I Should've, by Sector 6 logic, killed him. Instead, I shoved him forward into the mud, kicking his pistol into the irradiated creek. "Just run away."
Again, you have to set the line somewhere.
If you don't you just become exactly what you hate most.
Let's pray to Anarchy Below I never forget that anytime soon.
After that while mini ordeal I decided to run back home to write back in my journal.
Not above the game events that would happen in the future.
Not about the people I had interacted with so far.
No.
This time it was about myself.
Because monsters were born when good men forgot where they came from.
And sure I remembered everything since I became Sonic (To this day I still wondered how the fuck that happened), but I was starting to forget about who I was before I was Sonic.
Back when I was just a normal human.
I quietly opened the door to Doc's makeshift lab and my humble abode—stepping over the biohazard symbols etched into the steel flooring—as the scent of ozone and sterilization gel burned my nose.
I then remembered the one person I didn't check to see if they were also asleep:
Collin Kintobor Jr.
I mainly remembered that because he was right there holding a flashlight to my face.
"I thought you would never be back."
"I was always going to be back later."
"I assumed you would indeed be back later. If you managed to come back at all... you would be 'back later'."
"Well, I'm back now, okay?"
Collin then noticed a small piece of shrapnel on my shirt, "Is this... shrapnel?"
"It was just a little workout Collin. Just to make sure I stay loose," I said, flicking the jagged metal off my glove with practiced nonchalance. The dim glow of Collin's flashlight traced the outline of my suit's torn shoulder plating—small victories like keeping him from seeing the bloodstains were what passed for tenderness these days.
His grip tightened around the light, knuckles whitening beneath his skin as his gaze flicked between my minor injuries and the cracked plasma gun in my hand.
"Workouts don't usually involve explosives from my experience."
"It all depends on your trainer," I said, tossing the ruined weapon onto Doc's operating table with a metallic clatter—Collin didn't need to know it'd been ripped from an Acorn Trooper scorched chassis mid-brawl. The flashlight trembled in his grip, casting jagged shadows across my muzzle as I stepped closer—not enough to crowd him, just enough to make him tilt his head down to maintain eye contact. "You gonna help me patch myself up, or are you going to keep playing interrogator?"
My grin was all teeth, but the way I leaned my weight onto the table betrayed exhaustion even I couldn't hide from him anymore.
Collin just sighed as we got some of Doc's medical supplies—sterile gauze, some biofoam, and a hypo of painkillers—while I peeled off my shredded glove. The guy's hands were steady, methodical, like he'd done this a hundred times before.
Maybe he had done this a hundred times before.
If he did, I was willing to bet it was for himself.
"You're gonna get yourself killed one of these days," he muttered, pressing the biofoam to my side—his fingers meticulous even as they shook. I exhaled through my nose, watching the overhead lights flicker like dying stars, "And what will Uncle Julian say then?"
I sighed in agreement—not at Collin's words, but at the way his fingers lingered near the jagged wound like he was afraid of hurting me further.
"I guess you have a point there Collin..." I almost whispered, watching the biofoam seal my wound with that familiar sting—part of me wishing it hurt more, if only to keep me sharp. Collin's ear flicked at my tone, his grip tightening on the hypo as he hesitated—just for a second—before injecting the painkillers with clinical precision.
The chill of the serum spread through my veins like diluted frostbite, and for a moment, I let myself slump against the operating table, the weight of Sector 7's rubble still pressing against my shoulders.
My claws almost hesitated near my uninjured side—a twitch Collin noticed instantly. "You're thinking about something," he muttered, sealing the last of my wounds with biofoam that smelled like burning sugar.
The hypo hissed empty against my thigh, its contents flooding my veins with artificial numbness. Collin's fingers lingered near my pulse point—checking for tremors, for hesitation—and I let him. His fingers were a bit steadier now, kind of similar now to the way Doc's used to be when patching up lab accidents.
"You're stalling," he said, voice low. The flickering overheads cast sharp angles across his face, turning the concern in his eyes into something harder—something that knew too much. I flexed my claws against the table's edge, the metal groaning under the pressure.
Collin wasn't exactly wrong there.
There were plans barely even half finished in my head, alliances balanced like knives on a wire. But the guy didn't need to hear that—he needed to hear *something* human, or Overlander, I supposed. So I laughed, sharp and sudden, and ruffled his head hair the way I knew would only slightly bug him off. "Yeah, and I'll write all about it in my manifesto after this."
