Flipside Chapter 5: Sunken Hearts, a sonic the hedgehog fanfic

Samantha27, NeckBreak, IT'S NO USE I'M OUTTA USE, SpeedsMyGame, Kampfer, YGquan: Yay to my awesome reviewers! You guys rock! :)

This chapter is going to have a lot of action/adventure stuff in it… and I will say that I've never been great at writing action. However, the past few days I've been replaying some old Sonic games (SADX, Sonic 1, and Sonic 2) and giving myself ideas of how to write these characters fighting and working as a team. So I hope you enjoy this chapter, and please give me any feedback about my action writing. I'd love to get better!

And those of you here mostly for the romance, don't worry, I have plenty of moments here for you, too. :D (And many more to come!)

Chapter 5: Sunken Hearts

"Hey lover boy, why are you standing still?" Knuckles shouted at him.

Sonic immediately resumed running to make the tornadoes, knowing his blue blur would hide his blush. He wasn't quite sure what had come over him today - but he'd been thinking about Amy almost constantly.

Original Dimension - Alternate Sonic, Original Tails, Original Amy

The wind whipped through Amy's quills and her ears popped as they gained altitude, but she barely noticed anything around her. Her eyes were trained on the back of Sonic's head, and she admired his perfect blue quills with a numb aching heart. She couldn't believe this… the hedgehog in front of her… he wasn't who she thought. This whole day, which felt like something out of her dreams, where he'd been so kind and nice… turns out it wasn't her Sonic after all. It had been a mistake, a misunderstanding.

She should have known it was too good to be true… deep down, Amy believed Sonic loved her, he was just too shy, or he didn't want her to get hurt, or something. But he did love her, and one day he'd finally show that. But now, after seeing what this Sonic had done for her, and how he treated her, Amy was having serious doubts about her own Sonic's feelings.

If he really loved her, why didn't he do the things this Sonic did? Why did he not take her out, treat her nicely, or even give her the time of day? Why was he so rude to her and always ran away whenever she approached him? No matter what she did and how hard she tried, he was always the same. Why, Sonic?

Amy had spent years, years, chasing after the blue hedgehog, her head full of dreams and hopes. Knowing, deep down in her heart of hearts, that Sonic would one day be hers. She'd always believed, always stayed positive, and never let anything get her down or distract her from her ultimate goal.

But now, she'd been given a taste of what being with Sonic was like. She'd held his hand, even kissed him - only for it all to be a lie. Some other look-a-like hedgehog from another world had swept her off her feet, and she'd fallen for him. And now, the cold, hard hand of reality had slapped her in the face.

There was no way her Sonic loved her.

Amy pushed her lips together and held back fresh tears that tugged at her eyelids.

The Tornado finally landed near Tails' workshop, and while the boys immediately hopped out and headed inside, Amy remained seated for another moment. Sonic didn't even stay to help her out, so she had to climb out herself. She slowly walked inside, her moist eyes staring at the rocks on the ground. As she entered, she managed to overhear the conversation between Sonic and Tails.

"Sonic, I'm gonna need some time to figure all of this out. Like, maybe a few weeks," Tails said as he rubbed his temples.

That was fine with Sonic. He needed to run, clear his head, and figure out what was going on with him. He was confused, and for some reason, angry. The only thing that could make him feel better was a romp around the planet.

"Alright Tails. I'll be back in a bit."

Sonic was about to rush out the door when Amy spoke and stopped him.

"Sonic?"

No. He didn't want to talk to this girl now. He didn't even want to think about what they'd done together. He felt an uncomfortable shudder come over him as he realized he'd actually cheated on his own girl. Even if it was with her look-a-like, he'd just rushed in, not taken the time to make sure it was her. He'd been selfish, and short-sighted.

In fact, he hadn't even investigated or noticed that this wasn't his own world. He'd had that gut feeling, but instead of trusting it, he'd gone out with Amy instead. He'd been dumb. That was it - he was neglecting things that had always been important to him, like adventuring and fighting Eggman, in favor of making Amy happy. And it wasn't even his Amy.

His foot began tapping almost involuntarily, and Sonic would have to run. Those thoughts had crossed his mind in only a few seconds, but he needed to make the world blur around him to think. Or more like, to stop thinking.

"Sonic, can we talk, please?"

He let out a sigh. This may not be his Amy, but he didn't have it in his heart to leave her behind. He wanted to be selfish, but Amy's sweet voice tugged at his heartstrings. Sonic turned to face her, his own heart dropping when he saw the tears in her eyes. He couldn't stand tears. His face softened.

"Whaddya wanna talk about?"

"Are you really from another world?"

