Shadows of the Future
Chapter Four
Rude Awakenings
(Explanations, rating, and disclaimers can be found at the beginning of Chapter One.)
"Hey! You! We don't go for that kind o' thing 'ere!"
Sonic opened his eyes slowly, blinking into the painful brilliance of the sunlight above him. His entire body felt as if he had just stuck it into a wall socket. While standing in a puddle of water, no less. He tingled and ached all over, all his fur was standing on end, and he could barely see. But one thing was for certain--he was no longer in Lava Reef. The sunlight attested to that.
"Come on, come off it, then, get off the ground!" came the strange voice again.
What was that strange buzzing noise, Sonic wondered. It sounded almost like words but he couldn't understand the language. He didn't pay much attention to it as he had more pressing matters to attend to--like locating his feet. He squinted against the brightness. Ah, that was a little better. He could now make out the forms of Amy, Tails, Electra, and Jolt near him. They were just blurs, but now they were a pink blur, an orange blur, a yellow blur, and a purple blur, rather than one big grey one.
"Damn slaves," grumbled the voice again, but of course Sonic and the others couldn't understand it. "Thinking they can escape--they're far too stupid! Look at these critters, they can barely even talk! What ARE these things, anyway?" said one of the voices to another. Sonic now realised that the two figures looming over him were wearing uniforms of some sort--policemen?
"I mean," Voice #1 went on, "those three"--he indicated Sonic, Amy, and Electra--"look KINDA like people, but..."
"Who cares?" shrugged the other voice. "Let's just lock 'em up and find out who they belong to later."
And with that, the five animals were all snatched up and tossed into jail without having the slightest idea why!
* * *
"I said, sir, you shouldn't be out in public like that," chided a voice from above.
Knuckles was a bit dizzy, but was recovering from the giant transporter--for that was evidently what that dome was--much faster than the others had. Probably since it had been built by echidnas, it was more in tune to their biology. He couldn't know any of this though, as he had somehow been seperated from the others during transport.
Ignoring the voice for now, he climbed unsteadily to his feet and gazed about at his surroundings. It was an incredible sight. An enourmous, highly-advanced city of metal, marble, and crystal met his eyes, towering skyscrapers and delicate bridges, strangely streamlined small vehicles zoomed along paved highway and air-way alike, hundreds--no, THOUSANDS of busy people went about their daily business in thousands of different ways. Although Knuckles normally detested crowds, he somehow didn't mind this one. As he stood there and felt the cool breeze riffle through his glossy red fur, he drank in the sunlight and sighed happily. Even though he had never seen this strange place before, he somehow felt like he had come home.
"Are you LISTENING to me?" the voice prodded again, a bit more insistent this time, not to mention annoyed. "We don't go for that kind of thing in a public park, sir. You'll have to come with me."
Knuckles' attention yanked back suddenly to the owner of the voice. He could only BARELY understand the words--they were somewhat like the ancient dialect he had been raised with, but with a very heavy, very strange accent and many words and phrases he didn't know at all.
Wait a minute...no-one alive except him knew that language in ANY form! As this sank in, he finally placed his gaze straight on the person who was talking to him. It was a young female animal, tall, slender, athletic, and attractive, covered with orange-brown fur and wearing a neatly-pressed dark blue uniform adorned with metal badges and buttons.
But none of that was what made him gape with shock.
From the tip of her long, pointed muzzle, to the slant of her almond-shaped eyes, to the thick, shoulder-length, dangling head-spines she was tossing out of her eyes, there was no doubt at all what he was looking at.
She was another echidna.
HE HAD FOUND HIS MISSING PEOPLE!!!
The stunning realisation rang like a bell in Knuckles' mind, over and over, drowning everything else out. I found my people! his heart sang with shocked joy. They're NOT dead!! They're alive!! I found my people!!
All this time he was staring in total rapture at the police officer, who finally put her hands on her hips and shook her head. "Yeah, I think you're cute too, Mac," she said sarcastically, "but we DON'T allow nakedness outdoors in a public park! You're breaking the law, sir. Now MOVE or I'll move you myself!" She seemed very angry.
Knuckles was still so caught up in the moment he didn't even feel the stun-gun...
* * *
He awoke, groggy, in a small, bare room with a cold stone floor, a hard bench, a strange object that he supposed as a toilet of some kind, and nothing else. He groaned as he peeled himself off the floor, temporarily staggering as that dizzy feeling you get when you stand up too fast hit him full-force. He leaned against the metal bars of the room's front wall for support.
