Recursion Error

Episode 61- Goodbye, Earth

The room was separated in half by a wall that had a giant window that spanned the entire length of the wall, save for the door that was on the very end of said wall that lead to the other side of the room. On one side was a long array of consoles and buttons pressed up against the wall, with multiple cords and cables at the bottom going through small ports at the bottom of the wall and snaking through the floor on the other side of the room in order to connect something at the very far end of that room. It was what the cables were connecting to in the other room that was Sorun's sole focus at the moment.

He hadn't really known what to expect when it came to how the portal machine would look like. A large, circular metal thing that would make a portal perhaps, like something out of 'Stargate'. Or a large platform with a bunch of pillar things around it. Something along those lines. He'd seen too many examples of portal machines in various forms of fiction back on Earth to make a singular guess for what it would be.

In the end, he... wasn't too far off the mark, Sorun had supposed. It was indeed a circular 'gate' of sorts in that the main component he was staring at past the window was a large, metal ring set up on a small, metal platform. On either side of the portal were two tall, metal poles topped with, oddly enough, red spheres decorated with yellow stars. And those poles were each attached to small consoles on their sides by power cables, from which Sorun could see from here had the Chaos Emeralds slotted into them. Three of them inserted into the left console and four on the right.

"The weird star post things are a bit off-putting, but, uh... whatever works, I guess." At the end of the day Sorun didn't really much care about how the thing looked as long as it worked, and he knew from experience it worked.

It was finally time to go back home. The anticipation alone was killing Sorun. Leaving it all, going back home, the mess he was going to have to deal with seeing as he'd technically been missing for almost five months over there, seeing everyone again and leaving everyone here. To put it mildly he was feeling jittery. Excited, too, enough that he could barely stand still seeing the portal machine. It was almost intimidating to look at.

There were a couple of other people in the room besides him. Tails was over by all the consoles, making various adjustments and such to get the machine ready. A scientific process that was way over Sorun's own head for him to even begin to understand what he was doing. Sally was there, too, mostly just to oversee that everything went as planned and supervise Sorun's departure. She'd approached Sorun's side as the human teen was staring out at the portal machine on the other side of the window, looking down at his torso with curious eyes.

"Hey, Sorun." Her voice drew Sorun attention towards her, where he saw her examining his torso. "Where'd you get that?"

"Hm?" He looked down at what she was looking at. "Ah, this..."

Earlier

"A last-second gift? For me? You shouldn't have."

Looking up from the item he held in his hands, Sorun saw the yellow cat standing in front of him blink her golden eyes, and then turn her head away in slight indignation. She'd crossed her arms over her chest as well, while her tail began to swish back and forth in an irritated manner.

"Well, if you're going to be like that then just give it back," Honey said, not sounding nearly as irate as she looked. "I'm sure I could find an owner actually appreciative of it."

"I didn't mean to detract from your kindness, Honey. It was just a bit of sarcasm." Sorun looked back down at what he was holding. "I actually quite like it."

Simply put, it was a leather vest. A navy blue vest, almost black it was such a dark blue. A vest that would have been normal otherwise were it not for the texture it had. The interior was lined with a soft, silky-smooth material, but its exterior, the dark blue leather surface, was a different matter. It wasn't the soft, smooth texture normally found on leather. As he ran his thumb over the vest, it... almost felt like he was touching the scales on a lizard, strangely enough. Or at least something that tried to mimic that sensation, as it still felt like leather.

A strange vest, to be sure. And for some reason Sorun couldn't help but be drawn to it.

"What gave you the idea to make something like this?" Sorun asked, his eyes still transfixed on the vest.

"Remember that one time I asked if I could see that sword you used to have for inspirational purposes?"

"Vaguely," Sorun answered, looking back up at Honey.

"Well, I noticed back then the, er, handle part was made of this weird blue, scaly stuff," Honey explained, her own head having already turned towards Sorun. "I wanted to make you something to take with you back home as, well, a souvenir, and I thought if I made something like that it'd make it personal for you." When he continued to silently look at her, the cat Mobian began shuffling her feet while growing a bit sheepish under the look. "I-it came to me in a dream, so the next morning I got some faux leather and silk out from my storage and threw that together."

"Oh, she uses fake leather? Eh, one mystery solved." Humming, Sorun looked towards his own chest. Honey'd been nice enough to give him a new black t-shirt to replace the one that had the hole through its chest. Without another word he slipped his arms through the arm holes in the vest, and then reached for its center in order to zip it closed.

