Chapter 1: Back in pink.
A twelve year old red haired boy in a simple red jumper and blue jeans sat silently on the park bench, his empty eyes staring sadly into the distance. He felt as if the world itself was slipping away from him with each painful breath he took in and out. Everything looked blurry from his point of view, for he had been crying uncontrollably until a few seconds ago.
Things hadn't been easy for Christopher Thorndyke; the heir to the massive Thorndyke fortune better known to his loved ones as simply "Chris". Two weeks ago he would have felt as though he could take on the world. He felt as though the old Chris with no confidence whatsoever was a relic of the past. He felt that the old days in which he struggled to even make eye contact when he spoke to anyone were the old days.
The day he found his best friend nearly drowning in his swimming pool and was just in time to save the blue alien hedgehog from drowning would go down in history as the happiest day in Chris's life. The day of the hedgehog. Sonic the hedgehog.
The blue blur. The nightmare of evil. The protector of many worlds and the shining icon of freedom itself. From the day Sonic and his merry gang of friends became a part of Chris's lonely existence, Chris felt as though he had become unstoppable. The forboding sense of emptiness which had been festering in his mind from when he was a young toddler left alone by his extremely busy parents was gone.
Starting from the day Sonic moved into his upstairs attic, Chris's loneliness was no more. And when Sonic's eccentric gang of friends began to arrive in Station Square after him; Chris felt as though he was truly blessed.
The long and dreary days in which the hours crawled by like years were finally at an end. Even if it took an evil genius named Dr Eggman to come after Sonic and company, Chris's following days became filled with exhilerating adventures.
He learned what it was like to be the Alfred to Sonic's Batman. The Kylo Ren to Luke Skywalker. The Samwise the bold to Frodo the ringbearer. He felt for the first time in his life that he, Christopher Thorndyke was finally more than a useless burden to everyone.
From the day he saved Sonic from drowning in his pool, he felt as though he had become a movie hero just as his beloved mother Lindsay always wished he could one day become so as to take after her. Then when he and his amazingly badass grandpa Chuck went with Sonic to rescue one of Sonic's best friend's Cream the rabbit from prison island where she was being cruelly held against her will as an alien invader to be barbarically experimented on, Chris felt as though he had been upgraded into an action hero.
The days afterward were equally exciting. After Sonic's other friends had also arrived on Earth after him and been introduced to Chris by Sonic, Chris felt as though he had found his own people. His own special group of companions who understood him on a deeper level than even his wonderful friends from his amazing school.
It wasn't that he didn't value his three fellow classmates who sat next to him during every lesson. It was just that he only spent a few hours a day with them, most of which were spent in dead silence looking at the whiteboard or poring over a long and boring textbook or standardized test sheet. Thus he didn't have much time to bond with Danny, Frances or Helen as he would have liked.
So while he deeply cherished them all especially Helen, they were his friends in name only. They were the friends he kept at arms length, to be seen and not heard. Talking during class and exams was forbidden after all as it was the school rule.
With Sonic's team living in his mansion, first covertly and later overtly once his parents got used to the idea of having a friendly group of colorful animal aliens protecting their household and city from danger, Chris felt that he had a group of wonderful people he could actually form a close-knit bond with.
When they cried he was there to dry their tears. When they were happy then so was he. While Sonic was the strong leader that Chris idolized, he actually felt much more in tune with Sonic's two closest companions Tails the yellow fox and Amy the pink hedgehog.
Amy in particular was also quite the delicious piece of sweet candy for Chris's eyes and her charming singing voice raised the city walls. Chris actively had to distance himself from the pink hedgehog girl just to ensure he was not giving her more attention than Helen, for that would be to cheat on Helen even though she didn't know how much he romantically loved her yet.
When Chris's faith in Sonic began to wane following Dr Eggman's devious plot of secretly covering up the sun so he could pretend to be a hero by selling Station Square the solution to the problem he himself created; it was Amy who restored Chris's faith in Sonic's incorruptible goodness. Even Sonic's adopted little brother Tails had began to lose hope in Sonic when the blue hedgehog quite rightly questioned Eggman's true motives.
Chris trembled a little just thinking about just how close Eggman had come to tricking him and his other friends. It was only thanks to Amy that the gang were thankfully roused back to their rightful senses once again.
While he hated to admit it, Chris missed Amy as much as he missed Sonic. Flawed as she was with her quick temper which could be very frightening at times even to her friends, Amy had been a powerful positive influence to Chris that he would not soon forget. Yet Chris had chosen to only give a proper farewell to Sonic without even giving Amy a second glance. He could only pray that she was happy now wherever she and Sonic were now, and that she could understand that his undying admiration for Sonic extended to her too even if he never had the chance to say it to her.
"Hand over your money now. You puny loser!" A deep and throaty voice rumbled from behind him. The menacing threat brought the half-asleep Chris to his feet, only for him to be grabbed from behind by the scruff of his neck and seated back in the bench he had been relaxing on.