"Oh hardy, har, har..." He dry laughed, batting my hand away with an irritated flick of his ear—but I didn't miss the way his shoulders relaxed just a fraction. The guy could pretend all he wanted, but we both were beginning this new routine: me bleeding out some half cocked scheme, him helping me stitch me back together like a damn quilt.
It was something to do.
Collin tossed the used hypo into the incinerator chute with more force than necessary—the *clang* echoing like a gunshot in the sterile silence. I watched him scrub his fingers raw under the decontamination spray, the water running pink for a heartbeat before swirling clear. His reflection in the steel paneling was fractured, warped by old bullet pocks, but I could still see the tension in his jawline as he looked at my minor injuries.
It was fine, I'd be fully healed in two days.
And that was at most.
Soon we had fully wrapped me up, and Collin stepped back, wiping his hands down again—more habitual than necessary.
"Thanks Collin, I mean it."
Collin froze mid-turn, ears twitching like I'd just confessed to poisoning Doc himself. The words tasted foreign—too soft for the warzone we'd built together—but the guy deserved honesty when I could spare it.
His fingers flexed unconsciously against his thigh, tracing old scars through his jumpsuit fabric, before he huffed and punched my shoulder hard enough to bruise. "Don't get sentimental now," he grumbled, but the way his face twitched twice in quick succession just so betrayed him.
I grinned, rubbing my arm with exaggerated pain—letting him think he'd actually hurt me—before snagging Collin's wrist mid-retreat. His pulse jumped under my claws, but he didn't pull away. "Sentimentality's got nothing to do with it," I said, squeezing just enough to make him feel the threat without bruising. "You're just not a complete asshole."
He just walked away, probably back to his room if I had to guess.
I shrugged and jumped down from the medical table to go to my own journel and continue writing in my manifesto.
Sorry, I mean my journal.
I ran at top speed—*because I just could*—through the hallways until I reached my own room, then under my mattress but above my bed case, to where my journal was hidden at.
I then got my pencil.
And then I started writing about who I was before.
Before everything.
Before being reborn as Sonic the Hedgehog.
Before all of this.
Before becoming the walking paradox of controlled chaos and calculated rebellion—the guy who could flip from cracking skulls to cracking jokes mid-fight—I was just some overworked, underpaid schmuck in a cubicle.
I remember the exact shade of piss-yellow the office walls were painted, the way the fluorescent lights hummed like dying wasps at 3 AM when I'd still be crunching numbers for some corporate vampire who'd never know my name. The irony wasn't lost on me: traded one cage for another, except now the bars were bioelectric and the collar was my own reputation.
Back then, I'd fantasized about slamming my boss's face into the keyboard—now I just slam Assholes into walls when they piss me off. Funny how morality bends when your claws are the ones holding the leverage. The cubicle drone who hesitated to yell at interns became the hedgehog who made warlords flinch with a smirk—same soul, different operating system.
Kind of poetic, if you squint hard enough through the blood splatter—the guy who used to begrudgingly refill Karen's printer ink now casually snapped spines mid-air like they were disposable coffee cups. My claws tapped against the journal's frayed pages, remembering the exact shade of corporate beige that used to coat my existence like a second skin.
Back then, rage was a quiet thing—swallowed down with burnt coffee and passive aggressive Post-its.
Now?
Now it crackled blue-hot under my fur, a live wire begging to be shoved down someone's throat. Funny how dying—*properly* dying, not the half-assed afterlife shuffle I got—strips you down to raw essentials. No more pretending to give a damn about watercooler gossip or mandatory team-building retreats. Just the primal math of claws and consequences.
That was me, old Joe Shmoe.
You know what, fuck it.
If I'm going to pour out my heart and soul into these pages I might as well be more specific about everything.
My name, my birth name was; or is Isaiah Maliks.
I was a twenty six(? That was something I was beginning to forget, what with it being a completely different year and calander date system on Mobius) American accountant that was the child of Sudanese immigrants with a caffeine addiction and a bit of a knack for numbers—and barely any patience for stupidity of other people over the age of twelve.
I was normal in all the worst ways—another miniscule cog in the machine until the universe spat me out. The only thing I had was maybe being slightly smarter than average.
And that was barely true.
