A/N- Believe it or not I actually do read all the reviews. I know I said way back I was gonna be more interactive with that, and for the most part I failed in that regard. That being said I've been getting lots of questions by people so I'm just throwing this out here as a blanket statement to all of you:
I'm not answering any questions that would spoil future events of the story in any way whatsoever. Not on if such and such character is appearing, not if this one thing or power or weapon or whatever will show up, not on any of that.
Recursion Error
Episode 82- The future unequivocally, without a shadow of a doubt, sucks
Maybe there was something to be said about not feeling anything after performing the act of murder. Maybe. Sorun would argue context was important to such a thing, and a number of other factors and variables, but based on how everyone was treating him it seemed he was alone in that thinking.
Which in itself was strange. Maybe it was from back when, back when he'd been hyping himself up to kill Eggman when he thought it'd be the last thing he'd ever do before dying, and if there had been one single person on the entire planet that needed to die if only because it meant the quality of life of literally every single person would improve, it was that guy. Sorun wouldn't have shed any tears for his sake, and when he'd almost done it, he couldn't have been more zealous in the act. And he'd have done it, too, if it weren't for the fact he'd been just a second too slow.
But he'd never put any thought into how he'd feel after. Sorun figured since it was Eggman he'd feel nothing, even if he didn't have the time to ruminate on it. But now he'd killed that fake Shadow. King Shadow. Alternate Shadow. Did he deserve it? Well, Sorun didn't think anybody deserved to die, but he also made exceptions in life and made one for Eggman. Beyond that he considered himself to be the least-qualified judge of character when it came to King Shadow since he hadn't even been in this world for a full day when everyone else spent a lifetime here.
Still, he killed him. Because Sorun was just too desperate to go back to the original timeline and he was in the way. Because it didn't matter because he was going to change everything anyways. Because, the more Sorun thought on it, the more he realized he was completely okay with the fact he'd just killed someone, and really he just wanted to stop thinking about it and move on. The others weren't of the same mind.
Apparently they didn't even trust him enough to keep the Chaos Emeralds. They made him give them up. He would have argued against it, maybe just outright refused, but Sonic was there, Knuckles had returned, and his daughter with that bullshit time freeze ability was nearby and Sorun couldn't see him winning against that without outright killing or dismembering her, and that wasn't something he was willing to do. So he'd relented, given the Emeralds up, realized how brutally tired he was once Devil's Body had left him and his hair turned back black, and had chosen to just slump up the wall he'd been blasted into during the fight while everyone else talked things out.
It didn't help Sorun's mood that Knuckles had come along with a new face in tow. One he instantly recognized, but he knew just from a glance she didn't have a clue as to who he was. Even with the added age of twenty-five years Sally had a distinctive enough face. The hair alone was a dead giveaway, even all... done up like it was now, all regal-like along with the royal-looking dress she wore.
He didn't remember Sally ever looking at him like he was a rabid animal, though, and she chose to stay on the other side of the room along with the others. It might have to do with the fact there was a sheet-covered decapitated corpse near Sorun he kept taking glances at.
Hearing a pair of footsteps stop near him, Sorun turned his head to look up at Tails. Of everyone he was probably the most conflicted-looking out of all of them, and he, too, couldn't stop glancing at King Shadow's corpse. The way his facial muscles kept twitching it looked like he was struggling to make up his mind on whether to scream at Sorun, scold him, or just express his disappointment. Sorun couldn't help but wonder how long his patience would last under those circumstances. He didn't give himself good odds.
"What's she doing here?" Sorun asked, nodding his head in the older Sally's direction. Tails had immediately gotten his meaning, and sighed as a result.
"Knuckles had to look after her during your... fight," he tentatively answered, hesitating for a long time on the fight word. "She was getting ready to become queen. Was gonna marry Shadow and everything. She said she was doing it in hopes of getting Shadow to ease off some of his more unpopular policies."
Sounded like her, at least to Sorun. She never could stand not helping people. "Well..." Sorun drawled out, eyes turning back down to the sheet over King Shadow, "I don't think they'll be sounding the wedding bells any time soon."
Tails' face twitched. "You're making jokes after killing someone?"
"Yeah," Sorun answered, looking back up at the fox. He felt irritation rising. "It's called levity. Fucking look it up."
"I know what levity is, I'm just saying it's not appropriate," Tails said, the anger in his voice rising. "You had no right to make that kind of choice."
"And yet I made it anyways. Look where that got us." Sorun spread his arms out. "I don't see what the problem is. Sonic wanted his change in government? Well, he's sure as shit gonna get it now."
Tails shook his head. "That doesn't mean-"
"Listen, when you fight a guy radiating so much power the air around him is literally boiling then you can fucking talk," Sorun snapped out. He stood up to his feet, eyes narrowed and voice dropping a bit, though Tails stood his ground and simply crossed his arms. "'Til then you can't say shit about what I did, so shut the fuck up about it already."
"... Do you even regret what you did?" Tails suddenly asked, in a way that he sounded like he didn't want the question answered. "Are you even feeling any remorse? Guilt? Something over the fact you just murdered a defenseless prisoner?"
"Was nothing 'defenseless' 'bout that guy," Sorun argued with a dismissive scoff. "But to answer your question, no, not really."
For a long moment Tails just stood there, looking at Sorun. Then he sighed out, hanging his head in resignation as he mentally processed what Sorun said. After that, a weary breath left him, and his shoulders sunk down.
"You know, from your perspective, just a week or two back, you were a normal person everyone was friends with. You were a hero." He picked his head up to look at Sorun. He didn't know what to feel when he saw that Tails looked so sad. So betrayed. Disappointed. "What happened? What... what changed in you that turned you from the Sorun I knew back then to this?"
He could have made something up. From fighting Enerjak to falling into this mess, there were a number of things he could have said. He decided to just hit Tails with the truth. "Nothing changed. I was always like this," Sorun bluntly answered, making Tails stiffen. "This was just the first opportunity I had to kill someone without it being a problem and I took it. That's all." He paused. "And I mean, Enerjak, too, if you really count that thing as being a person."
Tails shook his head. "I don't believe that."
"Tails, for god's sake, you're in your mid-thirties. You're a grown-ass man with kids. I know you're not stupid, so what's so fucking hard to understand?" Sorun bit out, making the fox flinch. "For fuck's sake, your parents were war veterans, weren't they? You're really gonna stand there and tell me you can look at them without judging but the second I off an actual DICTATOR trying to kill us-!"
"That's different!" he loudly argued.
"How!? How is it different!?"
"Because you're supposed to be a good person!" Wildly, Tails gestured to the sheet-covered, headless corpse. "Good people don't... don't do that! They don't kill helpless people! Are you really going to stand there and tell me this is acceptable in your culture!?"
"Tails, I'm from fuckin' Detroit," Sorun said in a lame voice. "The violence there was admittedly way overhyped by memes and shit but that doesn't change the fact I had a nextdoor neighbor that got shot on three separate occasions when someone tried to mug him. Did Earl ever cry about it? No, he just punched the guy out after he got shot every time. Because Earl was just built different or something, never could fucking tell with that guy," Sorun muttered out. "Or Crazy Ricky, who I'm fairly certain killed, like, fifty people while in the army before he became that one weird homeless guy living in a box behind the local Wal-Mart. Or my..." The teen trailed off a bit, eyes growing vacant for a moment before focusing back on Tails. He made a defeated sigh. "Look, Tails, I don't know what you want me to say. Earth isn't Mobius. Things are different there. I'm different. What do you actually want out of me?"
"I want you to stop using your species being violent as an excuse and say you made a mistake."
Sorun made a sharp breath as displeasure creeped into his features. "Oh, is that really how you're going to play it? We're playing the race card now?" Sorun's eyes narrowed in the same way Tails' eyes narrowed at his. "You're gonna stand there and tell me your parents didn't kill any Overlanders in the war? That Sonic's didn't? That there aren't messed up Mobians out there that don't have a problem killing people, because this one jackal I punched out once says otherwise. And you really think there weren't humans where I'm from that'd be just as appalled as you are over the fact I just cut someone's head off?" He reached forwards and roughly jabbed Tails in the chest. "Fuck you, Tails. You don't know anything."
Tails' eyes darted away from Sorun's. He brushed Sorun's hand away. "At least we didn't blow up our own planet with nuclear bombs."
Sorun froze. He felt his right arm twitching at his side, and it took a phenomenal amount of willpower to not hit the fox standing in front of him right now. He managed to let out a steadying breath and stay his hand, even if he couldn't figure out why Tails was on his case so hard. If the hero mentality of being a Freedom Fighter and being a hero as a child was really so ingrained into him that he never grew out of it, If Sorun really did make that big an impression on him back then, or if he really was just that naïve. Maybe being that naïve was a good thing - the whole reason Sorun fought to save the planet and told so little about what Earth was like to people was just to preserve that innocence since he adored it so much. So maybe this was just a consequence of that.
