Sasotisland!

…Was a pretty miserable place, like the newspapers claimed. On the way in, Sonic had seen rocks, dead grass and not much else. It reminded him a lot of where he’d grown up, except that Christmas Island hadn’t been within spitting distance of the arctic circle. Ironically. There was also the matter of the locals. Not exactly different; There had been a lot of guns and not a lot of brains in Sonic’s childhood. But maybe the cold up here made these guys a little more…

“Napasti!! Za jedan dan slava dana savez!”

“Ubiti određeni član svinja! Osveta umjesto naš braća!”

“YEEEAAAAAARRRRRGGGHHH!”

…Active.

Hugesburg was the capital of the geographical snake pit known as Sasotisland. Sort of. Sasotisland was a political argument that even Blaze couldn’t sort out. Infamous for its rich cultural background, diverse population and the resulting multiracial free-for-all you get after a good sect dance. The country had more political movements than the Republican Party in a bounce house, all of which were aimed at someone else’s face. And contrary to what everyone said, no one was really in charge here, so they could get away with it. The region had so little political stability, Sonic could declare his left hand a republic, his right hand a confederacy, and no one would think oddly of him. Until his arms started declaring civil war all over his body.

That said, Hugesburg wasn’t your ordinary capital. It was simply the largest, oldest city in Sasotisland, and therefore the one that was argued over the most.

Sonic ducked low to avoid the shrapnel. He liked a good fight as much as the next guy, but this party was a little too wild, even for him. “What’s going on?”

“A peace rally.” Sebastian replied. As he spoke, six men and a bull pushed over a bus. “It’s going better than expected.”

“Really.” Sonic jumped on top of a streetlight. There was a man with an assault rifle taking shots on general purposes. “So maybe if it goes a little bit better next year, you’ll be able to actually come into the city?” He was talking into a cell phone. The reception was terrible, probably because someone had just crashed a helicopter into a nearby tower.

“Ha ha ha. I am not that stupid, sir Sonic. You’re the only one who could last for more than a few seconds in there. Good luck finding the general.” The line went dead. Sebastian was ten miles away, watching the city with a pair of binoculars.

“Right…General Gamemnon.” A pistol retorted, and the cell phone in Sonic’s hand shattered. At the same time, a car crashed into the streetlight, dislodging him. As he screeched to a halt on the pavement, he had to step quickly to avoid becoming the center of attention. “…I hope he’s having a better day than I am.”

Smooth moves hadn’t worked as well as he’d hoped. Sonic had just become the attention of the nearest paramilitary cell. Or possibly a bacterium. Between the six bug eyed loonies in front of him, there was enough stuff that went ‘boom’ to open a bank vault. And from the looks of it, there was enough self-control to fit through the keyhole.

He laughed in a way that he hoped seemed friendly. “…You guys wouldn’t happen to know where General Gamemnon is, would you?”

“Ist er man unser?” Which translated into something like “Is he one of us?”

“I dunno.” One of them said, scratching the back of his head with his rifle. “Who are we again?”

“We are the Allied Liberative Front, Kirke.”

One of the Sapient sasotislanders gave his human friend a dark look. “No, that was last week. Now we’re the Unified Liberative Front, ever since we joined up with the Society For Progressive Action.”

“But we killed all of them, so we’re back to being the Allied Liberative Front.” The human shouldered his shotgun at this point.

“No, that’s wrong. We are still the unified…”

“Wait a minute, I thought this was the Coalition of Socialist Doctrines!” One man burst out, instantly receiving deathly glares from everyone else. “Umm…I mean…Hooray for the liberative front! Glory to our leader!”

“…You know, Liberative isn’t a real word.” The other sapient pointed out.

“Yes it is.” The first sapient was looking pretty testy now, and his fingers were twitching on the butt of his rifle. “It is a word, and the last six factions that said it wasn’t are all dead.”

“Well I say it isn’t.” The human replied, leveling the shotgun.

“And I say you’re a cocksucker, Boris.” The testy rat declared, emphasizing his point with a flourish of the rifle.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh yeah?!”

“Yeah!”

“Weren’t we talking about that blue guy just now?”

“Shut up, Otto!”

Sonic had made an exit as soon as the attention was off of him. He couldn’t even hear the ensuing ruckus as the Arguing Liberative Front schismed into A Bunch Of Really Angry People With Guns. The rest of the peace rally was too loud.

He ducked casually under a spray of automatic gunfire. He’d avoided better aim than this, and no one was really paying attention to him anyway. When a grenade bounced his way, he kicked it into the sewers and left before the grate blew out of the cement. So he was a little surprised when it bounced out and started following him.

An extra-firm kick sent it into an abandoned cement truck before it detonated. Now Sonic had his head crouched to the sewer grate, listening intently. Someone was arguing. The unusual thing was that they were arguing in English.

