Sonic was sleeping, Amy had placed her picnic blanket over him like a duvet, not that there was much point, there was no wind to make him shiver here in White Space.

"So what do you think's wrong with him?" Rouge asked, as Tails returned from his umpteenth check to see if Sonic was still breathing, he had been stuck in a very deep sleep for some time now.

"Isn't it obvious?" Tails asked, rolling his eyes, "he clearly hasn't slept since he got here, that device…" he pointed towards the pile of scrap metal that had once imprisoned Sonic "…must have needed to keep him awake in order to work."

"But why?" Amy asked, "wasn't that thing just for sucking chaos energy out of him?"

Tails didn't know the answer, he was quite knowledgeable when it came to manipulating chaos energy, he'd needed to be in order to power some of his machines with the Chaos Emerald as safely as possible and it was very easy to overheat his creations when using chaos. But he didn't have the slightest clue how chaos outside of the Emeralds themselves worked.

"You can't take chaos out of someone, it doesn't work like that," Shadow sighed, he'd had his eyes closed and his arms folded, thinking about what to do next. When he opened them, he'd found the whole team staring at him expectantly.

He sighed, deciding there was no way to avoid having to lecture them.

"Look…the ability to control chaos is really hard to explain, people like me and Sonic, who can control chaos, it doesn't come from inside us, if it did I wouldn't need chaos in the atmosphere to create chaos spears, I could just use my own energy. We're just like magnets for chaos, it swarms around us, we can just direct it through ourselves, we don't create it." Shadow explained. "Chaos is just attracted to particular people, usually those who are themselves pretty chaotic."

"You make it sound like chaos is alive," Rouge responded.

"Maybe it is, after all the Master Emerald is controlled by the stupidly named Chaos who lives inside it. Well him and Tikal." Knuckles suggested.

"So, this machine wasn't designed to extract chaos, only to redirect it using Sonic as some kind of dynamo or generator to alter the type of chaos energy that is produced." Tails said.

"That's right, but using chaos requires conscious thought, so luckily Sonic won't be sending any Tornados after us as he sleeps," Shadow said.

"But when he wakes up?" Rouge began, looking at Tails, "he's clearly lost his mind, hell I thought he was going to slice you in half!"

"I knew they were just empty threats, I'm certain now it's definitely Sonic, anyone else would've just gone straight through me if they were that angry," Tails said confidently.

"But Tails, has Sonic ever threatened you before?" Rouge wasn't letting this go.

"Well, no but…"

"Exactly. He's changed, there's clearly something wrong with…"

"He's been stuck here for a whole year!" Amy shouted at Rouge, "of course he's angry, I bet you get cranky if you miss a single night!"

"He wasn't 'cranky' he was insane!" Rouge shouted back.

Amy and Rouge continued their shouting match, Tails couldn't be bothered to break it up this time. So he, Shadow and Knuckles walked back over to Sonic, Tails quickly lent down to see if he was okay, then stood back up.

"He's definitely still sleeping" Tails assured himself more than the others.

"How long has it been now?" Knuckles asked.

Tails sighed, exasperated with Knuckles.

"Time doesn't work normally here Knuckles, how many more times do I have to say it?"

"Well yeah but there must be some way to tell how much longer he'll be out" Knuckles whined, "besides if there was no time here, then why would Sonic even be tired if he hasn't even been awake for any amount of time?"

Weirdly Knuckles' comment was sort of accurate, but it really made Tails' brain hurt.

"Look, he'll wake up when he's ready." Tails said, wanting to change the topic. "What we need to do is work out where we are going next. Do we go back home or into Blaze's world?"

"What do you mean? There's no way we are going home, we need the Chaos Emeralds back in our world." Knuckles decreed.

"But think about it Knux. Sonic isn't in good shape, he needs to rest somewhere, and isn't our world more peaceful without chaos? A full year has gone by without any killer robots, any monsters, any carnage or destruction."

"Or things to do" Knuckles continued. "Besides if no Chaos Emeralds means peace for us then the Chaos and Sol Emeralds combined must mean bad things for Blaze."

"If Eggman is harming innocent people somewhere then that's where I have to go," Shadow stated, "we have to keep going Tails, we can't split up, you and the Master Emerald are our only mode of transport."

"Yeah but…"


Sonic stirred slightly, before stretching, sitting up and opening his eyes, he turned to see Tails, Knuckles and Shadow and he could hear Rouge and Amy bickering somewhere out of sight. This was going to be an awkward conversation.

"Oh erm…hey guys" Sonic began, removing the picnic blanket.

"How are feeling Sonic?" Tails asked, a little hesitantly.

"Better, little bro'" Sonic answered, standing up and ruffling Tails' hair. Normally Tails would shake out of it and moan about being treated like a little kid, Sonic was happy to see Tails just smile at him this time, he had missed him. Of course he had, Sonic had been stupid to think otherwise.

