Notes: Happy Memorial Day to all you Americans! It's time for an update! I don't have too much to say this time, so let's get right to it!

Meanwhile, mini-Tails was flying in between the stalactites hanging from the ceiling. He was weaving in and out of the stone spikes, looking out for his and Sonic's doubles. He muttered under his breath, "I'm on patrol… I'm on patrol…" as he flew. He had decided that the easiest way to make sure the other Sonic and Tails weren't coming was to go out and find them. He hadn't seen them yet, but he thought he was headed in the right direction. He thought he could hear badniks being destroyed in the distance, which was a good sign. 'I wonder why Sonic doesn't want me to talk to them,' he thought. 'Me an' him are from different times, and we can talk to each other. So why can't I do anything with little me an' little little Sonic?' He pouted; he didn't get it. Time travel was hard for him to wrap his head around.

"OH CRAP!"came a shout from relatively close by. Tails stopped. That was Sonic, the younger one, he'd know that voice anywhere. He instinctively started to fly towards the source of the scream, but then he remembered what big Sonic had said about staying hidden. He hesitated. What should he do?

'Maybe I'll just go and see what's going on. Just to check,' he thought. He dropped to the ground, opting to travel on foot to reduce the amount of noise he was making, and started to cautiously sneak towards where Sonic was.

The hedgehog wasn't too far away, and easy to locate; he kept grunting loudly and calling out for Tails- his Tails, the six-year-old had to keep reminding himself. He was getting closer and closer, until he and the young Sonic were separated only by a group of bushes and stalagmites. The fox peeked slowly over the shrubs, his dark eyes wide. Sonic was nowhere to be seen, but Tails could hear him struggling close by. The hedgehog could be heard grunting, "Ugh, come on… Tails! Catch up, will ya… This is what I get for- urk- running ahead…!" Tails looked around, confused. Where was Sonic? He noticed a large pit in the ground not too far away, the remnants of a broken bridge hanging from one side. Uh oh. Tails looked around quickly to make sure his double wasn't coming, and then rushed out of the bushes and ran over to the hole.

"Is someone there?" Sonic called out from inside the pit. He must have heard Tails' footsteps as he approached. "Tails, that you up there?"

The fox hesitated before responding. He wasn't supposed to let past-Sonic know he was there. But he couldn't do nothing, this was his brother! And besides, he guessed he was only a year older than his double. He could pretend to be past-Tails, and past-Sonic would never know the difference. Cemented in his decision, he went right up to the edge of the pit and made himself known. "Sonic!" he said, kneeling down and looking in.

"Bud! There you are!" The young hedgehog's face lit up with happiness and relief. He was holding desperately onto some vines that were hanging down the walls of the pit. Down at the bottom of the chasm were sharp spikes, threatening to impale anyone and anything that fell in. There was no way to possibly jump out of the hole, and even climbing out would prove to be difficult. Sonic was well and truly stuck.

"Don't worry! I'll save you!" Lil' T exclaimed with a determined look on his face. The kit began spinning his twin namesakes until he lifted off the ground, and then flew into the pit without hesitation. Sonic was about ten feet down, halfway between freedom and a spiky death. Tails flew down until he was almost level with the hedgehog, and he extended his hand.

"Tails, you can't carry me outta here! You're not strong enough!" the younger Sonic exclaimed, still gripping the vines tight.

"I can do it, just trust me!" the fox said almost commandingly, reaching out again.

Sonic gulped, looking conflicted. He wanted to believe and trust his friend, he really did. But in his mind, Tails was still just a reckless little kid, and he didn't think the fox knew his limitations very well- especially how strong he was and how long he could fly.

"Dude, are you going to take my hand and let me fly you out of here or not?!" Lil' T yelled, starting to get annoyed.

"If you drop me-"

"I'm not gonna drop you! Jus' hold on tight!" he said. Sonic reluctantly nodded and pulled his hand away from the wall, grabbing the fox's wrist. Tails immediately started to ascend, pulling Sonic off of the ivy-covered patch of wall. He kicked his namesakes into overdrive, accelerating quickly until they were safely out of the spike pit. Sonic dropped to the ground, while Tails landed a few feet away.

"Thanks, bud," the speedster breathed, taking a seat on the ground and resting. "You really saved my skin. When'd you get so good at flying?"

"I've always been good," LIl' T shrugged, not entire sure how to respond. He knew that older-Sonic would get mad if he let it accidentally slip that he was a time traveler.

"Yesterday you tried to fly me up a cliff and you dropped me about halfway up," Sonic said, not for a second believing the fox in front of him. He eyed the child carefully. "... Did you get taller?"