“This is disgraceful, general! We’re here to bring law and order to this chaotic land! We are the hand of justice! Why are we hiding in a drainage pipe?!”

“Because the hand of justice doesn’t feel like getting its fingers blown off. Now shut up, I’m trying to think here.” There was further grumbling, from at least a dozen people. It must be rather cramped in there, Sonic thought. He worked his fingers around the sewer grate and yanked.

The grate started screaming and spitting bullets at him. Anyone slower that Sonic would be dead right now. In fact, he’d been grazed across the arm. “H-Hang on! Hold! Hold your fire!” The shooting stopped, and Sonic was grabbed by the sleeves and pulled under. A throwing knife whizzed through the air where he head used to be.

It was cramped in here. Sonic had never been a Tetris piece before, but he imagined that this must be how it felt, only with more body odor. Someone lit a match, and Sonic found that he was sharing personal space with a beefy tiger in the tattered remains of a dress uniform, among others. “…You’re General Gamemnon, aren’t you?”

“Yes. And you’re that Sonic character.” The tiger grunted, trying not to get himself impaled on the back of his new friend’s head. He didn’t spend a lot of time in the capital, but he read the newspapers. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Serving my convictions.”

“What, all of them?” Someone was dumbfounded.

Sonic jerked his spiky shoulder, bringing forth a yelp and a quick apology. “Look, do you want to get out of here or not?” This produced a chorus of laughs. “What?”

“I don’t know if you slowed down enough to notice, but there’s a bit of a war going on out there.” Gamemnon growled. “You might be able to dodge bullets, but we can’t.”

“Point well taken. What if I just go out and kick everyone’s ass?” More laughing here.

“If it were possible to just force those maniacs to behave, we wouldn’t be in this pit right now.” Gamemnon sighed. “We tried everything. Sanctions, embargos, blockades, police actions…you know what it all did? Jack shit, that’s what. These people don’t even know that they’re part of the kingdom. They thought we were just another faction. It’s like trying to tell rain not to make things wet. They’ll never stop fighting.”

“…Say that one more time?”

“What? “

“They don’t know who Blaze is?”

“No. They don’t even…Oh, damn…The Queen is going to kill me for this….” Gamemnon groaned. “I’ve failed…Hey, where are you going?!” Sonic was climbing through Gamemnon’s personal guard towards the exit.

“I’m going to go…introduce them to her majesty.” was all he said. And then he was outside, wiping tiger sweat off his face. As soon as he was, someone took a shot at him with an RPG, of all things. He sliced it in half and kept walking. His destination; The stage that Gamemnon had just fled from.

It was fairly simple. In terms of sheer repressiveness, Blaze could make Stalin eat his own moustache, were she so inclined. And no one knew that better than Sonic. It wasn’t a matter of how convincing he could be. He knew, and once they knew, they’d start behaving. Blaze had that sort of effect on people.

Amazingly, the mic was still on. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite loud enough to catch the attention of the crowd, despite experimentation with Linkin Park levels of screaming. The tanks were just a bit too noisy for him.

He sighed and opened up his arms. This trick always left his hands stinging…

It also left everyone’s ears stinging, including Sebastian’s. Sonic Booms are loud.

Sonic shook his arms out, trying not to think about the way he’d just flattened the muscles in his palms. The Sasotislanders, clutching their heads and waiting for their inner ears to stop throbbing, began looking at rather loud blue guy on the stage. “Now that I have your attention, allow me to introduce myself…”

In the sewer, Gamemnon and one of his cronies had poked their heads out. “What the hell?” He growled. “He’s talking to them?! That idiot’s going to get himself shot!”

“He said he had a plan, sir.” The private scratched his head. “But I don’t see where he’s going with this…”

“I do.” Gamemnon grunted, slinking back towards the sewers. “He’s talking about her majesty.” He nodded. “I remember the last time I was in the capital, one of my lieutenants interrupted her while she was talking.”

“…What happened?”

“Can’t tell you. Geneva convention.”

“…Oh.” The private spent a few brain cells on this thought. On stage, Sonic was in full swing. Some of the crowd was wincing, possibly from the still-echoing boom. “…You know, when you put it that way, it sounds like it might work. You’ve always said that if her majesty had the free time to come here, we’d be back in time for Christmas. And if that Sonic really knows her so well, it might…”

“First.” Gememnon snapped, as Sonic illustrated his next point with a gesture culled from Mortal Kombat. “That was a joke. People don’t disobey Queen Blaze, but that generally only works when she’s actually looking at you. Second. Sonic isn’t much of a public speaker. I mean…just look at him. And third, and this is the important part, private, these people don’t speak english.”

“…Oh.”

Up on stage, Sonic had just realized the same thing. His audience had started to get over their surprise, and there was suddenly a lot of lead pointed his way. Sonic groaned. If this was a cartoon, then this would be a really good time for a show-tune and a dance, after which the bloody-minded militias would be so jubilant that Sonic, Gamemnon and the cronies would be well out of the city by the time they started fighting again. Unfortunately, Sonic had the singing voice of a crow, break dancing didn’t win hearts and there wasn’t a handy orchestra.

