Chapter Text
Dr. Eggman was causing trouble, like always, and like always it was Sonic’s job to go deal with it.
Don’t get it wrong, he had fun doing this—at least half the time now, anyway—but he was tired that particular evening. Eggman’s plans for world domination don’t rest for anyone, though, especially not Sonic, so whether the blue hedgehog was tired or not, he had to go do his job as the hero of Mobius and smash everything this old man held dear. Aka as many robots as possible, maybe some walls, too, that was always pretty fun. Sunset would be in two hours, so he’d make this quick. It wasn’t like finding Eggman’s base was that hard anymore. This one wasn’t necessarily easy, but it had only taken a few weeks to locate, and while he would’ve preferred to sweep the place with his friends, they were all busy and he kind of wanted to get it over with, hence his lack of backup. Tails knew he was going in, though, and that was the bare minimum required.
Getting inside was the easiest part. Getting farther inside is what would be a struggle. According to Tails, there was evidence that Eggman was playing with some new stuff and building a big radioactive superweapon, but when wasn’t he? Seriously, the older they got, the more serious Eggman got, which was a weird analogy for life or something but whatever. Sonic didn’t really care. As long as he lived, Eggman would never destroy the world, no matter how many times he tried to.
Smashing things was also pretty easy, even if the majority of them had lasers or hammers or energy blasts or whatever the hell else Eggman thought to put on these things. There was no sign of Metal Sonic, so that was kind of a relief—Sonic really wasn’t in the mood to deal with him tonight—but badniks still poured out of the shadows of hallways as Sonic zipped around in a blur, traversing what felt like a maze, looking for this mysterious weapon that the doctor was building. It was clearly well-hidden and well-protected, but Sonic would find it—he pretty much always did! he wasn’t a fan of mazes, however, and while he was fast enough to negate the several times he got lost, speed didn’t save much time when he ran into more badniks.
“Ha! Eggman stepped up his game, huh?” he said to nobody, circling some of the bots. “Guess that means I should too.” His quips were met with angry beeps and attacks, but it was just another day of work to him.
He would just later pretend that he didn’t spend a solid hour and a half just clearing a path for himself, which is how he’d get out, too, because he wasn’t sure how big this thing was and he’d prefer to have a nice, clear set of hallways to run down with it. Hopefully he hadn’t made a mistake not bringing Knuckles or Amy with him.
One room looked promising, after taking out the badniks guarding it, he smashed through the steel doors and right into a dark room. He was quickly met with the glow of technology, specifically a supercomputer and a bunch of tanks holding several colors of liquid. One was a bright pink, another cloudy yellow, and one was just clear, and could’ve been mistaken for water if this were literally anything but a secret lab in a mountain. No bots followed, so he hoped he’d smashed this base’s supply of them and quietly investigated the room. One tank stood next to a weird box-like tank, almost solitary, large tubes ran from the other tanks to this one, and Sonic was careful to step over and around them as he made his way around. There were boxes of other things, a desk with a lamp and lots of notebooks, plus a ton of snapped pencils and pens in a waste basket.
“Guess this one’s been a doozy on Egghead himself, huh?” he muttered. Frustration could only mean something worse then what he previously thought. But where was the weapon? The other tanks were obviously chemicals—what kind, he had absolutely no idea—but that box tank was enclosed.
Maybe it was in there? If so, it was smaller than he’d assumed, but that just meant it was easier to steal, right? And really, was it stealing if it was for the good of the world? Nope! Not in Sonic’s books. Having Tails here would’ve made getting into it easier, though… he tried prying the top off with his hands, tried taking a piece of scrap metal to the latch on the left side—he had the feeling that it would open at that side—before sighing and stationing himself in front of the computer. It was a large console, clearly meant to monitor whatever this thing was, and even without his genius best friend, he could probably guess his way into it, right? Or call Tails and have him do it remotely, which was the smarter option, but of course, he chose to brute force it instead.
Eggman’s passwords were easy to guess, though. Sonic chose his best egg puns before trying something egotistical, and a combination of this was his way in.
“Open sesame.” He muttered with a grin. He was totally bragging about this to Tails later, even if the screen now looked like a totally new maze of files and folders, all strung out without order.
“Eggman works on chaos, it seems… don’t blame him.” he’d never admit it, but it was similar to whatever Sonic’s organization would look like if he ever used a computer for more than entertainment—and he rarely used one to begin with, he only knew how to use one because Tails was adamant on not letting Sonic go without this skill. Still, it was a pain in the ass as he searched file after file and found absolutely nothing but nonsense. Tails had never taught him what coding looked like, and Sonic was pretty sure he was looking at lists of useless commands before dumb luck saved him and he opened the right files, of which led to him gaining access to a big, beautiful red button that he had way too much fun slamming his hand down on, and opening the latch to the tank-box. The sound of a latch clicking loud enough to be considered a pop made his ears twitch.
“Jackpot!” he pumped a fist in the air before running back over to the box, now popped open and letting steam out of the side. He lifted it up and over, wincing at the slam of metal on metal but choosing to focus on waving away steam. It wasn’t hot steam, though, probably just a byproduct of the chemicals being pumped into this thing, and while he kind of wishes he had a mask to block out the awful, sour smell that assaulted his nose moments later, he was too focused on the box’s contents. Floating in cloudy, tinted green liquid was not a superweapon, but rather an impossibly small hoglet with smaller tubes attached to it, mainly at the mouth and belly, with one in its back.