"Yeah, seems like it."

"And my Sonic… he's in your world."

"Guess so."

The two hedgehogs continued to awkwardly stand in Tails' workshop, staring at the various gizmos and gadgets he had lying around, anything to keep from looking at each other. A moment passed as if an eternity, with a room so silent they could hear each other breathing.

"Well… you wanna go get somethin' to eat?" Sonic really wasn't hungry, but couldn't stand still for another moment. In the corner of his eye, he saw Amy nod, and that was enough for him.

Alternate Dimension - Alternate Knuckles, (Original Sonic, Alternate Tails, Alternate Amy, Alternate Cream)

Knuckles was getting very familiar with the ground in this area of the world. After working the past hour or so, he'd managed to dig a hole about the size of a swimming pool using only his fists. The ground was easy to work with, and he didn't even feel slightly tired as he displaced the earth.

Of course it was up to Knuckles to do the dirty work. Not that he really minded, and right now he was the echidna for the job. He didn't even mind Amy and Cream leaving him out here alone; in fact, he preferred it.

However, he had no idea how far down this power source was, or what it even looked like once he found it. He was assuming it was similar to the Chaos Emeralds, but all he'd found as far as he'd dug was dry, reddish brown dirt and clay. He just hoped he was digging in the right spot, and had considered asking Amy to leave the scanner behind, but she'd insisted on holding onto it. She was the only person he knew more stubborn than himself.

After a pleasant amount of time with just himself, Knuckles' thoughts were broken by a loud booming voice.

But unfortunately, it wasn't his friends.

"Well, well, well, what do we have here? Could it be Knuckles?"

Oh no…

Knuckles climbed to the top of the hole and peeked over the edge. To no surprise, he saw Dr. Eggman floating in his Egg Mobile, hovering over a giant army of bots. There were the standard fare of heavy clunkers and flying hunks of metal. But what really captured Knuckles attention was the gigantic drill that towered above all others. Held up by four massive pillars for legs, the drill itself looked like it could tear the earth open in minutes.

So, Eggman was here for the power source too. And until his friends got back, Knuckles would have to take them out himself. He let out a breath. No problem.

"Such a strange place to be digging there, Knuckles."

"Eggman, why don't you just attack me and we'll get this over with," Knuckles said with no-nonsense. "I know you're here for the power source."

"Oh, so it is here! Perfect. Now, where is that annoying blue hedgehog? Weird of your friends to leave you here alone, hmm?"

"No," Knuckles said as he forcefully jumped out of the hole. "I'll handle you myself!"

The echidna launched himself at the army, and the bots quickly mobilized. The giant drill slowly rolled towards the hole he'd already dug, but Knuckles couldn't hope to take it on himself when the other bots would be all after him. However, the pillars would work great for him to take the high ground. Knuckles pushed his fists forward to propel himself in a glide, aiming for the nearest pillar. He focused his eyes over the top of his white gloves to steer himself correctly. Along the way, he managed to punch a few of the flying bots Eggman had sent after him, tearing through their metal structures with ease.

After sailing through the air, Knuckles latched onto the pillar and began climbing higher, punching his fists into red metal and pulling himself up. Before he could make it to the top, he found himself dodging several laser shots aimed at him from the grounded clunkers. He used his legs to push himself off the pillar and glided around the perimeter of the drill, avoiding lasers to his left and right. This was about to get even more difficult.

He kept gliding laps around the massive drill, punching out any clunkers or flying bots that got in his way. He felt as if he was barely doing enough to keep the badniks at bay, meanwhile the drill itself was already in position over the hole he'd created. The spiral bored into the ground, displacing what seemed like tons of dirt with its pointy tip.

Finally, Knuckles heard the familiar whizzing sound of the Tornado. He looked up to the sky, nodding at the sight of the bright red plane and the blue figure riding fearlessly on the wings.

"Knuckles!" Tails called down to him. "We're here to help!"

"About time," the echidna grumbled as he completed yet another lap around the drill.

"That's a lot of mean robots," Cream commented as she looked down with wide eyes. She hugged Cheese close to her chest.

"We'll take care of 'em!" Sonic shouted confidently and jumped off the wings, rolling himself into a ball. He had to help Knuckles as soon as he could, there was no time to waste.

As the hedgehog rolled through the air towards Knuckles, he noticed something when he happened to be facing the sky. Amy had jumped after him! From so far away, and so high up! What was she thinking?

He pulled himself out of the ball and turned to face her, knowing he'd have to catch her. There was no way Amy could stick the landing when jumping from so high up. He reached up his arms towards her, but she merely scowled down at him.

