Time for a change of pace!

…Er, awkward Eggman impersonation aside, this is gonna be a decidedly different chapter than all the others. I'm calling it an "Interlude" chapter, with a focus on character interaction. In this one, I want to focus on a couple of groups, with one set of characters making their debut in this one. Their paths will cross with Tails' gang and the Resistance eventually, so don't go writing this one off, okay?

Oh, one more thing. Expect to either laugh or shudder in this one. Some characters are, er, a little "off".

"How'd I end up in THIS mess…?" A white, winged experiment muttered quietly, a tinge of fear evident in his voice. At present, he was sitting atop a large cliff adorned with a checkerboard pattern. He was also cowering behind a small rock. Given his circumstances, one could hardly blame him.

While being enveloped in a white light out of nowhere and being dumped in this strange place was disorienting, it wasn't his biggest problem. Neither were the robots.

The robots… He wasn't quite sure what to make of them. They looked totally ridiculous, and their pathetic attempts at attacking were as easily avoided as tilting one's head to the side, but they WERE annoying in large enough numbers. Nothing a liberal application of hail couldn't handle, though.

No, his problems were much, MUCH worse than that.

You see, he had a problem with-

"Oh, Dumpling~!" A voice rang out. The experiment felt his blood run ice-cold.

Yeah, he had girl problems.

Normally, that wouldn't be too much of an issue normally. A normal girl would probably understand if you turned them down, though they may be more than a little hurt by it. Still, normally, you wouldn't have to worry about too much.

Irial Jr. Lightburst, also known as "Sunny", was NOT a normal girl.

She was a Demonic Experiment. That by itself wouldn't have been TOO big a deal, given how loving many of them seemed to be with their families. Hell, he came from such a family. But Sunny, well…

"Oh, my dear Angel food cake, where are you~?" Closer that time. The white experiment didn't want to give himself away, but nonetheless prepared to take off.

To call Sunny 'psychotic' was like calling water wet, the sky blue, and that people died when they were killed.

It was actually a pretty severe understatement. Sunny was capital "P" PSYCHOTIC.

It was then that the rock he was hiding behind was suddenly lifted into the air. The white experiment slowly turned around, desperately hoping that it was a group of robots and not who he was thinking it was that was holding that rock.

A pair of deep red eyes met his sky-blue eyes.

"Found you, Sky!" The bright yellow experiment who was holding up the rock cheered. The white experiment, now identified as 'Sky', yelped in surprise and terror as he stumbled backwards.

"H-H-Hey, S-Sunny…" He managed to stammer out. Already, he was looking for any possible way to escape his current situation. Sunny giggled in response, her eyes suddenly blinking sideways as a result of her excitement. Sky felt beads of sweat go rolling down his face.

He nonetheless managed to clamber back onto his feet and began backing away as Sunny began walking towards him. He found himself zeroing in on the black rings around Sunny's arms, which portrayed the souls of her many victims screaming in eternal anguish.

Sky gulped. He knew he wasn't likely to to be joining them, but the crazy demon standing in front of him was, well, CRAZY. If THAT wasn't a turnoff, what was? Unbeknownst to Sky, a certain blue hedgehog would agree with him wholeheartedly, being able to relate to the experience and all.

"What's wrong, Skyburst?" She asked innocently, her voice beginning to distort due to her excitement, changing between her sweet girlish voice and a distorted, low demonic one. "Why are you backing away?"

"O-Oh, no reason…" Sky lied through his teeth. He had to keep her calm. Any wrong moves here would NOT end well for him. And in this unfamiliar environment, he wasn't sure if there was anyone who could lend him a hand anywhere nearby.

"Oh, dumpling…" Sunny said, still moving towards him. There were hearts in her eyes, and she was giggling in a lovestruck manner, which, combined with the demonic reverb underlying her voice, reminded him more of a deranged horror movie villain than a cute girl in love.

Sky backed up, but felt his foot reach the edge of the cliff. Unless he took off, he had nowhere to go. Sunny edged closer and closer to him, before asking, "Oh, Sky… Why not give me a kiss?"

At that moment, Sky turned around, spread his wings, and took off at top speed, desperate to get away from her. Sunny looked confused for a moment before her face lit up.

"Oh, playing keep away again?" She cheered, taking off into the air after him. "We play it all the time, but I love that game!"

