Reason was used to stress.

She had maintained multiple lives in her care, dealt with endless tribulations, many times critical, as she had cared for her wards, handled the endless failures and malfunctions on a space station that was, thanks to the odd quirk of time dilation used to set it up, beyond ancient by the time any of her was born.

And she had spent centuries with the sure, quiet certainty that she was going to be murdered by her one true love. All in the same dead isolation of not just solitude, but being suspended in the mechanical shell of "Mama", exposed to the world outside only at the moment of her birth, and, though she had herself never experienced it, the moment of "her" death.

Reason was not, however, used to uncertainty.

The same anxiety that gnawed at her so constantly was at the same time a dull reassurance. She waited for Miles to awaken because she knew he would. She fixed and treated and repaired with the quiet confidence that she would either succeed, or that her failure would not matter in the grand scheme of things. When a Cream needed to be switched out, there was no worry that this might go wrong, even after Miles had them live together, because it didn't go wrong. Hers was a necessary existence, any surprises she faced were either trivial or pleasant - for a given value of pleasant. Like finding out that it was not necessary to overclock a Cream to run the Happy Days simulation together with Miles. He was used to people thinking slower than him, after all.

That minor change had saved her several hundred Creams and a great deal of work, and the only change in the end was that the script her sacrificial self read before she died was even less true than before, and there was very little of it that had been true in the first place, something that was either intentional on Miles' part to help his future-past self pick up on the discrepancy, or an artefact of the Prime Happy Days, the trigger at the start of infinity, that Miles had hijacked to save the world.

But was it even infinity before she had lived it? Where did they fall in an infinite chain? Was Miles victim of his own scheme, fighting an imaginary threat, or was he the first in a loop? Could it meaningfully be distinguished either way? Perhaps every loop was real until it wasn't, until he made that fateful choice to sacrifice the few for the many. The paradox was an endless source of interest and tireless contemplation for her over the centuries, tied inextricably to herselves, and she long hoped, when her carefully laid schemes fell into place, that she might get the opportunity to talk with Miles about her theories.

And other stuff. She was Doodle, after all, and gifted with Miles' own stubborn tenacity. She wasn't going to forget what he promised her.

But… she had no idea if she ever would get that chance.

Reason, for the first time in her long, long existence, had no idea what the future held. And that scared her as much as the pink hedgehog currently trying to force feed her a haddock.

"Come on, you're the one who had me make the stuff."
"Funny story. I didn't realise I hated fish."

"You just want me to sprinkle mint on it or something. Well no mint until you finish your fish. Come on, open up little mister."

Reason sighed, holding a slightly squashed yellow flower in her hands as she dutifully opened her mouth to accept the vile input. Chewing was a new and unpleasant activity for her as well.

"So you have any idea what... Uh, you were thinking when you shoved all this through the portal?"

Of course. "Nope." Reason shook her head. "He- I- even put some dirt in the bag. Didn't stick around for more than a fraction of a second before disappearing either or I'd have called you."

"So what are you doing?"

"Right now I'm just testing all these materials to see if they have any effect on Rouge's tissue cultures." Reason tapped her chin, still moving her jaw up and down. She wasn't quiet sure how to know when she was finished chewing. "He might have been hoping to make use of the lab facilities to try and determine a cure for Sonic." And Knuckles, and Rouge, neither of which he could know about in the scenario she'd concocted, where she had no contact with him. "Not much hope for a miracle, but with how quick time flows over there, we could try to enlarge the portal and stabilise them both there."

And that would appeal to Doodle as well as her.

"Makes sense." Amy nodded. "I hope we find something." Her expression fell as she looked down to the plate, stabbing another hunk of dead sea creature harder than she needed to. "Come on, open up."

"Still chewing." Reason moved to another pair of petri dishes, these ones already sprouted with purple grass shooting from the alien soil she'd spread over Rouge's corrupt tissue. Seeds in the soil? The corruption itself taking new shape? It was fine, an opportunity to test her primary objective.

"No stalling. Swallow." Amy poked the fork forward again.

Reason complied with a grimace. Her jaw ached.

"You don't need to feed me you know, you can-"

"Watch you waste all this food?" Amy smirked. "I don't think so. Besides-" She delicately inserted the fork into Reason's mouth. "Not every day I get to spoil my adorable foxy friend without him getting mad at me."

Well, he was adorable, and so she was by induction. Reason frowned. Maternal instincts or more general affection? An odd turnabout for her either way. But was this Amy or Doodle? Did it matter? Doodle was watching. If she was not Doodle enough, would she have any warning at all? Or would the next time her personality surfaced be to swing a hammer at the back of her unsuspecting skull?

She didn't know.

A shiver ran down her spine.

"Oh come on, it can't be that bad." Amy rolled her eyes. "Two more bites, alright?"

"It's cooked fine, Amy." Reason assumed with a smile, dripping a bright green liquid onto one dish. "It's- oh!"

A streak of green grass sprouted from among the purple - no, the purple grass had become green, in a perfect pattern mirroring the droplets she'd poured with almost instantaneous effect.

"What is it?"

"We may have our miracle." Reason glanced at the label. The green "seeds" ground into a suspension with a yellow flower, sand and "spores" in honey. Their green solution to this mess. "I'll need to run a few dozen more tests, set up some control samples, and check to confirm necessary dosage, but this is a great start."

"Yay!" Amy cheered, wrapping her arms around Reason's shoulders in glee.

And even better, forgetting to feed her another hunk of fish. Reason stiffly endured a gesture of affection she'd last experienced as Sept, triggering a wave of fresh trauma deep in her gut.

"It's not the finish line yet. I'll set up the machine to mix up some more and start working on a report to send to Miles. We're going to need to-"

An explosion rocked the outer wall of the workshop. Reason fell to the floor, tiny flask skittering from her hands as heavy set robots burst in through the unlocked door with autocannons raised.

"Eggman's robots!"

"Why hello, Hedgehog Girl." Eggman's voice crackled from machine speakers. "Thought I'd drop in and collect my emerald while that fox brat is away. How about you hand it over and nobody has to get hurt? What do you say?"

"I say... activate Security Protocol Prower Seven."

Amy grinned as cannons blazed into life all around her.