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Disclaimer: Sonic The Hedgehog belongs to Sega. I’m content with this turn of events, because Sonic Frontiers proves that they are still capable of awesome content production, even if it’s not perfect. This short is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America for fantasy violence and emotional injury.
Persistence of (Read-Only) Memory
Sonic, I want you to see the hero I become.
The words are still ringing in my head now, after who knows how much time. Does time even pass in Cyberspace the same way it does in the outside world? The first time I was here, everything seemed to twist and warp, so that everything lasted an eternity and no time at all, but Sonic said it’d had only been a few days since we’d gotten sucked in. And it couldn’t have been too long, because all our food supplies were still with the Tornado, stuck in Cyberspace, but Sonic didn’t seem too hungry.
Not that he’d have told me if he was, the big blue idiot. “I’m fine.” “Just catching my breath.” And we can’t forget “Careful? Where’s the fun in that?” Just keep smiling and don’t tell the computer specialist that you’re literally dying of data corruption–
Breathe, Tails. It won’t help to save Sonic just to kill him immediately, no matter how tempted you are to try and whack some sense into that pointy head with a wrench. And we are going to save him– I can feel that Amy and Knuckles got their parts done, Sonic’s energy signature feels more stable already. Now it’s just up to me to find my way through these warped, twisted corridors that make up Sonic’s memories of Colony ARK and get that last bit of essence back where it belongs.
I wish I could say it’d be easy, but something’s been following me since I got here. I can’t catch a glimpse of it, but I can feel the eyes on me. Whoever it is isn’t friendly… but they feel weirdly familiar. There are a bunch of possible answers to that, and I don’t like any of them.
I can’t think about that too much, though, because I have to focus on the jumps, loops, and railways that go spinning everywhere. Normally I’d just fly, but something about the atmosphere here won’t support me for more than short periods. Good for if I need to correct a jump, but not enough for actual transport.
Good thing Sonic’s an adrenaline junkie– I don’t think anybody else would have been able to make their way through this mess back then. I mean, yes, the course I’m going through is corrupted– I know there weren’t miniature black holes surrounding the ARK, for one thing. But I can still feel echoes of how Sonic was feeling back then, and that weird mix of concern and exhilaration is… well. Weird.
The last rail dumps me off in the middle of an empty room, bars slamming down behind me to trap me in. This… this isn’t the ARK. I don’t know this actual room, with no features except a ledge built into the far wall, but the metal construction, the sounds of machinery, the general feeling– this is the Death Egg. I should know, I’ve helped sabotage a few of them in the past. All of a sudden, I have a very bad feeling about this.
The snicker that echoes from the shadows around me only makes it worse. The rail’s gone, and when I turn to look out through the bars, there’s nothing but darkness broken by the occasional red dot from some machine or another.
“Don’t you like it?” a voice asks. The echoes make it impossible to pin down, and while it seems familiar, I can’t quite place it. Whoever it is, though, there’s a venom under the words that’s making my skin crawl.
“I know it’s not the most comfortable accommodations, but you get used to it,” the speaker continues, getting closer. I can almost see a shape approaching through the shadows now, as I strain to make them out.
Another step, and now they’re standing just outside the circle of light from the bulb above the cell door. “After all… after six months, it was practically home.”
My breath catches. That couldn’t be– “S-Sonic?” I could kick myself for the quaver in my voice– how am I supposed to be a stronger, independent hero if this has me quaking in my sneakers?
Well… yes and no. The person who steps into the light is definitely a hedgehog, with Sonic’s downturned quills, rather than the upturned ones Shadow has, or Silver’s crown. And he’s blue, or at least I think he is. It’s hard to tell, between the darkness and the waves of red and cyan digital corruption creeping over him. But the eyes– they’re all wrong. White and empty, with lines of static running through them like on an old TV tube.
This person, whoever or whatever he is, smirks at me. “Hey there, little bro. Been having a fun trip?”
