Authors note: I originally took this chapter down a year ago in order to make some changes to it. But in the end I've not really made any impactful changes to it. But it's restored with a few tweaks to the characters to make everything flow better.

Chapter 5

It was awake again, and something had attacked it from the inside. Fearing for itself, it instantly sealed itself and took off again. Feeling the four intruders inside it, it shook its interior and buffeted the creatures in the hope of killing them before they hurt it. Everything was now still within its dimensions as it leapt off this strange world it had found itself on, and dived back into the Time Vortex running as fast as it could away from the world and sped across to the other side of eternity.

Tails held on as the machine seemed to settle down and level out. The console glowed like a Christmas tree and the crystals in the centre rose and fell rhythmically producing a much quieter, and relaxed wheezy-groan.

Tails found himself sighing and collapsing onto the console for a second so his brain could process what had just happened.

It was as if the box had been rolled down a steep hill and tumbled from roof to floor, yet the buffeting he'd felt gave the illusion that they were at sea somehow.

Remembering his friends Tails went to check on them. First Sonic. He was still paralysed but his eyes still gave the fox a confident look as if to say, "I'm okay." He blinked, and his arm twitched. Good, it meant the anaesthetic was wearing off. Hopefully there would be no damage to his brain.

Tails then moved over to Amy and checked her. She was unconscious, and there was a lump forming on her head but otherwise she seemed to be okay. He laid her out on her front and made sure she could breathe. Tails didn't know much about first aid, so he hoped what he did would help her, but he was confident she would recover.

The Fox then looked out into the void, in the direction Robotnik had fallen. He could tell which way he'd fallen by using the faces of the console as a reference point. He'd fallen away from the side with two disk things set into the panel.

"Robotnik?" Tails called out into the darkness, "Are you okay?" No response. He guessed he must be unconscious too, or pretending to be. Robotnik was a difficult man to trust. He was always scheming and planning and pretending.

Scratching his head, Tails turned back to the console and just watched it for a second. The crystal was moving up and down almost like a heartbeat, the colours it produced were both ethereal, and familiar. Of course they were, they were the primary colours.

Experimentally Tails flipped a switch with a 'click', but nothing seemed to happen, in fact the switch 'clicked' again as it flew back on its own. Was the machine operating itself?

Tails walked around the console and looked at the controls and wondered what the heck they could all be for. They didn't seem to have any defined function at all, and nothing was labelled.

What was this machine even for? Producing chronotrons? If only he had his Chaos Detector still with him he could find out.

He placed his hands on the metal of the console. Weirdly, it felt like he was resting his hands on something that could feel his touch. Gently he moved his hands over its surface like he was stroking a dog, and gently for some reason he found himself petting the mushroom console. The room shuddered as if the machine had actually felt it, and a noise was produced deep beneath his feet. Something tingled at the edges of his brain, like the machine was giving him its appreciation at being treated so gently.

He placed his hands on the console again and stroked the console like a pet. Again the machine shuddered, almost like a stray dog that has just come into contact with people and was a little frightened.

"Shh..." Tails said to it more out of instinct than certainty. "It's okay... I'm not going to hurt you." All the while he realised he was talking to a machine. But then again, he'd met some machines that had feelings... of some sort. As Tails continued to stroke and pet the machine the shuddering seemed to calm down. When the shuddering finally stopped Tails stood back and looked at the console, scratching his head on what to do.

Tails' attention was grabbed by a glow coming from the opposite side of the console. He moved over to find two glowing disks set into the console. They glowed a welcoming orange glow and Tails got the feeling the machine wanted him to touch them. So he did, placing one hand on each.

Tails body went rigid as the telepathic circuits dived into his mind. The Telepathic circuits? How did he know they were called telepathic circuits? What was happening? He felt like he was being shocked, yet Tails couldn't let go of the console, all he could do was scream.