Sky forced himself to fly faster, hoping that he could outpace her. Unfortunately for him…

"Oh, Sky, my sweet Sky Angel… I LOVE YOU!" Sunny called. Sky's blood ran ice cold as he realized that she was getting closer to him. Sunny's arm morphed into a long tendril, which she threw at him in an attempt to grab his leg.

Sky swerved, narrowly avoiding being caught. He was desperately looking for some kind of escape. SOMETHING that would get this insane demon off his tail. In doing so, he completely failed to notice where he was going and smacked face-first into a chequered cliff. For a moment, he was stuck in a Sky-shaped hole in the rocks, before slowly sliding out of it and falling to the ground. There were small birds circling his head as he pulled himself up and looked around in a daze.

"Uhhh…" He groaned, wondering why he was seeing two cliffs in front of him. Just as he began to shake his head to clear his vision, he felt strong arms wrap around him. All at once, his daze vanished, and he began to panic.

"SUNNY! LET GO!" He shouted in a panic, desperately trying to squirm his way out of her grasp to no avail. Sunny gave a slightly mad giggle in response, the demonic reverb returning to her voice.

"I got you~…" She said, sounding pleased with herself. She licked him on the cheek affectionately before declaring, "Well, time for my prize!"

She began puckering up as she said that. Sky began struggling even harder and began shouting, trying to break free. Realizing that he couldn't escape, Sky squeezed his eyes shut and braced for the worst. Then, just as she was mere moments from kissing him...

"Huh? Hey! Sunny! Sky!" Sunny stopped dead in her tracks and turned her head. Sky's eyes slowly cracked open. A girl in a red-and-white floral muumuu was running up to them, looking slightly out of breath.

"Oh, hey, Lilo!" Sunny greeted cheerfully as the girl came up to them. Lilo opened her mouth to speak, before noticing that she was holding Sky.

"Uh, Sunny? Are you doing bad things to Sky again?"

"No," the Light Demon said innocently.

"YES!" Sky shouted in protest. Lilo sighed.

"Sunny, let go of him. Something's wrong here," She ordered. Sunny did so, pouting as she did so before finally getting a look at their surroundings.

"Huh?" She asked. "Where are we? And, um, why is there sand falling instead of water?"

She had noticed that, despite them being in what appeared to be an idyllic green plain, where what would should be waterfalls were instead flowing with dry sand.

"I don't know," Lilo admitted. "I just saw some weird light, and then I was here. I've been trying to find Stitch, but I haven't been able to. You guys are the first two experiments I've found."

Sky clambered back up to his feet and looked like he was about to take off, but paused when he heard what Lilo said.

"Well…" He started cautiously, as if unsure if he should speak. He took a few cautious steps away from Sunny. "I saw something earlier…"

Lilo's attention went to him. Sunny's attention was already on him, and he had to resist the urge to fly off as quickly as he could.

"You saw something?" Lilo asked, tilting her head in confusion.

"When I was flying around here earlier, I saw this small blue thing racing past," He continued.

"Stitch?" Lilo asked hopefully. Sky shook his head.

"No, it was moving way too fast for it to be Stitch."

Lilo looked confused at that.

"Way too fast?" She asked. Sky nodded. "But Stitch can move pretty fast, so-"

"All I could see was a blur, honestly. I blinked, and it was gone, but it looked like it was going…" He pointed roughly towards the east. "That way."

"That way, huh…?" Lilo looked in that direction. "Hey, maybe we should follow it!"

"I'm not sure if that's a good-" Sky didn't get a chance to finish when Lilo took off in that direction. He was about to begin debating with himself whether or not he should follow her when a tentacle suddenly wrapped around his torso. He paled immediately, knowing who that tentacle belonged to.

"Now, Dumpling…" Sunny started. Sky squeezed his eyes shut and braced himself for what was coming next.

…

…Nothing happened. Although, he did feel the sensation of the wind in his face. After a moment, he opened his eyes. Sunny had taken off after Lilo, with him in tow.

"I'd love to continue where we left off…" She said, before sighing. "But, yeah, Lilo's right. Something's wrong here, so I guess we can continue later."

"S-So why are you dragging me with you…?" Sky stammered. Sunny gave him a sweet smile that, to Sky, looked more like the smile of a blood-thirsty executioner.

"Because, Darling, I need you to be there so we can continue!"

Sky mentally brick-walled at that. Guess he was going, whether he wanted to, or not.

