"What are we going to do with her?"
The question sounded more numb than urgent. Amy Rose sat on the couch, deep sunken eyes locked in a haunted expression as she stared in dull horror at the thing that Rouge had become… and at the thing he'd become.
Sonic rubbed the back of his spines. How bad did he look that even Amy was spooked at him? She was usually uncomfortably close.
"I'm checking the lab's inventory now." Tails spoke up from Amy's lap, the Miles Electric oversized in his tiny fingers. He didn't take his eyes off Big. "If I know M… me, there might be something we can use to contain it… her when she wakes up."
"You sure, little buddy?" Sonic frowned. "This is Rouge we're talking about. She was even stronger than before when we faced off on the Lost Hex."
It wasn't something he really wanted to think about. He didn't lose often, but he definitely couldn't call that a win. Rouge & Knuckles were almost unstoppable, two titans that had shrugged off everything that Shadow and him had thrown at them and kept on swinging. Even this badly injured, even after being washed up out of the ocean, she was still alive, still… looking at him, though not with the eyes on her head.
"Unless you want to kill her while she's sleeping."
"Whoa!" Sonic gave the little fox a surprised look. "Of course not, little buddy. That's not the way we do things."
"Of course not, Sonic." Tails smiled faintly at him before looking back to his screen. "Just saying there's not much choice."
"Well, I guess you're right. Big, you're the strongest out of all of us, think you can hold onto her until Tails whips something up?"
The enormous cat cast a sideways glance at the oversized bucket by the door.
"Don't worry, Big." Amy sighed, squeezing Tails a little tighter. "I can cook the fish you caught while you hold her, alright?"
"Okay." Big nodded, standing up straighter with his mobian prisoner.
"Alright, I've got it. There should be enough parts to whip up a restraint harness and a holding facility. I'll just need an hour or so."
"Nice work, little buddy. Once she's all locked up we can try to find her some rings. Maybe they'll fix up whatever this thing's done to her."
"Or maybe they'll make it worse." Amy muttered darkly, her gloomy expression flicking towards him a moment before sliding back down to the floor.
Huh?
Sonic grimaced, looking out of the window at the cold landscape outside.
What the heck had happened with everyone? Amy was usually the heart of the team with her optimism, and Tails would never think about hurting anyone like that, even in the old days when Sonic hadn't kept the gentlehearted fox away from the fighting. And Sonic… he felt dirty inside. Crawling inside his head, creeping through his veins like an itch he couldn't reach.
Zombies rising from the grave, who knew how many monsters in the Lost Hex up above. And Knuckles and Shadow nowhere to be found. What had happened to Shadow? Had the Zeti got him? Usually this was the point that Eggman showed up to make everything worse-
A beep pinged up on the Miles Electric. Tails perked his ears in surprise, jabbing at the screen with vague suspicion.
"What's happening, little T?"
"We've… just found Knuckles." Tails glanced at him then back to the pad, a pout growing on his lips. "Or he's found himself."
"Uh oh. Where is he?"
"Says here that 'GUN' has just reported him emerging from the swamp of… Mystic Ruins Zone?"
"Home?" Big perked up. "Froggy?"
"Calm down, Big. Sonic will-"
"Froggy!" The giant cat tossed Rouge to the floor with a frantic yell and spun on his boot, smashing through the door in a blind dash, bucket's contents spilled all over the floor.
"Big! Wait!" Sonic's cry went unanswered. He almost slipped over as he stepped on a fish. A moment later a sputtering plane engine burst into life. Sonic zipped to the door just in time to see the Tornado 2, smoke billowing from its engine, climbing into the sky.
Sonic looked back to the two mobians who still sat on the couch, blinking in surprise.
"You guys stay here and get to work on that holding cage." Sonic took a deep breath, striking a confident pose. "And better build it for two, because I'm coming back soon!
He raced out onto the snow.
Miles Prower was old.
