This place is not a place of honor @nw96-archived - Tumblr Blog

A Flash of Silver - a theoretical post-credits intro for Silver into the SCU

Aw, to hell with it, I'm posting it here too.

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"Therefore, your affiant requests that the charges outlined above be filed against the defendant…"

The cramped confines of the Green Hills Sheriff's Department echoed with the ticking of the analog clock in the corner, and the tap-tap-tap of officer Wade Whipple hacking out the last police report of the night.

9:57.

As recently as two weeks ago, this report may have been for something exotic. Terroristic threats, breaking and entering, attempted murder, money laundering…the sort of crime that almost never happened in Green Hills until the blue hedgehog showed his face.

Instead, some punk teenager shoplifted a Ring Pop from the Super Q grocery store. Total value of loss: $2.50. He had to shake his head. Just five years ago they were less than half that much.

From what Wade heard, it wasn't even a limited edition Ring Pop. Just an ordinary blue raspberry.

Wade sighed as he hit Control+P to trigger the printing process. On the surface, the last three weeks without Sonic and his friends should have been a nice change of pace. Ever since they first set foot in the Big Sky Country, Green Hills had seemed to become the world's capital of interdimensional calamity and world-shattering peril.

But it had become the world's capital for something, at least.

His gaze drifted off to the left, and he stole a glance at the wood-grain wall covered from roof-to-ceiling with newspaper clippings of the department's exploits over the decades. Up to just three years ago, the Wachowski family only saw fit to post something once in a blue moon. Stories about public relations initiatives such as D.A.R.E…photo ops with Governor Schwinden…that sort of thing.

Then new additions to the collection came seemingly in torrents, with front-page headlines not just from the local paper – the Green Hills Gazette – but also the New York Times, USA Today, and…less-savory publications that could be found on grocery store checkout lines.

MASS BLACKOUT CRIPPLES COMMUNICATION ACROSS WESTERN HEMISPHERE.

MAYHEM IN SEATTLE - CRIME DOESN'T SPRAY.

MULTI-COLORED ALIENS SPARE TOWN FROM TOTAL DEVASTATION.

Regardless of where they may have come from, Sonic and his friends were citizens of Green Hills. If not in law, then most definitely in spirit.

Wade would never forget his weeklong excursion with the echidna into Nevada.

After Sonic had thrown off the mask of secrecy and became a full-time resident of Green Hills, he sought every morning to surpass his previous top speed down Main Street past the radar gun. By the time he'd disappeared, he'd managed to get it into the 800s.

And yes, the fox had destroyed his cruiser, but through his uncanny intellect, he managed to rebuild it into a more efficient crime-fighting machine with spiked wheels and a paint-spraying gun. Completely free of charge to the department, no less, sparing the town council from having to raise taxes for the next fiscal year.

And then there were the stories he'd heard about the three of them — many of them second-hand from Tom through ice-fishing.

Robberies foiled, children saved from burning buildings, and pets pulled from the tops of trees in cities up and down the west coast of the U.S. and Canada by Sonic's vigilante-style heroics as Blue Justice had garnered the attention of the national press. Once in a while, the blue phantom even managed to do something heroic without causing tens of thousands of dollars in property damage to the city in which he happened to set foot that day.

Apparently Tails had become a frequent visitor to the Green Hills Public Library, where he ravenously devoured all the literature he could find on aviation and quantum mechanics, and the schoolchildren came to adore his presence there — and his ample orange fur.

And Knuckles had spent his time "training" animals in Green Forest to "unlock" their "warrior spirit". Which, in practice, apparently meant taking local deer and running them through his obstacle course until they keeled over from exhaustion and marinated in their own sweat.

There were also rumors of a fourth, pink one who had briefly stopped over.

And then, just as quickly as they arrived, they disappeared. Every time he asked Tom about it, the sheriff quickly shifted the subject to something else.

The day the lights first went out in Green Hills, things were never the same again.

Now things were the same again.

It kinda sucked, to be honest.

9:58.

Wade motioned over to the moldy, decades-old inkjet printer, grabbed the freshly-printed report, and placed it in the yellow documents bin. After all, yellow was for new police reports and blue was for documents over a year old.

Or maybe it was supposed to be the other way around? Tom was the one who bought the bins with his own money and he didn't know either. Green Hills wasn't exactly known for running the tightest ship in the state of Montana.

Oh, well. It was Tom's problem in the morning.

9:59.

