Angel Amy
Chapter 1- Unrequited
Sighing, Amy turned over, and onto her back, and onto her stomach. Nothing helped. Insomnia, restlessness, can’t-sleep-itis; whatever you called it, Amy couldn’t sleep. She was haunted by thoughts of Sonic and the eerie glow of her laptop, which she had spent the past hour and a half surfing the Web on, looking for advice to get someone to love you. The only thing that showed up more than once was getting someone jealous. And that was so not an option.
How was she ever supposed to get Sonic jealous? Impossible. He was unruffled by everything-except Sally dying or getting lost. Then he burst into action. Not for Amy, except for that once. And she was eight. He was only being protective. That was when he thought of her as a little sister. In a way, her situation had only become worse after she aged herself with the Ring of Acorns. Now she was just a friend, nothing special. She sighed and adjusted her pillow. Tails-now he was the lucky one. He was like a brother to Sonic. He was something special, a somebody. Amy was just a crazed fangirl. And that was not something she was about to take lying down!
She had made her decision. She would find a new beau and make Sonic jealous. But now her problem was how to do that without breaking her love commitment.
She had promised herself a long time ago to love Sonic and only Sonic. She had promised this two years ago, and had yet to break it.
Then it hit her. She didn’t need to love someone! She needed a pretend boyfriend, boyfriend as an accessory so she didn’t look and feel stupid. So she could date anyone she didn’t really love and not break her commitment. Simple, really.
Still…she needed to decide who would be the best candidate for a pseudo-boyfriend. Someone who would make Sonic so jealous he would immediately ask her to be his girlfriend!
But who would be the best person to make Sonic just that jealous?
It hit her instantly and it was so simple she laughed out loud. Scourge! Sonic hated him and would do just about anything to make sure Amy wasn’t with him. It was the perfect plan! And Scourge took any girl he could get, anyways. She knew Fiona had left him behind on Moebius, through Zonic’s Christmas party, and she knew that before the Zone Cops could catch him he had made his way to Mobius, where there had been two sightings in the past week. Sonic had nearly exploded when he read that in the papers.
She smiled to herself as she drifted off to sleep, thinking of a plan to put into action.
The next day, Amy wolfed down her pancakes at Sonic’s house and was getting ready to burst out the door and head into action when Bernadette stopped her. “Honey, where are you going?”
“I’ve…um….got a dentist appointment.”
“Your dentist appointment was two weeks ago.”
Amy frowned. While it was nice that Bernie cared so much, sometimes she could be a bit stifling!
“Oops. Well, I, um…I’m shopping with Cream downtown.”
“You shopped with Cream two days ago.”
Amy shrugged and turned to leave. “What can I say? We like shopping.”
Bernie appeared reassured and smiled. “Don’t stay out too late. Are you going to eat lunch there?”
“Probably. I hear there’s a great Chinese place open. Or we could go to Uncle Chucks.”
“Well, just be back by five. Have fun, dear!”
“Can do. Thanks, Bernie!” Amy smiled and waved as she headed out the door. Once out of sight, she bolted for the science lab. It would only remain deserted for a few more minutes, but if all went well that would be all she needed.
She ran inside and went to the table where the Super Warp Rings were being experimented with. She selected a charged one and thought of where the last sighting had been-the Great Wastes. She thought hard and opened the ring, jumping through.
She was instantly transported to the Great Wastes, right outside of where Mina’s house used to be. She could tell, because someone had written on a nearby stone in indelible ink THE MONGOOSE HOUSE. Some person had gone around the Great Wastes with a map and a marker and located and marked every location. She wandered for a second, locating the library, her old home, and the boutique before searching.
She pulled out her NICOLE watch, a new development that was a watch the size of a matchbox with a touch screen and tiny stylus that was an organizer/mini-computer/ cell phone/compass/atlas/encyclopedia. Amy never left the home without it. It was the very best way to get prepared and stay prepared. Plus, it had a heat sensor/tracker. As long as Scourge had been here after the big rain three days ago, she could track him down.
She tapped and typed until she finally found it-a faintly glowing red dot five miles south. Amy groaned. With his super-speed, if Scourge got it in his head to get on the move, she would never find him. She had no super speed. Luckily, she remembered the bike port.
A while back someone had left five or six bikes chained to a metal bike rack, one of the few things that survived. It was strange, what had stayed and what had been bombed back to the Stone Age. Either way, people who went biking in the woods starting from the Great Wastes borrowed bikes, and it was an unspoken rule that you returned them for others to use. Amy usually grabbed the pink bike. There were six in all, she remembered now.
But when she got over there, only five bikes remained. A plain black one that Shadow the Hedgehog favored was missing. And there was only one person who could’ve taken it.
Scourge.
Now she knew where he was, and she knew that for one reason or another he wasn’t using super speed. And she knew Sonic was an excellent biker, which made Scourge only good on motorcycles. Amy was a professional cyclist. She could catch up, easy. It was almost as if he was saying “Hey, look at me! I’m totally vulnerable and out in the open! Get over here and arrest me now, please!”
Strange. But Amy only gave it a passing thought before wheeling “her” bike out of its port and heading off into the dark woods.
An hour later Amy had no leads, no water, no bike, and no luck.
She had biked for the first forty-five minutes until she thought she was approximately where she had tracked Scourge in the first place. Then she had left her bike against a tree and started walking. Fifteen minutes later, she was no closer to her destination. If anything, she was farther away.
Maybe her NICOLE watch had been wrong?
