Chapter Text
A healthy planet, for Foster, meant healthy chao. Sonic, hero of the Resistance, thought the same thing, apparently.
The town of Cedar Run sat on the interior of a wide river that produced log rafts shorn and lashed at the saw mill upstream. Sturdy Beavers and Squirrels with shoulders and arms thickened by days of lumbering shouted as they hooked the steel cable onto the winch of the tugboats, but otherwise there was a permanent sense of tranquility that attracted the chao to the clearings of plots left out of harvest rotation. Foster’s cubs were grown, leaving her with an empty cave and a feeling of a job well-done. They were strong kids on their own adventures, with her older electing to stay in town while the younger went off to a bigger city south of the valley. Foster thought she would be thankful to have them out from underfoot, but the cave was quiet and she missed the noise.
When a group of chao decided to roost in the acres of forest she called her backyard, she considered them as she hefted a trowel in one paw, her overalls muddy at her knees. It was a mild fall day and the crops she planted three months ago were leafy with green, vibrant tops. Foster wondered if they’d enjoy honeyed carrots like her older, or be extra picky like her younger. She had an abundance of root vegetables in the wheelbarrow she meant to trade to the family just down the path for half a bushel of acorns, some of the nuts she intended to roast while the rest got ground into flour for cakes.
She decided to save a few for the chao, just to see if they’d bite.
Foster spoiled them into the winter when they seemed to enjoy anything she put in front of them, a welcome change from the dinner fights between her and the kids. Spring came quickly with ramps shooting up through the ground and ready to be baked into trout pie. She saved a share for the chao, but for the first time in her memory they left some of the meal untouched. She shrugged it off as an intolerance for fish before she turned out another meal they historically enjoyed. This, too, was only partially eaten.
She put out a notice in the town for a consultation, not expecting much. She stuck a flyer on the board in her blocky, legible writing in the town square and sent a few along with the ferrymen who drove the boats down river.
When Sonic the Hedgehog showed up at her fence gate, she nearly dropped her spade on her foot.
He was casually leaning against one of her pickets, his smile easy and bright across his peach muzzle. “I heard you had some chao troubles?”
She was too old to be self-consciously wiping her gloves on her pants. She grimaced to herself when she noticed the smear of dirt across her denim. Oh well- he wasn’t here to be impressed by a retired mama bear.
“You heard rightly,” she answered. “I’ll take you to ‘em.”
-
Foster had never brought anyone into the chao clearing before. A protective edge intruded her gait, a feeling she couldn’t entirely shake. Sonic didn’t seem to notice, strolling just behind her with arms folded behind his quilled head. If she felt a bit betrayed at how easily they welcomed the hedgehog into their clearing, she didn’t voice it. It helped that a few of them ignored him entirely to go crawl into her lap once she settled on her favorite stump.
They climbed up his skinny legs like a tree. “Clingy little guys,” he noted, extending an arm out so that the bravest of them could hang off of it like a set of monkey bars.
“That part’s normal,” Foster informed him, her sigh big, toothy, and tired. “They ain’t eatin’ much. Sleep a lot more than usual, too, and it’s springtime. I’da thought they’d be running loose through the forest explorin’ instead of stayin’ put like this.”
The startle from Foster as an object on Sonic’s wrist lit up shook the chao in her lap; she smoothed her hefty paws across the tops of their heads in apologetic strokes. A gridded fan of laser light scanned down the top of a chao’s antennae to their dangling feet. “You get that, Tails?” Sonic asked into the device. Not small enough to be a watch, but not too big to be unwieldy. “Transmission successful,” a voice chirped in response, their cheer coming through despite the static. “Complete data analysis results won’t be available until another half hour of processing, but-”
“In words I can understand, buddy.”
“From these initial readings it looks like the same symptoms as the others,” Tails finished. “Weak chaos signatures and a lot of interference.”
Foster hadn’t thought much of Sonic so far (it was hard to be generous when there was an interloper in her territory, even if he was invited) but the look on his face as Tails spoke changed her perception of him, like she had been staring at him all wrong before and only now was seeing him correctly. There’s the hero who saved the world , she wondered. I get it now .
“So they ain’t the only ones acting up,” Foster assessed as soon as the device at Sonic’s wrist went dormant.
“Not by a long shot,” Sonic admitted, crouching to allow the chao down. “We’re studying as many as we can to get some answers.”
This wasn’t great news- it sounded like a sickness that was spreading without an obvious cause. She hugged the chao in her lap just a little tighter.
