Sonic the Hedgehog--The Official Movie Novelization

by Kiel Phegley

  In the center of the storm, things cleared just long enough for Sonic to zip up behind Tom, his fists curled up like an old-timey boxer. “This is awesome, right?” the little guy called out.

  “Ask me again when I know how many teeth I’m walking out of here with.”

  Sonic shot off to blue-blur status again. He spun into a hyper-bouncing sphere, ricocheted off the ceiling in loops, and bounced to the ground at odd angles. Even as every move looked like a totally random event, the bikers who were still standing parted and made a kind of tunnel of blue speed that pointed Tom right toward the door.

  “Wonders never cease,” Tom said as he laughed and made a beeline for the parking lot.

  He and Sonic burst out together like a pair of Wild West outlaws. They looked at each other and then booked it for the getaway truck. Sonic was already sitting with his feet on the dash when Tom ran up, out of breath.

  “Are they close behind me?” he said as he started the engine.

  “Not unless they already climbed over the mountain of furniture I piled up on my way out,” Sonic said.

  “Okay, but from here on out, we’re going straight to San Fran. No more legally dubious pit stops!”

  Tom tore down the road and tried to keep in mind that his dream job was on the other end of this trip. He couldn’t mess this up.

  “Oh, you loved it in there, Donut Lord!”

  Maybe Tom did a little. Maybe he’d been looking for an opportunity to go wild after years bottled up in Green Hills. But he couldn’t risk everything to be friends with an alien hedgehog. It was something driven home late that night when the fading radio signal announced, “Manhunt underway for a rogue local, said to have stolen government property. The details of the case are highly classified, but Department of Defense officials say a thirty-something man is wreaking havoc in the company of a diminutive accomplice. Be on the lookout.”

  Sonic stared out the window at the morning sunlight. They’d stopped behind a billboard to grab a few hours of sleep, and now Donut Lord was winding his way toward San Francisco on a path that Sonic deemed too slow, too crooked, too dull.

  “Come on, super cop,” he said as he made his hand an airplane out the window. “I thought you were leaning toward being the action-adventure type. Floor it.”

  “Laying low, dude. That Dr. Robotnik guy seems like he has more than a few ways to track us down,” Tom said. “Let’s hope that the satellites don’t have us pegged already and that Maddie got my messages saying my cell phone was dead. ’Course, it’s probably lying in the ruins of our kitchen after those drones went to town.”

  “What do you care if Robotnik torched your place?” Sonic said. “You’re leaving Green Hills, anyway. The best place in the world, and you’re selling out for some crazy land of glass sky daggers.”

  “Do you really not know how small Green Hills is?” Tom asked. “Talk about trying to live your life before it’s all gone. I can’t do that back home.”

  “It’s not small! There are literally hundreds of people! And, like, three times as many chill animals. And one really rude beaver named Lucius.”

  “Really?”

  “No dude, I’m the only one who can talk!” Sonic shook his head. “You’re not making any sense. You come from a great town, with great people. And by my count, zero evil warlords are trying to kill everyone and steal their inexplicable speed energies. That’s what it’s like where I come from, and I can tell you that only a crazy person would want to leave a place like Green Hills. Besides, what could possibly be more important than protecting the people you care about?”

  “Oh please, I clean out their gutters. I jump-start their cars in winter. They can call anybody to do that,” said Tom.

  “Sure,” said Sonic. “They can call anybody. But they don’t. They call you.”

  Before Tom could respond, the sound of shattering glass rang out. A grappling hook broke through their back window and buried itself in the dashboard. Sonic spun around to see a spinning egg-shaped drone on the other end.

  “Yahtzee!” called a familiar voice from a speaker on the drone. Robotnik. This creep was turning out to be, well, a creep.

  “We’ve got incoming!” Sonic yelled. “I can bust Ro-Butt-Nik’s machine no problem. Just drive the car. I’ll take care of this. The way you used to take care of Green Hills!”

  As soon as Sonic unbuckled, Donut Lord yanked him back down on the seat. “This time, we do it my way,” he said, picking up a tire iron from behind the seat. “Here, take the wheel . . . and keep it steady! I put it in cruise control.”