He re-lived so many of his childhood traumas. Rogan the Pitbull smashing his newly completed helicopter toy. Sally the Squirrel teasing him about his twin Tails. His torment and loneliness. Meeting Sonic, going on adventures to save the world countless times, the friendships he'd forged and the losses he'd felt. Watching the Tornado fall, crash and die, all over again.

What was this machine doing to him? Stop it, please! I don't want to re-live this again!

Suddenly...

TARDIS... Time Vortex... Eye of Harmony, Time Rotor, Gravitic Anomiliser, Thermal Buffer, Helmic Regulator, Dimensional Stabiliser, Chameleon circuit. What were these things? Then in an instant, he knew, somehow he just knew what they were. Reams and reams of technical data, equations, theory. It felt like it was all being downloaded into his brain.

Time And Relative Dimension In Space.

The machine was scared, it was running from the darkness? What darkness? Tails didn't know and the machine wouldn't say. But the machine, the TARDIS, it had decided it liked him, and it decided to take a chance and trust him. So it... 'she' was giving him all this technical data.

Why? Then Tails blacked out.

The world flooded back into her mind as Amy Rose heard someone screaming. It stopped and Amy's lazy mind slowly came back to her. She picked herself up and felt a lump on her head. The machine, the console was producing a weird wheezing noise and the ground was shaking, like they were moving.

She spotted Sonic and she crawled up to him. His face looked peaceful and he reached up to scratch at his head. The poison Robotnik had injected into him was slowly wearing off.

"Oh... my head." Sonic said, his voice still a little slurred. "What happened?"

"Oh Sonic!" Amy said, gathering up her rag dolled hero. "I was so scared."

"Amy!" Sonic said as she squeezed his chest as she hugged him. "Take it easy. I can't breathe!" With the one hand he could move he tried to push her off him. "Amy, I need you to check on Tails, something happened to him. He was screaming." She relaxed her grip when she saw Tails on the floor, staring up into the void above. She gently laid Sonic down and moved over to her twin tailed friend. His eyes were glowing all manner of different colours.

"Is he okay?" Sonic asked, sitting up.

"I don't know." Amy felt his pulse, his heart was beating, it was slow and relaxed, but steady. "He seems okay. He's just out of it."

A noise started up from the console. More wheeze and groans, but they produced a pitch like an engine was coming down. It came to a stop with a 'ka-chud' and the crystal in the centre came to a stop after sinking back into the console.

"What just happened?" Sonic slurred

Amy suddenly noticed that the doors they had passed through had re-appeared, and that meant Badniks were about to flood in. Sonic was still in no shape to fight and Tails was out for the count. So it was up to her. Amy stood, brandishing her new pipe weapon and prepared herself to battle.

But the doors didn't open, nothing was hammering on them, nor firing at them. She looked at Sonic, and Sonic looked back at her, he shrugged and rotated his other arm trying to get some feeling back into it.

Amy moved towards the door and experimentally she pressed her ear to it. She couldn't hear anything. She took the inner handles and pulled open the doors and looked outside to see if the coast was clear.

It was clear, a little too clear. She just stared at what she could see, and she couldn't believe it.

Amy slammed the door shut again and pressed her back firmly against the doors.

"Sonic!" She cried, "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!"

Sonic felt well enough to stand on his own two feet, though a little unsteadily.

He had to see for himself what Amy was talking about. She sounded vague at first, like she was trying to get the concept right in her own head but all he could get from her was that they weren't where they were supposed to be.

Did the Badnik's pick up this box and move it? Is that what she meant? She'd just said he'd need to see it to believe it.

Amy looped his arm around her neck so she could guide him towards the doors. Sonic didn't resist, he admitted to himself that he still wasn't a hundred percent. When she opened the doors she held onto him even tighter.

What the heck was out here that could spook her so much?

The doors of this 'Police Box' box thing folded back into itself and Sonic found himself looking at a giant, swirling spiders web that he nearly walked into.

No, wait. That wasn't a spiders web, and he'd never be able to walk into that thing from where he was, not in a million years, not if he ran, not if he went super, or hyper, or ran at lightspeed.