Where’s Mickey when you need him?

“…Ah, screw it.” He pointed in the direction opposite of Gamemnon. “Look! WMDs!” That was maybe the one English term that these people understood, possibly through instinct. There was a gasp of pleasant surprise, a stampede in that direction, and a bloody mess as people started noticing each other again. Sonic simply stepped down from the stage, found a working car and helped Gamemnon into it. “I call shotgun.”

- - - - - - - -

Sebastian watched the car rumble off into the distance. There was still a lot of Sasotisland to cover, but Gamemnon was a pretty tough nut to crack. It wouldn’t be a happy trip, but he’d make it back to the capital. “That was quite daring, Sir Sonic.”

“Well, Danger is my middle name.”

“Apt.” Sebastian thumbed across his PDA, probably recording this new information. “We are making good time. How are your legs, by the way?”

“Honestly?” He sat down, graciously accepting the icepack Sebastian had prepared for him. “They hurt like hell. It’s nothing serious though. They do this all the time. I’ll be happy when all this is over, though.” He groaned, easing the pack onto the afflicted area tensely. In his mind, he was cursing himself for pulling that stupid stunt for Anne’s friends. Once around the world and he was done for the day. Three times? That had been a real stroke of genius.

He had to lift his pantsleg to put the icepack under. He didn’t see it, but Sebastian was looking intently at what he saw under it and writing something down.

There was a snap of pain, then a cool, dull sensation as the knees wet numb. In just a few minutes, he’d be good to go again.

And until then, he was bored. After a moment, he decided that Sebastian was marginally more interesting than the view. “So.”

“So.”

“…I just realized something, Sebastian. You’re the only human that works for Blaze, aren’t you?”

He shook his head. “The department of public works alone employs some seven thousand humans, and…”

“I meant directly. All her other servants are sapients.” Sonic winced. The knee had one last little knife hiding in it after all. “Humans in this world don’t usually get important jobs like that. No offense.” He added.

“It is not a concern.” Sebastian replied, fiddling with the schedule. “Let us simply say that I am…indebted to the former queen. Her majesty’s late mother.”

“Ah.” Sonic was quiet for a minute. Overhead, a crow croaked. This was Sasotisland, so someone shot it. “…What’s the story behind that, anyway?”

“Lukemia. I doubt the two of you would have gotten along.” There was a silent finality in there. “What else would you like to discuss?”

Sonic thought for a minute. He was honest, so he answered honestly. “Me.”

“All right.” The PDA beeped. “You do this sort of thing a lot, don’t you? Risking your life, I mean.”

“Yep. It’s a psychometric thing. I see a mountain, I wanna climb it. I see a fight, I wanna join it.” Sonic laughed. “Blaze says I’ve got no self control, and she’s probably right.”

“Did you know that your plan was going to work? It’s likely you’d have died if it hadn’t.”

“I’m good at last-minute plans.”

“That’s not a very reassuring response.”

Sonic laughed at this. “Wow Sebastian, I didn’t know you liked me that much. We ought to get together for poker sometime. You’ve certainly got the face for it.”

“Actually, I was thinking about Anne.” Sebastian muttered, tonelessly as ever. “I doubt she realizes it herself, but she’d be quite devastated if something happened to you.”

Sonic stood up suddenly. “Knees are fine.” The icepack slid off, collecting mud on the ground. “Lets go.” He muttered, waiting for Sebastian to climb on his back. It wasn’t comfortable for either of them, but you couldn’t argue with that kind of speed.

Sebastian thought for a moment before he did. He knew Sonic to be a very talkative person. And he usually took a few more minutes for his legs before this.

Something about Anne, then?

Sebastian didn’t talk very much, unless there was someone talking to him first. This was because he was usually thinking. It was exactly the opposite of how most people worked.

He was very, very good at thinking. He was also a lot more perceptive than you’d believe. And something about the way Sonic had just spoken had gotten him thinking very, very hard.

He smiled. “As you wish, Sir Sonic.”

- - - - - - - -

“All done, your majesty.” Between three maids, cleaning up the office had taken about an hour. It would have been much less if not for the coffee stains all over the place. For most, this would be reason to buy a new carpet, but these ladies had been cleaning up after Anne for the last fifteen years. Blaze had worked through it. “Shall I bring another pot?”

“No, that will be fine, Louisa.” Blaze said without looking up. Now that she’s had some time to win back some sleep, she was feeling better than ever. And a good three or four blows to Sonic’s head always did wonders for her.

“Yes’m.” Louisa and the other two maids curtsied, and exited.

Blaze refreshed the ink in her pen. It was always so hard to get work done when Sonic was around. It wasn’t that she liked to work. Not exactly. But it had to get done, and she liked knowing that the system was still functioning.