A gloved hand touched on her furry bicep. “Don’t worry,” Sonic soothed. “Tails is a genius and we’ve beaten everything we’ve come up against so far. We’re gonna fix this.”
Foster’s unease at his intrusion finally lifted like a broken dam, allowing in the light and hope that effused from him. Again, she felt her understanding of him deepen just a little more. He was a hero in the big and the small ways. For Foster, who generally believed that the world was a good place, it was a comfort to be given a little proof. “I trust you,” she responded, catching a chao who tumbled off her head after clambering up her form. “Good luck, Sonic.”
-
The information from Sonic’s transmission ticked in a loading bar across the screen, hovering above multiple programs opened and chugging along in the background ready to rip the data apart for reproduction in readable, clarifying graphs. Tails tested his lip against the rim of his mug, decided to drink, and only jerked a little bit as he burned fresh tastebuds out of commission on some mint tea. He stirred more honey in to both sweeten and release steam through surface heat transfer. He had little hope that this newest sample provided answers for their problem, but more information meant a more precise analysis. Can’t really be mad at clarity.
He didn’t get it. The chaos emeralds stayed hidden as per usual, Knuckles hadn’t reported any changes with the Master Emerald (then again, he was still treasure hunting with Rouge, and who knows what kind of trouble those two could get into on their own), and all was quiet on the Eggman front. Dead ends everywhere, and no explanation for these strange chaos energy signatures or the lethargic behavior exhibited by the Chao. The new energy readings did strange dances across the frequency spectrum, making unfamiliar shapes that didn’t conform to pre-established chaos waves. Yet they had a pattern to them, a general rhythm that they always followed in these recordings. A piece to the puzzle whose edges Tails had yet to find.
He remained determined. He logged hours of success under his utility belt since working at what was once the clinic, now turned into Restoration HQ’s Health Hub. People depended on him for medical equipment schematics, for better sterilization methods, for little bots that maintained the tiled floors. So many faces added a “thank you” before they called him “Miles” that the weight of his name stopped feeling like a case of mistaken identity and more like a pair of gloves he finally grew into. He didn’t hate it. It made “Tails” someone personal, someone who still missed his brother’s kind ruffle of the fur between his ears.
The progress bar finished with a blink of success before disappearing, all processors roaring to life. New renders populated the monitor nearly the size of the wall. Then, in the tiny fanfare of a three-note completion tone, his wrist communicator informed him of a successful update. Well, at least he had something to give to Amy.
–
Midday arrived with folks rolling up the sleeves of their work shirts. The soil of the community garden smelled damp, soft enough for setting stakes and marking rows. A section started prepping beds for root crops while another team arrived with water barrels filled from the water tower. Frost sensors courtesy of their local vulpine genius indicated that the morning snap passed by without damaging their yield. The strawberry patch rustled with unfurling leaves, leaving Amy suddenly wanting a slice of the morning’s loaf smothered in jam.
“Two,” said a voice across from her, doggedly (hah) persistent.
“Five,” Amy responded, removing pins from the tarp protecting their more fragile produce.
“I don’t need five backup agents for reconnaissance,” the wolf asserted. He crouched down to pluck more pins from the other side. Condensation rolled off the cloth and flew in a scatter of drops once he and Amy lifted the sheet together with a snap.
“I had two teammates with me when I got caught out,” Amy informed him- just mentioning the accident sent a twinge of phantom pain through her knee cap. “Are you saying you’re better than me?” she asked in warning, airy as she verbally handed him the trigger to her internal detonator.
“You and I have different skill sets,” the wolf hedged. “Don’t make unfair comparisons.”
“Hey Keel,” Tails greeted, ambling up from the direction of the main Hub building. Funny how different he looked outside of his workshop and in Amy’s territory, careful not to disturb any of the growth as he negotiated room along the path for his feet and clutching at the wrench on his tool belt. “Amy- I have some upgrades to the chaos energy analyzer that I thought you’d want to know about.”
“Thank goodness,” Amy cheered, rising into a stretch with a punch to the sky and a clamp around her elbow. “Something for me to deliver to the scouts.”
“Something that might mean I don’t need five bodies breathing down my neck,” Keel followed after, a smug and winning grin. Not like Knuckles, who wore his victory obviously, or Shadow, who only ever expressed his pleasure through conquering someone else, but instead with the firm belief that the world rewarded persistence eventually. His tail maintained a steady sweep back and forth behind his knees, dodging the blackberry bushes behind him, and Amy mentally accused him of being a great big show-off .
