun.
"New Tek," murmured the black hedgehog, sounding as half-asleep as he looked.
"New Tek City?" blurted Amy, her head snapping back up. That explained the spark of recognition. In recent times, news crews and clickbait mongers alike had flocked here to document the aftermath of the biggest mass migration in modern Mobian history.
New Tek City was situated on the island continent of Meridian. From what Amy could remember from Rosie's geography lessons in the Knothole Village schoolhouse, Meridian was six thousand miles south of the supercontinent of Gran Mobia, where the Acorn Kingdom, United Federation, and places like that were located.
The emergence of Robotnik had transformed what was once a sleepy port city into a veritable boomtown. Its population trebled more or less overnight as wave after wave of Mobians fled south to see out the war. Alas, once these recent arrivals started to realize Robotnik's fantasy of a new world order would remain a fantasy, neighborhoods like the one where the hedgehogs were had emptied out almost as quickly as they'd been built.
Just then, a shrill wind blew. Amy reflexively wrapped her bare arms around herself, letting go of Shadow's hand in the process. He flopped back onto the frosty lawn. Hearing the grass rustle, Amy looked down.
"Shadow?"
The black hedgehog didn't respond. Amy frowned. Squatting beside him, she pushed the blue Chaos Emerald off his lap. She inhaled sharply through her nose. There was a small red dot on the white cocoon of bandages she'd wrapped his wounded right thigh with. In short order, she shrugged off her backpack, threaded her arms under Shadow's shoulders and dragged him up to the house.
She was too busy looking over her shoulder to notice the thin streaks of red they left on the grass in their wake. Once they reached the house's porch, the pink hedgehog didn't so much as pause for breath. She shouldered open the latchless front door, sending up a thick cloud of dust. She spluttered as they passed through it, powerless not to inhale several dancing motes.
Thanks to the creeper-shrouded windows, it was as gloomy inside the house as it was sunny outside. Mercifully, there was enough sunlight peeping through the gaps between the plants' tendrils to illuminate a loungeroom-like area just inside the front door. Amy lugged Shadow over and deposited him in a beaten-up old armchair, having checked for rogue springs poking through the threadbare upholstery.
Unburdened, she collapsed onto her backside on the dusty floorboards beside the armchair. She could've sworn he hadn't been that heavy in the apartment. Once her huffing and puffing had subsided, she got up to inspect his leg properly. At first glance, the red spot on the bandages didn't look any bigger than it had outside.
Heartened, Amy knelt down and set about loosening the bandages. She wasn't surprised to find the dressing underneath had turned completely red. Whispering an apology in advance, she tore away a strip of the medical tape holding the sodden gauze pad in place. Undeterred by the blood already seeping out where the removed adhesive had been, she carefully lifted the dressing.
Amy squealed as a jet of crimson squirted out of the exposed wound. She swiftly replaced it, scrambled to her feet and slowly backed away, arms frozen by her sides, hands flapping like a hummingbird's wings. With green eyes fixed on the now-leaking injury, her front teeth became embedded themselves in her lower lip as she felt her confidence crumbling.
Outside the cozy confines of her third-floor apartment, without Sally a phone call away, and without her neighbor – a kindly old tarot-obsessed ewe named Ivory – a door knock away, she suddenly felt very much like a child in way over her head. A glance down at her blood-flecked camisole and leggings did nothing to lift the twelve-year-old's spirits.
Feeling tears starting to well, Amy wiped her eyes on her forearm and took a deep breath. Determined to compose herself, she tried imagining how Princess Blaze might react in this situation. Before long, she realized her literary heroine hadn't faced a scenario like this anywhere in six books. Undaunted, the pink hedgehog tried to envisage how another one-time princess she knew might react.
Pressure. Pressure, pressure, pressure. That'd been Sally's watchword in every first aid class she'd supervised back in Knothole. Pressure first, bandages later. With that in mind, Amy was out the front door like a shot. She crunched her way across the frosty lawn to her backpack. Grabbing it by its only strap – the other had been broken since a camping trip with Cream and Vector – she tucked the blue Chaos Emerald under one arm and doubled back.
〜
"Can you feel the sunshine? Does it brighten up your day? Don't you feel that sometimes you just need to run away?"
