Hey, all!

So, first off, I think it's quite obvious that this is not a chapter.

Instead, it's an explanation. Stupid character limit in the summary…

It all pretty much started in psychology, when we discussed the parts of the brain and their development – particularly the speech area. The teacher gave us an example of how sometime during the Renaissance era, or around then, a 12 or 14 year old boy was discovered in France. Discovered, as in no one had even known he had existed until they stumbled upon him. The boy had had no human contact in his life and was essentially wild. Naturally, they tried to civilize him and teach him language.

They failed. Utterly. He was incapable of learning speech.

Then, in anatomy and physiology just a tad bit later, we studied nervous tissue. And the teacher told us about neurons, and when they're formed, how half of the ones in the brain pretty much commit cell suicide right before we're born, yadda yadda. And interestingly enough, she also told us a story about a modern New York girl who had been horribly abused. Her father had kept her locked up in a bathroom all twelve years of her life, and so she had never learned speech either.

And when they tried to teach her, all she could understand were the nouns and vocabulary. She was incapable of picking up all the complex syntax that we use to put nouns together. Picture it kind of like a foreigner who tried to learn a language. At first, they're going to say something like, 'Me want water' before they get better. But she was never able to improve past that point.

No speech. Remind us of anyone?

But of course, Classic Sonic could understand language. So what gives? Did he have a really painful sore throat?

That's one idea. But this story is about another:

The title, attachment theory, happens to be the current topic in my psych class and it plays a huge part in our development, from infancy to adulthood. I'm not going to say much more on it here, because I want the story to show its conjectures and points and influence over us. But I will say that this is my attempt to use what I learn from my psych textbook to explain how Classic Sonic became who he is.

And there you go. Explanation.

Now for an actual summary:

Shadow just wanted away from that happy birthday party of socializing anthropomorphs, unable to stand the torture of having to watch from outside. He wanted away from the smiling blue hedgehog who always insisted on dragging him into complex adventures of teamwork and friendship, the way you would drag a horse to water, but for reasons of his own, Shadow refused to drink. So he picked up his Chaos Emerald and teleported away.

Sonic knew that something was missing in his life and that he wanted it, even if he didn't know what 'it' was. He knew that if he had had it, he would have a very different life, one far more similar to the lives everyone else led, and very possibly a happier one, too. So when he found a kindred spirit in the form of a small, abandoned fox kit on the forest floor, Sonic was determined to give him what he himself had been deprived of. Even if he still didn't really know what that was.

Tails was a young freak of nature, kicked out of his village the instant the few people who had wanted him were gone. He was also, according to an odd hedgehog, a person exactly like everyone else who had the same needs as everyone else, and who deserved a life just like everyone else. So Tails decided to take the odd hedgehog's offer of a life, and followed him through space and time.

And the first chapter will be up soon :)