1. Playground Prologue
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Author's Note: Before I begin, I would like to express my gratitude to a couple of good friends and fellow authors, Madhog thy Master, Blaze the Vampire, and Dragonlord Pwns All, for all of their help and support while I wrote this first chapter of my first story.
Changes to Chapter 1: An author by the name of Frozen Nitrogen was kind enough to point out that I did not use the same detail to describe Gemerl and certain other things that I did use to depict Tails Doll. I have made a few changes in this chapter to resolve this issue and believe that the rectification of these errors has improved the quality of my work. I would like to express my great appreciation for Frozen Nitrogen, not only for pointing out these flaws so that I could correct them, but for doing so without including insulting "flames" in his review.
Legal Disclaimer: This chapter and all others to be published in the future are works of fiction. All characters and events are the product of the imagination of the author and are not to be construed as being real or having actually occurred. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and unintentional. Sonic the Hedgehog and all related characters, places, and items are the intellectual property of Sonic Team. All trademarks and copyrights contained in this document are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders.
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"Hooray, Cheese! Gemerl! Let's go play outside in the park!"
Those were the last words Vanilla the Rabbit heard before her six-year-old daughter ran out the door, Cheese the Chao and Gemerl Type Advance-3 tagging along behind her. She chuckled quietly to herself, happy that her daughter was having fun and behaving herself. She knew that Cheese, a light blue Chao with blond-yellow highlights, a red bow tie, and power that belied its pocket-sized stature, and Gemerl, a black, gray, and yellow battle robot of Dr. Eggman's creation that had been recently defeated by Sonic the Hedgehog and even more easily rebuilt and reprogrammed by Miles "Tails" Prower, would be able to keep Cream out of trouble. All the same, Vanilla had checked the weather report, and after finding that there would be bright sunshine in a cloudless sky for the rest of the day, she allowed Cream to play in the park with her live-in friends for an hour.
Cream, Cheese, and Gemerl left their home in the outskirts of Station Square and made it to the park without incident. They looked around at all of the various slides, jungle gyms, hobbyhorses, and other diversions, and after seeing that they apparently had the park to themselves, they decided to play on the swings. Cream sat down and Cheese perched on her shoulder, while Gemerl pushed her. "Wheee! This is fun, isn't it?"
"Chao! Cha chao!" responded the Chao.
"Wheeeeeee!" repeated Cream, as she swung particularly high and jumped off the swing. She went a little high, flapped her ears to gain a little more altitude, and finished with a stylish back flip before dropping gently to the ground and performing a curtsy.
Cheese flew off of Cream's shoulder and cheered with a "Cha chao! Chao, cha chaaao!" while it and Gemerl clapped their hands together. The Chao then gave her a high-five and a gentle hug, which she happily returned to her miniature companion, and the robot simply watched and waited for Cream to finish. After performing a few more similar swing-jumps and other aerial tricks, she checked to make sure her orange dress was dirt-free and smoothed-out, and the group left the swings to explore the rest of the park.
The two of them continued to play on such amusements as the slides and the monkey bars. Cream laughed a lot while spinning on the merry-go-round, but during Cheese's turn Gemerl accidentally swung too hard for the little creature to maintain its grip and the poor Chao was flung away, resulting in an "Oh my gosh! Are you okay, Cheese?" as she ran to fetch her dizzy companion.
"Choao chaoao..." mumbled the rabbit's dazed buddy while staggering around on the floor, the sunshine orb above its head taking the form of a small spiral larger at the top than at the bottom. Cream swiftly scooped up the cerulean Chao from the ground and apologized while wiping sand off its body and bow tie. Eventually the creature shook its head and the mini-tornado returned to its former shape as a smooth yellow sphere, though he was still mumbling incoherently, "Chaoaaaooo..." Gemerl folded its hands and bowed its head as a gesture of remorse.
