Chapter 6: Blast To The Past
"Rose! How far from here did you leave the TARDIS?!" The Doctor had leapt up from his chair, his tall form nearly knocking the table over. His usual good cheer was gone to be replaced by wildly staring eyes and a frantic energy, letting everybody realize that for the first time they were actually in trouble.
"I, I dunno, maybe ten miles, I have no idea how fast we were going!" Rose waved her hands at him helplessly, her voice also on the edge of panic.
"What-?" Several people began to stutter, but the Time Lord had already dashed to the door. Hanging onto the frame with one hand as if some supernatural force was pulling him outward, he cast a panicked glance back.
"Tails! We have to get into one of your planes and fly to the TARDIS now! The fastest!"
"Wait." This had come from Sonic, who had also risen, now looking serious. "I know something faster." Within the blink of an eye he had disappeared, only to zip right back into their midst, now holding the head-sized green gem Knuckles had prized off him earlier.
"Sorry, Knux, but your ride home might have to wait. Now, everyone who's coming, grab a hold of me. I'll Chaos Control us there."
"'Sorry, Knux, but your ride will have to wait.' Hah. The way this day's been going I'd be up there faster if I built my own plane," the echidna muttered in the background, but the other Mobians were quick to grab their hero by the arms and shoulders.
"Knux? You coming?"
The echidna hesitated, then shook his head. "No. If Robotnik succeeds in whatever he's planning, then I have to protect the Master Emerald and Angel Island more than ever." He locked gazes with the blue hedgehog until Sonic finally dropped his eyes and nodded.
"Fair enough. I hope it won't come to that," he said, quietly. Then he shot Rose and the Doctor a curious look, all contemplativeness gone.
"And what are you two waiting for? Secure your ticket on the hedgehog express. Mind the spines, though, they're sharp."
The blonde girl exchanged a shrugging glance with the Doctor, but then both reached down and instinctively went for the two blue ears.
"Hey!"
"Sorry. But they're cute."
"I'll pretend I didn't hear that. Chaos Control!"
The Doctor instantly gasped. He had to admit that he had never expected anything like this (indeed, had felt slightly ridiculous crowding around the hedgehog and the gem) and now he was on a roller-coaster-ride of madness.
His surroundings had disappeared in a blinding white light that hinted at all the colours of the rainbow - and then some more. He first thought he had been thrown out of his TARDIS into the Time Vortex, except that this wasn't movement in time. It rather felt like a transmat - in a washing machine. It was wild, it was unpredictable, it was…Chaos.
And then suddenly there was solid ground meeting his face at approximately 9.81 meters per second.
"Hold it right there, Robotnik!" Unlike the Doctor (who was right now taking a closer look at Mobius' yellow and brown checkered earth), Sonic had landed on his feet and appraised the situation in an instant. They were back in the meadow where the TARDIS was parked – and surrounded by battle robots; the fat scientist had been expecting them. The blue hedgehog tensed up. His enemy was standing in the entrance of the Doctor's weird space ship and it was obvious that if he moved a muscle, Robotnik would have Rose and her friend shot. The self-satisfied grin of the human also told him that Robotnik knew he knew and relished every second of it.
Dazed, the Doctor at this point lifted his face from the ground where he had landed flat on his belly. Next to him Rose groaned in a similar state, muttering something non-understandable about certain hedgehogs and how she was going to kill them and produce sandwiches.
"Sorry, Sonic. But if I stay and chat any longer, I'm going to miss my flight. Goodbye for the last time…"
Ivo Robotnik slammed the doors of the TARDIS shut.
And the robots opened fire.
Complete mayhem erupted in split seconds, laser blasts and bullets flying through the air wildly, occasionally blasting into earth and other robots, letting them explode. It was obvious that this uncoordinated attack was merely a distraction maneuver – Sonic, Amy and Tails immediately had their hands full shielding their new friends, smashing into the fighting mechs before any of them could fire a blast that would actually have hit a target. But even while he was dodging, twisting and turning for his life, the Doctor could hear it clearly… the unmistakable grinding noise signalizing that his TARDIS had just been taken from him.