There were other, similar formations around the large spider web. Some even more distant, all clearly visible.

They were collections of stars. Massive collections of stars. Galaxies, millions of them. Sonic had seen galaxies before, but not this many, and usually it had a million other stars around them.

He'd never seen a galaxy this close up before. One shouldn't be this close to Mobius, or even the galaxy Mobius resides in.

Looking at the none existent ground confirmed the truth of the matter. Beneath him were just more galaxies and here and there were wisps of nebula.

They'd left more than just Kansas behind this time.

"Hey buddy, wake up." said a voice in the fog of his mind. A hand gently slapped him across his face as the world came back into focus.

Tails shook his head. He felt like there was a jumble of information in his brain, but none of it was connecting yet. His eyes focused and Sonic and Amy stood over him looking concerned.

"Alright! He's back." Sonic said, and Tails reached up to his head and rubbed it. His head felt fine, but his mind felt like someone had been rummaging around in it.

"Son...Sonic?" he asked as the memory of who Sonic was floated up into his brain.

"Yeah, you feeling okay, buddy?" the hedgehog asked.

"I think so..." Tails said, sitting up. He looked at Amy and pointed. "Amy Rose?" He asked as if not sure.

"Yep, that's me." Amy winked at him. She gripped the console as if she was full of tension.

Tails shut his eyes and shook his head again. He felt like he'd just recovered from a really bad cold.

Sonic was up and moving again, which meant the anaesthetic had warn off. How long had he been out?

"I made telepathic contact with..." Tails said weakly, and his brain didn't register what he'd just said for a brief second. "I must tell you."

"Don't worry." Sonic said, misunderstanding him. "Amy filled me in on everything. You just rest buddy."

"Sonic, we kind of have a situation here!" Amy said, unable to hold the tension back. "We've lost Mobius!"

"Lost Mobius?" Tails asked.

"This stupid thing lost Mobius, now it can bring it back." Amy said and she held her long pipe high, preparing to smack the machine.

Tails suddenly found himself wide awake. "NO!" he shouted and was up in an instant, standing between Amy and the console, arms spread. "Amy stop!" She froze and watched Tails, bewilderment on her face. "If you damage the console we'll never get home. You don't understand, it ran, it was just scared, it thought it was under attack."

"It..." Amy snapped out of her rage. "It ran? It thought it was under attack?" She echoed as if this sounded ridiculous.

"It's not bad," Tails insisted, "it's not a weapon, it's transport, it's alive!"

"It's... transport?" Sonic asked.

"It's alive?" Amy said.

"I know it sounds crazy. But I know what this thing is!" Tails insisted. "It wasn't attacking me, it was communicating. It was telling me what it is. It downloaded all kinds of info into my brain so I could understand it."

"Understand it?" Sonic echoed.

Why do you keep repeating everything I say, you're not a parrot are you? Said a deep sounding voice in Tails' head. It didn't sound like something he'd say, so he'd refrained from saying it.

Tails turned towards the console and spread his arms out to encompass it. "This thing is the 'ultimate' trans-temporal travel. The definitive Time Machine slash Star Ship. A Time And Relative Dimension In Space machine. This thing is called the TARDIS."

"Whoa, whoa. You're usually asking this of me, but, slow down there, buddy." Sonic said looking at the console. "We're in a Time Machine?"

"No, not just a Time Machine, but a Space Ship too. A Time Ship. A Space-Time Ship." Tails said, he felt a little discombobulated after having his brain messed around. Stuff was still finding its place to settle. "It can go anywhere in the past or future, and any location, anywhere in the universe, and even beyond." Tails said excitedly.

Amy looked at the TARDIS doors, a haunted look on her face. Tails correctly guessed she'd looked outside. "You mean, whatever's out there might not be Mobius, nor our own time?"

"There's a whole Galaxy outside." Sonic confirmed.