“Honestly? No. I’ve been worried about you, not to mention there’s the giant evil sky voice talking about consuming reality or something. Kinda hard to relax.”
A huff that might be something more like a laugh. “So what, you came in here to hide?”
“... What?” That doesn’t sound like Sonic at all.
“You’re a genius, Tails, you’ve got to have seen it– Cyberspace is going to be the only safe place when that thing gets going. It destroyed the Ancients’s homeworld– I saw it die. It took everything they had to lock it up, and even then, the lock failed eventually. There’s no defeating it– even with all the power the Ancients had, they were only putting off the inevitable.”
“That’s what being alive is all about, Sonic. You taught me that.”
He stares at me– or at least I think he does, those empty eyes make it hard to tell. “Then why are you here, Tails? Old memories ought to stay buried, there’s nothing in them but pain.”
It takes everything I have not to stretch a hand out to him through the bars, but… not yet. This isn’t my Sonic. It’s a third of his essence, his memory, trapped in this place and time, one he’s tried so hard to forget– or maybe repress. For a second, I can’t help but wonder where Amy and Knuckles found themselves, but I push it aside.
“I’m here because you are, Sonic. Because we need you.”
A flash of green irises before those eyes go blank and white again, and he laughs. It’s… not a nice laugh. “You need me? Of course you do, you always do. Everybody needs me– when I’m gone, it all falls apart. Well, you know, maybe I’m tired of being needed. Maybe I’d like to take a day off once in a while and not watch the entire planet fall into the dumpster. Maybe, just once, I’d like to be the one saved, rather than having to get myself out because Infinite decided to press his luck one more time and play with me rather than finishing me off.”
A hundred excuses rise to my lips, and I bite them back. Sonic knows all of those, and he doesn’t hold anything against us, not really, but– none of that’s important right now. Sonic’s always been the one we’ve all relied on. I was mad at him during the thing with the Lost Hex for relying on Eggman instead of me but that was about trust. I don’t think Sonic’s ever let himself be anything other than optimistic in front of anyone before.
Instead, I take a deep breath and meet his eyes. “Okay, then, Sonic. Let me save you.”
“Because you need me to go out and fight and die for you? Pass. Done more than enough of that recently.”
“No, Sonic. Because I need you. Because everything I’ve ever done has been because I wanted to make you proud of me, to be someone like you, who keeps going, who does what’s right no matter how hard it is. And I’m sorry I never saw how much that cost you. Never let you know that you could lean on me the way I’ve been leaning on you all my life. Well, now’s my chance. Now’s your chance. Let me save you. Let me bring you home.”
Now I do reach out my hand to him, through the bars of the cell, never taking my eyes off his.
“Don’t you get it? There isn’t a home anymore, there isn’t any saving anyone. What’s coming is something you can’t fight, you can’t stop it. Like a hurricane, or a volcano, or–”
“Or the planet tearing itself apart, or a falling space station or a mad god flooding the world? You’ve– we’ve stopped those things before, all of us. Because we don’t give up. Because you’ve never given up. And I’m not giving up now, and if that means I have to make you let me save you, I will.”
For a second, I can see the green of his eyes as he reaches out to me. Then the corruption streams over him, and he fades back. The bars in front of me disappear, and the shadows retreat to show a floating floor composed entirely of hexagonal tiles.
“Sorry, little bro,” he says, voice distorting and glitching as he begins to float. “You’re staying here, in my memories. Where you’re safe.”
Clenching my fists, I step out onto the tiles to meet him. I’m not running away from this fight, not this time. I’ll make you proud of me, Sonic, when we see each other again. And we will see each other again.
I won’t let it end any other way.
Owari
“I am anti-life, the beast of judgement. I am the dark at the end of everything. The end of universes, gods, worlds... Of everything. Sss. And what will you be then, Dreamlord?”
“I am hope.”
– Neil Gaiman’s “The Sandman,” Issue 4.