Chapter Text
Sonic had a problem: he was bored.
Like, terminally, chronically and critically, bored .
Of course, that was to be expected when he functioned on a slower passage of time than the rest of the world, (or that was the sciency stuff Tails said at least). Normally, it wasn’t an issue- The superspeed hedgehog had plenty of activities to occupy him. Save Mobius, stop Egghead’s most recent plot, help his best bro Tails in the workshop, hunt chaos emeralds, hang out with Amy, stop another of Eggface’s braindead plans, pause in Central City for a chili dog or two, pester Knuckles, do any odd jobs of rescuing cats from trees or cleaning a beachfront… Most of Sonic’s days were jam packed with adventure and action, just the way he liked them.
But when the hedgehog had an hour or two without anything to do, he went absolutely stir crazy. Sonic would dash around the workshop to the point that Tail’s would kick him out so the fox could focus. Sometimes he’d go to talk to his other friends, but he’d often just go for a run across a few continents, just wanting to get moving, to do something . It was a consistent point of frustration for Sonic that none of his friends could keep up with him, or understand that he just needed to move.
It wasn’t until Tails finally dragged him to a doctor's office that the reason for his hyperactivity was made obvious; Sonic had ADHD. And once he got meds for it, it was far less of a strain on his life, for both the blue hedgie and his friends.
Even so, Sonic still had major bouts of boredom, and he often just ended up racing around the countryside until his friends called on him or Robuttnik attacked again.
On this particular day, everyone seemed to be busy. Tails had locked the door, saying he needed to focus on a new hydro-super-whatsit-gadget that had very complicated parts, so he couldn’t be running around and distracting him. Sonic ran from house to house, trying to find something to do, to no avail. Knux was on Angel Island as usual, the Chaotix were on an oversea investigation trip, Eggface had already attacked this morning, and even Amy was busy with ‘adjusting the feng shui’ in her house because she got a funky tarot reading.
Sonic was at wits end. There were no children in immediate danger, he just ate a chili dog a few minutes ago, and even the most obscure of his friends were- Actually, he could probably ask Team Dark if they needed any help with a mission or something. Truth be told, he didn’t know any of them very well. Shadow was an edgelord and hated his guts, even though he was the only person who could really keep up with Sonic. Rouge had a thing for gems and Knux, and Omega was one of Egghead’s bots that went AWOL.
In any case, the blue hedgie thought as he tapped the icon for contacting Rouge on his communicator, he could handle Shadow’s attitude if it meant he got to do something, even if that meant fighting with the guy. The dialing tone ran for a few seconds longer than usual before the bat’s voice came out of the device.
“ Rouge speaking. ”
“Hey Rouge, I was just calling to ask-”
“ Oh! Sonic, thank chaos. ” An explosion overshadowed her words. “ -ink you can drop by to help us out? Eastern Frog Forest, just look for the giant plume of smoke- WOAH! Shadow, watch your chaos spears! No, I don’t care if- ” The agent hadn’t even waited for him to agree before hanging up, and she hadn’t made a single innuendo. Something was definitely wrong.
East Frog Forest? Shouldn’t take too long to get there, and he didn’t even have to cross any water to get there. Sonic took off running, becoming a blue blur as he sped across the countryside towards the location Rouge had described.
It only took him a few extra minutes to get there as he had to stop and find the direction of the smoke, but once he got there, Sonic stopped with surprise. An old eggman base rose from the foliage a few hundred feet away, plumes of smoke billowing out of the top. In front of him, Rouge, Omega, and Shadow were battling 4 nearly identical Silver Sonics, a fifth blown to bits near a splintered tree. Team Dark looked rather worse for wear, though to their credit, a few of the bots had missing limbs, and one had a hole blown through its left eye. It was impressive that they were still fighting the gleaming sonic copies, Sonic himself had a difficult time fighting this particular badnik.
“Sonic! Glad you could make it- How the hell do we defeat these things?” Rouge was in the air, dodging spin dashes and kicking the robots out of her vicinity.
Shadow groaned from where he was throwing chaos spears at two sonics at once. “Why did you call him here? I’m doing just fine beating these fakers!” He punched one in the face as if to illustrate the point, glaring Sonic down. Said blue hedgehog winced.
“Well maybe you enjoy punching your rival around for hours, but Omega and I are not equipped to do so. Also, I have a spa treatment booked in a few hours from now, and you know how long paperwork takes when it comes to eggbases.” Rouge placed her hands on her hips as she sassed Shadow, but Sonic could tell that she was tired.