"Sonic, what are you doing?"

"Yer gonna fall, but don't worry, I'll catch ya!" Remembering he was trying to impress her, he grinned.

Amy appeared less than impressed. "I'm not falling. Get out of my way!"

While in midair, the girl began spinning her hammer in a circle, creating a small whirlwind underneath her. She twirled to the ground before turning her body to complete a frontflip, swinging her hammer in front of her. Amy fell with her hammer first, and when the mallet hit the ground, it created a minor shockwave, knocking a few ground clunkers over.

As Sonic was falling, he found he couldn't take his eyes off of her. Where had she learned moves like that? Sonic realized he'd been trying to impress the girl, but she'd ended up impressing him. Wow.

"You guys need to get that huge drill down," Tails called from above in the Tornado, breaking Sonic's thoughts. "I'll take out what I can from up here."

"Yeah - Knuckles and Amy, you guys get up there and pound at it, I'll take the perimeter and deal with Eggman," Sonic called out.

"Got it," Amy and Knuckles confirmed.

Using her hammer again, Amy cleared the ground of clunkers, smashing their metal bodies to bits. Sonic dealt with the flying bots, and attracted the attention of the lasers away from Knuckles so he could climb.

Meanwhile, Knuckles punched into one of the legs of the drill, climbing to the top. Now that Sonic was distracting the attacks and taking out most of the missile bots, it was an easy climb. Standing at the top of column, he jumped off to glide to the large drill and landed easily on the top vaulting. As he punched into the top of the drill, he could slowly feel the massive tool becoming loose on its hinges. But it would take more work before he could get it to come down.

Tails flew his plane high, giving air firepower and callouts to the ground force. Cream rode with him in the backseat, giving her own callouts and encouragement. In fact, in a brief moment of reprieve, as Tails was circling the plane around, he felt her soft hand on his shoulder. He turned around only to be greeted with a cute smile.

"You're doing a great job, Tails."

Her sweet voice warmed his heart.

"Thanks," he turned back around to try and focus his attention and guns back to the fight, but her nice smile and big brown eyes lingered in the back of his mind.

As Sonic ran around the perimeter, taking out the main defense force, he felt something odd under his shoes. The ground itself was shaking, becoming less stable, as if affected by a minor earthquake. The more he looked around, he couldn't see anything that could be causing the shaking, but he knew what stable ground felt like to run on, and this was anything but. The Drill itself was starting to come loose thanks to the powerful punches by his echidna friend.

So why was the ground still shaking, even as he ran far away from the drill?

An idea formed in his head, and Sonic changed direction on a dime, starting a path of a tight circle. The wind began picking up around him, creating a mini tornado in his path. As he did so, he looked at the blustering winds, and noticed tiny pieces of debris floating through the air, creating an insect swarm-looking effect. Sonic stopped running for a moment, and the swarm seemed to disappear as the objects dispersed and fell to the ground.

"Tails are you seein' this?" He called up to his friend as he raced to catch a few of the pieces in his hands.

"What is it Sonic?"

"These bugs!" The hedgehog built up some speed before jumping as high as he could, and Tails guided the Tornado down towards him.

Sonic landed on the wing and bent over to show Tails the small black thing in the palm of his glove. He squinted.

"That's a microbot! A mini drill!"

"Could that be what's causing the ground to shake?"

"Maybe - I bet they're drilling the ground as well -" HIs blue eyes lit up. "Eggman's trying to distract us! These microbots are what are really digging into the ground - he's trying to make the whole area cave in!"

"Okay, I'm on it!" Sonic jumped back to the ground and resumed making the tornadoes to slightly unearth the small bots. But as many tornadoes as he could make, the bots resumed their digging. The ground was becoming more and more unstable as he ran, and Sonic could feel the slight changes under his feet. Knuckles and Amy didn't seem to be aware, but they were busy with their own tasks. Knuckles was giving the giant drill hell, and he could see the contraption shake more with every punch. And Amy was taking care of the bots near the pillars, smashing them and taking shots at the legs of the drill when she could.

He couldn't help but take a moment to watch the girl move - she was jumping around and swinging her hammer like nobody's business. He felt himself smiling as he watched her, as he'd never seen Amy be so athletic and capable before. Or maybe he'd just never noticed.

"Hey lover boy, why are you standing still?" Knuckles shouted at him.

He didn't like it.

It was time to focus and get back to business. However, it seemed his tornado attacks couldn't dislodge the bots already underground, and he had no easy way of digging to them. If he used his spindash to bore into the ground, it would only make things more unstable…

"Tails I can't do anything, there are too many!" He called out to his team. "You guys need to clear out of here - the ground is going to collapse - I can feel it already!"