Wade stood up and slung his briefcase over his shoulder and made a move for the light switch behind him before heading for the exit. If he hurried, he might make it home in time to catch the end of the hockey game –

As if on cue, three knocks against the front door stopped Wade dead in his tracks.

Of course.

It was a rule of thumb in police work that the instant the last person in the office made a move for the exit, either the phone would go off or someone would make a last-minute complaint in-person.

Wade hurried to the front door, and standing in front of him as he pulled it open was a person of short stature wearing what appeared to be a brown cloak which shrouded all of their facial features. Whoever this was, their full height came up only to Wade's waist.

"All right, kid, we've been over this," Wade said, with a sigh. "I know you said you were sorry, but rules are rules. You can't just take candy from a store and not pay for it–"

The figure opened his mouth, interrupting Wade in a voice that on its own was enough to tell him that this person was not the prepubescent confectionery snatcher from earlier.

"I need to know if you've seen this individual." As he spoke, the cloaked figure rifled through his clothing and pulled out a wrinkled, well-worn piece of paper and unfolded it, presenting it before Wade. "It is a matter of great urgency for all of us."

Judging by the uneven and yellowed edges, the paper appeared to have been ripped from a book at some point. On the fragment was a blurry, color…drawing? Photograph? Given the quality of the reproduction it was hard to tell exactly what it was. Either way it looked to have gone through the photocopying process several times in the past.

Not expecting to be presented with a missing persons case so late in his shift, Wade bent over to take a close look at the image. Despite the low quality, it appeared to depict a shorter-than-average individual – one of roughly the same height as the one standing before Wade at the moment – with large green eyes and an oversized head, covered mostly in blue.

Wade's mind sputtered, flashing back to a few people he knew in high school who vaguely fit that description, before the realization washed upon him.

"Oh, hey, I know who this is!"

Though its face wasn't visible, Wade could nonetheless see the cloaked figure perk up at this news. "You…know him?"

"Oh, yeah! His name's Sonic! He's…kind ofa big deal around here. You should really meet him someday. Great guy," Wade rattled off at roughly a mile a minute.

He was met by silence. The cloaked figure tilted its head to the side and cupped it in its hand in a moment of contemplation. It stood there. Stood there, looked down, shook its head.

Obviously it had no intentions of leaving the station anytime soon, and it was the only thing standing between Wade and his knowing the results of the all-important Kraken-Avalanche game — which he, of course, had forgotten to tell his DVR to record that morning — so he figured he might as well say something to break the ice.

"Okaaay, well, there was the time he attacked me on the roof and stole something I was looking after," Wade said. "But other than that–"

The head of the cloaked figure jolted upward in Wade's direction and locked its gaze upon him. Its face was concealed by the darkness of night, the station's humble LED wall light unable to penetrate the thick brown hood, but in that moment, the humble sheriff's deputy could swear he felt a hole being carved through his soul.

And a stabbing feeling emerged in the pit of Wade's stomach, as he realized that he'd probably just violated numerous state and federal privacy laws — not to mention common sense — with the information that he had just divulged.

The cloaked figure slowly lifted a finger in Wade's direction. The words sputtered out of its mouth with a thick coating of venom:

"Where…is…he?"

"I…I—" Wade chuckled, his feet guiding him backwards into the police station with slow, furtive steps. "We…we're not allowed to disclose the whereabouts of private citizens, sir."

Again, the cloaked figure said nothing, but what happened next spoke louder than words. Leaves in the autumn twilight stirred in a gentle breeze, surrounding the figure as it made slow, menacing strides toward the door frame where Wade stood. He couldn't help but notice as the edges of the figure's silhouette took on a subtle, greenish glow that pulsed in and out of existence, gaining in intensity with each pulse.

"That…thing that you call 'Sonic'…is the source of my world's destruction. Your failure to cooperate will put our entire civilization at risk!" the figure said, brandishing an index finger at Wade. "I will only ask you once more…where?"

Wade hadn't been on the job nearly as long as his superior, but he had already been in his share of difficult conversations in his career. He'd been trained twice for this job — both the mandatory courses from the Montana State Police in the basics of negotiation, and the less-mandatory courses from Knuckles in the arts of being a true warrior.

His hand gripping tighter and tighter to the service revolver in his holster, he knew he'd need them both.

"All right, look…as a matter of procedure I should probably ask you to come back in the morning and fill out a missing persons report, but…until then, uh…" Wade searched for the right word, and it flowed from his mouth without a second thought given.