"N-no! It's 'cause you're sittin' down, that's all," Tails said, crossing his arms over his chest. This was bad. He needed to get out of here and regroup with the twenty-year-old Sonic, and fast. "I-I gotta go to the bathroom, I'll be right back!" he sputtered, trying to hide his nervousness. He turned and dashed into the bushes just as the communicator on his wrist started to beep. The fox ducked behind a large stalagmite protruding from the ground and covered up the wrist-com with his hand, trying to stifle the noise. 'Sonic picks the worst times to call!' the child thought. He peeked out from behind the rock formation to see if the younger Sonic had come after him. He hadn't. The hedgehog was still by the spike pit, standing with one hand on his hip and scratching his head with the other. 'Phew.' Tails breathed a sigh of relief. 'That was close.'

With the most miraculous timing, the other Tails had finally caught up to his Sonic. The younger of the two foxes flew in from above, panting. "Well, that was fast," the small hedgehog could be heard saying. Lil' T couldn't believe his luck. If he had tried to leave a second later, he would have had some serious explaining to do. He held his breath and jogged away as quietly as he could. He only stopped when he felt comfortably out of earshot of his and Sonic's doubles. He stopped a little ways off the road, ducking behind some more bushes, so that he could see someone walk by but they would not be able to see him.

He sat down to rest, realising that he was still covering the beeping wrist-com with his hand. He pulled his hand away, allowing the devices' speakers to continue to beep unimpeded. Tails pressed a button on its side, accepting the call. "Hi, Sonic," he said cheerily.

"Tails! Took you long enough!" the twenty-year-old hedgehog's voice filtered through the speakers. HIs voice was much deeper than that of his younger-self, surprising a Tails a little bit at how different it was. The two voices still sounded so similar at their core, though; they were both equally Sonic. The voice spoke again. "Jeez, where the heck did you run off to, anyway?"

"Well, I kind of… ran into little-you," the fox said with an overly-innocent voice.

"You what?!"

"The other me wasn't there though! Little-you didn't know I wasn't me. Or, uh… That I wasn't the me he thought I was. Um… this is hard," the child said, struggling to figure out how to explain everything.

"It's okay, I think I get what you're saying. I don't think you ripped open another massive hole in spacetime, so we're good." Sonic still sounded a bit uneasy, but he quickly hid it behind his trademark brave face. "Where are you right now? We should regroup."

"Yeah! Um… hang on." Tails poked his head out of the brush and looked around the road for landmarks. "Uh, there's the road… There's a bridge a little ways over there… Oh! There's a lantern up there!"

The hedgehog sighed. "Just stay there, I'll find you. I'm pretty sure Tails- oh, uh, older you- put tracers in these wrist-coms anyway. So just stay put."

"Oh-kaaaay," Lil' T heaved a massive sigh.

"And you had the nerve to call me a drama queen," Sonic said, his voice tinged with a smile. "See you in a few, squirt."

"See ya."

Click.

ooo

"I'm bored."

"I know you're bored, Scourge. You've been complaining that you're bored for the past half hour."

"'Cause I've been sitting here for freakin' forever with nothin' to do!"

"So take a nap."

"Ain't tired."

"Then what the hell do you expect me to do?" the Zone Cop groaned. He was sitting in an armchair on the other side of the workshop's living room, legs kicked lazily over the side of the chair. He had an open can of ginger ale in one hand, and his Zone Cop visor was down over his eyes. He was scanning the visual display, skimming through various news stories and police reports that were streamed right to his headset. Sitting down and resting were not his favorite pastimes. He was used to working all day, everyday. He was not accustomed to sitting around with nothing to do, and he was not happy about having to babysit an injured criminal.

He took a sip of his soda. He had hoped it would help his stomach stop doing cartwheels, but it wasn't doing anything. That only served to put him in an even worse mood. What he would give to make this stomach ache go away…

"So what are you doing over there that's so interesting, anyway?" the green one asked, his eyes pointed up at the ceiling.

"Checking the news," Zonic replied in a bored, monotone voice. "Seeing how much of this world is unstable time-wise, checking what's been going on in No Zone. That kind of thing."

"Oh," Scourge replied. He had been hoping for an answer that was slightly more exciting. "Anything big going on?"

"Aside from a few more areas of Westside Island getting affected by the rip, not much."

The blue-eyed hedgehog pouted. That wasn't good news. Plus, his attempts at starting a conversation were being quickly and consistently shot down. 'This whole 'talking to people' thing is harder than I thought.' He exhaled slowly.

The yellow Chaos Emerald was still in his hands, resting comfortably on his scarred chest. It pulsed calmly in time with his own heartbeat, something that Anarchy Beryl, Moebius' version of the Chaos Emeralds, never did. Something about the Emeralds felt… warm, almost inviting. Anarchy Beryl felt cold, dark, and angry somehow. It made sense that the jewels from opposite worlds would feel like opposites, Scourge supposed. A lot of things about Mobius Prime were different from that of his homeworld. The little time he'd spent in Station Square was a good indicator of that. This world just felt happier than his. And frankly, he wasn't sure if he was totally on board with that.

"Hey," he decided to give conversation one more shot. "What's been happening on Moebius since I've been gone?" he asked, looking over in Zonic's direction.

