Chapter 7 - New Soleanna

Sonic stood on apartment building and stared at the busy down moving on from second to second. People opened their shops and cars moved from the new side of the city. There had been few changes to Soleanna and there was so called ‘New Soleanna’. It was just big modern city, with all kinds of technology. Many people had moved there and mostly anthropomorphic animals like sonic had stayed in the old Soleanna. It was better place for such small animals. The sight of the New Soleanna was depressing. Enormous grey buildings rising behind the small buildings looked so surreal. Sonic had been many times at the city, and it was terrible. The traffic was never-ending and the people seemed tired and angry most of the time. It was depressing sight it made Sonic wonder how people lived in that grey colored Hell? He was glad to live in this small village kind of part; Sonic wasn’t sure what to call it, but something better than the grey jungle next to it.

“Kssssh!” screamed the radiotelephone that was firmly attached to the leather belt Sonic wore. It also had gun, because it had gotten more and more unsafe to move around. The leather belt was hiding under his hoodie and all the tools on the belt were in their own cases. Sonic slipped the telephone out and watched it as it kept going; “Message from the underground base has arrived! Come. NOW!” a familiar voice screamed with a hint of panic in his voice. It was Mile’s voice. Mile’s, also known as Tails’ voice made Sonic think of the old times, six years backwards, what it was like to adventure with usually the three of the hero group, Tails, Sonic and Knuckles. It made him melancholic…Amy. She had been the light of his life for a long time. She had always stood beside him and helped him to take care of himself when he might’ve forgotten it. She…she had been important but…but Sonic couldn’t understand what had happened. Of course he understood as he slowly drove towards using alcohol everything just happened.

Thinking of it made him feel like he couldn’t breathe. He was shaking, nearly crying. He had lost what was important to him. Why? How he had been so stupid?! “Kkksssh..Sonic? Are you there?” Sonic heard Mile’s voice come from the radiotelephone. He pinched himself and wiped his tears away, no time for the thoughts. At least not now. “Clear and loud”, Sonic answered to the phone while pressing down a button to talk. “I’m coming over now, over”, Sonic ended the message and hid the telephone again. He peaked over the edge of the building he was standing on. There was at least 400-450 meters to fall. Sonic grimaced and moved his skiing goggles on and jumped on the nearest balcony he found. He kept on jumping on the lower balconies until his feet reached the ground. He took few jumping steps and then launched himself to run. He had said to be the fastest hedgehog in the city and he was proud of his title. With just few easy steps he ran with the speed of sound! The scenes weren’t even a quick view, just flash and mix of blurry colors and then they were gone. He moved a skeleton mouth scarf on his mouth so any bugs wouldn’t go into his mouth.

He enjoyed running. It was all he ever needed! He had run as a kid and damn he had enjoyed it! He loved the air cooling his face as he ran towards the secret base. Sports might have been his favorite thing, but stayed second to his love for hot dog. Sometimes he took morning runs and took shower after it. He loved to stand on his balcony on cool summer evenings. There was the nice breeze that blew off the sweat and the water his fur held. The view to the ocean wasn’t as good as the view of the forest 10-11 years ago. Building the city had taken a lot of time to build up.

Maybe the hardest memory was when he and Amy were married and spent some mornings at the balcony. They were the best. Fresh coffee and wife. No sounds of the traffic and amazing view. They say times golds memories eh?

It didn’t take long time, until he was at the secret base of the Pacifist army. There was this building painted with colors that would make it harder to see. It was covered with leaves and tree branches and it worked quite well. Sonic stopped near the base and it actually took a while until he found the door. He knocked three times, then two and then three. Little hatched opened and determinate female voice commanded; “Password.” “Srethgif”, Sonic answered and the door opened. Sally Acorn was standing behind the door and she held smile on her lips and welcomed Sonic. She wore military green jacket with few medals. Under that was her blue vest with collar that was almost always standing up and hiding her face. She wore white blank t-shirt under the vest to hide her stomach and her pants which ended under her knees were a bit baggy and army green colored. “Welcome back Sonic”, she smiled and Sonic nodded back to her. “I had to come, I heard that there was message from Mario”, Sonic’s slight smile fainted away and Sally nodded. “Yes, come and check it out”, she moved out of the way as Sonic stepped in.

