Chapter Text
Sonic had just finished running laps around Hill. After feeding the bushes (literally, they had teeth) and watering the flowers eyes, he needed some sort of energy release.
The end of his jog brought him to a small, humble cabin surrounded by heads on pikes. This imagery still made the blue blur uneasy, but he managed to muscle through to get to the door and enter.
Inside waited an older hedgehog, about 22,328 years older to be exact. Muted blue, almost grey fur and spines, grey shoes, and black where white should be in his eyes. Red pupils, an X-shaped scar across his chest, and the fingers of the gloves had been torn off.
This was Lord X. Quite a while ago, he was a ruthless deity who toyed with his victims and played with the souls of those who damned themselves to his dimension. However, he found himself fulfilling a parental duty when he abducted the real Sonic from his home universe as a baby.
"Plants are taken care of," Sonic said.
Lord X was sitting in a chair fashioned out of what Sonic hoped to be regular leather, though he wouldn't be surprised if it were just dried flicky flesh. X never told him, which simultaneously annoyed Sonic and made him chuckle. He was reading a book with an incomprehensible title.
"Good. Good. Took you longer than expected, I'll say," X responded.
"Well, I needed something else to do when I was done."
"Heh. Despite my influence, you're still somehow the same as you always were," X mumbled so Sonic couldn't hear. "I have another task for you today, kid. I need you to accompany me to visit an old friend for a reunion."
"I see... wanna make it a race?" Sonic suggested.
"I don't see why not," X chuckled, letting a sharp toothy grin form on his deformed face.
With that, the two hedgehogs burst out the door, grabbing rings, smashing monitors, and spindashing through the environment.
The finish line, which Sonic cleared first, much to X's surprise, was another cabin.
"Seems like whoever invented cabins has a monopoly on their hands, huh?" Sonic said.
X didn't acknowledge the joke outside a small grin.
He took several steps forward, towards the door, but stopped.
"What's wrong? Suddenly scared of doors?"
X was scared, but not of doors. It had been forever since he checked on his victims, and last time he spoke to any of them was as their endless tormentor. But at this moment, he wanted to talk as a friend.
There was no telling how Alan would react to the face of his satan. But there was only one way to find out.
After a moment, he knocked. The familiar voice of Tails shouted from behind the door, "Coming!"
Another moment went by, as several odd sounds came from inside the cabin. Sonic and X looked at eachother in confusion.
The door opened.
"Sorry about that, I was looking for somethIIIING," Alan seemed to have seen a ghost.
X tried to look as innocent as possible, and ended up looking quite menacing by accident.
"Y-Y-YOU!! What are YOU doing here!? I..." The fox stammered.
"Relax, Alan. I am not here to hurt you. I just want to see how you're doing."
Alan stared in disbelief and utter confusion. Sonic squeezed past X to introduce himself.
"So this is the Alan you were talking about? Nice to meet ya, I'm Sonic! Sonic the Hedgehog! X-y here has told me stories about you!"
The disbelief was overpowered by the confusion.
Alan extended his hand hesitantly. "Sure."
Lord X cleared his throat. "Ahem, Alan? May we enter?"
"A-ABSOLUTELY NOT!!??" Alan shouted, "WHY would I trust you!!??"
"Why you little--" X took a breath. "I guess you're right. You can't trust me. But you can trust the original, correct?"
Alan looked both horrified and confused, for what felt like the fiftieth time in the past five minutes. "The original??" he whispered.
He took a moment and thought about this. Not only the ramifications of Lord X being able to infiltrate other worlds, but also whether or not he should let he and Sonic in.
He decided to let them in.
The inside of the cabin was surprisingly well-kempt, for a scarred trauma victim of 1,000 years torment as a fictional, 11-year-old fox boy. There were chairs, hand-fashioned and hand-painted. The windows were small, so as to avoid being seen by whatever strange entities X had sent out to hunt. There was nothing really of not about the cabin, except for how un-noteworthy it was compared to it's surroundings.
"You've got a nice little home here, Alan..." Lord X tried to make small talk.
"Oh please," Alan breathed, "this isn't home. YOU took that from me."
The torturer and his plaything stared at each other in awkward silence, meanwhile, Sonic was running around the inside and outside of the estate like a child on Christmas who just opened his new kicks.
As the three started settling down for food, X tries out a calming tactic Sonic taught him.
He really has changed, huh? All started with that damn hedgehog.
This really shouldn't be as hard as it is. It's just an apology.
The problem is the intensity of the actions that need be apologized for.
That must be why, for the first time in his long, long life,
The entity known as Lord X
is terrified.