Disclaimer: All non-original characters are property of SEGA, DiC and/or their respective creators.
Inescapable Past, Act 9: The Principal's Office
There was a clank of glass striking glass as Sally Acorn reached over to silence her cellphone and missed.
"Bugger," murmured the chipmunk, hastily rescuing the device from the crimson tide of cranberry juice she'd unleashed by knocking the glass over.
Turning off the jingling alarm, she glowered at the numbers and letters on the phone's lock screen: 5:30am. Sitting up in bed, she thumbed the notifications tab. There were three in all, none of them from Sonic. With a sigh, Sally began scrolling anyway. One was from Nicole: still no progress on Vanilla's retro-diagnosis. Another was from Bunnie: Cream was determined to return to school today, come hell or high water. The last was from Elias. Whatever it was, it could wait.
Tossing her phone aside, Sally extricated herself from the double bed's sheets and trudged towards her bathroom. The hot shower helped wash away the creeping sense of nostalgia for the Knothole days she'd been having yesterday. Simpler as those times may have been, and cozy as her old treehouse was, it was easy to forget how often other treehouses suddenly became vacant after certain missions.
Having picked out a clean blue gilet, Sally headed downstairs where she was reminded of another perk of city living. A bowl of hot, syrup-doused oatmeal awaited on her kitchen table, along with a cup of coffee and fresh glass of cranberry juice. She had cautioned Hershey about blurring the line between bodyguarding and butlering, but like any self-respecting Freedom Fighter, the cat often ignored her.
While breakfasting, Sally returned to Elias's message. It contained a link to an article on , the website run by Breezy, Mobius' sensationalist-in-chief. Morbidly curious, she opened it. To her surprise, it wasn't another tirade attacking her big brother. In fact, it was more aimed at her. Apparently, Breezy felt the mandatory uniform policies of schools like the Alicia Acorn Academy were foisting a 'culture of clothedness' on a generation of young Mobians.
Relieved to see the tabloid queen hadn't got the only scoop Sally was really worried about, she put her phone away and finished eating. Stopping by the front door to lace up her boots, she stepped out onto the veranda and found Hershey perched on the hood of her black sedan, reclining against the windshield.
"Ready to go?" asked the lounging black cat, lifting her blue-tinted shades.
"Are you?" replied Sally, crunching her way across the gravel driveway.
"That oatmeal didn't make itself."
"Not that I'm ungrateful, but I can make my own breakfast."
"Haven't you got enough on your plate?" said Hershey, slipping off the hood. "No pun intended."
Watching while the cat made a show of checking the car for poorly-hidden explosive devices, Sally climbed into the backseat. The sedan proceeded down the gravel driveway at a crawl. Pausing at the far end while the compound's automated wooden gate opened, Hershey turned out onto a street lined with mansions that made Sally's look like a modest bungalow.
Named for the former princess's late grandfather, Fredericktown was Station Square's most affluent suburb. Some of Sally's neighbors looked to be in a competition to cultivate the tallest hedge, not that she could see the point. When they all had three (or more) floors to conceal, how much privacy could vegetation realistically provide? At times like these, she wondered if such excess would seem quite so weird if she'd grown up in Castle Acorn. Alas, Robotnik had reduced the House of Acorn's family seat to ruins years ago.
They drove down a few such streets until, upon rounding a corner, the looming hedgerows on the left side of the road gave way to a tall granite wall. A quarter-mile later, the sedan came to an open gate in the wall. Hershey turned left, passing under a black wrought iron archway bearing the word 'Timberland'. It was the name given to the estate by its previous owner, a disgraced lumber magnate called Fiona.
She had lived here until shortly before the Black Arms invasion when Breezy, frustrated by one too many interview refusals, published an exposé on the vixen's business practices. Flexing the same journalistic muscles that once led her to Knothole Village's precise location, Breezy found Fiona had made her fortune harvesting and selling the wood of Royal Oaks,. These oversized trees, unique to the Great Forest and a symbol of the House of Acorn, had been protected by royal decree for four generations.
The vixen had fled before the police could act on Breezy's findings, leaving the mayor to dispose of a forty-acre estate six mansions had been demolished to make way for. Worried by rumors that Antoine, a candidate in the race to be Governor of Station Square, hoped to make Timberland his official residence if elected, the outgoing mayor had persuaded the former princess to make it the Alicia Acorn Academy's main campus.
