The sun had now set and Sonic and Tails were taking Blaze on a tour through their humble abode – even if it was far from humble in every sense of the word. For a home that only accommodated two Mobians, it was quiet massive with each of the six different zones serving their own purposes. The garage had been made at the hollowed out base of the tree and had two planes and a car parked in it. The storeroom was also located on the base of the tree, a relatively large shack built on the side of it where Tails put all of the things he didn't know where else to put including failed projects of his. Higher up was the main salon where they would often find themselves relaxing at the end of the day, consisting of a dining area, lounge, kitchen, and bar. In the upper level of the hollowed out trunk was Tails's lab where he did most of his experiments. The last two zones were the living spaces, with four rooms and only one bathroom – a flaw in design – and finally, their trophy room.
While Sonic and Tails showed her around the aforementioned trophy room, they spoke a bit about what had been happening in their lives since they last saw each other. Sonic had been explaining the Soleanna Incident in more detail than he had ever done before, revealing to both Blaze and Tails that he, Shadow, and a hedgehog named Silver had used the seven chaos emeralds to defeat a creature known as Solaris. Sonic had searched her expression for when he mentioned that name, Silver, but she didn't seem to emote in the slightest at his mention. Perhaps our time travelling messed with whatever world he comes from too, thought Sonic as he explained further.
"And this black hedgehog," Blaze said, pointing to a framed photo of Sonic and Shadow in front of the capital building in Central City, Sonic with a thumbs up and a massive smile while Shadow stood turned away from the camera with his arms crossed in his typical fashion, "this black hedgehog is the one you call Shadow?"
"Yeah, it took the two of us and Silver sharing the power of the chaos emeralds to defeat Solaris," Sonic explained. "Not something I'm typically used to. Only other times I shared the power of the emeralds was when we were sorting out the Biolizard situation on the Space Colony ARK and when I gave Tails and Knuckles a taste while we fought Neo Metal Sonic." As Sonic explained, he couldn't help but think that she didn't know or understand anything he was saying. Even if their time travelling hadn't been a factor in her memory loss, she was so removed from their world that they doubted she even knew who Metal Sonic was or what the Space Colony ARK was. She knew so little of their adventures.
"The power of your emeralds can be shared, is it?" Blaze asked, still sipping at her smoothie. "A curious thing to hear. I doubt the same is possible with the sol emeralds from my world."
"Well," Tails began, "if what Sonic claims is correct then your sol emeralds may just be interdimensional counterparts to our chaos emeralds, just with a different name. In that case, I can imagine your emeralds would behave the same way as ours would."
Blaze seemed unconvinced, shaking her head slightly at the fox's comment. "I doubt our worlds are that closely tied," she said, turning from the photo to an air-board mounted on a shelf like a trophy titled 'Blue Star', her back to Sonic and Tails. "Only because you suggest that we've crossed paths and worlds before, doesn't mean our worlds are so closely tied."
"That depends entirely on what you think the chaos emeralds are," Tails said.
"Here we go," sighed Sonic as he dropped himself onto a couch. "Tails, you don't have to explain your whole theory on the emeralds and their pow—"
"So according to my theory," Tails interrupted, "the chaos emeralds aren't just a couple of stones with some really high power levels. They're unlimited sources of energy. They've been used to power up a gigantic water creature, the eclipse cannon like three times, a laser that split apart the planet, and Sonic a couple of times yet they never run out of power. Even when Sonic can't maintain his chaos powered form for long, it's because of his own bodily limitations rather than those of the emeralds. And even when they appeared to have been drained when the world was split apart, turns out the energy had just been transferred to Gaia Temples rather than depleted. The energy in these emeralds is unlimitedBottom of Form and, if I am correct, it is a necessary constant in the universe."
"How so?" Blazed asked.