Or maybe adult Tails was just that fucking irritating, but really, that was all his fault if that was the case.
"You sure grew snippy with age, didn't you?" Sorun's voice was cold.
"... Look, I'm not gonna argue this with you," Tails decided, releasing a sigh as the tension left his body. "Just... we'll talk about it later, after everything's settled and everyone's cooled off, gotten their heads straight. We have more important things to talk about."
"Alright, sure. Fine." Crossing his arms, Sorun leaned his back against the cracked wall and crossed one leg over the other. "You got some explaining to do anyways. Like the whole 'we're all gonna die unless I do something' thing, the Chaos Emeralds and how I apparently gave them to you when I didn't, and all this other stuff that isn't adding up like how the late and great king over there knew me when I never did any of that."
"You did. And didn't," Tails cryptically answered. Before Sorun could open his mouth and tell Tails how nonsensical that was the fox tossed him something that glowed blue. Sorun caught the object in the air, eyes widening in surprise when he saw the blue Chaos Emerald in his hand for a brief moment before it transmuted into the Yamato.
It was a move that puzzled him. They'd been so quick to take the Emeralds away from him after he killed King Shadow that he didn't expect to just be given one back. It was as comforting as it was confusing to Sorun. "Er, thanks," he awkwardly said, looking back at Tails, "but I still don't understand-"
"You went back in time."
Sorun automatically pursed his lips in surprise. All things considered he shouldn't have been that surprised, since it sat besides all the other wacky stuff and the fact he'd traveled forwards in time, technically, in an alternate timeline. But backwards was a whole different beast and he already was feeling the coming migraine just thinking about it.
It also didn't make any sense because last Sorun checked time travel was... well, actually, Sonic going into a time machine was what caused this whole mess, wasn't it? So he supposed it did exist. Extremely so. Still didn't explain what he had to do with all this.
"... Okay, I went back in time," Sorun echoed, slowly nodding along. "And how did... you know what, just walk me back from the beginning." If he had to listen to this he at least wanted it put in front of him in a cohesive enough way he didn't have to think about it too much.
"Right, right." Tails' eyes flickered to King Shadow's corpse. "So you know way back Shadow tried blowing the planet up using a weapon on the space station he was made in?"
"ARK, big laser, yeah I got the gist."
"And in our timeline Sonic stopped him," Tails continued.
"Mhm, mhm, yeah."
"Well, since Sonic wasn't there back then saving the world in this timeline it had to be left to the rest of us, and other people. World was an even bigger mess than it was with Sonic before Shadow came along." A regretful, pained look flashed over his face. "Things like dealing with Chaos in Station Square were... they were really messy without him there to help."
It took Sorun a second to connect the word Chaos with a name and not with the concept that had been screwing with him the entire time he'd been on this planet. "Oh, right, Chaos and Tikal. And those Chao," he said, vividly remembered the group he'd met. A tinge of worry went through him at the face Tails was making. "What... ended up happening?"
"It was bad," was all Tails offered. "Chaos was rampaging a lot longer than in our timeline. Shadow had to intervene, Tikal had to take desperate measures, and it wasn't... it didn't end like it did with Sonic there." Tails looked down at the floor. "You know the dungeon we were in with all the weapons stockpiled? Where we got the nuke?"
"Yeah...?"
"Well, Chaos and Tikal are down there."
For a second, a brief moment, Sorun felt a bit happy knowing they were close. But then it was dashed when he remembered the conversation he was having with Tails. "Why are they down there in a dungeon they keep weapons of mass destruction?"
"Because you wouldn't recognize them if you went down there to see them."
Sorun felt a stabbing feeling somewhere in his chest at hearing that. He tilted his head down, black hair brushing over his eyes as he made a breathy sound. A few moments passed before he shook his head. "I don't want to know," he said, hoping Tails would stop speaking on the subject. Fortunately, the fox nodded at him, looking eager to change topics anyways. "So I'm assuming Sonic wasn't there to stop Shadow from blowing up the planet?"
"No, he wasn't," Tails confirmed with a nod. "So you had to go back and do it."
It was amazing to Sorun how something could make so much and so little sense at the same time. "And I did this...?"
"It's..." Tails paused, sighing out a bit and holding a hand to his forehead as he thought. "From what I pieced together, from right now you used the Yamato to go back in time to stop Shadow, take the Chaos Emeralds, and then you found me, gave me the Emeralds, explained everything to me so that when I got to this point I could tell you all this so you'd go back in time and do the same thing."
"... What?" Confusion and bewilderment blossomed on Sorun's face. "I did what?"
"The sword you make," Tails clarified. "You used it to make a time loop."
"... The Yamato can time travel...?" Sorun muttered, mostly to himself as he glanced down at the Yamato. He gave it a critical look-over, mentally going over all the abilities he knew it possessed in his head before shaking his head in Tails' direction. "No I didn't."
"Yes, you did," Tails stressed.
"Tails, the Yamato can't be used to travel through time," Sorun rebuked. "It can do a lot, and I mean a lot, but time travel ain't one of them." He'd know if it could. Hell, he was the only person that could know if it did that, since he was the only person in the whole universe with intrinsic knowledge of it.
"Sorun, I am telling you-"
"And I am telling you it can't," Sorun interrupted, tone a bit angry. "Why the hell are you claiming to know more about its abilities than I do? You don't even know where it comes from."
"I know because you're the one that told me!" Tails yelled out, quieting Sorun. "You said its separation power could be used to make a portal that could separate the distance between one point in time to another! You're the one that said it can cut through space and time, aren't you!?"
"... Well I mean yeah, but..." Sorun trailed off, floundering under the look Tails was giving him and the steady realization that was coming to him. "But, but that doesn't... oh, wait, it actually might..."
The fact was that the sword he was holding wasn't the true-blue Yamato from 'DMC', but a replica his subconscious had made. That being said his knowledge of it was so thorough that, if it wasn't a 1:1 copy of it, the difference was so marginal it was practically negligible, and he knew the sword's power of separation was loose in that separation applied to everything. That was the power behind tying a power to a single word, how a single idea could blanket so many other concepts.
So time travel could in theory happen if he really utilized the Yamato's separating power to cut through time itself. Except it shouldn't, because the real Yamato never displayed that ability in the games. In fact nothing in 'DMC' lore displayed the ability to travel anywhere in time.
...
Well, except for that one thing.
"The fucking 'DMC 2' novel..." Sorun internally groaned out. He remembered now - how the worst game in the series had a novelization that had a demon named the Beastheads that could travel through time. Now that he thought of it that really did mean time travel was somewhat canon to the series if one accepted that book as cannon. And for all Sorun knew that mere idea somewhere in his subconscious was enough that the power to time travel was included in the Yamato's abilities, if in-universe time travel was a viable thing.
At least it was either that or he was right the first time and the power of separation really was so broad that the power to cut through points in time was just lumped in with it. Either way it was hard to refute facts - how Tails was saying all this, how he had the Emeralds, how King Shadow had knew him and implied Sorun was on the space station twenty-five years ago when he wasn't.
Unless he traveled through time.
"..." Sorun lifted the Yamato up, one hand gripping the handle and the other its scabbard. He pulled the sword halfway out, spotting his reflection in the immaculate, silver surface of the blade, how he was blinking down at in with a contemplative face before he sighed out in acceptance. "Alright," he muttered, sheathing the sword and looking back at Tails, "so future me got to this point, killing Shadow and everything, and after you said all this to him he went back, dealt with the ARK and past Shadow, nicked two of the Emeralds, the blue and red ones you gave me, gave them to past you and explained all this so when we got to this point, you could tell me allll this so I could go do the exact same thing."
Tails nodded. "Pretty much, yeah," he said with a nod.
"Okay." Sorun's mouth thinned. "I don't wanna."
The way Tails' mask cracked resulting in the frozen, half-confused and half-shocked look he was giving him would have been comical under any other circumstance. The dead body nearby sucked a lot of the enjoyment out of the situation, though. "You- I'm sorry, but what?"
"Yeah, I'm good," Sorun reiterated, shrugging at the now-sputtering fox. "Sounds like a lot of complicated work. I don't even like work in general, but throw something as bad as time travel in with it?" He made a low whistle. "Yeah, I think there's been enough time travel as it is. I'm just gonna not do it."
"No, you don't understand." Tails began to shake his head, vehemently, and took a step towards Sorun. "You have to do this, Sorun. There's no not doing it."
A groan left Sorun. He somewhat regretting how whiny it sounded. "But whhyyy?" he groaned out. "Weren't you the one telling Sonic how bad messing with time was, and now you're here telling me I have to mess with time? What happens if I don't? I can't be that bad, can it?"
