The Van Pelt Residence, Birchwood, 2am, 7 days after the Anomaly
"Was it worth it, in the end?" Amy lay awake in her bed unable to sleep. "Losing friend after friend on those dark days, the pain and suffering that came with it, having to pretend to keep my head when everyone else was losing theirs. Holding everything together because the future of life on our planet depended it on it. Am I destined to live out the rest of my days a stranger? A refugee? I don't know what to call myself."
"It's not even their fault. They've tried their best, bless 'em. But they're just kids. I guess I can't be mad that Shadow left. He saw this coming, and heaven knows he can't stand to live like this. Heck, even I'm struggling to accept this fate." She wiped her eyes, and found she was tearing up.
"Come on Amy, get it together! You know there's a way back. I just have to find it. Even if it takes me years. I'll get back." She convinced herself. With enough positive energy in her mind to keep her worries at bay, she pulled her duvet over her and slept for the rest of the night.
Morning broke, and so with it did the alarm clock, as Amy lazily palmed her hand on the snooze button, causing the clock to fall off the shelf.
Amy yawned herself awake, slowly making her way downstairs to have breakfast. Linus and Rerun were already there, tucking in to some cereal, while Lucy was sat nearby, frowning as she tried to solve a crossword puzzle in the morning paper.
"You okay?" Linus asked, as Amy made herself a jam sandwich.
"I'm… I'm okay." Amy lied. "I just have a lot on my mind."
"You can talk to us, it's fine." Linus assured her.
"You sure?" Amy asked. "Back in my world, my friends and I have been through a lot. I don't think it would be right to unload those kind of worries on young kids such as yourselves."
"Perhaps not, but whatever it was, it's not going to be the end of the world, is it. You'll get back home, I promise." Linus replied.
Amy said nothing. Divulging more about her frequent brushes with disaster might traumatise them, and possibly also cause them to question the morality of sending her back to a place that frequently puts her life in danger. Linus and Rerun got up just as Amy was finishing her sandwich.
"Come on." They called to her. "We wanna show you something." And the two boys took Amy by the hand and led them to their back garden, where the boys had set up an easel each.
"You guys paint?" Amy asked in surprise.
"Rerun does, mostly. This was his idea." Linus clarified. "You've seemed stressed this past week."
"And your eyes look tired." Rerun added.
"Do they?" Amy rubbed her eyes as if to hide the fact.
"Yeah, you look like you've lost some sleep. Did you wake up in the middle of the night?" Linus asked her.
"Uh... no." Amy lied again.
"Alright, well, anyway, we thought this would be a relaxing activity for us to do." Linus replied, as he and Rerun sat at their easels, which were angled in such a way that they had a good view of the streets, houses and trees in front of them, giving them all plenty of inspiration to draw from.
As Amy sat down and began to draw, she focused her attention on the tree, on which a bird's nest was resting, and tiny cheeps emanated from the nest as two young chicks pestered their mother for food. Amy marvelled at the sight of it, noting all of that detail in her painting.
Linus, meanwhile, was simply painting some houses. He'd been doing some thinking recently; what research he could get done in the past week was nowhere near the level of understanding required to know how to build a gate to another dimension. Heck, even Earth's greatest scientists hadn't achieved that yet, or light speed travel, for that matter. He wondered if there wasn't a different way to resolve this.
"Amy?" Linus began.
"Yes?" Amy replied, painting streaks of blue across the skyline.
"When you said there was a flash of white, didn't you say you were fighting this Eggman person with your friends?"
"Yes. Why do you ask?" Amy responded, putting her brush down.
"Assuming that they were all caught up in the same incident that you were, doesn't it seem odd that neither Eggman nor your friends have appeared?" Linus posited.
"Shadow got thrown here with me, but he left to have some time alone." Amy responded.
"Anyone else?" Linus asked her.
"No, actually." Amy answered, as she worked out what Linus was getting at. "Hmmm." Amy thought aloud. "Shadow did say we weren't in danger here. Perhaps he knew already?"
"Wouldn't that mean your other friends are somewhere else?" Linus replied.
"I guess so. Tails would probably be capable of building a way back home, provided he has the necessary materials."
"And once your friends get home and realise you're gone, they'll be looking for you, and Shadow too, probably." Linus finished.
"What if they can't?" Amy worried. "There could be an infinite amount of universes to look through before finding me."
"Well, two of you got sent here, out of…"
"Seven. Eight if you include Eggman." Amy clarified. "You were saying?"