“It means the backup can act with more information,” she remarked, “not shrink the resources.”
“Or you relegate those bodies and spread out the scans for more intel,” Keel suggested, the pins shoved back into the cloth. “You mentioned yesterday how you didn’t feel comfortable sending out patrols until we had a better lay of the island. Miles expedited the process.”
Just when she thought she had a handle on Keel, he proved that he listened to her when it mattered- or when it suited his needs, she had yet to decide. It surprised her how often he tossed her words back at her like he was always ready to catch them.
“That’s not the same as saying the risk is gone,” she snapped, “Just because we’ve got an upgrade doesn’t mean we stop acting with caution.”
“You’re not throwing caution out, you’re misusing resources,” Keel countered. “Trust in the advice of someone who has literal years of infiltration experience.”
She was getting tired of Keel’s contradictory attitude. He had an air of self-assuredness that could suffocate a room, much like someone else she knew who could rile her up just as easily. Someone blue, and sunny, and not here right now. “You’re letting your ego do a lot of the talking,” Amy growled.
Keel’s tail managed another infuriatingly perfect flick, his ears tipped forward and his expression unreadable. “Funny, I was about to say the same thing.”
“Guys!” Tails piped up, shoving his communicator between them like a peace offering. “Uh, okay, wow. I did not mean to cause a tactical crisis. Just let me demonstrate what this can do before you make any decisions?”
Amy read silent concession in the fragile incline of Keel’s nod. She budged, but with a promise that this conversation wasn’t over that she trusted him to read in her face. And, there - tossed back to her, the ball of their conversation flung to her like he wanted to throw it over her head before she could catch it. Smugness, and a returning promise that he would thoroughly enjoy exhausting her with more counter-arguments afterwards. “Go ahead Tails,” Amy asked, a deliberate cut away from Keel and all of his nonsense.
“Okay! So,” the communicator’s face glowed with a few taps along it’s surface. “I noticed similarities between some of the weird energy signatures we’ve been picking up, indicating a regular pattern. I have enough information to load the new signatures into the scanners as well, so we can start tracking those and see where they’re coming from.”
At this, Amy lit up. Good, now that weird energy won’t catch them off guard again. “That’s brilliant!” Tails had only a moment to bask in the praise before she asked, “How quickly can we set up everyone’s mobile scanners with the analyzer software?”
“Give me two days, and I think I can not only upload the changes but create a repository for the new data. I need a bank to capture and render the transmissions into a readable format.”
“Okay,” Amy grinned. “So, we’ll start tracking this new energy and whatever gets sent back to you is going to help figure out what’s going on?”
“At least give us more to work with,” the fox sighed.
“It’s good work, Tails,” Amy assured him. After her accident and subsequent weeks of PT, she kept reconnaissance on a tighter leash knowing she was choking her most restless units. This development allowed her to give those teams some room to breathe without a weight on her conscience, though she struggled to determine exactly what Keel wanted. Some days he processed reports by her side in silence, as diligent and regular as his one o’clock meditation break with a cup of matcha. Other times he acted with a restlessness that he channeled into hours of physical training. She tried not to miss him too much. She wondered how her heart had any room left to ache for the absence of someone else.
“Two teammates, Agent Keel. I’ll send their profiles to you through comm after lunch. Let them know about the analyzers and be prepared to deploy by the end of the week.”
Keel’s ears flickered, barely noticeable if you weren’t looking for it. She ate up his blip of confusion like an unwrapped sweet. “Why not sooner? Miles said two days.”
“Because,” Amy sniffed, dismissive, moving onto the next cloth that needed venting, “I’m not the only one overworking themselves. You need this party as much as I do.”
“The party!” Tails exclaimed. “I almost forgot to check if Knuckles and Sonic are coming for it.”
“Oh,” she sighed, dreams of a boisterous rooftop playing as a film behind her eyes. “I can’t wait. I already checked the sign-up sheet for the food, ordered plates, a band, streamers-”
“That you are forbidden from putting up,” Keel insisted quietly. “As per your therapist’s orders.”
“ Streamers ,” Amy continued. Lift, snap, pin back into place. Another row of frost cloth ventilated. “It’s going to be a perfect celebration for the official opening of the Health Hub.”
“I’ll just let my teammates know that we’re delaying reconnaissance in favor of getting shot by glitter canons, shall I?” Keels wondered.
“She is the boss,” Tails reminded him, the communicator dimming with the close of the analyzer program. “Her resistance, her rules.”
