Chapter Text
Chapter 1
No One Mourns the Wicked LifeForm
“Sonic! Exactly how dead is he?”
“Because there has been so much rumor and speculation, let me tell you the whole story. According to the Green Hill’s clock, the melting occurred at the 13th hour—the direct result of a bucket of water thrown by a female child.
Yes, the Wicked LifeForm of the West is dead!”
A group of children runs through a field of flowers, happily yelling, “Good news! The Dark LifeForm! He’s dead!” “Come out! Come out! He’s gone!”
As they reach Greenhill, the villagers open their doors and windows as they hear the children announce the excellent news. A child runs up to the village bell, ringing it as he excitedly yells, “Good news! The Dark LifeForm is dead!” Everyone runs out in excitement.
Could it be? Is he really dead? Everyone runs out, chanting, “Good news! He’s dead!”
Villagers happily start ripping down the terrifying posters of the red and black hedgehog.
“The wicked LifeForm is dead! The wickedest LifeForm there ever was is dead!” “The enemy of all of us here in Green Hills is dead!” Everyone rounds up in the center of the small village, happily dancing and chanting,” Good news! Good news!”
As they dance and sing, a grinning voice can be heard from the sky, “Let us be glad!”
Looking up, the villagers see a blue bubble coming down upon them.
“Look! It’s Sonic!”
“Let us be grateful!"
The villagers cheer in joy as their beloved blue hero falls from the sky as he happily says, “Let us rejoice that goodness could subdue the wicked workings of-”
A pain in his heart hits him. He can’t say the name. It’s too much. “You-know-who!”
Sonic lands on a balcony, surrounded by his beloved village, which happily waits for him to step out of the irritating bubble.
“Play the part…” he whispers to himself before looking towards the village with a grin. He pulls out one of his electrifying blue quills and aims it at the suffocating bubble surrounding him.
Pop.
He chuckles as the villagers cheer for him. He waves at them happily as they all scream his name in joy. He looks around; this is what he’s wanted all along, right? To be loved and admired. To be a hero to everyone he’s known his entire life. This was his dream come true.
Yet it felt so painfully wrong.
He smirks cheekily, “It’s good to see me, isn’t it?” The villagers laugh. Of course, they’re happy to see their hero. They love him.
Love…
Sonic steps off the platform and walks towards the balcony, “My fellow people! Let me set the record straight.”
The village looks up at him with hope. Could it be real? Is it true? Is it-
“Yes! The Wicked Dark LifeForm of the West is dead!” He yells happily. He looks around and watches everyone cheer. Everyone is so happy that he’s gone now. This is good.
“Isn’t it nice to know that good will conquer evil? The truth we all believe’ll by and by, outlive a lie…”
Lies . It’s all lies.
He shakes the thought away as he continues to speak.
“For you and-”
“No one mourns the wicked!”
A Villager screams happily. Sonic looks back at him with surprise mixed with annoyance. He was speaking; why did the villager interrupt him? How dare he-
“No one cries, ‘They won’t return!’ No one lays a lily on their grave!” A woman yells.
The people scatter around the village, singing and dancing. Children run around happily, laughing and cheering. “The good man scorns the wicked!” A man says as he throws confetti down the balcony. “Through their lives, our children learn what we miss when we misbehave!” A woman says as she playfully glares at the children running around.
Everyone is so happy he’s gone. No one cares. The lie they’ve been told by a man who doesn’t even-
Control yourself, Sonic. This is what you wanted. Play along.
Sonic warmly smiles as he walks down the balcony stairs. He breathes in before speaking, “And goodness knows the wicked’s lives are lonely. Goodness knows the wicked died alone…”
Died. Alone.
Sonic smiles at the people around him, holding their hands in comfort. A Child walks up to him and offers him a red rose.
Red.
Sonic bends down and grabs the flower, smiling at the child.
“It just shows when you’re wicked, you’re left only…
On your own…”
The Villagers sing as Sonic walks through them, smiling tenderly, watching them dance as they finally feel safe. He watches them with a tender smile—a smile he’s mastered to put on after so much pain and loss.
Sonic sighs as he starts walking back up the stairs. He needs to get away.
“Goodness knows the wicked's lives are lonely! Goodness knows the wicked cried alone!” They chant.
Cried. Alone. Sonic didn’t even realize the pain he must’ve felt when–
“But Mr. Sonic!” A child calls, snapping him out of his thoughts. He stops and turns to the child, “Yes?”
“Why does wickedness happen?”
Sonic tries his best to smile, though it’s hard when he’s trying to hide his shock simultaneously. Oh, sweet chaos, how is he supposed to answer that when he doesn’t know the answer himself? He’s never met anyone who was…wicked…
“That’s a good question.”
Not really.
“One many people find confusifying. Are people born wicked? Or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?”
Sonic can’t tell them. He’d get in so much trouble. But he also can’t let them think the worst of him . These people have no heart. Perhaps helping them see him as one of them could help settle their hatred towards him . Or maybe to resolve his own pain.
