Crossover With Non-anime Series Fan Fiction ❯ Hedgehog Book 1: The Merchant Of Death ❯ Hedgehog Book 1: SECOND EARTH PART 1 ( Chapter 2 )

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HEDGEHOG: BOOK 1

THE MERCHANT OF DEATH

SECOND EARTH

...I hope I'll see it again someday.
Miles "Tails" Prower looked up from the stack of parchment papers in his hand and took a deep breath. His heart was racing. The words on the pages before him seemed as if they were written by his best friend, Sonic the Hedgehog, but the story they contained was impossible. Yet there it was. He glanced at the pages again. What he saw was frantic writing. Sonic's writing in smudged black ink on some kind of old-fashioned yellow parchment. It looked real, it felt real, but so much of the story these pages contained felt as close to reality as a fevered dream.
Tails sat safely locked in the second stall from the door of the third floor boys' bathroom at Angel Island Junior High. It was a rarely used bathroom because it was at the far end of the building, near the art department, way off the beaten track. He'd often come here to think. Occasionally, he even used the toilet for its intended purpose, but mostly he came here to get away. At his feet were a pile of carrot ends. He'd been nervously gnawing on them as he scanned the pages. Tails had read somewhere that carrots improved your vision. But after months of constant carrot intake, he still had to wear glasses and only had a mouthful of yellow teeth to show for his efforts.
Tails knew he wasn't a full-on nerd, but he wasn't running with the cool kids, either. His only contact with the world of "the accepted" was Sonic. They grew up together and were about as tight as two friends could be. As Sonic started to grow up and become popular, Tails kept one foot firmly planted in kid-world. He still read comics; he still kept action figures on his desk. He didn't know popular music, and his clothes were, well, functional. But that didn't matter to Sonic. Tails made him laugh. And Tails made him think. The two would spend hours debating issues as diverse as First Amendment rights and the relative merits and the relative merits of Pamela Anderson before and after cosmetic surgery.
A lot of Sonic's jock friends would dump on Tails, but never in front of Sonic. They knew better. Mess with Tails and you'd be messing with Sonic, and nobody messed with Sonic. But now, somebody was indeed messing with Sonic. Tails held the proof right there in his hands. He didn't want to believe what the pages told him. Under normal circumstances he would have thought it was some goofy joke that Sonic thought up. But some things had happened that made Tails think that this might not be a joke. He leaned back against the cool tile wall and his thoughts brought him back to something that had happened the night before.
Tails always slept with a night-light. He was afraid of the dark. That was his secret. Even Sonic didn't know. Though sometimes Tails thought the night-light was worse than no light at all, because a night-light made shadows. Like the dark jacket hanging on the back of a door that looked like the Grim Reaper. That nasty vision happened more than once. It didn't help that without his glasses, Tails could barely see things clearly beyond the end of his bed. Still, the occasional rude awakening was much better than sleeping in the dark.
The night before, it had happened again. Tails was lying in bed, drifting in and out of sleep. He opened one groggy eye and in his stupor he thought there was standing at the foot of his bed. His mind tried to tell him was just the shadow cast by a passing car, but his gut told him to wake up. Fast. A surge of adrenaline shot through him and his brain went on full alert. He tried to focus his nearsighted eyes on the interloper to confirm it was just his backpack. No go. He couldn't tell what it was. So he groped his bedside table, knocked over a mug full of pens and his Game Boy, but managed to grab his glasses. When he finally jammed onto his nose, he looked to the end of his bed...and froze in fear.
Standing there, lit by soft moonlight streaming in through the window, was a woman. She was tall and dark-skinned. She wore a colorful wrap that draped off one shoulder, revealing a incredibly taut, muscular arm. She looked to Tails to be a beautiful African queen. Tails dug his heels in and pushed his back against the wall behind his bed in the futile hope that he'd crash through and escape out the other side.
The woman simply raised a finger to her lips and gave a soft "shhh" sound. Tails froze in absolute, paralyzing fear. He looked into the woman's eyes and something strange happened. He grew calm. As he thought back on this moment, he wasn't sure if she was hypnotizing him or casting some kind of spell because, oddly, his fear slipped away. The woman had soft, friendly eyes that told Tails he had nothing to be afraid of.
"Shaaa zaa shuu saaa," she said softly. Her voice sounded like warm wind through the trees. It was pleasant and soothing, but it made no sense. The woman then walked around the bed and sat next to Tails. Tails didn't jump away because, for some reason, this all felt...right. A leather pouch hung from a cord around her neck. She reached into it and pulled out a ring. It looked to Tails like one of those school rings you see on college kids. It was silver with a slate-colored stone mounted in the center. There was some sort of inscription engraved around the stone, but it was written in no language Tails had ever seen before.
"This is from Sonic," she said softly.
Sonic? Sonic the Hedgehog? Tails had no idea what was happening, but the last thing he expected to hear that this strange woman who appeared in his bedroom in the middle of the night had something to do with his best friend.
"Who are you? How do you know Sonic?"
She gently picked up Tails' right hand and slipped the ring onto his finger. It fit perfectly. Tails looked at the strange ring, then back at the woman.