"Perhaps this is the same in your world but do you ever hear stories from different religions and mythologies starting with 'In the beginning, there was nothing' or 'In the beginning, there was only chaos'? Well according to my theory, this chaos was a shapeless and timeless mass of raw energy. They say before the big bang, time didn't exist, right? Well, if that is the case, whatever this 'nothingness' was, whatever this 'chaos' was had the elements necessary within it to not only kick-start the big bang but create and manipulate time and space. I don't know how it was triggered, but I believe that the universe expanded from that 'nothingness', from that 'chaos'. And then there was matter and time and gravity and space and laws of physics and all that constitutes our universe today, although in its most rudimentary form. Do you follow me so far? Good. Now, what I think is that the 'chaos' that made this universe still exists within it, not congealed into the matter that we are all made of but in a purer form. I think this 'chaos' is what we call chaos energy and I believe that it is within the chaos emeralds. That's why the laws of physics and chemistry bend to the emeralds. That's why time can be frozen and rewound. That's why we can use them to teleport and create massive energy output from little input, how we can power eclipse cannons and fancy machines, how we can do so much. The chaos emeralds are the remnants of the great power that once was before matter was a factor in the universe. Do you know what that means?"
"No one knows what it means, Tails," Sonic cut in, "not even you."
"Exactly!" Tails shouted excitedly. "No one knows! It's an entire field of study that calls into question all of science's laws, something no one has fully wrapped their minds around yet because the only people in the world who have studied these emeralds extensively enough are Gerald Robotnik and me."
Sonic noticed Blaze cringe at the sound of Robotnik's name and he wondered if it was the family name or that of the individual that made her react like so. She now had her full attention on the two of them – mostly Tails – and appeared to be just as fascinated in what the fox had said as he always wanted someone to be. "And you believe that if your chaos emeralds are a constant in your universe, they must be in mine as well?"
"Exactly!" Tails announced. "But then again, I don't know if whatever this chaos force is has the reach to influence multiple universes or if there is only one to which an amount of it can apply at once. If the latter then we're correct to assume that you sol emeralds and our chaos emeralds are the exact same thing, just in different dimensions and with different names."
Even Sonic, one who was rarely moved by scientific babble, found there to be a lot of interest in what Tails had just said. If the fox was right then in whatever dimension they travelled to, there would always be emeralds with the power and capability to break the laws of physics. "With emeralds of such power," Blaze began, "I'm sure your world must have a guardian of the emeralds as well, mustn't it? Who is responsible for protecting the emeralds?"
"We don't have one guardian for the emeralds," Sonic explained. "They're kind of all over the place."
"Well do you know where they are?"
Sonic and Tails looked to each other. Though they may have enjoyed speaking of the adventures they had with and their theories regarding the emeralds, speaking of their whereabouts and who watches over them was always an uncomfortable topic. They often preferred to ignore such things like exactly where they were and just know that they were safe wherever as long as they were separated. But Sonic knew that he needed to try to stimulate her memory, see if she could remember him or the emeralds or at least why she was on their world.
"We have one," Sonic explained. "Tails keeps it in his lab to run experiments on. If it weren't for it, he wouldn't have had that lovely dissertation he just worded out to you."
"There's another one in the University of Spagonia," Tails added. "Only the greatest minds in the world get to work with it. They mostly try to see if one can be exploited to provide unlimited sustainable energy."
"Another one is in the hands of GUN," added Sonic, "Guardian Units of Nations. They're probably the most qualified to keep the emeralds safe, even if they might not be the most trustworthy with exactly what they do with them."
"The fourth is with a friend of ours," said Tails. "Shadow the hedgehog. We don't see much of him but we trust that he can keep it safe."
"And the fifth is in the hands of non-other than Doctor Eggman," Sonic sneered. "Obviously we'd rather it be in someone else's hands but there's not much he can do with just one so no one's really gone out looking for it just yet."
Blaze nodded, waiting for them to continue. The two had stopped. There was a momentary silence before she eventually asked, "And the other two? I'm pretty sure that there are seven of your chaos emeralds. Where are the last two?"
"We don't know," Tails shrugged.
Clearly Blaze found this more alarming than her two hosts as her eyes widened and her jaw lay slightly agape. Was there something she wasn't getting? "If the chaos emeralds are as important and powerful as you've just said they are, Tails, wouldn't it be best if you two always knew where each one was?"
"To be honest," Sonic began, "I'm kind of glad no one knows where the other two are. If we're lucky, they'd be sitting on a shelf in a gem store next to other equally massive yet practically useless gems so no one knows they're important. Better yet, they'd be at the bottom of the ocean or somewhere no one'll be going any time soon. The emeralds are better off when they're as far away from each other as possible and best way to keep it that way is if no one knows where they are."