“Hmm.” She leafed through the next three or four items in her in pile. They’d all been completed, and it looked like Sebastian’s handwriting. Either that, or these documents had been

through a very expensive typewriter. She glanced them over, out idleness more than anything. Sebastian was the last person she needed to check up on.

He’d really handled things well over the last few days. Blaze considered exactly how long she’d spent this week out of the office. She’d been gone almost all day yesterday. She didn’t usually take twenty-four hours off in a month, even when Sonic was over. Refreshing change, certainly. But work was work.

The phone rang. It was General Gamemnon, who sounded a little more weary than usual. Maybe it was just the static from the phone he was using. Blaze spent a few minutes listening to his report without actually listening, wished him luck, and hung up.

“Ha.” She muttered. The door opened. It was another maid, here to refresh the in pile. Blaze thanked her, she curtsied and left. Gamemnon’s story had been…well, flattering in a certain sort of way. She certainly didn’t think paying a personal visit to Sasotisland would amount to anything besides an inordinate amount of people trying to shoot her. People tended to exaggerate things about her, especially Sonic. But it was…charming, in an odd sort of way. It certainly made her laugh.

The next item was an itemized list from the department of public works. Blaze signed it without looking. Something was bothering her about that story. Sonic wasn’t a talker. He was a loudmouth, certainly, but he didn’t get things done with words when he could do it with action. Come to think of it, he had been behaving very strangely over the last few days.

Blaze drummed her fingers against the desk and bit her lip. There was a mystery here. She hated mysteries. They always made her feel like there was someone smarter than her running around.

She thought about it for a moment. Then she picked up the phone and began to dial the number to Anne’s cell phone.

- - - - - - - -

“You know…” Sebastian winced as a particularly loud crunch was punctuated by the yelp of a polar bear. His breath came out as mist as he huffed to keep himself warm. “…This might not be the best way to deal with the global warming crisis.”

“What do you mean?” Sonic had his legs locked around the bear’s throat and was looking at Sebastian as though he were sitting on a couch. If that bear didn’t get some air within the next few minutes, it would certainly be in a good position to be defurred.

“Well…” Sebastian was carefully maintaining his distance. “When I said that Global warming was causing arctic predators to disturb northern settlements, I thought you’d be doing something about the global warming itself.” The bear’s face was turning blue. “Not the predators.”

“What do I look like? Captain Planet?” Sonic released. The bear wasn’t a sapient, but it was smart enough to know when it was time to go. The last they saw of it was its rear, making a path through the pine trees.

This place was called Bartyale. The geographical location of Ontario and the elevation of Colorado combined to make a province colder than a penguin’s nipple. This caused it to have been well isolated for centuries. The pines had grown as tall as redwoods in their isolation, and the wildlife had followed suit. There were moose up here the size of elephants. Bears the size of buicks. Squirrels the size of Anne. Lower down the mountains, there was also a huddled city called Nortorusk. Currently, it was undergoing a major crisis; global warming was forcing big, dangerous animals to venture further and further down the mountains in search of food.

Sonic pulled a bear tooth out of his shoe. It would be a nice gift for Anne. Slowly but surely, certain wildlife here was learning that anything south of the arctic circle was a no-go zone. “Besides, it worked on the killer whales.”

Sebastian was about to argue, but he stopped himself in time. Only Sonic could save the environment with a free-for-all. Telling him to do it passively would be like telling that polar bear to consider the vegan option. Which, ironically, it probably was.

Sonic started negotiating the terrain, ears peeled for anything the sounded like a polar bear. Sebastian, having no intention of being left alone out here to freeze, followed him instantly. Sonic gave him a sideways glance. “How long do we have to hang around here again?”

“The schedule says until six.” Sebastian was unhappy to see that his PDA’s batteries were running out. Snow was melting on his nose. The coat he’d picked up in Nortorusk was thick, but not quite thick enough. “We were supposed to be in the city, running a surprise inspection on emissions standards…”

“Yeah, like I know how to do that.” Sonic had swapped his duds for warmer wear, as well. He wasn’t a big fan of sleeves, but the climate wasn’t a big fan of the sleeveless. His ear flicked. “Was that a bear?”

“I think it was a deer.”

“Hold tight.” He vanished. The bushes exploded, there was a very un-deerlike scream and half of a moose’s antlers came scything out. Something big and hairy went barreling past in the opposite direction. “My bad!” Sonic called after it. The moose only bellowed.

Sebastian pinched his brow. It took a lot of nonsense to get him to make such an expression, but Sonic could get a rise out of a statue. “Sonic…Why don’t we take a short break? We’re still ahead of schedule, after all.”

“You sure?” He was playing with the antler, contemplating some way to make good on what he’d just done. With glue. “My knees are feeling pretty good right now, and…”

“It’s beautiful weather, isn’t it?” Sebastain asked, quite off the tempo of normal conversation. He wasn’t very good at small talk, but everything even remotely similar to a bear within ten miles depended on him. “Very…brisk.”