The contagious chorus of one of Mina's hit singles resounded throughout the third-floor apartment as its front door was tentatively pushed out. Espio entered. Briefly testing the door's busted latch, he walked methodically down the hallway, treading on the shredded papery contents of four black garbage bags. His golden eyes shot down as he kicked something. Some kind of metal canister. No identifying markers, but definitely not deodorant or spray paint.
Continuing on, Espio ignored the first doorless doorway he passed in favor of another further down the hall where Mina's voice was emanating from. It started on another loop as Espio peered inside. Over the music, he could hear a shower running through the en-suite bathroom's wide-open door.
Stepping inside, he picked a path across clothes-strewn floor towards the bookcase, where the blaring cellphone was buzzing away on a middle shelf. He picked it up and found Sally's face onscreen above the green ANSWER button. Wary of raising false hopes, he replaced it and turned around. That was when the chameleon noticed the tarpaulin sheet covering the bed. It was coated in red smears. Espio's brow furrowed. What the hell happened here?
〜
Amy shut off the faucet and unfurled her magenta leggings. Inspecting them by the light of the creeper-free bathroom window, she sighed. The dark red flecks certainly looked smaller, but they were hardly inconspicuous. Pulling the damp garments back on made her regret trying to clean them in the first place. Alas, her white camisole wasn't quite long enough to serve as a dress.
Wooden steps creaked underfoot as she headed back downstairs. Her rebounding flipflops slapped against her heels as she nervously approached Shadow. Sally's first aid lessons had saved his life again. The towel that'd been intended for her still-moist quills had proven to be a serviceable makeshift compress. She hadn't dared check to see if the bleeding had stopped completely. She was just glad he hadn't lost consciousness.
"Shadow?" said Amy hopefully, standing directly in front of the armchair.
The black hedgehog stirred. "Huh?"
The pink hedgehog took a deep breath. She'd been going gone over and over what she was about to say in the bathroom mirror whilst scrubbing her hands. Her quest to find some way of putting it that wouldn't rile had led nowhere, so she just came straight out with it.
"Shadow, we have to go back."
"What?" he muttered groggily.
"Can you teleport us back? You need-"
Amy winced slightly as he raised his head to look at her. Even with his eyes only half-open, his piercing scarlet gaze still managed to intimidate. "Have you lost your mid?"
The preteen felt her back stiffen. "I'm trying to help-"
"You've got more bandages, don't you?"
"You need more than bandages!" she squeaked, pointing at his right thigh, "That is more than my crappy little first aid kit can handle. You don't have to take us to a hospital. We can go back to, I dunno, my apartment. I have a friend who can-"
"It's too soon. GUN might still be in the area," said Shadow flatly.
Amy huffed. "Fine. Go to Emerson's Point."
"Emerson's Point?" he said impassively, his voice barely louder than a whisper. "But that's miles from-"
"You saw how fast I ran up that hill, right? You should see how fast I can run down it."
Shadow held her imploring gaze for several seconds. Her face dropped as he shook his head.
"I don't know how they keep finding me. It's too risky-"
"Riskier than sitting here and bleeding to death?" she blurted, "Wouldn't you just be doing GUN's job for them?"
That remarked seemed to raise his eyelids a little higher. She pressed on.
"Besides, if you die, who'll be left to look for Omega?"
The black hedgehog grunted softly. "It's not that simple."
In that instant, Amy's mind flashed back to some of her earliest days in Knothole Village. Before Sally started to let her sit in on the Freedom Fighters' mission briefings, the eight-year-old hedgehog used to sneak out after lights-out and spy on them anyway. Quite often, she saw the chipmunk engage in loud disagreements over a mission's strategy with a certain blue hedgehog.
Amy vividly (and rather fondly) remembered Sally's tried-and-tested technique for resolving such standoffs with the intransigent Sonic. She imitated the technique now. A soft clap echoed around room as the pink hedgehog struck Shadow across the face with an open palm. Less than a minute later, she was breathing the salty sea air blowing in off the Bay of Acorns.
Amy left the semiconscious Shadow in a thicket of grass, under the watchful gaze of the bronze Princess Emerson Acorn. Then, after a false start in which she almost became the first Mobian to suffer death by flipflop, she took off her shoes and took off down the hill. Her frustration with the winding path soon reached breaking point.