"This drill is almost down!" Knuckles yelled.

"We need to get the power source, and I have the scanner!" Amy showed him the device.

Before he could protest, the ground suddenly collapsed under Sonic's feet. Sand and dirt simply gave way under him, and he had to jump from side to side of the newly formed sinkhole, his sneakers gripping what they could from a waterfall of dirt. He looked down and saw gravity pulling tons of dirt towards a deeper cave than he'd expected. Just a quick glance revealed a gigantic cavern mouth. The power source would still be down there somewhere - he'd have to take that energy scanner and rush to find it before Eggman's bots did.

But Sonic wasn't the only one succumbing to the land avalanche - the giant drill, all of the remaining robots, and Knuckles and Amy were also falling in with him. Knuckles had pulled himself into a glide, and Amy used her hammer to hit bots and slow her descent. Tails and Cream were flying in the Tornado, but could only watch as the sinkhole grew and sucked their friends into the dark caves below.

Original Dimension - Original Tails

Tails was relieved when Sonic and Amy finally left his workshop for him to research in peace. Sonic being swapped was no big deal, and he was kinda glad for something to do and think about. He was also relieved that this was just another Sonic, and his big bro hadn't suddenly gone love crazy over Amy. The girl herself was overwhelming enough, and Tails wasn't sure he could deal with Sonic being just as infatuated.

He settled into his computer chair for his routine work of figuring out what was going on with the space-time continuum. Before he could get much work done, he was rudely interrupted by a most unwelcome guest that sauntered through his door, riding in his Egg Mobile.

"Eggman!" Tails jumped in fear, quickly looking for his defense system remote, and suddenly wishing Sonic and Amy were still here.

"Relax, my fox friend. I come here in peace, see?" The doctor lifted his empty hands in a gesture of goodwill.

"In peace? What are you doing here?" Tails demanded, one finger ready to press a button and set off an alarm.

"No, Tails, I am here because, as much as this pains me to admit, I need your help."

Tails almost spit out his drink. "My help? You need my help? You think I believe you? After what you just tried to do with us back there?"

"Well, Sonic ran away before I could fully explain!"

"Right, and you threatening us meant nothing, right?"

"I did not even attack - I merely explained part of the situation to Sonic, and he seemed to understand and agree with me, but then ran before I could say any more! You, on the other hand, surely you will listen to reason."

Tails sighed. He looked behind Eggman outside, but couldn't see any attack force, no hidden robots. His security cameras were coming up blank. He might as well listen to what the doctor had to say. "Fine, go ahead... "

"Well, the truth is our world may be on the brink of collapse. I'm sure you've noticed how our world seems to be losing energy - and you know as well as I what that means."

"Losing energy? Eggman, you know that's not possible due to the laws of physics."

"See for yourself… those computers seem to be built… on a budget, but should still help you come to the same conclusion."

Keeping one hand on his defense system remote, Tails ran a few scans of the energy levels of the planet over the past 24 hours. To his shock, he saw a downward trend graphed in front of him.

"No way… but how? Do you know why it's losing energy?"

"I may have… conducted some experiments using the Egg Stone."

"The what?"

"My new power source, of course. A one of a kind gem that formed deep underground as the earth grew old, absorbing the energy of the land above it."

"Hm," Tails mused. "Either way, I'm not helping you, Eggman. I just found out about this and it'll take me awhile to get up to speed - "

"I'll share my data with you, what I have, of course. I just need an intellect slightly inferior to mine. All of my attempts at fixing this have been… less than successful, I'll admit."

"So why do you care, anyway?"

"If this world is destroyed, I'll have nothing to rule, don't you see?"

Tails blinked. "Uh-huh. Well, I'm still not helping. You made this mess, and Sonic and I will fix it our way."

"Well, it's more like you don't have a choice."

Dr. Eggman suddenly pulled out a gun from his Egg Mobile and aimed it right at Tails. In his other hand, he aimed the Switching Tablet at him.

"My OctoScramblers are outside, surrounding you. You have five seconds to agree to help me, or I'm sending you to the other dimension. The other Tails will surely agree."

Five seconds. Tails would have to think fast. What would Sonic do here?

"Five."

He couldn't agree to help. Not an option.

"Four."

If he activated his defense system, it would attack the OctoScramblers, and may send him to the other world regardless of what he did.

"Three."

What would his copy in the other world do? Would it be better to allow the swap? How had things played out for this world's version of Sonic over there….?

"Two."

He'd have to let Sonic and Amy know Eggman was here.

"One."

Time to see what the other world was like…