"Dunno. Haven't been keeping up with all the details," the officer shrugged. "I do know that enough people had started calling the place Moebius that it's become your planet's actual name. So there's that."

Scourge grinned a sharp-toothed grin. "Sweet," he said, crossing his legs satisfactorily. At least his world had the guts to get out of Mobius' shadow, as he had done. He had refused to be an anti-Sonic on an anti-Mobius. His world was real, it didn't just exist to serve as Mobius' mirror. That was why he changed his name in the first place. He wanted to be the Prime him, not some alternate Sonic. Of course, since his own personal rebranding, he had become a real villain, contrasting even more directly with Sonic's heroism… But he also hadn't been Scourge for all that long, less than two years. He hadn't actually had a lot of time to reinvent himself. The smile had faded from his face and he looked distantly into the Chaos Emerald sitting on his chest. Maybe "Scourge the Hedgehog" wasn't exactly who he expected him to be.

"Oh, here's something you'd want to know," Zonic mentioned. "The Zone Cops put your pal Miles on the Most Wanted list. Reward for information on him is huge. The kid is practically running the Moebian black market for weapons and tech."

"Why is that not surprising?" the green one sighed. "I send the joint spiralling into discord, he picks up the pieces and puts himself on top."

"Yeah… Kid's smart, I'll give him that much."

Scourge nodded. He kind of hated Miles. He had worked together with his world's version of the two-tailed fox in the past. The kid was actually a core member of his old team, the Suppression Squad. Gods, that name was so lame now that he thought about it. It was no wonder everyone had turned on him and tried to kill him, with a gang name like that. It made perfect sense that Miles would take over as head honcho once Scourge left. The fox was as smart as Tails, and way more ruthless. He did whatever got him to the top in the quickest way possible, no matter who or what got in his way. "Good luck catching him," Scourge said, "you're gonna need it."

His head started thrumming again, and he squeezed his eyes shut tight. He was starting to get pretty annoyed with this stupid concussion. He was sick of lying around nursing injuries; he'd been doing that for a year solid already. He wanted to get up, move around, do something. Being stuck with nothing to do but think not only hurt his head, but it was making him question who he was, who he wanted to be. Things he was not in the mood for thinking about at the moment. He sighed.

"I'm bored."

"I know."

o o o

It took Sonic about ten minutes to find his young friend. He hadn't been able to figure out how to turn the tracer on or get it to work, so he carefully scoured over every square foot of the cave system, especially near bridges and lanterns. When he eventually did find Tails, he felt like he would have to rest soon or else his scar would start to really hurt again. He'd been running around too much, and his lungs were already starting to burn.

"Hi, Sonic," the young Tails said as the blue blur approached his hiding place in the bushes. The fox had been fiddling with his wrist-com's Chaos radar while he waited, and only looked up from his work for a split second to see Sonic walking up.

"Hey," the hedgehog breathed, taking a seat next to the kit. "So, you met the other me, huh?"

"Yeah. You were about to fall into a pit of spikes, and I helped you out," Lil' T said nonchalantly.

"Oh," Sonic shrugged. "Wait… That was you?!" he gasped, looking at him incredulously.

"See! I told you that the other-you never found out I'm a time traveler!" the kid said proudly, puffing out his chest and smiling widely. Sonic wrapped an arm around his small shoulders and brought him in for a noogie.

"I had just had a near-death experience! Why would my first instinct be, oh, maybe my baby bro is a time traveler?" he laughed as Lil' T squirmed around in his arms.

"My point still stands!" the fox giggled, playfully swatting Sonic's hand away. "I got to talk to the other you and nothin' bad happened!"

"Yeah, 'cause you got lucky, squirt," the hedgehog said, releasing him from his grip. "What if the other you saw you? We've got to be more careful."

Tails' face fell. "Aw, but Sonic-"

"No buts, kiddo," the green-eyed one shook his head. He smirked. "C'mon, do it for an old geezer's piece of mind."

The fox laughed approvingly. "Okay!" he smiled, wrapping his arms around the other's torso.

'Wow, he's so tiny,' the hedgehog thought amusedly. 'Kinda skinny, too… Wasn't always easy to get three daily meals into the kid back then. No steady source of income, no real place to call home… I don't think I ever realised how important a home was until we had one of our own. Tails, though… My Tails is almost as tall as me now. No doubt the kid's going to be even taller than me soon, I'm more or less done growing. He's still got puberty to look forward to. I still can't believe he's grown so much… that we've known each other for so long! It feels like we just met yesterday, but at the same time it feels like we've been best bros forever...'

"Uh, Mobius to Sonic, come in Sonic?" Lil' T was waving his hand in front of Sonic's face. The hedgehog snapped out of his thoughts and back to reality.

"Hm? Oh, sorry. I was just thinking about something, kind of zoned out."

"You do that a lot."

"Not usually this often," he shrugged, "but I've had a lot to think about." Sonic ruffled the springy bangs on the fox's head and stood up. "Come on, we need to find that Emerald. It's got to be around here somewhere."

