CHAPTER THREE

There was no words to contain her horror. Mouth slack and eyes wrought in despair, Bunnie fell to her knees and cried out loud. She had come back in the middle of Robotropolis. The ground was hard and cracked, baked with grime and pollution. Above her, the sky was a dark gray, thick with the choking smoke of the city. Nearby, a brook of foul sludge, black as ink, bubbled a foul order into the air.

But when she scanned the area around her, she found no buildings. Instead, the landscape was lined with tombs.

No, not tombs, she realized. Stumps.

Tree stumps.

Crawling on her hands and knees, she crawled over to the nearest stump and put her hand on it. This had been a tree as wide around as she was tall. She rubbed her fingers over it, trying to understand what this was, what it meant, what had happened. She loved the trees. They proved for them and had sheltered her from the elements and from Robotnik for a decade or more. But now, they were gone. Tombs was more correct than stumps, because what was left of the Great Forest was now a graveyard of the once beautiful greenery that had been her home.

"Oh mah stars. What happened?"

In the far distance, like a blight on the landscape, she could see the dark stain of Robotropolis. But here, where she stood, if she had her direction right, she was very much in the heart of the Great Forest beside the very same creek.

Bunnie stood to her feet and looked down. Her two legs were still robotic, as was her arm. Tears welling in her eyes, she wondered how. What had gone wrong?

Then the full impact hit her: Knothole! Sonic! Sally! Antoine! Tails! Rotor!

She let out a gasp and tried to look and gain her bearings, but the trees were gone, as were the markings. Frantic, she spun around and around, trying to gain a sense of direction until she looks down and realized she can follow the brooks until they join the river, which passed through Knothole.

The one hope is all the glimmer she needs. Bunnie set out for Knothole and ran tirelessly. The fifteen mile treks to and fro Robotropolis had kept her in exceptional fitness, so the run to Knothole was next to nothing for her.

When she finally arrived, she only knew it was Knothole because of the rubble. Of the common house and the huts, only blackened rubble remained. The stumps of the support beams under the huts jutted out like tiny tombs. The bridge's supports were like jagged teeth rising from the river and the common house had crashed to the ground and burned to cinder.

A foul wind blew a horrid stench through the air. Bunnie had to force herself to not cry at the sight of Knothole so ruined. She walked through the ghostly remains, circling around and taking in each terrible sight. Rotor's workshop looked as thought an explosion had gone off inside. The area around it was ankle deep in bits of rusted and useless machinery and gadgets. Rosie's hut was half-collapsed , with the hay and mortar walls corroded and broken beyond repair.

Something scuffed Bunnie's foot and she looked down. Something half buried in the ground stuck out and she reached down to lift it up. When she did, she spun the object around and yelped in shock. She held a skull, filled with dirt, small enough to belong to only one person in Knothole.

She dropped Tails' skull on the ground and finally collapsed to her knees, face in her hands, sobs racking her body.

Her grief lasted what seemed forever, but Bunnie knew she would accomplish nothing now. She had to find out what had gone wrong. What had happened here? Were any of the Freedom Fighters still alive?

She rounded the village, making note of every burned out building, looking for anything of use. Nothing jumped out at her. Everything here had been ruined for years. When had all this happened?

At last, she came to the Power Ring Pool and looked inside. Impossibly, the water still looked crisp and clean. The magic of the Power Rings was unknown to any but Sonic's Uncle Chuck and it didn't surprise her that it had some kind of purifying effect on the water.

She got on her knees and inspected it before dipping her face down and taking a long, deep drink. Sure enough, the water was as clean as it looked and she drank her fill.

Suddenly, a golden glow reflected off her face. Bunnie jerked back as the Power Ring Pool began to glow gold and bubble. She looked aside and saw the old trunk was still jutting out over the pond. She scrambled over in just in time to catch the ring as it floated up above the water. Marveling at the ring, she couldn't believe the old machine down at the bottom of the pond was still working.

Not knowing what else to do with it, she decided to hang onto the Ring for the time being.

"Drop it right now!"

She spun around at the sound of the voice and for a moment didn't recognize the figure before her. The blue fur and quills were the first thing she noticed, but the boy she knew always stood loose and easy with a boyish charm to everything he did.

This young hedgehog before her was aged beyond his years, his stance ready, quills bristling angrily. Eyes once playful now brimmed with fury; not trace of recognition flashed in them.

"Sonic?" Bunnie gasped, resisting the urge to rush forward and hug him. His angry appearance startled her, but she could only see half of him, the other half concealed in shadow.

"Who are you?" He asked, "How do you know my name?"

"Sugar-hog, it's me. Bunnie."

"Hogspit! Bunnie Rabbot died years ago!"