He couldn't be too surprised at the way it fit so snugly against his torso, and yet at the same time wasn't uncomfortable in the least. All in all the vest was perfect.

"I'd say you outdid yourself, but considering that's pretty much a gold standard for you I'm not sure the phrase does you enough justice," Sorun said. The nervousness disappeared from Honey altogether at Sorun's comment, prompting her to stand up straight with a proud, smug smile on her face. Her tail began swishing around even faster. "I love the vest. Thank you, Honey."

"Wellll...~ I suppose there's a lot of truth to that," Honey said, her nose pointed high in the air and her expression growing more smug by the second. "As expected of somebody who knows they stand so close to greatness. Really, you're the luckiest guy in the world to have somebody as amazing as me as a friend who showers you with gifts like this, Sorun."

Sorun's own smile began to become strained, and one of his eyes twitched. "Yes, I'll... miss this humbling attitude of yours so very much..."

"As you should." She looked back down to lock eyes with Sorun, after which Honey's smile softened. "But really, I can't thank you enough for everything you did to help my business out. I really am gonna miss you." She began to idly twirl around one of her black pigtail-tied bundle of hairs with her finger. "I have way more than enough people that do business with me, but not a lot of people actually talk with me normally like you do. I'm not so sure why."

Sorun's face twitched violently.

"Ah, well. I'll be fine." Her finger lowered away from her head. "Anyways, take care of yourself, y'hear?" Honey finished out. "And don't you dare ruin that vest. You don't have to fight killer robots anymore, so you don't have any excuses."

"I'll do my best," Sorun assured her with a smile. "Bye, Honey. I doubt I'll ever meet another person like you ever again. I still don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing."

"Alright, alright. Don't push it." With a teasing look on both of their faces, Honey reached over and pushed Sorun on his shoulder. "Go on already. You have a home to get back to."

"... It was a parting gift from a friend," Sorun answered in response to Sally's inquiry. The fact he could comfortably say that he considered the cat as a friend was still something that mystified Sorun, but despite all her faults, of which there were numerous in Sorun's opinion... well, she was still a good person who gave him nice clothes. It was hard for him to not like her.

"Gift, huh?" Sally gave the vest he wore an appreciative nod. "It looks good on you. Honey?"

Sorun nodded. "Yeah."

"Hm... maybe I should go to her one of these days." She looked down a bit and tugged at her own open vest. "Not that I don't like this one, but..." She looked back at Sorun's vest. "Yours has so much detail. She must have put a lot of work into it."

"She did." Sorun gave Sally a half-amused smile. "I guess blue vests are just in. Congratulations on being a trend setter."

"Har, har." Mirroring Sorun's amusement, Sally shook her head, and then rolled her eyes towards the window dividing the room in half. "So... this is it."

"That it is," Sorun confirmed. "Thanks for keeping your promise, Sally."

Chuckling a bit, Sally turned back to Sorun. "I'd be a terrible princess if I didn't keep my word," she said, and then extended her hand out to Sorun. "It's on behalf of all the republic's people that I thank you for your service with the Freedom Fighters, Sorun. I realize everything that's happened to you hasn't been the least bit ideal, and I'm sorry the most we can do to repay you is undo what we did by sending you back to your zone, but you still have everyone's thanks, as well as my own personal thanks." Her smile became wider, more genuine and happy. "Thank you, Sorun. For sticking with us and being such a great friend."

Sorun stared down at the hand. If this was right after he learned he was dying, he probably would have smacked the hand away from him. If his current personality had any semblance to what he was like back then he wouldn't have bothered saying goodbye to anybody and would have just waited for the portal to finish so he could storm through it and back to his own world. But that was then, and this was now. And he valued Sally too much to ever consider doing something like that anymore.

"It's been an experience I'll never forget, Sally." Sorun reached his own hand forwards and grasped at Sally's brown-furred hand. "Good luck with things over here. And with, you know... the whole royalty thing."

"I'm still questioning just how much my title of princess is worth with the way the government is now, but I'll try my best." They shook hands, and then retracted their hands back to their sides. "As for things here, don't worry. Eggman's still out there, but we'll all still do our best to keep the world safe."

"You better. If I died to keep this world in one piece only for you guys to screw it up I'll find a way to come back here just to slap you all."