Or, more correctly, Miles Prower was young, and had been young for a very, very long time. Solely from what he could remember, or at least could remember forgetting, he had been trapped in Happy Days' prison of enforced bliss for two hundred years, and the time he had spent employing the time stones stretched to literally thousands of lifetimes. He had shadowed each and every one of his clones, and Doodle, from cradle to grave, bearing witness in penance for the terrible deeds he had made them commit on his behalf, and he had spent many times longer than that again in his timeless quest to save his friends and the world.
While only days had passed in the world outside of the Happy Days facility, Miles had lived through a period of time so long that even if he'd sent his friends to the Twilight Cage, where the ancient echidna had been imprisoned since four thousand years ago with barely a day passing for them within, they would still have died of old age by the time he'd finished.
"Are you quite done?" Cosmo looked away from him, arms folded as she bore his thoughtful stare.
"Sorry, Cosmo, but it would be really helpful if you moved from where you were standing while I finish calculating."
A rain of leaves slapped against the side of his head, forming a thin layer around his helmet. The dryad scowled at him.
"I am no fool, Miles Prower, to be misled by such trickery."
"Worth a shot. " Miles grinned, shrugging. "It's fine, I can finish up without you having to stand around, thanks."
Cosmo harrumphed, stomping away to sit on a cobweb encrusted seat, staring out of the window at the inky black darkness outside the subterranean cabin.
He'd come across a few of these now, deserted buildings either constructed below the earth for some unknown purpose or dragged below during the cataclysmic events that came before. Broken furniture lay strewn about the floor, somehow trapped in a state of endless disrepair mixed among a few intact specimens and storage chests, though all he'd found so far had contained dirt or already been empty. Mainly they represented a safe…ish place to stop and rest. Or think.
Discovering that he had been progressing through untold lifetimes beforehand, building up fake chaos emeralds time and time again, oversaturating his body with chaos energy as he sought to confront foes best handled by stronger, better people, this had been in many ways simply an explanation for things he already knew. He was too damaged, too riddled with chaos energy to be normal, so tainted that even the Master Emerald, designed as it was to suppress and purify the Chaos Emeralds' power, could not make him whole. Even if he did grow, achingly slowly compared to his peers, the next iteration of the time loop would inevitably come sooner or later and he'd be ground down to almost nothing by the chaos overdose to start his life, such as it was, over again in mind and body.
And now, trapped in the digestive tract to end all digestive tracts, corrupted and reformed in a world where old age was as alien to its residents as it was to him, the dark powers that had shadowed him all these centuries had achieved something even the ancient echidna would have found impossible.
They had fixed him.
Miles Prower was growing up.
No wonder Cosmo had seemed shorter. He couldn't perfectly calculate his height in the absence of a ruler or the ability to actually put a marking on anything that stayed longer than a few moments. But from rough estimations he'd easily gained a full two inches of height, a massive increase for a mobian, especially over a few short months, and not what one would commonly expect from someone who had lost quite so many bodyparts as he had recently.
Miles ate a mouthful of cake, sugar and fluff without substance, but a decent way to offset the numbing effect of the Hallow with the sugar rush.
Didn't do much to fix his fur though. He needed to find a sunflower.
At least he wasn't glowing.
No, wait, focus. The lack of chaos energy might explain why Skin had been happy to finish him off. Even if they spat him out, he wasn't useful anymore, all that remained was retirement.
Funny how any other time this would have been good news. Important news. Miles snorted. He certainly didn't mind being useless to the monstrous existences that stalked him, and he'd wished to be older many times in the endless years he'd been alive. But…
No, didn't matter. He would get out of here. He would save the world. Miles struck a confident pose, his heart filled with a noble purity of purpose and boundless optimism.
Miles frowned, rubbing the back of his armoured head with a pink furred hand as a glowing bat hammered against the window.
… Yeah, he needed to get out of here especially. And soon.
