Work Text:
The next morning, Maddie Wachowski needs an ibuprofen and a mimosa. The ibuprofen because working on an injured, anthropomorphic hedgehog on the couch was not kind to her back, and the mimosa because she's pretty sure said hedgehog should have been dead on arrival.
She takes two ibuprofen and pours a cup of coffee, because she needs to check on Shadow again and then get the rest of her kids up for the day. Knuckles is probably up on the roof– he had a long-ingrained habit of rising with the sun– but she can hear Sonic snoring from the attic when she heads upstairs.
At the end of the hall, Tom's slightly louder snores rumble through the door to the master suite. And in the guest room…
Maddie startles as the handle shocks her on contact. It's just static, hardly worth noting at all, but when she opens the door and sees orange electricity arcing off the limp body of Shadow the hedgehog, it seems just a smidge more relevant.
"Oh, shit," she curses and backs out of the room, leaning over without looking away to grab Ozzie's collar and haul him back, too. "Ozzie, bed. Go," she hisses, urging their sweet, dumb golden retriever down the hall.
Okay. Okay, she can deal with this. Sonic used to emit electricity too– still does, whenever he lets his emotions get the best of him. They used to have to go down to the breaker box once or twice a week after their blue boy tripped every circuit in the house. Jump scares in movies were especially likely to put an end to movie-watching, and even when he didn't start sparking, there were times when Maddie would go to brush between her son's ears and get a little static zap as his affection overflowed in a burst of blue.
"Shadow?" she calls from the door, tentative. His eyes are pinched shut, mouth twisted down in a frown, but she thinks he's still unconscious. When she gets no response, she tries again. "Shadow, sweetie, can you hear me?"
Another arc of orange lightning streaks across the floor. The body it's emanating from, broken and bandaged, spasms and locks up.
…This is more than a nightmare or injury-induced pain.
Ozzie looks up from his dog bed as Maddie hurries across the hall to pull down the stairs to the attic. She takes the steps two at a time, whisper-shouting, "Sonic? Wake up baby, I need you…"
As if on cue, the house suddenly goes silent in that strange way after the power gets cut– the hum of the A/C and the fridge and the dozen or so little electronic devices all dying out at once. Double shit.
It takes physically patting the lump that is her prickly son to get Sonic up, but thankfully once he's awake, he's awake. Green eyes blink open and then a second later Maddie pulls back as he jolts upright. "Wha– What's goin' on? Is there an earthquake? A–"
"Shshshhh," she shushes softly, looking over at Tails' and Knuckles' beds respectively. While the red truck-shaped bed is empty and neatly made, the yellow sportscar has one Miles Prower nestled under the covers. The fox kit rolls over, but doesn't wake. "Come downstairs with me? It's Shadow."
Sonic's out of bed in a heartbeat. "What? Is he okay??" he whisper-yells from the attic stairs, not waiting for a response before dashing down. Maddie, long used to her blue boy's speed, follows his wake all the way to the guest room where Sonic's stalled at the door. "Oh, crap–"
"Language," Maddie reminds him automatically. Sonic just stares at the now convulsing body on the bed.
"He's– it's his energy, it's like– I can feel it all over the place!"
"What's that mean, honey? Is it like when you–"
"No, no, totally different, it's– it must be those rings!" Sonic blurts out, pointing. The blanket Maddie had carefully drawn up over Shadow's limp body the night before had slipped down at some point, and the strange golden rings around his ankles are glowing brightly. "He– he had them on his wrists, too, I guess they must be like–"
"Like regulators!"
Maddie and Sonic both startle so bad they nearly tumble into the room. Hovering behind them, obviously awake, is an uncharacteristically dour-faced Tails. "Holy– don't do that, dude!"
Maddie ignores her son's dramatics. "Tails, sweetie, you think you know what's wrong with him?"
Tails hovers a little closer and peers into the room, taking stock. "Maybe. If Sonic's right, then those rings he had on might have been regulators to keep his Chaos energy in check. Like a pressure valve on a–"
A particularly violent arc of lightning cracks across the guest room. Shadow looks like he's going to start levitating any second. Sonic makes a 'get on with it' gesture. "Less explaining, more fixing! Do we have anything that'll regulate his energy or whatever?"
"Well–"
Another arc of electricity, and with it comes a stroke of inspiration. "What if we ground him?" Maddie tries, keeping her voice level against the rising anxiety. Shadow's already knocked out the power and started leaving scorch marks across the walls and floor. If it gets any worse…
Tails smacks his palm with his fist and chirps, "That's it!"
…And then he drops down to the floor behind his brother and starts pushing Sonic into the room. "Whoa-whoa-whoa–!"
"Your body is naturally conductive!" the fox babbles, urging the protesting hedgehog forward. "If you can stabilize Shadow, that'll buy us time to find his rings and–"
"Me?!" Sonic's voice cracks in surprise. Maddie, standing at the threshold of the guest room, puts a hand to her heart. It sounds like it could work, but they don't know it will.
"Tails, baby, are you sure–"
"Worst case scenario, you get zapped," the fox admits, making his brother's eyes go huge, "But it's Chaos energy! Same stuff you have!"
"Just to reiterate: when you say zapped, you don't mean zapped zapped, do yo– o-o-ooohhhhhh crap–!" Sonic's argument cuts off on a stammer as one of the stray orange bolts finds him, connecting with a sharp snap. Maddie jumps, physically fighting her own protective urge to leap into the room and snatch her babies away from the danger, mouth open in a yell.