In front of him he could see two boys far taller and more heavily built than he was. One of them had long dark hair tied into a ponytail and a black tattoo of a gun on his left arm. The other's boy's two muscular arms were riddled with needle marks from shoulders to hands. The tell-tale signs of substance abuse, made obvious with how the second boy was twitching madly from left to right as he leered at Chris with a look of pure hatred, his sandy blonde hair shining in the bright midday sun.
"We hate you, you disgusting little piece of filth." The less insane looking of the two boys coldly remarked as he raised his left hand and slapped it forcefully across Chris's right temple, leaving a nasty red mark on the redhead's right cheek.
"I'm so sorry for whatever I did to you. But what did I ever do to you?" Chris timidly croaked through the increasingly painful chokehold he was being put through by an unseen person behind him. Tears blurred his vision as he did his best to look apolagetic despite the righteous anger blazing within him. This was just one of the many times this month in which he had once again come under attack for Sonic's decision to become his best friend over the rest of station square.
Chris always knew that his choice to allow Sonic's friends stay with him at his mansion in their time of need would cause problems for himself down the line. He knew this and yet he also knew that it was the morally right thing to do. But even he could not have anticipated the disproportionately violent backlash he was facing here and now.
"You caused Sonic to leave us. You and your annoying attitude and your prententious snobbery drove our great hero away." The blonde drug-addict explained in a shaky and barely comprehensible voice as he grinned a toothy grin at Chris showing off his dirty, badly damaged teeth. "And now you must pay for your evil crimes and we must be the ones to do it."
"I, it wasn't my fault Sonic had to leave. I tried to keep him here with me. Really I did." Chris tried to weakly protest, only to be slapped once more across his right temple. He just wished that none of his teeth had been chipped by such an impact. He really did want to burden his lovely, hardworking parents with a hefty dentist bill.
Far from calming the furious gang now cresting him, Chris's weak defence of his actions only seemed to anger them to their boiling point. The junkie's twitching became increasingly violent and the veins on the forehead of his ponytail partner in crime began to bulge as he gritted his teeth and clenched his fists.
"You see? You see? He admits it. He wanted Sonic all to himself and to leave the rest of us 'rejects' here in the 's evil I tell you. PURE EVIL! Kill him. KILL HIM!" The junkie shouted as he let out a demented cackle which demonstrated his rapidly waning sanity.
The awful sound seared through skin, mind and soul causing Chris to close his eyes and turn away. He could not cover his ears as his two hands had been held behind his back.
"Please just let me go." Chris pleaded. "I'll give you all my money. I won't tell anyone you tried to attack me. I'll do whatever you want. I promise."
He was strong-armed to his feet by the person behind him. The smell of cheap beer and cigarette smoke flowed through his nostrils. It made him to gag and he had to strain so as not to vomit.
"You'll do exactly what we want one way or another. You dirty coward." The bully behind him whispered menacingly into his left ear in the same deep throaty voice which had rudely awoken him earlier. "You're going to..."
The teenage thug never finished his threat. For in the next second as time seemed to slow down, his deep voice was replaced by high pitched screamed as a dull thud sounded from behind Chris.
Suddenly Chris felt the grip on his neck and arms loosen, and he gingerly dared a brief glance behind him to see that the tall brown haired de-facto ringleader of the gang had dropped unconscious and was now lying motionlessly with his head down on the asphalt.
Standing proudly behind him with her iconic oversized sledgehammer in her white-gloved hands, was the most beautiful pink hedgehog in this world and any world. Technically she was the only pink hedgehog as far as Chris knew of. But he believed that even if there were other pink hedgehogs back on the alient planet that Amy came from, she would still be considered at least among the prettiest among them if not downright the most pretty.
The junkie sneered as he drew a large silver switchblade from his belt and lunged at trembling Chris.
A thrown hammer connecting with his skull later, and he had no emotion at all as he bumbled around for a few more dizzy steps before joining his partner in crime in a coma on the blood soaked asphalt.
Thankfully for Chris, he could still see the two victims of Amy's hammer moving slightly as their shallow breathing filled the now eerily silent air. Amy had been ferocious and yet restrained in her assault. It was in her nature to protect the innocent and to avoid unnecessary bloodshed whenever possible.
Amy stepped over the two down and outs and approached the one remaining boy who had threatened Chris.
Her eyes were full of fire and her hammer was poised to strike, but her voice was surprisingly soft.
"If you harm one hair on my best friend's head, I will make you sorry you were ever born." She hissed as she spared a gentle look back at Chris to make sure he was alright if a little shaken up by this whole ordeal, and to silently apolagize for having to show this hard side of her to him.
"Please don't hurt me." The bully gulped as he hid his face in his hands as if he believed that this would shield him from the metal hammer which had curb stomped both his companions. "I was just trying to pay my respects to you and your beloved boyfriend Sonic."
Chris winced at this last statment, and squeezed his eyes shut in a desperate hope that Amy would not believe his wicked lies.
Thankfully, Amy Rose was far smarter than she appeared. Just as Chris knew she was. Her hidden cleverness was just one of her many wonderful gifts.