“Brisk?” Sonic made himself comfortable on the tundra. Snowflakes were taking over his quills, bit by bit. “It’s twelve below. I’m surprised you haven’t scheduled ‘5:00 to 5:15: Freeze to death’.” Sonic laughed. “But it’s not bad for the sub-arctic, I guess. This planet’s a little colder than Earth.”

“Tell me more about earth.”

“Hmm? Well, I don’t think you’d like it much. It’s ruled by a democracy, which is a whole bunch of old guys who act like everyone gets a say. As far as I can tell, they just argue all the time.” He twirled his finger listlessly. Politics neither interested nor affected him, unless the president wanted to lower the speed limit. “I don’t really get it. Blaze’s way of doing things seems so much more efficient.”

“You don’t say.” Sebastian tried to imagine a ruling power other than Blaze. It was imagining being pulled down by something besides gravity. “Earth must be a very strange place. If you come from there, then it must be a very dangerous place, too.”

“Not really.” Sonic interjected. “In fact, I don’t think there’s much of a difference at all, besides who’s in charge. Tails thinks that they’re deviant realities. I don’t really know what he meant by that, but he said something about two sides of a coin having tiny differences that seem huge from our point of view, and…”

“Actually…” Sebastian cut in, before Sonic could fully mangle Tails’s theory. “I meant, ‘It must be a very dangerous place if you spend any great deal of time there.’” Sonic gave him a deafening look, but Sebastian was invincible to such things. “This is the longest you’ve ever been away, hasn’t it?”

“There was that one time I spent the Christmas break over here. But other than that, yeah.” For the first time in about a week, Sonic wondered how Tails was getting along. “Hmm…”

“When was the last time you took Anne to your world?” Sebastian was starting to sound like a psychologist.

“Umm…When she was nine, I think. Yeah, and Eggman kidnapped her…And then Blaze showed up…” Sonic winced. He still remembered getting chased all over the Egg Carrier by a flame-spitting promise of death, who’d found some extra fury when Knuckles had started laughing and ended up nearly killing everyone except Anne. “Yee…Kinda wish I didn’t remember that.”

He stretched out a little more on the moss. Sebastian had an odd quality to him in that once you started talking, you didn’t stop. It was like you were trying to fill up a hole. Sonic didn’t really empty his mind often, mostly because there wouldn’t be much left after two or three times. But he could be pretty deep sometimes. Usually when he wasn’t terrorizing moose. Mooses? Meese? Who cares, he thought.

“You know, I laugh whenever I think about that, because it was pretty funny to watch Eggman trying to put out his moustache. But it makes me nervy too, you know?”

“Is it Anne?” Sebastian asked, resisting an urge to ask Sonic to tell him about his mother.

“Yeah. Eggman can be pretty dangerous sometimes, you know. He used to do this thing where he took animals and hooked them up with wires and electrodes and stuff, then turn them into living batteries for his robots. He hasn’t done that for ages, but I couldn’t stop thinking about…well…”

“I know what you mean.” Sebastian didn’t, but he wanted Sonic to keep talking now.

He nodded, a little choked up now. “Well, I guess it’s all my fault to begin with. It goes back to my childhood, you know?”

“I don’t. Please, explain.”

“Well, I was an orphan. No idea where I came from, and it probably doesn’t matter. The first guy who I remember is this bounty hunter. Nack, but everyone called him The Fang. Total asshole. Total asshole. He was a deserter. And he shot at me for kicks. That’s how I learned to move fast. He was probably the best gunman in…well, history. He only took me in because he didn’t like handling the outlaws after he was done killing them.”

“You were handling corpses? How old were you?”

“Six. Sixish. You get used to it after the first few days.” Sonic shrugged. “Anyway, so Nack eventually started teaching me how to fight. He’d always wanted to go after this former mob boss who lived a few islands over, but nobody would ever back him up because of his attitude. We ended up going in before I really knew what I was doing, and things went ass up. Nack lost his eye, I almost died, and the mob knew our faces. He said it was all my fault, so he threw me out. I was on my own until I met Tails. Haven’t seen him since.”

“…And you’ve lived pretty much the same way ever since?” Sebastian was more than a little impressed. He’d never thought of Sonic as much more than a mobile accident en potentia.

“Well, I didn’t know how to do anything that Nack didn’t teach me, so…yeah.” Maybe it was just the temperature, but he felt a little less inhibited than usual. And a little deeper, too. “I think it was the corpses. And all the violence. I never really thought that getting hurt was such a big deal, so I just went ahead and did whatever felt good. Right up until that night with Blaze.”

“That night?”

“Yeah, fifteen years ago.” Sonic laughed. “Now that felt good.”

Sebastian didn’t know what to do.