But the bolt doesn't dissipate. The rest of the arcing, sputtering electricity being thrown around dims in tandem with the arc between the two hedgehogs getting brighter. Tails, who'd jerked his hands back reflexively, gives a shout. "It's working! Sonic, grab hold of him!"
Sonic's twitching like he's stepped on a live wire, which is something Maddie never ever wants to see again, but he manages a nod and takes one, two stuttering steps before jerkily reaching out to grab onto Shadow..
The searing glow of orange energy winks out the moment they make contact, going from a lightning storm to a hum-buzz of energy flowing across Shadow and over to Sonic.
"Yes!" Tails pumps his fist. "It's working!"
Sonic looks like he has to fight to unclench his jaw. "Y-yeah, this uh– this sssucks," he manages, voice vibrating with a strange static quality. "Hurry up and f-fix it for real!"
"Sonic!" Maddie calls, finally able to step into the room. She hovers a few feet away and cringes at the sight of her son's pinched expression. "Sonic, is it hurting you–"
"N-nuh uh, it's just weeeeird," Sonic shakes his head jerkily, gripping Shadow's arm tight. "Any t-time now Tails!" He looks like he's going to start physically vibrating.
"Uh, right!" Tails dashes out of the room up the attic stairs, and a moment later he's back, this time with one of his homemade gadgets. "Okay, if I calibrate this with the energy signature from one of these rings, I should be able to triangulate the location of the others. So long as they're not still in space–"
"–We can use a travel rrrring!"
"Exactly!"
Maddie, for all that she's still panicking internally about her son being a lightning rod for their supercharged houseguest, feels a little pang of pride over how smart and resourceful her boys are.
Tails carefully holds the yellow device over Shadow's ankle, where the band around it is still glowing ominously, and a moment later there's a cheerful little beep. "Got it!"
"Hey guys, what's going… on…"
Two heads turn towards the door (Sonic tries to look over his shoulder but doesn't quite manage). Tom Wachowski, in slippers and bedhead, looks back at them in sleepy bafflement. He rubs his eyes, staring at the scorched floor, at his son holding onto Shadow with a death-grip, his wife and his other son huddled close like they're performing an anthropomorphic exorcism. “Am I still dreaming?”
Maddie gives herself a little shake. "We had a situation," she starts, moving towards the door to fill in her husband. "Turns out Sonic isn't the only one who can short-circuit."
Tom blows out a breath through his lips. "Oh, boy…"
"I got a location!" Tails declares, rising up into the air like he's going to rush out the window that very second. "It's close– they must have been near him when he started falling!"
In the end, it takes less than an hour to locate and then retrieve the rings. Knuckles gets called down from his morning meditation on the roof to help, while Sonic– bless his big heart– stands firmly next to the bed with his hand clamped around Shadow's arm the whole time. On either side of him, Tom and Maddie stand a safe distance away but still close enough to provide moral support.
"M-man, I'm gonna make sssoo many battery jokes after this," the blue boy manages a grin. Tom runs a hand through his hair in exasperation, wishing sorely that he'd had time to get a coffee before the morning exploded into action. "Gonna call him Sparky. Livewire. Static Shock…"
The wait is nail-biting, but thankfully brief. Tails reappears first, the glowing light of a portal ring shining across the room before he steps out of what looks like the backdrop of a western movie. "Got one!"
Knuckles portals back downstairs, by the sound of it, and then jogs up the stairs into the doorway with the other, brandishing it in one gloved paw like a trophy. "I have retrieved the other ring!"
"Awesome, now put them on him," Sonic grits out, making both the Wachowskis look at him in concern. He'd been so flippant about the situation– now that they've almost got it resolved, there's audible strain in his voice.
"Wait," Tails holds out a hand, stopping Knuckles mid-stride. "We can't touch him, remember? Sonic's grounding his energy right now."
"Okay, so?" Tom urges.
"Sonic's gotta do it."
Tails sets one of the rings next to Shadow as he explains, careful not to touch either hedgehog. It's a testament to just how much Sonic had been masking his discomfort that he doesn't even crack a joke as he grabs it with his free hand.
It clicks into place on Shadow's un-bandaged wrist, and then immediately starts to glow like hot metal. "Oh, jeez– Quick, gimme the other one!"
Knuckles smacks the other ring down like it's a venomous snake, and then– fumbling to keep in physical contact with the hedgehog as he reaches across Shadow for his other arm– Sonic works the ring onto his sprained wrist.
Just like when the power flicked out, there's a sudden, ringing silence once it's in place. All four rings go dim in unison, as does the coruscating wave of energy flowing between the two hedgehogs.
Shadow's expression smooths from pinched-pain to troubled sleep, the tension bleeding from his body like a sigh.
"Is it– did that work?" Tom hedges after a beat.
Sonic looks like he wants nothing more than to slump over Shadow's unconscious body and take a nap right there with him. "Sure… feels like it did," he manages.
"Baby…" Maddie starts.
"Let go of him. We shall see if these rings are controlling his power properly," Knuckles determines, folding his arms.
With a nod and a collective held breath, Sonic steps back.
Shadow… remains still. No lightning. No sparks. No glow– not even from the now innocuous-looking bands around his wrists and ankles. His chest rises and falls with labored, but steady, breaths.
"Oh thank god," Sonic blurts out, swaying in place.
And then he promptly collapses.
"Sonic!"