Bunnie yanked the hood off her head and waited for Sonic to recognize her, but that seemed slow in coming. He looked long and hard, squinting a little, before finally letting out a long breath.

"Bunnie…where the fuck have you been?"

Bunnie had heard Sonic curse only once before. When he had learned the word from somewhere-no one ever found out where and Bunnie was sure Rosie had never spoken the word-he started slinging it around in front of the other boys and once in front of Sally and Bunnie. However that one time in front of Sally and Bunnie was also spoken with Rosie standing right behind him.

Rosie had never before and never since had to apply a spanking to any of them. Sonic's blistered posterior had prevented him from running for three days and afterwards, potty mouth was never an issue again.

"What do you mean?" Bunnie asked. "Sonic, what happened here?"

"What happened? Eobornik happened! The hell are you talking about? What happened to you? I thought you were dead."

Bunnie approached him and as she came near, the shadows peeled away from the side of his body, revealing the deep set scar tissue that covered the right side of his shoulder and face. His mouth curled down in an unnatural sneer and his right eye dull and white.

XxXxXxXxX

Bunnie had no choice but to confess what she had done. Sonic listened to her stoically as they sat in front of a fire in a small cave not far from Knothole. She knew she could tell him, as he was the only person who could relate to traveling through time. He watched her with his unnatural sneer, but his face was hard to read. His only offering was a flask of water. He accepted her story without question.

"Ah don't understand what went wrong, Sonic. All ah did was keep mahself from getting' Roboticized. How did all this happen?"

Sonic let out a deep, ragged breath and erupted into a fit of violent coughing. Bunnie moved to sit next to him and put her arm around him until he stopped. When Sonic finally raised his head, his hands before him were flecked in blood.

"Sonic?"

"It's the air." he said angrily, "Yiffin' Robotnik's pollutants. I been coughing this shit up for a year now. Getting' harder to breath…harder to run. Every time I juice, I spend thirty minutes coughin' up blood and…last night, I passed out. Don't know how long, but I almost got caught. Don't know much of anything anymore. Not since it all went to shit a few years back."

Bunnie took Sonic's hands in hers. "Tell me."

Sonic swallowed, which made his sneer turn into an almost comical face. "It all went wrong with that robot. The one Robotnik made to look like Sally?"

"Ah remember. Ah gave her what for."

"No, you didn't." Sonic and Bunnie shared a short look. "Bunnie, you didn't have those robot limbs you got now. Sure would have helped us out. When we found her out, she ran ahead. I got stuck in some mega muck. You…"

Sonic had to swallow hard again.

"You came in and launched yourself at her. Hit her square in the jaw, but you bounced right off. That's when she…when I saw you….Bunnie, it was-ah, what did Sal used to call that? Uhm, point blank? She used that finger laser and you just…"

Sonic put his head in his hands and moaned. "I can't say it. But when she shot you, she turned it on me and did this!" He gestured to his face and shoulder. "Hit me so hard I thought I was gonna die. I used a Power Ring to escape. I ran into Robotnik's fortress and that's when I saw Sal. I was too late to save her. Robotnik got her."

Bunnie put her head in her hands. "No. no, no, no, it's all mah fault."

"Why?"

"That's not what happened. Not the way ah remember it. I kicked the stuffin' outta that she-bot and pulled you outta the mega muck. You saved Sally, we blew up Robotnik's factory, and went home."

Sonic growled and kicked a rock into the fire. "Why didn't I get stuck with that life? After I came back, I told everyone what happened. I had just gotten patched up when Robotnik attacked Knothole. The robot had given Ro-butt-nik the location and he brought everything he had against us. I did what I could, told Ant and Rotor and Tails to run, but they never had a chance. Not without me nearby. He did all that to Knothole. Everyone got Roboticized cause I couldn't save em'. My little buddy got hit by something in the head. In a day, they were all gone and I was the only left. I been hitting him here and there, but it's nothing. Without Sal's planning, I didn't know what else to do. Takes most of my time to just stay alive and I can't even do a decent job with that."

"Sonic, ah'm so sorry. Ah just wanted a normal life with a normal body. Ah never thought ah'd make so much a difference in everyone's life."

Sonic coughed twice and looked into Bunnie's eyes and she almost broke down into tears. His eyes were sadness personified and spoke in volumes of depth she could never hope to read. She did only what she knew she could and leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. "Ah'll make it right again, sugar-hog."

"How are you gonna do that?"

"Ah'll just go back and make things right. Ah'll use the…"

She froze. Sudden realization took her heart in an icy, frozen grip.

Sonic sensed this and asked, "What? What's wrong?"

"Oh mah stars, the Time Stones! Ah left them behind when ah came back!"