"While I was waitin' for you, I was runnin' some tests with the scanner," Tails said, standing up and pointing to the device around his wrist. "It said there's nothin' here."

"That's weird… I didn't feel anything when I was running around looking for you, either. And I looked all over this place," Sonic tapped his foot on the ground. "But it's got to be here somewhere, right? If time's being all screwy, that means there's an Emerald, doesn't it? That's been the pattern so far." He led the small fox out of the bushes and onto the road, looking around first to make sure they were alone.

"So then where is it?" the young fox asked, looking up at him with large eyes. "Maybe it's just not here, Sonic. Maybe older-me's tracking algorithms were off."

"No, it's got to be here… We're just not looking in the right place," Sonic said, walking down the pathway. His eyes darted around, looking for any clue, some sort of sign. "Come on, think. Where would a Chaos Emerald hide? Where in the Mystic Caves would it want to go…?" He froze mid-step. He saw something in the distance. A tall, metal pole with a globe on its top. "A Star Post… That's it! Duh! Why didn't I think of it before!"

""What's it? Sonic, what are you talking about?" Lil' T asked, looking around in confusion.

"The Star Post! The Chaos Emerald- it's got to be in the Special Zone! That's why your radar isn't picking it up, and that's why I can't sense it. It's in the Special Zone! Gah, it's so obvious!" The hedgehog leapt up excitedly like a small puppy. "Tails, how many rings do you have with you?"

"Um... twentyish?"

"Here, give them to me."

"Uh, okay." The fox quickly pulled the rings he had collected out of his fluffy namesakes and handed them to Sonic, who counted them up along with his own rings. He had to recount a few times to make sure he was getting all the numbers right, but after a minute or so the hedgehog smiled.

"Just a little over fifty. Perfect," he said, putting the rings away. "No sense waiting around here. We've got an Emerald to grab." He motioned for his young friend to follow him, and then took off towards the Star Post with excitement. Tails cheered and took off behind him, glad that they finally had a lead.

They approached the post. While the Star Posts had once stood tall over the hedgehog, they now bested him by only a few inches. He grinned. Sonic lightly punched the globe on top of the post, sending it spinning. A small portal opened up just above the Star Post, surrounded by bright swirling lights."Alright bud, you ready to get that Emerald and get out of here?"

"Let's do it to it!" Lil' T exclaimed, pumping his fists in the air. Sonic cringed slightly at hearing one of his old sayings, but quickly laughed it off.

"Okay then. Let's go!" He grabbed the fox solidly by the hand and jumped straight up, flying through the portal. Everything faded to white, and the sounds of the Mystic Caves seemed to evaporate as the two made the journey to the Special Zone. They floated in the blinding white space for a few seconds, before a new world began to materialize around them. The two found themselves in a checkered half-pipe, filled with twists and turns and going far into the distance. Rings were scattered everywhere, clumped in large groups, and settled in large spiral formations through the pipe. In addition to the rings, landmines were sparsely located throughout the bizarre dimension as well. As soon as the world had completed materializing, a strange energy began to push Sonic and Tails forward, bringing them to a run. "Stay behind me!" Sonic said, glancing back at his bro. He knew full well how surprisingly hard the challenges of the Special Zone could be, and they only had one shot at getting the Emerald located at the end of the half-pipe.

A large sign overhead read in bright, flashing letters: "TOLL AHEAD. COLLECT 40 RINGS TO PASS." Alright, 40 rings wasn't so bad. They could handle that, no problem. Sonic ran through the first grouping of rings, collecting as many as he could with his arms outstretched. Tails followed close behind, grabbing any extra that he missed. The next group was coming up on the side of the pipe, so they ran to the right until they were running at a 90 degree angle to the ground. Due to the slightly reduced gravity of the Special Zone, they could stay running on the walls for extended periods of time without much consequence. 'This is what it's like all the time for Zonic,' Sonic thought with a laugh as he ran through more rings. The half-pipe tilted downward in a steep descent. After going over the hill, the hedgehog saw something that made his eyes go wide.

At the bottom of the hill were time monsters. Lots of them. These weren't the weakling kind, either; these were the full-blown four-armed beasts like the one that had attacked in Windy Valley. Sonic frowned, grinding his teeth. He and Tails couldn't stop running, and they still had twenty more rings left to go before they reached the first Toll. There was no way they could stop and fight. There were too many monsters, and they were too strong for an injured hedgehog and a six-year-old fox to take on.

"Sonic!" Lil' T gasped, seeing the monsters laid out in front of them. "What do we do now?!"

"Well, I hate to run away from a fight," the blue one grimaced, "but I think I'll have to make an exception. Go for this next patch of rings, then move up to the ceiling!"

"Okay!" Tails nodded. "Don't forget to keep moving, or else you'll get dragged back down!" he shouted ahead.

