Twin wandering planets spiralled through the vastness of space in a never-ending journey. Their orbit around each other was tight but their gravitational fields never seemed to interfere with each other. A careful observer with a powerful telescope might have noticed that the way they almost clipped through each other had an aspect to it as though they didn't quite exist in the same Universe at all, but sidled in and out of their respective realms, somewhere beyond human comprehension. They could not have looked more different, and although both of them radiated majesty and beauty, it was a direct opposite sort of power and glamour. Only at the tightest point of their orbit did they almost seem to blur and merge into one. That was when they were most difficult to spot, as they were shrouded by the dark side of whatever they travelled to and from, giving the illusion that they completed each other and then cancelled each other out. It was a confusing appearance, but then, nothing was ordinary about those two planets.
One was a beautiful verdant planet of green rainforests and blue lakes, probably teeming with life, and it sparkled with a corona of rainbow lights, soft twinkling motes of cyan, magenta and lime green. An observer would probably correctly guess they were crystalline but would be completely clueless as to how so much rock debris of such varied colours emitting such bright light could have been trapped in the atmosphere of an otherwise Earth-like planet. Its twin planet was completely mechanised, a silvery smooth metallic orb, radiating a dull red light that felt harsh and menacing. Occasionally, something that looked uncomfortably like a weapons system large enough to destroy another planet loomed into view, but it seemed to be inactive. The twin planets did not threaten other inhabited planets. They did not approach other planets at all. Whatever their purpose was, it did not involve the rest of the Universe all that much. Like many twins, they simply wanted to be left alone. Occasionally, a flight of drones would emerge from the mechanised planet and mine out a local asteroid field or chase away an inquisitive explorer. At other times, strange waves of energy would pulse from the green planet, a process that caused its veil of gems to shine even more brightly. There would be a reaction with everything the light touched, both with objects in space and the fabric of space and time itself, but it was impossible for any current technology in the inhabited sections of the galaxy to determine what type of energy it was, never mind its purpose. A number of probes and exploration vessels, an unlicensed mining operation and in one case, a pre-emptive doomsday strike team, had all been sent to the planet by various species. None of them had returned, except for the ones whose wrecks had been dragged back by their own salvage drones.
Only one observer knew the truth of the twin planets. At least, he knew a few things that others didn't know and, as his ego was approximately the same size as one of the planets, he was under the illusion that he knew everything about them. One thing he knew for certain, was that the planets weren't threats as long as you didn't attack them first, although it was wise to keep a close eye on the mechanical one. They certainly weren't the enemy bombardment squadron that he had been tasked with predicting the appearance of, so he gave the order not to intercept them and to continue keeping all forces on standby. The fact that the enemy hadn't arrived was in itself noteworthy, almost as much as the reappearance of the Miracle Planet and its doomed counterpart. Not that he wanted to face an enemy he was not only outnumbered and outgunned by, but that he actually knew he was going to lose the overall war against. He had been banking on his foreknowledge of the future giving him an element of surprise in the coming battle. In short, he wanted to change the future he had witnessed during his bizarre journey through time. He just didn't want it to have already changed in a way that he couldn't predict.
It's a good job that the Miracle Planet has returned, thought Classic Sonic, I've already made a complete mess of the whole 'changing history' thing. Miracle Sonic will scold me for being an irresponsible time traveller again, for changing events in history without fully mapping out the chain of consequences, but at least he'll teach me how to do it right.
Classic Sonic didn't want to think about the worrying complication that the Miracle Planet wasn't supposed to pass by Mobius again for several centuries. He knew that something was going a little wrong on the planet - the most obvious clue was the existence of two iterations of the planet from two different timelines in the same time and place at once. Doppelgängers and parallel timelines were bad news - he at least remembered that lesson, probably because his teacher's urgent warning had been reinforced by a subsequent, rather painful personal experience of the danger. Doppelgängers from particularly nasty futures were even worse trouble. It wasn't *the* Bad Future, or at least it wasn't the one he had visited when he was fighting to free the Miracle Planet from Dr Robotnik's grasp - it wasn't chained to Mobius, for one thing - but it was close enough. He also knew that the version of himself that existed there at the moment could not be trusted. At the thought of that particular encounter, he winced and rubbed his legs to ward off the remembered pain.
"Are you okay there?" asked Alex Kidd, who was on his lunch break and sat on a three-legged stool in the corner eating a hamburger. The exiled Prince was the only person who believed Sonic. Everyone instantly accepted Sonic's story about time travel, it was the part about them losing the war in the future that had almost gotten him locked in a psychiatric ward. Alex Kidd had bribed the military to let Sonic out.
"Just an old wound," said Sonic.
"I thought you moved too fast to get injured."
"I walk into things sometimes," he replied, "It's nothing."
"You've been staring at that thing on the radar a long time now. You sure it isn't something we need to worry about? I could send out an Opa-Opa..."
Sonic shook his head frantically. The little biomechanical ships were skittish and enjoyed shooting at anything that scared them, "It's... it's an omen of bad luck back home, to see two wandering planets together like that."
"I didn't know you were the superstitious type!"
"I don't think it's really going to bring bad luck, but it's a big change. It's going to bring more big changes with it. I don't know if they're good or bad," Sonic was telling the truth, just not about the same subject as Alex Kidd thought they were talking about.
"I thought you knew the future."
Sonic looked at the display one more time. Just above the planets, there was a small constellation of five stars that he thought looked a bit like a bird. Tonight, there were six. The sixth hadn't been there before the planets arrived but it didn't look like it was a satellite of theirs. Somehow, this fact stayed in his head, more so than the existence of the planets and the change to the course of events in the war. This was significant. He didn't understand how he knew but he felt it deep in the instincts of a mind that had been subtly changed by too much time travel.
"So did I," he replied.