"What the heck is that thing?!" Sonic yelled over the buzzing and humming of the strange, purple-colored barrier between him and the fortress. It had suddenly revealed itself to be a huge dome covering the entire area around the evil place, as well as the place itself.

"A Bi-Dimensional Barrier! Get away from it before it expands!!" Knuckles called out.

Sonic almost dragged Tails as he got up and sped off toward a tree near Knuckles. Dropping Tails at the bottom, he ran right up the side of the tree to the top, just to see how tall this 'Bi-Dimensional Barrier' was.

He ignored Knuckles' comment of 'being scared like a little kitten up a tree' as he looked around. 'Yep', he thought to himself, 'Whole place is surrounded.'

Sonic jumped, flipped, and landed perfectly in front of the still- stunned Tails and the triumphant-looking Knuckles, and asked, "Okay, how do we get inside that thing?"

Knuckles laughed to himself. "You can't!" he mocked.

"I guessed as much," Sonic mumbled, trying to think. Finally giving up, he asked, "Okay, you are superior this once. How do we get past that thing if we can't go through it and there's no way inside?"

"I didn't say that."

"Yeah you did," Tails piped in.

"No," Knuckles said, "I just said 'You can't'."

"When I asked how do we get inside. I'm not that old. I don't forget stuff," Sonic shot back.

Knuckles pulled out a green Chaos Emerald and a blue-tinted one as well. "There's a way around a BDB, but there isn't a way inside one. Especially here."

"I can guess why it's hard to get inside you," Sonic giggled. Tails walked over and tapped him on the arm, and Sonic whispered something to the curious two-tailed fox, causing him to laugh silently with his blue friend.

"What?" Knuckles asked. "BDB stands for Bi-Dimensional Barrier."

"What about 'Big Dumb Bonehead'?" Sonic quipped.

Knuckles threw a punch at Sonic, who ducked and countered with a punch in Knuckles' stomach. Knuckles coiled as he fell backwards, clutching his stomach and biting his lip to stop the pain. Sonic walked over to him, standing and looking at his rival on the ground. "If I've told you once, I've told you twice. I am not your enemy, Knuckles."

Knuckles looked up at him, still tense in pain.

"Take the green Emerald, give it to Tails. Stand opposite him with the blue one. Hold both above your heads and I'll chant the code to release the mechanism I used to travel. No guarantees that it'll work, though."

Sonic just looked at his friend while Tails stumbled around to grab the Chaos Emeralds. "Why the sudden change of heart?" he asked, intensely curious at this.

"Because you need to go back to your 'dream' to collapse the barrier. That's why it's called a 'Bi-Dimensional Barrier'; it works across two dimensions!" Knuckles explained. "Robotnik disappeared around the same time you went into a coma. I guessed it meant he followed you into your 'dream world' to take care of some business. Most likely it would be getting rid of you."

The barrier began to hum louder and pulse visibly. Knuckles rolled off his back to his feet, looking at Sonic and Tails.

"Get into position! I'll explain later!"

Sonic and Tails got into the position they were told to be in, both equally wondering what was going on. Knuckles chanted some strange words in an alien language, and Sonic felt himself, once again, tear apart.

Even though he was in pain, it brought back flashes of memories in his recent past. The hospital, Carl and Cody, the school, the psychiatrist card.

It just then hit him.

The card had had Robotnik's name on it!