"I'm saying that whatever caused this can only send you to a limited number of places, even if there are many more universes outside what any of us can reach. At least I think. I don't know a lot about this sort of thing, I'm only 7." Linus explained.
"Tails is 8. But then again he has an IQ of 300." Amy replied.
"300?" Linus remarked in slight shock. "The smartest people on this world have an IQ of about 200, or so I read once. Your best bet is probably to wait for your friends to come get you. Until then, you might as well enjoy the peace you have here.
"I guess." Amy replied. "Thanks, for your help." She added, putting the finishing touches on her painting.
"Wow." Linus took a look at Amy's finished painting for the first time. "That looks amazing!" He gawked, impressed by her artistic skill. His painting of houses, by comparison, was only just as good as Rerun's and Rerun was still in kindergarten.
"I do things like this to decompress when I'm at home, if I have the time." Amy tried to explain, somewhat embarrassed by the praise she was receiving. She wouldn't have to hide her blushes for long though, as Mr Van Pelt approached them, carrying a basket of clothes to hang on the washing line.
"Hey kids, Amy, How are you guys doing?"
"We were just doing some painting, Dad." Rerun explained.
"Cool." His dad bent over and peered at the three works of art. "You're getting better every day, Rerun." He complimented, ruffling his son's hair. "Mow that you're done, why don't you help your mother out with the cooking? We're having roast potatoes for lunch.
"Alright." Just let us put these away first." Linus replied, as the three of them took their paintings upstairs and cleared their easels away, before helping around the house once more.
Cream's House, Mobius, 10:45am, 7 days after the anomaly.
*Knock Knock*
"Coming!" Cream shuffled her way to the door, avoiding her mother' potted plants and scattered notes as she walked. For the past week, Vanilla had seemed rather busy, and she seemed very reluctant to tell her why.
"I wonder when she'll tell me?" Cream thought, as she opened the door to find Charmy Bee standing in front of her, magnifying glass in hand.
"Oh. Hi Charmy! Do you want to come in?" Cream welcomed him.
"Not today, thanks." Charmy replied, a little timidly. "Did you see the Chaos emeralds flying across the sky last week?
"I did, but when I asked mother what happened, she wouldn't say anything. Normally when the chaos emeralds do that it's because Sonic defeated another one of Eggman's evil schemes, but it's been a week since you and I saw it, and no one has seen him, or Amy, or even Tails. It's kind of eerie, actually.
"Yeah, it is." Charmy replied. Vector and Espio were keeping tight lipped about it too. I can't blame them though. If rumours got out that Sonic and half of his friends had disappeared, there'd be panic in the streets.
"Indeed." Cream replied. "You need my help with anything?"
"Well, seeing as Vector and Espio are busy, and aren't letting me in on it, I was wondering if we could look for the Chaos Emeralds together." Charmy blushed.
"I can help, in a little while." Cream graciously accepted. "I promised mother that I would help her reorganise her garden. Come back in an hour, okay?"
"Okay." Charmy replied. Not content with waiting at the door the whole time, he buzzed around the local area looking for clues. He came back with a few hints, but no emeralds as yet, as he approached Cream's door and knocked again.
"Charmy's back!" Cream called to her mother as she got ready to go out.
"Okay, just make sure to be back before it gets dark!" Vanilla responded.
"I will!" Cream replied, shutting the door behind her tightly on the way out.
Charmy and Cream walked for a while (with Cheese following behind them) as Charmy followed the clues he already had.
"Apparently, one of the townsfolk said to me that he saw a green chaos emerald arcing downward as it went past him, landing in a field somewhere in the distance." Charmy explained.
"Really?" Cream asked in response.
"Yeah. The field, should be this way." Charmy pointed ahead of him as the field of corn presented itself to them. The pair made their way through the kissing gate and into the field itself.
"So you're saying one of the Chaos Emeralds is somewhere in here?" Cream asked.
"I think so." Charmy replied, as he brushed aside a swathe of corn as tall as himself. Charmy looked down at the soil in front of him, while Cream followed, keeping on the lookout for any stray farm equipment or other obstacles he could bump into. After about half an hour of searching up and down the field, Charmy finally stumbled on something.
"Cream, look at this!" Charmy beckoned her, as he pointed at a bank of dirt heaped in a lump.
"What does this have to do with the chaos emeralds?" Cream looked at him, puzzled.
