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Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five year mission – to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before.

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Glass exploded against the wall of a bar, the shards tinkling down in a glittering shower of dangerous confetti.  A blue hedgehog just barely had enough time to duck his head behind a scuffed bar to avoid being pelted in the skull with another accurately thrown shot glass.  He poked his head from the table to peer at his rather angry looking customer that seemed quite fond of destroying public property.  His uncle was going to have a fit once he saw this mess, but it wasn’t his fault!  Who knew he wasn’t supposed to cut off a drunk Mallasion when they were on a binge?

It was a lesson well learned.

“Hey buddy, have I seen your face before? You’ve got the charming charisma of a TV star, were you on LOST?” The bartender tried for small talk.

The hedgehog ducked again to avoid getting a bar stool hurled at him.  He crawled behind the bar to avoid further attack, taking note that he really needed to clean the floor sometime soon.  He peered around the corner to see the slime alien lumbering towards the bar.  The hedgehog tucked into a ball and rolled out of the way.  Just in time too, as the alien oozed over the ledge, landing in the spot where Sonic had been crouching.  The gelatinous slob.

The alien began to raid the supply of liquor, upending bottles and throwing the stuff he wasn’t interested in over his shoulder. Emerald eyes narrowed with annoyance as he realized his uncouth friend was taking the good stuff.

Oh, it was so on.

The bar had been cleared out as soon as the ugly lug began to throw a tantrum, so he didn’t have to worry about anyone getting hurt in the cross fire.  The bar tender had stayed behind to try and reason with the intolerable alien.  Or to go down with the ship in a proverbial sense, because if the alien didn’t kill him – his uncle would.  Either way, the hedgehog was a dead man walking anyway.  He jumped to his feet and took stock of his surroundings.  Attacking a monster comprised seemingly out of slime was not a great idea.  Not only would his limbs get stuck inside its body and if caught for too long, the alien’s skin could secret a type of burning poison that would give him one hell of a rash.  But he had a plan.

A rather bad one, but he was confident it would work.

“Hey ugly!” He shouted, darted to the side of the room with such speed it was almost hard to believe the mobian was capable of the feat.  It was even more surprising that the alien actually looked when the bartender shouted at him.  He would have a chuckle out of this later since clearly the alien wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box.  Now he just needed to make it angry.

Well...

Angrier.

Lucky for him, the hedgehog had the particular skill of enraging anything that breathed.  Especially while they were drunk off their tails.  That talent of his would come into handy. Unfortunately he was a bit strapped for source material on slime ball aliens.

“Did you get your looks from your MOM?” Sonic shouted, “Because that’s a face not even a mother could love!”

It was hardly a serious or malicious insult, as far as snarky remarked went, it was one of his worst, rating amongst the ones he had said when he was a cub in grade school. It said volumes about how drunk the alien was when the third grader jib actually worked.

The alien lunged for him and the bartender skidded back, his impressive speed coming to his aid.  He hadn’t expected that to work.

It was ten minutes later, but the hedgehog felt like it had gone by in a blink of an eye.  At the same time it had felt like an eternity.  The fight had been jarring and painful as Mobians were not as physically adept at fighting species that were better equipped at it.  The bar tender’s speed was the only thing he had to his advantage and it had taken all of his impressive cunning and improvisation to lock the Mallasion in the freezer.  The fight could have been over a lot faster had he been in an open area, but the bar wasn’t built for a race course.

Exhausted and quills askew, the hedgehog walked out into the common area of the bar, thinking he could very much use a drink himself right now.

Only to stop dead at the dozens of phasers pointing at him.  A speaker blared from the outside.

“Fugitive 0157246, you are wanted by the law for the first degree murders of officers Monroe, Vera, Embank, and Tifa.  Any move you make will result in immediate vaporization!”

The hedgehog remained absolutely still, doing a great impersonation of a statue if not for the fact that his ears were twitching with mad confusion on the top of his head and his eyes were taking in his surroundings once more.  It was an impressive feat for him to stand so still all things considered, but when he was so tired and had that many weapons pointed at him, he wasn’t going to start kicking up a fuss.