As such, the pink hedgehog was soon skidding, stumbling, sliding, and occasionally tumbling down steep grassy banks. The aches came on quick, but if every bruise represented even a single second of saved time, she didn't mind. Besides, the closer she got to Station Square, the better she seemed to feel as her innate optimism began to reassert itself.
Part of it was the sheer childish abandon of running full-tilt down a hill, but her destination was also a factor. Amy was always psyched to see Vanilla, even when Cream was in school. Even though she'd been living in the city for months now, the novelty of having the rabbits so close by still hadn't worn off. The fact Vanilla always seemed to be baking something probably helped.
There wasn't any particular reason why Amy hadn't told Shadow where she was headed. Well, to be honest, she was a little worried he would think she was running to a grownup for help, but it would've taken too long to explain. Vanilla wasn't just a homemaker anymore. She was an herbalist. She even ran her own clinic downtown.
Not that Amy planned to run all the way there. It so happened that Vanilla and Cream lived in Emersonia, the very suburb the pink hedgehog was bearing down on. Moreover, she hadn't been scheduled to pick Cream up from school later, which all but guaranteed Vanilla would be at home today.
Soon enough, Amy was clambering up a sturdy wooden trellis into a stranger's backyard. Grimacing at the clematises that'd died so that Shadow might live, she slipped her flipflops back and made for the nearest gate. The reintroduction of footwear slowed her all-out sprint to more of a spirited jog. Even so, it beat risking her bare feet on the sidewalk, which the midmorning sun was already heating up. She could only rush so much right now anyway.
As Station Square's newest suburb, not all Emersonia's streets had received signs just yet. What's more, the residents' uniformly manicured lawns made many of the turnoffs look alike. Usually Amy relied on Cream to guide her: the bunny was like a fluffy little GPS. It was a nickname she wore with pride, especially after she'd thought to ask what GPS meant.
Eventually, Amy spied what she'd been looking for: a weeping willow draping a curtain of fronds over the sidewalk. She promptly kicked off her flipflops and charged headlong across the empty road. She burst through the willow fronds like an overenthusiastic gameshow host. Then, however, she came to an abrupt halt, and not because of her lack of shoes.
Up ahead, she could see Rotor's red pickup truck parked outside Vanilla's house. Dirty as it was, the mud-spattered vehicle itself wasn't what stopped her in her tracks. It was what had been loaded onto it. With its headboard cut in the shape of a Chao's silhouette, Amy would have recognized that bed anywhere. She continued down the pavement as if in danger of interrupting a burglary.
Parked in front of the truck was a silver minivan. It was even more familiar to Amy than Rotor's truck, mostly because of the countless rides Sally had given her in it. She was too distracted by what was sitting in its open trunk to question why Sally's car was here on a school day: Cream's prized dollhouse. The one Vector had made for her. The one Amy had spent countless afternoons rearranging the furniture of.
Shadow momentarily slipped to second on Amy's mental list of priorities as she turned and saw the house's front door was wide open. That wasn't something Vanilla ever did. Unlocked? Sure. Open? Never, even when Cream wasn't around. Keeping her wits about her, she started up the garden path. She was halfway to the house when Rotor emerged onto the porch.
The pink hedgehog jumped in fright. The purple walrus went one better, dropping whatever he was carrying all over the deck. "A-Amy?"
"Rotor?" said Amy, pausing to work out what exactly he was picking up. Soon, his arms were overflowing with purple gingham dresses. Cream's school dresses? "What's going on?"
"W-where've you been?" jabbered the pinniped like he hadn't heard her. "Th-they've been trying to call you."
"They?" she said with more than a flicker of impatience. "Who's they?"
"Me, mostly," said Hershey, stepping onto the porch.
Sidling past Rotor, the black cat walked down to join the pink hedgehog on the cobbled pathway. In addition to her red bodywarmer and blue neckerchief, she wore a pair of blue-tinted shield sunglasses over her dark-green eyes.
"Is Vanilla, like, moving or something?" asked Amy, studying the feline's unusually stern face for anything to quench the bushfire of her curiosity.
Hershey sighed, removing her sunglasses to massage the bridge of her nose. "Vanilla's not moving, Amy. She's sick."