The lighthearted jest caused Sally to laugh a bit. "We'll do our best to avoid that," she assured him. "Bye, Sorun."

"Bye." He spent the next few second taking in Sally's face one last time, which was still smiling at him. Afterwards, he bid the chipmunk a farewell with a nod, and then walked away towards the panels lined up against the room's window. He stopped right besides Tails, who was still working on the various controls on the machines. "Hey, Tails."

"Hi, Sorun," the fox greeted, turning away from his work briefly to give Sorun a smile. "I'm just working on some calibrations before I get the portal up and running. Already have the coordinates punched in and everything, so I should only be a few more minutes here."

"Sounds good, m'man." Sorun looked to the side and out the window, towards the other end of the room where the portal machine was. "So how does this whole thing work, anyways? Does it just open a hole between two points in space like my Yamato did?"

Tails shook his head. "Not exactly. It's a bit more complicated than that." He turned his gaze back to the machines he was fiddling with. "I don't think you realize just how far your zone is compared to all the other zones. Usually if you want to go to another zone it's as easy as using Chaos energy to open a way to the Cosmic Interstate Highway-"

"The what?"

"- and after that you can just take a road to a new zone," Tails continued, making Sorun sigh and flip his hand up at the ceiling at being ignored. "But your zone isn't even connected to that. It's really weird, 'cause, well... every single zone in the entire multiverse is supposed to be connected to the Highway. But yours is just so removed from every other zone that I'm honestly shocked anything could be that far out. The entire reason we need the Chaos Emeralds is because that kind of sheer distance creates a power requirement no other possible energy source could provide."

"... The word 'Highway' is just being used metaphorically, right? Like, there's not just a literal highway-"

"Even then," Tails continued, making Sorun groan loudly, "there's only so much we can do. Having an unlimited energy supply doesn't do us much good when the actual hardware is still limited in how far it can be pushed. We had to cobble this thing together from spare parts we took from Badniks, after all."

Pursing his lips, Sorun leaned forwards and leaned his forearm against the window. "How does it work, then?"

As he turned a nearby knob, Tails stuck his tongue out as he thought of an answer. "It's like, uh... well, take your Yamato answer from earlier," he began. "Normally, yeah, that's how a portal would be made, but the longer the distance between the two points you're trying to bridge, the more power you need and the harder the hardware has to work. Jumping from one zone to another is one thing, all you have to do is go far enough to hit the Highway, but as I said, yours isn't connected to the Highway for some reason, and it's so far away..."

"The machine itself gets stressed?" Sorun mumbled out in a questioning tone.

"Tearing open a portal to link a distance that vast would melt the entire thing," Tails confirmed, nodding at Sorun's understanding. "I kinda had to get creative with the workaround. It's less about tearing a hole open to bridge the two points in space and more like tunneling a path from here to there while punching holes in space to make the entranceway. There's no technical 'space' in this tunnel, so the distance is zero, but it's less effort to use brute force and tunnel to your zone than fold that much space to connect the two points. Metaphorically speaking. It uses a process that..."

The technobabble Tails began spewing out proved to be too much for Sorun's understanding, so he tuned the young Mobian's words out as he continued staring out at the portal machine. He didn't have any idea what the "Cosmic Interstate Highway", as Tails called it, was, but it had to be some kind of placeholder name for something weird. Sorun didn't really care too much for whatever this vaunted Highway was or how the machine really worked. It worked. That's all he needed to know.

"Sorun? May I speak with you for a moment?"

"Huh?" Sorun turned around away from the window, while Tails had gone back to focusing on the electronics, having finished his longwinded explanation that Sorun had ignored. Nicole had materialized behind him. Hands clasped behind her back and her face set in a mostly blank expression, save for her eyes. They looked almost downcast, her green irises switching between looking at Sorun and the portal on the other end of the room, separated by the window. If nothing else, Sorun found her look peculiar.

He still pushed himself away from the wall, and traveled towards the center of the room where she was waiting for him. He actually had wanted to talk to her regardless; he was aware he never got to give her a proper goodbye outside of when she confronted him in the park that day when he revived, and he wanted to rectify that with the precious few minutes he had left in this world. She deserved that much, and he truly did want a proper goodbye with her.

"Nicole. Hey," Sorun greeted after stopping in front of the lynx. "You're here, too?"

"I'm overseeing some of the preparations along with Tails," she answered. "I wanted to speak with you one last time."