"Yes! It can! It can be very bad!" The panicked enthusiasm Tails had incorporated into his voice, and how actually panicked he looked, managed to catch Sorun off his guard. "You set up a time loop! Do you know what happens if you deviate from that loop and not go back to close it so the next Sorun can do the same thing!?"
"No, I don't! Jesus, Tails, I'm a gamer, not a... a time physicist," Sorun said in a tired voice. "Why, what happens? What happens if I don't go back and close the loop? We're already here because the loop was closed already, wasn't it? Why does it matter?"
Frustration began growing on Tails, both on his face and the way his tails were angrily swishing around in the air behind him. "It matters," he said in a very stressed voice, "because if you don't go back in time to close the loop it'll cause a time paradox!"
Sorun's expression became entirely lost, which only seemed to make Tails more frustrated. "I don't get it. Is that bad?"
A loud sigh, short of Tails exploding and screaming in rage, left the Mobian as he did his best to calm down. He began rubbing at his temples with his fingers, muttering under his breath while Sorun silently watched on, and then breathed out.
"Alright," Tails began, light blue eyes opening up to stare at Sorun's confused blue eyes. "Let's say you don't do it. You don't go back and close the loop. Because we currently, all of us, are in a timeline in which you went back in time and stopped Shadow from using Space Colony ARK to destroy Mobius, you would cause a time paradox by not going back in time and stopping Shadow from using Space Colony ARK to destroy Mobius." He rose up two index fingers. "That would create two timelines - one where you closed the loop and saved Mobius, and one where you didn't. Imagine time as a straight line. You going back in time caused a curve that connects somewhere down the line, and when you go back to the future in curves back up. It makes a loop, a circle, but for all intents and purposes it's still one single timeline because the line carries past the circles. But if you don't go back and close the loop the line branches - we get two timeline."
"O... kay, but we're in the one where future... past, I dunno... me closed the loop and saved Mobius," Sorun pointed out. "So why does it matter?"
"Because a zone, this universe, doesn't have the energy or ability to house two alternate timelines! No zone does!" Tails snapped at him in a loud voice, causing Sorun to flinch. "Alternate zones with different histories is one thing, the multiverse is home to infinite zones in that regard, but there's a reason that the entire timeline was completely overwritten when Sonic used the time machine as opposed to it just making a new timeline, and we're beyond lucky that's all that happened. One zone can only have one timeline. One. So if a time paradox happens and creates two..." He loudly clapped his hands, startling Sorun. "The zone just can't sustain itself. Best case is that timelines or whole segments of time get annihilated. Worst, and most likely, case is that the entire zone grows unstable and just collapses. I'm talking complete and utter destruction of the entire zone and everything in it. The whole universe would just disappear."
Sorun's eyes widened. He felt something in him shudder uncomfortably as the weight of Tails' words settled in him. "Oh," he softly murmured out. "Yeah, you're right. That's pretty bad."
"THAT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN TRYING TO TELL YOU!"
"Alright, you don't have to shout!" Wincing a bit, Sorun rose his free hand to rub at his ear before continuing to speak. "God, this is frustrating. How do you even know all this?"
"Because you told me," Tails answered. "You explained all this to me so that I could explain it to you."
"Yeah, but there had to be a starting point to it somewhere, right? A Sorun that kicked off this loop?" Sorun asked him. "Ugh, I don't even want to think about what happened that made him desperate enough to do something like this. The trial and error alone he must have had to go through while dodging time paradoxes must've been a nightmare. Why'd he even do all this, anyways? Just to make sure Shadow didn't destroy the world?" It was a sobering through the more he dwelled on it. That a version of him at sometime had to deal with what was probably the most headache-inducing problem Sorun had ever tried to conceive. He evidently succeeded, at least, since they were all at this point, but Sorun still couldn't help but count himself lucky he wasn't that guy.
All Tails offered Sorun was a shrug. "We'll probably never know. But whatever that version of you did, it seems like it worked. We just need to send you back to reset the loop for the next Sorun, and after that everything should be fixed."
"... Fixed." The word felt dry and tasteless in Sorun's mouth. Like there was no meaning behind it. Wasn't hard to see why he felt this way when he looked around. "Right. So how long do I have to pull this off?"
"Probably not long."
"'Course, 'course..." He shook his head, sighing under his breath as he pushed off the wall. "Alright, you made your case. Give me all the details you can."
Well, as far as time travel plans were concerned, it was simpler than what Sorun had feared it would be, so he supposed that was a good thing. Go back in time to point A, do this event, take that, take them to so and so and give them the lowdown, then head back where, should everything have gone right, they'd be done with the time travel stuff for good. In this case it was go back to a specific date Tails had given to him, and then after that go to the space station Shadow was at, incapacitate him, take two of the Chaos Emeralds, go bring them to Tails and give him the information to give to the next Sorun, and then go back to the future.
Unironically it was way simpler than Sorun would have pegged time travel. Maybe he could chalk that up to Mobius and all its weirdness making something that was supposed to be as complicated as time travel simple. It inversed everything, apparently. Or maybe it was because he was going back in time using a magic katana that trivialized the whole concept.
Either way he wasn't complaining. Much. He would have preferred to just not do all this, period, but the threat of annihilation was as good a motivator as any.
He glanced down at the sword in his hands. From a normal person's point of view it didn't look like something that could cut through time, space, and apparently travel through time. By all appearances it really did just look like a normal katana, if a bit stylized. He knew people sensitive to Chaos energy always had weird reactions over it, though, even if it felt normal to him. He never could figure out what about it set people off.
"It's too bad going backwards with this thing has the whole time paradox risk thing if everything Tails said is right. I would have just went back in time and crushed baby Robotnik's head in with a brick otherwise." It made Sorun wonder as he pulled the gleaming, silver blade out of the black scabbard. How the one that set this loop up managed to do it without causing a time paradox. Must have been some mind-bending riddle he was glad he didn't have to solve.
Scabbard hanging off his waist, Sorun held the sword up, tip pointed forwards. He didn't know how this was supposed to work, and Tails knew even less since he'd never used the sword. The Sorun that set him on this path thankfully gave him the advice necessary, which basically amounted to doing the same thing he did whenever he focused on a location to cut a portal to. Except instead of a location just focus on a date, or the amount of time going forwards and backwards. Didn't sound right, but nothing did these days.
"Why am I at a point in life where this isn't even the weirdest thing I've done this week?" Suppressing a sigh, Sorun looked over his shoulder. He'd elected to go into the closest hallway he could find leading out of the throne room so he didn't have to be near everyone else while doing this. Mostly because he didn't want to be bugged anymore by the strangers wearing aged versions of his friends' faces, and fortunately Tails got the hint he didn't want to be disturbed and left him be. So it was just him in a narrow hallway attempting to cut through time and space with a katana to travel back in time. As one does.
Exhaling, Sorun faced back forwards and began focusing into the sword. The date Tails had given him was repeated in his head over and over in a mantra, and as he did this he pushed the sword forwards. Surprisingly, he met resistance despite the fact he'd stabbed forwards into empty air. The tip of the sword was struggling and scraping off against nothing, with heated blue specks occasionally flying off as if Sorun was attempting to stab into an invisible wall.
His eyebrows furrowed a bit. He could feel it - the same feeling he got when he was making a portal to a different location. A sensation that would travel through the blade to him, a mental click as the two locations were bridged and he cut a portal through space to travel there. In this case he felt the "location" he was trying to get to, the point in time he was trying to get to. It wasn't clicking, though. It was just hanging there at the edge of his mind.
He focused more power into the sword. More sparks flew off from the tip as the silver blade began thrumming with blue power. That location back in time was growing stronger in Sorun's mind, closer, and, rather bizarrely, he felt less resistance against the nothing he was stabbing against. Putting some more effort in found Sorun finally being able to sink the blade fully forwards into a thin, glowing blue fissure that had appeared in the air in front of him.
Grunting, Sorun began slicing downwards, lengthening the fissure. It wasn't like making a portal to simply teleport, where space parted effortlessly and was more or less made a smooth process. This was taking a phenomenal amount of effort and concentration by comparison, and Sorun could feel actual strain being put on the sword, the way it was vibrating in his hands. He'd finally cut the fissure long enough that it was as tall as him, and afterwards was forced to turn the sword and use it like a crowbar to widen the fissure into an entrance large enough for him to slip through.
"Okay-okay-okay this is way harder than I thought it'd be!" It was difficult to properly conceptualize the difficulty of using a magic katana to hold open a portal that, if everything went right, lead to the past. Like trying to keep a door wedged open with a crowbar while a raging flood was hitting the doorframe on all sides in addition to the pulsing waves Sorun felt go through his body. When the portal began to shrink he realized there was no way to open it completely for him to walk in: he wasn't strong enough, and the longer this went on the larger and more numerous he saw the hairline fractures alone the sword's blade grow. "Fuck it, here goes!"