For a tiny fraction of her inheritance, Sally had acquired a sprawling redbrick mansion deliberately designed to be the biggest house in Fredericktown. Many of its forty cavernous rooms, no doubt built that way to maximize the building's profile, made almost ideal classrooms. As for the acres of verdant grounds that'd come with the house, Sally had enlisted a group of veteran Freedom Fighters – many of whom hadn't found the switch from Knothole so easy - as live-in groundskeepers.
Just before turning into the parking lot, the sedan passed an old ram named Ari hosing down the school's netball court. While Hershey went to say hi,, Sally headed up the limestone front steps and through the arched front door. Every inch of the foyer's ceiling and walls were covered with light-brown wood panels, fashioned from poached Royal Oak. The décor was the same throughout most of the building.
Sally crossed the black-and-white checkerboard marble floor and took off up the grand staircase, sprinting up three floors. It was a daily ritual intended to keep her in shape, lest Bunnie start nagging her about visiting her new gym. At the top of the stairs on the fourth floor, she came to a door affixed with a brass plaque. It was inscribed 'Principal Acorn'.
Upon entering her office, Sally stopped in her tracks. Across the room, Amy Rose was curled up in the green wingback chair behind her desk. Standing there looking at the hedgehog, the chipmunk noticed she could hear breathing out of sync with the rise and fall of Amy's chest. She looked over her left shoulder. Shadow lay sprawled on a small couch inside the door.
Narrowing her cerulean eyes, Sally slammed the office door with all the strength she could muster. The black hedgehog awoke in a frenzy, brandishing a handgun in the chipmunk's general direction. He grunted as a boot heel collided with his fingers, sending the weapon clattering to the floor.
"Don't you point that thing at me!" hissed Sally in a venomous tone no student had misbehaved badly enough to have heard yet.
"Don't hurt him!" Amy piped up, springing out of the wingback chair.
The chipmunk looked round. Seeing the state of the pink hedgehog's purple gingham dress stayed her tongue. Tinged brown with dust, it was replete with rips and tears, half the buttons off the front were missing and one sleeve was shredded completely.
"Amy, of all the places to hide, how could you-"
"That's not why we're here," Amy cut in, her braided quills whipping back and forth as she shook her head.
"Really? Then why are-"
"I want to come to school."
Sally blinked in surprise. "You do?"
The pink hedgehog nodded firmly. "I figured that, like, if I'm not going to be sitting for Cream anymore, if I'm here, she'll still know I'm nearby."
Green eyes tracked Sally uncertainly as she made her way behind the desk. She seized Amy in a viselike hug. It took all the chipmunk's restraint not to swing the preteen around like she was still an eight-year-old.
"Don't suppose you want to start this morning?" Sally half-whispered.
"Nuh-uh," uttered Amy, slightly winded by the embrace. "Not until Shadow's safe."
"Fair enough."
Stepping backwards, Sally looked the hedgehog up and down again.
"Do you want to take a uniform now anyway?"
"It wouldn't be another one like this, would it?" asked Amy.
"You're actually a little old for that dress," smiled Sally.
Spinning on her heel, she grabbed a pen off her desk, wrote something on a stray scrap of paper and handed it to Amy.
"Go give this to Hershey. She's probably out by the netball court."
"Oh, uh, o-okay."
Amy glanced down at the scribbled note, then over at Shadow. The black hedgehog nodded. Sally smiled warmly as she and Shadow watched the pink hedgehog plod across the office, accompanied by the slap-slap-slap of her rebounding flipflops. The smile vanished the instant the door clicked shut.
"Three bloody months," she remarked, collapsing into the green wingback chair.
Shadow eyed her quizzically.
"I spent three months telling her there was a desk waiting here with a name. Three days with you and I suddenly have a new student. I don't know whether to thank you or kick you."
The black hedgehog frowned. "Do I get a choice?"
"Tell me, what do I have to pay you to leave here before she gets back?" asked Sally flatly.
Shadow looked at her aghast, scarlet eyes wide open. "I couldn't possibly-"
"Why not?" snapped the chipmunk.
"Because you might lose your new student before she's even attended a class," interjected Espio, rendering himself visible on the couch's armrest.