And even that didn't fucking matter when I wasn't smart enough to get a scholarship to actually be able to afford to go to college and so I just didn't.
My parents... were fine. Not great, not terrible—just functional. Dad worked logistics for a shipping company, Mom taught third grade math. They loved me in that distant, exhausted way middle class parents drowning in mortgage payments do. Sundays were for church and passive aggressive silences over burnt pancakes. I learned early that kindness was currency—spend it wisely, or get fucked.
The office was worse. Endless spreadsheets under flickering fluorescents, my cubicle smelling of stale coffee and defeated dreams. My boss—a walking hernia named Stephanie—had the emotional range of a stapler and the leadership skills of a concussed lemming. Every Monday, she'd microwave fish in the break room like a war crime, then bitch about morale.
I fantasized about tossing her out the window, but rent was due, and I didn't feel like going to jail and dropping the soap, so I just recalibrated the printer to jam whenever she swiped her badge.
Was it petty?
It absolutely was.
Was it satisfying?
Like a caffeine drip straight to the veins. Back then, my rebellion was still small—spreadsheet formulas rigged to crash at 4:59 PM, "accidentally" spilling coffee on HR's dress code manual. Now? My rebellions could leave craters where cities used to be.
And they probably actually would one day.
Funny how perspective shifts when your idea of workplace harassment involves plasma grenades and war crimes. The Isaiah who flinched at raised voices of his superiors now made warlords flinch with a glance—it was the same soul, it just had sharper teeth now.
But as Isaiah Maliks I was just another victim of the at the at least two dozen crisises happening all at once in America—rising rent, stagnant wages, the looming threat of medical bankruptcy if I so much as stubbed a toe wrong. The breaking point came when Stephanie docked my pay for taking a sick day to attend my grandmother's funeral.
I remember staring at the paycheck in my hands, the numbers mocking me, and realizing I'd spent years polishing the chains of my own cage. That night, I drove home through a storm so violent it felt like the sky was screaming on my behalf—only to find my apartment's ceiling leaking like a sieve.
The landlord's voicemail was full, of course. So I sat there, watching rainwater pool around my secondhand furniture, and decided something primal: *I'm done being polite.* Next morning, I sabotaged Stephanie's presentation by replacing her slides with hardcore YTP edits of her own voice—her shriek when the screen lit up with *"STEPHANIE'S GUIDE TO FAILING UPWARD"* was sweeter than any promotion.
Felt good.
Felt *right.*
Got fired on the spot, obviously, but the way her face twisted—like someone had shoved a lemon up her ass mid-sentence—was worth every penny of my severance. Except there *was* no severance, just a security escort dragging me out by my cheap polyester tie while Stephanie screeched about "unprofessional conduct."
The joke was on her—I'd already wiped the entire department's server backups three days prior, hidden behind seven proxy chains. Stephanie's shriek when payroll crashed the next week was my personal symphony.
Was that just stupidly petty?
Maybe it was.
Actually it probably was for all the other people that worked there.
But when you're drowning in a system designed to grind your bones into profit margins, sometimes the only lifeline is watching your oppressor's spreadsheet formulas dissolve into digital confetti as you slowly loose your sanity and watch the world burn like you're the next coming of the Joker.
My death wasn't expected at all.
In fact, I just went to sleep after staying awake for thirty six hours straight—then I woke up in that run down hospital with Bernadette and Jules.
I might be going off topic here, but I still thought about Bernadette sometimes—how hollow her eyes were.
How she died right in front of me.
How Bernadette didn't have the time or chance to scream.
How her purple stained arm flopped limp against the tile as plasma bolts punched Doc's sterile lights, spraying molten glass across the Organicizer's console.
How the leader's second shot vaporized her skull above the eyes—a scarlet mist against chrome.
How Doc staggered backward, clutching his bleeding hand, his shout of outrage choked by coolant fumes.
How the Echo Squad moved with brutal choreography: one enforcer hauled Amadeus Prower upright, ignoring the fox's mangled leg dragging dark streaks.
That was the thing; I remember everything from when I was born to right now, but I'm beginning to forget how and who I was before.
How I was as a human.
How I was in Earth.
How I was as Isaiah Maliks.
A Sudanese-American accountant that was maybe twenty-six, twenty-seven at the time? Or something like that.
I personally didn't think it mattered.
But better safe than sorry I guess.