As we’ve already established, Sebastian is as perceptive as a satellite dish and smart enough to run the country when Blaze is otherwise occupied. And he knew his queen better than he knew himself.

So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that he knew of the question she was losing sleep over. And he knew how carefully Sonic had always avoided that same topic. He’d known, and he’d known that the chances of finding out just what was behind this mystery were one in a million.

But that was still a chance, after all.

“Sonic…” Sebastian’s face did not falter. He had this answer by the tail, and he didn’t want it to slip through his fingers. “…Tell me more about that…”

His blue ears twitched, whipping away the two lines of snow that had formed on them. “Hang on.” He sat up. “I hear something.” Sebastian heard it too. Praying for it to be a broken branch, he turned his face to the oncoming noise. It went something like…

“… … … Dad, Hi SebastainAAAA AAAAHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhh………” It was followed by the sound of a pack of wolves, which Sebastian barely noticed, even when one such wolf knocked him face-first into a snowbank. Anne was out of sight by the time Sonic’s wits had fully returned.

And once they did, he screamed louder. Leaving Sebastian to make snow angels, he continued to scream, although it was sort of hard to hear over the sound of his approach.

Sonic caught up without wasting a second. He jumped on the closest wolf’s back and pulled it’s head in the direction of its ass until he heard a snap. Once it did, he kicked it’s carcass so that it barreled over the next nearest wolf and rushed towards the one closest to Anne. Taking its head off with a kick, he slung Anne over his shoulder and made a quick detour to the top of a nearby pine tree. Pausing only to make sure that she wasn’t about fall out, he jumped off the branch, landed on a wolf’s head with a skull-collapsing kick and slashed through the pack.

True to instinct, one of them had jumped him from behind. He flipped backwards, breaking its mouth with one foot and puncturing its chest with the other. Slipping out from underneath before it dropped, he jumped high to dodge the next lunge, ducked under the paws of a hungry beast, grabbed its neck and flipped onto it’s back without letting go. Snap.

He jumped again; It was easier to approach these guys from the air. With another flying kick, he stunned a wolf, whipped a fist through its teeth and spun into the flank of another one. It was a heavy spin, and it sent the beast bouncing into a pine tree with a sharp yelp. When another one charged him from the side, he jumped and sliced at its back. Sonic’s hand, moving at even a fraction of its full speed, was swift enough to bring the creature’s spine into the daylight. He finished the flip, landed on one foot and dashed forward, driving his other one into a snarling muzzle. The sole of his foot had a lot more surface area than his fingertip, though. Instead of punching through the flesh, it just launched the wolf like it had been unlucky in a car crash.

It hit a pine tree halfway up its trunk and fell to the ground. The other wolves glanced at their fallen comrade, did so quick calculations re:the dwindling numbers of their pack and barked out a hasty retreat. Sonic started breathing normally about thirty seconds after he stopped hearing them yowling.

He fell down on his back, as though he were about to make snow angels. There was blood in his eyes, but his hands were bloodier. Trying to wipe it off just made him look like an unpreened Shadow.

“Are you alright?”

Sonic opened his eyes. It was Sebastian. And coming down from the tree, trying and failing to be unnoticed, was Anne. Sonic nodded, and took the handkerchief he offered. “Yeah, fine. Just had a bit of a scare there, that’s all. Bleah.” Wiping his mouth, then his eyes, Sonic tossed the cloth back to Sebastian. “Anne, are you okay?”

“Y-Yeah!” She stammered, recalling that she’d already been scolded once today. “I was just heading back home, like you told me to, but I got lost. I figured that if I just ran around for a while, I’d wind up find my way eventually. Um. But then I got sidetracked.”

“Sidetracked? How’d you get sidetracked all the way here? We’re on a whole different continent.”

“Umm…Well, I saw this car broken down as I was running. I went over to check it out…well, a lot of things happened, and I ended up near an airport, you see, and I thought it’d be easier if I just caught a flight back home…but I didn’t have any cash. So then I remembered that thing you and Uncle Tails always do. But the plane went a lot higher than…”

“Okay, I think I see where you’re headed with this.” Sonic sighed. She was already starting to have adventures like him. By this time next year, she’ll have probably saved the world.

“Dad? Is something wrong?”

“Huh?” He shook his head and stood up. “No, nothing. Hey, Sebastian?”

“Yes?”

“I’m taking Anne home. You want some help getting back into town? I’ll be back right after…”

“Actually.” Sebastian cut in, opening his PDA. “This was the last social service you were scheduled for, Sir Sonic.”

“What? No way. What about cleaning up that oil spill?”

Sebastian winced. Somehow, he just knew that Sonic trying to clean up an oil spill would result in a fire big enough to be seen from space. No one else would ever know, but Sebastian was hastily erasing the day’s itinerary from the records. Detonating the bombs in Abarassa, that riot in Sasotisland, provoking wildlife in Bartyale…If Blaze hadn’t personally told him to do this, he’d have earned more than a century in jail. “I think the EPA would appreciate handling that one personally.”