Then it struck him--since when had he felt so weak and dizzy just from standing up? The feeling was subsiding now, but still...his mind harkened back to the way he had felt earlier in the Master Emerald Chamber, and he shuddered.
Shaking his head as if that would somehow clear it, he studied his surroundings a bit more carefully. The first thing he noticed was that he was now clothed--a pair of nicely-tailored light blue pants and a matching vest. He had never worn clothing before except for protection in cold weather and it was warm in this building--why on Mobius was he wearing this stuff? Irritated, he spied his customary gloves, socks, and shoes lying in a corner and began to disrobe in favour of them.
"Hey, hey, hey!" called a female voice from the other side of the metal bars. Bars? wondered Knuckles suddenly. I'm in JAIL! But why? I didn't do anything! Meanwhile the person was still talking. It was the same orangey female officer he'd met earlier. "You're a regular little exhibitionist, ain't ya? Geez! I've never SEEN anyone as eager to strip in public as you! Well, there was that sleazy pop singer...what was her name again...oh, never mind...anyway, if you wanna spend ANOTHER night in here, just keep it up, pal!" She struck the bars sharply with her stick and walked away.
Knuckles jumped back, startled, from the loud noise and took his hands off the waistband to the pants. He had only been able to pick up some of the words but she seemed to be telling him that he was not allowed to be naked in public. Since when? he wondered irritably. His own fur had always been good enough before! These echidnas may have LOOKED like his own people but they were sure ACTING strange...
Glowering, he pulled on the gloves, socks, and shoes while leaving the blue outfit on, and, if he could have seen himself, looked quite stylish. He didn't care about that, however. Instead, he decided to study the officer. She was the first of his kind he'd seen in twelve years, after all.
The young orange officer crossed the larger room, of which his cell was only a part, to sit down at a table across from another female officer, this one older, heavier, and with dark brown fur. Both were evidently not on strict duty at the moment, as they took their over-jackets and hats off, then set about playing some kind of card-game in their shirtsleeves.
"Boy, am I glad we've got a three-day weekend coming up," sighed the older cop. "So what's up with HIM?" she nodded towards Knuckles. His ears pricked up--figuratively speaking, of course, as echidnas don't HAVE external structures to their ears.
The orange one laughed. "Him?" she chuckled. "He's a strange one, Shirlana. I found him lying down, dead to the world, in Starlight Park at 2:00 in the afternoon--totally, absolutely, stark, raving, naked!" Both women laughed. "EXCEPT for--get this!--clashing socks, ugly, clunky shoes, and--and" she could barely talk for the giggling "--dainty, prissy, little white gloves!" Both women completely dissolved in laughter as the younger one pantomimed pulling on the gloves with exaggeratedly feminine movements. "Anyway, I had to knock him out to bring him here, and then put some clothes on him," continued the orange one. "What a weirdo!"
"Oh, I'll bet you REALLY hated THAT, Lorinda," smirked the older one, waggling her eyebrows at the younger officer. "An unconcsious, helpless, naked man...and such a HUNK, too..."
"Hey, hey, HEY!" yelled Lorinda, although in a good-natured tone, throwing her hat at Shirlana's face. "Contrary to what Lt. Darlo may say, I do NOT go after every single male I see!"
"No, just the ones that are still BREATHING!" giggled Shirlana and ducked under the table as Lorinda threw the cards at her.
Knuckles had had enough. He couldn't understand all the words--but he was getting better with every sentence they said, and he knew now for a fact that they were making fun of him! He was fed up with this. They may have been his own people, but that didn't give them the right to lock him up and then laugh at him. Metal bars--huh. Did they ACTUALLY think a bunch of mere one-inch-thick metal bars would stop HIM? Confidently, he drew back one of his large, powerful fists and struck the bars with the spiked knuckles from which he got his nickname.
WHAM!!
The sound of flesh and bone hitting metal rang throughout the room, but the bars did not break. They didn't even bend! Knuckles was knocked flat on his back by a wave of INTENSE pain--among the worst he'd ever felt. The bones in his left hand were now all broken into tiny bits and he was bleeding profusely, inside and out.