"Oh. Yeah, alright." Sorun unconsciously rose a hand up and began scratching at the back of his head. "You've been kind of acting weird ever since I told you I was going back home," he noted. "Did I do something?"

A look of confliction briefly flashed over her features. So brief, in fact, that it had been too fast for Sorun to possibly perceive it, and thus he hadn't noticed. She settled for frowning a bit, softly biting her lower lip before relaxing again and transitioning into a neutral expression. "I was... I was just surprised," Nicole confessed to him. "Admittedly I was somewhat upset to learn that you are leaving. Forever, that is." She paused, the frown somewhat returning to her face. "I'm sad to see you go."

Sorun made no outward reaction, though he did look a bit to the side while exhaling through his nose. He had some slight suspicion that was what this was about, but he didn't know how to address it other than remind her of the cold, hard truth: he was leaving, and that was that. He didn't know how to make it sound any better than that. "I'll miss you, too," he tried as he looked back at Nicole. "But I have to go. Besides, you have all the others. You won't be alone."

"I realize this," she replied, voice a bit quiet and toneless. "But none of them could ever replace you."

Making a small sigh, Sorun had to resist saying the first things that came to his mind. Asking her what she wanted, or what she wanted him to say. He wanted this goodbye to remain as friendly as possible. He didn't want to accidentally escalate it. "I know," Sorun said. "I mean, who else is gonna play games with you and actually be able to keep up?"

The corners of Nicole mouth upturned the smallest bit. It was more a sad smile than anything else, but the smile itself looked genuine enough to Sorun's eyes. "Perhaps nobody," she admitted to him. "I've had some time to process it all, and I've come to the conclusion... well, I..." Hey eyes dipped down to the floor for a second, and then she looked back up at Sorun. "Your family takes precedence over everything else. I realize this. So you returning to your zone is the logical decision to make."

"Um..." Blinking in confusion, Sorun tilted his head to the side and gave the AI an odd look. "Where are you going with all this?"

"Nowhere," Nicole answered with a shake of her head. "Just promise me you'll be safe and happy back home."

"Of course, Nicole. I'll do my best." Clicking his tongue, Sorun began to roll back and forth on his feet. Both he and Nicole kept looking at each other, neither finding any words to say to the other for some time. "Bye, Nicole. I hope things go well for you here."

She nodded at him, the sad smile growing. "As do I," she said. "Goodbye, Sorun. I truly enjoyed our time together."

"Hey, Sorun? We're all set to go."

His eyebrows rising, Sorun turned back towards Tails. He was looking back towards the human, while right next to him the myriad of lights and diodes on the consoles in front of him were all brightly glowing with green and white lights. Realizing that it was time, Sorun nodded at the fox, sending him, Nicole, and Sally all one final look.

"Well, uh... guess this is it." He rose his hand into the air, gave them all a two-fingered salute, and then turned towards the door to the wall separating the room in two. "Take care, guys."

Sorun approached the door in the wall, opened it, and then stepped through. The door sealed shut behind him, leaving him alone in the half of the room containing the portal machine. He walked forwards, and then stopped in the center of the room, right in front of the inactive machine. Looking back over his shoulder introduced Sorun to the sight of Tails at the controls behind the window, along with Nicole and Sally standing right besides him. All three of them were giving Sorun reassuring smiles, helping ease some of the tension Sorun felt, while Tails had even given him a thumbs-up before looking down at the console in front of him. Switches were flipped, buttons were pressed, and knobs were turned, resulting in Sorun hearing the sound.

It was a sound that was reminiscent of crackling lightning, making Sorun turn back towards the portal machine in front of him. The Chaos Emeralds slotted into the metal boxes powering the machine began alternating between dimming and glowing brightly, and at the same time he saw green energy began sparking out from the cables connecting them to the star-tipped poles and the hollow gateway. More green sparks began flying out from the balls on top of the poles, and seconds later a beam fired out from each of the spheres. The two beams converged right in the center of the inactive, metal gateway, after which there was a bright flash of light that forced Sorun to close his eyes.

The flash had only lasted for a second, and when Sorun opened his eyes back up, there it was. The exact same green portal he'd seen at the beginning of all of this. A green, swirling portal fitted perfectly inside of the metal gateway in front of him. All he had to do was walk right on through and he'd be home free.

"Huh. Just that easy, huh?" Sorun thought. "After all this time, I can finally go back. All I gotta to is walk on through."

