Second Chance

By LejindaryBunny

 

Author's Note: I doubt anyone reading this has read any of my other
work. In fact I doubt very much that very many people are reading this
at all. But that doesn't really matter. I wrote it and I'm posting it
and if anyone cares I'll tell you this, it's not the sort of thing I
usually post. I don't mean not the sort of thing I usually write,
because I write this sort of thing all the time, I just never put it
on the net. I never put it on the net because I figure no one will read
it. But my last long fic got 192 reviews so I know I'm not a terrible
writer. It's just that this isn't about a particularly popular
character, is it? But finding the work of A. Fleury and several others
gave me hope, and so I'm posting this. In fact they're probably the
one's reading this now. I can't think of anyone else who would be. And
so therefore I will stop rambling and let you read the fic, for fear
that an overly long author's note might drive you away.

Disclaimer: Sonic the Hedgehog and company, as well as their are owned
by Sega as well as DiC and Archie comics. Were I to ever claim them as
my own not only would I have a big, fat, lawsuit to deal with but also
a large number of video game nuts with pitchforks and torches and
a small group of screaming, rabid fangirls with blunted sporks.


Chapter I.
"Nothing in his life/Became him like the leaving it."
-Malcolm, Shakespeare's Macbeth

The last thing he remembered was a very, very large explosion. Given
that, he assumed it was very unlikely that he was still alive, and
stranger still that he was yet able to ponder that oddity. He had seen
the warheads himself in the monitors, seen that blasted hedgehog trick
Robotnik into putting up the shields behind missiles. Seen them
streaking through the air, and then? Nothing. Perhaps he'd fainted from
fear. Wouldn't have been the first time. Seemed to have been the
last though. After all, it wouldn't make any sense for him to be alive.
He should have been vaporized, or at the very least blown to pieces.
He'd studied the effects of various explosives and surviving a close,
contained nuclear blast was not one of them. No not at all. If this was
death, pity he hadn't kicked it sooner, he thought wryly to himself,
only half joking. Somehow he'd imagined it with more fire and
brimstone, and screaming. His own probably.

Yet here he was, conscious, and embodied at the very least. And not
as had been previous to the explosion, in a robotic body. The figure
was his own, pale skinned, painfully short, and dreadfully skinny, but
there were a few changes. First off he was completely devoid of scar
tissue. This was odd because the last time he had checked (when he had
still been flesh and blood) scar tissue had made up a significant part
of his form, left over from various accidents, operations and the more
than occasional beating. The second notable difference was the presence
of a large, unruly mop of wispy jet black hair that tended to drift
about his head as though held aloft by some unseen freak negation of
gravity or a rogue field of static electricity. This particular feature
hadn't graced his person for approximately the last five years and
although he took these things as indicative that this was indeed the
afterlife, he was rather profoundly grateful for them.

And what an unusual afterlife it was! He'd found himself in what
seemed to be Robotropolis, though that was impossible since it must
have been blown to bits as well. The city, or semblance of a city, was
completely devoid of any life, or rather, conscious entities, he
supposed, besides himself. Not another soul. He grimaced inwardly,
realizing the pun too late to stop himself from thinking it. But it was
true, the entire city was there, except for the doctor, the robots or
the freedom fighters. For the first time in his li- for the first time,
he had the city to himself.

And it was terribly boring. Oh for the first while or so (there was
no day or night here, and all of the computers had stopped telling
time)he had reveled in it of course. Complete freedom to do whatever he
chose. But what did it amount to with no one to order around and
nothing to do. He'd walked to the edge of the city once, to see if he
could leave, but when he stepped over the threshold he'd simply found
himself on the other edge of the city. It was like a circle, a self
-contained world in which he was the onnly occupant. All the surveillance
monitors that should show anything outside Robotropolis were static.
He'd checked, several times.

When it had become apparent to him that there was no way out, indeed
seemingly no out to get to, he'd tried another exit, just to see what
would happen. He'd taken a knife, a scalpel rather, from one of the
barren medical labs and taken it across his slender, feminine wrists.
There had been blood, surely enough, but no pain, and the moment he'd
looked away, and then back, the wounds and blood were gone, as though
they had never been there.

So he had taken simply to lying on the great, palatial bed in what
had once been his Uncle's bedroom, doing nothing. He slept sometimes,
off and on, but no dreams overtook him. He awoke and nothing had
changed, there was no way to mark time, and no way to escape. He was
sure that he would go mad any time now.

That was where he was now; on the bed, not mad. Well perhaps he was
mad, he wasn't sure, but he was definitely on the bed. Although,
perhaps he wasn't. Perhaps he WAS mad and only THOUGHT he was on the
bed. Maybe he was really somewhere else. But that didn't really matter
did it? Not here at least, where nothing ever happened. If he thought
he was on the bed, thinking about going mad then he was as good as
on the bed thinking he was going mad. But it was best to operate on
the assumption that he was still sane, at least until he discovered
some concrete evidence to the contrary.

So anyway, he was lying dead on his Uncle's bed, on his stomach with
his arms wrapped around one of the giant, fluffy, red pillows, and the
covers pulled up to just above his shoulders. It was cold in here
damn it! No matter how many times he tampered with the thermostat the
temperature never changed, not by a degree! Cold day in hell, he
thought miserably to himself, and chuckled morbidly into his pillow at
the bizarre irony of it. He sighed and rolled over onto his back,
glancing absently around the room until his eyes fell on the strange
woman sitting at the foot of the bed.

To be continued...

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