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I'm also so sorry for making you guys wait, like, a full month for another chapter, I assure you, I'm not dead! Lets get started!

No Zone Archives: Drift

Family Dynamics

Zlaze stepped through the portal and found herself amid black stone plains, lava geysers sprayed up in the distance. She quickly found Ziles, who was busy investigating what appeared to be a corpse. He quickly jumped up and saluted to her.

"C- Commander Zlaze!? I wasn't expecting to see you here!"

The cat smiled, "Good to see you again too Ziles." Causing a blush to appear across the fox's face.

She had been the one to train Ziles when he first joined, before he decided that he was going to become a forensic scientist. As such, they knew one another rather well.

"What are you up to?" Zlaze asked.

"Well, that's the thing, I'm not certain." He gestured to the body in front of him, a white furred cat. "We've already had our first casualty. This dimension, T-615, was already really close to naturally falling out of alignment. Because of the problems that are now coming with these things, stuff is already starting to die… Believe it or not, but where your standing, this all used to be grassy fields.

Zlaze looked around, it was difficult to imagine, it just looked like a wasteland for forever. "That's… Terrifying…"

"Exactly my thoughts!" The fox exclaimed, "The scary thing is, if we can't figure out what's causing this, it'll happen to every dimension eventually…"

The statement hung in the air for a bit, letting it's full weight set in. Ziles returned back to the body he was inspecting.

"Have- Have you found anything strange?" Zlaze asked, still taken aback by the sheer scale of what they were dealing with.

"Well, it's- like nothing I've ever seen before… Everything is just… It's all just, nothing makes sense here, it's infuriating!"

For emphasis, he kicked a nearby rock, sending it sprawling down the hill. He walked back over to his spot, leaving small paw prints behind in the loose black dirt.

"Easy Ziles, easy!"

"Sorry, just got caught up in it. I'm just used to these things coming naturally you know?"

"Well, maybe you can tell me about what's so strange about it, I don't understand any of this stuff you know." Zlaze responded, a small smirk crossing her face as she did.

"Well, it seems like everything just, forgot how to work." The fox responded, hints of exasperation in his voice. "Like it all just shut off."

"Are you scared the same thing will happen to us?"

"That's the thing, it seems to only occur in natural denizens of the dimension, we were both born in the No Zone, so we're somewhat rooted to it. Otherwise, if we stayed here long enough, we'd end up like this." He replied, gesturing down to the body in front of him.

"So, how's it spreading then?"

"It's not, at least, not on a physical level. The other living things in this dimension seem to be fine, but its slowly going to get worse. It's all just falling apart, and I'm not sure a forensic scientist like me can do a whole lot about it."

"You're alright bud, maybe you'll be the one to finally figure it out!"

The fox blushed slightly at the compliment and continued his investigation. Zlaze, deciding she wasn't going to be much of help to him, decided to take a walk around, see if there was anything Ziles had missed.

After pacing around for a few minutes, she found the edge of the infestation, where the total breakdown of living organisms had stopped, for now. The thick green plant life was starting to disintegrate slowly, causing the black desert she was in to expand forward, inch by inch. As she neared the edge of the desert, she was put on alert by the sound of movement coming from the foliage. She lowed her hand down to her waist, resting it on the grip of her pistol. "Who's there? Show yourself!"

After a moment, a short white hedgehog emerged from the underbrush. He was much younger than she was, about six or seven if she had to guess. Zlaze's HUD on her helmet identified him as a alternate version of Silver, his Prime Zone counterpart. Not much info outside of that, however, knowing this, she could guess that the kid had a power of some sort.

Zlaze relaxed and waved the hedgehog, whom appeared slightly terrified at her stern demeanor earlier. She tried to salvage the meeting as best as she could, maybe he knew something she didn't.

"Hey bud, what's your name?"

"Silver…"

"Figures," Zlaze thought to herself. The only reason the Zone Cops even had a different name than any of their other incarnations was because the iconic 'Z' at the start of their name was added when the officially became a Zone Cop. It was done to remove confusion when dealing with alternate versions of their coworkers.

"What you doing all the way out here?" The feline asked, from what short briefing she had received, she new the nearest settlement was a sizable distance from here, what this hedgehog was up to was up for questioning.

The hedgehog seemed to tentatively approach Zlaze, emerging from the plant cover. "I was just looking around I've never seen anything like this place before…"

"Where are you from Silver?"

The hedgehog pointed off, "That way."

Zlaze gazed off into the distance, but couldn't see what Silver was referring to. But she did know there was a small town that direction. "How did you get that far on your own?"

In response, Silver's wrists started to glow a bright cyan and he teleported a short distance away before returning. Zlaze smiled.

The hedgehog was just about to speak to her again before he hid behind the officers legs as Ziles approached. She figured the small blood splatters on the foxes' uniform weren't doing a whole lot of good for the hedgehog's nerves.

