Sonic the Hedgehog 1. Good Morning

I wake up with a jolt, electricity sparking in my brain as I come around to gun shots nearby. The resulting migraine digs in though my ears; each shot of the hundreds being fired like a small explosion in my mind. I don`t bother going for my pistol anymore then the rabbit in my arms even bothers to wake up. Her kind don`t seem to care anymore (their history is too riddled with war would be my guess) so I see no reason to move. Tracing her ears as she sleeps I look around my apartment as I consider why I`m in this grime stained place. The floors are in a desperate need of a hoovering, dark yellow tinged wall paper that in a past life was white and the awe inspiring mountain of dishes…

The boy looks around tiredly, observing his apartment with his gold tinged eyes with the thick blankets wrapped around himself and the cream coloured rabbit laid bare in his the nook of his arm. He considers himself a man despite his youthful age of seventeen. He wonders how Sally will take him sleeping with one of Knotholes youngest members, the pair both barely legal and by Julius`s laws illegal to be together just by species.

He gently stands, brushing the rabbit into the beds depths and tucking her in before walking towards the pile of clothes by his draws. The oak stares accusingly, its once grand shade obscured by dust and poor care as he takes an outfit from on top and dresses, ties his shoulder length white hair into a small ponytail and looks down at the white shirt and black joggers he is now wearing. A vital moment of confusion hits him as his socks seem to be…gone.

Cream wakes up tiredly once her partner walks across the room, the gunshots and loneliness hitting her instantly. She glances around quickly before noticing him staring out the window, it being open. "John?" she whispers, as if afraid the human might disappear within a second, the same way he appeared the first time she`d ever broken one of Sally`s rules, saving her life. He just glances back, smiles and then looks away again.

"Looks like their getting their Tail`s in a twist over at the bank honey, a lot of cops coming out and in, body bags and all…" he laughs grimly as she winces. While she knows the humans he speaks of are her foe the casual way he watches his own species die has always pained her. He doesn`t say anything else, not even when she stands and walks across the room, equipping the dress he made himself, the sewing almost as eloquent as the sub-atomic binding used to attach the nanofibre bullet resistant material within it.

It makes her laugh when she thinks about it, that fateful night when he sat there as she recovered, half conscious and bandaged as he sat bloodied in battle armour, sewing needle in hand and a strange hand held device by him fixing her dress and muttering about the poor quality of the seams. Something about there never being enough resistance.

"Did you say Tails?" she says, walking up behind him.


	2. Good Afternoon

_The lad gives me that look, the one I know means trouble "Hey Brunts, you ever think you`ll fall in love?" _

_I let one eyebrow hit the roof as I finish assembling the carbine in my hands, keeping eye contact and finishing the weapons reconstruction without averting my gaze from his; "You`re shitting me, right?" I reply, dead panned. The others chuckle softly. _

_"__Well why not?" He pauses, almost looking thoughtful "I mean your attractive, strong, sooo clever and such as born leader, I bet you could pull anyone!" His sarcasm is not unusual, but grating none the less. He flinches as I cock the carbine, the barrel suddenly aiming at him, calming slightly seeing my hands off the trigger piece. _

_"__Maybe because we`re on Julian`s top ten to fuck list kid? I mean think about it, the Resistance want us dead, the government want us dead, who could any of us realistically gun for? A rogue Mobian?" I bite back, activating my safety and slotting the gun into my rigging. _

_I meet his gaze for the last time his eyes ever left that helmet "Or were you planning to pull tonight with that pretty face?"_

"John?" Cream repeats, looking at him curiously. It only takes her a second of looking at his eyes to know he`s gone, blanked out to some distant moment of the past. It showed though the blown pupil, engulfing his iris entirely. She decides better than to wake him and walks over towards his laptop on the desk, opening it and tapping into her account.

The email from Sally still sits there, unopened on her notifications from the system along with its four siblings, all with hard-line subject lines. It doesn`t take her a second to shrug off the urge to open them in favour of checking John`s open storage. The sight takes her back to when he first let her into his personal section, the wry smile with a hard edge as her tersely replied to her constant request for knowledge into his past.

When he caved she had expected to see horror, pain and war. Instead she was greeted with images, writings, diary`s and short videos from years upon years in time span, child to now. She was still in his thirteenth year, seeing for the first time the transference into Julian`s genetic modification process. She went to click open the next file from her last session when John turned jerkily, his face worried.

"We need to move, now" he states, shielding his eyes as the pupils contract back to a normal size.

She doesn`t question, a moment listening is all it takes for her to hear the steps on the stairs, the attempted subtlety of the team closing in on their hideout.


	3. Good Evening

It took them exactly 12.41224 seconds to reach the doorway after putting on their trench coats, one each side and both armed in one hand with a Kaidan Mark Seven 9MM pistol, one of the many branches of Julian`s old weapons development that John had been loath to leave behind on his defection; the pistol containing a tri-reaction bullet and an accelerated barrel that delivers the bullet, which promptly detects being within an electrical or organic target and is set to then fire a halo of shrapnel outwards and a small timed pulley upwards, which then pulls the shards back up though the subject. While originally disgusted at John`s obsession with producing and using "Spike" rounds, Cream eventually decided the ends justified the means, leading to today's method of cranial extraction.

The first S.W.A.T member to kick in the door found it fell directly downwards into the room, the weakened hinges collapsing on contact before the two rebels took his arms, breaking the wrists and meeting back to back in front of him with a good grip to prevent him moving before using their pistols to fire down the corridor, tearing though the inferior light-steel armour of the deployed troops.

At 16.15345 seconds S.W.A.T-ALPHA had sustained ninety-percent casualties, before a duel swipe of claws tore out the throat of the remaining member at 16.87415, leaving a trail of lacerated skin three feet into the apartment.

