( Sequel of sorts to Fluffy Run Away )
Sonic startled awake as the door slammed shut, looking around wildly. He was alone. He didn’t know why - usually, his daddy would tell him good-bye, or call an “I’m leaving!” as he went, but now? Nothing.
“Daddeh?” the blue fluffy called, letting go of his Pikachu plush and leaving the game room where he lived. Even checking the rest of the small apartment, there was no daddy to be found - he truly had left without saying a word. Stressed, if that door slam had been any indication. Had something bad happened?
Returning to the game room, looking for hints, Sonic found that his daddy’s computer was on too. More than that, he had a chat program open, with voice chat and everything!
Sonic wasn’t actually allowed on the computer, particularly not without supervision, but this was kind of an emergency. With some fussing and flailing, the fluffy managed to climb up into his dad’s swivel chair, and from there accessed the keyboard. He leaned down to the microphone, keen ears picking up the sound from the headphones. “Hewwo?”
“Oh woah! That’s his fluffy, right?” he heard a voice on the other end. Sounded like a lady. She seemed taken aback, but not hostile. “Hey little buddy! What’s up?”
“Um, Sonic haf question. Daddy weft aww of a sudden, fwiendwy wady know why?”
“Oh yeah,” answered a second new voice, this one male and carrying a laugh. “Yeah we were playing so long he put off buying stuff, and now the store’s closing in like … yeah 20 minutes, so he panicked.”
“Ohh, otay. Thank yu.” That made sense. Daddy did lose track of time sometimes. Relaxing now that he knew nothing was truly wrong, Sonic settled comfortably into the chair. Sure, he should have said good-bye and dropped back down to his designated fluffy-corner, but he was a fluffy and being alone didn’t sit well. Besides, while he had graduated from fluffy games, the new games his daddy had provided for him were still kiddy games and he would much rather socialize with new people than continue on the pretty-Barbie-lady game.
“So what’s up?” asked the lady.
“Um, Sonic jus’ woke up.”
“Are you allowed on the computer?”
“Nu teww daddeh, pwease,” Sonic asked as politely as he could. “Wan pway daddeh’s games and tawk to daddeh’s fwiends.”
The response was a distinct ‘awww’, and it took a couple seconds for the male to answer. “Play daddy’s games, huh? You got any in mind?”
“Hopefully not Guild Craft,” interjected a second male voice. “We don’t need a repeat of that one raid.”
“Nu, Sonic wan, um…” Sonic paused, tapping a hoof at the keyboard. Actually, he was curious about a certain game … It wasn’t a computer game, which was why daddy hadn’t let him play it yet. At least that was what he had said, that it was a TV-only game, but still - it didn’t hurt to try. “Sonic wan pway Sonic!”
“Uh, yourself?” asked the first male.
“He means the game Sonic, Moleray,” the lady shot back. “You know, hedgehog.”
“Who am Moweway?” Sonic tilted his head to the side. Actually … “Boy name am Moweway?”
“Oh yeah, right. Yeah, I’m Moleray.”
“I’m WendyKoops,” added the lady. “You can just call me Koops.”
“Steff,” noted the third voice. “Couldn’t be arsed with an inventive name.”
“An’ Sonic am Sonic. Am happy to meet Moweway an’ Koops an’ Steff!”
“Hey, Sonic, click that,” suggested Koops, and Sonic blinked.
“Cwick what?”
“The blue text. You wanted to play Sonic, right?” she asked. Indeed, in the text chat, a blue text had appeared. “See, Boogie - your dad - doesn’t have Sonic, so you have to download it first. You know how to click on stuff?”
“Yus, Sonic knows,” the fluffy confirmed, and with some finagling was able to move the mouse onto the blue text and press the button. It opened a new box, asking where to save what. “Um… What cwick now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Whewe save game to? Nu wan save in weiwd pwace…”
“Oh, right. Okay, uh, this is a bit more involved than I expected. Can you set up a screen recording?”
It took a long while as Koops lead Sonic through first how to open and start a screen recording, and then where to save the file and how to extract it and everything else. But finally they were done, and Sonic sat in front of a new folder with the game file he sought proudly on display, titled Sonic.EXE.
“Oh man are we really doing this?” he heard Steff ask quietly.
“Don’t ruin it,” Moleray whispered back before raising his voice. “Oh yeah, that reminds me, can you turn on a webcam? I wanna see you play this.”
First recordings, then downloads, now webcams! It was another annoying aside, but finally - again - Sonic was ready. Koops told him the controls he’d need, and then he booted up the game.
He gasped, eyes widening as he saw the start-up screen. In the middle of the screen, against a backdrop of pretty green hills and sparkly water, was a hedgehog! A blue, cartoony hedgehog, with spikes that looked just like Sonic’s mane! The fluffy lacked any peach snout or belly, but even so the resemblance felt clear and he smiled delightedly. “Is Sonic!”