"...skedaddle?"

Okay, that was probably not the right thing to say.

Fallen leaves and dust from the sidewalk below began to swirl around the cloaked figure, taking on greater speed with each rotation. A faint green light appeared out of the corner of Wade's eye. He peeked over to his right to find that the same pulsating glow that enveloped the mysterious figure had now enveloped his own body from head to toe…clothing, bare legs and arms, even accessories carried on his person.

The figure steadied himself into a fighting stance and locked its hands together in front of its body. Given everything that had taken place so far, Wade was pretty sure this constituted a direct physical threat, and ample justification under the unwritten rules of police duty. In one swift motion, he reached for his service revolver.

One second too late.

The figure pushed his hands forward, and before Wade could react, he found himself careening helplessly backwards as though shot out of a cannon. He had scarcely time to even scream before his backside made contact with the next solid object.

Neatly-ordered paperwork, computer equipment, everything that hadn't been bolted down — and a few objects that had been — flew about like matchwood caught in a tornado. By the time Wade realized what had happened, felt the wooden splinters gouging into his arms and legs, with his head fixed into place staring toward the well-worn floorboards, he realized that he had effectively become one with his own desk.

And he realized that he was going to have a lot to explain to Tom when he came in for his morning shift and saw that the Green Hills Sheriff's Department office, which he took great pride in keeping neat and orderly, had become a disaster area.

Each move he made caused thousands of shards of pine to carve new ridges into his skin and his police uniform, but with enough effort from his shoulders, Wade managed to extract himself from his own furniture and roll forward. Once he got over the shock of what had just happened, he rose to his feet and made a mad dash for the front door, revolver firmly in hand and pointed in front of his person.

"Freeze, punk!"

But by then, no trace was left of the mysterious figure. He tiptoed forward to get a better view of the outside of the station, his eyelids fastened fully open, his arms quivering as he pointed the revolver toward the spot where the cloaked figure had stood not 30 seconds earlier.

But the only clues remaining to suggest that anyone had even set foot in front of the police station were a pair of muddy boot prints carved into the sidewalk.

Slack-jawed, Wade craned his neck toward the sky, and that's when he saw it. A speck of green light receding far into the Montana twilight, at first seeming to float away from the scene like a sprite caught in an updraft, before it stopped and became a comet disappearing into the distance.

Wade looked at the muddy bootprint, then back at the sky, then back at the bootprint, and finally, back at the quagmire in the police station that…whatever that was…left behind.

The morning sun cast its first rays over the horizon, splashing the skyline in every imaginable color.

A mountainous range overlooked the town which, the sign had just informed him, was called "Green Hills." Apparently it saw fit to dub itself "The Small Town with a Big Heart." Not that it made a difference to him. If he couldn't act soon, then it would end up like everything else in this world.

Charred…mutilated…dead.

The small town was an oasis of motion and civilization poking through the still forests of conifer trees. Small businesses preparing to open to eager customers. Farmers tending to their crops and livestock. Some poor sheriff making sense of the mess that had become of his office and wondering how he was going to explain this one away to the council.

Population 1,981, the sign said. And not a single one of them were either willing or able to provide him with a concrete lead on just who or what this "Sonic" was or where he – or it – had gotten off to. What few answers he had gotten were conflicting at best.

1,981 souls soon to be extinguished.

The fools. Not a single one of these people realizes what's about to happen to them.

Content with the privacy of keeping company with only pigeons and the odd deer, the figure finally saw fit to pull down his cloak, and leaf-shaped quills as white as snow unfurled themselves to the morning sky. Once again, he pulled out the photocopy he'd carried with him all this way.

The source he pulled it from didn't grant a single, consistent name to what it was that he was looking at. Some languages back home called it Pralaya. Others called it Gyallarhorn. But evidently the local name for it was "Sonic".

So this was a faint, color reproduction of this..."Sonic".

Not unless I find him. Not unless I destroy him.

But it was the rest of the image that stood out to him. The depiction of Sonic – or as one of the residents called him, the "Blue Devil" – standing amid a towering inferno, flames licking at his face and limbs as he stared daggers directly through the viewer's soul.

…the Iblis Trigger.

The figure reached into the recesses of one of his quills and pulled out an object that had become all too familiar to the residents of Green Hills in recent years – a gold interdimensional Travel Ring. He tossed it like a frisbee over the edge and focused his thoughts on his next destination.

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