Sorun lifted up his foot, and then planted it forwards. He did the same with the other foot, and then kept going. Each and every tentative step towards the green portal filled him with more and more equal parts anxiety and excitement. The anticipation alone was making it feel like his heart could explode at any second, and it was certainly beating fast enough that such a thing was plausible.

"Ah, man, mom's gonna be so upset at me for being away so long. Dunno what lie I'm supposed to spin to explain it all away." He was almost there now. Just a few more steps away from the portal. "Wonder if any good games came out while I was gone? Wanna try and catch up on some of my shows too, and- oh, egh, wonder how school's gonna work? Is there any catch-up work I can do or am I just gonna have to repeat the year? Eh, I'll figure it out."

He stopped directly in front of the portal, close enough that the tip of his nose was practically touching its surface. His entire vision was overtaken with the green color of the portal, and the quiet thrumming of the machine filled his ears. Sorun took a deep breath, and then held it in for a few seconds before exhaling.

"Well... here goes nothing. Let's go home."

With that final thought, he stepped into the portal.

"There he goes." This was said by Tails, right as he and the other two by his sides watched the human step into the green portal. "He said that the portal appeared in a grocery store at his end, right?" Tails asked as he turned towards Sally.

The red-haired chipmunk nodded. "Yeah." A small smirk grew on her lips. "Every time he brought it up he kept complaining they were out of orange juice. Maybe they finally restocked some."

"Well, I mean, they have to have by now, right? It's been months," Tails reasoned. "Though, eh-heh, I think he's gonna have bigger concerns than some orange-"

Sorun fell back through the portal.

It was an event so sudden and unexpected it caused all three observers to jump in surprise and snap their gazes back towards the room. The portal was still open, though the nearby machines were beginning to spark more and more violently as the window it could remain open closed further and further. But, for some reason, Sorun was back. He'd stepped through the portal only for a few seconds before he'd tumbled back out to their end.

"U-uh... what... what's Sorun doing?" Tails mumbled out, his eyes glued to the human's body. "What's going on?"

"Huh...?" Sally seemed just as confused as Tails was, and only grew more confused as she stared out at Sorun. The way he'd fallen back out of the portal on their end made it so he was sitting on the ground with his feet and hands against the floor, though from this position they couldn't see his face. Just the back of his head as he stared up at the portal. "Sorun...?"

Sudden movement on Sally's right side caused her to turn her head. She'd ended up looking towards Nicole, who'd straightened her body in response to something. Her ears had folded back a bit, and the previous confusion on her face was replaced by something that made Sally begin to worry. She looked extremely concerned.

"Nicole?" Sally voiced. "What's going on?"

"The nanites in the room, they're... I'm..." The lynx's face began to transition from concern to being suddenly alarmed. "I'm reading a high amount of radiation flooding into that room..."

Sally had taken some steps back, while Tails had jumped right out of his seat. Both looked confused and horrified at Nicole's claim, while Nicole herself had already vanished, and then reappeared on the other side of the room. She'd materialized right next to Sorun, and then proceeded to crouch down right next to Sorun.

"Sorun!?" Nicole reached a hand out and grabbed at one of Sorun's shoulders. Even after calling out his name and shaking him, he wouldn't look her way. "Sorun, please say something!"

He wouldn't respond to her no matter what she did. His eyes were locked onto the portal, widened to their limit with the irises alternating between dilating and constricting in a rapid fashion. He was panting heavily, far too heavily for Nicole's comfort, and a cold, panicked sweat was beading down his face. Throughout the entire ordeal he continued staring at the portal, his face terror-stricken and his entire body refusing to budge or move despite how much Nicole shook him.

Her own eyes wide and mouth agape in worry, Nicole swiftly stood up and, quickly, looked towards the green portal. For a single second the teeth of her holographic body grit together as she processed her thoughts. She came to a decision in mere milliseconds, and then moved towards the opening of the portal.

After she arrived at the portal's entrance, she stuck her head through. Not her entire body; just the head of her body, enough to see out to the other side. Nicole had only maintained this position for a single second before she pulled her head back out from the portal. When she had, the alarmed look on her face had shifted to a horrified look. So horrified, in fact, she'd stumbled a few steps away from the portal.

"T-Tails... you need to close the portal..."

"What!?" The twin-tailed fox had already made his way back to the portal's controls, though his face was marred in worry and panic as his hands clumsily made their way to the buttons and knobs. "Nicole, what-!?"