She glanced to Keel, delighted by the way he managed to finally dirty his gloves by setting in the last pin of the cloth. “Don’t say it,” Keel warned her just as Amy moved to squat beside him between the rows of berries. She had challenge in her posture, her lips pulled back to show off her teeth- and it reminded her of the way she felt before she slammed the flat of her hammer, sending a cobalt blur into the mechanical guts of the next badnik.
“Heel,” she grinned.
Keel came alive under her eyes, from dour and disconnected to alert. The agent’s tail took on a sharp swish behind him, and his ears stayed cocked forward. Like he was listening intently. Like he saw threat in the pink hedgehog within his swiping range, a woman who didn’t bother to withhold what she kept in her arsenal. From one moment, they both braced to enter into a match. She felt alive under the scrutiny, like winning this competition between her and Keel meant more in the grander scheme of life, like she could apply her power to any heart and watch it transform under her paws just because she forced his to rally beside her.
He assessed her, ready to wait her out. Amy read his profile, she knew the score- he could outlast her if he wanted. But it was a silly thing to work himself up over a joke in the middle of a community garden, and she knew that. He relented with a tsk. She swallowed down her anticipation for how this would play out later, when he planned to pull her teasing out again like a shiv. For now, he packed it away as a professional before offering her a hand. She took it. He had large hands, she noticed in annoyance for the third time today. They gripped her easily, tugging her without more force than required, like he measured his strength when he held her and dosed it accordingly.
“Break time, Commander,” Keel ordered, offering her an arm while Tails offered her another. She looped her own through both, her coasting on the anticipation of a fun-filled evening with her as the most sensational host.
-
Rouge mentioned the next stop on their travel laid just a few miles north of their latest excavation site, just “ a little lush rest stop, a small pool or two, should be lovely. ” Knuckles believed her, like an idiot. His expectations for isolation and quiet expired as they stepped into the grand open courtyard of the oasis. Day two of their stay and he muttered darkly to himself while other bodies joined him in his pool, never mind that all the amenities were communal. Surely his demeanor communicated the obvious well enough, these people were just body illiterate.
Maybe that was Knuckles trying to justify his discomfort in his ears. The denizens of his home on Angel Island trilled during the nights and chirped at him during the days. At these resorts Rouge insisted they visited in between expeditions, conversation lingered in the spaces around him, produced by a language he understood but the words usually not meant for his ears. Rouge’s own seemed to swivel at the sounds, divulging when an exchange piqued her interest or otherwise making things up- it was his job to determine which was true. She made it a game. With some coaching from her, he got somewhat decent at it.
He chose to forgo more soaking for a rinse off, grabbing a thin but absorbent cotton towel to scrub against his chest and finding Rouge sipping a drink out of a twisty straw. “Alright, woman,” he groused, “you had your fun. Tomorrow we leave.”
“Can’t,” Rouge insisted behind a pair of sunglasses whose pink frames matched her outfit, “I have a stone massage scheduled for two. Oh,” she murmured, cutting through his indignance, “your communicator kept beeping while you were gone, so I shut it off.”
“You shut it-” he lunged for the communicator left on a stone plinth. It turned on fine, the boot up taking too long for his liking.
“Relax,” Rouge cooed. “Your toe-tapping is undoing all of the mindfulness I paid for.”
“What if it had been an emerge-”
“It wasn’t,” she insisted, lifting up her frames. “I know what your alert chime sounds like.”
That was one of the many things Rouge taught him- how to let go. All he ever knew on Angel Island was to engage with vigilance when either the Master Emerald or his own senses alerted him to disturbance. Off the island, everything engaged his fight-or-fight harder at first. Rouge handled everyone, friends and strangers alike, the same way as she did a gemstone- examined with terrifying perception, weighted for their value, then admired or tossed depending on what she found. People sparkled differently from stones, she explained. The way they engage with one another could hold glints of drama, of joy, of regret. Observing stopped being a job, for once, and turned into an indulgence. A story that he liked listening to through her nuanced observations.
Did he trust her? Marginally more than he did at the start. He wasn’t the optimistic powerhouse that was Sonic, not willing to throw his good will behind every gesture, but…without Sonic’s urging, he wouldn’t have these new experiences that made the world feel bigger and stranger. More exciting. The urge to berate her settled into a huff while he examined his messages.
“It’s from Tails,” he explained as he sat on the end of her lounge chair, her legs folding up to accommodate him. “He says they’re celebrating the opening of the Health Hub with a party. Amy’s hosting it.”