The base was quite capacious because there wasn’t anything big yet. Luckily there had not been any bad situations where they would be needed to store food and stay hidden from the outer world. There was lot of different machines and screens that had tons of texts flashing here and there and many had the basic training to use machines, but few where good with them and Tails was maybe the master of the machine after the literal computer or some sort of program named Nicole. Rotor Walrus was fixing one broken computer in one corner and Nicole was handling the working computer, going through hundreds or maybe even thousands of words and messages, information, formulas and calculations as well as maps and 3D maps and designs of the New Soleanna. Nicole the Holo-Lynx sat on the chair with her eyes blanks and screens flashing in her eyes, she was quiet and concentrated. Her arms rested on armrests, but she held her palms up and her fingers were constantly tapping the air, see she had some kind of sensors on her fingers that obeyed her moves. There was also Tails’ best friend T-Pup. It was a big metallic dog who had probably actual brain and mind of its own, Tails originally created it to be his company, but now it was needed to much more important things, so there was made some differences to its body. It was probably even 80 centimeters tall and it had hard metal armor to protect it, “just in case”. It had ears pointing upwards and eyes that had actually moving eyelids. Tails had worked on it together with Rotor and Nicole. They could’ve been called the “computer nerds”. Not in bad way though! Sonic was jealous of their skills. T-Pup was never renamed because T-Pup had been its name from the start, from the small robot puppy it had been, the named had not much meaning, but memories. It wasn’t Tails’ pet, it was his loyal, trusted and one of the best friends.

As Sonic moved towards to controlling tables where there were tons of meters, buttons and blinking lights. Tails was working with the machine with headphones on and he seemed quite focused. Miles had always had interest in machines and their way of working and fixing and building was his favorite thing, no wonder this job was given to him. “What’s up Shrimp?” Sonic quickly moved his hand on Tails’ shoulder. Tails jumped and turned around; “Hey rat! Stop scaring me! That’s not nice!” Sonic just laughed. “I’m sorry. So what’s the message?” he wanted to already hear the message, he was worried about what was going on and what was happening. “It’s telegraph message, I translated it,” Tails explained and showed the paper on the table. Sonic moved closer to it and read it out loud; “You will do the next move next evening. Get your forces ready and take heavy weapons. Rosalina has trick up her sleeve, we don’t trust her.” At this point everyone had stopped their duties, listened silently and processed the message a short while. “They didn’t say any specific time?” Bunnie D’Coolette pointed out. Sonic always felt embarrassed around her due to her not wearing pants. She wore pink top and brown leather jacket among with a cowboy hat. She was odd pair with Antoine D’Coolette, who was a coyote. He usually wore blue jacket with red lining around the part where the jacket opened. White pants, black leather combat boots and red arm cuffs. Two white swords straps decorated his chest with “X”-shape. He also had red and white colored belt with gray buckle and on the belt there was one sword and two guns. The sword time had disappeared to the past, but Antoine seemed to have some kind of obsession to swords. “No, but we have to start moving before the sun settles. If we will have heavy weapons it might take time, unless Miles cannot think of anything”, Sally turned to look at Tails.

 

“U-uh… I have no idea. This all happens so quickly I think I can’t make everything. I have to work on the bombs and check how the bombs are held under the horses. I have to prepare some planes and my plane too. I have to create some form of weapons to soldiers and and…” Sonic stopped his panicking friend “Okay you can stop. You don’t need to work on everything. You are not alone here Tails. We will get help from the  The Chaotix Team, from Blaze the Cat and Silver the Hedgehog! We are trying to get help from Sticks the Badger, but I feel bad because she live in the jungle and in peace so I don’t want to bother her with death and destruction. Cosmo has refused to join the war, she doesn’t want it anymore. Shade the Hedgehog hasn’t answered yet and Sonia among with Manic are probably drunk somewhere and I don’t want them messing in the war. Someone who I am not a fan to invite, but we definitely need is Shadow. Shadow the Hedgehog.” The base was silent from the sudden information that surprisingly came from Sonic. Usually Sally would’ve had all planned out, but now seemed that Sonic had been jumping around the whole world and talked to these creatures he mentioned.

“Well… I think you have us covered. And Miles, let’s go to check the horses. Do you have the ideal weight of the bombs?” Sally turned her eyes from Sonic to Tails. “Ye-yes I have. Le-let’s go”, he nodded. “Will you go get the help groups from the New side?” Nicole had stopped controlling the machine and looked at Sally and Sonic with her faintly gleaming green eyes. “It’s safer if we go together with Sonic and Tails. We will take T-Pup with us”, Sally nodded firmly to Nicole. Nicole smiled. “Good. Stay safe and I’ll stay with you”, Nicole said and turned back to her computers, but her body started to divide into light glowing blue parts and bits, until she was completely gone, Sonic could swear he hears Nicole whisper something, but he couldn’t make out what it was. “T-T-Pup, let’s get going”, Tails demanded walking up to Sonic and Sally. T-Pup jumped up from his kind of nest made out from curtains. Tails turned on some kind of virtual clock on his wrist and there was quiet beep that meant that something had been activated in T-Pup’s brain. It was some form of controlling system, it had the basic commands; sit, come back, attack and fetch. Nothing more, because T-Pup was already well behaving robot and it didn’t need any more commands. Tails nodded to Sonic and Sally and smiled with determination. Sonic smiled back, showed his thumb to Tails and opened the door, hopping outside, ready to take off to running.