"Why? What's this?" he asked.
The woman touched a gentle finger to Tails' lips to quiet him. Mark immediately felt his eyes grow heavy. A second before he had been about as wide awake as anyone can be, but now he felt weary enough to fall asleep on the spot. He felt the world slipping away. In an instant, he was out.
The next morning Tails woke up at the usual 6:15 with alarm clock blaring. His first thought was that he hated alarm clocks. His second thought was that he had had the strangest dream. He chuckled to himself, thinking that he should cut down on the raw vegetables before bedtime. He then reached over to hit the snooze button...and saw it.
There, on his finger was the ring the woman had given him. Tails sat up in bed quickly and stared at it with its gray stone and strange inscriptions. It was real. He could feel it. It had weight. It wasn't a dream. What was going on?He dressed quickly and left the house without telling his parents what had happened. There was only one person who could explain this to him. Sonic the Hedgehog. But something had already happened with Sonic that gave him a queasy feeling. Last night was the county semifinal basketball game...and Sonic hadn't shown up. His parents were there, his sister was there, but not Sonic. After the first half he went over to ask Sonic's family where Sonic was, but they had already left. Very strange.
And Angel Island lost. Bad. Everybody at the game was buzzing, wanting to know what happened to their star. Nobody knew. When Tails got home he called Sonic's house, but there was no answer. He'd figured he'd see him in school the next day and get the story. Then he went to sleep and had his strange night visitor. Now Tails wanted to know a whole lot more from Sonic than why he hadn't shown up for a basketball game.
When Tails had got into the school building, the number one topic of conversation was The Game.
"Hey Prower? Where's your superstar pal?"
"He blew it!"
"This better be good, Prower!"
"What's the story?"
Everyone was yelling at him about Sonic. That could only mean one thing. Sonic hadn't gotten there yet. Of course, Tails didn't have any answers, so he shrugged and kept walking. He went to Sonic's locker, but Sonic wasn't there. Instead there were more angry kids waiting to ambush him.
"He chickened out, didn't he?"
"Couldn't take the heat!"
Tails dodged them and went to Sonic's homeroom. Sonic wasn't there, either. Where was he? Something was definitely wrong.
And then it happened. It started as a twitch at first, but quickly grew. It was the ring. It was moving. It felt like it was squeezing and releasing, squeezing and releasing.
"Prower! Hey Prower! Where is he?" More kids were closing in. This was not a good time. Tails didn't know what to do, so he grabbed the ring with his other hand and ran. He blasted through kids, bumping into more than he dodged. A couple of older guys pushed him back, nearly sending him sprawling, but Tails somehow stayed on his feet. The bell rang and everyone headed for homeroom, but Tails didn't stop until he reached his own personal Fortress of Solitude---the boys' bathroom on the third floor.
He ran to the center of the room and held his hand out as if it didn't belong to him. The ring was still moving, squeezing and releasing like a heartbeat. Then the gray stone started to sparkle. An instant before it had been a solid gray mass; now it sprang to life like a brilliant diamond. Beams of light shot from the ring and filled the room.
Tails couldn't take it anymore. He yanked off the strange ring and threw it. It hit the tiled wall and bounced to a stop in the center of the bathroom. The beams of light continued to shoot from the stone and dance across the ceiling and the walls, making the room look as if it were alive with beautiful, dazzling stars.
Then Tails watched in awe as the circular band started to grow larger. It slowly got bigger and bigger until it was about the size of a Frisbee, and in the center of the now impossibly large band was a black hole where the floor should have been. The ring had opened up a dark portal to...somewhere. From deep within this portal, Tails could hear the faint sound of musical notes. It wasn't a melody; it was a jumble of sweet sounding tones that grew louder and louder.
Tails backed away from the strange ring, not sure if he should turn and run or stay and watch the show. He was fascinated and terrified at the same time. The musical notes coming from the portal got so loud that Tails had to cover his ears. Whatever was happening, he didn't want any part of it anymore. So he turned and ran for the door. He was just about to throw it open when...
Everything stopped. The musical notes ended so abruptly it was like somebody threw a switch to cut the power. The dazzling light show ended also. The only thing that didn't stop was Tails' beating heart. Whatever had just happened, it was over now and Tails tried to calm down. He took his hand away from the door and looked back into the bathroom. What he saw was the ring on the floor, right where he had thrown it. It was back to its normal size and the stone had returned to its original gray color.
But something else was there too. Lying on the floor next to the ring was a scroll of paper. It was yellow parchment that had been tightly rolled and tied with a thin leather strap. Whatever the event had been with the ring, the result was that it had deposited this scroll here on the bathroom floor.
Tails approached the scroll cautiously, bent down, and picked it up with a sweaty hand. It was indeed rolled paper. Nothing scary about it. Just odd. Tails tugged on the leather cord that kept it together and gently unrolled the paper. There were four sheets, all filled with writing. Tails looked at the first line of the first page, and what he read hit him like an electric charge. He couldn't breath. He couldn't think. This strange parchment was a letter...to him.
It began: I hope you're reading this, Tails.