“A party!” Rouge enthused gently, her drink set aside. “How decadent. Of course we’re attending.” Her chin nestled on his shoulder and he lifted the communicator to give her a better look. “Yes, we still have time for that massage tomorrow-” his indignant scoff went unnoticed - “and make it in time to the station for the train.”
“...it would be good to see how the construction finished up,” Knuckles allowed, leaning back into her a fraction. His lean had the desired effect of encouraging her arms around his waist. He liked the creamy white of her fur against the solid mass of his red. “And I haven’t seen Amy since she started her physical therapy.”
“Poor dear,” Rouge sighed. Her breath smelled like mangoes, encouraging him to scent the air and tilt his chin in her direction. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of you four take a blow quite like that one.”
“She’s tough,” Knuckles asserted, “She was already complaining about the boredom when we left.”
Rouge only hummed. He stole the hum against his mouth and changed the acoustics of it into a lilt of surprise that settled into a sound as wide and breathless as desert winds. “We better check up on her then,” Rouge whispered, “if only for the sake of everyone else.”
“Later,” he rumbled, putting Rouge’s lessons of observation to work as he soaked in her delighted laugh and the easy way she fell back onto the lounger.
-
Health Hub’s rooftop acted like a big, grey, industrial canvas for the guests, but leave it to Amy to fill the boring and expected full of heart. Trough-shaped planters lined the roof, lending it color. Crates from shipments got repurposed into tables for the buffet, draped in heavy cloth that reflected back the glow of string lights. Some enterprising individual cobbled together hundreds of pallets stacked together to make a stage with a back to it, rounded and oblong-shaped despite it’s many edges. The sound would be reflected back to the audience instead of lost to the sky, seemed to be the intention. And the streamers - so many tied to upturned barrels and secured at the top of a makeshift tent pole in the center. More string lights above the paper so that when dancers moved, they undulated beneath a rainbow of hues.
Amy knew how to throw a party , Sonic had to give her that.
“This looks great, Ames,” Sonic grinned at her side, earning him a giggle.
She looked great, too- dolled up in a dress made for swishing with a substantial hem flirting with her knees. “I can’t take all the credit,” she admitted, because Amy was never the kind of person that wanted the spotlight if she could lift someone else up into it alongside her. “I had lots of help setting up everything- especially the streamer tent in the middle.” Amy more flung her statement out than declared it, but her target remained unmoved at her side. At least, to Sonic the wolf seemed unbothered. Amy must have read something differently though, because her smile took on a satisfied curl that burrowed it’s way into her cheek.
“She made him tie every single one by himself,” Tails revealed to Sonic, cupping his older brother’s ear. They both snorted together, Sonic collapsing slightly into Tails. “Good work, Keel,” Sonic congratulated, “looks festive.”
“A community effort,” Keel responded, cool. “Though I thank you for the praise. A worthy prize in exchange for the state of my paws.” Leave it to Keel to layer smug condescension with amusement and lamentation all at once. The reconnaissance scout had a way of making his existence a muted spectacle. But Sonic didn’t mind that- at least the guy was interesting.
“Your paws are fine,” Amy insisted, but Sonic caught her glancing down at the wolf’s gloved hands anyway. When she wrapped hers in Keel’s, she did so with restraint. “Now c’mon, let’s go celebrate!”
The food was simple but plentiful, potluck-style and Sonic’s speed. They had heaps of casseroles, salads, appetizers wrapped in pastries and containers of dip sprouting among dozens of bowls of chips. It was easy to discern who came from what faction of the Resistance; nurses rarely changed out of their scrubs, the field agents arrived together and conversed in the low tones that felt more natural to them, and the engineers who maintained Tail’s tech came in boisterous, ready to mingle while a few of them examined the stage with loud aspirations. The groups discovered the photo booth stationed against the entrance to the roof top one at a time. The booth saw a rotation of use between groups claiming their barrels and dipping under the streamers to dance to music emanating from speakers rigged around the perimeter.
What intrigued Sonic the most was the board situated to the entrance’s left, ringed in leftover lights and with a spotlight placed above for good measure. It stood as tall as him and three times that length wide, covered with photos like a paper-mache work halfway completed.
Behind him, Amy let out a small shriek of delight and turning the heads of partygoers nearby. “Knuckles!”
“Amy,” he greeted, late and silhouetted by the hallway fluorescent at his back. He bent over her as a looming red presence, her looking small and excited within the confines of his hug. “You’re looking good.”
“Feeling good,” Amy supplied, pulling away to make room for Tails. “Where’s Rouge?”