There was a laugh from Koops. “Yep, that’s Sonic!”
Oh, he couldn’t wait to play! Sonic hit the Enter key to start playing, but then got an uneasy feeling - just before the game cut to black, something about the joyful screen changed, but he wasn’t able to get a good look before it was gone. All he knew was that something was wrong about it.
The black screen stayed up for a weirdly long time, and Sonic had started worrying that he had broken daddy’s computer when it finally vanished. He almost wished it had stayed black though - what appeared was some kind of selection screen, with a dark and cloudy sky instead of the pretty one from the title. There was no real music, just eerie sounds like wind in a big echoey room, and each file he could select had a little figure on it. There was a chubby little fox with two tails, a red … other hedgehog? … that looked all fighty and punchy, and a man who looked like an egg on stilts. At least those characters were cute and fun, enough for Sonic to try and ignore the scary feelings in his chest as he picked the fox.
“That’s Tails,” said Koops. “Isn’t he cute?”
“Y-Yus,” sniffled Sonic. “Sonic game is um… Wiw’ bit scawy… But Sonic am --”
He was cut off by a creepy, pixelly laugh sounding from the speakers, which caused him to jump and swallow his words with a squeak. Again the screen went black, staying all dark for a long time, before a new screen popped in.
HILL, ACT 1
Sonic could read it, but he wasn’t sure what to make of it. An act was like a level, maybe? So was it a hill level? Either way, the rest of the game soon faded in and now he was back in the nice, green-and-blue landscape from the title screen. The music was weird, but at least it was music, sounding kind of calm but kinda weird too. And on the left of the screen was the little fox, Tails.
Sonic tried moving him to the left, but that didn’t do anything so he went right. It was weirdly easy - he jumped a couple times, but there was no real reason to do it. Tails was just running and running on a perfectly flat and empty plain. There weren’t even really any hills in the hill level, which was weird.
“Dis game is easy,” said Sonic, puzzled. “Why so easy? Nu enemies ow thingies to …”
He let go of the right-arrow key, gasping softly. In front of Tails lay a little animal in a puddle of red, and Tails himself had switched from cheerful (or at least neutral) to a sad, shocked look. Even the music sounded sad, starting to get slower and deeper. Sonic tried walking over to the animal and crouching to help it, but nothing happened when he tried - the little thing was already beyond saving.
“Fowevah sweepies…” he murmured to himself as he kept going to the right. More and more dead little animals appeared, killed in more and more gruesome ways - lost limbs, hanged entrails, it just got worse. Sonic wanted to close his eyes but that’d mean leaving Tails all on his own to maybe fall in a pit or get gutted himself and Sonic couldn’t bear that thought, so he just focused on getting the fox past all the carnage as quickly as possible, tears pricking at his eyes. Even when the animals were all gone and the music had gotten so slow and deep that it wasn’t audible anymore, Sonic kept going. He just wanted to get to the end of this stage! Why was the stage so long, anyway!
The flat plain shifted to a slope and up onto a hill, and as he reached the top Tails suddenly stopped, even though Sonic hadn’t let go of the right-arrow key. The fluffy blinked. “Um …?”
Oh! It took a moment but then he saw Sonic - the real, hedgehog Sonic, that was. Sonic (the fluffy) let go of the right-arrow key, watching the little cutscene. Hedgehog Sonic was on the right side of the screen, eyes closed and turned away, with Tails closer to the middle and looking happier than ever before. The fluffy relaxed. “Is aww otay now, Taiws… Sonic wiv hewp, gib huggies…”
Except something was wrong. Tails’s smile faded and he started walking toward Hedgehog Sonic, slowly like the game was lagging. Something bad was starting to happen, the closer he got to his friend the louder a weird static noise was becoming. Sonic tried to make Tails back away, hitting the left-arrow key, but it didn’t help. The fox was just getting closer and closer to Hedgehog Sonic, reaching out to touch him, and then …
The hedgehog’s eyes opened, but they were black instead of white, and then the screen turned black and the static disappeared. Sonic flinched back , ears flattened as he stared at the black screen. Why? What had happened? Was Tails okay? Why didn’t Hedgehog Sonic help him? He wanted to ask, but he was fighting back sobs too hard to voice such complex questions.
The black screen ended a little faster this time, a string of white text appearing on-screen. It read …
Hello.
… Um, it read more than that too, but Sonic couldn’t read it all. “H-Hewwo… Nu can wead …”
"It says ‘Do you want to play with me’?" replied Moleray, for some reason putting on a dark and creepy voice for the reading that absolutely did not help matters. Sonic wiped his eyes with his hooves and tried to swallow his fears with a final sniffle.