Sonic acknowledged his advice, and lined himself up with the first line of rings. He dashed through them expertly, adding them to his steadily growing total. Lil' T picked up the few he had missed. There was another group of rings approaching them quickly, but the monsters were approaching faster. Rather than go for the extra insurance with the rings, the two were forced to pull some evasive maneuvers, quickly running up the side of the halfpipe and up to the top. They were now sprinting on what was basically thin air, though their momentum from having flown up the side was keeping them going. They wouldn't be able to stay up top for long- they would soon begin to fall, and falling down would be catastrophic. Time monsters were passing underneath them, and the beasts were reaching their arms up to try and grab the heroes. Monsters were attempting to climb up the sides of the tube, but since they weren't moving forward at a constant pace like Sonic and Tails were, they were stuck at the bottom. Sonic grinned, enjoying being just out of the monsters' reach. It was fun to see them frustrated, especially after all the grief they had caused him over the past few days.

"Sonic, we gotta move!" Lil' T reminded him, snapping him out of his reverie. He looked for an opening on the ground, and possibly some more rings for them to grab before they approached the first Toll. By pure luck, there was a clear path back down the tube twenty feet ahead, lined with rings.

"Down there!" the hedgehog shouted, pointing at the path he had scoped out. He didn't have time to see if Lil' T saw where he pointed. He only had one opportunity to run back down the side of the pipe before he fell down, and this was their best shot. He started heading right, running down the side of the tube until he was at a 90 degree angle again, and then slid gracefully back down to solid ground. Tails followed behind him closely, barely dodging the waving arms of the monsters and any gooey projectiles they might be firing.

"Aw man, these guys are shooting goo!" the child shouted, squirming a little bit and drawing his arms in closer to his body. He ran through the path after Sonic, collecting the rings that his older big brother missed. The path led them narrowly through a clearing in the groups of monsters, and back up the opposite side of the halfpipe.

"Okay, I think we have enough rings to keep going," the emerald-eyed hero yelled. He didn't want to turn his head and risk taking his eyes off of the crowded road ahead. The number of monsters was luckily starting to lessen a bit for the time being; they were approaching the first Toll Gate. "We'd better have enough, I would hate to have to do this again...!" He held his breath as he and Tails ran through the gate. He didn't feel himself being forced to slow down, which was a good thing. A sign appeared over them again, this time saying "TOLL APPROACHING. COLLECT 90 RINGS."

"We gotta get 50 more?!" Lil' T groaned, his legs working overtime to keep up with the older Sonic's brisk pace.

"Not quite, we got a few extra the first time around. Just keep an eye out!"

There were still monsters in this part of the course, but luckily none of them were moving around much- they seemed to be pretty stuck to their places. This meant that they could be treated like regular obstacles, such as bombs, making them much less of a threat in the runners' minds. They just had to watch out for each monsters' two sets of vicious arms, and tail, and projectile snot.

Sonic and Lil' T collected several more groups of rings, jumping over the heads of the monsters in order to get to the next group faster. At one point, the young fox got hit by one of the creatures, but he only dropped a handful of rings and didn't sustain much damage. Further down the line, the rings abandoned their clustered groupings and spread out into two single-file lines, each one twisting around the entirety of the pipe in opposite directions, like a double helix almost. There was no way for one person to get all of the rings. Luckily, though, there were few enough monsters and bombs in this part of the tube that Sonic was comfortable grabbing one line of rings while having Tails break off and grab the other. They both missed plenty at first; the spirals were arranged so that it was tricky to travel around the tube at the just the right speed. They couldn't just gun it, run around the tube as quickly as they could, and have it so that they grabbed every ring. They needed to limit themselves, take it easy on the spins. This was something both of them had done before, so once they got the hang of the timing, both hedgehog and fox collected most of the rings in his line before regrouping just before the Toll. Again, holding their breath as they passed under the glowing arch signifying the end of a section, they both hoped to Chaos that they had snagged enough of the small, golden halos in order to pass. They found themselves suddenly slowing down. "Did we not have enough?" Tails asked, looking up to see if there was a "TOO BAD" sign hanging above their heads. He saw nothing however, except their collective ring total. It was more than the 90 they had needed to get through the Toll, so what was the deal? Why were they slowing down?

"We can't be at the Emerald already, these things usually have three Tolls. Right?" Sonic said, slowing down to just a jog. "We only went through two. What's going on here?"

They felt the pressure from both ahead and behind which kept them running at the same pace suddenly disappear, and the lights floating above the half-pipe, illuminating the Special Zone and giving the place a carnival-ish air, went dim. The duo came to a stop, confused.

"What in the..." Sonic stammered, looking around. Nothing like this had ever happened before, in any version of the Special Stage he'd visited. You didn't just stop. You either succeeded or failed, there was no in between.

"... Is the Special Stage broken?" Lil' T wondered quietly, looking up at the dimmed lights. It felt they were in an amusement park after hours. The place was supposed to be filled with bright colors and lights and movement, but now that they were at a standstill and the lights were off, the colorful checkerboard half-pipe felt... dead.