  Tom climbed out of the back window, breaking out the rest of the jagged glass as he went. He held firmly to the roof as the drone reeled itself close. Tom swung the iron forcefully at the drone’s eye, and the machine spun hard to the left, pulling the car with it.

  Sonic responded by jerking the steering wheel back and forth. He ignored the breaks. As the truck swerved left and right across the empty country highway, he saw Tom lurch in the rearview mirror.

  “Hold steady!” the Donut Lord called. “Who the heck taught you to drive?”

  “Nobody!” Sonic said with a laugh. “I have absolutely zero clue what I’m doing!”

  With another wild swing, Tom connected with the drone, popping the cable loose as the front of it shattered into sparking pieces.

  “Mr. Wachowski, you don’t have to be a genius to know how supremely stupid that was,” called Robotnik’s now garbled voice.

  As the initial drone sputtered out of commission, a fleet of little baby bots buzzed to life. They swarmed all around Tom and into the truck, circling Sonic’s head. The hedgehog swatted at them, and the car careened across lanes. The driver’s-side mirror exploded as the truck grazed the guardrail.

  “I’m taking the captain’s chair back,” said Tom as he swung into the driver’s seat and pushed Sonic aside.

  “Good,” the hedgehog said, “because I see where the problem is, and I’m going to fix it.”

  Like a tranq dart, Sonic blasted off the back of the truck. He hit the highway with his legs pumping as fast as he could and spun into a ball of pure velocity. Nearly four hundred yards back, an armored van was chugging along. It had to be Robotnik’s mobile lab.

  Sonic struck the center of the van’s hood as hard as he could, and with a crunch of the fiberglass, it collapsed, and the vehicle spun off-road. “A real bull’s-eye at last!” Sonic cried, skidding to a stop to make sure the van stayed down.

  “Do you think the egg drone was the last of my botniks, hedgehog?!” yowled a megaphone voice. The top of the van split open and launched a spider-like dune buggy drone onto the road. It spun out its wheels with a screech and was soon at Sonic’s doorstep.

  “Tech this ugly is more like Badniks!” Sonic shouted, and bolted back to the pickup.

  The truck shuddered when Sonic hit the tailgate and climbed into the back. Tom couldn’t believe the old pickup had lasted this long, but it was being pushed to its limits. In the mirror, he saw something black quickly get bigger and bigger.

  “You make a new friend?” he called to the hedgehog.

  “It’s over, Donut Lord,” Sonic said through the window. “You have to leave me. Maybe if Robotnik tracks just me to San Francisco, maybe even if he gets his hands on me . . . then you and the town will be okay.”

  “That’s crazy!” Tom said. He was touched this little guy would be willing to sacrifice so much for their safety. And maybe he was feeling a little guilty, too. “You don’t owe that town anything.”

  “Somebody has to!” Sonic yelled, and his quills started to crackle with blue energy. “If you leave, who’s gonna judge the Blueberry Festival? Or sit in the dunk tank? Who’s gonna do all that stuff?”

  “Now is not the time to talk about this, pal!”

  The dune buggy bot was right behind them now. Tom floored the gas pedal, b
ut the shaking truck just wouldn’t move any faster. The mechanical monster behind them sprouted tiny metal arms that clawed at the pavement just inches from their wheels.

  “But it’s all going to be over soon. And everyone in that town is going to be left alone, like me!” Sonic cried. His whole body was vibrating with uncontrolled energy now, and Tom could see the fear in his eyes as his rage turned to realization. “Oh no, not again—”

  “Sonic, don’t—!”

  It was too late. The hedgehog jumped off the truck and flew three feet through the air to land on the dune buggy. The botnik shuddered as Sonic’s hands reached out in front of him and made a thunderous clap. The shockwave of chaotic blue energy radiated out of those fingers with all its fury pointed back from where they’d come from. In a second, the dune buggy smoked and collapsed on the road. Far back, all the little lights on Robotnik’s van went dead. But Sonic was flung back by the force of his own attack and landed in the truck bed with a thud.

  Miraculously, Tom still had control of the vehicle. He slammed the breaks and as it peeled to a stop, he shivered at the thought that Sonic might be hurt.

