Chapter 10: Another Day

Knuckles did not speak to the others as they made their way up the chain – Not to the happy little fox flying alongside his hero as the hedgehog simply jogged up the chain, or to the hedgehog girl twice his age he carried up. He wanted to talk to Sonic, tell him about this, but he wasn't sure Tails and Amy should here. Sure, Tails was smart, but he was only about four. Heck, he was freaked out by it, and he was nearly thirteen.

It didn't take much time to reach the top of the chain. And from there, it took no time at all for Tails to set Amy down and for the two speedsters to dash off through the palm tree forest (which was weird in itself, come to think of it), leaving Knuckles and Amy to try and catch up.

Amy sighed, staring after Sonic. "He's so dreamy…"

"If you say so," Knuckles said. "… How fast can you run?"

"For Sonic, I'll go however fast I need to, until I can keep up with him!"

"… Okay… Could you just start running?"

"Fine…" Amy began running in place, kicking up a cloud of dust into Knuckles' eyes. Knuckles yelped, rubbing the dust out of his eyes just as Amy shot off like lightning… Or at least like Tails when he didn't feel like flying.

Knuckles ran after her as fast as he could. Amy was, admittedly, faster than he was, though with the help of his spin dash he was able to keep up fairly well. It wasn't long before he began noticing that this place wasn't entirely… Natural-looking. Everywhere he could see, there was some metal, looking like Eggman had gotten to the place a long time ago – It was certainly more than he could have possibly done in the less-than-a-day he'd had to have been here. And this place had something called Time Stones… Just more evidence that Eggman had, indeed, mucked up the past.

"It's weird how Robotnik got all this stuff here already, isn't it?" Amy asked, as Knuckles spun through a robot Sonic and Tails had missed while dashing through at sonic speed. "What do you think, Knuckles?"

"I've got a bad feeling about this," Knuckles said. "I want to ask you something, though… What do you know about this place, and the Time Stones?"

"Oh, that's easy!" Amy exclaimed. "Little Planet is the resting place of the Time Stones, which are magical gems which can be used to travel through time. If you go to the past… I don't know what would happen. I think it could change it, but it could also turn out you were supposed to anyway, or… I really don't know. I always read that time is really unpredictable."

"… How would you tell if the past were changed?"

"… Uh… Weird question, but, alright. You'd have to somehow get involved with something that… I guess, slipped through the seams? It's hard to explain… Some sort of weird… timey… thing. No idea what one would look like, or even if it'd look like anything."

"Thanks."

"Why did you ask?"

"Maybe I'll tell you later." If he needed to. He hoped not.

"Okay. Where do you think Sonic went?" Amy asked, sighing dreamily.

"To beat up robots and stop Eggman," Knuckles said bluntly. "I'm sure we'll walk in on him right in the middle of what he calls a 'boss battle' sooner or later."

Knuckles' prediction of what Sonic and Tails were doing turned out to be completely accurate – A ways ahead of the pink hedgehog and red echidna, blue hedgehog and yellow fox were facing off against a powerful robot built to resemble Sonic at that very moment.

They'd just been running through, smashing the smaller, easier badniks without any difficulty at all. Sonic asked why Eggman even bothered building them, and Tails suggested that maybe he was lonely. Sonic had laughed, even if he personally didn't quite believe that Eggman really cared about anyone.

As soon as their little conversation had ended, Metal Sonic had showed up, crashing to the ground in front of the two and kicking up a cloud of dust, forcing them to stop.

"Subject Sonic the Hedgehog located," the robotic voice said from the dust. "Subject Tails located. Objective: Destroy subjects."

"Heh," Sonic laughed. "So, you're the new knockoff bot, huh?" As the dust began to clear, Sonic got a better look at Metal. "Well, you're certainly better lookin'. Not so huge and bulky."

"Explanation: The sleeker, more streamlined design allows for me to be a better match for your speed. Offer: How about a demonstration?" To slower eyes, it would have looked like Metal had vanished. To Sonic, though, he simply moved very fast, taking just milliseconds to accelerate. Sonic was still able to see exactly where he was coming from and kicked his double in the head before he hit him. Metal Sonic was flung backwards into one of the many palm trees that littered the area.

"How's that?" Sonic asked, wagging his finger. "Face it, buddy, I'm too quick for ya!"

"Counter. What about the baby fox?" Metal said, as he suddenly zipped off again, this time towards Tails. Sonic turned to try and reach the little fox before the robot did, but, while he was fast, the only way he could hope to build up that kind of speed that quickly was with a Super Peel-Out, as he'd taken to calling it, but he still had to prepare for that.

He needn't have worried, though – Tails was ready for Metal, and moved his tails in front of him. While the fox's tails hadn't been particularly strong three months ago due to lack of use, Tails spent a lot of time doing nothing but flying now, even if he didn't need to.