"Well, Vector taught me, that when objects hit something soft like dirt or snow at a certain speed, it'll leave a mark or trail behind. So if my intuition is correct then…" Charmy turned around to the other side of the heap to find a familiar green gem embedded deep into the dirt.
"Yes! It's here!" Charmy grabbed the Chaos Emerald and raised it aloft triumphantly. Cream congratulated him with a few claps and cheers of her own before heading out of the field.
"We should send this to Jewel." Cream told him firmly. "If anyone knows about what happened to Sonic and Amy, she does."
"Agreed, but how do we get it to her? The Restoration HQ is a pretty long way from here." Charmy reasoned.
"We could give it to mother, she'd know what to do with it." Cream suggested.
"True, but Vector and Espio would probably be able to do it quicker." Charmy countered.
"But you said yourself that they went off without you." Cream argued.
"Oh, right." Charmy realised, looking disheartened. Cream didn't appear to care much about that, though, as Charmy saw her holding a hand over her eyebrows, straining to see at something in the distance.
"Is that…?" Cream uttered as she saw a vague, bat-like figure flying towards them. Charmy did the same thing as she did, looking into the distance and spotting it too.
"It's Rouge!" Charmy blurted. "What should we do?"
"We'll let her have it." Cream replied.
"Yeah!" Charmy enthusiastically responded, as he readied a fighting stance, which turned to one of utter confusion as Cream waved the emerald in the air for Rouge to see. "What are you doing?"
"You can trust Rouge." Cream assured him. "She can hold on to them safely until they're needed."
"Isn't she an internationally renowned jewel thief?" Charmy asked.
"That would be correct." Rouge interrupted, landing in front of them, as Cream handed her the Emerald.
"I trust you can get this to Jewel?" Cream asked.
"Of course, dear." Rouge replied. "That's what she tasked me to do, well, after a bit of nudging from yours truly."
"So you're not stealing them?" Charmy asked in an accusatory tone.
"Heavens, no. I could hardly hold on to these long enough until Sonic would need them, or Eggman steal them off me for that matter. I'll stick to diamond heists any day."
"Okay, I guess." Charmy relented.
"Why don't you guys run along home, and I'll get Jewel to thank you later?" Rouge asked.
"Okay!" Cream happily obliged. "See you soon!"
"Anytime." Rouge replied, as Cream and Charmy walked away back the way they came. Charmy dropped Cream off at her house before he too, headed back home.
Meanwhile, Jewel was still busy at the destroyed Eggman base, searching among the ruins for info. Thankfully no one had turned up dead amongst the rubble, but there had been scant else to tell her what had happened. That was all about to change though, as she tossed aside a rock and looked down at a dusty and creased notepad buried underneath.
Jewel picked the book up and began to flick through it. Inside it were diagrams of various machines Eggman had either built or was planning to build, and some of the properties of the Phantom Ruby, the Warp Topaz and the Chaos emeralds. Flick through it further, she stopped on a page containing a diagram of a portal powered by the chaos emeralds and both of the other gems.
"Interesting…" Jewel scoured the page, ignoring the big X scrawled across the page in pen. "Maybe we can use this…" Jewel ended her search for the day and headed back to HQ to pore over the details further in her office. After a bit of thinking time, she put in a phone call to Rouge.
"Hello, Rouge? It's Jewel."
"Oh hi." Rouge responded. "How's your rubble rousing coming along?"
"Haven't found anyone, luckily, but I have come across something of interest."
"Go on." Rouge replied, intrigued.
"Among the ruins I found a notepad full of Eggman's failed and unused ideas. According to this, he was planning to make a portal at some point, which indicates to me that my theory that him, Sonic and the others were all thrown into a different world is probably the correct one." Jewel surmised.
"And your goal here is to?" Rouge tried to keep her on point.
"I'm suggesting that we try to build this portal so we can bring them back." Jewel proposed.
"So I'm guessing you want me to continue searching for the Chaos Emeralds?"
"Yes. How are you doing on that front?" Jewel asked.
"Cream and Charmy managed to find one and give it to me, so including the two that Eggman didn't manage to find, that leaves me with 4 more to look for." Rouge answered.
"Good work." Jewel replied.
"One question." Rouge stopped her for a second. "Suppose Eggman were to return first, how do you make sure he doesn't immediately steal the emeralds and break the portal?"
"I have his notebook. I'm sure I'll think of something." Jewel replied. "Good luck out there." And she hung up, getting up to make herself a well-deserved cup of coffee, just in time for her lunch break.