I was looking at my old DeviantArt page—you know, the one with all the bad shit you liked or drew during late elementary to middle school—when I saw it.
It was a faintly familiar drawing of my old Sonic OC.
Although calling it an OC or a drawing was generous.
In reality, it was just a recolor of Sonic himself—somehow worse than just tracing over official art—with jet black fur that was also on the arms, a tan as Shadow muzzle, sharp teeth that didn't make much sense, and glowing crimson eyes surrounded by black sclera. He was dressed in a fusion of Scourge the Hedgehog's punk aesthetic and Underfell Sans energy. This was before I understood that those characters actually had themes and stories to them, and were, in fact, not just vibes.
Back then, "cool" was the entire philosophy.
I looked at the title I gave the "drawing"—Sonic NEO Xtreme—and cringed so hard I had to sigh and put my hands over my eyes.
I should have closed the tab and watched Sonic Boom memes to distract myself from how much worse the world had gotten since I made that thing. Inflation, climate anxiety, social media doing psychic damage to everyone I know. The usual end of the world sampler platter.
But hey, boredom and depression are both a hell of a drug.
And so I reluctantly scrolled down.
Under the title was the lore. Of course there was lore. Past me never met a bad idea he didn't think could be salvaged with lore.
The text described "Sonic NEO" as a faulty clone of Sonic, created by "forces beyond the possibility of being known."
Whatever the actual fuck that meant.
Then came the bio.
Bullet points.
Capital letters.
Maximum confidence.
Fur Color: Obsidian Black
Eye Color: Crimson Red
Height: 4 Feet
Abilities: All of Sonic's, plus transforming into a "NEO Werehog" form during the night and crimson lighting powers
Clothes: A black leather jacket with torn sleeves, fingerless gloves with holes on the knuckles, and a long, tattered red scarf that always seems to billow dramatically even when there's no wind, showing off his perfectly built frame and black biker pants
Of course.
Because why wouldn't I give him the edgiest possible wardrobe?
The description practically screamed, I want this guy to look cool but also like he might stab you in a Denny's parking lot.
I scrolled further, bracing myself as best as I could.
The "story" section was worse. Some nonsense about NEO breaking free from his creators only to realize he was "cursed" with his Werehog form—seven feet tall, the general size range just about Sonic the Werehog fanart had Sonic as for some reason—doomed to view himself as dangerous. A misunderstood monster.
A tragic anti-hero.
Pre-teen angst layered over Sonic lore like bargain-bin fondant.
I groaned, rubbing my temples as memories flooded back. I remembered arguing in DeviantArt comment sections, typing essays on a touchscreen keyboard, defending this edgy mess with the ferocity of a medieval theologian. "He's not a Shadow ripoff," I'd insisted. "He's deeper than that." I had been twelve, which explained everything and excused nothing.
The screen flickered.
For a second—just a second—the image seemed to pulse. The red eyes glowed brighter than my phone screen should allow, like the pixels were bleeding light.
I blinked hard and quickly.
Sleep deprivation.
Eye strain.
My brain misfiring under the weight of nostalgia and regret.
I turned my phone off, rolled onto my side, and stared at the wall like I might find answers in the cracks. I pretended to sleep.
Then, slowly, I actually did.
When I woke up again, it was not in my bedroom.
The first thing I noticed was the smell: warm grass, ocean salt, something metallic in the air like ozone. The second thing was the sky—too blue, aggressively blue, the kind of blue that only exists in cartoons and childhood memories. I sat up, heart hammering, and felt dirt under my palms.
I was lying on a hill.
Not just any hill.
A Sonic hill.
Checkerboarded dirt.
Perfectly round palm trees swaying like they were looping an idle animation. Rings floated in the air nearby, spinning slowly, chiming softly like they were aware of their own importance.
"Nope," I said out loud. "Absolutely not. I can't loose my fucking mind now of all times."