“After all, the Wicked LifeForm had a childhood, though it wasn't a normal one either...."
‘It was the 1970s. It had been years since humans owned this planet before the Mobins outgrew and overpopulated them, causing the remaining humans to eventually go extinct.
Besides two.
Shadow had one singular purpose: to cure Maria, a 10-year-old child with a rare incurable illness.
Shadow loved Maria and was willing to go through every single lab experiment, painful or not.
Until one failed experiment on him, causing an explosive toxic wave, hitting Maria on her chest.
Her illness got worse, as her body now had Shadow’s chaos energy running through her.
The lead scientist of this project, Maria’s grandfather, was expelled from the project and told he could never get near his granddaughter, as he was blamed for overstimulating Shadow’s power, causing the toxic wave.
Shadow and Maria were left in the hands of the Commander and his wife, two hedgehogs, the female expecting a child soon. The Commander had no interest in either children, causing his wife to take care of them.
It seems that maybe their lives could go back to normal, until one unfaithful day, when Shadow found Maria’s lifeless body in the middle of their shared bedroom.
Pain. Grief. Sorrow. Agony. Anger. Sadness. It was all Shadow could feel in that moment, not noticing his body lighting up and reacting, shooting another wave of toxic chaos energy.
Liliana, the Commander's wife, had walked in to see what was going on but was hit with the radioactive chaos wave Shadow released.
The commander blamed everything on Shadow, ultimately creating his limiter rings, punishing cuffs around his wrists and ankles to contain his toxic chaos energy.
Everything fell apart, because of him.’
“And so…It couldn’t have been easy…” Sonic thinks back to the hedgehog's tragic past.
He didn’t deserve any of that. It wasn’t his fault. How could someone–
Sonic lost his train of thought as his heart sank seeing what the villagers were bringing out.
No. How could they...?
Right before his own eyes was a wooden statue that looked precisely like him holding a sign that read ‘kill the LifeForm,’ being pulled by some stage with wheels. Sonic couldn’t hide the shock on his face.
How do they have something like this? How long has it been sitting in the back, waiting to be revealed? What are they going to do with it?
“No one mourns the wicked! Now, at last, he’s dead and gone! Now, at last, there’s joy throughout the land!” villagers cheered, though it was all but background noise to Sonic as he looked at his friend.
Friend.
As the villagers cheered, sonic slowly walked towards the statue, whispering under his breath, “Goodness knows…he died alone…”
Only then did Sonic realize this was no longer about him. It was about himself. All because he sought validation, he lost someone he loved.
He died alone, but so will Sonic. In the end, even though it looks like Sonic won, in reality, he lost everything.
A villager walked up to him with a lit-up torch. No. He couldn’t do such a thing.
He was about to refuse before remembering he had to keep up the act. No one could know.
And with a heavy heart, he smiled at the villager and grabbed the torch. He took one last look at the man he lost before throwing the torch at the base of the statue, slowly watching it burn.
All Sonic could do was watch with a conflicted and hurt face as he watched his friend burn. The villagers cheered and screamed, “No one mourns the wicked!” as they danced around the burning wooden statue of him, so happy he was now gone.
“Good news..!” Sonic tried to cheer along but couldn’t. This was too much for him, and he needed to get out.
“Whoo! Yep. Well, this has been fun, As you can imagine, I have much to attend to with the wizards unexpected departure; so if there are no further questions…” Sonic said uninterested as he stepped back onto the platform, pressing a button on the floor with his foot to bring up that suffocating bubble. “Im gonna go.”
A villager pushed through the crowd, reaching the front before exclaiming “Sonic! Is it true you were his friend?”
Sonic noticed he was being spoken to, but couldn’t hear due to this danm bubble surrounding him.
“What? Sorry, one sec,” he said as he once again grabbed a blue quill and popped the bubble.
“What?” he asked, rather annoyed at this point.
“Is it true you were his friend?” the female asked with a serious tone.
The villagers gasped, whispered, and looked at Sonic with worry and judgment.
Sonic blinked, clearly not expecting such a question. His eyes varied, expressing multiple emotions at once: pain, grief, fondness, happiness, longing, and yearning. “Friend…” he said with a conflicted smile. “Yes.”
Everyone gasped, utter shock went through the village as they heard their hero was once friends with someone so… wicked.
Shit. I slipped up. “I mean yes, I did know him.” he tried to save himself. Nobody can know. Yet, he couldn’t help but smile in fondness, his eyes expressing love and his lips curving into a smile he missed so much.
“That is, our paths did cross…”
Sonic looked around as memories came flooding back. Their first dance, their conversation in the lavender field, their deep talks, every beautiful moment they shared seemed to flash by in seconds.
Sonic’s smile only grew, feeling his eyes water at all the core memories he shared, “At school. But you must understand, it was a long time ago.”