"Wake up Sonic."
"Huh?" Sonic feebly answered as he opened his eyes, "I just had the weirdest dream."
"What was it?" asked Tails inquisitively. He stepped back and allowed Sonic room to stretch.
Sonic stood upright, taking a few seconds to look at Tails, watching as the foxes tails swayed gently in the breeze. It was a mild afternoon in the Emerald Hill Zone, and Sonic had obviously drifted off.
"I can't remember most of it," Sonic sighed, "I remember there being a insane Doctor."
"Eggman?" Tails asked.
"No," Sonic answered, unsurprised, and smiling slightly at Tails reply, "It was a duck. It was one of those 'dream-in-a-dream' things, first I'm engaged, then there was some stuff about the emeralds breaking, then it gets really crazy and hectic, before I woke up in a hospital, and get chased by an insane doctor."
"Sounds complicated," Tails replied, "But it was only a dream. No need to worry about it."
"I guess not," the hedgehog replied, "But it seemed so real..." Sonic trailed off.
Sonic looked around him at the zone. Green grass and light brown cliffs met his eyes, with a few loops and some formerly straight walkways that nobody had bothered to untwist since Eggman had twisted them in an effort to hinder Sonic's progress through the zone. A clear blue river cut the landscape evenly in half, and the scene was complimented perfectly by a clear blue sky. It was tranquil, peaceful, pleasant, and altogether the perfect place to waste an afternoon, Sonic thought. But still, there was something in this dream that was bugging Sonic.
"So what did you want li'l buddy?" the hedgehog asked Tails wondering why the fox had woken him.
"Oh!" Tails said remembering, "I just wanted to show you my newest inve-" the fox paused, "... my newest inve-" he said, before pausing again, before he began repeating himself, his head visibly shaking each time he did.
"Err, Tails, you okay?" Sonic said, placing both his hands on his young friends shoulders. Even through the hedgehog's gloves, Sonic could tell Tails felt extremely cold.
Tails kept repeating the same five syllables over and over, getting faster and faster with each repetition. Sonic acted on instinct, and assumed Tails to be some sort of advanced android, and assumed it would soon self destruct. He'd seen it often enough, both on TV, and in dealing with Eggman, the fox was going to explode.
So it came to Sonic's surprise when the Fox just stopped talking and moving altogether. Tails stood motionless, vacantly staring forwards, his arms outstretched at his sides. Sonic looked on concerned, this was not usual behaviour for robots.
"Tails, can you hear me?" Sonic asked, waving his hand in front of the foxes vacant stare. The fox didn't answer. Sonic looked to his friend, and panic filled the hedgehog's mind. Tails' fur was slowly slipping away, to be replaced by nothing but a three dimensional outlined version of the fox. At first parts disappeared randomly, but within seconds, most of Tails' body was a wireframe image that Sonic could see through.
Sonic stood firm, "What's going on?" he asked, suspecting foul play, "Eggman, what have you done to Tails?"
There was no reply. In fact there was no noise at all. Sonic hadn't noticed it until now, but everything had fallen silent from the second Tails started to repeat himself. Even his own footsteps failed to register a sound. The only thing Sonic could hear anywhere was his own voice, and even that was beginning to sound distorted.
"What's going on?" The hedgehog shouted, "Is anyone there? Hello?" Sonic beckoned out, to no-one in particular. He began looking around, hoping to find someone. Dashing through the familiar sights, things just became weirder and weirder, as patches of ground were the wrong colour, with bright red grass, orange skies and purple flowers that Sonic knew should be yellow. Even further out entire chunks of colour were missing, becoming completely transparent like Tails had become prior.
Sonic stood on the highest hill he could get to. From there he could see further into the zone. Or rather, that was the theory, in practice half of what should've been there just wasn't there. The hedgehog estimated that only about half a mile of the zone was still intact, the rest simply gone. Even worse than this, Sonic could see the horizon, not normally an issue, but the horizon just stopped after a certain point, replaced by blackness. Through the now transparent ground, Sonic could see that the sky itself did not surround what was left of the world.
The hedgehog had no idea how to respond. Part of Sonic was convinced he was still dreaming, but he had no idea how to wake himself, and he didn't particularly want to assume that, just in case he was wrong and he spent what little time he had trying to wake up instead of saving the day like he felt he was supposed to.
Scouting the area out, Sonic concluded that there was nobody else around, and no way out of the area he was in. The Chemical Plant Zone, and the Aquatic Ruin Zone, the only two Zones directly connected to the Emerald Hill Zone, weren't anywhere near where they needed to be, and the entire coast had disappeared, leaving the water from the rivers to just vanish when it hit the border of the blackness.
After some hesitation and deliberation, Sonic discovered he could extend his body into the blackness, and whatever it was that had removed large parts of the zone had no affect on him. Bravely Sonic stuck his leg out, in a vain attempt to find something solid to stand on in the blackness. The hedgehog found there to be a perfectly flat ground under his feet. Sonic closed his eyes, and slowly put his other foot onto the blackness.
Opening his eyes Sonic found himself stood on the nothingness like it was no big deal. He took a few more steps, carefully shuffling his feet so he'd know if he stepped off an invisible cliff edge. The ground consented, allowing the hedgehog to go further and further forwards into the blackness. He took a few more steps before looking back to the visible ground.
It was gone, replaced entirely by the blackness. Sonic was all alone, and without a way to get out of the blackness. Sonic immediately regretted his decision. As he began to wonder what he should do next a loud high-pitched beeping surrounded him. Sonic closed his eyes, wincing at the sound, and collapsed to the ground, unable to tolerate the noise.