"Oh dear Goddess!" exclaimed the younger officer, Lorinda, racing across the room to his cell. She hurriedly punched some buttons on an adjoining wall and the cell bars disappeared as if they had never been there. She rushed to Knuckles and the bars reappeared behind her. "Are you CRAZY?!" she yelled at the near-unconscious red echidna, who was reeling just as much from the realisation of HOW bad his weakness had become--he'd never been stopped, let alone HURT, by a mere inch of iron before!--as from the pain itself. "You're even weirder than I thought!" Lorinda yelled, examining his hand. She didn't sound angry so much as worried; however, that was lost on Knuckles as he was extremely woozy.
"Shirlana!" Lorinda bellowed at the older officer as she held Knuckles upright to keep him from going into shock, "call a medic! Hurry!"
Shirlana did so, but not before tossing over her shoulder, in a singsong voice, "Lor-ee's-got-a-boyyyyy-frieeeendddd!"
"Oh, shut up!" grumped the younger officer.
"It wasn't supposed to happen," Knuckles murmured wearily up at her. "It never happened before..."
and he passed out.
* * *
"Oh, please, don't take that, it's my little sister's favourite toy!" cried Amy as the large echidna searching her pulled out a miniature wooden mallet from a pocket in her red dress. The man looked at it for a moment, then shrugged and handed it back.
"This is HUMILIATING!!" fumed Sonic as he paced back and forth in a cell of his own. They had all been searched by now, and not only had they all been locked up, had iron COLLARS put around their necks, lost all their food, Power Rings, and more when their backpacks were taken (they were allowed to keep their clothing, what there was of it), but he and Tails had been given really ugly shorts to wear! It was just the last straw. "They're penning us up like criminals! We haven't DONE anything!" he yelled. He HATED sitting still, and he hated being FORCED to sit still even worse.
"Sonic," said Electra quietly from a corner of the same cell, "Calm down. You won't get anywhere by shouting."
"And we're all being treated JUST as badly as you!" Jolt pointed out sulkily, fingering her own heavy metal collar.
Sonic clamped his mouth shut but continued to pace. He was one ANGRY hedgehog, as anyone could tell by taking one look at him. His spines were all completely on end and his hands were clenched into fists.
"What do you think they're going to do to us?" wondered Amy, her eyes wide. "Do you think they might KILL us?"
"Don't even SAY that!" exclaimed Tails hurriedly.
"YOU!" bellowed a loud voice at the door of their cell. They all looked up to see a large, muscular maroon echidna standing over them with a nasty-looking gun of some kind. "You are going to the market tomorrow." the man boomed. "Do you understand?"
"He looks kinda like Knux, only MEANER," Tails observed. Sonic stepped on his foot to hush him up. They didn't know what had happened to Knuckles or why they had been seperated from him in the first place, but in as obviously hostile a place as this, there was an advantage in not letting the enemy know their true numbers. It was none of these people's business that they had an extra person in their party...somewhere...so they had agreed to keep their mouths shut about Knuckles when in public.
Tails' comment seemed to go right over the man's head, though. Evidently he didn't understand them any better than they understood him. "I said, do you get what I'm saying to you, SLAVES?!" he bellowed.
"Why have we been locked up?" demanded Sonic in Mobian Standard.
At this, the man sighed, pulled out a small device which until now had seemed to be just a button on his shirt, and switched it on. "I hate these things," he muttered in what sounded to their ears like Mobian standard with an accent. "Dang infernal machines...can you understand me now?"
"Yes," they all said, too amazed to remember to pretend otherwise. A universal translator--and so SMALL! When Knuckles had said his people were advanced, he hadn't been kidding!
"Good. Then you will now be able to understand your new duties as slaves," said the man, reaching through the bars to pin similar objects on each of their clothing or fur (it didn't hurt; they stuck on by some kind of magnetism rather than the traditional metal pins.) "You'll be sold in the market tomorrow morning. Good day." and he walked away.
"SLAVES?!" roared Sonic, outraged. "Did he say SLAVES?! I won't do it! I'll run away! I'll--I'll bust us out of here! I'll--"
"You'll do nothing." Electra cut in coldly, putting a restraining hand on her impetuous brother's arm. She nodded towards a small, flat lens buried half-in, half-out of the wall of their cell. Sonic gasped as he realisd what it must be--a hidden security camera.
"At least," and here Electra lowered her voice and turned away from the camera, winking conspiratorially, "you'll do nothing...NOW..."