"Good to see you're better man." Knuckles said, smiling at Sonic.

Sonic couldn't help looking down, he had very nearly trapped Knuckles in the same tube he had been stuck in, more than that he had actually threatened Tails. He was relieved that they weren't angry at him but still...

"Guys I'm… look about before… I didn't…"

"Don't worry about it Sonic" Knuckles said "It's not like I haven't tried to kill you before."

"Yeah but that was before we even knew each other, since then the worst you've done is try to get Chaos Emeralds off me, what I was trying to do was… evil."

"You weren't yourself Sonic, you'd been through a traumatic experience and…" Tails began.

"No don't make excuses for me!" Sonic interrupted. "I'm going to make it up to you. We're going to do what we always do, go after Eggman!"

"Yeah Ok!" Knuckles cheered. Placing his hand between them.

"Let's do this!" Tails joined in, placing his hand atop Knuckles'.

"Team Sonic is back!" Sonic joined in.


Shadow had been watching 'Team Sonic' for some time. Sonic was still his pale blue, not his usual deep blue, and his eyes were still grey, not his bright green. He seemed happier sure, spouting his valueless platitudes and the like, but there's no way he had recovered so quickly. Sonic is only behaving like he's found himself again, but that's impossible, after all, Shadow was still searching and his demons were created over 50 years ago. Since then he had continually made bad choices. Sonic was putting on a front, he probably did feel guilty about what happened but he's endured too much to suddenly be fine. He showed a new side to himself before, that can't have gone.

Sonic had helped Shadow immensely, he had become better at opening up to people, Sonic was one of the only people he truly cared about.

And Shadow knew something was still wrong with him. He just couldn't put his finger on what.

Sonic's voice brought him out of his reverie.

"So guys, what's been going on during my gap year?"

They proceeded to explain what had been happening, halfway through Rouge and Amy joined them, Amy immediately ran to Sonic's side and forcing his arm around her shoulder, Shadow smiled when Sonic rolled his eyes at him.

"…and that's when Amy pressed the button to release you." Tails concluded.

"Yep, I'm the hero of the story." Amy said smiling and giving an elaborate bow.

"Her inability to control herself around big red buttons is perhaps her greatest gift." Rouge said with a slow clap.

"Well it isn't the first time her button pressing abilities have got me out of prison." Sonic pointed out.

"That's not all I can do Sonic!" Amy pouted, "I've been boxercising all year, trust me I'm not getting kidnapped this time!"

She began to mime boxing and dodging joyfully, until her heel snapped.

"Aww I just bought those!" Amy whined, getting some flats from her hold-all. Shadow couldn't help but notice how that hold-all does genuinely seem to hold…all. She had all that picnic stuff in it too. It could have her giant hammer in it for all Shadow knew.

"Anyway, moving on from Amy, Vanquisher of Worlds, are we going to head to Blaze's world or not?" Rouge asked, clearly impatient.

"Yeah, I wanna see my little buddy do his Master Emerald stuff." Sonic said, eying Tails curiously.

"Er, yeah sure, Shadow can you trace Eggman's chaos energy again?" Tails asked nervously.

"Not an issue, I checked it out when Sonic slept, it's faint, but it's still there." Shadow answered. "It's clearly high level chaos to last this long"

"I like to make an impression" Sonic smirked. "What can we expect when we get there?"

"Why does it matter?" Knuckles asked, "you usually just turn up, run around, smash robots and leave."

"I don't intend to do this normally" Sonic replied, ominously. "Eggman stole a year from me, I'll make him regret it."

"Ooh I like this new vengeful Sonic" Rouge flirted, "that sounds like one of Shadow's lines."

"Oh don't worry," Sonic closed his eyes, folded his arms and spoke in a deep monotone "I've no intention of losing my memory and going all 'I am the Ultimate Life Form you pathetic mortals' on them."

The team laughed at Sonic's impression, except Shadow of course.

"We have to be careful. The high chaos levels there may enhance our abilities to near Super levels and you don't have inhibitor rings like me, you shouldn't use too much chaos energy Sonic."

"Not a problem, I prefer getting up close and personal anyway." Sonic said, punching and kicking the air.

Tails had placed the Master Emerald and brought it back up to its usual size.

"Guys you need to be touching the Emerald." Tails instructed. "We don't want to get separated again."

Everyone circled the Emerald and watched Tails as he closed his eyes and imagined something. Shadow could only assume it was some incredibly calming thoughts, like improving the calibration on a death cannon. He looked over at Sonic, noticing an odd hunger in his eyes. He didn't have time to figure this out as he suddenly felt Tails' spark of energy had to mentally direct it through to Blaze's world.

To a world of chaos.