“Really?” Sonic grinned. Less work for him. “All right, then I’ll drop you off in town and pick you up after I take Anne home…”

“Oh, I’ll walk.”

“To town?” Anne wondered, squinting at the blurry lights at the base of the mountain. Nortorusk was a daunting hike from here.

“No, your majesty. To the capital.” Sebastian said, as tonelessly as ever. And then he left, climbing down the mountain at a pedestrian pace, leaving Sonic and Anne to wonder if they’d just had a fleeting encounter with Sebastian’s sense of humor.

- - - - - - - -

Sebastian was about halfway down when he saw two lines of dust and snow scraping their way across the mountain. After about a minute, they arced away from the direction of the capital, assumably to go do whatever it was that Anne and Sonic did in their free time.

Sebastian waited until they were out of sight before taking out his phone. The reception was terrible, but he could use some time to think anyway.

He’d come close to finding that answer. The answer to the one question that Blaze couldn’t stop thinking about. Maybe it wasn’t his place, but it was something he couldn’t stop thinking about either. He’d come close, but he hadn’t gotten it.

But he’d learned something.

The phone finally connected, a few hours later. It rang twice before Blaze picked up.

- - - - - - - -

It wasn’t until eight at night that Sonic and Anne popped out of nowhere in front of the palace. Laughing over something silly, they walked inside, lowering their voices only marginally.

It had started out as a simple detour; Sonic had wanted to teach Anne a thing or two about running cross country. One of the more useful tips was how to use the highways as a one-to-one scale road map. Which had lead to a little scuffle with some bikers. The fact that Sonic was still covered in blood had turned it into a scuffle with local police. There was an amusing adventure with a hot spring as Sonic tried to get clean. And a slightly more amusing adventure as Sonic tried to escape the wrath of six or seven naked women without letting the world see more of Sonic than needed to be seen. Anne had helped by stealing a pair of pants from a man who turned out to be professional wrestler. Which had probably resulted in wrestling a naked man. Sonic had glossed over details after that.

All he was sure of was that his knees were killing him.

Blaze had been watching them through her office window. She didn’t take her hand off the phone, though. “You’re walking back to the palace?” Sebastian said something about taking a plane at some point. “All right, all right.” She sat back down with a pen ready. “What was that message?”

The pen hovered above the paper uselessly as she listened. After a moment, Blaze looked at the phone as though it had begun talking to itself. “I don’t see where you’re going with this, Sebastian. …Uh huh. Uh huh. …He was six?”

Blaze listened for a while longer, failing to picture this one eyed weasel or imagine how or why Sebastian was discussing it. Considering that this was the guy who made Sonic into the semi-suicidal lunatic she knew and…well, knew, at any rate, Blaze wasn’t sure she wanted to picture him. She subtly changed the subject, and somehow, it changed to the topic of knees. Sonic’s knees.

“Uh-huh. Uh huh.” She raised an eyebrow. “He asked you not to tell me? No, I’m not mad. Just a little surprised.” She started writing. “Tell me a little more. Maybe I can use it to make him hold still. …Mmmhmm. Uh huh. Mmm…Exactly how bad did he say they were? …Oh.”

Sebastian was as well-read as he was intelligent. He knew a fair bit more about…well, everything than Sonic, and no matter what the hedgehog said, he was running his way into a wheelchair.

She wheeled her chair back to the window, but Sonic was inside the castle by now. If she listened carefully, she could probably hear him walking down the hall. Very, very slowly.

“…I see.” Blaze contemplated this with her eyes half-closed. When the contemplation was complete, she growled. “Honestly. That egotistical bastard can’t even stop running around when his legs are falling apart. Should I even be surprised by this?” She began to multitask. Her pen scarred the paper more than inked it. “If he could just stop pushing himself for a while, he’d be fine. But no, he’s too busy making an ass out of himself. Honestly. Why does he have to…to…”

It was an odd, rather pitchy noise she made, but the aggravation behind it was unmistakable. “I just don’t get it. What in the world could make him so…so…” There was a word she was looking for, but the only one she could find was ‘retarded’. “…Honestly. And wasn’t he complaining about having to serve out his convictions in the first place? What made him want to…”

The sentence hung half-built in the air as Blaze’s frozen in place, recalled exactly what had made him so motivated.

“…Well.” Blaze muttered, chewing her pen. The change in her tone wouldn’t have been noticed by anyone. Anyone at all. “…Anyway, how did it go?”

Sebastian told her.

“Is anyone going to press charges?”

Sebastian said no.

“Good.” Blaze checked that off her list. She tapped the pen against the desk once, twice, three times as she thought to herself. She was resisting a powerful urge to start biting her nails. There was a powerful feeling of guilt in this room and Blaze knew exactly where it was coming from. She needed something else to think about. “Why was Anne with him?”

