S: After a very long time, here's chapter 2! My apologies for taking sooooo long to update this.

Anyway, before I start rambling on again, please, enjoy.

It was morning. The dead fire spat its smoke in little threads, carving up the bland landscape into chunks in Sonic's vision. The wind puffed through his spines with a gentle coolness, but the hedgehog barely noticed. His attention was focused on the still-sleeping pink girl, curled up on the opposite side of the small camp.

He could get up and run away right now, and she'd never be able to follow him. He'd be miles away before she could even blink, much less try to convince him otherwise. Not like she would be successful anyway. She could barely summon the courage to say a single word to him, let alone anything else.

She'd do nothing but be a burden.

You'd be leaving her in the middle of nowhere.

She got here by herself, she can leave by herself.

She's going to starve to death.

If she can't look after herself, she doesn't deserve to live.

But such a young child couldn't possibly surv-

I DID!

Did you?

Sonic hissed through his teeth, shifting his body. His spines tensed slightly like a drawn knife. It was not his responsibility to look after little kids.

And yet someone else did it once. Maybe it's karma.

He rose and pivoted swiftly, away from her. As he lifted his foot to leave, he heard the girl yawn behind him. A couple of stones clicked together as she stirred. She was close to waking up.

Why was it so hard to take one measly step?!

His foot began to shake. He stared down at it, the red stripe contrasting like a smug grin with the brown dirt. His mind rushed back to when he'd looked at Amy's feet, all cut and bleeding.

He hadn't had that when he was in her position.

She wouldn't have a chance without him.

He had a spare set of shoes in his pack.

Dammit!

His spines rose higher as he growled in frustration. He slammed his foot back down to the ground, a dust cloud rising and drifting away in the wind. With a quick movement, he opened his pack and looked inside it, willing the spare shoes not to be there and for Amy to stay asleep until his stupid mind ran out of stupid excuses to stick around. Her breathing was getting louder.

People should take care of themselves!

And yet…

His eyes found the shoes, coloured half red and half white. He plunged his gloved hand into the pack and ripped the small trainers out, throwing them behind him viciously. The hedgehog bared his teeth and roughly closed the pack. It was like the locking of a cage, and his ears shivered at the sound.

The incriminating little shoes made a clump as they hit the dirt, and Sonic heard Amy gasp as she woke up suddenly. He felt himself go cold like last night, and one last thought went through his mind as he turned to face her.

Why did she have to have emerald eyes?

Amy hadn't had a night's sleep like that for a long time. She'd dreamed of apples, nice green ones that would fall from the tree when she wanted them to and never got all sticky and black. The black ones never tasted good.

And now she had shoes.

But the blue hedgehog had told her not to wear them yet. He said something about infections and cleaning, and then he'd picked her up and everything had melted into streaks of brown and grey.

So now she was sitting by a river as it fled from the distant hills. The wind lavished its cool feathery texture on her fur, and made the riverbank grass dance. The clear liquid all around chased away the arid dust from her throat. Amy could see right below the surface, to the plants of the river bottom as they were noisily whipped up into a frenzy. It was nice to be next to a river. But she was expected to willingly put her feet into it.

"B-but…" she stuttered, looking up at his folded arms as he stood over her. His fingers tensed a fraction in his gloves, and her head shot back down again in deference.

But it would hurt.

"You afraid of water or something?" he said. There was some sort of hidden emotion in his voice when he said 'water', but Amy didn't know what it was.

"No…"

"It'll hurt now, but you'll feel better later."

Amy didn't answer, but stared at the rushing clear water just inches from her toes. The grass on the bank leaned over sharply, as if trying to reach the glittering surface that her pink fur refused to touch. The underwater plants waved at her in an almost mocking fashion, wallowing in their submerged superiority.

"Let me put it this way…" he growled suddenly, clearly pronouncing every syllable. "If you don't, I'll-" He stopped.

A thin sliver of icy fear fell down her back. He'd what? Her treacherous mind went back to an unhappier time when she heard that, and the fingers on her left hand tingled with the memory. It had been months before the fingers moved again.

"…I'll help," he finished haltingly. Amy blinked.

He knelt down, covering her view of the water with sharpened spines and a lean back, and she saw him take one of her feet in his hands. She watched him look closely at it, turning it this way and that, eyeing the sole, as well as each individual toe. He did the same for her other foot, lightly tickling it with his inspections. He was strangely gentle, and so she was totally unprepared for when he dunked her foot in the cold water.