Not seeing any alternative to his situation, Sorun decided to bite the bullet and dive right into the portal while it was still large enough for him to fit through.
Going through a portal through time wasn't like going through a portal that simply lead from one location to another. It wasn't simply walking through a doorway through a small interim of darkness intermingled with blue energy, skin tingling with the ambient energy as one made the journey. It wasn't the relatively calm couple-second walk that "normal" portals entailed.
There wasn't a scope to define what going through a time portal was like, much in the same way it was hard to describe what it was like opening it. For Sorun it was the sensation of falling, being pulling upwards, and somehow being yanked in all other directions simultaneously. Tumbling through an endless expanse of darkness and blue, where the space was so thick with energy it was like being dragged through the ocean. That's the best Sorun could come to even think about what was happening, as he could hardly see, and his mind was racing so hard he struggled to even comprehend the way his body was tumbling around this expanse. Like he'd been tossed in some king of cosmic washing machine.
Realistically the process only took somewhere in the ballpark of ten seconds, even though to Sorun it felt like minutes, and he'd been so disoriented the entire time that for all he knew the opposite was actually true, but he didn't have a way of knowing. Eventually, and mercifully, whether he'd been tumbling through some sort of undefinable tunnel and finally made it to the other side or reached the other portal he'd cut into this space, he made it to the other side and fell out. Flat onto his face, with the blue Chaos Emerald falling out after him and falling next to him with a soft plink! noise. The portal, less that and more a blue tear in space, promptly closed afterwards, leaving behind wispy, blue vestiges of power that slowly dissipated in the air.
For a solid minute Sorun laid there, completely motionless aside from his breathing. Then a groan left him, followed by some coughs, followed by Sorun, looking sick and feeling incredibly nauseous, pushed himself up, maintained the position for two seconds, and then flopped over and fell back onto his back.
"God, it's the wave pool from Adventure Bay all over again... fuck that water park..." Sorun groaned out, cursing at the memory and how falling through a time portal reminded him of that terrible trip he and his friends had went on during that one spring break. At least this time he hadn't almost drowned and didn't have water pouring out from his mouth, nose and ears and didn't feel like his head was going to explode from having his nasal system power washed. On the other hand every other symptom from his aching body to the nausea and disorientation was also there.
After a few more minutes, during which the nausea slowly faded away and Sorun didn't feel like he was going to throw up on the spot, he sat up. At this point he realized he was sitting outside, as opposed to the giant castle he'd been in prior. He was actually in front of a similar building, probably the same location since it had the same giant lawn space, instead of except of a castle it was more a giant townhouse. Rundown, dilapidated. Abandoned in every way, and the grass all around him was overgrown.
He grabbed the nearby Emerald, not paying it any mind as it transmuted into his katana, and stood up to his full height. The afternoon sun shined down on Sorun as he turned around to take in the city sight. A sight that was wholly different than the city he'd just come from. Where that city was lived-in, well maintained and bustling with bright lights, the city in front of him was completely empty, and in the same state of disrepair as the townhouse he'd just turned his back to.
"... Wow, it actually worked," Sorun murmured to himself, slightly in awe. It had to be the past, because it was either that or the apocalypse happened without him seeing it, and he doubted it was that latter explanation. There was a single, surreal moment where Sorun had actually stumbled on his feet, nearly dropping the sword he held when he realized he just time traveled. Genuinely and legitimately. He made a small, empty scoff, holding a hand up to his swimming head and shaking it in bemusement.
"Does it even get any deeper than this?" he wondered to himself, still murmuring as he turned his head up to the blue sky. "Jeez, and now I gotta go into space. Where even- where's that card Tails gave me?"
As Sorun began rummaging around in his pocket, he began to idly wonder if Tails really distrusted Sorun so much that he had to write explicit details about what he was supposed to do on a card for him to carry around in case he needed any reminders or pointers. As if the three separate times they went over what he was supposed to do wasn't enough in addition to the pressure named "The Universe is Irreparably Fucked if You Screw Up" bearing down on him wasn't enough.
Then again, Sorun barely even trusted himself to remember important details for something this incomprehensibly important, and the more he thought on it the more he supposed he couldn't blame Tails writing this all out just to make sure Sorun wouldn't make a mistake. He'd probably do it himself.
He brought the object out of his pocket. It was little more than a yellow sticky note, heavily crumpled and filled with Tails' messy scrawl. There was a basic outline of what he was supposed to do - stop King Shadow firing the ARK, get the Emeralds, yadda yadda - as well as some other important details that Tails figured must have been better written down than said. Like the coordinates for where the actual space station was, because Sorun didn't like his odds of blindly exploring space for that.
"Alright, Space Colony ARK, located... at wherever this mess of numbers is," Sorun said in a flat voice, exhaling a bit through his nose when he saw the long string of numbers. His brows furrowed, and he shoved the note back into his pocket as he looked back up at the sky. "Right, so how the hell do I go up to space to get into a space station...?"
A few minutes were passed with him standing there, standing and thinking. There was a good chance a breeze had blown a nearby tumbleweed passed him, but Sorun had been too preoccupied with his own thoughts to pay any significant notice to it. This went on for another minute until the blue ribbon tied to Yamato's scabbard reached up and tapped Sorun on the wrist.
"Hm? Yeah?" Blinking away his thoughts, Sorun looked down at the katana. Then he'd blinked in realization, and nearly rose his free hand up to smack him. "Right, I have this..." he said, slowly pulling the blade out while making incomprehensible grumbling noises all the while.
Teleporting to different locations via Yamato-made portal was still a much better experience than time traveling via Yamato. Less falling and feeling like one's body was being dragged through an otherworldly whirlpool. By comparison it was little more than a nice, small walk. One that didn't make him want to lose the little food he had left in his stomach.
God, but was he hungry. And tired. He couldn't even remember the last time he ate or slept. A large part of him hoped this would be over soon just so he didn't have to keep thinking on the subject.
When his feet emerged from the blue portal they touched down on hard, metal flooring. The Earthling's body emerged fully from the portal, absentmindedly closing the portal behind him and sheathing the sword as he took a look around. His environment had changed from the bright, barren city he'd just come from into moderately-lit metal corridors. There were paths that branched off into other hallways, with helpful signs attached to the ceiling above and even colored lines painted on the ground that coincided with the colored signs above, which made Sorun assume they were guidelines. A blue line that, according to the sign, lead to the cafeteria, white line for the labs, yellow for the sleeping quarters...
"Well, this certainly looks... space-y," Sorun noted. Having never been on a space station he didn't know what to expect. A small hop revealed that the gravity was normal, so either the people who built this figured out artificial gravity or he was in the wrong place. Temperature seemed normal, if not a bit cold, no feeling of wind or air circulation on his skin, and the air smelled... off. Akin to the way air in hospitals always smelled too clean, like antiseptic, but this was different. More stale.
It was just when Sorun was beginning to wonder if he was even in the right place that he turned around and saw the window right behind him.
An awed gasp left Sorun when he took in the vista before him, separated by what was hopefully reinforced glass. An infinite expanse of black dotted with innumerable lights. A moon that had a large groove carved through it, a whole chunk having been blown off with pieces frozen in orbit around it. And right down below both him and the space station was the planet itself. Mobius, what had once upon a time been an alternate version of the Earth he once knew. Speechless, it was all Sorun could do but slowly step forwards and press his hand against the glass as he looked down at the planet, eyes wide and shining.
Vaguely he remembered that map Sally had shown him, back when he'd first come to Mobius. For the most part the continents and landmasses he saw below was the same as those on the map. A planet that looked so much like his own, but warped, only holding the vague shape of the planet he was born on. Continents misshaped, islands missing, even the home state that had contained his city was gone completely, sunken to form a giant lake that was at the head of a great river that split what was once America in half.
"Huh..." Sorun breathed out, eyes glued to the sight before him. "Hey, mom. I did it. I'm in space." It'd always been a secret wish of his, to go up and experience space. Something about it, from all those games and movies... he didn't know. There was just an allure to it; just an urge to go up there beyond the sky to see what it was all about. Lots of people on Earth had that same urge.
Being here in person to see it, though, and have that dream realized so quickly and instantly, it left Sorun feeling about as hollow as it did breathless. He didn't think it'd be this easy. Realistically it shouldn't have been, because really he'd cheated to get here, and he couldn't help but feel that took some of the wind out of the accomplishment. Even so, he still felt accomplished. Oddly happy, which was probably the first positive emotion he'd had all week.