At least now he knew where he had seen that joker’s ugly mug before, “ A wanted fugitive huh?” He said, looking far calmer than he was, “And here I thought he just looked like the soap scum on the bottom of the sink, an easy mistake to make.”

The officers did not look impressed by his joke.

“Uh, I locked him in the freezer,” The bartender continued a moment later, feeling awkward under the officer’s stony gazes.  And their weapons. This comment seemed to interest them and the hedgehog found himself being ushered out of his own bar.

Soon he found himself sitting at a hovercraft outside, tricorders to measure his health being waved in his face until a medic whipped out a bruise kit and began tending to him.  Not that the hedgehog took it quietly.

“I’m fine, really!” He whined, his head straining from one side to the other, trying his best to see what was going on and not making the medic’s job any easier, “What’s going on? How did you guys track him down anyway?”

The medic scowled at the hedgehog but didn’t reply.  Before he could pout and pester the man for a answer though, a deep voice from behind him spoke up.

“One of your clients at the bar alerted the authorities with his description, and yours – Sonic the Hedgehog.” The bartender whirled around and the medic drew away, hands thrown up in a gesture very clearly saying ‘I give up!’

Green eyes watched the newcomer with careful consideration.  He was a mammoth, huge and tall.  He was wearing a GUN coat which bore the Starfleet insignia and had his arms folded behind him, looking serious yet casual at the same time.

“How do you know my name—...” Sonic asked, pushing up off the craft and eyeing the man.  He eyed the insignia carefully and managed to ascertain his rank, “...—Captain?”

This earned him an amused look.

“My name is Captain Mogul, and I know who you are, because you’re the only blue hedgehog around in these parts aside from your Uncle Charles,” The captain answered, “You’re your father’s son.”

Sonic already didn’t like the way this was going and his expression closed off, a cocky grin flickering over his face as he dug sneakered heels into the ground, “Yeah, so? That’s generally the way those things work.”

Mogul gave him a patiently amused look.  His arms folded over his chest and he nodded, “It was impressive for you to take on the fugitive by yourself.  A bit harebrained and reckless, but impressive none the less.”

Sonic eyed the captain warily, as if unsure how to react to such a compliment, “Well harebrained and reckless is how I operate sir, gotta keep them on their toes somehow.”

The captain seemed to agree with him as he was nodding, “Enlist in Starfleet.”

At Sonic’s baffled look, he continued.

“Your father had a similar ideology,” Mogul muttered, “He died on the USS Tornado, saving the lives of over eight hundred people, including the lives of your mom – and you.”

Sonic’s ears laid back as the familiar guilt that comment hit him squarely in the gut.  He couldn’t help but resent it whenever someone mentioned his old man.  Days alternated between him being proud of Jules, and hating it whenever someone so much as breathed his name.  He wasn’t sure how he was feeling about it now, but he knew that his ma had never quite gotten over her mate’s death. 

Sonic disliked it whenever she looked at him and her eyes fogged over.  It was like she was seeing Jules instead of Sonic. Seeing ghosts that were no longer there.

“He was captain of the ship for twelve minutes,” Mogul said softly, “He went down in the books as one of the best around. I dare you to do better.”

“The ship leaves at 0800 hours,” Mogul nodded at Sonic one last time and turned around, walking back the way he came and leaving the blue hedgehog to his thoughts.

Green eyes flickered up to the starry night sky contemplating what the captain had said.

Enlist in Starfleet, huh?

A small smirk ghosted over his fawn muzzle.

He rubbed his bruised cheek and stretched out, the muscles in his legs tensing. Green eyes burned as the first stirrings of adventure began to creep up in Sonic’s mind. 

He’d do better than his old man, he decided then and there.

He’d captain the best ship around with the best crew Starfleet had ever seen.

And he’d last for more than twelve minutes.