"But you were just talking about all the times the emeralds were used to save the world. Don't you think it would be best if you just held onto them and waited until the next time Eggman or anyone tried to do something sinister?" Blaze questioned.
"When I used the chaos emeralds to defeat Perfect Chaos," Sonic said, pointing to a framed photo of himself in station square, "it was only after the chaos emeralds had been used to make Chaos as powerful as he was in the first place." Blaze hadn't recognised it as him until she focused on the bodily similarities in comparison to the colours and the shape of the hair. He appeared to be a completely different person with glowing bright and golden fur, his quills turning upwards, and his once green eyes a harsh hue of red. It was framed with the name 'Super Sonic in Station Square' on it. "When I used the chaos emeralds to defeat Biolizard on the ARK," he added, pointing to artificial chaos 0 helm, "it was only after Shadow and Eggman used the emeralds to blow up half the moon." He moved his finger to point to a newspaper with a front cover featuring what looked like Sonic running away carrying a small chao and a frog. Blaze wondered what the significance behind that was. "When we used the emeralds to defeat Metal Sonic, it was only after he had combined and copied the chaos energy's data to become Neo Metal Sonic. When Shadow used the emeralds to save the earth from the Black Arms, it was only after they had used the eclipse cannon to destroy Central City and teleport the Black Comet onto the earth. I won't get into what happened in Soleanna," Sonic said, "but do you want to know what really made the whole world decide that these emeralds shouldn't be kept near each other?"
Sonic moved his finger and pointed to a small green bauble necklace, to whom it belonged, Blaze was not sure, under a framed photo of the globe. The globe was fragmented, as though it was a shattered sphere with each piece suspended in the air apart from each other while still close enough to make a somewhat spherical shape. The centre of the world, the molten core, was visible from the view from space. Blaze had seen the photo when they had walked in but she had thought it to be an artistic work. Now that she was seeing Sonic point directly at it, she had to acknowledge it for what it was. "What happened there?" she asked.
"I saved the world, again," Sonic explained. "Used all seven emeralds to transform and defeat Dark Gaia once and for all, putting all of the world's continents back together and bringing about a brief period of peace. But it was all after Eggman used the emeralds to break the world apart in the first place. That time, the rest of the world had to get involved. It wasn't like when Eggman took the time to gather all the emeralds to power the eclipse cannon and just threaten to destroy Mobius. This time, he had all seven from the get-go because I led them to him and he used them to successfully break the planet into pieces. It wasn't just me having my adventures anymore after that. At that point, the rest of the world had decided that these emeralds were a complication to world peace. It was then that everyone started to realise, including me, how much of a risk the emeralds really were."
"That's why we keep them separated," Tails added. "If one person has them all, they can be stolen so much more easily. Or that one person can think they have the choice to change the world in ways no single person should have the power to. There's just no reason why it isn't better that they remain separated, nor is there a reason to make our knowledge of where the last two are necessary or beneficial to anyone."
They had made convincing arguments. For a short while, Blaze had said nothing and averted her gaze from both Sonic and Tails. She stepped out the trophy room and into the cool night air and saw as fireflies began their ascent into the sky and around the leaves of the tree. Sonic and Tails followed shortly after her. "I'll not pry on your emeralds any longer. I understand what you're trying to say."
Neither Sonic nor Tails had anything left to say on the matter. They had done enough talking for one day, they thought, and decided that they'd give Blaze the full night's rest before either of them starting asking her hard questions. What could she remember? Why was she in their world? How did she get to their world in the first place? It would all be answered on the morrow, they decided. Tails had shown her over to where she'd be staying, a small room with a bed large enough to accommodate a full sized adult human rather than a Mobian. If Blaze had any things to unpack, she might've done so but instead she just kicked off her shoes and climbed right onto the bed, not even crawling under the sheets. She lay on the bed the way a non-Mobian cat would and let out a slight purring sound as she got comfortable. Tails thought he'd have the time to tell her the morning routine and how the shower times worked but she was already out as soon as she touched the bed. The fox wished her sweet dreams quietly from the door and left for his room, wondering exactly what it was a semi-amnesiac cat from another dimension would dream about.