Chapter Text
Sonic was running faster than usual that day; his friends were kidnapped after all. Eggman snuck up on Tails and Amy right under his nose, so he had to go and rescue them, a script he had gone through enough times. The plan was simple: break into his base, bust some robots, perhaps kick the butt of his latest mech, and then leave with his friends in tow as the doctor’s headquarters fell into a flaming ruin. All he needed to do was to be fast enough, and that was essentially his middle name.
Yet, there was something odd. Well, not on the base itself, it was just as large and smeared in red, black, and grey as always, and of course filled with badniks as it usually was, but he felt…watched. Like there was a set of eyes behind him, their gaze burning into his back like there were leeches attached to his fur. It was foreboding to say the least, but he didn’t have time to waste; he had friends to rescue and a doctor to snub off.
Entering the base was a simple affair; a spin-dash easily broke through the gate, dashes, punches, kicks, and homing attacks to add some spice as the badnik horde guarding the entrance got turned into scrap metal. It was fun, but he couldn’t have that much fun when his mind was filled with the thoughts of his friends locked inside cages, while the searing feel of being under watch continued to bother him.
He wanted to go faster.
He started to search through the labyrinthine walls of Eggman’s base, turning more and more robots into piles of crushed plates and broken bolts. And weirdly, the feeling was getting worse, growing stronger whenever he dashed through another badnik or dodged a hail of bullets with nothing but his legs. He was growing increasingly frustrated with it, and especially with trying to locate the inner sanctum where the doctor was hiding; there was only so much pressure and annoyance he could tolerate until his chill vanished.
“Oh? Something is bothering you, hedgehog?” Eggman’s voice echoed as Sonic finished clearing a room. A monitor coming out of the ceiling featuring the doctor in a dark room, only his eyes, teeth, gloves, and the faint outline of his moustache visible.
“Yes, and it would make my day if you showed your sorry face in person for me to drive into a frying-pan, Egghead!” Sonic replied with a cheeky smile, trying to hide his irritation. “Let’s get onto the main show unless you want me to take out your entire army and dig you out of your hole myself!”
“Ho ho, is that a challenge?” Eggman replied, his grin getting wider, before a secret door appeared in the metal wall behind the monitor. “Very well, let’s-”
Before he could finish the sentence, Sonic stormed into the hidden entrance, rushing through it like a man possessed. Eggman was disappointed that he didn’t get to finish his sentence, but he let out a satisfied “hmph” before speaking anyway. “Fine, you won’t expect my surprise then!”
—
He was watching more closely than usual, of course, he had caught Sonic right when he was running headfirst into action! What else was as exciting as that? For him, there was nothing; his home was empty, and outside of moulding mere facsimiles of what was on the other side, there wasn’t much for him to do other than watch. Sometimes it was boring; even he had better things to do than to violate his privacy during his moments of downtime, but when he was running around punching through metal with nothing but determination and raw speed, there was nothing quite like it.
Today was special, a rescue mission! His damsel and his best bro were captured by his arch-enemy, and he had to save them from his clutches! A fun watch, no matter who you were, and an evening’s worth of exercise for the blue blur, but there was something wrong; he kept looking back, as if trying to catch someone or something trying to sneak up on him. It was a wise habit, who knew when Eggman would try to make him join his two friends, but the frequency he was doing it felt driven more by paranoia than mere caution, and most importantly, where he was looking, almost like he was looking at him .
Dear heavens, he certainly hoped he couldn’t see him! He didn’t quite master his form yet; the proportions were a tiny bit wacky, and worse, the eyes were all wrong, and the blood vessels beneath kept popping, making it appear as if he was always crying blood. He probably looked a little spooky! And on the other hand, while Sonic was certainly special, being special enough to look through the one-way glass of the dimensional viewport was a terrifying prospect; the last thing he would want Sonic to know would be that he did occasionally peek during his downtime.