She shrieked. It hurt! She thrashed around with her arms, ripping out the grass in her efforts to move away from the shore, but he was far too strong. He grabbed her other foot in a tight hand and shoved that into the water as well, making the pain double instantly.

"Stop SCREAMING!" he yelled at her, tossing her feet out from the river, and she rolled backwards, acutely sensing every blade of grass that sliced at her thin limbs. She curled up in a ball, breathing hard at the constant throb in her feet from the torture. Her eyes blurred with tears, and she squeezed them shut so hard she saw disjointed colours on her eyelids. Crying would be punished severely.

Then he yanked at her feet again, making her yelp and squirm, but her protests were cut out when he sat on her stomach, winding her. Barely able to breathe, she couldn't concentrate on what he was doing.

Eventually he got up, and Amy took in a gasp of air. Her feet felt… better. Much better.

She sat up, totally oblivious to her surroundings now. The river was silent, the wind's embrace unnoticed. Her hanging spines flapped forwards at her speedy rise, and she stared in wonder at her feet, now encased in thick grey socks and red and white shoes. She reached forward and tapped them, getting a small clunk in response.

Amy got up quickly and tested her weight on them. They were very solid, and gave her a wonderful feeling of being safe. Her eyes found the face of the older male hedgehog, but he did not meet her gaze. He had crossed his arms again, and was focused on the trainers he'd given her.

"Good?" he said gruffly. She nodded frantically, shoulders and arms going up and down as well.

Apparently satisfied, he turned around. "Come on." He started walking off.

"Thank you."

His head turned round quickly, his frame radiating surprise. The two pairs of green eyes made contact.

Amy spoke again, a whisper that somehow deadened all sound around it. "Wh-what's your name, mister?"

He stared for a long moment. His face did not twitch, his limbs did not move; he might have been carved from stone. Even the wind seemed to be uneasily staying away from him.

"Sonic. Just Sonic."

Amy walked over to him, stumbling slightly from the unfamiliar balance of her new footwear. "Thank you for the shoes, Mister Sonic."

Sonic's eyes seemed to shine for some reason, and his mouth made to open, but didn't. His face was frozen in a vaguely confused fashion, looking through her into something she couldn't see or hear. After a second or two, he turned from her.

"Let's go." Sonic marched off determinedly, without a look back. Amy, stumbling, ran to catch up.

"Test 1273 completed. Subject is physically unchanged and is in a normal state," a metallic voice proclaimed flatly, buzzing around the metal room.

Dr Robotnik sighed, stroking his luxurious moustache in thought. If he was honest with himself, he already had all the information he needed from the cylinder and its occupant, but he could not bring himself to stop trying to wake him up. The knowledge he might possess was far too valuable to be allowed to lounge around, so near yet so far from his grasp.

The Doctor had next to no memories of his life before waking up on this strange planet of Mobius, and the ones he did have were faded and nonsensical, flashing images of meaningless trivia. Only one name, 'Maria', stood out, as a flashing beacon in a fog. He knew with certainty that she was a loved one.

Robotnik rested his chin on his hands, letting his elbows fall with a muted thump onto the steel console in front of him. His black glasses shone with lines of data, tattooing themselves through his eyes, and towards his brain. The information of the failure was carefully filed away inside his vast mind.

He also knew, with depressingly equal certainty, that Maria was dead. Murdered. He had spent much effort trying to find more of his own species anywhere on this planet, all of it a futile waste. This cylinder, identical to the one he himself had woke up in, contained the only person who had any sliver of hope of knowing more.

Floating in the stasis chamber was a black hedgehog with red markings. A deep green glow insinuated itself from the thick glass window, covering the entire darkened room with its penetrating colour. Robotnik's shadow stretched long and black across the riveted silvery floor, and it moved strangely as he rose to his feet.

Yes, he had all the information about Chaos Control he needed in order to make his plans work. Even now, his Badniks were out looking for the mystical Chaos Emeralds, hunting down every possible entrance to the Special Zones and retrieving the jewels that would be used in the powering of his Death Egg space station.

No one could disturb him once he got into space. Not even…

"Squad 7E has a report, Doctor," intoned the mechanical voice. Robotnik's thought trails went spinning off into the ether, and his eyes narrowed.

"Very well, show me." He turned around, and let his gaze fall upon the screen.

S: Well, I hope it was worth the wait. No actual Sonic CD yet, but it'll be there eventually.

Thanks for reading!