With his tails braced for impact, a normal badnik would have been sliced to ribbons moving at this speed towards the little fox. As it was, Metal was no normal badnik, but still crashed into the twin appendages like they were a steel wall.

Ever fast to calculate and react, Metal grabbed the fox's tails, and flung the little fox towards Sonic. Tails was able to catch himself in midair, and hovered next to his hedgehog brother.

"M'not a baby!" Tails said. "Can't beat us both!"

"Taunt. Bring it, slow-mos!" Metal said, before dashing out of sight.

"You did NOT just say that, faker!" Sonic and Tails tore off after Metal Sonic, slowly gaining on the robot. It became clear that this knockoff was, truly, FAR faster than the previous two. As they were running, the robot suddenly stopped, turning on a dime and slamming into Tails before the fox knew what hit him. Sonic screeched to a halt, but the robot had Tails in his arms already, and arcs of electricity were shooting from the robot to the fox.

Tails' fur frizzed up, making him look quite a bit bigger than he really was, but he seemed uharmed. Certainly not hurt enough that he couldn't use one of his tails to grab Metal's arm and pull himself free. Tails stuck his tongue out as he flew back over to Sonic. Metal Sonic glared at the two, calculating his next move.

"Th'lightning di'n even hurt, Sonic," Tails said to his big brother. "… Why not?"

"Probably that electric thing you do," Sonic said, as he Homing Attacked Metal. "C'mon, bud, let's take this robot down!"

Sonic and Tails both began a spin dash, while Metal produced some sort of odd black barrier around himself and flew towards them. Out of nowhere, before Metal could reach them or Sonic and Tails could shoot off towards the robot, Metal was punched backwards by a spiked fist.

Knuckles yelped in pain – Whatever the black shield was, it hurt – But his goal was accomplished. Metal Sonic was flung into a tree just in time for Sonic and Tails to shoot forward and slam right into him.

"Thanks for the assit, Knux!" Sonic called out.

"Stop calling me that!"

"Analyzing…" Metal said, as it lifted off the ground. "Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles. Chances of my success in your defeat: 57%. Taunt. BRING IT."

Sonic smirked. "Gladly, faker!"

"Counter-argument! I think you're the fake hedgehog around here!" Metal yelled. He rushed forward, only to be met with a whack by a hammer.

"STAY AWAY FROM MY SONIC!" Amy yelled, whacking Metal again.

"Pink hedge-girl. Threat: Unknown. Action: Further analysis by Dr. Robotnik." Metal grabbed Amy, and flew off.

"SONIC! SAVE ME! AND THEN WE'LL BE…" Sonic didn't get to hear the last of Amy's plea, but he had a pretty good idea of what it was, and he didn't like it. But that was no reason to not help someone. Saving people was what Sonic did. So, Sonic did the only thing he would have ever done in this situation: He chased after Metal, Tails and Knuckles by his side.

If only he'd known what he was getting into at the time… Then, maybe, he'd have had second thoughts. Or maybe he'd just go ahead, because helping is what heroes do.

Amy couldn't escape Metal's grip – The robot was too strong, ridiculously so. She gave up struggling quickly, and Metal flew her into a building clearly built by Dr. Eggman, that, strangely, looked very old. She didn't think about it too much, since she was preoccupied by her brain arguing with itself about how rescues were romantic and that she really shouldn't need a rescue in the first place.

Metal dumped her into a cage, and flew off. Moments later, he was back with Eggman, who, in person… Didn't look that frightening. He was a fat guy with a mustache and needle legs, nothing more.

"… Metal. That's a little girl. WHY did you bring her here?" Even his voice sounded goofy.

"She is an unknown accomplice of Sonic."

"No! I'm gonna be his girlfriend!"

"… Very likely," Eggman said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "And when did you meet Sonic?"

"About an hour ago! And already he's been in my house!"

"… Well, I see he's got his first useless crazed fan."

"HEY! I can do stuff!"

"Really? Like what?" Eggman asked.

"Like magic and seeing the future and-"

"Good. Metal, 'convince' her to work with us." Eggman said, grinning as he walked out of the room.

"… What just…"

"Praise. The great Doctor Robotnik just fooled you into spilling your skills for him. Excitement. Now for the fun part!"

If robots could grin evilly, Metal would have been doing so. Amy shuddered, closing her hand around the nearest bar. As Metal moved to open the cage, she realized that it wasn't one of the cage's bars.

Dr. Ivo Robotnik walked through the hallways of the base he'd built long ago, thinking to himself, tweaking his plans here and there to suit new information. He was not, generally, a patient man. After the incredible failure here he'd had a year ago – which, he mentally protested, was in no way whatsoever his fault, just his stupid uncle-experiment-thing and that dumb echidna – He really did not want to wait another year to make another attempt.