“P-Pway… otay…” Maybe his hedgehog self just wanted to be a bit spooky and teasing. “Otay. Pway wif Sonic.”
The next level title appeared, though this one didn’t even have an ‘Act’ in it. It just read HIDE AND SEEK. Tails appeared in a jungle-looking level, but everything was on fire - reminding Sonic a lot of the burning forest from Fluffy Run Away - and the fox looked absolutely terrified, crying and pointing forward as if begging Sonic to start moving.
So he did. The music was creepy, all the music in this game seemed to be creepy, and before long that scary pixel laugh from the level select played again and Sonic flinched away from the controls. And then he saw Hedgehog Sonic, just for a moment, popping in with those black eyes, and he hurried to tap the key again and get Tails moving. He had to get out of here, out of the fire, he had to.
The music changed from creepy to outright scary as Hedgehog Sonic appeared and didn’t disappear, flying at Tails and slowly gaining on him - his eyes weren’t just black, Sonic found, they had creepy little red pupils and he had a super big scary grin.
The little fluffy wanted to just stop and hide, but that meant leaving Tails to be caught and no no that just wasn’t allowed. “Nu, stop it!” he whined instead. “Nu wan mowe tag! Pwease weave Taiws an’ Sonic awone!” But of course the evil Sonic didn’t listen. “Nu, nu, nu …!”
All of a sudden Tails stopped, tripping and collapsing - everything went dead silent and the evil Sonic disappeared. Tails lay there, crying, and Sonic couldn’t hold his own tears in anymore either, sobbing loudly along with the fox.
At least until Hedgehog Sonic reappeared, right in front of Tails. Horrible red blood started dripping down the hedgehog’s eyes and he was grinning wider and wider, staring down at the little fox - Sonic panicked, still crying as he started hitting at the keys. Right, left, jump, nothing did anything! “Nu nu nu nu! Nu huwt Taiws! Nu huwt-”
Hedgehog Sonic lunged at Tails, the screen cut to black, and a screech cut through the headphones that made Sonic both shit his non-existent pants and recoil so hard he hit his head on the back of the chair. The little fluffy began to wail, hooves over his eyes, even when that terrible laugh was heard again. It even sounded like the voice chat was laughing with it, which was the meanest trick of all!
"Okay, okay, haha geez… It says ‘You’re too slow, want to try again?’," Moleray finally managed to say. Sonic managed to look up from his hooves with a little hiccup of a sob, trying to stop his blubbering - he didn’t quite succeed, but as Moleray had said, there was white text on the screen again.
“Nu, Sonic nu wan tu pway mowe,” he protested with a whimper. But the text faded out without heeding his words, going back to the eerie level selection screen, and Sonic instantly felt like crying again. Poor Tails wasn’t selectable anymore, but trapped in a staticky box above where he should have been, and his pretty orange fur was black instead and his eyes were gone, all black and bleeding. “Nuuhuuu…! Taiws! Nu wan dis! Nu wan pway mowe!”
“It’s okay!” Koops managed to reassure him, out of breath from what was definitely not laughter. “Don’t worry. If you can clear it with one of the others, you can save him!”
Sonic’s breath hitched and he wiped his eyes, ears flat. “W-Weawwy?” But, if he failed the other two too, then … “B-But nu wan huwt weddy hedgehog ow funny eggy man …”
“Don’t worry,” Koops assured with a grin that was downright audible. “The red guy’s called Knuckles, and he’s super strong. He’ll beat it no problem.”
Martin had reached the store and gone inside before he even remembered he had a fluffy at home. He caught his breath, taking a moment to recover and think. Leaving a fluffy alone was a recipe for disaster, he’d been warned, but Sonic was different. Heck, Sonic probably hadn’t even woken up yet.
The little guy would be fine for half an hour on his own, he was sure.
“Nu, nu, nu, nu huwt funny egg man …” Sonic whimpered as he slowly, slowly helped the egg man down a set of stairs.
Knuckles had been no match for Hedgehog Sonic after all. It was Sonic’s own fault; even with the voice chat calling encouragement and trying to help him hit the hedgehog, his hooves fumbled and couldn’t hit the right keys in time, so Knuckles just hit empty air over and over until he’d been taken. Their only hope now was the funny egg man, and Sonic was absolutely terrified of letting anything bad happen to him.
After all, he was an egg, and eggs were fragile. And sure, Koops had tried to explain how his name was Robuttnik, but Robuttnik was a tough name to remember and no matter his name, he was a funny egg man and Sonic liked him a lot. So even though he knew he had to be quick in case Hedgehog Sonic appeared again, Sonic was also really worried that if he jumped down too many steps at a time Eggy Man would shatter and crack open like a real egg, and he’d lose his only hope of saving everyone.