"Yeah, it's... it's, um, it's space. About what we expected it'd be like," Sorun continued to whisper out. "Real neat, um... you know. I know Dave and the others guys'd be just as psyched out about it as I am, and, uh... yeah. Yeah. Still miss you all." He pushed off of the glass. "'Kay, gotta... gotta go stop the crazy half-alien animal guy and save the world. I don't really get it either. S-so... yeah. Bye."
When he'd turned around and began walking away from the window, Sorun had noted that his left arm that was holding the Yamato began shaking. He did his best to steady the arm by holding it with his right arm, and had to use his right sleeve to wipe away some of the stray tears falling down his face as he made his way down the metal corridors.
Were circumstances different and he had more time on his hands Sorun would have loved nothing more than to explore the empty space station, creepy and noiseless as the place was. Because when else would he ever have the opportunity? Unfortunately the stake of the entire universe just happened to be resting on his shoulders, and he didn't want to risk something bad happening because he dawdled off. So against his more childlike instincts he had to resist the urge to run around touching everything.
Except a fork. He'd gone to the cafeteria and stolen a fork. It was completely indistinguishable from a normal fork other than the fact it came from space. But it was his space fork now. He was walking away from this with at least one souvenir.
On another note, Sorun had never been to the Space Colony ARK before now, so he didn't actually know where he was going. The signs helped out, and he was forced to rely on them and the lines painted on the ground to lead him around. From what Tails had told him all the Chaos Emeralds powering the super weapon were all slotted into a core somewhere in the facility, and all he had to do was walk up to it and take them out. So that was the easy part. The hard part was actually finding the thing.
At least it would have been hard if he didn't find signs and a path that lead him to the laser weapon core. Took him fifteen minutes to even find the pathway and another thirty minutes of following it to arrive at the place. Sorun didn't have much scope for how large the station was without getting an outside view, but based on the fact it'd been nearly an hour of him walking straight without seeing familiar sights the place must have been huge, which was mindboggling for Sorun.
The weapon core wasn't so large by comparison. The other side of a door lead Sorun to a large chamber lit up with blue, fluorescent lights. At the end of a platform fitted with large computer consoles was a catwalk that lead to a large, spherical piece of machinery suspended in the center of the room by cables and metal struts, held over a large chasm that Sorun could barely see the bottom of. He didn't even have to look for the Emeralds; they were slotted right in the front of the core, six in a circle surrounding the seventh one in the center. Just like Tails said.
"... Alright." Wasting no time, Sorun ran forwards across the catwalk and to the front of the mechanical core. He stopped in front of it, blinking as he looked down at his hands, one carrying the Yamato, and looked back up at the Emeralds slotted in the machine.
Sorun frowned. He looked back down, but even after he willed the sword to transmute back into the blue Emerald that still left him with one hand filled. "Okay, I guess I can just pocket one," Sorun quietly mumbled. His right hand reached forwards and gripped the red Emerald that was slotted into the machine. He pulled it out with surprising ease, causing the nearby lights to flicker and dim briefly, but otherwise there was no change. He looked down and attempted to jam the Emerald into his pocket, but to his dismay it didn't fit. "Man, what the hell?" he grumbled out. "Geez, why do these things have to be so big? It's gonna be really awkward trying to carry these..."
"And just what do you think you're doing?"
Hearing that voice was to Sorun the equivalent of somebody dumping a vat of iced water over his entire body. That voice, his voice, the voice of the person he just killed. Would kill. He slowly turned around, blue and red Emeralds in hand as he faced the owner of the voice, who sounded very displeased with Sorun.
It was him, alright. Shadow. This timeline's version, before he'd taken over the world and become king. No cape or crown, and otherwise he looked identical to the real one Sorun knew. But then again never saw his Shadow have that murderous glare in his eyes that turned Sorun's blood ice-cold. The kind of hard expression and determined look that promised quick and decisive death.
Not even King Shadow had looked that murderous until he and Sorun had started fighting, which made Sorun briefly wonder why this one looked so angry until he had to remember this version of Shadow was upset enough to blow up the whole planet. The details around that reasoning was still vague to him, but it was enough to put him on edge. Especially after how his fight with the future version had went, how poorly it ended.
"..." Sorun didn't have a response. He wanted to make one, maybe even make it somewhat witty to try and add some levity to the situation, but nothing could come to mind. His eyes darted behind him, at the core still holding the other blue Emerald he needed, and then he looked back at Shadow, stuttering out, "U-um, Emeralds need." He cursed himself for making such a stupid sentence.
His words seemed to annoy Shadow more than amuse him. "Is that so?" His eyes narrowed as he peered closer at Sorun's face. "Overlander. I presume based on that gaudy coat the Doctor sent you."
Sorun did his best to ignore the comment on his coat. "N-no."
The dark hedgehog's eyes narrowed further. "G.U.N., then? I'm surprised they even remember this station exists at all."
"Nobody sent me." Technically a lie, but it was more believable than the truth.
The crimson eyes staring into him un-narrowed. He pondered Sorun's words for a bit, and then beneath all the anger a bit of confusion set in. "Then who are you?" he asked. "Some self-proclaimed hero, come to stop my plans under some ill-conceived notion of saving this worthless planet?"
"Man, was my Shadow like this before he chilled out?" Sorun wondered to himself. He honestly couldn't see it even though it was coming out of the man's own mouth, alternate version or not, but this was so early into that and Shadow coming out of cryosleep that Sorun didn't even know if there was a fundamental difference between the two at this point in time. It made it that much harder for Sorun to understand him.
"Well," Sorun began, "no, not really. I just came here for some Chaos Emeralds, but I'm not exactly complaining about the fact it'll end up stopping your doomsday weapon in the process." Maybe the slight anger he felt at knowing Shadow wanted to blow the planet up gave Sorun the confidence to stop stuttering. That and the plan that was slowly formulating in his mind as he gripped the Emeralds tighter.
"And what business do you have saving that wretched ball of dirt?"
"'Cause... 'cause I live there and everyone I like lives there, what- what kind of question even is that?" Sorun asked, voice growing somewhat blank as he looked at Shadow with wide, confused eyes. He was just short of saying, "No shit I don't want myself and everyone else to die" right to Shadow's face, but he'd figured that reasoning would be so implied anyone with common sense wouldn't need it explained to them.
He guessed he was mistaken. That or Shadow was so single-minded in his goal to blow up the planet he wasn't thinking straight.
"Hmf." Shadow turned his nose up at Sorun. "As pathetic an excuse as any."
"I mean I thought it was a pretty solid excuse, but whatever, I guess." Evidently that hadn't been what Shadow had expected to hear, as he leveled his eyes back at Sorun, though now he looked even more confused than before. "Dude, listen, I don't know what your whole deal is and why you're upset, but I don't care. Like I really don't care, but you're dragging literally the whole planet into your drama and I have to be the guy to step in because there's nobody else to do it. So as much as I don't want it to be my business, you're making it my business."
"Your 'business' has nothing to do with this," Shadow rumbled out, teeth bared into an angered snarl. "Set the Emeralds down. And move aside. I will not repeat myself."
"You really think killing billions of people is gonna fix whatever your problem is?" Sorun asked Shadow, though the latter refused to back down from the words. "Seriously? That's your answer? Revenge at the expense of everyone else? Is it the anger blinding you or are you really that selfish?"
"Selfish? Selfish!?" Shadow roared out, breaking his composure and making Sorun flinch back. "Selfish is the world taking away the life of someone who only ever wanted to protect it! I will not-!"
"Quicksilver."
A silver ring expanded outwards from Sorun, spreading over everything. The colors of everything around him briefly inverted, and then slowly settled back to normal as motion halted. That was all expected when Sorun used the power. What he didn't expect, and what Sorun was elated to see, was that Shadow had stopped. Mid-sentence, his entire body frozen in time just like the world around him.
"You utter fool." With renewed confidence Sorun walked directly towards Shadow, newfound vigor in his steps. A large part of him had been worried stopping time wouldn't work on Shadow; that, since Shadow himself could stop time with his natural abilities, he'd be able to negate it much like Enerjak had negated Sorun's timestop with his own timestop during their fight. He'd been wary of trying it at all for risking Shadow responding if he resisted the power. But it seemed either he couldn't or Sorun had caught him in surprise and he hadn't been able to respond in time before freezing. It didn't matter whichever was the truth. What did matter was that Sorun successfully caught Shadow in the timestop.
Which meant he basically already won.
He stopped right in front of Shadow. Sorun scoffed at the sight, half in amusement and half in derision. Here was the person that terrorized him so much, almost killed him during their fight in the future. One of the strongest individuals Sorun knew. Completely helpless and at Sorun's mercy, frozen in stopped time as Sorun pondered what to do. He looked down at the two Emeralds in his hands, humming a bit as he turned back to the machine core where the other six were.