Despite his methods, Dr. Eggman did not condone chaos. Rather, instead, he wished for nothing but order. Having grown up in a world ravaged by a war between two groups of echidnas over an incredible power, he wanted nothing more for than it to end…

He was not the only one to wish for this, either. Scarcely a month before he'd discovered Little Planet, an armada of birds, supposedly descended from the Babylonians of legend, had begun a journey to look for the other six Chaos Emeralds. He never did find out what happened to them, but, in the end, it didn't matter. He took matters into his own hands, and used the one Chaos Emerald he'd been able to procure and the time stones to create a portal to the past.

By changing the past, he'd succeeded in preventing the conflict, though not in the way he'd intended. A mild calibration issue was all it took, and, instead of the destruction of the Master Emerald, suddenly the Chaos Emeralds had scattered all over the planet, and become a part of the world's history, instead of only one ever being found in four thousand years.

He'd left Shadow and Knuckles behind, to be taken by the changes to the timeline. They did not matter anyway, their old roles would just make things difficult. He did not know where Shadow was in this new timeline, but it seemed an incredible coincidence that the Knuckles of this timeline was the only echidna remaining. He came to the future again, leaving Little Planet behind, hoping to see the utopia he'd always dreamed of, a world where robots ruled.

What he found was something that was, in his opinion, so much worse. There was no insanely lengthy war going on, but there was no order, no control. Everyone went about their business, in their small little communities, if they could even be called that, and robotics, if anything, were even further behind than in the old timeline.

That of course, was when he vowed to fix everything. And he would have succeeded, too, if not for that meddlesome blue hedgehog. Truly, where had Sonic come from? The similarities to Shadow were unmistakable, but the hedgehog seemed to truly just be a hedgehog with odd powers.

And then there was that fox, Eggman thought, as he walked into the control room that held the machine that would make his plans all possible, along with all seven Chaos Emeralds and Time Stones. A two-tailed fox was unheard of, even in the old timeline where the numbers of mobian foxes were far greater than now. And there was something… Off about him, even apart from that, that he could not begin to explain. The fox, for whatever reason, radiated a strange presence. He was sure it was nothing to do with Chaos Energy, as he'd tried whenever he could to feel it himself from a Chaos Emerald, but to no avail, and yet no one else seemed able to feel the near-overwhelming presence of Tails at all.

He sat down in his seat, and began programming his machine to do what he needed it to do, and summoned some of his robots to the control room and the hallways leading to it. Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles were, inevitably, going to show themselves, and he needed to buy some time to ensure he would not fail.

Not a minute later, and his computer started giving him notifications that his robots were being destroyed fairly quickly, with the intruders making an average speed of approximately 200 mph through his maze of hallways. Eggman allowed himself a grin – That meant that clogging the hallways with robots had had his intended effect of slowing Knuckles down to less than half his top speed, and Sonic and Tails down to well under a quarter.

He finished his work, and the machine began charging. Almost immediately, one of the sensors on the console began to beep, and he shut it off. He couldn't believe he'd left the detector for anomalies in temporal energy on – That would have been an eardrum-bursting fiasco once the device was fully ready. Though, oddly, it had started several seconds before he'd predicted. No matter, he did have all seven Chaos Emeralds this time, instead of just one. A minor miscalculation was no real issue, as long as it did not get in the way of his goal.

Thirty seconds passed, and several things happened at once.

Knuckles punched the door down, crushing about five robots under the thick steel plate as Sonic and Tails rushed in after him to blitz around the room and start destroying everything in the form of highly destructive balls.

The portal Eggman's machine was to generate opened, creating a huge swirling blue vortex in the middle of the room. Knuckles reacted quickly, and threw the fallen door at it, which did nothing but suck the door far into the past.

Eggman heard a shout of "NINJA SNEAK ATTACK!" as a purple, reptilian mobian jumped down from the ceiling and began beating him up… With its tongue. Now, that was just utterly disturbing, but he had no more than half a second to think about it as the chameleon threw him into the wall, leaving him dazed. The chameleon then proceeded to yell "AWESOME NINJA STARS!", and began to throw shiruken at the portal, which, just like Knuckles' attack with the door, did absolutely nothing.

A wall suddenly collapsed, as Metal Sonic was shoved through it. The robot flew straight into the portal, being sucked to who-knows-where. If he could think clearly, Eggman probably would have yelled at the culprit – Amy Rose, wielding a hammer she got from who-knows-where, screaming something incoherent about stupid fakers, romance, and croquet.