"Are you alright, Cheese? I'm sure Gemerl didn't mean to swing so hard! Can you forgive him?" beseeched the sand-hued rabbit of her miniature playmate. Eventually, the Chao's eyes focused on Cream, and Cheese soon smiled and gave her as best a hug as it could with its tiny arms. Cream managed to smile, too. Gemerl walked forward and hugged them both, careful not to injure them with his golden elbow and knee spikes, and they were all immediately reconciled; they could never be angry at each other for long. "Maybe we should go home now. I told Mother we'd only be here an hour while she cooks dinner."
"Chao!" Gemerl nodded its assent.
"Okay, guys! Let's go home!"
And with that, they turned away from the swings and merry-go-round and everything else and began to leave. Just as they were at the edge of the park, however, they heard a peculiar sound that made them stop and turn toward the sports ground.
"Broooo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo... broo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo..."
"Cheese, Gemerl, what's that? It sounds like someone's crying!"
"Cha chao..." responded the Chao.
The three ran toward the playing field to see if someone was hurt. They reached the edge and looked, but no one was in the field. Gemerl positioned itself to stand guard and make sure no strangers approached them, and Cream kept looking across the ground, but Cheese was the first to spot the source of the sound. "Chao! Cha chao!"
"Broo-hoo-hoo... roo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo..."
They looked up at the bleachers that lined the field. At the top and right corner of the stands, sitting backwards in the seat, hunched over and sobbing, was an orange and white figure, and two stiff tails could be seen sticking out from the bottom of its back.
"Look, Cheese!" spoke the rabbit to her companion. "It's Tails, and it looks like he's upset! Let's go cheer him up!" All three of them ran up the bleachers, the rabbit's and robot's shoes clanging against the aluminum stairs, to comfort Cream's friend. They quickly reached the top and ran towards the lone figure, but once they reached it, Cream saw that this was not the same two-tailed fox that had rebuilt Gemerl.
"Broo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo... huh?" the stranger choked out haltingly, stopped shaking (or at least slowed the shaking somewhat), and turned its head to face its audience.
This was not Tails... though there was a moderate resemblance. This person - if it was indeed a person - was orange, with two arms, two legs, and two tails. It had a short white muzzle, a patch on its chest was white, white tipped both of its tails, and its... hands... were also white. But there the similarities ended. Its "fur" was actually a covering of felt, with cotton forming the white sections. The shoes on its feet (or were they its actual feet?) were red, with a single white stripe running across the center of each - not unlike the design of Sonic's shoes. The hands had no fingers, and in place of fingers the edges of its round hands had cross-stitches running along the borders. Its mouth appeared similarly stitched closed, begging the question of how its sobbing was so enunciated. The nose was a mere round stone of plastic, and the eyes were simply circles of black polyester sown onto larger circles of white cotton, with no discernible eyelids. And the greatest difference was perhaps the most obvious: a red octahedral crystal, approximately two-thirds the size of Cheese's head, was connected to the being's forehead via a thin gray wire of about five inches. The crystal, wire, and felt skin appeared to connect to each other seamlessly, as though fused together on the molecular level, so that one could not tell where each ended or where the others began. Overall, its appearance seemed to be that of a stuffed toy modeled in caricature of the person whom Cream had first believed it to be.
"You're not Tails! Who are you?" asked the surprised rabbit girl. At the tone of her voice, Cheese and Gemerl moved forward to protect their friend should it prove necessary for them to do so.
The being gave the appearance of having slightly calmed, though it was still trembling and sniffling a little. It answered Cream's question in a high-pitched, faintly mechanical voice, its words broken by held-back gasps and sobs.
"I-I... rrrhh-rrrhh-rrrhh... I'm ca-called... rrrhh-rrrhh... Ta-Tails Doll..."
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Author's Note: This is my first story, and I hope I got off to a good start. Please leave a review and tell me what you think. Any constructive criticism or other suggestions that could help me to improve my ability as a writer, both in this story and in others which I plan to publish in the future, would be greatly appreciated. I accept reviews from other FF-dot-net authors and unregistered users alike but reserve the right to delete anonymous reviews at my discretion (for example, if they contain only insults or other content not related to my story or authorial talent). Goodbye for now, and see you next chapter.
Best regards,
Master Metallix