Big liked fishing.

He liked Froggy too. But Froggy was sleeping. Froggy slept when it was cold.

So Big fished alone. Which was okay. It would have been better with Froggy.

He'd found some strange fish today. He'd even found a box.

Big didn't know where the box came from. But that was okay. He didn't like the box very much. It wasn't a fish. And there were eyes on the box. Boxes weren't supposed to have eyes.

The box had fishing bait in it though. That was nice. He liked the spinny toy as well.

Big reeled in his fishing pole. Another strange fish. All yellow metal like a ring. Didn't look good to eat. He threw it back. It was bad to catch fish and not eat them.

He took new bait from the box.

Big liked Tails too.

He hoped Tails was okay. Tails helped him with Froggy sometimes. And he told Big things. He was hard to understand. But Big knew he was very smart, and very sad. But he always smiled anyway. That was hard to understand too. So Big didn't ask why.

Big scratched his chest. It was very cold. Too cold for Froggy. But not too cold for Big.

Good thing Froggy was sleeping.

Big looked up. A big floaty thing was coming. It looked a bit like fish. Too many eyes though. Like his box. He didn't like the fish very much. Fish weren't supposed to be in the sky.

Sonic had said to run away if he saw things with horns. Big looked at the fish, scratching his head. It looked a bit like it had big horns. But those weren't horns. They were just very big teeth.

That was fine.

More teeth fish flew towards him. Big's lips moved as he counted them.

One. Two… Three… Lots. Lots and lots.

But they didn't have horns, so Big looked back to his fishing.

Until one bit him.

Big did not like being bitten.


"You know, I would have got us back in a week, right?" Cream asked with a huff, the red bandanna around her ears denoting her seed.

"You were flying all yesterday, Knuckles!" Cream, a year younger, replied in a huff, adjusting the crimson hairband that both held her long ears up and marked her own seed. "Sonic's been doing a great job. It's not hi- her fault that the controls are broken."

"Shut up." Cream whispered, unheeded. Her seed was the original. But she was broken.

"Guys! Guys! Calm down!" The Cream in the blue dress called out from the pilot's chair. "We're going to be fine, alright? See? Earth is right down there. We'll be there any day now."

"I hope Tails is still okay back on Happy Days."

"Psh. Like he's even there, he went down to Little Planet right?" Cream snorted, folding her arms. "Since we're still here he must have failed to get the time stones or something."

"Shut up!" Cream yelled this time, startling the whole cabin to silence before hunching back over, tears spilling from her eyes.

A few of the younger Creams joined her, starting to sniffle.

"Sh, sh, shhh, it's alright." Headband Cream scooped up the littlest. Nerf. A seedless.

Lucky her.

Cream sighed, twitching her white tail and brushing her fingers across its stubby length.

It must be nice to be seedless.

To the eight Creams that hadn't been seeded with the minds of the dead, they were surrounded by family, thirteen sisters cramped together in space. A strange life, perhaps, but all they'd ever known.

To the oldest Cream, mourning the death of her Mama, she was surrounded by friends wearing her face, haunted by the centuries she'd spent living with her Mama's killer, tormented by a cage of love and hate.

And to the three heroes, gifted with memories of people stronger, faster, and more heroic, their bodies were cages. Cages that stopped them being what they were. Cages that were robbing them of who they were.

The mind was a reflection of the body. Memories poured to fill a rabbit shape like so many grains of sand. Take fifteen years of memories of a hedgehog boy who raced the world, and out the other end came a delusional rabbit girl, one who remembered a lifetime of things that stopped mattering to her, who remembered being able to run faster than sound against all evidence to the contrary.

A Cream that went through the same experiences as Sonic would still be Cream. A Cream that spent fifteen years thinking they were Sonic would still be Cream. Would still be sweet. Would still be slow. Would still be a girl. And there was a reason these were called formative years. Soon they really would be more like sisters than anything else, their personalities worn smooth by new experiences, by new life. Like… twins? Tri… What was the word for thirteen identical siblings again?

They were still the lucky ones.

Cream sighed, staring out at a planet she'd never been to, at lights shining in the dark. They'd spent weeks arguing about their origin. Feeling the metal ring at the back of her neck where she'd been put in this head.

Or at least as much of her as would fit.

A metal canister broke into her line of sight and her concentration. The Cream pretending to be Amy smiled down at her.

"Hey, you hungry, Sept?"

Ah, yes, she was Sept now. The seedless used numbers. Back when her head worked, she had found her own name to be delightfully ironic for reasons she couldn't remember and would no longer have understood. Three years old and average.

"...Thank you, Amy." Sept took the canister in a white gloved hand anyway, her lunch sloshing within.

NotAmy grinned, rubbing Sept's head. "It's going to be alright. You'll see."

"I know." Sept nodded.

Sept knew lots of things. And she had forgotten most of them.

But she did know that things were going to be exciting very soon.


"Tails! Hey, Tails! Open up, you hear?!"

Knuckles pounded on the door with a mitten'd fist, the reinforced knuckles that were his namesake leaving sizeable dents in the polished metal.

Whoops.

Well, Tails could fix that. Little guy was always fixing stuff. He should have opened the door though, it was freezing out here.

Knuckles pounded again, scowling.

This was why he kept Angel Island flying near the equator. Balmy weather all year round, far away from any ice zones. Not messing around in freezing snow. His crimson fur wasn't long enough for this. Echidna were supposed to laze in the sun as the gods intended!

But even though his tail was so cold it was almost straight, Knuckles kept banging on the door, distorting the fragile inch and a half thick steel door as he did.