"So, lemme get this straight," Vector said, raising a non-existent eyebrow. "You guys are a bunch of artificially created aliens from another dimension, and some of you are also able to use magic, right?"

The group was lounging around the shuttle's bay. The experiments, particularly Stitch, had explained what he felt was happening, as well as a rough retelling of their backstory. This being after Slang nearly froze him to the wall, and it took the combined forces of Angel, Shadow (598), Aurora, Silver, and Vector to keep him from retaliating violently.

"Well, more-or-less," Angel said. "Some experiments, as in, most of the ones in this room with the exception of Shadow over here were born naturally."

"I don't believe you," Amy said, crossing her arms.

"Trust me, we're telling the truth," Stitch mimicked her gesture, giving her a lightly irritated expression.

"W-W-We really a-are…" Lady Kuroko stammered out. Summer just sighed and leaned back, reading his magazine. Sonic, who was casually lounging near the exit, sat up for the first time since the trip.

"C'mon, guys," He said evenly. "Like this stuff's any weirder than rescuing genies in magic books, fighting a giant darkness monster in the planet's core, or a giant mecha monster that ate time."

Stitch blinked. The blue hedgehog wasn't lying. There was nothing in his voice or body language that would indicate that. However, he came off as rather confident, to the point of being cocky. It didn't come off as a bluster, though. The even tone of his voice and the grin he was giving all said that he was completely and sincerely confident in himself. On the other side of the room, Slang, who had been examining her scythe, seemed to be making the same observation, and her eyes narrowed.

"…Good point," Amy conceded, nodding.

"Yeah, we've seen some pretty weird stuff," Silver agreed. "I mean, I'm from two hundred years in the future, and interdimensional travel's nothing new here. Remember the Sol Dimension?"

"Same with aliens. Remember the Black Creatures and, what was it, 'Eggman's Incredible Interstellar Amusement Park'?" Vector added.

"And Shadow's kind of a genetic experiment too," Amy added. Shadow (598) regarded her curiously. She quickly clarified. "Er, there's a guy from our dimension who has the same name as you."

Espio nodded.

"Indeed. It's safe to say that we have faced many situations that most would consider out of the ordinary."

Aurora was thinking. All of these things sounded really interesting, and would warrant a more detailed retelling later, but one thing Sonic said earlier caught her attention: 'Time Eater'.

"Pardon me," Aurora started, looking towards Sonic. "You said something about a 'Time Eater'. Could you elaborate on that, please?"

As a user of time magic, Aurora found herself intrigued, and perhaps more than a little freaked out, by the idea of an entity that could consume time itself. Stitch, Angel, Lady, and even Slang and Shadow (598) seemed to be interested as well.

"It was just another Eggman plot," Sonic said, grinning at the memory. "Apparently, he found this thing out in space after his amusement park got eaten by a black hole. He decided to try and use it so he could undo all of his past defeats."

"And he lost!" Charmy cheered. "That was so awesome, how you went Super Sonic and pummelled that thing into next week!"

"W-Wow…" Lady whispered, sounding slightly awed.

"Sounds like you're a pretty experienced guy," Shadow (598) said. Sonic shrugged.

"I've been cracking the Eggman since I was like seven. You get used to it after a while."

"Considering what's apparently happened, it was foolish to get complacent," Slang said. Sonic gave her an amused glance.

"Funny that you say that. You know, Eggman still doesn't think he's actually beaten me," He said. That got a few odd looks, so he elaborated. "Eggman and I've been tangling so long, he thinks that the only way he's ever gonna win is if I admit defeat. I haven't."

"Huh," Stitch said, sitting up. "So, in his eyes, taking over the world means nothing if you haven't admitted defeat?"

"Pretty much."

"That's… Interesting…" Angel blinked.

"Hey," Silver started. "You said that you're from another dimension, but how do you think you guys got stuck in our world, anyway?"

"Yeah, I'd kinda like to know why we're here, too," Shadow (598) nodded in agreement. Slang said nothing, instead levelling a glare at Stitch, who responded in kind. At least, until Angel punched him in the back of the head and sent Slang a look. The hooded experiment went back to toying with her scythe, earning a sigh from Angel.

"Well… It's a long story," She sighed. "Stitchie, you wanna start, or me?"