Tails approached the doors and confidently opened them. He knew what to expect, he knew where the TARDIS had taken them. To a place it thought would be safe. Deep space. Beyond any galaxy.

The moment he saw the galaxy in front of him he couldn't help but stare in awe at it. Sonic and Amy joined him.

"That..." Tails pointed, "is our galaxy." He announced. "We've flown two hundred and fifty million light years in just a few minutes."

"Boy, and I thought I was fast." Sonic joked.

"Mobius should be somewhere there." Tails pointed to one of the spiral arms of the galaxy. Just halfway from the centre of the swirling mass of stars.

Sonic whistled, still taking all this within his stride. "So, now what do we do? What does it want from us?"

"Want?" It was Tails' turn to echo questions.

"Yeah, isn't that how this usually works. An alien craft or species finds us, wants our help with a bad guy, we help them beat up the bad guy." Sonic said. When he put it like that it made their adventures sound predictable.

"As far as I can tell, the TARDIS doesn't need or want anything. I think it's more like a lost puppy, just looking for a family."

"You mean like that car in the movie the Love Bug?" Amy asked.

"Exactly." Tails confirmed.

"Yeah, but it's bound to attract trouble." Amy said, "Someone built it, and they're bound to come looking for it."

She yelped as the console sent an electric shock up the Hedgehogs tail. "Why this little... umm... big..." Amy held the pipe higher. Sonic grabbed it before she could bring it down on one of the panels.

"All I could get from the TARDIS is that it's running from something. Something deeply traumatic. It's feeling... grief." Tails was certain of that. The TARDIS was feeling a deep sense of grief over something.

Tails turned away from the galaxy and returned to the console. He looked over all the dials and controls. He understood exactly what they were now, but not how to operate them. He shook his head.

"Its decided it likes us. Or likes 'me' at least. I think it's adopted me as its pilot." Tails looked over the controls, "But I'm not sure where to start. It's like learning what everything does in a car, but not understanding the procedure to make it go. It's just too much of a jumble."

He gripped the edges of the console. He needed to sit down, so he leapt up and perched himself on the consoles edge and rubbed his temples.

"Did it tell you where it came from?" Amy asked.

"It didn't say. Only that it was running away from a darkness it fears." Tails explained.

"Hey, that's cool." Sonic said to the machine, "At least its on our side, OW!" Sonic yelped as he received an electric shock when he tried to rest his hand on the console.

Tails suddenly leapt down from the console and faced it. "TARDIS, listen to me. These are my friends, Sonic and Amy. They're nice. They don't mean you any harm, so please don't hurt them."

The machine didn't respond, and Sonic gingerly reached out for the console again. He snapped his hand back when the console sparked at him.

"You know, I don't think it likes me." Sonic said.

"Nor me." Amy said, "and what a coincidence, because I don't like it either." She stared at the console like Amy and the TARDIS were trying to stare each other down. Amy was sure she'd won, but how could you tell with an inanimate object?

"Shhh.. shhh..." Tails hushed at it and spoke in a relaxing tone, patting the console. "It's okay, it's okay. You're in the company of friends. Relax." He turned to Sonic and Amy and said, "It's just woken up, it's like a child that's found itself in a strange place, with strange people."

As Tails patted the console Sonic looked around the place, and Amy looked at Tails with a mixture of loving pride at how affectionate he was, and was also kind of creeped out and disgusted because he was acting this way towards a machine. Tails admitted it probably looked a little odd, but he was only treating the machine like it was a new-born baby, because that's what it felt like it was.

"Come on," Tails said, "Lets get you to my workshop and we can work on restoring you to your former glory."

Tails rummaged around in his head until he found the sequence that allowed him to set coordinates, and fly the machine through the Time Vortex. He pressed a sequence of switches and prepared to set the TARDIS in motion again. He turned to a panel ready to program coordinates before hitting the takeoff lever. But he suddenly froze, his mind was a blank.

"Oh..." he said suddenly, worry on his face.