Wait. Was this even the right lab? Why did Tails have to have so many? If he was going to change labs he could at least answer his communicator!

"Knuckles?"

Knuckles paused, fist halfway to the door as he looked up. A pink furred hedgehog looked at him, a brown paper bag clutches in one of her hands and a steaming cup in the other.

"Oh, Amy, hey. Just trying to get someone to open his door already." He folded his arms with a chuckle.

"Huh? But Tails never locks his door." Amy tilted an ear in confusion. "Not even in the middle of the night."

"That's… Uh… How do you-"

"So, did you try calling him?" Amy smiled sweetly.

"Of course I did!" Knuckles scowled. "He's not picking up!"

"Hm… He did leave Sonic a message about going to check some readings awhile ago. Maybe he's not back yet? Did you check his plane?"

"His…" Knuckles rubbed his frigid lips with his mitt. "Oh! I forgot."

Amy stared at him half-lidded.

"Don't look at me like that, I was in a hurry!" Knuckles zipped to the side of the building and back again, snow spraying under his boots. "Yeah, his plane's gone. No tracks, must have been gone awhile."

"Huh. That is strange." Amy tilted her head. "I could have sworn Sonic was nearby."

The sound of jet engines slipped past the edge of hearing. Knuckles shot Amy a glance before squinting up into the air, trying to make out the distant red shape.

Yep. Sonic's plane.

Thank Yuda she wasn't interested in him.

Sonic skidded to the snow, powder spraying through the air as damaged wheels failed to find purchase on the frozen surface all the way to a snow drift piled at the end of the runway.

"Sonic!" Amy hopped up and down, beaming despite the steaming brown liquid sloshing all over her gloves.

"Oh, hey, Ames." Sonic staggered towards them, whacking the side of his head to dislodge snow from his ear. "Long time no see."

"It was this morning, Sonic." Amy glowered at him, bag tearing slightly in her grip. "We met this morning. You took me to breakfast."

"Huh? Oh. Right. Right. Well, we need to get inside- Whoa! What happened to the door?"

"It was like that when I got here." Knuckles shrugged.

"Okay." Sonic glanced at him eyes half-lidded. "Sure."

Knuckles nodded in sly satisfaction. Nobody would ever suspect.

"Amy, could you? We're in a hurry."

"Sure thing, Sonic!" Amy shoved bag and cup into Knuckles hands as she stepped past, bending over the lock for a moment before standing back. The battered lock clicked open. "See? Aren't I useful? How about you marr-"

"Not now, Amy." Sonic pushed past her into the lab, letting the door clang shut behind him.

The hedgehog girl blinked in shock, mouth gaping open before it faded to fury. She slammed the door open, following Sonic with a furious yell that rattled the laboratory's thick windows.

Knuckles gazed at the door for a long moment, slurping his new beverage. Hm. Mint hot chocolate. Not bad.

Thanks again, Yuda.

He shook his head, stepping into the lab. Amy was already quiet, sat hunched over on Tails' desk, Sonic in Tails' chair, hand on his forehead. The Miles Electric and a bloodstained energy cannon sat on the table before him.

"What's going on guys? So Tails forget his computer again?" Knuckles slurped another mouthful of hot chocolate, helping him to warm up. "That explains why he wasn't answering my messages I guess?"

"Tails left these on Windy Hill." Sonic didn't move, staring at it.

"On the Lost Hex? But that's Zeti territory!"

"Tails is missing, Knuckles." Amy muttered quietly, staring at her hands.

"Well then we need to get back up there!" Knuckles punched the end of the sofa with a crunch of wood.

Uhh… Tails could fix that too. When he got back. "Why did you leave him up there, Sonic?!"

"It wasn't just the Zeti!" Sonic snapped, slamming his own fist on the desk. Part of the machine next to him broke off in a spray of paperclips. "There were these monsters! Kinda like Black Arms, they were everywhere! They attacked me and Big. We had to get out of there."

"Then where is-"

Amy's question was cut off by an almighty crash from outside. A moment later the vast purple cat stumbled into through the broken door, his fur smoking slightly and caked with swampy green fluids and clumps of purple flesh.

"... Hello." Big waved, a spiked ball and chain of softly glowing blue metal clutched in his other hand.

"Big! What happened?"

"It bit me."

"If Tails was here…" Sonic glowered down at the desk.

"What bit you, Big?" Amy hopped down off the desk, nose crinkling from the smell as she brought a towel over to the giant Mobian.

Knuckles nodded, crushing his now empty cup and throwing it into the trashcan.

"Alright! Listen up!" He clapped his mitts together to catch their attention. "When I was out by Green Hills I came across something too."
He pulled out a fang as long as his arm. "There were weird giant bugs in the sand, making some kind of nest. Both things are probably linked to those readings."

"Sonic." He pointed at the blue hedgehog. "You go and find Eggman and beat some sense out of him. If he's taken Tails you know he'll tell you. Amy and Big, stay here in case Tails comes back. Try and get in touch with G.U.N. If Black Arms are involved somehow, Shadow's our best bet. If not, we could still use their resources. This isn't just a mobian issue now."

"A-alright." Amy nodded, still scraping gunk off of Big.

"What are you going to do?" Sonic frowned.

"I'm going to go ask the Zeti where my friend is." Knuckles pounded his fist into his palm with an impact hard enough to loose a wisp of flame. "We'll keep in touch via the lab computer. Understood?"

Three pairs of eyes stared at Knuckles, blankly.

"Hey! Stop looking so surprised! Let's go! For Tails!"

The three heroes sprung into action.

Big continued to stare blankly.