“Oh man…” He whispered, because this is not what he was looking for. Not at all. Not in the slightest. Clearly, the doctor was expanding his horizons, and that was not a good thing by any means, but now what? What was Sonic supposed to do here? He couldn’t possibly leave it—them—here. No way! Eggman was up to no good with this little guy, who was most likely made right here in this lab, and would explain the heavy and complicated set-up.
“I really hope you’re just a side project, little buddy, cause’ if you’re the superweapon, I’ve got some special words for Eggy when I see him again.” he said, mostly to the hoglet. He hesitated before reaching his hands in to try and pull the plugs out, silently praying that he wasn’t about to condemn the poor thing. As soon as the mouth tube was out, he pulled the hoglet out, and was very relieved to hear a tiny cough and wheeze. A smile crossed his lips, looking around for anything to dry them off while he retraced his escape route mentally. He wanted desperately to freak out but now was not the time. It was time to leave, and Sonic managed to find some hand towels nearby, next to a sink. His guess was that since it was a biological specimen, Eggman was being careful. But his thing was robots! Not lab-grown babies! Biological lab-grown things was, like, the one thing Sonic hadn’t thought of, mainly because he had hope that Eggman would never have gone down that path. Unfortunately, he did, and now Sonic was wrapping a tiny hoglet—he had a feeling it was a hedgehog because of it’s head, which already had silvery-blue fur on it that would most certainly mature into quills—in a hand towel and cradling it close to his chest, because he had enough common sense to assume that they should stay nice and warm right now.
“Alright, little guy, let’s get you outta here and to the workshop.” He said before racing out and down the hallways. Any remaining badniks were avoided, because smashing them while holding a baby was a recipe for disaster. One hand kind of shielded the baby while he ran, and soon enough, metal hallways and stark white LEDs had transitioned into soft grass and a starry night sky, and only when Sonic was sure that he was far enough did he skid to a hard stop in a forest grove to really consider what had happened.
He had broken into Eggman’s base, swept the place of robots (mostly), and left swiftly while holding what was, potentially, the big radioactive superweapon that Tails was worried about. But this wasn’t a weapon. This was a baby. For chaos’s sake, Sonic could hold this guy in one hand, he was that small!
He sat down in the grass and let his shoulders relax, even though his quills and fur felt like they were still standing on end a little. His heart still raced, because what now? He had the weapon, supposedly! Now what? This wasn’t something he could just hand over to Tails to study, not in a million years. If anything, tails would freak out harder than Sonic was. The fox might’ve grown up, but that didn’t mean he could handle this. He was only 19, and Sonic was only 25! What would either of them do with this baby?! He couldn’t pawn them off to anyone, could he? But then what? Because really, whose baby was this?! They had to have parents, right? At least one parent, there was no way Eggman could build a hedgehog from scratch, he just couldn’t, it wasn’t his specialty.
His spiraling was put on hold—or rather, a second thought—as the hoglet coughed.
“Hey, you okay? That escape was rough, I know.” he said quietly, adjusting his hold. Chaos, was he even holding them right? he had no idea! But they sneezed before trying to curl up in the towel.
“For a lab grown baby, you are pretty healthy… no extra arms or anything!” he quipped, mostly to cope with the whole ordeal as he used the towel to try and wipe the drying goop off. the liquid wasn’t water, it was more like slime, and the baby was covered in it, so Sonic focused on gently wiping it away from their face.
“You look like you licked something bitter.” He said with a chuckle. Like any baby, their face was all scrunched up, tiny paws held in fists. All over, its short was a silvery-blue, which a muzzle and belly that were an inconclusive color because it was still to fresh to tell, but it would probably be a pale color, since it looked kind of peachy-pink right now.
“What do I do with you?” he whispered to himself. The hoglet squirmed before making a hiccup-y sound, right before crying. “Aw, don’t do that!” he whispered again, cringing when they started to wail. Not wanting to draw the attention of anything in the forest’s shadows that surrounded him, he tried to comfort them. He was not good at it, though, and the baby kept crying until he tried to sway them—just lightly, of course. Rocking a baby turned out to feel a little awkward when you’d never done it before, but he’d prefer that over the crying, and thankfully that seemed to work. They calmed down, mostly, down to a whimper. Sonic went over all his options. Who, out of all the people he knows, were suitable to taking care of a baby?
Well, not many, but there was a small chunk of them! That chunk was almost non-existent when he added ‘and would suddenly take a baby in’ to the sentence. He sighed.
“Maybe I’ll just keep ya… parenting can’t be that bad…” he muttered. It was just a baby hedgehog, and after about ten minutes, they did seem to fall asleep, and there was something nice about sitting under the stars with something so small sleeping in his arms. Sonic was a protector of many, both big and small. He’d protect this one too, even if it meant suddenly being a parent. But he did things spontaneously all the time, and surely his friends would help him.
He could protect this baby, make sure Eggman never got his greedy evil hands on them again.