‘I CONCUR WITH THIS STATEMENT. ONE SONIC IS ALREADY HARD ENOUGH TO DEAL WITH. WHAT STRATEGY SHOULD BE EMPLOYED TO TAKE DOWN THESE CREATIONS OF EGGMAN?’ Omega said over the sound of gunfire, the barrels in its arms pumping out bullets that the Silver Sonics were just fast enough to outrun.
Sonic laughed, speeding up as he spindashed into a bot and knocking it away from Rouge. “Ouch, Omega. Am I really that bad?” he asked rhetorically.
“Yes,” Shadow responded immediately, and his bat partner snickered.
Sonic rolled his eyes. “Hardy-har, Shads.” He punched the bot into a tree, and tried to pry open a dented panel on the shiny robot, missing the death glare that the edehog gave him at the nickname. “These guys pre-date Metal, but they’re both designed after me. Just do what you would to defeat me, and it should be over in a jiffy.” He remembered these guys, and it made him a bit nostalgic to see them again. Normally they were solo-produced, however. “What’s up with this base, anyway? Usually the Silvers are dispatched alone, they don’t often have buddies.” Sonic ripped out the inner wires of the bot, and its workings rasped to a stop, falling to the ground in a pile of metal.
“No idea,” Rouge said, alighting down atop her robot partner. “We got orders to bomb the place, so we did. Omega mentioned something about blueprints and records, but I only really noticed a severe lack of Eggman’s narcissistic homages to himself. Not a single larger than life portrait.”
“I too noticed something off, particularly about the chaos energy of this area,” Shadow commented, driving a chaos spear through the torso of a Silver Sonic. Three down, two to go , Sonic noted.
Sonic tripped the badnik that was being chased by Omega’s fire as it passed him, and the Silver Sonic tumbled to the ground. He dove out of the way of the bullets, and kicked the downed bot to get its attention. “I got this one, Omega!” he yelled, and the gunfire stopped.
‘I WAS UNDER THE IMPRESSION THAT IT WAS RUDE TO STEAL ANOTHER’S OPPONENT IN BATTLE, SONIC,’ Omega said, sounding more than a little grumpy.
Rouge pat his head comfortingly. “Don’t worry, big guy. There will be plenty of things to blow up next time, all for you. Let’s get back to the chopper, Shadow and Blue got this handled.”
“You’re leaving me here?” Shadow asked, sounding even more irritated than before as Omega began walking away.
“You can teleport over when you’re done, darling, you know where the chopper is!” Rouge yelled over her shoulder, and Shadow growled, muttering something about thieves and their eagerness to drop from a battle.
Sonic hopped up, trading blows with his counterpart until he ended up back to back with the Shadster himself. Both Silver Sonics started curling into a spindash, and Sonic looked back at Shadow. “On three?”
A barely perceptible nod was his answer.
“One, two… Three!” Both hedgehogs leapt into the air as the Silver Sonics shot forward, colliding with each other and becoming scrap metal. Sonic laughed, holding out a fist for Shadow to bump. “Nice job, Shads! We should work together more often.”
Shadow glared at the fist. “Do not call me that.” He turned to leave, giving Sonic the cold shoulder.
“Ouch, not even a goodbye,” Sonic teased, following the edgelord. “Come on, Shadow, let’s race to your chopper or whatever! Unless you’re afraid of getting beat by me.” He smirked at the other hedgehog, knowing that if he taunted Shadow enough, he wouldn’t turn down a race.
Shadow scoffed. “Tch. It’s on!” His rocket boots flared to life, and a red blur streaked off into the jungle. Sonic laughed, and raced after him. He wasn’t exactly sure where the chopper was located, but he saw where Rouge and Omega had started going, and it was pretty easy to follow Shadow. He wasn’t the fastest thing alive for nothing.
Sonic grinned. He hadn’t had this much fun in ages! It was exhilarating to find someone who could keep up properly with him, to actually provide a real challenge! The two hedgehogs jogged through the foliage, skillfully avoiding the undergrowth and obstacles as if they had done this millions of times before. They weren’t pushing themselves, not really. There was no need. They were just running for the sake of running.
Sonic pulled up beside Shadow, shooting him a smug grin. Shadow growled, and ran faster to pull ahead. This continued for a few hundred yards, until a clearing with a G.U.N. embossed helicopter parked within came up on them. Sonic pushed forward, speeding into the cleared area a half second before his dark counterpart. Sonic skidded to a stop, leaving a rut in the grass, and he jumped with a victorious grin. “I win!” he yelled, quite happy with himself. The blue blur felt far more alive and energized than he had in weeks, and it was invigorating. Shadow rolled his eyes, but Sonic could tell that even the stone cold hog was less tense than before.
Rouge and Omega emerged from the bushes shortly afterwards, the bat atop the bot smirking to herself. “You boys have fun?” she asked in a way that wasn’t quite condescending.