I stood, legs shaky, and looked down at myself, half-expecting pajamas. Instead, my hands—my *hands*—were covered in black fur, fingers tipped with claws that looked like they'd been filed into points. The jacket sleeve rode up as I moved, revealing a slightly muscular forearm (about the level of Terios in Sonic X Shadow Generations) with a tattoo that read "X-TREME" in jagged fake kanji. "Oh *come on*," I muttered, voice much more...
What's the word I'm looking for?
Eh screw it.
It was edgy now.
My voice was *edgier*. Like I was a nameless thug in an early 2000s anime dub—the kind who'd get kicked through a plate-glass window in the first five minutes. I patted myself down, confirming the worst: fingerless gloves, biker pants tighter than my future (I mean, at least I wasn't naked but my balls were being choked on at this point), and that godforsaken scarf billowing dramatically despite the complete absence of wind.
"Okay, either I'm having a lucid fever dream, I had WAY, WAY, WAY, to much weed, I've finally lost it, or somehow this is real," I muttered, rubbing my temples—then freezing as my fingers bumped into unfamiliar, pointed ears.
Right.
I'm a Hedgehog.
I pinched my forearm—ow—and nothing changed. The sky stayed that stupid, impossible blue. A ring drifted lazily past, chiming like a taunt.
The second paragraph (as instructed): I took a deep breath—inhaling that weirdly nostalgic mix of grass and ozone—and immediately tripped over my own damn scarf.
Faceplanting into the dirt, I groaned into displaced dirt as I ripped the scarf off and threw it.
I slowly got up, brushing dirt off my stupidly tight pants, and immediately regretted it as the fabric pinched in places no fabric should pinch. "Alright, universe," I muttered, voice still annoyingly deep, "if I'm gonna be stuck as my cringe DeviantArt OC, could you at least give me the dignity of functional pockets?"
Nothing.
Just dead silence.
Just typical.
I looked at my outfit.
It was fucking terrible.
But it was this or being naked.
I sighed, adjusting the jacket collar—because apparently, I still had *some* dignity left as I started walking.
Where?
I don't fucking know.
And I don't fucking care at this point.
The landscape stretched out in that exaggerated Sonic way—hills too steep, loops too perfectly circular, flowers that looked like they'd been copy pasted every three feet. It was like someone had taken my childhood sketchbook and vomited it into reality. I kicked a pebble—which bounced with cartoonish springiness—and immediately regretted it as my stupidly pointy shoe (why the *hell* did I give him pointy shoes?) jabbed my toes. "Ow. Fuck. Why."
Then I saw the signpost—a classic wooden one, arrow pointing left toward "Emerald Coast," right toward "Station Square." The paint was chipped in that weirdly deliberate way video game assets are. I stared at it, the reality of the situation hitting harder than the time I'd accidentally googled "Sonadow" in a public library. This wasn't just some dream. The details were too consistent—the way the grass blades all bent at identical angles, the distant sound of a spring coiling somewhere.
My stomach dropped. If this was *the* Station Square... that meant the *other* things existed too.
Government robots. Ancient echidnas. That one scene from Sonic Adventure where Big the Cat fishes for Froggy in the middle of a goddamn highway.
I exhaled through my nose, my stupidly edgy voice making it sound like a growl. "Okay. First objective: don't get murdered by Shadow. Or—*fuck*—worse, run into *Sonic* and have to explain why I look like his edgy DeviantArt OC."
I went left.
Because beaches have fewer witnesses. And also because if I was gonna have a mental breakdown, I'd rather do it where the ocean could drown out the screaming. The sand squeaked underfoot with that unnervingly perfect "video game sand" sound effect.
Somewhere in the distance, a seagull (or the closest thing to a seagull that wasn't sentient) cried—but like, the MIDI version. I clenched my fists (which made my stupid fingerless gloves dig into my stupid knuckles) and muttered, "Cool. Great. Awesome. I'm in the *deepest* part of the cringe iceberg now."