Technically he could just collect the second blue Emerald, use one of them to make Yamato, and then leave, all while time was stopped. Shadow couldn't do anything about it, not while he was frozen in the stopped time, and without seven Emeralds the weapon he was using to threaten Mobius was effectively inert. But he didn't want something to go accidentally wrong. For the Chaos Emerald fueling the Quicksilver ability to slip out of his hands as he tried to juggle three of the gems or for it to just wear off and have Shadow attack him.
More than that Sorun was still pissed off at the fact his head was almost cut off.
With all that in mind Sorun turned back to Shadow, two feathered, spectral arms having appeared over his shoulders. The right blue-glowing arm clenched its clawed fingers into a fist and shot forwards, right into Shadow's face. His head whipped back from the impact, and then froze immediately after. Sorun leaned forwards to examine the damage, and saw that the hedgehog's muzzle was visibly distended, the bone underneath cracked. There were teeth peeking out between his lips, threatening to fly out once Quicksilver ended.
He got to work on his legs next, the Bringer Claws flashing downwards and gripping Shadow's shins. They squeezed down hard enough to splinter and pulverize the bone beneath the flesh, enough that when the blue hands released the legs they looked as if they had never been even remotely straight a day in Shadow's life. They punched his hands after, bending them far back enough to break the wrists while taking care to not even touch the golden rings hanging off of them.
At that point Sorun could have ended it. Shadow couldn't chase Sorun with busted legs or throw a Chaos Spear with broken hands. He was completely disabled until he healed. But Sorun kept going, for fear he'd regenerate too quickly for Sorun to get away once timestop ended. The Bringer Claws destroyed his joints, grabbed arms and legs and bent them backwards until the knees and elbows popped out, until his hands were touching his shoulder and feet his backside.
More memories assaulted Sorun the longer this went. That radiating, crimson aura that had been spreading around King Shadow as he attempted to kill Sorun with that blazing Chaos Spear. He'd almost succeeded. Sorun had the Bringer Claws dislocate Shadow's shoulder and hip joints and crush them. Tied down to that table, the crackling sound of electricity growing in tandem with the dread Sorun felt. Spectral, clawed fingers grabbed each of Shadow's fingers, twisting them backwards, crushing the bones, demolishing the joints until the bones were powder. That fight, him dodging all of Sorun's swings, spinning around and cutting through him so many times. The Bringer Claws pounded at Shadow's torso, shattering his ribs, clavicles, pelvis, the blows likely damaging if not outright bursting some of the organs underneath.
Him, this whole vendetta, how he tried to destroy the world and then changed his mind and fucked it up even more than it already was, how he thought his motivations and reasons were so much better than Sorun's, that he was better than him, everything he'd done and tried to do to him just to preserve his status quo. The blue claws reached up, crushing his scapulae to fragments, and then reached down to his spine, clawing and madly gripping at them, mashing the vertebrae together until it completely lost form.
Sorun's neck. He'd only felt it for the briefest times - that's how all his wounds worked while in Devil's Body because of the regen factor. Just fast enough to notice something happened to cause pain, but it never stayed enough to linger, for him to think on it. Even more that body muted pain somewhat. Not nearly enough to be traumatic in any significant way. But the feeling of that Chaos Spear dragging along his neck, feeling it heal just behind the spear as it went through his flesh, knowing he'd been that close to death again, it hit different. The memory stayed when nothing else did.
Some care was taken when Sorun's Bringer Claws began punching Shadow's face. Just enough to ensure the brain wasn't damaged in the same way he'd taken care not to accidentally rupture his heart when he'd attacked his torso. Less care was taken when his orbitals were shattered and his eyes began spilling out from the broken sockets, hanging by optic nerves.
Finally, Sorun stopped. He was breathing heavily, some flashes of what had happened with King Shadow still vivid in his memory, though they faded rapidly when he looked at Shadow's frozen body. He couldn't even recognize him the longer he stared, the way his entire body was mangled, how there wasn't so much as a single intact bone in his body. Seeing as how he and the rest of the world wasn't being consumed in a terrible time paradox, he didn't fear he'd gone too far and killed the hedgehog. And he felt somewhat relieved that his breathing was calming down to a normal rate the longer he looked at him.
The Bringer Claws faded away, and Sorun released the timestop. Where most bodies would have crumpled down Shadow's more or less spilled to the floor, like he couldn't support any of his own weight. Probably couldn't since Sorun shattered all his bones. He wasn't screaming, though in this state Sorun wasn't even sure he could. There was just a loud choking, gurgling sound coming from the mound of flesh that used to be his face. His entire body was twisting sporadically, likely in agony, but with how much damage Sorun had done all he could do was lay there in a broken mess.
"That's game, Shadow. I win." Still panting, albeit lightly, Sorun turned around and began walking back to the core. "I win," he whispered out, reaching its front. Frowning heavily at being introduced back to his earlier predicament, Sorun decided to just hold the one blue Emerald under his armpit as he reached out and pulled the second blue one out of the core. Again the lights flickered and dimmed, with the blue Emerald shifting into an unsheathed Yamato held in his right hand as he turned back around.
Sorun paused. Already there was a green aura surrounding Shadow's body as his regeneration went into overdrive to try and heal his body. The progress looked slow - parts of his body would seemingly snap together as the bones tried piecing themselves together, but more often than not they'd crumble back apart due to the extensive damage. He'd manage to fix himself completely eventually, but by then Sorun would be long gone, and the damage was so severe it looked to be inhibiting the process somewhat. It made the Earthling pause as he realized something.
"Oh, hell, that's what he was talking about back at the castle. No wonder he wanted to kill me so much," Sorun murmured to himself. A moment passed, and then he shrugged. "Oh well. That's future Sorun's problem to deal with now. Past Sorun? Eh, whatever. I'm gone."
Trying to open another time portal with a red Emerald in one hand and a blue Emerald under his arm was phenomenally more difficult than when he had a hand free. He'd had to summon the Bringer Claws back to help pry open the portal, only to then swear under his breath when he realized instead of awkwardly carry the Emeralds like he was now he could have just had the arms hold them. Regardless he'd still managed to open the portal, which was satisfactory enough as far as Sorun cared.
Before he'd stepped in Sorun took one last glance at Shadow's broken body. The eyes spilling out of his skull were pointed away from him, and even with the optic nerves still attached to his brain Sorun wasn't even sure of he could still see or not in this state. They were slowly sliding closer towards his skull and the eye sockets that hadn't mended yet in the same way some of his muscles that Sorun had torn were slowly reeling themselves back into proper positions, healing.
"..." Sorun turned away from the broken mess and back towards the portal. He didn't want to see him anymore. He couldn't have leapt through the portal fast enough just to get away from it all.
It was official: Sorun hated leaping through time portals he made. It was less disorienting going through a tornado than falling through those things. He counted it fortunate that when the portal spit him out onto the ground in the same way the last one did that it spit out the two Chaos Emeralds as well. He'd managed to keep a hold on Yamato this time but hadn't had a chance to keep hold of the gems while falling head over heels in whatever that space was that he fell through.
The climate he'd dropped into was a stark contrast from how the space station had felt. Where that place had been cool and relatively comfortable this new place was hot and arid, and a sweltering sun was beating down on him. Already Sorun hated it, and grew to dislike it more with each second as he picked the Emeralds up and then stood up to his full height to get a better sense of his surroundings.
He would have thought it was a forest were it not for the heat. Not a jungle, that was for sure. Not with how dry the air was. And the trees weren't as dense as he would expect a forest to be, the grass a bit too tall and less green. Across the way, past some rocks and trees, he spotted the beginnings of sand and tinges of blue to signify water. Somewhere close to a coast, then.
After examining his surroundings, Sorun tried to dig into his pocket, but found his hand full with a red and glowing gem. He made a displeased grunt and made a Bringer Claw to hold the gem, and then dug into his pocket to retrieve the note Tails had given him. His eyes traveled downwards, towards more barely-legible scrawl and a set of coordinates below that. His eyes darted above the note, back at the trees and nearby beach, and then looked back down at the note. He made a small nod, and then pocketed the note.
"Downunda. In another age, Australia. I still need to figure out how that joke carried past the apocalypse," Sorun thought to himself as he glanced around the area. "Tails told me he and his family eventually moved here, so their house should be around here somewhere. Why he decided that is something I'll never know. This place was full of things that wanted to kill you before all the animals on the planet mutated from the gene bombs."
He pushed through some of the brush and foliage to press forwards, dismissing the Bringer Claw so he could hold back onto the Emeralds. He didn't need to search long to find the house, so apparently Tails' coordinates had been spot on. Homely little place on top of a small hill, big lawn in the back that lead to the forest while the front had a nice view of the beach and ocean from this angle. He didn't see it until he'd moved to the back of the home, but on the other side there was an extremely long, flat stretch of land, with a large shack nearby the house on that side. He didn't even need to look in there to know there was a plane in there.