The pink hedgehog narrowed her eyes and furrowed her brow. "What you just did to my brave, handsome and clever friend Chris was nothing but an insult to Sonic's good name. Sonic chose to be Chris's friend and you couldn't take that. Because you knew you weren't worthy of Sonic's friendship because of your horrible life decisions."
Her voice became a shrill as a siren as she continued to keep her eyes and hammer trained on the now terrified gangster. A gangster who knew despite his thick head; that to pick a fight with a Mobian hedgehog who was both armed with a huge hammer and only slightly weaker than Sonic himself was pure suicide.
He didn't even bother arguing Amy's point as he placed both hands in the air and managed with a herculean effort to mask his scowl with a saintly expression.
"You're going to crawl back to whatever depraved cesspit you crawled out from, and never speak of this to anyone ever." Amy ordered him. "If I ever see you threatening good, innocent people like Chris here ever again, I'm not going to be as nice to you as this time."
She drew her finger across her throat as she waved her huge hammer in his sweating face.
"Now leave us alone and never come back."
For once, the dim-witted thug did not need to be told twice. He turned tail and dashed far into the horizon without looking back once.
Not even waiting for his footsteps to die away, Amy rushed to the side of the crying Chris and put a hand on his left shoulder shoulder as she let him weep bitterly into her silky red dress.
"It's okay Chris. It's okay. Cry as much as you need to. I'm here." Amy whispered soothingly to him in between his sobs.
"I'm sorry I have to cry like this. It's just that I've missed you so much Amy." Chris sobbed, disgraced by his inability to suppress his sentimental feelings in front of his loved ones. He always felt weak every time he burst into tears, and yet he could never stop himself from doing it.
After a lonely childhood in which he was often left at home alone by his overworked parent's, Chris had always had a propensity to burst into tears whenever they or one of his friends returned to him after what felt like a long time. He always worried that this was the negative aspect of him which made him incapable of finding a fulfilling relationship in his life no matter how hard he tried.
"I've missed you too." Amy replied as she gently patted the shaking boy whose sobs were finally beginning to break up. Seeing that he was beginning to get a grip, Amy took a respectful step back and gave him a few seconds to pull himself back together. She knew that Chris would be excited to see her again, but not to this extreme extent. She felt grateful that she had come at just the right time to prevent something terrible from happening to her new best friend.
"Why are you here Amy? How did you get back to Earth after you went through the portal? Didn't grandpa say that you'd cause a time paradox if you and Sonic didn't go back to your own home world?" Chris asked, his eyes as wide as saucers as his fragmented mind tried to reassure him that this was all completely real. Amy's return was real. Amy saving him from those evil bullies was real.
"I'll tell you all about it back at your house, Chris. We should..."
But before Amy could finish her sentence, she let out a pained scream as the crazed junkie she had knocked out earlier came to and grabbed her from behind. Her hammer flew from her grasp as the junkie covered her mouth to cut off her breathing with a mad look in his eyes.
Amy tried her best to shake off her attacker. But lacking the raw muscular power of her teammate Knuckles or the Chaotic abilities of the overpowered avatar of Chaos known as Shadow; Amy was powerless to prevent the junkie giggling manically as he mercilessly tightened his grip on her.
Shaking off all sense of his fear and all his feelings of helplessness, Chris charged at the madman with a defiant cry. He closed his fist as he made contact with the monster determined to murder his pink hedgehog companion from a distant world.
"For Sonic!" The redhead shrieked as he swung his fist at the junkie's face with as much power as he could muster. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as his left arm cleaved through the air in front of him and the drug-addled teen turned to face Chris with a look of pure terror.
Somehow or another Chris's blow not only managed to connect with it's intended target but succeeded in utterly devestating the druggie's dirty nose, causing a few drops of deep red blood to trickle from it. While it was probably more embarassing than painful to have been dealt a relatively mild blow by a scrawny weakling several times smaller than himself; Chris's desperate attack was enough to cause the junkie to recoil backwards, dropping Amy back on the ground as he did.
Wasting no time at all, Amy quickly grabbed her hammer from where it had fallen and swung it with full force at her still dazed attacker's unprotected chin. With one giant whack, the deranged gangster was sent flying into the air and out of sight.
Chris and Amy didn't bother looking to see when and where the murderous thug who had tried to kill them both would land. Instead they turned to one another with a friendly grin and began to walk hand in hand back to the safety of the Thorndyke manor without another word.
There was a lot of important things to get done in what little of the day remained, and neither of them wanted to waste another second in pointless rumination.
...
Thank you for reading. Please fav and review if you like this story and want me to keep going.
I really feel that the relationship between Chris and the other Sonic characters between Sonic should have been explored in more depth, especially since Chris spends way more time with Tails and Amy than with Sonic in the show.
I also wanted to add my own guess as to why there are a massive chain of games where Amy doesn't appear at all. My theory is that she was somewhere else while Sonic went on his adventures, and one possibility is that she was on Earth helping Station Square.
It should be noted that Station Square was the place where Amy's first level in Sonic adventure took place and where a lot of the other characters like Tails have their levels as well.
See you next time fellow Sonic fans and bye.