"TAILS, CLOSE IT!"

The panicked scream from Nicole shocked Tails enough that he flinched, but, understanding the severity behind her voice, he managed to pull himself together quickly. In just a few seconds he'd located a large, red button on the dashboard of controls he was standing in front of, and then banged his fist down on it.

A loud clunk! sound echoed throughout the room the instant Tails hit the large, red button. Alongside the sound the beams firing out from the two posts disappeared, and in that same moment the green portal disappeared, leaving the hollow gateway. Right after the Emeralds slotted into the machines besides the portal started shaking violently enough that they began to come loose from the slots housing them.

Nicole, quick to act, had waved her hand up at the ceiling. The nanites that comprised the entire structure obeyed her silent command, after which the ceiling dissolved and opened up due to the nanites receding, revealing the open sky. Not a moment too soon, as the seven Chaos Emeralds shot out from their slots in the machines that they had been plugged into. They'd bounced around the walls of the room for a bit, with Nicole going as far as to cover Sorun's body with her own in an effort to shield him, but fortunately they soon enough found the opening in the ceiling. The seven colored gems shot up into the sky, each one then shooting off in a different direction towards the horizon after rising far above the city. Nicole had paid exactly zero attention to the display, instead choosing to wave her hand again to prompt the ceiling to close back up. She hadn't even waited for it to finish reforming before she'd picked Sorun's body up and ran towards the door.

Without her even touching it the door had opened right as Nicole, still carrying Sorun, approached it. She bolted right through, and the door had closed again once she'd ran past it. It was only after she was out of the room did the lynx stop, and then carefully began setting Sorun down on the ground. Tails and Sally meanwhile, both tense and concerned, slowly approached the two.

"Nicole," Sally began after they both stopped next to them, "what's going-?"

"Don't go in that room," Nicole hastily stated as she finished gently laying Sorun on the ground. "It's saturated in radiation."

"Radiation?" Sally's eyes darted towards the windowed wall separating the room, and then, with her eyes widened, she looked back at Nicole. "If that room's contaminated-"

"I'll deal with it later!" Sally had looked taken back at the AI's outburst, though Nicole hadn't seen it. She hadn't even looked towards either her or Tails, her focus solely being on the human lying down in front of her. "Sorun! Sorun, please...!"

She'd began cradling his head with one hand while using the other to brush the teen's black hair that matched her own out from his face. She grew more and more visibly worried when she saw his face was a paler color than normal. His eyes were half-open and unfocused, while the rest of him looked drowsy and weak. He wasn't responding to any of Nicole's pleas, even after she began to rub at his face with her hand to try and get him to focus on her.

"Nicole!" A strong hand clamping down on her shoulder finally got Nicole to look away from Sorun. She saw Sally crouching right next to her, a gravely serious look on her face underneath the concern. Tails, standing behind her, wore a pained expression as he looked down at Sorun, who was beginning to move less and less. "If that room is contaminated with radiation, then Sorun got exposed. The hospital can treat him, so you need to teleport us there right now before his condition gets worse."

"R-right." Shakily, Nicole gave her a nod. The panic on her face had subsided by a fraction, though she still looked nearly as terrified as Sorun had seconds prior as she looked back down at the teen. "Sally, his home..."

Sally roughly shook her shoulder. "Tell us later, Nicole! Sorun needs a hospital right now!"

What was he expecting when he walked through that portal?

A store, simply put. The same beyond-average grocery store Sorun remembered going into before getting dragged to Mobius. The same aisles, the same refrigerated racks full of drinks, maybe even the same employee sweeping the floor. The sensation of his feet touching down on tiled ground, that same scent of frozen produce, the same moderate lighting.

He remembered his foot touching down on the tiles, and there'd been so much pure joy Sorun had felt. That one step confirmed it all for him, that he was finally back and it was all over with. Mobius was a thing of the past. It was gone, over with. He was home. He could see everybody again, go back to his life, go back to his mother and friends. He planned on going home first thing just to see his mother again, once he'd managed to assemble some sort of excuse, of course.

Two steps out of the portal and that joy, that happiness, magnified tenfold. He was back, finally back, finally in the world he belonged in. In a world filled with his people and his culture; a world he was comfortable in. No more fighting for his life, no more of the insanity that was the entire universe Mobius resided in, none of it. He'd felt so light, so happy, and so free that he could finally put that awful chapter of his life behind him and move on with his life.