"I'll start," Stitch said in response. "Alright, so, basically, it started earlier today, when Angel and I were going out. We had just met up, when…"

Angel noticed that Stitch was leaving out the freaky THING that they had seen, and what they had heard it say. Frankly, she couldn't blame him. He'd been seeing, and trying to get rid of, that thing for weeks, or so he told her. She had been rather alarmed when she'd seen it for the first time, and more than a little worried when she started thinking about WHY, pray tell, Stitch could see it.

"…Well, this magenta stone, I think it was a ruby, appeared right behind us. It made this weird noise," Stitch continued, before blinking in realization. "The same one that the masked monster makes, now that I think of it…"

Angel blinked. Yeah, now that she thought of it… Was there some kind of connection between that ruby, and the masked creature?

"Stitch," Aurora spoke up. "That creature, the one in the mask, he has a magenta stone on his chest. Do you think that-?"

"Probably," Pretty much everyone that wasn't an experiment in the room said at once. Aurora blinked. She wasn't expecting a response that fast.

"Experience has taught me to investigate anything that glows," Sonic said, grinning. "Next time I run into that guy, I'm gonna see if I can't get him to talk about it."

"…Right, good luck with that," Angel sweatdropped. "Anyway, long story short, those gems, um, 'Chaos Emeralds', right? They appeared right around that ruby and they all unleashed this flash of light that blinded us. Next thing we know, we're in the middle of a warzone."

"Sounds to me like it might have been Chaos Control," Silver mused. The experiments turned to him.

"Chaos Control…?" Angel repeated in confusion. Slang crossed her arms.

"That's the definition of 'oxymoron'," She said emotionlessly.

"…Okay, I'll bite, what the hell is Chaos Control?" Summer sighed, not looking up from his magazine.

"Chaos Control is a technique using the power of one or more Chaos Emeralds," Silver explained. "It can be used to slow down the flow of time, teleport from one location to another, and if two users of the technique invoke it against each other, it can produce a rift in spacetime that can be used for time travel."

"…You're joking," Stitch said.

"He's not," Sonic said. "I can use it myself. I just don't care to most of the time."

"Seriously?" Shadow (598) asked. He turned to Stitch. "Hey, you have one of those Emeralds, right? You think we could use it, too?"

Stitch was about to open his mouth to respond, only for Angel to hurriedly beat him to the punch.

"…I think it's best if we wait until we're on the ground first," She said. Stitch wanted to refute her, only for her to add, "After all, it wouldn't be a good idea to run the risk of accidentally blowing a hole in the side of the shuttle while we're in space, right?"

Stitch grumbled slightly, but quietly agreed with her and didn't press the matter. He just sighed and slumped back into his seat. Slang cast him a look, her face as always hidden behind her hood. He swore that she was smirking at him. Scratch that, she probably WAS smirking at him. He felt his eye twitch involuntarily…

"But, here's the thing," Amy started, breaking up the impending fight before it began. "You said that there was ruby of some kind there, right?"

"Right," Angel nodded. Amy looked thoughtful.

"Wonder what that could be? Maybe something to control the Emeralds?" She wondered aloud.

"Probably just something Eggman found," Sonic said, punching his open palm. "Nothin' a little force won't fix."

Stitch grinned. He decided that he liked Sonic's way of doing things.

"I'd be happy to help with that," He said, mimicking the gesture. Angel sweatdropped. Stitch was always looking for ways he could cause some more havoc. Granted, he was 'good' now, so he wasn't likely to put that knowledge to use, but the fact that he was still going out of his way to look for ways to cause trouble was a little concerning. Stitch seemed to notice her reaction and turned to look at her.

"Something wrong?" He asked. Angel snapped back to reality and shook her head.

"Ah, nothing, Stitchie," She said. Stitch gave her an odd expression, before nodding.

"So…" Shadow (598) started. "Anyone got any good stories? We've got a while to wait."

"Ooh, ooh! Tell 'em about the time you stopped the space colony ARK from crashing into the planet!" Charmy shouted.

"Oh, that one's a LONG one," Sonic grinned, crossing his arms. "Well, it started when the world's military, GUN, decided to come after me…"

And that's a wrap! Was that filler? Perhaps. But after seven chapters of action, we needed something to break up the tension and get some character interaction going. Sunny was fun to write, let me tell you. Innocent, but delusional. She kinda reminds me of a certain pink, hammer-wielding hedgehog in some aspects...

Anyway, I hope you guys have enjoyed, and I'll see you guys in the next one!