I forgot that Silver doesn't remember Sonic, I thought, watching the ivory hedgehog kill the older, cobalt-colored one. The latter glanced over at me, a startled and nervous look in his emerald green eyes. His tan muzzle started to get a purple hue to it. He was still trying to break the cyan choker around his neck, but Silver seemed to curl his fingers in more, quickening the Iblis Trigger's death.

When Sonic's eyes widened with fear as he realized none of us were stopping the mistaken mobian, I smiled and started counting down, "Five, four, three-"

Aero and Sora broke and fell over into laughing fits. "I guess I was too late," I said to no one in particular, which distracted Silver, who's eyes flickered back at us for a moment in annoyance. His psychic grip slacked enough for Sonic to jump away to the ground, rocket behind me, and flop in the grass, gasping for air.

As the laughter quieted, Silver slowly turned around to face me, annoyed. "Why did you let him live?" Wow, he sounded pissed. "I could have finally rid my world of Iblis, but you're protecting him!"

I gave him a sorry smile. "I'm protecting my friend, Sonic, not the Iblis Trigger. I'm sorry to tell you this, but he isn't the cause of any apocalypse. The only way to get rid of Iblis is for Blaze to send him and herself to another dimension. Sonic didn't do anything wrong."

Silver's mouth was open, exaggerating his look of disbelief. "But… But we were told-"

"He was lying," I broke in. "Trust me on this, though."

After a second, he averted his golden-amber eyes to the ground in defeat. The gasping behind me, which has been gradually getting quieter, stopped. Sonic rose to his feet and dashed next to Silver. "Too bad you don't remember, buddy," he casually said, leaning on the other.

The younger hedgehog picked his head up to look at him, a faint scowl shadowing his face. "Buddy?"

"Yep!" A white grin from Sonic made the scowl deepen. "When I came to this world, fate let me keep my memory of all those fun times, like when I first met you, and you almost killed me. The second time we met, though, …you almost killed me again. But you got kicked in the head! Shads told me that!" Sonic snickered, but a kick in the shin from Silver shut him up.

Continuing a second later, he said, "When you dropped in for the third time, you said, "Circumstances have changed," so we ran off into the sunset to save a princess, even though it was, like, noon or something. Blaze met up with us at some point, too. When the princess died in a really cool fiery explosion, I went through a time portal thing that we opened to the past, and you went wherever little Silvers go.

"Then the world was destroyed, so we fought a giant sun god together with Shads and won! But then there was this big time paradox, so it made it so we never met for that adventure, but we met up two other times. At other points throughout some other days, you showed up for no particular reasons, but you competed with us in a few events. You were really good at curling, actually! It was really fun, except when you beat us, but we've known you for a while after that, so that's all that happened that you can't remember!" he finished with an over-dramatic bow to the group of us. Aero and Sora, still lying on the ground, enthusiastically applauded for him, keeping the laughter to minimum.

"Wait a minute," Luna and Silver said at the same time. The hedgehog glanced over to her and nodded, letting her speak.

"If there was a time paradox, how do you remember the first time you and Silver fought- err, met? And why didn't you tell him this after the events of time distortion?" she asked, cocking her feathered head to look at him.

A blank reaction from the normally quick-to-answer hedgehog was her immediate response. He's silent for once. Wow.

"Well," Sonic managed to utter, but he scratched his head and got his cool and collected demeanor back. "I really don't know. Magic?"

Abigail, who had gotten up, walked behind us, and scared the crap out of me, shrugged, saying, "Good enough. Let's eat! I didn't go through all that trouble for nothing!"

For eating on the road and with a budget, it was a pretty good… meal? I can't think of a name, but it was probably somewhere around lunch. Anyway, we mostly had cans of soup and ravioli. Aero was thrilled; according to her, that was "the best combination of foods ever!" Some of us liked it cold and out of the can, while those who didn't heated their meal over the fire with the pan Abigail conveniently bought. As well as canned goods, we had slightly-bruised oranges, apples, canned chili, and hot dogs. Obviously Sonic's idea, since he had two steaming chili dogs in his hands and the evidence of a third on his face within ten minutes.