She listened to the reason. Halfway through, she put her hand over the receiver and groaned. And afterwards, he’d taught her how to run cross-country, just so that she wouldn’t get herself in trouble like this again. With his legs in the kind of condition they were in.

Motherfucking idiot.

She needed a moment before she could use the phone again. Sebastian was nothing if not patient. When she finally bid him good day, he could detect an odd tone in his queen’s voice. He’d never heard her trying not to cry before.

She put down the phone and rested her head in her hands for a while. It was one of those moments when you think without thinking, and come to conclusions that only happen at moments like these. When she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was the in-tray.

It flew out the doors of her office, cutting a groove in the wall opposite. Blaze kicked the tray out of her way as she stumbled towards the stairs.

As she went up, she ran into Anne coming down. Before the girl knew what was happening, she found both of her mother’s arms wrapped around her so hard, she was almost off her feet. There was a sniffling sound, as well. Amazingly, it seemed to be coming from mom.

Anne looked up. It was harder than it usually was, because Blaze had such a strong grip. “…Mom? Are you okay?” Blaze just nodded without letting go. Anne stayed where she was for a few minutes, and then Blaze kissed her on the forehead. Anne was still rooted to the spot until her mother was out of sight.

Sonic flinched when she slammed his door open, and flinched again when she slammed it shut. His pants were unzipped, and he’d been in the middle of a clumsy attempt to rub the soreness out of them. Blaze was looking at his eyes though, Steel-melter on full blast.

“What the hell is wrong with you?!” She demanded. Sonic didn’t have a chance to answer, as she stormed towards him and grabbed his shirt so roughly, it began to tear. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack!? Take off your pants!”

“…Huh?” The turnaround time on that last sentence had moved faster than he did. While he was stunned, she pushed him down on the mattress and grabbed his belt. “Whoa, hang on a…Blaze!”

“Shut up and unbend your legs.” She growled, wrestling him into compliance. If he hadn’t unfolded, she probably would have ended up burning the pants off.

And was glad she didn’t. His legs didn’t look fit for that kind of rough treatment. They were…

…Corpsey. They were pale as puckered flesh, and dark as scar tissue in places. There was some kind of sweaty shimmer beneath his short, dense fur, and the muscles seemed to be hanging listless. When she brushed against the knee, there was a pop like a knuckle and a sharp grunt from Sonic.

He reached down to pull them up, but she grabbed his hand when it reached past his knee. She wasn’t facing him, but the way she grabbed it was more then expressionate enough.

“…Why?” She asked, squeezing harder. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“This.” She was on the verge of tears now. She was starting to collapse, but she hadn’t let go of his hand yet. “All of this. Why do you have to be so…so stupid? Why can’t you just care about yourself for once?”

“…I don’t understand.” He said, softly. “I did this for you.”

“…For me?”

“Yes.”

“…You idiot.” It was a choked noise, pulled from between clenched teeth and curling lips. “You stupid, stupid idiot.” Now she looked at him, a thrown knife of a glare that seemed to tear his heart out through his eyes. “Doesn’t it mean anything to you?!” She screamed, squeezing his hand so hard that blood came from between their fingers. “You have a life now! Me! Our daughter! Why can’t you care enough about that not to let this happen?!”

“I…” Sonic’s next few words withered and died before they got out of his mouth. In silence, he simply looked down and put his other hand atop Blaze’s. It was a few seconds before he could speak again.

“…I care, Blaze. Really. When I think about you two, it’s like there isn’t anything else in the world that’s real to me. Nothing else makes a difference. I don’t think I ever felt this way about anything before.”

“Then why? Why did you let this happen to you?”

“Because…It doesn’t make any difference. When you and Anne are happy, I’m happy. That’s all there is to it.” As he spoke, he reached down to pick up his pants again. She didn’t let him.

“You’re wrong. You’re wrong, understand? It’s just not that simple.” It was half growl, half sob. “It’s never that simple.”

“But it is. I don’t care what happens to me. I don’t care what happens to anyone else. I only care about the two of you. No one else.”

“Sonic…” A bit of a laugh was in her voice now, broken glass turned to sound. “You’re just not cut out to be a father, you know that? You’re no good at it.”

“…What?”

“It’s not your fault, though. It’s just the way the world made you. Everything has always been simple for you. That’s why you just don’t get it.”

“…What don’t I get?”

She didn’t say anything. She just let go of his hand and placed her palms on his legs. And slowly, smoothly, softly, she began to ease her hands along the muscles, finding the tension he’d built up over the years and gently ushering it on its way. “You can’t understand…that people care about you too, Sonic.”

“…What?”

She sighed. When you got right down to it, there were some things about Sonic that would never change. “Shut up and go to sleep.” He nodded and put his head down. And as she ran her fingers down his calves, he couldn’t help but smile. This day hadn’t gone as badly as he’d thought it would.

No. Not badly at all.