Well, he didn’t do much other than some passing glances. Maybe it was just a coincidence, or he was being sloppy with the viewport; he just needed to be more careful next time, but at that moment, there wasn’t any time for him to do any adjustments, as everything started to move for the climax, as Sonic rushed into the inner sanctum.
—
The room was dark, pitch black, and in that state of sensorial deprivation, the burning feel was yet even more scorching, not just in his back, but on the inside as well. Was this all just a field test of Eggman’s latest invention made to make him supremely uncomfortable? He hoped to get some answers soon enough, especially when a light appeared in the middle of the room, Eggman’s silhouette appearing against it.
“Look who decided to show up!” Sonic replied, not even bothering to try to hide his anger. “Now, tell me where Tails and Amy are so I can get outta here!”
“Oh, no need to rush, Sonic!” Eggman replied, raising a remote. “They’re right here!”
Two more beacons activated, revealing the capsule-like holding cells for both Tails and Amy, the former sitting down and the latter leaning against the glass with her arms crossed, both immediately standing up and turning to Sonic as they saw he had come for them. Sonic thought it was great that Eggman obliged his request; all he needed to do was break down the glass, and he could get out of there.
Of course, it wasn’t that simple, as both of them had comically large lasers pointed at their cells.
“Well, hedgehog, there are two options here,” Eggman said with a grin, with Sonic replying with a snarl. “I can press the upper button, which will free Tails, but fry Amy to a crisp, or I can press the lower button, which will do the opposite! Which one shall I press, hm?”
Great, the classic hero’s dilemma, made all the more complicated by the sudden feeling of a fever settling in. He didn’t really have a fever, but he might as well have one, as he felt his very bones ache and burn, like the mysterious set of eyes were boring into his body at the worst possible time.
He had to make a choice: who was he going to save? Of course, he wanted to save both, and Gaia willing, he would save both! The question remained as to how he would do it, as a risky plan was formulated in his brain. There was no more than 10, maybe 15 meters between him and Eggman, and it didn’t seem there were any physical obstacles in the way either. He could cover that distance faster than Eggman could begin to think about pushing either button. Plus, if he put enough power behind it, he could break any potential invisible obstacles with ease.
“What’s the matter?” Eggman said, moving his thumbs over the buttons in a teasing manner, as he saw the droplets of sweat form on his brow. “Are you nervous, you deplorable pincushion?”
Oh, he was so gonna get it. Whatever he had put in his back to get him to lose his cool, he would repay him at least two-fold: one for taking his friends, and the other for making him feel like he was drowning in magma. His legs started to tense up as he tried to control his panting, focusing his eyes on the prize: the remote. If he could grab the remote, that could at least buy him enough time to break the capsules if there was any form of emergency measure or dead-man switch. All needed was to be as fast as he could, a bit hard thanks to the standing start he was coming from, but everyone knew how fast he could be if he really wanted to.
He breathed in and breathed out, trying not to be bothered by the scorching torment assailing him, and with a final clench of his fists, he dashed straight at Eggman.
Then the room became bright.
Everything started to go into slow motion as he tried to recover from what amounted to a flashbang. He felt something odd at his back, something completely different, an actual burning sensation coming from the ceiling, as sparks of electricity made their way to the floor, with their origin being the same as not only the smouldering sensation, but also the entire lighting of the room.
He turned his head, still in midair, as he muttered a curse under his breath. It had been a trap all along.
—
He wasn’t always aware of lights; for most of his existence, everything was nothing but pure darkness, darkness trying to be darker than dark, a monotonous existence that barely was existence at all, rather just a void, a void trying to justify its existence despite being practically a dead thing no different than a floating rock or a star.
But then there was light, a light shining into the void, something greater than himself, something to contemplate that wasn’t just never-ending darkness. Something that existed, something that was real besides himself. A source of brightness so powerful that it shone even beyond the dimensional veil.