As Eggman began to regain his senses just ten seconds later, the room was in chaos. Between them, Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles had destroyed every robot in the room with extreme ease. Espio had decided to leave Eggman alone, as he kept throwing more things at the portal to try and destroy it. Eggman picked himself up, scoffing at this. Honestly, there was nothing that could be thrown at that portal that could mess it up. What were they thinking?

Amy chose that very moment to toss the hammer Tails had given her earlier straight at the portal. Eggman rolled his eyes as the projectile flew near, all that would accomplish would be the loss of her weapon. When the hammer was three feet from the portal, bright bolts of lightning suddenly shot out of it, bathing the hammer in electricity and light. The inside of the portal suddenly changed from blue to an angry red as the hammer was pulled inside before Eggman could process what had happened, or even figure out what was so special about the hammer to do that.

He didn't have time to think, though – A sudden pulling sensation overcame him, and he was flung into the portal itself. He yelled an extremely manly battle cry as he flew into it, nope, totally not screaming, letting the one who ruined his plans know his displeasure as she was pulled in alongside him with a very girly scream. Amazing how she did that with her mouth closed, really.

"THE AWESOME AMAZING NINJA DETECTIVE, WHO IS ME, SHALL PREVAIL! I SHALL NOT BE DESTROYED BY A MERE SWIRLY ENERGY THINGY! FEAR NOT, SONIC, KNUCKLES, AND YOUNG KITTY-FOX! FOR THIS IS NOT GOODBYE!" Espio screamed as he was sucked into the vortex.

"How'd he say all that in one second?" Sonic yelled, as he hung onto Tails' arm, Knuckles hanging onto his own leg, and Tails trying his best not to get them pulled in while hanging onto one of the poles on the wall. "Maybe it's a secret ninja skill!"

"NOT THE TIME, SONIC!" Knuckles yelled, raising his fist… Of the same arm that he'd been using to hold onto Sonic. Knuckles grabbed at the ground with his knuckle spikes, but was slowly but surely dragged into the portal. Just as he lost his grip, he spared Sonic a glare, leaving him and Tails alone.

"Knuckles!" Tails yelled, but was too scared to move. "Sonic, we gotta do somethin'!"

"Hey, bud, we'll figure it out. I know it's scary, I'm scared too," Sonic said, reassuringly. "I think there's only one thing for me to do, keed. Take… take good care of yourself, bro." Sonic let go of Tails, jumping towards the portal, nothing but determination on his face.

"SONIC!" Tails yelled, taking a step forward to try and catch him, but the hedgehog was already gone, leaving Tails alone in the room. Tails' ears and arms drooped, and he began to cry a bit. Sonic had just… And he'd never… NO! That wasn't how it was going to be. Tails wasn't going to just let this happen, he was going to get his friends out of this! Tails ran for the portal, and jumped in. As he crossed the threshold, lightning began to crackle from the edges of where the portal met the real world, but he was moving too fast for it to strike him.

He turned around in mid-air, to watch what happened to the world behind him, but he wished he hadn't. The lightning from the vortex had struck itself, and… Something was happening. The edges of the portal back to where he'd come from were getting closer together, fast. With a resounding boom, they slammed together, sending Tails hurtling through the vortex as its colors changed from red to yellow.

Aaand… There! It took a while, but it's finally done! So, this was hard to write, since it's kind of a transition chapter, and there's also the whole thing about the school semester coming to an end, so that also meant more work for me. But, here we are! So… Time travel. Yep, planned from the beginning – That's why I chose this title. And there's those hints, here and there, that Eggman did something in the past.

I included a sort of POV for Eggman, to give some insight into him… He's a bit deluded, and doesn't quite seem to grasp that he's completely amoral and that his idea of a utopia is anything but. Also, some exposition from him – Hopefully the puzzle pieces I've provided start to fall into place. It might not be the longest chapter, but I hope it gives you something to think on.

So a couple more notes – Amy using the Super-Peel Out comes from Sonic Advance 3, where she can use it when partnered with Knuckles. Sonic is unable to perform it in this game, though he still did it in an earlier chapter of this story.

Metal Sonic is not good at strategy – He is, after all, based on Sonic.

Espio returns! After seeing the response for him here, I decided to bring him back. The others might show up, at some point, but it'll be awhile yet, since, well, everyone just went through a time portal to who-knows-where.

I've also been working on something that I think is very cool, but others might not. I'm trying to program a Sonic the Hedgehog game engine in Unity3D. I think I've made some progress, too, it already supports Sonic and Mario Galaxy styled level design, with variable gravity and the ability to run up walls and ceilings, along with being able to run across the surface of water and multiple playable characters. Hopefully I'll be able to get far enough with it to release it for people to use, eventually!

Also, I am, obviously (because I'm me) going to write another Mario/Sonic crossover at some point. The ones I've written so far have been adaptations, so... Any ideas for a game to be based on, or, if it's good enough, a plot to work off of?