Sorun's entire body passed through the portal. He was still trying to figure out how he'd return to his life. Reuniting with his mother would be a challenge all on its own. His education would be another thing. He planned on visiting David as soon as possible right after he settled all of that, and he was certain his friend would round up the boys and they'd all plan some big party for him. Maybe he'd end up telling Dave the truth; Sorun felt he'd actually believe him for some reason. And after Sorun figured out how to get his life back on track he could go back to doing things he loved. Go back to games and pirating shows off the internet. Maybe he'd take up literature again. Hell, maybe he'd write something himself. Make an adventure novel about his time on Mobius. He'd have to change some things of course, couldn't rightly write a story using Vergil's powers without suffering some form of copywrite infringement, but he'd find a workaround.

It was going to be alright. He was home. It was all fine now.

But then he'd taken a look around right after he'd exited the portal, and something was wrong. Very, very wrong. It was the grocery store alright- he recognized the layout. Although some aisles were knocked down for some reason, he recognized it as the same store. But there weren't any lights. In fact, there wasn't even a ceiling.

And then Sorun made the mistake of looking up.

It was either dawn or dusk from how the sky looked. That deep red color. Through the completely vacant ceiling Sorun saw the state of the city he'd been in his whole life. Once pristine buildings that he managed to see through the open ceiling were now cracked apart. Almost all of their windows shattered, and some were dangerously leaning over or were even toppled over completely. They looked less like buildings and more like ruins.

There was a burning sensation, too. It was slight, almost unnoticeable to Sorun, but it was there. And he knew it was there. And that, along with the state of the store, along with the states of the buildings, that hellish image he'd stepped out of the portal to see, all said enough for him to understand.

He'd stumbled back, dazed at it all. He tumbled right back through the portal, back to Mobius and onto the floor of the room where the portal machine was. He didn't even notice it. All he could do was stare at the portal he'd just fallen out of, so much in shock that he couldn't even move. His thoughts weren't in any better shape.

"I... what, I... that... I don't... why... I- that isn't- when- I-I-I..."

His eyes saw Nicole next to him, doing something. His mind couldn't register her presence, though. All he heard were muffled sounds when she tried speaking to him. He didn't feel his heart hammering in his chest or his breathing that was so rapid and heavy that, were he conscious of it, Sorun would find painful. He wasn't aware of when he was physically picked up and carried away. He was so much in shock that nothing was registering with him. What he was aware of, if just barely, was the fact he was rapidly growing more tired and weak by the second. His breathing began to grow more shallow as his movements slowed, and alongside that his jumbled thoughts began to become more and more disjointed.

"Why...?"

There was no describing how sharp of a change Sorun had felt when he saw his city once so pristine and shining now destroyed. To have gone from being so hopeful and happy to what he was now. Horrified and confused and anguished and a hundred other emotions bundled together in such a way that he didn't know what he felt. His mind couldn't make sense of any of it. It was all just nothing but noise that made him feel awful, that was scrambling his thoughts so much he couldn't think coherently. And as Nicole laid him down on the floor, everything was becoming quieter. His own body as it slowed down, his breathing, his thoughts, his emotions. Everything continued to rapidly slow down as Sorun's eyelids became heavier and heavier.

He saw forms in his blurring vision. A brown and purple form with splashes of black and a hint of green. A lighter brown with blues and reds. Yellow and white. He knew who they were, could put names to the forms, but he couldn't think to say anything. What little focus he had between him shutting down and the maelstrom of emotions swirling through him was all focused on a single thought, the one, single thought Sorun successfully managed to form as his eyes closed further and further.

"Why is my home dead...?"

The last thing he saw before everything went black was the brown and purple form frantically shaking him.

A/N- You know in hindsight I don't think all these fakeout goodbye chapters are gonna hold much weight to people in the future just getting to this part when there's gonna be however many chapters after this one. A fact I realized way early on, because I originally planned a short goodbye chapter for every single character before realizing I didn't wanna put that much time and effort in for just that: a fakeout. At the same time I didn't wanna skimp, either, and I still had to throw a few things in there like Shadow informing Sorun about Rubrum's existence, however vague it was, so we got what we got.

But hey, good news for people who wanted Sorun to stay on Mobius: he's staying on Mobius. It's not at all good news to Sorun, but the truth of the matter is we still got a whole lot of story to go through here.