Silver was holding a chili dog and examining it curiously. "This is food?" he asked.

"Yeah," Hestia answered, taking a bite out of her apple. "I don't like them, though. Have some fruit."

"No, have some ravioli!" Aero jumped in, taking a fork (Abigail was smart enough to get utensils, too; we should send her shopping again), stabbing a ravioli from one of the cans, and thrusting it out to the hedgehog. "Indulge your senses into the wonder that is Chef Boyardee."

He reluctantly took the fork and bit into the wonder. The wonder caused him to gag as he swallowed and shuddered. "I hope that was edible, at least. You guys aren't trying to poison me or anything, right?" He looked hopefully to me, and I shook my head.

"What?" Aero asked in disbelief, her eyes wide. "What kind of sick world do you come from?"

Silver stared at her with a haunting gaze. "A post-apocalyptic Hell-hole resting in the center of a volcanic inferno. A world where we have to fight for our lives every day. One where lives are spared and lost every waking hour. A world that I have to save, and I would have killed the one that I thought was responsible-" he shot an accusatory glance at Sonic, who only had one chili dog left, "if Krystal didn't stop me."

He stood up and snarled at the wolf. "Don't ever call another world sick again."

He started to storm off, but I grab his hand and pulled him back over to our circle. "Everyone here is protective about their beliefs, Silver," I told him. "It was just a joke."

Luna started giggling. She swallowed the mouthful of soup she had and informed the ivory figure, "Yeah, Aero once made a guy cry over the phone because he didn't know who Tré Cool was."

We girls laughed and Athena added, "And you beat a guy unconscious with a bat because he called Bellatrix Lestrange a psychopath!"

"Athena, you claw and beat anyone who doesn't agree with you!" said Sora.

Sonic joined in with the laughter, being done with his food. Silver hastily sat down next to me, crossing his arms expressionlessly.

Boy, almost as bad as Shadow, I thought jokingly as I finished my can of ravioli. A rustle behind me brought my attention to the fox kit that came out of the woods. I waved to him, getting everyone to notice and welcome him; well, Silver just glanced over and closed his eyes, sighing. Tails sighed, too, only with a more content look on his face.

Abigail got up and ran over to him. They talked for a moment, and then walked back into the leafy growth. A minute later, they both walked out with arms full of Tails' findings.

Soon setting the items by Sonic, Tails dropped down next to him, huffing. "Hi," he told us, quickly looking at Abby when she sat down.

"Whatcha got there, little buddy?" Sonic asked, pointing back at the pile.

"Just some stuff I found while you were out. Why did it take so long for you to get lunch?"

Abigail snickered. "Long story, but good for another time. Have something to eat, though!" She held out a can of ravioli for him.

Tails held up his hands and shook his head. "No thanks," he said politely. "Not my taste."

When Aero didn't comment, Silver threw his hands up in disbelief, falling back to lie on the ground. I smiled regretfully and started to peel an orange.

Abigail went through the pile of newfound treasures, separating them into smaller groups. Tails explained to us about what he found between mouthfuls. "There were many strong greens that I picked up," he said. "I want to try to test them for medical purposes, as well as some berries. I found some bits of different kinds of ores, a couple of strange minerals, and- oh!"

Swallowing, he put his can of soup down and rustled through the "plant" pile. "I found something interesting that you might know about, Sonic."

Untying a bundle of leaves, Tails pulled out a circular stone with a hollow center. It looked like a bracelet, split into three segments with three dashes on either side. As he turned it around for us to see, I saw one of the segments had a dim blue plate on the outside and a similar blue circle connecting the other two sections together.

Sonic gasped and snatched it from the fox. "Sweet!" he exclaimed as he slipped it on his wrist. "I love these things!"

"What is it?" asked Caillech.

