Miles' laughter echoed across centuries.
It was funny how you could see something so many times without ever really noticing it until you stopped to look.
It was funny how even the smallest detail changed everything.
It was funny how close tears were to laughter.
These facts were eternal:
Happy Days exists, and always operates for a period of over two hundred years, mounting an endless campaign to "take care" of all children on Earth until the planet is doomed. Their bones float, suspended in endless Happy Days tubes, mountains of children's clothes discarded in the dark.
Doodle is placed into the Happy Days simulation at a young age, and dies on board, never leaving the station.
Miles Prower arrives up in Happy Days shortly after this beginning.
Sonic, Knuckles and Amy come to rescue him. They die in Happy Days.
Cream is kidnapped. She also dies in Happy Days. Her clones, neural and otherwise, are sacrificed at a rapid rate to provide a companion for Miles in the Happy Day simulation to reduce his escape attempts.
Miles escapes the simulation, frees Doodle, and fights Mama, the caretaker of Happy Days, killing her.
The only escapees of Happy Days are a dozen Mobian Rabbits, sent to Earth as Miles travels back to the past with the Pink Timestone, leaving Doodle to stay on board.
And nothing can prevent these events. Especially not Miles himself.
But he still might save the world.
He still could change his future.
He just had to be wrong.
He just had to be terrible.
And where better to start than in the middle?
"Welcome back." Reason raised her eyebrows at him, a transparent bottle of liquid partway to her lips.
"Has it been long?" Miles stared through her.
"You just left." Reason drank her meal - the only kind there was, up here - as Miles slumped down beside her. "Still having trouble? Or just starting to, I suppose?"
Miles nodded, dropping a fabric sack to the ground with a clatter, his monochrome arms wrapping around his knees.
"I see." She patted him on the shoulder.
"Did I tell you what I was doing?"
"You're saving the world." Reason smiled.
"No, I mean-" Reason put her fingers over his lips.
"You. Are. Saving. The. World." Her smile didn't waver.
"But... who am I saving it from?"
"I wondered for a long time where you found the ring that saved me that day. Did one version of me decide I wanted to live? Did a ring just appear at that moment through chance? Did I die originally, and another you left a ring to bring me back?" Reason placed the empty bottle on the metal floor beside her and twisted round to plonk her head on his lap, staring dreamily up at him. "I'll never know. Time is funny like that. Either I lived anyway, I died and you pulled off a miracle to save me, or I always lived because you somehow never let me die."
Reason reached up and poked him in the nose.
"But if free will exists, if an original cause exists, somewhere out there at the other end of infinity, then I know that you were not that cause. Because you are here, with me, trying not to cry."
Miles rubbed his nose, pouting. "I wasn't crying."
"You will," Reason replied. "But in the end, you are doing this because it is the best choice, or because there is no choice."
She closed her eyes, stretching out with a yawn.
"Be sure to stay right here when you leave. I'm comfortable."
"I will do no such thing."
"Yes you will." She murmured smugly.
Miles rolled his eyes, grabbing his fabric sack and storming off with a clatter.
And in the very same moment, as though he never left, Miles slipped back into position, muttering to himself.
Reason's smug smile intensified as she settled into her nap.
A young girl with chestnut hair stood in front of an unborn fox with two tails. The first of many more to come. Miles stood behind her, hand reaching out towards her slender back.
But he didn't call out. Because he didn't.
Miles turned around, pulling his beam knife from his glove, and scorched a message into the door before he left. Just like the one she'd left for him.
And he watched.
Doodle roamed the station. Repairing, collecting, cataloguing, preparing, building - especially more cloning vats. So many more cloning vats.
Because he had asked her to.
Because he hadn't the strength to do it himself.
And he followed her, never seen, never felt. Because he wasn't. The two of them never met.
But he never left her alone. It was second nature. He was a shadow, after all. When she dropped a tool in her absent-minded quest, it was always where she first reached to find it. When she fell asleep at her work, she always woke covered in a blanket against the icy chill.
And he watched her grow up. The child became a lovely young woman - at least by human standards - never losing that dreamy expression through all her years of solitude. The woman became a mother, of a sort, as the first of many clones emerged, already walking and talking, already her. As driven and directed as the original, just in a smaller package. At least at first. Miles watched her decay into him over the years, a Miles without history or uniqueness as many, many more hims followed.
It was fascinating. It was horrifying. Mostly the latter to watch his clones turned into a eusocial hive by genetic proximity, their personality ground into nothing by time and each other.
He followed them too. Every single one. If he could not bear to do the deeds himself, he could at least bear witness to them.
His stolen moments with Doodle became rarer and rarer, but he watched a lifetime of interactions take their place. Watched her grow older day by day, working, laughing, talking, being. Sometimes sad, sometimes angry, sometimes scared, but always driven, chasing his dream across the ages.
Until finally Reason was born. The remaining cloning tanks were emptied and altered in readiness, collars fitted in grim preparation. Their world made itself ready for the end they knew was coming.
And when Doodle fell, unable to stand beneath the weight of the years any longer. Miles followed her one last time, a final message stained into her tank in binary:
0011110000110011
He left the moment his past self arrived, an ache in his chest. The first of many misdeeds soundly in place.
When next?
He hesitated. So much to do still. Centuries to make wrong.
So he went back to Happy Days, Doodle's notes in his hand, her carefully catalogued storerooms made ready on the other end of time.
The Death Egg was dark and empty when he arrived. Little Planet below was encased in steel pretending to be sunshine, and Amy was long gone. Off stalking Sonic. Hopefully happy on Earth. Hopefully come to terms with the loss of her family, even if she could never forgive him for it.
Miles sighed, breath misting out into the air.
This was where it all started.
This was where he woke up from Happy Days. This was where dreams of happiness ended. Where his nightmares truly began.
Pulling his beam knife from his glove, Miles raised his other hand, blinding light illuminating the darkness as time distorted, years becoming days, minutes, seconds… His very own Twilight Cage in reverse.
He'd better get to work.
Deep in Final Fever, the ultimate command centre of his Little Planet invasion, Doctor Robotnik worked alone, putting the finishing touches on his ultimate weapon.
The R-9, its armour practically indestructible, perhaps the most powerful machine he had ever constructed, powered with the pink timestone he had recovered from the fox girl. It would surely mean the end for that meddling hedgehog this time. He chortled to himself, tugging on his moustache.
"Ah, here you were." A voice muttered from behind him.
Robotnik whirled around in surprise, the empty hangar devoid of life, mechanical or otherwise.
There was a crash. He turned back to see a hole missing from the R-9, a deep cavity leading deep into its core. The engine whined as it destabilised, energy crackling out of the hole. An unseen pair of hands yanked his moustache from behind.
"Sonic says "hi", by the way." The voice muttered in his ear.
Robotnik was already running, diving into an escape hatch as the robot detonated behind him, a massive series of explosions sending masonry falling into the reinforced tunnel as he raced through it to safety.
Finally, he emerged, dusty but unscathed, the smouldering ruins of Final Fever smoking a short distance away. Robotnik rubbed his aching moustache, a scowl on his lips.
"...I really hate that hedgehog."