"I don't think the Zone itself is broken..." the hedgehog said, furrowing his brow. "Think about what's been going on lately. All those time monsters we passed..."

"Are you saying time stopped? Here? I thought that stuff was only happening on Mobius!"

"Apparently it's happening here too. We must be getting close to the Chaos Emerald. On your toes." Sonic balled his fists and looked around sharply to make sure there weren't any creatures approaching. "Grab any rings you see, just in case. The Tolls might still work, even without time."

"Good idea... Wouldn't want to get kicked out of this place by accident. Even though it is kinda creepy..." the fox muttered under his breath, his twin namesakes twitching about nervously. Sonic suddenly remembered that Westside Island itself made Tails a bit uneasy, and this was certainly not helping.

"It's okay if you're scared, you know," he said, glancing down at the kit. "Nothing to be ashamed of."

"You don't get scared," the child responded in turn, sounding almost accusatory.

"Hey, since when do I not get scared?" the hedgehog chuckled. "Is it 'cause I'm a grownup or something? Grownups don't get scared?"

"It's 'cause you're Sonic. An' you're not scared of nothing. Remember? You told me that when we met."

"Did I?" Sonic tried to think back to that day. It was normally something he remembered quite well, but he was having a hard time visualizing it. "Huh, having a hard time remembering, actually. I haven't been able to remember a whole lot today, have I...? Anyway, the point is, I do get scared. So don't feel bad if you feel scared, too."

Tails seemed a bit reassured by this, and nodded. He put on a solid, confident expression. He wasn't going to let any dumb monster faze him. "What are you scared of then?"

"What am I scared of?" the blue one cracked a grin. "You already know that. Water."

"All water?"

"If it's enough for me to fall into and not get back out again, yeah. Now that's scary." He shuddered for emphasis, thinking back to the giant fountain he jumped into yesterday to grab a Chaos Emerald.

"Is that the only thing you're scared of?" Lil' T asked skeptically. Sonic shrugged.

"Nah, but I think that's a conversation for another time." He reached his arm up to grab some rings that were on the side of the tube. They blinged out of sight, almost in slow motion. "Huh. Wacky," he said with a smirk. He continued to hold his arm up so he could collect the rest of them and looked off into the distance. He groaned. There were more monsters further down the tube. "More of these losers?"

"Yeah, and now we actually gotta fight 'em," Lil' T said, an annoyed note in his voice.

"Joy… And we can't afford to lose any rings. Which means we need to get through them without taking a hit." Sonic hugged an arm around his chest subconsciously. Sure, the last time he fought one of these bigger monsters, he was cocky and underestimated his opponent. But even so, his usual confidence was waning. Getting through the large gang of monsters ahead and retaining all of his rings seemed to be too much to ask for. "Tails, you're on ring duty," he said decisively. "Grab any rings that I drop, and any more that we pass. Keep our total up, and don't get hurt. I'll handle the fighting."

"But Sonic, I wanna fight too!" Lil' T protested, pouting angrily.

"No buts, bud. I'm the grown-up, I make the rules." Not accepting any more arguments, the hedgehog cracked his knuckles and got down low, prepared to sprint at a moment's notice. "Remember, we need as many rings as we can get if we want to get that Chaos Emerald. Be careful." He nodded towards the fox before taking off at full speed towards the group of monsters that lie ahead of him. His feet pounded hard against the checkerboard surface of the tube. He was just approaching the sound barrier when he leapt high into the air, swinging his foot up to kick one of the monsters solidly in the head. The near-supersonic kick practically blasted the beast's head clean off its shoulders, and it fell to the ground, dead. Kind of a cheap shot in Sonic's mind, but he didn't have time to fight fair. The other monsters- there looked to be about six or seven of them at least- all immediately turned towards him. This was starting to look like a very stupid idea.

Refusing to let himself be surrounded, he circled the tube, too fast for the time monsters to possibly follow. His brain was moving even faster than his feet, thinking of possible moves to make several moves in advance. He jumped off the wall, curling in on himself and spinning rapidly, and collided with the skull of another creature, sending it crashing to the floor. He used his momentum to spindash back up the wall of the half-pipe, turn around, and race back down, taking out another monster's legs. Sonic got up, stumbling a little bit as his chest screamed in shocking pain. In the split second he spent wincing, one of the creatures still standing charged at him and knocked him hard into the wall. Several rings burst out of him and fell to the floor with metallic clings when he impacted the side of the tube. He groaned as he slid back down to the floor, recollecting some of the scattered rings as he did so.

"Sonic!" Lil' T gasped, spinning his tails. He was getting ready for take-off, prepared to help his friend back up, when Sonic stopped him.

"Hold back!" the hedgehog gasped, the breath having been knocked out of him. He held his hand out, telling Tails to wait. He knew he had told his friend to go for the rings, but now the monsters were closing in. It wasn't safe enough at the moment.