Sorun maneuvered into the backyard. Nobody present, thankfully, so he assumed everyone was in the house. He knew Tails was at least there: there was something that looked like a garage door behind the house, and he heard the sounds of loud whirring and screeching metal from the other side, along with bright lights flashing from the underside of the door.
"Alright, here we go." Sorun leaned his shoulder onto the garage door and knocked on it with the red Emerald he had in his hand. "Tails!" he shouted out over the sound of metalworking on the other side of the door. When there was no response, he banged on the door a few more time, putting more strength on the hits, and shouted, "Tails, it's important! Open the door!"
The metalworking sounds ceased after a few seconds. There were small shuffling sounds and metal clinking, likely tools being put down. A few more seconds later the garage door began to open up, forcing Sorun to step away from it. Eventually the door opened up, fully revealing the Mobian on the other side.
For all intents and purposes, this Tails... well, he looked the exact same as the other adult Tails Sorun spoke with before committing to this time loop nonsense. He had an apron on, orange goggles over his eyes, and there were dark smudges of grease and oil in some spots on his fur, but otherwise the same. He looked incredibly confused, though.
"Er... hello?" Tails greeted, awkwardly. "Can I help you? Who are you?"
A short sigh left Sorun's nose. Tails, the other adult Tails, warned him of this. How in the original timeline he'd built some kind of room to protect his family from the timeline's alteration due to Sonic's meddling, and how when they appeared in this timeline their memories were spared, unlike everyone else. But this was an event that was a week away from happening, so until then this Tails was only working with one set of memories, those of this timeline. And Sorun never existed in this timeline.
And he had the job of convincing this Tails he was a time traveler who he himself sent back to the past. Somehow the adventure on the ARK was seeming easier and easier by the second.
"... Yeah, hi," Sorun swiftly greeted. "Can I come in?"
"... No?" Sorun did anyways, pushing past Tails and walking into the workshop. "H-hey!" he shouted, wheeling around towards Sorun as he entered the workshop.
"It's a nice setup you set up for yourself," Sorun noted. The workshop was about what he'd expect from a busybody like the Tails he knew. Tables stuffed to the brim with electronics, tools and metal parts to the point he couldn't see the table underneath. Toolboxes with various tools spilling out scattered everywhere, a computer bank with multiple monitors pressed up against the far wall. Machines of various sizes and shapes scattered around, none of which Sorun could even guess the function of.
The place was honestly a mess. Sorun would bet money Tails considered it to be the most organized workspace on the planet.
He sat down on a stool next to the most empty table he could find, which wasn't saying much. He set down the red Chaos Emerald on it, and then the blue one, and then turned to face Tails while laying Yamato in his lap. The fox had moved the goggles up to his forehead, revealing eyes that were puzzled and a slight bit angry as he approached Sorun. Then he saw the sword lying in his lap, and then stopped completely. Confusion warped into caution, his body going unnaturally still as he looked up to Sorun's face.
Sorun found himself biting the inside of his cheek. He should have known approaching a stranger with a katana was a bad idea.
"I don't appreciate you barging in here without being invited," Tails began. His two tails swished through the air once in sync, almost in a threatening manner. "I appreciate it even less you brought a weapon into the same house my wife and kids live in."
"Admittedly that's on me, my bad," Sorun apologized. He tried sounding sincere, but it didn't get Tails to ease up at all. "I didn't come here to hurt anyone."
"Then why the sword?"
"'Cause I'm an idiot?" Sorun shook his head. "Because I need it. And look, gimme a break. It's Australia, and with how messed up this world is for all I know there's giant spiders skittering around."
The confusion returned to Tails' face. "... What's an Australia? And what do you mean giant spiders? You mean spider Mobians? Like Willy?"
Sorun did a double-take. "What?" he asked, mouth dry. "Insect Mobians are a thing? Wait, fuck, Charmy was a bee. Bees are insects. OH GOD."
"Yeah, Willy. He's the mail courier that brings mail to the house," Tails elaborated, not seeming to notice the light sheen of sweat that had appeared on Sorun's face. "Wait, why am I even- what are you doing in my house!?" Tails shouted out, startling Sorun and causing the idea of spider-people to leave his mind.
Wincing a bit, Sorun slowly pointed at Tails. "It's rude to shout," he admonished, though the heated look Tails was giving him didn't dissipate in the slightest. Sorun sighed and decided to just go for it. "I'm from the future. And the past. It's complicated."
The hostility in Tails' face diminished a small amount. "The future?" he repeated, disbelieving. "Like time travel? That's impo-"
"Tails, I have been introduced to two methods of time travel in the last twenty-four hours alone. I have a sword that ignores the laws of reality. Do not stand there and tell me something's impossible, because I barely believe in that word anymore," Sorun said to him. "And if it's really impossible then how do I have these, huh?"
He nodded his head to the nearby Chaos Emeralds. Tails shifted his gaze towards them, and after a few seconds his eyes widened in recognition. Wonder spread over his face, and simultaneously his disbelief grew. He stepped up to the table, standing right next to Sorun as he picked up the red Emerald to examine it closely. He looked closer, and then made a sharp gasp and almost dropped the Emerald back on the table.
"I-I'd... have to run some tests to confirm, but... yeah, these seem genuine," he mumbled, putting the gem down with a shaky hand. He turned back to Sorun, and immediately his face turned back into looking angry. "Are you trying to get my family killed?"
That hadn't been the reaction he'd expected. "Huh?"
"Everybody knows King Shadow hoards artifacts like this! You, you what, did you steal these from him!? If he tracks these back here then-!"
"He's not gonna know to look here," Sorun promised Tails. "... I mean if you wanna get technical I did steal them from him," he added, and he saw Tails' nostrils flare out as he breathed heavily through them, "but that was twenty-five years ago. Time travel, remember? So chill out."
"Okay, say I believe you." Tails took a few steps back and crossed his arms. "I don't, but let's pretend I do. Why come to me of all people?"
"What do you mean you don't- agh, look!" Sorun dug into his pocket and brought the note out. He threw it at Tails, though, due to it being a piece of paper, it'd barely carried far enough to even reach Tails. His hand still snatched the note out of the air regardless, and slowly he began to read it over as Sorun continued speaking. "It's a note in your handwriting! Ain't that enough!?"
"... Okay, I'll admit this is suspiciously close to my handwriting. I even use the same kind of notepads," Tails slowly admitted as he set the note aside on the table. He still didn't look convinced. "But that alone doesn't-"
"Your name is Miles Prower," Sorun interrupted, causing Tails to snap his mouth closed. "Your nickname is Tails, you have a plane you like to mess around with and fly in, your wife is a mongoose named Mina, you have an uncle named Merlin, your father was named Amadeus and your mother was named-" Sorun cut himself off, and then cleared his throat. "Her name was, uh... MMM... Martha..."
"You mean Rosemary?" Tails asked, expression unamused and voice flat. "My mother? Rosemary?"
"Look, I never knew your mother," Sorun breathed out. "I'm from an alternate timeline where we were friends. Then I got... kinda shunted into an alternate future timeline where we never met."
"Ah-huh..." Well, he didn't look totally unconvinced now. Sorun figured that was somewhat of a good sign. "And you came here to, what, catch up with your pal from another timeline?"
"No, I'm here because I got roped into a time loop and if I don't do this it'll cause a time paradox that-"
"YOU'RE MESSING WITH TIME KNOWING YOU'RE RISKNG A TIME PARADOX!?" That scream was loud to the point Sorun had shuddered and began fingering the inside of one of his ears once again. He'd never heard the fox sound so vocal before in his life, except for maybe that time he'd scratched his plane when he tried to fly it. Sorun still maintained the mountain came from nowhere. "Why would you- what are you thinking!?" Tails began to pace around, more nervous than angry, as he continued to rattle off. "Time is such a fragile, fragile thing and the keystone to the zone's integrity, and if your method of time travel actually carries the risk of a time paradox-!"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it, end of the world, life go poof, I heard it the first time you explained it to me when I pretended to listen," Sorun assured Tails, who wheeled back towards him with wide eyes. "It's fine-"
"It's not fine!" Tails yelled back. "Why are you time traveling with that kind of risk!?"
Sorun threw his arms up. "Well, it's not like I want to! We're gonna hit a time paradox and die if I don't do this," Sorun argued, making Tails calm down somewhat. "Considering I made it this far and we're not all dead yet I'd say I'm doing a pretty good job of it." Which was honestly surprising. Sorun fully expected to fail five minutes in, so the fact he made it this far to him was nothing short of a miracle.