He smiled and took off the bracelet, flipping and catching it. "It's an Ark of the Cosmos, one of the five gravity-controlling meteorites. We had so much fun with these; too bad you can't remember, little buddy."

"Control gravity?" Tails repeated, eyes widening. "That's amazing! How does it work?"

The hedgehog shrugged. "No clue. I do know that racing Jet with these on Extreme Gear is awesome, though!" He paused and added, "Can you make us some? If we meet up with the Babylon Rouges, I should have a team of trained riders with me."

Tails sighed. "I don't remember what Extreme Gear is, Sonic. Sorry…"

"No worries," I said, throwing my arm in the air to point at the sky in a heroic manor. "To the Internet!"

Pulling out her laptop, Abigail turned it on and started searching, Tails was back to eating, but was watching the screen as well. I don't know how she connected to the Internet, even though I suggested the idea; maybe she had a router with her or something. I don't know! Do you expect me to know these things? Psychics don't know everything, so stop asking!

When lunch was finished and everything was packed, Athena grabbed the Emerald Locator from Tails' tech-y collection. "Where's the next one?" Luna asked.

She pointed to her right. "Off to the east," she answered.

"Aw… That's where we came from," complained Hestia. "Why didn't we go that way first?"

"Maybe there were only two Chaos Emeralds in the United States," I suggested.

"Probably."

While everything and everyone was getting on the biplane, I wandered over to Silver, who was still lying back on the grass. "You coming with us?" I asked, hoping for a yes.

His gold eyes just looked up at me tiredly. "Do you think that would be a good idea?"

"Of course!" I grabbed his hands and pulled him up into a sitting position. "And if you don't think you are, I'll drag you along with us, seeing you don't have anywhere else you can possibly go."

After a second, he wordlessly stood up and walked with me to the Tornado. "Besides," I told him, "we might find Blaze along the way. Who knows how many mobians were sent here!"

Tails had just jumped out of the pilot's seat for Abby, signaling that the plane is set to take off soon. He was settled behind her with the Ark of the Cosmos, tinkering with another metal thing and occasionally glancing at Abby's laptop screen. Awesome, he's building Extreme Gear! I thought with a smile.

Hestia, Luna, Athena, Sora, and Caillech were already on the wings and starting to get comfortable. Aero was bouncing and Sonic was doing his pre-running stretches, soon done and hopping anxiously with the wolf. Luna noticed Silver was coming and asked, "I'm guessing you're going to fly, right?"

He nodded and jumped into the air, hanging until I was up as well. The plane started off, following the two grounded mobians that dashed away. Airborne with lit auras, Silver and I followed.

I could feel the familiar thrill of danger and the cool breeze through my quills. Flying over the trees, I went over to Caillech, who had a map and the Locator. "Where to now?" I asked.

"If I'm right," she glanced up at me, "we're heading to Holland."

"Nice!" Dropping down until I was in front of the other ivory hedgehog, I flipped around and asked, "Wanna race, Silver?"

He smirked. "You're on, Faker!"

"I'm not the Faker! Sheesh, you're more like Shadow than I thought!"

We darted forward, passing the Tornado and its passengers easily. Silver put an early force field up, slowing me. "No fair!" I cried, watching him fly off. Clenching my fists, it was my turn to smirk. I still had Chaos Energy in my aura.

"Chaos Control!"

This is gonna be a fun trip.

So sorry for the long wait. Unlike many people, I still have school for two more weeks! Oh noes! I have had projects, homework, studying, YouTube work, Animoto work, beating a copy of SA2 I've managed to get, reading other fanfics, etc. This is actually the first half of the chapter, but writing the second half would delay the update even longer.

I'm going to try to incorporate characters, items, and themes from all of the games, even though I haven't played Riders, Rivals, '06, Rush Adventure, SA1, or Advance. I'll get the info from somewhere, though. If I miss anything major or get it wrong, please tell me; that'll help a lot later on!

Muchos gracias for all the support! So glad people like this fic! Many thanks!

~Silvershadow471