An explosion only a metre from his right let him stagger but he barely noticed it. Sonic had sliced the last robot in two, a quick glance assuring him that everybody was still left standing.
The blue hedgehog whirled around.
"Alright Buttnik, your last toy just went back to the box, so you better…wait a moment, where's he gone?" the hero of Mobius blinked in confusion at the space where just a moment ago the blue policebox had rested peacefully. Uncomprehending, he scanned the empty skies, then glanced at Rose and the Doctor for help, but the girl merely looked terrified and her companion stared blankly into space.
"No," he whispered. "No. no, no, no, no!" He buried his face in his hands, running them through his disturbed hair. "NO!"
"It…it just disappeared. With a vworp-vworp noise," Amy managed, looking as stunned as the rest of them, especially not having seen the eccentric space ship of their new friend before. "Err…is he okay?" she asked Rose tentatively, taking a step back from the Doctor who was still waving his hands in the thin air where the TARDIS had vanished.
"Uhm…no. This is kind of bad. The only time he ever abandoned his ship before is when he was ready to die. She is really important to him," Rose managed to explain, her heart going out to her distraught companion. Next, however, all heads turned as a shriek pierced the silence of their little battlefield.
"Sonic! What is happening to you?!" Tails was pointing at the blue hedgehog, horrified. The reason for his terror was that Sonic, still standing in front of them, had suddenly turned transparent.
"What?" Sonic's eyes grew wide as he stared at – and through - his own hands. And then met the eyes of the Doctor, which had all at once darkened with a sadness that seemed almost too much to bear.
The Time Lord seemed to have trouble to speak. "…Robotnik just killed you, Sonic." His expression turned pained. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."
"You mean…in the past? Because you said your ship travels through time, right?" Tails stared at the Doctor with wide eyes, his young intellect working in overdrive to compute the bizarre events of the last five minutes. "But…but he's still here, isn't he?"
"The time vortex is being disrupted this very minute. I can feel it." The Doctor's voice was strained as if he was suffering. "Robotnik went back to the past and killed Sonic a long time before today. But apparently - and this is mere guesstimation - at the same time somebody also went back and saved him. At the moment it is not clear whether Robotnik is going to succeed or not. So, Sonic is flickering in and out of existence, which is why he looks transparent – basically Schroedinger's Hedgehog."
Nobody laughed at the poorly-timed joke, but the only thing that seemed to matter was that the Doctor's spirits had slightly picked up as he started to explain things. Or tried to, anyway.
"Whose hedgehog?" Amy asked in puzzlement.
"Nevermind. Has to do with quantum. And cats. What I am trying to say is…" the Time Lord moved his hands in a way as if he was attempting to braid spaghetti. "People assume that time is a strict progression from cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly…" he gave a slightly disconcerted pause here, mostly because the expressions of his audience were starting to turn a bit wibbly-wobbly as well, "…a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff! That's it, basically."
He beamed into an assembly of question marks. The only exception was Sonic, who took the silence as a prompt to slap Tails on the shoulder.
"See? You could learn from him, li'l buddy, his explanations actually make sense. So, Doc, what next?"
Now the Time Lord looked slightly crestfallen again. "I don't know," he admitted. "Technically, he shouldn't even be able to pilot the TARDIS. That's Time Lord stuff."
"Believe me, if there's one thing Robotnik can do it's handling technology," Sonic gave a cynic smile. "But there's gotta be something we can do. Come on, Doctor, think," he said, for once using his new friend's proper address as the situation looked ever bleaker.
"As soon as the TARDIS reappears in this time, the new alignment will have solidified. Meaning, if Robotnik returns before someone can go into the past to save you, you will vanish completely."
"Right." Sonic nodded, looking grave but determined. "Do you know where he has gone? Or rather, to when?"
The Doctor nodded. "He's gone back 11 years, two months, 15 days, four hours, 29 minutes and 36 seconds exactly. My screwdriver can tell me that by analyzing the residual artron energy of the TARDIS, but I can't follow." His brow creased once more in unhappiness. Having silently listened to the exchange, Rose knew how much he suffered whenever somebody came to harm through his actions, be it directly or indirectly. To her surprise, however, Sonic looked far from desolate at their predicament.