"I presume you heard what she said about wanting to be near Cream?" the principal countered, determined to not let the chameleon's appearance faze her. "Cream will be here in less than an hour."
"Okay, so maybe you'll get a seventh grader either way, but would she ever trust you again? No way would she believe this old sap ditched her of his own accord."
"She's always been a very trusting-"
"She's not stupid, though," Shadow piped up. "I understand your concerns, prince...ipal, but I already offered to take her home once. She wouldn't even let me finish the question."
"How much help can a kid be to a-... Well, no offence, but a living weapon like you?"
"She saved my life," said the black hedgehog levelly.
"He's not exaggerating," Espio chimed in. "You and your pals trained her too well."
"We didn't have a choice," said Sally pensively, leaning back in her chair. "There was never enough of us."
"Why not try and just be proud of her, then?" said the chameleon, walking over to perch on the edge of her desk. "If it makes you feel any better, we aren't exactly headed for Metropolis."
The wingback chair pivoted in his direction. "Where are you going?"
Espio cocked his head towards Shadow. "May I?"
"Does it matter what I say?" replied the hedgehog.
"Good point," the chameleon quipped, looking back at Sally. "The Emerald Hill Zone."
"The Emerald Hill? Why?"
"Something about a killer robot, I think," said the chameleon as the office's door handle turned.
"Hey," said Amy shyly, shuffling into the room as three sets of eyes converged on her.
Gone was the purple gingham dress, replaced by a gray pleated skirt and violet blazer over a white shirt, complete with red necktie. Her blazer's left breast pocket bore the school crest: three interlocking As arranged in a triangle pattern within the silhouette of a golden acorn.
"You put the tie on?" said Sally, sounding a note of genuine surprise. The mandatory accessory had been the source of many headaches, and more than a few detentions.
The pink hedgehog tugged at the silken fabric looped around her neck. "Hershey just kind of put it on."
"Speaking of Hershey, haven't I seen those somewhere before?" asked Espio, eyeing the bright blue boots that'd appeared on her feet.
"Uh, yeah, she threw my flipflops in the trash," said Amy, a little miffed. She glanced down at her new footwear long enough to miss the chameleon punching the air.
"I hope she didn't say you could wear those to class," said Sally as she stood up and walked over. Honoring a shared joke of theirs, Amy pinched the corners of her skirt and curtsied. Flushed with pride, the chipmunk placed her hands on the hedgehog's newly-padded shoulders, coming across something odd beneath the braided quills draped over them. "She gave you for satchel too?"
The preteen shrugged. "I needed something to put the other uniform in. She wouldn't let me leave without one."
"I can see her logic," remarked Shadow.
"Well, take care of it...and yourself," said Sally, kissing Amy on the forehead. Forcing herself to unhand the youngster, lest she attempt to drag her out of the office for her own good, the principal looked over her shoulder. "Can I speak to you outside for a second?"
Cocking a brow, Espio shrugged and started towards the door.
"Don't go anywhere without me," he said, drawing an eyeroll from Shadow as he followed Sally out of the office. Meanwhile, Amy recovered the handgun from under the couch.
In the hallway, Sally parked herself on a bench usually reserved for students who'd exhausted their teachers' patience. Unlike Cream, she wasn't completely confident Amy wouldn't get to know it quite well in the near future.
"Please tell me this isn't a delay tactic," said the chameleon, leaning against the wood-paneled wall opposite.
"Much as I wish it was, no. Look, Hershey and Rotor stopped by your - well, Chaotix's – offices last night-"
"And?" asked Espio pointedly, his golden eyes practically glaring at her.
"The front door was open but, uh, no one was there."
Watching him close his eyes and exhale, she frowned.
"Should we be worried?"
"No. Wherever he's gone, he'll be better off. Anywhere beats hanging around that dump alone."
"Are you sure? I mean, if you wanted to go look, there's always the chopper. I'm sure Elias won't take too much con-"
The chameleon silenced her with a shake of his head.
"There's no point. That croc's got a harder head than your boyfriend. He'll come back when he's good and ready."
Sally mutely watched Espio let himself back into her office without so much as a wave goodbye. Did he know? Moments later, she heard a muffled shout, followed by a flash of white light leaking out from under the door. Pulling out her phone, the chipmunk sighed. 7:15am. No way Sonic would be awake yet.