Sonic swung his legs around in a fashion similar to breakdancing, dissuading the monsters from getting any closer to him. Giving himself a bit of space to breathe, he jumped to his feet and got moving again. Keeping still was a deathwish, apparently. There were still five of the time monsters still able to fight, and it looked like more were coming from further down the tube. "Seriously?" the blue one groaned. He didn't like these odds, not in the slightest. He homing attacked creature after creature, but even direct hits to the head weren't doing much damage, if any. He needed to build up a lot more speed, and he didn't have the room to do so without making himself sick from doing constant loop-de-loops. If there were only one or two of these monsters, maybe repeatedly homing attacking them would work. But there were way too many to take them all on one at a time.

The hedgehog was suddenly grabbed from behind; a large clawed hand gripped around his arms and torso. He felt himself being lifted up, and he struggled, kicked his feet, and tried to break free. He was unable to, and the monster holding him started to crush him. He was thrown into the wall again, only this time he hit the top of the half-pipe, and actually went over the edge. The next thing he knew, he was holding on to the outside edge of the half-pipe, with nothing below him but space. 'What the… I didn't even know you could get out here!' he thought, looking down at the emptiness below him. 'I think I liked it better back in the pipe, surrounded by Time Eater Jr's. Time to get out of here!' He pulled up, trying to get an elbow up on the ledge so he could hoist himself up; it felt like something was pulling him down, though, like he was fighting gravity where there shouldn't have been any.

His fingers were starting to scream, and his gloves didn't have much grip on the smooth pipe surface. He needed to get back up quick before he fell, or worse- he gave the monsters enough time to get to Tails. He grunted, straining his muscles even harder. He was not going to let that happen. He placed his feet against the curved wall of the half-pipe and pushed off, gaining a little bit of lift. It was enough to offer his straining fingers some relief, but not much else. He kicked off harder this time. 'Bingo!' He'd gotten enough height to get his forearm over the edge, and from there, he was able to pull himself up to his elbows, and from there, the rest of his upper body. He swung a leg over the threshold and tumbled back into the tube, aching and sore. His chest was on fire through the bandages, but he didn't have time to be concerned about that. He looked around for Tails, who was airborne and dodging the slime projectiles fired at him by the temporal beasts.

Sonic stood up, panting. "Yo, uglies!" he yelled, gaining the monsters' attention. "If you want to get rid of me, you're gonna have to come up with something better than tossing me into space!"

"Sonic!" Lil' T exclaimed, a wide smile bursting onto his face. He had clearly been worried that the blue blur had fallen into the void, never to return.

The monsters, shocked by Sonic's reappearance and deciding that he was worthier prey, gave up on trying to shoot Tails down. They started moving towards the hedgehog, determined to finish what they had started. Sonic gulped. 'Right. Lots of strong monsters that I was barely able to beat two of. Almost forgot,' he thought. "Lil' T! New plan! We're making a run for it!" he shouted to his flying younger brother.

"Good plan!" the fox called back, taking off down the tube in the direction of the Emerald. The hedgehog followed, running just as the large collection of monsters started to close in on him. He raced down the half-pipe as fast as he could without his chest exploding, not even looking for rings at this point. He was swerving so wildly around the twists and turns of the pipe, however, that he ran into plenty of them anyway. Tails stayed in the air, grabbing the rings near the top of the pipe.

"Sonic! There's more monsters ahead!" the fox kit said, pointing farther off down the track,

"I see 'em! Don't stop moving!" Sonic ordered, looking ahead. His eyes darted around as he counted up the beasts they were approaching. Twenty. There were at least twenty monsters in their path, and ten more coming up from behind. Stopping to fight meant taking on thirty time monsters at once. Even if he wasn't injured, that would be way too many to fight single-handed. He just hoped these monsters would leave him enough space to run in between them.

He grabbed some rings as they rushed by, and then jumped high into the air. He cleared the heads of the first few monsters, taking them by surprise. Lil' T, flying above him, grabbed his hands and carried him, keeping him out of harm's way. "Need a lift?" the fox commented with a smirk.

"Thanks, Tails! But we're not out of the woods yet."

"Yeah! You're really heavy!" he grunted. "You gotta stop eating so many chili dogs!"

Sonic gasped dramatically. "No more chili dogs? How could my own brother suggest such a thing? I'm hurt," he said, acting like he was tearing up.

"Shut up before I drop you!"

"Jeez, touchy much?" the hog grinned. The monsters below started firing their slime up at the two, attempting to shoot them down. A few of the repulsive shots were uncomfortably close to their target. "You can't dodge these things and carry me at the same time!" the blue one said. "Try using Thundershoot!"

"What?"

"Throw me at one of those monsters as hard as you can!"

"You could have just said so!" the child said with exasperation. He launched Sonic downwards, directly towards one of the many creatures below. With the added momentum from Tails' throw, as well as the force of gravity on his side, Sonic was able to muster up enough energy into a homing attack to seriously injure the monster he hit. The time monster roared as it collapsed to the floor, and Sonic uncurled to continue running as he dropped to the ground as well.