"So traveling in time is the only problem, huh? Well, if this weird state of mine still allows me to Chaos Control, I think we can help with that…"
And with a wink and a flash, he had vanished.
"What is that?" Rose finally managed to ask. "Some sort of Christmas teleport lightshow?"
"Close. We call it Chaos Control." Tails smiled. "There's seven power gems called the Chaos Emeralds, and with them, certain individuals can warp time and space. They can also be harnessed for offensive attacks, like Chaos Spear or Chaos Blast. However, the only users capable of those techniques we know of are Sonic and-"
A blinding flash of light interrupted them as Sonic returned. The hand that wasn't grasping the Emerald was holding the arm of yet another new arrival, a black hedgehog that looked very similar to Sonic, but sported upturned head quills, red stripes across his limbs and spikes, as well as a patch of fluffy white fur perched on his chest. His eyes were dark crimson and looked at first very surprised, then very angry and then his fist landed in Sonic's face.
"…and Shadow," Tails finished happily.
xxx
"…so now we either go back in time and stop myself from becoming a rather sad special effect, or this timeline unravels and Robotnik rules Mobius. And for that we need you," Sonic rattled off his version of an explanation after people had managed to stop Shadow from killing the blue hedgehog. "All rather wibbly-wobbly, as I understand. And ow, by the way," Sonic finished, still holding one hand over his bruised eye.
However the black hedgehog, Shadow, was still scowling. "For some reason you appear to think that I would care whether you lived or died. Abducting me with a sneak Chaos Control is not making me any more likely to help you with this."
Rose could see the flash of anger darkening the eyes of the Doctor, but before either of them could say something, it was Amy that took a step toward Shadow.
"Well then how about this, you Ultimate Lifeform, if Sonic never lived to battle Eggman, then there wouldn't have been any reason for him to go and excavate you from Prison Island lab as a weapon to conquer Mobius two years ago. You'd either be his mindless slave by now or sleeping away your days in that tube until the day humans turn green! Now help us save my Sonikku!" Amy finished, accentuating her little speech with a rather vicious poke into a surprised Shadow's chest.
Rose shot a look at Tails. "Robotnik tried to use him as weapon? And he…slept in a tube in an underground lab?"
The little fox nodded. "That, and Shadow is also the Ultimate Lifeform created on a spacestation by Robotnik's ancestor, and he lost his entire family to a military raid half a century ago. It's…complicated. But the bottom line is, he mostly glares a lot."
"Uh-huh." Rose gave the Doctor a look, who shrugged. It basically said that at this point he didn't care anymore whether Shadow was a tentacle monster who sang operas, dated Captain Jack and feasted on small children, as long as he somehow helped them get the TARDIS back. The Time Lord clapped his hands.
"Right! Time to get back on track, here. How are you lot planning to achieve time travel, then?"
"We had this adventure in the future, some months ago." Sonic stepped forward, holding out his Emerald. "Shads and I learned a new trick. Apparently, all we need is a double Chaos Control to travel back and forth in time. You got your Emerald?" he asked the black hedgehog, who reluctantly pulled out a red gemstone from his quills.
"Yes. But we haven't done this since and there's no telling where or when we'll end up. It's one of your hare-brained ideas, as usual."
"Heh, no worries, Shads! That's why we've got the Doc. He's a Time King and everything," Sonic grinned and at the same time patted the time-traveler on the back – or rather, his upper thigh since the rest of the lanky Time Lord was quite hard to reach. "He'll guide us through this time-stuff in a cinch."
The Ultimate Lifeform gave the grinning Doctor a look that suggested he'd just as soon trust him with his life as proceed to eat his Emerald, but seemed to acquiesce.
"Very well. But the only reason I'll let you go ahead with this is because I am ageless, have nothing to hold me here, and if we end up in the stone age because of your idiocy at least I can go on to see this century again. Ready?"
The others nodded, coming together closer to grab a hold of Sonic (for some reason nobody wanted to hold Shadow's hand) again. Just before the two hedgehogs could shout their strange incantation, Rose shot the Doctor a look.