"But do you realize how stupid this-!?"
"Yeah, Tails, it's stupid, I get it, but guess what not everyone is born a genius like you, so if you have a problem you're gonna have to take it up with the idiot that started this whole loop," Sorun snapped. "I'm just the idiot perpetuating it so we all don't, you know, evaporate into the ether."
At that, Tails deflated. He covered his mouth with his hand and muttered something into it, and then shook his head while combing his fingers through the tufts of hair on his head. "Okay. Okay, if it's like you say then all we have to do is close this loop and everything should be fine." He looked back to Sorun. "So what does that entail?"
Sorun nodded. Finally, he could explain all this and get out. "Through methods I'm not entirely clear on you and your family will get memories of the timeline I'm from in a week, then you go off to Angel Island to talk to Knuckles- er, the chief enforcer guy- forget it, Knuckles, you'll remember, and the rest'll take off from there." He reached to the side and pushed the two Emeralds closer to Tails. "You'll find me, but it won't be me me, past me, future me, don't know which term is appropriate, doesn't matter, just... when the time is right, give him these, he'll know what to do with them. And after everything has calmed down and nobody's in danger you need to do three things." He rose one finger up and stared Tails in the eyes. "A, you need to tell that Sorun all this. Tell him the Yamato can go back to the past by separating the distance from two points in time. He's gonna deny it, just tell him it works." He rose a second finger. "B, he needs to go to Space Colony ARK and stop Shadow from blowing the planet up by stealing two of the Chaos Emeralds from the doomsday weapon, from twenty-five years ago. It needs to specifically be the red and blue Emeralds for some reason. You'll remember how to do that when the memories hit you in a week." A third finger. "C, after that he needs to go forwards to the week before you get your memories and explain everything I just explained to you and give you the Emeralds." He dropped his hand.
Surprisingly, Tails had nodded along to the entire explanation, looking like he somehow managed to comprehend it all. "Alright, so assuming that everything you just said is actually the truth... That's it?" he asked, making Sorun let out a bemused scoff that he'd understood all that. There was still a veneer of caution over his face, some skepticism. He honestly couldn't blame him, but he wasn't outright refuting any of what Sorun said. Probably as good as Sorun would get, which was his cue to leave.
Rising from the stool, Sorun gave the Mobian a nod. "That's it," he confirmed. "Believe me, don't believe me, won't matter in a week when the memories hit you. I'll leave the Emeralds with you in the meantime. If everything plays out the exact same as what I just went through it should work out." He rose Yamato up and rested it on his shoulder. "So, uh... yeah. That's all I got. I'm gonna dip out now before your mailman comes around, because... well, I'm just never gonna sleep again if I see that."
He slowly walked past Tails, heading towards the exit to the garage. The fox didn't stop him, didn't even speak up as the human stepped around him and left the room. All he could do was continue staring at the two Emeralds sitting on the table with a troubled expression, sighing deeply as he held a hand over his mouth in thought.
A few seconds later Sorun peeked his head back into the garage.
"Hey, man, uh, you got any food in the house? I haven't eaten in forever."
The sound of his footsteps as he departed Tails' house was hardly heard as his feet thumped down on the soft ground. His left hand held Yamato, still rested on his shoulder. His right hand was holding a sandwich Tails had been kind enough to give Sorun. This Tails was at least generous enough, even if he didn't know Sorun. More of that Mobian kindness.
He wasn't so sure if the other adult Tails that saw him cut King Shadow's head off would be so accommodating.
Sorun still didn't know how he was supposed to play that. By all rights he was done closing the time loop: all the conditions were met and all he had to do was return back to the future after he'd gone back and everything should be golden. That was all fine. It was after that, having to deal with the after effects of his actions, he wasn't sure on. Frankly he didn't want to deal with it at all and just ignore everyone.
Problems for later. Potentially minutes from now, but before then he actually had to get there. He stopped once Tails' house was out of sight, near the same patch of forest he'd arrived in where the beach was visible, and then held up the sandwich to his face. He moved it to his mouth, but then stopped when he smelled a peculiar scent. He looked closer at it and saw a white substance on the inside, sandwiched between all the other ingredients.
"Fuckin' mayo." His nose wrinkling in disgust, Sorun threw the sandwich as far as he could into the woods so he wouldn't be offended by its sight anymore. His stomach rumbled in protest, though he did his best to ignore it as he gripped Yamato's handle and pulled it from the sheath. "Alright, one last time."
There wasn't a particular date Sorun had in mind. Just some point after he went back in the future. Preferably a long bit after, if only to just give everyone some time to cool off and settle with the fact he'd killed someone. Surprisingly he wasn't having nearly as much difficulty cutting this time portal open - he was able to cut it with relative ease and didn't have to put his all into having to use the sword to crowbar it open. Best guess Sorun had was that going into the future was far easier than going backwards. That or he was just getting better at this, but he doubted it.
Even falling through it proved to be an easier time. It was still Sorun tumbling through a dark space of blue lights, but it wasn't too disorienting by comparison to going backwards. He even managed to land on his feet when the portal spat him out into what was visually identical to the location he'd just left. But when Sorun looked up as the portal closed, he'd noted the sun was in a different position. A bit past afternoon. Or morning. He didn't know which direction he was facing.
A long sigh left Sorun. He turned towards the nearest tree he could find, trudged towards it, and turned around just as his back fell against it. Another sigh left him as he slid down into a sitting position, pulling his knees up to his chest as he sheathed the katana.
As far as closing a time loop to prevent total annihilation went, it was a lot simpler than Sorun thought it'd be. And somehow even more exhausting than he anticipated. He was swearing this time travel stuff off once everything went back to normal, because nothing was worth this amount of stress.
Normal.
Sorun's head picked up from his knees. His eyes were tired, his face ashen and gaunt as he thumped the back of his head against the tree bark. "The fuck even is normal anymore?" he wondered to himself. The word sounded wrong, like it wasn't applicable. "Once again the world's saved. Woo-hoo. Now what am I supposed to do?"
He still didn't want to stay here. In this altered timeline. He wanted to go back to the normal one and just do away with this one entirely, maybe try and go back to having some semblance of normality to his life like he'd had before. Away from all this. But Tails had still maintained that was impossible and they were stuck here.
The weight in Sorun's left had was too heavy not for him to notice. It wasn't the physical weight that was on his mind as he lifted Yamato up for him to see. Time travel - he wouldn't have thought it was possible until he'd done it a few times. Now it wasn't even a concept anymore, but an avenue. An avenue that Sorun was quickly growing to hate because of all the trouble it had caused him. Ripped the memory of him away from all his friends, altered their lives, threw him twenty-five years ahead of where he was, undid all his actions...
Unconsciously he'd gripped Yamato tighter than normal, but then stopped. A few seconds passed of him just staring at the sword, thoughts swirling through his head. He pulled the sword out halfway, just so he could see the shining surface of the blade.
"Time travel got me into this situation," Sorun murmured to the sword. "Gotta wonder... could it get me out?"
There was a faint shimmer along the blade. The reflections he saw were swapped out with images of black-blue flesh and numerable blue eyes staring back at Sorun from within the sword. He stared at them for a bit, cocking his head to the side in curiosity.
He still didn't know what the deal with the eyes were. He had an idea, and it unsettled him how familiar the sight was. Better maybe to just ignore it.
The blade was fully pulled from the scabbard. He experimentally held it in front of him, thinking of a destination. Back in time, twenty-five years. He stabbed forwards, but immediately frowned when the blade sunk into the empty space in front of him.
It was stabbing into the past, yes, but not the right past. Just this timeline's past. He pulled the sword out, the frown deepening as he stared at the sword. "The power of separation. Time and space, reality itself. Concepts. The simple idea of separation." A beat passed. "Could that work?"
Another idea was formed by Sorun. Something for him to focus on - a new target for the sword. Crazy, maybe, but that was his life now. He focused deep on the new idea and stabbed forwards.
A different reaction. Blue sparks flew out as the tip of the sword bounced on an invisible surface in the air in front of him. Sorun's eyes widened, his heart rate quickening as he tried stabbing forwards again.
No good. No matter how much force he put into it the blade wouldn't pierce. Even focusing more energy into the sword, enough that the whole blade glowed blue, wasn't cutting it. But there was resistance to his efforts. Something tangible that his sword scraped uselessly against. Proof that this idea might actually be feasible, that there was a path forwards.
"But not even you can do it, huh?" Sorun muttered to the sword. "If you don't have the power to do it..."
Sorun shook his head, and then sheathed the sword. Maybe he was rushing into things, messing around with forces he didn't have a clue about. He wasn't even sure if this idea really would work.
A second opinion was needed, one who knew a lot more about this than Sorun did. Fortunately just the expert lived nearby, assuming he was home right now.