The journal snapped shut under my claws with a finality that felt almost performative—like I needed the sound to convince myself the past was truly buried. Outside, the war-torn skyline of Maxxopolis pulsed with intermittent artillery fire, casting jagged shadows across my floor. Funny how the rhythm of distant explosions had become my lullaby now, replacing the hum of office fluorescents and the clatter of keyboards.
Doc would lecture me about sleep deprivation if he saw how late I was up, but the doc had his own demons to wrestle—ones that left his lab smelling like ozone and regret most nights. I traced a claw along the journal's spine, contemplating whether to burn it or stash it deeper. Knowledge was leverage, and leverage was the only currency that mattered in this bloodstained game of four dimensional chess.
The things I know I've forgotten rattle inside my skull like loose shrapnel—phantom limb pains of a dead identity. My claws twitched against the journal's edge, phantom synapses firing uselessly for memories that had dissolved like sugar in toxic rain.
There used to be a rhythm to Isaiah Maliks—anxiety before deadlines, exhaustion after midnight commutes—that Sonic's adrenalized existence had scorched away. Funny how violence sandblasted a man down to his scaffolding; the accountant who flinched at office shouting matches now orchestrated war crimes with the casual precision of a chef seasoning soup.
There were things I know I've forgotten and things that were beginning to blur:
I didn't remember my parents real names at all anymore—just impressions left behind like fingerprints on a fogged mirror. My mother's hands had smelled like cardamom and chalk dust; my father's laughter rattled like loose change in a dryer. Now those fragments were buried under the stench of plasma burns and the metallic aftertaste of battlefield adrenaline.
Funny how trauma rewired the brain—I could recite Sector 7's entire patrol rotation after almost a year of watching but I couldn't recall whether I'd preferred coffee black or with cream back in that old life. The memories were slipping faster now, like sand between clenched fists, and part of me wanted to chase them down before they vanished completely.
And so here we are, with me writing what I still remembered down on paper, because forgetting was inevitable, wasn't it?
I was only human.
Well, I was once only human at the very least.
Now I was Sonic.
Where I was a super powered furry.
Sonic the Hedgehog.
The name of a character in a video game series named after him that represented true freedom.
Everything I always wanted to be.
But I knew I never could be like him.
I had far too many memories for that.
I knew for a fact that if I was still reborn in this world and didn't have any powers, I'd just be a reclusive coward.
Which was why the "invincible hero" act was vital—grin sharp enough to draw blood, posture loose but coiled like a live wire.
I was absolutely nothing like Sonic at all.
I never claimed to be like him.
Sonic... a name that was forced into me by lthe egotistical dick that was Sonic's sperm donor and what was nowvmaking me begin to forget my own.
I wonder if I should change it...
That last thought was for another time I suppose.
Preferably in the morning if I had to choose.
And so I closed the journel back up, and put it back under my mattress as always as I climbed onto my bed.
I sighed—stretching my arms—before letting my arms fall limp onto the bed.
Huh.
That was... unexpected.
Didn't think I'd be coming back to thinking about my... past life?
Past self?
Whatever.
Maybe I was feeling overly sentimental—but I'd never say it out loud because I had an image to keep up.
I was Sonic the Hedgehog—the guy who grinned in the face of death and made dictators shit themselves with just a raised brow. But right then, staring at the cracks in my ceiling, I felt more like Isaiah Maliks—the exhausted accountant who'd once hidden rage behind spreadsheets.
Funny how the past clings to you like the smell of smoke.
I yawned—deliberately exaggerated—and rolled onto my side, my fingers drumming against the mattress in a rhythm that matched the distant gunfire outside. The journal was safely tucked away, its secrets buried deeper than most corpses in this godforsaken warzone. *Sentimentality's a luxury for people who aren't stitching up their own bullet holes,* I mused, flicking a claw against the bedside lamp.
Soon I closed my eyes to finally rest.
Doc's footsteps echoed down the hall—his gait uneven from old scars, his lab coat brushing against the doorframe with a sound like dry leaves. He paused outside my room, listening to the silence, before muttering something about "reckless pups" and shuffling away.
I smirked into the darkness, counting his retreating steps—eleven before the hydraulic door hissed shut. Doc's sentimental streak was worse than mine.
But hey, that's why I liked him so much.
People like him were rare. Way too rare in this world.
Let's hope I can change that someday.