John and Cream quickly ran down the corridor, throwing themselves over the banister of the hotel`s stairwell backwards to grip the small hooks pre-set there on arrival and hang to unload a new clip each into S.W.A.T-CHARLIE. 19.41569 sees the remaining three members killed by ricochet from a bioelectrical shield deployed from John`s modified fingers, blacking the skin from the high current being drawn from his machinery, delicately wrapped around the organs they draw life from.

23.15940 sees all communication within a mile of Jewel Lane, Capital City blocked out by electro-static pulses.

John, pistol emptied runs across the rear lobby of the hotel, sliding under the desk to meet Cream.

"G`day." He laughs, the red static on his arms peaking up to maximum capacity as the leech systems react to his mental pulls to form a bolt pattern. Cream winces as sliding in a new clip as the thunder of the strike rebounding though the armour of S.W.A.T-DELTA leaves them KIA at exactly 34 seconds. Both rebels cringe violently at the slight hail of human meat, slightly roasted raining down around the desk they found themselves under. One clip and click later both run towards the alley and seeing it clear quickly discard the trench coats and throw up the hoods on the coats they are wearing underneath and run into the rainy streets, at one with the fleeing crowd…

**Captain**

**From entry to the target structure, S.W.A.T force one report losing targets at 85.1234 seconds. No evidence was found of their stay bar a pile of dishes, a pair of plain black socks and thirty-six corpses left by the teams that entered the building. Official reports show that one team was torn asunder by the use of a rigged electrical system, leading to the strange cause of death of the troops found in the rear lobby. **

**I suspect subject seven and his pet are on the run in civilian clothing. Please advise all forces in area that they are armed and extremely dangerous.**

**The president himself has advised that subject seven may be going by the names; Brunts, John, Order, Kyle, Eid-Nailuj. **

**Advisory**

**Lieutenant **


	4. Good Night

The street was gloomy, dank and overgrown with twisting vines and questionable marks on the walls that an inquisitive person might conclude could be blood. The two shadowy figures walking it didn`t seem to mind, one tall and the other barely reaching the others chest and both clad in dark hoodies with firearms tucked firmly in hands reach on hip holsters. John had started with the handguns hidden but entering darker parts of the city made appearing unarmed less than advisable. The dust kicked up by their footsteps never seemed to bother him, although Cream would have to occasionally stifle a cough from the rough mix of stone and grime floating up, swirling into a storm when a brick from the nearby buildings would crumble and fall into the ancient paving slabs with a load crack.

"John?" Cream uttered softly, almost under her breath.

"Hmm?"

"Where are we?"

He went silent for a moment, consideration ripe in the air before his almost dream edged tone returned.

"It`s never been about the journey, but where we`ll be at the end of it honey."

She considered his response for retorting; "Is that human for I`m lost?" She teased.

"Human for my marker says this way, not where this way is." John pouted

"Marker?"

"Its kind of a beeping in my head, very basic output but the input is connected to the satellites. It does single letters in Morse code, directions. It gets grating after a while mind but what can you do?"

"That`s kind of fucked up John…if I stick one of my ears next to yours can I hear it?"

"…I have no idea. We need to find a clothing store before closing time."

"How come?" Cream replied, confused by the sudden change of topic and priorities from "_we need to go to a safe place, meet with a friend before this place gets hotter than Knothole under a magnifying glass_" to clothes.

"I lost my socks."

"You`re kidding me, right?"

"No! They were cotton as well! Today's just a nightmare you know?"

"You`re unbelievable" She replied, looking around yet another alley, this time with cables above and several of the walls holey and crumbling, a pair of trainers hanging solemnly on a wire above and a few homeless citizens, huddled close around a barrel in one of the shattered structures; all human and unaware of the pair passing across the alley nearby, one breastfeeding a small child at her chest. Stopped suddenly by the touch of John`s hand on her shoulder she went to speak before he put one finger on her lips, the barely black skin nearly healed from the fight a mere dozen hours before, baby soft.

"Look" he whispered in her ear, softer than any human could ever hear.

It only took her a moment to see why he had stopped her, the humans were not as alone as she first thought, the angle and allowed her to see in the shadow a small hedgehog male, thin and pale looking sleeping near a pair of humans. It took her a full minute of observation before she noticed why John was holding two fingers up now; the baby wasn`t human. She held two fingers back up in response.

He whispered again "This is why we fight, this is why are friends may die. Because of a few fools at the top of a pair of trees they will gladly burn the forest inbetween them in their vain attempts to fix a problem. This kindness is a crime here Cream. What does that say about this city?"

They moved on, solemn sight behind and fate infront.

Within a further ten minutes, with Cream hidden in a nearby alley John stepped forward into the clothing store, the place on the brink of closure. The shop was immaculate in places, cleaned and vacuumed and in others the sight of dirt and grime were still in the process of being attacked by a female, human, before him. Another, male, stood behind the counter, staring at John with cation, almost wearily.

Approaching him John pulled out a note, sliding it across the counter. "Three universal cotton please?"

The man gave him the socks without a word. It was only when John turned to leave he spoke out.

"Brunts?"

John turned almost with purpose, hand casually drifting by his gun. "How do you know that name?"

"You have powerful friends in low places Mister."

"How do you know that name", a growl that time, the women sinking into the woodwork as John`s pistol slid out of its holster.

"He said you`d come here, to give you this." He held out a piece of paper, moving slowly. "To tell you some people can be redeemed for a price."

"Cryptic" John retorted, snatching the note and reading it. A cocked eyebrow later and John had left the store, but the wife of the store owner could almost have sworn she heard him mutter something.

It almost sounded like "Bastard".


End file.

Sonic the Hedgehog, Adventure, Romance