Today's lesson was about how to avoid meeting your doppelgänger, how to escape quickly if you do happen to meet, and if something does happen to prevent you from escaping, how to safely interact without putting too much strain on each other's personal timelines.
"You're very lucky that you just met yourself from your respective past and future," said Miracle Sonic, as he had been named despite his protests, "Doppelgänger from two different possible worlds are more difficult to deal with. They always end up fighting over whose timeline is the real one. Because they can survive without the other one existing, they can sometimes even turn violent and try to destroy each other. You need to learn to defend yourself against malicious copies of yourself, if you're going to do a lot of time travelling. However, it's always best to avoid meeting them completely, as you'll always take at least some damage from meeting them."
"So... which are you?" asked Modern Sonic, "From the past or from another possible world?"
"That's kinda complicated to answer. This place has its own rules when it comes to time travel."
"Have you met a lot of those evil doppelgängers?" asked Classic Sonic.
"They're like... well, a little like you were," he said, resting his head on his chin, leaning on the projector screen and sighing, "I had a hard time stopping them from trashing the place. It's something I don't really want to remember. Anyway, the most important thing to learn is how to sense if another version of yourself is around. You can already tell when each other are nearby. I want you to practice that technique until each of you always know where the other is, and you can tell each other apart from myself. You're going to practice sneaking up on each other until it's impossible for either of you."
"Sounds fun!" said Classic Sonic, already dashing away from the table at a speed that not only took him out of his chair but also flung the chair up into the air. Modern Sonic reflexively caught it, then vaulted over the table and chased after his past counterpart, yelling witty banter at him.
The lessons were held in a combined lecture theatre and observation booth in the middle of Tidal Tempest Zone. As well as being equipped with a projector so that marine biologists could explain their latest work, the fish tended to calm the two Hedgehogs down to the point that they could concentrate on the lessons for longer than five seconds. Failing that, the only exits were either in narrow corridors or underwater, which slowed them down when he needed to catch them again. Both Hedgehogs were fascinated by the tropical fish in the high-tech aquariums of the Zone. The project to preserve and even reintroduce so many species of fish that were rare on a galactic scale represented the height of the progress that the unseen janitors of the Miracle Planet had made towards turning their world into the perfect balance of technology and nature. Miracle Sonic enjoyed the view almost as much as he did the bizarre apparatus that now took up the entirety of Wacky Workbench Zone. Mostly made up of glowing capsules inside giant columns, crystal structures of various celestial bodies mounted on giant pedestals, heraldic emblems, archways to nowhere and endless brightly coloured glowing panels, he had been told by his astral guides that the mystical machine was designed to streamline the process of time travel, prophetic visions and guiding the planet on its destined journey, and that he shouldn't ask too many questions unless he wanted his brains to melt out of his ears.
He was secretly still amazed that it had been so easy to persuade the two Hedgehogs to come back with him at all. Tails had immediately approved of the idea, admitting that he had been worried about the effect of all the spontaneous time travel and dimension-hopping on the space-time continuum. Shadow was just glad to see the back of all the Sonics, and had promised to take over their duties in giving Doctor Robotnik a hard time in their absence. Rouge had gotten bored halfway through the meeting and stolen the Chaos Emeralds so that Knuckles would chase her. Amy said she remembered the Miracle Planet from her last visit and that it was the perfect spot for a romantic date. Miracle Sonic suspected that she had found her own way back to the planet and was stalking them even now.
The next few days had been a fairly uneventful, even calm process of passing on his wisdom as best as he could to his disciples. He couldn't really blame them for having the mentality of hyperactive four-year-olds when it came to learning the mysteries of the Universe. It was himself, not the other Sonics, who was the odd one out. Truth be told, he didn't even know how long he had been stuck in the time loop. He had given up counting, or fighting its effect on him, long ago. He was no longer behaving like Sonic, that was for sure. It was refreshing to at least have an example of how this person called Sonic was supposed to behave, so he could get in some practice. So, those days had been a time of mutual learning. His worst fears had been unconfirmed. Modern Sonic hadn't done any real damage to the space-time continuum and Classic Sonic had been acting steadily less homicidal, maybe due to the effects of the Chaos Emeralds wearing off. He still had an air of melancholy about him, often going for long walks at a pace that would normally be unbearably slow for him, humming downbeat tunes to himself and staring up at the sky, pondering something within himself, but it was the healthy reaction of a person who had received devastating news and couldn't do a single thing about it.
Still, the prophecy wasn't changing. If he had changed the future for the better, if he had at least unlocked the possibility of a good outcome, the dreams would have shown him the mended future at least once by now.
Something was still wrong. His gut instinct was telling him so. Not only with the Hedgehogs now, but with the planet itself. Maybe that was because he had brought the Hedgehogs to the planet. A sudden nauseating wrench of fear went through him as he realised how bad an idea that might have been. Breaking his promise that he would give them a five minute head start, he threw out his senses as far as he could, sweeping the entire planet until he found them.
Classic Sonic was heading into Quartz Quadrant Zone. Modern Sonic had picked up his trail and was following him - from what Miracle Sonic could tell, Classic Sonic didn't know he had been discovered. Miracle Sonic focussed his senses on the area itself, and...
He snapped himself out of his trance, yelping at the pain that lanced through his head. He shook his head until every single one of the cascade of needle-sharp, red-hot images was gone.