But as she turned around another tree she thought she heard something. She stayed still and quiet and heard it again-this strange crackling. She headed for the sound and found a smallish shelter of a sort. It looked a lot like New Mobotropolis homes but was far smaller, with a tighter roof and a skinnier, thatched door, complete with sea-glass windows around the house. She went to the door and knocked on it. No one answered. She pushed and found it easy to open.
No one was home.
She had entered a small room. A propane stove she knew Manic had tossed into the trash because it was rusted the week before sat on a shelf. A hammock was strung along the back wall, under a green sea-glass window. A fire crackled in a makeshift fireplace. It was quite loud. That was what she must’ve heard. A gun that used to belong to Shadow was on a rack, with about five cases of ammo. There was a patched chair that Amy could’ve sworn she’d seen before, and then she remembered that she had left it on a street corner with a FREE sign around the back. Whoever lived here must’ve grabbed it.
She heard a soft creak behind her and whipped around, only to see a second door on the right slowly creak open. She peered inside. It was a closet. Behind it was another door to what was surely a bathroom of some sorts. Amy remembered that gas and sewer pipes ran right along here. Smart, tapping off New Mobotropolis energy. Then she noticed the door to the outside slowly opening.
She whirled around only to see Scourge come out and drop the basket of berries he had been carrying.
“$%@#!” he cussed. “What the @$%& are you doing here?” He glared at her. “Did Sonic send you? Well, he’s not gonna get me! I’m never going back! I couldn’t…I just…No! I can’t go back!” He raised his fists defensively, but it was hard to look tough when your shoes were covered in berry juice.
“No, no!” Amy was quick to say. “Nothing like that! I…I just wanted…um…I was mostly wondering if you, uh, wanted to go on a date?”
For a second a brief smile flashed across his face, then his brow knitted back into a scowl. “No. No way. Not after….” He trailed off, but Amy was sure how his relation-ship with Fiona had ended. The new scar across his shoulder proved it.
“Don’t worry. I just want to, you know, maybe see a movie.”
“And how do you propose we do that?”
Amy’s heart skipped a beat. We! That means he’s going! “You could, I don’t know, like dye your fur or something. And, maybe, like, we could get tickets under my name?”
Scourge hesitated, then slowly nodded and smiled a little. “Yeah. Yeah…that would be nice.” He smiled at Amy. “I think I’d like that.”
Amy almost felt a little guilty. He seemed different. This wasn’t how he’d talked to her last time they’d been alone together. Although that was a great kiss. Scourge seemed different. He didn’t seem like the guy he was, who would take her out on a date then dump her. It seemed like he genuinely wanted to spend time with her…She mentally shook her head. No. He didn’t want to. Why would he? He was just…he was just playing with her. And she repeated that to herself over and over again as she told him she was going to get fur dye and headed home for the bottle of peroxide that she kept for cuts.
“Platinum blond? Really? I bet if I smashed some acorns…” Scourge wandered around his little home for a minute, finally grabbing a bottle of something. “Yeah.” He dumped it into the peroxide and splashed it on his head, working it through his spines. “There!” His fur was now a light, mousy brown all over.
Amy giggled in spite of herself. “Perfect!” She smiled. “Let’s go.”
It was a good movie. It was a great movie. Actually the movie stunk. But in the back row they kissed.
And kissed.
And kissssssed….
And Scourge was a heart-throbbing, jeans-quivering, flame-throwing phenomenal kisser. It was a good date. It was a very good date. Amy floated home in a sort of dreamy cloud.
Two weeks later they were going strong. Three months later it was prom season, and for the first time in her life Amy had a date.
“All done!” Sally announced cheerfully. “You’re ready for prom!”
Amy was turned around and cautiously opened her eyes. She almost didn’t trust what the mirror told her. Her hair was lightly curled, her childish headband gone. She was wearing a sparkling, glittering prom dress in silver and red. Her eyes were rimmed with eyeliner in light pink, her eyelashes long and curled with mascara, the slightest touch of red lipstick hinted. Rouge dabbed her cheeks. She was hot.
“Now will you tell me who your date is?”
Amy smiled. “You’ll learn soon enough.”
She headed up to her room, sadly ditching her beautiful dress for a glittering tank top and jeans. She picked up the leather satchel she had prepared for this occasion. Then she took one last look and headed downstairs as Scourge rang the doorbell.
About five minutes later they were in Sonic’s convertible and speeding down the highway towards a high school that Scourge didn’t go to and Amy didn’t go to. Cutest couple? Yes. Most unexpected couple? Yes. Prom king, prom queen, great night? Yes, yes and yes.
Speeding down the highway on the way home, Scourge took a detour.
“Where’re you going, babe?”
He kissed the top of her head. “You’ll see.”
They turned off near a beach. They got out of the car and Scourge sat near the ocean and Amy curled up with her head against his chest. She touched his scars gingerly. They were like sandpaper, contrasting sharply with his soft fur. “Babe?”
“Hmm?”
Amy hesitated. What did she want to say? She had wanted to make Sonic jealous but in recent months she had genuinely begun to care for the green hedgehog. He was a part of her now. She had a decision here- she could go back to being Sonic’s obsessed fangirl, or she could stay with Scourge. She decided. She had to go back to Sonic. She had to have her old life back. But what she said surprised even her. “I love you.” Whoops. No turning back now.
He chuckled and put his arm around her. “I love you too.”
She looked up. He looked down. Their lips met for the first time. And they were still kissing when the Zone Cops arrived to arrest them both- Scourge for all his past crimes against the multiverse, and Amy for helping him. She held his hand tightly as Zonic himself read them their rights and Scourge gave her reassuring squeezes that made her hand very, very warm.
They were led into the cars as the sun set behind them, beautiful and oblivious to the pain that was under its romantic lights.