“She got called in by GUN at the last minute,” he shrugged. It was the closest Amy had allowed anyone in her vicinity to speak ‘work talk’. “She told me to go have fun for her.”
“That’s too bad,” Amy sighed. “I was excited to hear about your travels together.”
“I can tell a story like the best of them,” Knuckles assured her before he was swarmed by the rest. Sonic couldn’t resist a sneak attack to the echidna’s back while Knuckles offered Keel an easy, if mindful, fist bump.
They shared stories, ate, and cheered when the band arrived to round out the rest of the party’s cacophony. Like Sonic surmised earlier, Amy never disappointed when she put her heart into something.
Inevitably he got drawn back to the board with the photos, where Amy clearly put most of her effort. Picture sizes ranged from small instant shots with contents barely discernable to big blow up selfies with arms hung around shoulders and laughter almost audible from out of their mouths. Amy was in a lot of these- not just the more focused shots, but ones with her in the background helping to assemble scaffolding or lay down tile. Knuckles was hard to miss, a 6x4 of him hefting up a load of lumber for delivery. Tails often kept his head tilted down in these shots, his face obscured by his ears and a schematic in his hands…at least, for a few pictures. Sonic noticed a trend where the further along the Hub appeared to be in it’s phase of construction, the more relaxed Tails appeared in the shots, even willing to look up and smile for the camera. It was weird, Sonic realized, to see the remnants of the boy get shed away like loose quills. Weird, but good.
Sonic still hadn’t found himself until he noticed a collection in one spot, off-center and to the right. They hung one that was him, but his back turned to the lens. Another showed a blue blur shot towards a wall that needed demo, knocked out for expansion. The photos came, he supposed, from phase one of the clinic’s existence. He didn’t see himself in any more advanced stages of the building from the scant shots after that.
He turned his back on the board to admire the party in front of him. There was Amy, standing around friends who offered her samples of their potluck offerings. Her plate bent with the weight of it all, and it was clear she had just finished her last bite before passing her leftovers to Keel. She gestured at a specific corner of the plate, and Sonic could almost hear her insistence from an entire party away. Try this, I know you’re going to like it.
Keel dutifully sampled, and Sonic was able to clearly read the contentment in the wolf’s expression. Like he was happy that someone knew him well enough to make the observation of his preferences in the first place.
Tails stood amongst the engineers. He seemed taller- yes, he’d grown an inch or two, Sonic noting the difference immediately upon finding him. Not too tall that he couldn’t ruffle his little brother’s fur, but a change. Still, Sonic saw the posture of Tails, how he joked comfortably with workmates. His brother stood in their center as naturally as a star pulling everyone else into his orbit. There’s his partner , not his little buddy.
Even Knuckles, who Sonic experienced mostly as an alarmist and sometimes as an enemy combatant, appeared relaxed . Not on high alert for the next threat, but chatting with relative strangers. He wasn’t leashed to Team Sonic or here out of obligation, ready to clean up another mess. Knuckles usually exuded an air of confidence in his power, not in the benevolence of others. Tonight he made room for both. Looks like time with Rouge was doing the echidna some good despite the guardian’s initial reservations.
Pops went off, drawing attention from the guests and directing it outside of the party. Another pop went off, this time preceded by a crackling tail of color in the night sky, and all bodies turned to watch as fireworks rose in races of light before expiring together in unison. More filled the sky, one following another with such vibrance that no one noticed how the string lights dimmed around them, the stage gone quiet with reverence. Sonic, who witnessed wonders great and small, leaned back to better take in the view. But Sonic only partially kept his attention to the sky, unable to stop from looking down when the light of the fireworks revealed his friends in bright contrast. They appeared like after-images in the darkness, insubstantial for a moment and blending in with the other bodies, unidentifiable, until another round of fireworks burst into overcast brilliance.
This might be why he had awareness enough to notice his wrist communicator blinking with activity on one of the intelligence channels. He pushed on a side face of the device, rewarded with a receiver falling into his palm that he then set into his ear.
“... visual on several GUN aircrafts. Related personnel observed en-route to the southwestern corridor. Agent Rouge, free Agent Shadow, do not engage, repeat, do not engage-”
For a minute, Sonic considered telling his friends his next move. That meant evicting them from out of the scene, that amorphous blending that they settled into, that they chose and he didn’t. He popped the receiver back into his comm, tossed his plate into a nearby trash can, and gave his body a single stretch of preparation before zipping towards the rooftop access, the hinges barely squeaking with the speed at which he slipped though the door.