"Zlaze, we've got… Who's that?" He asked, gesturing to the hedgehog currently cowering behind her.

She gently pushed him out from behind her, he still looked rather scared at the fox's appearance however, "This is Silver."

Ziles reached a hand out to him, "My names Zi-"

Before he could finish, Silver flinched backward. Ziles retracted his hand back in surprise.

"He's pretty shy," Zlaze explained.

Ziles let out a soft chuckle in response, "Well, you have always had a thing with children." He replied, a small smirk crossing his face as he did. "Well, when you get a second, head back over."

Ziles left the two of them alone as he returned to his post, double checking the readings that he had, he had figured out why none of this made sense, which could confirm a suspicion that he had had since the beginning, the events didn't look natural. The mass breakdown was being caused or triggered by somebody or something. He didn't even want to think about how much power it was taking to even pull one dimension out of alignment, much less thousands of them.

He found himself hyperventilating as he thought of it, it surely wasn't possible, he had to be wrong somewhere, right? But as he checked back over his math in a panic, it kept coming up as correct. His breathing continued to quicken and he had to sit down for a moment, he couldn't stop his hands shaking, until eventually it was too much for him to comprehend and he passed out.

-X-

"So, Silver, do you know what happened here?" Zlaze asked.

"Well, not exactly, I know this wasn't like this a few days ago…"

"Did you see any of this before?"

"There was a small patch of the black dirt this is all made of that appeared a day or two ago, I didn't think it was anything special."

"Did you tell anybody?"

"No…" The hedgehog nervously replied.

"It's alright, now, why don't you head back to your family. I'm sure they're wondering where you are."

Sliver nodded and vanished in an explosion of cyan light, Zlaze sighed to herself, there wasn't going to be a way of saving this one was there… The time they would need simply didn't exist.

She walked back toward where Ziles was, he was currently sat down, seemingly contemplating something. At least that's what she thought until he slumped down and fell to the side. She ran over to him and removed his helmet and tossed it aside.

"Ziles? Ziles wake up!" She exclaimed, violently shaking him in an attempt regain his consciousness. Just as she was about to activate her warp ring to transport the two of them back to HQ, the fox's eyes fluttered open. Zlaze let out a sigh of relief.

"Don't scare me like that! Are you alright!?"

After a moment, he responded. "A bit lightheaded, but otherwise, I'll be ok, just didn't get enough air…"

"Let the anxiety take over again?" She asked, having a feeling as to the culprit of Ziles' sudden lapse in consciousness.

A small smile crossed the fox's face, "You know me so well."

Zlaze couldn't help but playfully ruffle his bangs, "You dork! What did I always tell you about worrying yourself to death?"

"Don't worry about things you can't control…" Ziles replied, having memorized the phrase long ago. "Just worry about yourself…"

"That's right! I highly doubt that's what you were doing when you passed out, right?"

"You got me…" Ziles responded slowly rising back to his feet. "But you need to look at this."

Zlaze took a glance through his readings, sure enough, the cause of death on the body that was present was from dimensional destabilization, however, the cause of the destabilization wasn't natural, far from it in fact. While there were some basic attempts to try and conceal it, it seemed to be the job of a amateur. Which puzzled Zlaze.

"How would a amateur have figured out how to trigger a mass destabilization?" She thought, Chief Zamy would certainly want to hear about this. She continued with her questioning.

"Do you have any idea where it's from?"

"Nothing, I'd need a lot more to work with, as it stands, there's not much hope for this dimension, I'm sorry…"

"Why are you sorry? You did what you could."

Ziles didn't respond, Zlaze still pressured the fox for a answer.

"Ziles, with a crisis this big, we're going to lose some, as long as we prevent as much damage as we can, that's all that matters."

"I just- forget sometimes what's at stake with each of these, everywhere we go there's other living beings who have no understanding of what's going to happen to them. I want to do more…"

"We all do, but sometimes, everything you have won't be enough, and you can't let that stop you." Zlaze responded.

Ziles gave her a weak smile, and the two were silent for a bit. Zlaze finally broke the comfortable quiet.

"We best start heading back, Chief Zamy will want to hear this." They both activated their warp rings and teleported out, leaving the black desert behind.

-X-

Zamy still couldn't believe what she was hearing, Zlaze had confirmed her suspicions, it was artificial in nature, an attack, she had proposed.

"Why haven't we seen this sooner!?" Zamy questioned, "How did this big of an operation slip past us!"

"I'm not sure," Zlaze responded. "We're double checking all the readings, there has to have been some clue or slip up somewhere, there's no such thing as a perfect crime."

"Perfect, as soon as you have any suspicion, I want a team deployed, we need to stop this, now!"

Zlaze saluted and exited the room, Zamy sighed and sat back in her chair, whis was going to be harder than she had hoped…

Alright guys, hope you enjoyed! Feel free to follow to be updated and leave a review with your thoughts! Remember, there is a poll on my profile about the next story I do. Until next time!