Chaos Born

There's Blood in the Water...

It wasn't really a party, as such, back at Amy's but Rouge made sure to open up Amy's liquor cabinet (though Shadow seemed to take every drink off of her) and Vanilla was quick to root out something in the kitchen for them all to snack on.

Sonic was slumped at Amy's dining table, staring out the window as his friends settled down around him, whispering to one another as they tried easing the situation, though why it was tense not all of them were sure.

Tails had put Rosemary to bed on the sofa and when he arrived back in the dining room Shadow had placed a drink in front of Sonic and sat down to pick some brains.

"So who's Ira Robotnik?" Silver was the first to ask, hovering (literally) in the corner of the room.

Sonic had an elbow on the table, leaning his muzzle deeply into the palm of his paw as he gazed listlessly out the window at nothing. 

"...I have no idea," he said, his monotonous voice muffled by his glove.

"Everyone is saying you know him."

"I don't."

"According to the G.U.N. he's Eggman's brother," Rouge then said. She was sat at one end of the table with a small GUN laptop, organising the information that had come through after Shadow had made the call and given a precise description of the would-be creep. "There was a whole family of Robotniks," she continued, "Most of them have died in an asylum somewhere."

Vector immediately looked at Espio and Charmy, perched on a stool next to Cream, who had simultaneously twitched his antennae in their direction, remembering something about a loose inmate from an asylum.

"I wouldn't know," Sonic merely went on mumbling, lost in his own thoughts, oblivious to the fact that Tails was watching him closely, a intrigued look on his face.

"But this is someone from your past," Knuckles commented, stroking his own muzzle.

"From before Tails, even," Cream agreed, "Was Eggman the first Robotnik you met? When did you meet him?"

To everyone's surprise, Sonic didn't answer. He frowned as he lowered his hand, revealing that his lips had only slightly parted, as though he had begun to speak but had stopped.

"Sonic?" Amy, sitting beside him, prompted, also watching him closely.

Replacing the confusion was an almost vulnerable look as Sonic shook his head ever so slightly.

"...I...I can't remember," he whispered, not wanting to hear his own voice, it seemed. It certainly served to puzzle everyone else in the room further.

"What do you mean?" Zooey cautiously asked, sat beside Tails.

"I mean," Sonic replied, "I can't remember when I met Dr Ro- Eggman. No... No, he called himself Robotnik back then. It was ages before we started calling him Eggman."

"You knew Robotnik before you knew me," Tails said quietly. He became the first one to whom Sonic established eye contact with since reaching Amy's house.

"Yeah, I can remember fighting him alone once..." he spoke softly, "But I don't know when we first met. He's just... always been there."

"You remember meeting Tails?" Blaze asked and recieved a very firm nod from the blue hedgehog.

"Sure I can!" he almost smiled, "That's a set event."

"But Eggman's always been there...?" Blaze trailed off, her tail slowly swishing from side to side as she tried turning over the facts in her head.

"You would have thought that the first meeting of your arch nemesis would be a set event too," Shadow then murmured deeply, from his hiding place at the end of the table beside Rouge, "So the question is, where does this Ira Robotnik come in?"