"Have you actually done this before? Ridden the time vortex without your ship or any gadgets?"
"No, never. The thing would tear you apart without the protection of a TARDIS or similar. But hey, it can never hurt to try, right?"
Rose opened her mouth to tell the Doctor that no, being torn to pieces hurt a lot, but then a chorused 'Chaos Control!' drowned out her words and next, her breath was driven from her lungs anyway.
xxx
It was amazing. The Doctor felt like he was a Time Toddler all over again, staring into the untempered schism, a gap in time that had scared him into running when he had been a child. He was within the roaring vortex, awed and absolutely terrified. Traveling through time like this was comparable to jumping out of an airplane with a parachute made from handkerchiefs as opposed to riding safely in the passenger cabin and bothering the stewardess for peanuts. The unbearable, beautiful symphony of Time itself sang its roaring song in his head, obliterating his consciousness and destroying the core of his being with its immeasurable power.
Except it didn't.
In the non-second after the immediate shock of entering the time vortex had waned, the Doctor realized with wonder that he and everyone was still alive. He could still feel the power of the time stream surging all around them, but they were shielded – as safe as in the TARDIS, Sonic and Shadow's consciousness was a protective bubble around them, Chaos Energy hissing when Time sucked and nipped at it as it was forced to part for the travelers. Mesmerized, the Doctor stared at the impossible colours swirling around them, greenish crimson mixing with infra-violet, all of it tinted blue…and then of course, giant letters spelling DAVID TENNANT spinning past. He'd never quite understood what they were doing in the time vortex, but no one besides him ever seemed to see them either. He was still musing, when, with a jolt, the Doctor realized that they were relying on him for guidance.
Here we go…it's my ship, the fate of this world, and the lives of these people at stake now.
As always, no pressure.
He concentrated. And picked it up.
Amid the overwhelming symphony of the vortex, in between the roaring and hissing and surging of the energies surrounding them, he could hear it – the faint singing of his own telepathic space ship, the TARDIS. She was crying for him, exactly eleven years, two months, 15 days, four hours, 29 minutes and 36 seconds ago.
The Doctor reached out to the time stream and squeezed.
xxx
This time, when they were dumped back into the world, it was only Rose, Tails and Amy that fell over. The blonde human idly wondered whether there was some universal rule that thought sidekicks with aching bums were funny.
"This…this is my old school." Sonic's voice sounded strangely strangled and they all took in their surroundings for the first time. It was a meadow similar to the one the TARDIS had stood in, indicating that they perhaps hadn't travelled in space as far as in time.
"Where's Shadow?" Tails asked dizzily, climbing back to his feet.
"Probably lost contact and got teleported somewhere else. We'll collect him later," Sonic muttered absent-mindedly, still lost in their surroundings.
A hundred yards distant from them stood the wooden school house Sonic had been staring at, a dirt path leading from it through the grass to other dwellings further in the distance. A small green hill, a forest and a freaky giant stone loop-de-loop surrounded them on the other sides. It looked all very idyllic, especially with young sapient children of various ages and species now emerging from the front doors, apparently on their way home from school. More than a few of them shot the group goggle-eyed looks, which wasn't very surprising – the Doctor thought that for two neon-coloured hedgehogs, a twin-tailed fox, the only human girl for miles plus the last Time Lord in existence, they should probably try to sell them tickets for ogling.
And then the screams erupted behind the hill.
"Chaos," Sonic whispered. "That's me."
To be continued…
Heeeh, hope you liked! I know I said last week that the next update wouldn't be for a bit, but hey, you got lucky...:P But yeah, pace finally picking up now! ;) And no, I don't even think there's any continuity errors in this one, I'm fairly proud...thanks to the wonderful petite-dreamer as well, of course! Today's random remark shall be about MMPWF, or maybe Massive Multiplayer Public Water Fights XD, and how much fun it is to travel to Frankfurt to participate in a giant, hundreds-of-people flashmob having one in the middle of the city. Other than that, I'm seriously concerned about how Eleven seems to do more kill than good, but then again, that could be Tennant withdrawal. :P I should go and watch my new Casanova DVDs...if you read, please review?^^