  “Hey, buddy! Sonic! Friend! Are you okay?” Tom called, leaping into the back of the truck.

  The hedgehog rolled over and flashed a weak smile. “Totally cool, Donut Lord,” he said. “Just a teenager reacting to how bad life sucks right now.”

  Tom smiled wide. “Yeah, I been there,” he said. “Let’s just be happy that your blackout blast only seemed to kill the road behind us. If it went back far enough, then Robotnik won’t be able to call out any reinforcements for a hot minute. Let’s get ourselves to San Francisco while we can still make it.”

  “Donut Lord . . . ,” Sonic said as he hopped down and made his way into the cab of the truck. “Tom . . . about what I said about you leaving everyone in town alone. I didn’t mean . . . it’s just hard for me to see you give up what I can’t—”

  “Forget it,” Tom cut in. “Let’s talk about it later. There’s a bag of rings waiting for us.”

  Robotnik gritted his teeth and stormed back and forth inside the newly arrived mobile lab. It had been six hours since that blasted hedgehog fried his last series of botniks, and though his drone-enhanced truck dutifully found him despite his total lack of functioning electrical equipment, he’d still lost too much time to the smarmy Green Hills dolt.

  A curse on these commoners. These small-town hicks disgusted him. The local yokels. The moms and pops. They were forcing him to think the impossible. In order to capture that creature, Robotnik would have to do more than outthink them. He’d have to overpower them. All that was left was a sheer display of brute force.

  “Doctor, do we have a calculation on their destination yet?” Agent Stone asked, poking his head in Robotnik’s high-tech sanctum.

  “Their obvious endgame is San Francisco,” the doctor hissed in reply. “Beyond that, inconclusive.”

  “Amazing that the two of them have been able to stay one step ahead of us this whole time,” Stone mumbled to himself—a telltale sign of pedestrian thought.

  “You know, Stone, I won’t miss you when you’re gone,” Robotnik said with a sneer, and then launched into his manifesto. “Humans are unreliable and stupid. Space hedgehogs are likely more so. I care very little about either of them or their so-called plans. My machines are diligent, relentless. They mean everything to me, and they will not fail me. You, on the other hand, have one last chance not to fail me. Now bring me what I require to get my juices flowing.”

  The agent ran out, leaving Robotnik alone with the glory of his own mind, the humming of his flawless machines, and the mystery of the quill. In a sealed glass case, the piece of the hedgehog those twits had left behind glowed—the same glow that had lit the inside of Robotnik’s battle van when that creature zapped every electric fuse within forty miles. Now it was time to understand what that meant.

  Robotnik flipped the switch on his stereo, and a steady drum machine rhythm pulsated out of the speakers. Funky bass licks filled the air, and the doctor went to work wiring every piece of triangulating tech he had to the blue quill. His eyes went wild with anticipation as his screens sprung to life feeding him data, and his feet took flight in sync with the jams.

  Dance! Glorious, undulating movement to the preprogrammed robotic soul of the stereo! Sealed in his workshop, Robotnik could finally shut out the disgusting breathing sounds of his fellow humans and be at one with his pelvic thrusts. The more he stared into the chaotic energy of this hedgehog, the more Robotnik became obsessed with the potential of harnessing its disorder. With that kind of power source, he could convert the whole world into a robot revolution.

  Above the captured quill, an energy meter revved up its intensity. Green to yellow to red in seconds as every alarm began ringing in time with Robotnik’s pure funky breakdown. “Yes!” he cheered as the distinctive energy signature of the hedgehog fed its data into his computer. “Yes! Yes! Fingerprint that blue freak and bring him to Papa!”

  Swack! The door to the lab opened up, and the shadow of Agent Stone fell over Robotnik, mid-thrust. He snapped the stereo off in a swift move and composed himself. Stone suspected nothing amiss, he was certain.

  “Um . . . chai tea latte with skim milk, extra hot, just the way you like it,” the agent said.

  “No foam?”

  “No foam.”

  Robotnik sipped his caffeinated comfort and licked his lips. “Ready the prototype, Agent Stone. And get my flight suit. We’re back on the trail.”