Shadow only glared her direction, whereas Sonic rubbed his nose contentedly. He had had fun. He always had fun racing Shadow, even if the other couldn’t match him without his rocket skates. But who cared about that? “Thanks for the race, Shads!”
Shadow glared at him. “I will have a rematch, Faker, but next time, on my terms. And don’t call me that!” he snapped, before going over and climbing into the back of the helicopter, looking more than a bit pissy.
Rouge laughed, patting Sonic on the head as Omega walked past him. “Don’t worry, Big Blue. Shadow is just a bit grumpy over losing. He’s like a little kid when it comes to emotions.”
“Don’t test my patience, bat!” Shadow yelled from the chopper, and Rouge snickered, Sonic joining in with a chuckle. Poor Shadow, he had to deal with Rouge’s quips for hours on end. Sonic was lucky that Tails was such a nice younger brother.
Rouge got into the cockpit, and the chopper blades began to spin, making Sonic’s quills rustle in the strong wind. He waved goodbye with a smile, seeing Rouge mention something to Shadow, and he chuckled as the striped hedgehog looked horrified and a tad red. He wondered what she said, but the helicopter had lifted into the air and began to head back north. Sonic watched them leave until they were a speck on the horizon.
Great, now he was bored again.
Sonic was about to start the run back to City Central, when his communicator beeped. “ Sonic, Eggman is attacking the Chao Garden on 7th! ” Tails’ voice said through the communicator.
Sonic smiled. Ah, never a dull day. Awesome. “On my way, ETA 3 minutes!”
---
After foiling Eggman’s plan to have the Chao power his badnik army, Sonic and Tails headed home to make dinner. Or rather, microwave some meal cups that should hardly be considered nutrition. Alas, it was the compromise the brothers had made, as neither could cook well enough to feed them both and Tails insisted that ‘eating just chili dogs was not a healthy diet’. The last time Tails had tried to cook, they needed the fire extinguisher, and Sonic was not about to sacrifice his pride to ask Amy for cooking lessons. So, after some ‘eh, it’s edible’ mac n’ cheese cups, the two sat down on the couch to talk about their various shenanigans and adventures of the day.
“I finally got my Hydro-SONAR-Echowave running properly. Of course, it will require testing, which means I can finally use the Sea Fox again. I haven’t used the ol’ girl in a few months and she’s getting dusty.” Tails was always excited to talk about his latest invention.
“Yeah? Why don’t you tell me about it?” Sonic didn’t understand half the words that his fox brother said during his little explanations, but he liked seeing him all excited and sparkly-eyed. And it meant they could waste more time before going to bed.
Tails grinned. “Well, in order to have the Echowave working accurately, I need to hook up the transducer to the Sea Fox. However, unlike traditional sonar, the Echowave emits chaos energy pulses instead of sound waves, because it’s powered by a chaos emerald. Then, the transducer picks up the energy when it bounces off of things, and this allows the Miles Electric to convert the energy readings into a map that shows what's under the water!” Sonic nodded along, only really understanding ‘makes underwater maps’. Tails really deserved to talk to someone who understood all the big words and genius brain connections he used. “So, what did you do today? I know you can’t stand to sit around here for hours at a time.”
Sonic grinned. “Well, I ran around for a bit, and everyone was busy so I couldn’t, I dunno, like help with garbage or something. Anyway, I ended up calling Rouge after I ate a few chili dogs, and she asked me to help Team Dark take out a few Silver Sonics.”
“Really? We haven’t seen any of those since the Death Eggs!”
“I know, but there were five of them guarding this facility that G.U.N. ordered to be destroyed. The others said there was something funky about the place, so maybe we could check it out after the fires die down. Anyway,” Sonic continued, “I got Shadow to race me, and then they left. After that, you called me over the comms. All in all, it was a fulfilling day.” Sonic crossed his legs, placing them on the coffee table and leaning backwards on the couch. He yawned, and stretched his arms upwards.
“Hmm… We might go investigate it in a few days, but I’ve got some tidbits to tweak and toggles to tune on the Echowave. Who knows, we might even find a chaos emerald to power it!” Tails yawned as well. “Well, I have some adjustments to make, so…” He stood up, heading for the workshop door.
Sonic jumped up, blocking the door with his arms folded. “Oh no you don’t, mister. You are going to bed in your room, not at your desk. One of these days you’re going to nod off and get a screw in your skull, Tails.”
The twin-tailed fox groaned. “ Fine. But only because a growing Mobian such as myself needs a full eight hours of sleep to function properly.”
Sonic snickered. “Yeah, yeah, whatever you say buddy.”
[2727 words]