It didn’t take long for him to start spending almost all of his time doing nothing but watching that light moving at the speed of sound. Sonic the Hedgehog became the reason for his existence, and all he could do was return the favor by learning everything there was to be learned from his dimensional viewport. It was a breathtaking sight, but often confusing. Why did he let his enemies go? Why didn't fear death? Why was he so committed to his ideals and his friends? Ultimately, what made him tick?
He always knew what things around worked; he could easily dissect the emptiness around him to discover its secrets, but there was only so much he could do from a mere window into Sonic’s world. He thought of one day going there and figuring out everything himself, maybe under a disguise, once he worked out the kinks of his “substitute” lying in the corner or of his own form, but at that moment, all such concerns were tucked away, as his face was almost glued to the viewport.
A dilemma was unfolding right in front of him, with the lives of his best buddy and best gal on the line, something that he just had to watch. He always got excited when something dramatic was happening, be it a race or crossroads like that, and especially when he used the Chaos Emeralds to go Super! Always a fun time to let everything turn bright in his little corner of the cosmos.
But that time, it got too bright, not in a fun way either. He covered his eyes as the sudden flash occurred, trying to avoid the discomfort, only for the light to get brighter and brighter, as an ominous noise began to ring in his ears.
The sound of glass cracking.
Oh no, he thought, the viewport was breaking!
However, before he could try a fix, he was suddenly sucked in.
—
The sight was as blinding as it was heart-wrenching. She would rather spend as many decades as she had fingers in the capsule than see even one more second of it. The sight of Sonic’s body sprawled all over the ground.
As the giant laser that Eggman had set up as a trap wound down, and the room was lit up by proper lighting, there was no two ways about it: Sonic was on the ground, not moving, and not breathing, his mouth partially open as his eyes were fixed at a random point in the wall, slowly losing their color.
“Vital signs read null,” The robotic voice of Sage rang inside the room, a small note of hesitancy ringing. “Sonic the Hedgehog…is dead.”
No, it couldn’t be that way, it shouldn’t end that way, Amy thought. Like always, he would get up, blast Eggman into the next week, save her, and they would celebrate it over some chili dogs. That was how things went, that was the script, like things were meant to be. She was hoping for him to stand up at any second and drop something like “fooled you, Egghead!” or some other terrible pun, but instead, he just remained there, a monument to Eggman’s cunning.
“It is done,” Eggman said, not even with a grin on his face, solemnly gazing over the hedgehog’s corpse. “I’ve triumphed at last. Sayonara, my worthy opponent.”
“What should I do with the body?” Sage said, hovering next to the doctor’s stand.
“Analyze it for every possible scrap of useful data and plug it into Metal Sonic, then bury it,” Eggman replied as he turned around.
After a pause as Eggman took his first steps, Sage asked another question. “What about the prisoners?”
Eggman stood still for a moment as Amy’s ears perked up to hear his answer. She could also barely hear Tails’ whimpering as the strength of her knees failed her. Sonic was dead, there was no escape for her, and the only thing that was left was to hear the sentence that Eggman had in store for them. For the first time, Amy Rose felt defeated.
“Dispose of them,” Eggman replied. “I won’t commit the same mistake as with the Infinite fiasco; we’ll wipe them all out surgically before taking over, so I won’t be needing them.”
“Understood,” Sage grimly replied as Eggman opened a door to make his leave.
That was it, she thought; she and Tails were going to die, and there would be nothing there to stop Eggman and a potentially souped-up Metal Sonic to take over everything. She could feel her cheeks getting wet as tears began to drip down. It was over, and there was nothing to do but cry about it.
But she didn’t want to believe it; she still wanted to hope, to hope that Sonic was still there, and that he could still save everyone. Leaning against the glass, staring one last time as the weapons pointed at her cell began to power up, she made just one final request.
“Please, Sonic,” she stammered, but ploughed through her tears. “Don’t leave me.”
Right then, his hand twitched.