  Tom and Sonic rattled into San Francisco in the late afternoon. How they ever made it, the policeman couldn’t figure out. But they were just blocks from the place Maddie was staying in. And if he could find a way to explain to her what the heck was going on, he might have a chance at saving the hedgehog and himself in the process.

  Tom knocked frantically on the door to the apartment, and when Maddie answered, he hurried in with a blanketed bundle close to his chest.

  “Hi-baby-cool-place!” he rushed in with a nervous smile. “Do you carry, like, cat smelling salts with you when you go on trips?”

  “Tom? What happened to you? Are you bleeding?”

  He felt his forehead and rubbed off the grime of sweat and blood. “Oh that? Yeah, that’s either from the broken window or the robot bee things. It’s fine. Anyway . . . cat smelling salts? Or, like, smelling salts for something slightly bigger than a cat?”

  Maddie furrowed her brow but pulled a tiny bottle from her first-aid kit. “They don’t make smelling salts for cats. But I have human smelling salts,” she said, and shot her husband a look. “What’s it for?”

  Tom laid the blanket down and unwrapped Sonic. He had been slowly fading since he shocked Robotnik’s setup, and now the hedgehog’s breathing was growing more and more shallow. Maddie’s eyes widened and then darted back and forth over the animal’s frame, immediately shifting into doctor mode.

  “He’s a hedgehog, or so he says,” Tom said, smiling at his wife’s take-charge attitude.

  “It talks?”

  “Almost constantly.”

  Maddie put a hand to its chest and two fingers on its neck. “Holy—! His pulse is racing!”

  “That might be normal for him, actually. But you’ve got to help him. He isn’t usually this sedate. In fact, he never is.”

  “I don’t know his physiology, but he doesn’t seem to have any broken bones. He’s just really banged up,” she said, and in a matter of minutes, she had cleaned and dressed Sonic’s wounds. Maddie took a deep breath to settle herself and then popped the cap of the smelling salts right under the animal’s nose.

  “GottagoFAST!” Sonic shouted as his eyes snapped open, and then he spun around the room. The blue blur ricocheted off the ceiling and the fridge with a clamor, and then came to rest atop a bookshelf. His breathing never slowed. “Donut Lord! Oh, and . . . hello!”


  He sidled up next to Maddie’s leg, and she jumped just a hair. “It’s Pretzel Lady, right? Good dude you got here.”

  “It’s Maddie, buddy. What is it with you and food?” asked Tom. “More importantly, are you okay?”

  Sonic bounced on his heels. “Feels like everything’s here, but I’ll be in better shape when we have those rings in hand.”

  “Tom, can I please talk to you?” Maddie said, her eyes never leaving Sonic. “Hedgehog, you stay here. Try to rest.”

  “Sure thing. I’m great at resting! I rest faster than anybody!” he said, adding, “And it’s Sonic the Hedgehog!”

  Maddie led Tom out of the room. “Okay. First of all, can we take a moment to acknowledge how under control I’ve been? I didn’t freak out, totally calm,” she said, and held out her fist. He bumped it gently. “Secondly, WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON? IS THAT THING AN ALIEN?!?”

  “So, you know how Crazy Carl is always going on about the—”

  “The Blue Devil! That’s him? He’s real?” Maddie touched her temple and processed it all. “What’s he doing here? What are you doing here?”

  “Well, remember how I told you the raccoons were back? I kinda, sorta shot our little blue friend with the tranq gun.”

  “You did not!”

  “It’s hard to explain, but it’s crazy important that he gets to the Transamerica building, and I promised to take him,” Tom said. He took her by the shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. “I’m still unsure of all the details, but we’ve got a spook on us that’s just a shade away from being a looney tune and . . . more than anything, I trust this little guy. I promised I’d get him to safety.”

  Maddie’s eyes raised with concern at her husband, but it only took a moment until she was back in problem-solving mode. “I have about a million questions, but I get it. This is the job. Helping people is what good policemen do. It’s what you’re doing.” She bit her lip. “Blue alien hedgehogs still count as people, don’t they? I think so.”