As soon as he landed and his feet started to move, he shut out everything else but his instincts and his reflexes. There were too many enemies, each with too many arms and legs, and too many attacks and projectiles flying every which way. He wove between and under legs, around arms, over tails, through gaps in the wall of temporal ooze that was trying to kill him.

Something else grabbed at his attention. There was something in the air… Sonic recognized it easily as Chaos Energy. The Emerald was close, he could feel it. All they needed to do was make it just a little bit further, get to the Emerald... then they would be able to warp out of the Special Zone and escape the horde of monsters chasing them.

The monsters' ranks finally started to thin out a little bit, and Sonic no longer had to dodge something every other second. He allowed his focus to drift slightly, and gave the beasts wider berth. He dashed through another group of rings, the small halos slowly fading and entering his body as pure energy. "Hey!" Lil' T yelled from above. Sonic looked up. "Is that where the rings always go when you grab 'em?"

"Uh, yeah!" the hedgehog said, focusing back on the path ahead of him. "Turn into energy and vanish, like the Emeralds."

"So THAT'S how you hold so many at once!"

"Yeah- less talking, more running!" the blue one yelped, ducking and sliding under the swinging arm of a nearby time monster. He ran up the side of the pipe again, being careful not to run off of the physical pipe itself; he knew he fell out last time only because he was thrown, but he still didn't want to risk it. He didn't know if he could pull himself back up again. Sonic was hurting big time. His chest felt ready to explode, his lungs and ribs were burning, and even his legs were starting to get tired. 'What the heck? My legs almost never get tired, this should be an easy jog! I guess I'm in even worse shape than I thought,' he thought glumly. To get his mind off of his worsening physical condition, he focused on the energy radiating from the Chaos Emerald. Just a little more... It had to be coming up soon, any corner now and they would see the Toll telling them that they had made it...

His prayers were answered. After running through several more rings, Tails pointed it out in the distance. "The last Toll!" he said excitedly. He had been flying for a while, and just like Sonic, he was eager for a rest. "Do we have enough rings?"

"No clue! Come on, this is the final push!" the hedgehog breathed, pushing his legs to the limit. He reached an arm out, trying to cross the threshold as quickly as he possibly could. He needed to stop, now. The Toll was approaching, the golden orbs signifying it bobbing slowly in mid-air. 'Please be enough, please be enough, come on...!'

All at once, it seemed like he and Tails were through the Toll, the lights came back on, the world started moving again. It felt like everything that was stagnant and dead was suddenly alive again. Looking back, Sonic saw that none of the monsters were following them- they hadn't been able to make it past the Toll. The two brothers, smiling and panting, put on the brakes and came to a stop.

"The Special Stage isn't broken anymore!" the young fox kit cheered, landing with both feet on the ground.

"Those monsters are stuck behind the Toll… They can't affect the time stream out here," Sonic gasped, out of breath. "Convenient." He bent over at the waist, his arm wrapped around his chest. Now that he had stopped running, his fatigue had caught up with him. He coughed excessively, his insides on fire and his throat closing up. He never felt this way after a run, ever. Even when he went for a run around the world, he felt more or less fine. What on Mobius was going on with him?

"Come on Sonic, get up! The Chaos Emerald is just a little farther!" Lil' T said, grabbing the hedgehog by the arm and pulling him towards the gem they had been searching all day for.

"Yeah…" Sonic wheezed and coughed again. He looked up at the fox, and then at the Emerald. It was the cyan one. The sky blue light filtering out from it felt both welcoming and soothing, so he let Tails drag him along with little resistance. Oddly enough, the closer Sonic got pulled to the Emerald, the more relief he felt. By the time he was ten feet away from it, he could breathe again. He stood upright, still weary, but now able. He grinned down at his young friend before gripping his fingers around the floating stone. Everything around them faded to white as they exited the Special Zone. "Take us to the workshop in the Mystic Ruins, will ya?" Sonic whispered to the Emerald playfully. "I'm pooped. Can't walk another step." He didn't have any idea whether his request would work or not. Even if it didn't, he could just call on Zonic to open a portal for them. However, when the world rematerialized around them, he and Lil' T found that they were no longer in Mystic Caves, but inside the workshop's living room. Once they had safely landed in their destination and the Emerald's energy went back to rest, Sonic looked around, shocked to see Scourge and Zonic sitting there, apparently in the middle of a conversation. "Huh," he said amusedly. "That was a quick flight back."

Notes: And so ends another chapter. Our boys aren't doing so well, it seems! Sonic, Scourge, and Zonic are all hurting, and where the heck are Tails and mini-Sonic?! Maybe that question will be answered next time :) As always, feel free to PM me with any questions, comments, declarations of love, etc., and leave a review if you enjoyed this chapter! A special thanks goes out to everyone who has faved/watched this story or consistently leaves reviews, you guys keep my world spinnin'! Hope you all have an awesome day~