Chaos Born

~Prologue~

They had been found.

Jules burst into the house, his face drawn and pale.

"Aleena!" he shouted, turning the house upside down in an attempt to find bags, supplies - anything! "Aleena!" he shouted again, "Children! All of you!"

From the kitchen appeared a raspberry purple  coloured hedgehog with long, elegant quills and a bewildered expression on her face. 

"What's the matter?" she asked her husband, "What in Chaos is the matter?"

The terror of her normally calm husband unnerved her to the core and his eyes, his strong green eyes, were ablaze with anger.

"They've found us," he practically choked. "They're coming for him."

Aleena had to seize the door frame to prevent herself from falling. Her eyes darted up the stairs where one hoglet, the same colour as her mother, had frozen in mid-step, tears pooling in her eyes as she tasted the panic from her parents.

"Sonia, darling, grab your bag and your brothers. We're leaving," Jules said, calmly but firmly. Aleena dashed past him to go help her children, trembling with rage and fear.

The pale blue hedgehog simply continued throwing things in a bag, desperate to put as much distance as he could between his family and this accursed area. Ever since the birth of the triplets, Jules had been living a life on the run, hiding his family away from sinister forces - now it was all starting to catch up with them and there was little time to waste, if any.

"You can't keep him forever," a voice echoed in the back of his head, a malevolent sound from the day that should have been one of merriment for he and his wife. "Try and hide him all you like. But we'll come for your son one day. You can't keep him."

Hot tears of fury stung the hedgehog with the sky blue fur.

"You're leaving?" a deep voice came from the front door. "Oh, a shame. I was hoping to have a word before you left."

Silhouetted in the doorway, an ominous black shape, stood a man. A skinny, grotesque sort of man with sharp eyes, a sharp nose, sharp fingers and a very sharp tongue. He had not a single hair upon his head and yet he sported a thick orangey brown goatee. 

Jules took one look at him and felt his quills sharpen.

"Get out of my house!" he screeched, instinctively moving to block the staircase as his eyes flashed with green fire, "Crawl back to the hell-hole you were spewed from and stay there!"

The man, dressed in a long coat, smiled sickly. 

"Such eloquent words," he chuckled, "I say that sarcastically, of course; whoever heard of an eloquent animal?"

Jules glared.

The man's smile dropped slightly but his gaze bored into the light blue hedgehog with hatred and evil. 

"How's the family?" he asked slowly, deliberately. He could see it now - while Julius Hedgehog spoke and acted like someone with guts, when it came to the safety of his family, he became as yellow as a plump hen. 

"Get out," Jules swallowed, balling his fists and beginning to shake. 

The intruder raised his bushy eyebrows and narrowed his gaze. His soulless, black gaze. 

"Now I think we both know that's not going to happen," he purred, holding his hands behind him and tilting his head to one size like some hungry reptile, "I haven't spent these last few years tracking you down to merely pop my head round the door and ask how you were doing. Although, while I'm here, how ARE you all doing? He must be getting quite big now, am I right? Let's see... 5 years old? 6?"