The stairs were endless and endlesser, with each set longer than the last, and the eggy man looking more and more scared. Then there was that awful laugh, the music fading to quiet and signifying the return of Hedgehog Sonic. Fluffy Sonic tried to hurry it up and move the egg man along faster and faster, but as he was hitting solid floor there the horrid hedgehog was - popping in out of nowhere, not giving the fluffy time to react other than a shocked gasp. “Nu-!”
The screen was filled with red static, and Sonic wailed in distress. “Nuu, nu huwt funny egg man! Weave funny egg man awone!”
The red static didn’t listen. It just stayed there for a long time, then vanishing to show -
Sonic recoiled with a scream. That was the hedgehog Sonic! But he wasn’t a pixelly little thing anymore, he was real, and big and his face was taking up the entire monitor! He looked able to climb through the computer screen, bleeding black eyes staring down his fluffy self with a horrible gory grin that distorted his face, like everything terrible he’d done to everyone else in the game was just a precursor to what he’d do now.
“NUUU!” screeched Sonic and he ran, scrambling off the chair and hitting the floor harshly but refusing to stop until he had gotten back to his saferoom corner. He sprang onto his pikachu plush and hugged onto it, wailing and crying as he put the toy between himself and the horrible hedgehog staring at him from the monitor as that laugh sounded again. Distant, only in the far-away headphones, but loud and distorted enough to be audible.
Sonic shut his eyes tight and huddled down behind the toy, crying and trying to shut it out even as his hedgehog self screeched, and then there was static so loud it was clearly audible even from his hiding spot. But the fluffy just hid, even when everything went quiet and black, even when it went back to the level select screen - in fact, when that happened he insisted on not seeing what had happened. He didn’t want to see the funny egg man as tortured and sad as Tails and Knuckles had been. No, no, no, not ever.
He just hid with Pikachu as his guardian until he finally heard the front door unlock.
“DADDEEEEH!!”
“Jeez- wha!?” yelped Martin as he was accosted by a blue fluffy the moment he opened the door. Something was clearly wrong - Sonic was an absolute mess, his face soaked with what was either tears or a water bowl-related accident, stumbling over himself as he tried to sprint into his owner’s arms while simultaneously limping and dragging his pikachu fluffy along. Martin had planned to ignore him while he put away his new purchases, but with Sonic wailing and wrapping himself around his leg, that was impossible.
He picked the fluffy up in a hug, and sighed as he set to work on putting things away. “What’s happened?”
“Sonic nu wike Sonic anymowe!” cried Sonic, which was less than helpful. “Sonic pway Sonic game and and Sonic am tewwibwe and scawy and nu wan fowevah sweepies!”
“Hang on, bud, you’re not making any sense.” Sonic had played a Sonic game, was terrible at it, and now was scared of being killed for being bad at games? It wasn’t until Martin returned to the game room and saw the scene at his computer that he realized just what had happened. “… Oh son of a bitch.”
“Sonic am sowwyyyy,” whimpered Sonic. Martin held him close to his chest as he shut down the game and put on the headphones, careful not to sit in the swivel chair (which would need a deep cleaning).
“Okay who the FUCK.”
“He wanted to play Sonic!” laughed WendyKoops helplessly. “We couldn’t resist, sorry!”
“I blame Koops,” added Moleray. “Sorry!”
“I didn’t take part,” Steff defended himself, raising his voice to be heard over the other two.
“You traumatized him!” Martin yelled. “I can’t have a Sonic fluffy that’s terrified of Sonic, he thinks the thing’s out to kill him!”
It was a loud, crowded and borderline incomprehensible chat that followed, but Sonic had suffered enough and that meant Martin had to show some restraint. They ended up agreeing to at least pay for the cleaning/new chair Martin would need, and to apologize to Sonic for their cruel prank.
Even so, the damage was done. Martin tried to introduce the fluffy to a proper Sonic game, but upon seeing the Sonic title screen Sonic had freaked out and cried, hiding and refusing to watch until Martin forced him. Another tactic was needed.
And thus, Martin wound up spending the rest of the night locating videos and games where the regular Sonic trumped over Sonic.EXE, saving all his friends and proving once and for all that Sonic.EXE wasn’t the real Sonic, but a meanie monster who just pretended to be him.
It was exhausting, but it seemed to work. The explanation that Sonic.EXE wasn’t the one Sonic was named after, and that he may be scary but the real Sonic had defeated him and so he couldn’t hurt anyone ever again, finally reassured Sonic (the fluffy) that he was safe. Martin even let the fluffy sleep with him in his bed to cement that everything was fine, Sonic murmuring about how he liked the funny egg man as he dozed off nuzzled in between Martin and his pikachu plush.
But as the two slept, nestled together, Martin’s dreams were plagued by a certain blue horror …