"Oh... Oh, what?" Amy asked.

"Umm..." Tails said nervously and slightly embarrassed, "I don't know what to do."

"I thought you said it told you how to fly." Amy asked.

"The TARDIS told me how to fly it, yeah. How to program coordinates, sure... but she's neglected to tell me how to navigate." Amy and Sonic looked unsure what he meant, so he explained further. "It's like you know where you want to go, but not how to get there. I can program coordinates, but they are all relative to where the TARDIS is."

"Meaning?" Sonic asked.

"I don't know exactly where we are, nor do I know exactly where Mobius is."

A few seconds passed as Amy and Sonic processed this.

"So, in other words..." Sonic said, his shoulders slumping and eyes drooping, "You mean we can't get home."

Tails had tried to ask the TARDIS if it could take them home by itself. But Tails got the idea the TARDIS was now lost in a maze and didn't know how to get back itself. There was something called a 'fast return switch' that would send the TARDIS back to its previous position. But when Tails operated it, it didn't do anything. The switch must be busted. But there was still hope of getting back to their home planet of Mobius, but it'd be the long way around. Sonic and Amy had his full attention as he explained.

"Listen, I know how to set coordinates, but I don't know what the coordinates mean." He said and pointed at the console, "But this panel lets us know which coordinates are our current Space and Time position. So hopefully, after a few trips around the universe I should be able to get a bearing on where to head towards and pinpoint the precise coordinates that'll return us home."

"Doesn't that depend on knowing precisely where we are to start with, in relation to Mobius?" Sonic asked. He might not be a brain, but he wasn't a fool.

"No. The coordinates are like coordinates on a map. They stay the same. Once I have my bearings I just need to figure out where Mobius is and we can go there."

"Why do I get the feeling this is going to take a while?" Amy asked sighing. "Oh well, at least me and Sonic get to spend some quality time together." She said, fluttering her eye lashes.

"Where's Egg-man?" Sonic asked ignoring her.

"I think he just rolled away." Amy said.

"He's out there in the void, somewhere." Tails said nodding into the darkness. "Don't worry. I don't think the TARDIS likes him, so it certainly won't let him near the console."

"Well, hey cool." Sonic said, "If anyone can figure out how to get us home it's you, Tails." He winked and gave him a thumbs up. "And in the meantime we get to explore the universe! And Egg-head can't steal our ride from us."

Tails moved and adjusted controls on the console and suddenly the TARDIS was set in motion again. The central column moved up and down, which indicated if the TARDIS was in motion. Tails had explained that he'd set the controls to land on the nearest habitable planet, and since the galaxy containing Mobius was closest so the nearest inhabitable planet would be in that galaxy. All they had to do was stay within that galaxy as they moved around.

Once they landed, and took down the coordinates they'd need to figure out exactly where they were in the galaxy to figure out what all those numbers mean. Tails would just have to be careful he doesn't take the TARDIS outside of the galaxy and into another one. That would be a very bad idea.

The time rotor eventually fell silent and a 'ka'chud' echoed around the place. The wheezing stopped and the machine was silent again.

Tails looked at the coordinates that were on a readout in the console, and using a pad and pen he made a note of them.

"Excellent, now all we need to do is go out there." He nodded towards the doors. "And find out exactly where in the universe we are."

Tails quickly checked the atmosphere outside using the environmental controls. Luckily it all seemed to be okay. A little more nitrogen and UV rays than usual, but it was safe. "It's safe outside. Lets go."

The three reluctant travellers looked at each other, unsure; Then at the doors which looked like the inverse of the outer Police Box doors. They didn't know what was actually beyond those doors. It could be anything. Anything at all. People made of smoke, cities of glass, a planet of plant people, a planet of machine creatures, from peaceful to the hostile. Whatever produced the light pouring in from those windows, they were about to find out.

Gingerly Sonic took the lead, approached the door. Took the inner handle and pulled it open.

To Be Continued...