Recursion Error
Episode 84- Back to the past, Jack
Maybe there was a lesson to be learned from all this. Some sort of sign. That no matter what Sorun tried in life he was deigned to screw it up in some fashion.
Try to buy some orange juice at the grocery store? Get drafted into a freedom war in another universe entirely.
Try to make it back to Earth? Can't, dying.
Try to at least save Mobius in his final death throes by taking an evil despot with him? Messed that up.
Finally make it back to Earth? Guess what, it's dead. Granted Sorun realized this one wasn't his fault, but the loss still hit deep.
Try not to be a depressed douchebag that always made his friends worry? Yeah, that never took off.
Save the timeline?
...
Well, considering he was jogging around the wrecked streets of a destroyed city somewhen, he wasn't feeling too confident with this one.
"~Don't be so serious, brr brr brr brr brrr, don't be so serious, brr brr brr brr brrr...~"
In actuality it was less jogging and more Sorun kind of just hopping over pieces of debris in the street after he chose a nondescript direction to wander down. The song felt appropriate given everything. That and he needed some sound other than the eerie silence all around.
"~Don't be so serious, brr brr brr brr brrr...~" This was probably the fifth car he'd had to jump over. The other side of the street was blocked by a fallen, rusted light pole and piles of rubble. On the other end of the debris was, shockingly, more destroyed city.
A short sigh left him. He shook his head, and the singing devolved into noncoherent mumbling as he kept moving forwards.
On the bright side he managed to find out where he was after a while more of wandering.
Downside was he wasn't sure it was a good thing.
It was in a city plaza Sorun had found his way into. Wrecked like everything else, with the exception of one single thing in the middle of it. A statue. And it just so happened that Sorun recognized the face on the statue, because Knuckles' daughter irritated Sorun so much in the time he'd known her that he wasn't sure he could forget her face if he tried.
What he couldn't puzzle out was why there was a statue of Lara-Su. What he did manage to figure out was that he must have been on Angel Island, because he couldn't see where else she'd get a statue for whatever she'd done to get it. Maybe in the future they'd renovated Echidnaopolis and it stopped being the ruined city everyone told him it was, like it was in that alternate timeline, but it seemed now it'd reverted back to being a ruin.
But there was still one problem with this new revelation.
"Why do I have to look up to see the clouds?" Sorun wondered to himself as he looked up. The sky was still orange, the few clouds floating up there being dark, but that was the thing. He'd been on the island before, and he hadn't had to look up this far to see the clouds in the sky. In fact from this vantage point it was the same as looking up from the ground.
Which meant he was on the ground.
"The whole island got grounded? What the hell?" Sorun took another glance around the city. For as big as it was he knew it only made up a small portion of the island as a whole. So if the whole thing ended up falling out of the sky, well... honestly, in that case the city was actually looking pretty good. And now Sorun was left wondering where in the world the island was. More importantly than that what happened with the Master Emerald here that caused it to fall.
Or most important of all what happened in general.
"None of this makes any sense..." Sorun murmured to himself. He turned back to the statue, his frown deepening when he saw Lara-Su. That straight, noble pose she was striking, the strong expression she held.
He pulled Yamato out of its sheath and slashed at the statue once. The head was sliced off and fell down to the stone pedestal holding it up with a loud thud.
Pettiness, maybe. Probably wasn't even the same Lara-Su. But she'd rubbed him the wrong way when he met her.
Eventually wandering became too tiring. Especially when wherever Sorun went it was just more ruined city. He got tired enough that he found refuge on top of a relatively intact bus, where he was now lying with his back flat on top of it with one of his legs dangling off the side. Eyes staring up at the sky and arms spread out at his sides.
"I fucking miss Quiznos," Sorun said to himself. "Subs in that place, they were the best, you know? Yeah, totally. 'Specially the bread, know what I mean? Something about it, I dunno, it just hit differently. Yeah, I know. Nothing really compared. 'Cept Blimpies, that place was pretty good, too. Oh, duuude, Blimpies, yeah, I almost forgot about that place. Fuck yeah, they rocked, too."
Mobian cuisine didn't quite cut it for Sorun sometimes. It was good in its own right, but it didn't compare to the food back home. Not in terms of quality, sometimes, at least, but more that it didn't taste like home. The homemade stuff, maybe, but the food from sandwich shops, diners, all the local places Sorun had frequented, nothing on this planet really compared.
Hell, he'd give almost anything to eat at a McDonalds again. Though on the other hand Sorun was technically the healthiest he'd ever been with the food he'd been eating since getting dragged here.
He wasn't sure if the health was worth it.
"Man, it sucks all my favorite food places are dead. Like everything else on Earth," Sorun grumbled to himself as he sat up. "Like everything else in this city, seriously where the fuck is everyone?"
Okay, by now he was pretty sure there was something wrong with the sky. There had to be. He'd been wandering around the city for hours now and the sky was still orange. He still saw the sun revolving around in the sky, so at least that was working normally. It was everything else that was wrong.
"Maybe that one song really was right and apocalypses just cause orange-colored skies," Sorun mused to himself. "... I don't even know if it's an apocalypse, though, for all I know it's just the island that got messed up. Still doesn't tell me what happened."
He groaned out and kept looking around. Still nothing but ruined buildings all around him. And this city must have been proper-sized, too, 'cause he'd been wandering for hours without seeing familiar sights. Or at least as varied as it could get seeing as everything had the same veneer of rubble plastered over it.
Still walking forwards, Sorun used his free hand to cup the side of his mouth. "HEY!" He called out, almost as loud as he could. Near-silence, the wind brushing past him.
"I'M SORUN!"
Nothing still. Another five minutes of blind wandering before he tried again.
"IS ANYONE OUT THERE!?"
Nada. Sorun had to wonder to himself if at one point he should give up and leave the island. Different time, but the overall geography of the planet should, hopefully at least, be the same. Maybe he should ditch the grounded island, try for somewhere more familiar? New Mobotropolis? The G.U.N. place, that base in the mountains?
Hell, he'd take the Mobians who spoke in that old-ass English that lived in Mercia over this silence.
"HELLO!?"
Sorun stopped mid-step. That hadn't been him.
He turned towards the sound of the new voice. Male, youngish. But it sounded far off, and when Sorun looked all he saw were more cracked streets lined with destroyed buildings and filled with rusted, burnt-out cars. Whoever this person was either was really far away or invisible and really quiet.
At this point Sorun would believe either-or, but he tried yelling back out all the same.
"HEY!"
"OH, HI! HELLO!"
Sorun squinted and leaned his head back a bit. "Okay, that was weirdly nice," he murmured to himself before he continued shouting. "OVER HERE!"
"I HEAR YOU!" the other voice shouted back. It didn't sound any closer. "IT'S NICE TO MEET YOU!"
"Uh..." Sorun shook his head. "CAN YOU MOVE!?"
"YEAH!" There was a pause. "SO HOW ARE YOU DOING!?"
"What the f- MAN GET OVER HERE SO WE DON'T HAVE TO SHOUT!"
"OH! YEAH, SURE!"
Sorun's hand ran over his face as he made a small groan. "At least this new guy seems polite, but goddamn..."
He decided to just stand there and wait for whoever it was he'd found. He didn't much know what to expect. To see someone walk or run around a building's corner and make their way to Sorun was the most likely event, but he'd prepared himself for pretty much everything at this point.
So when he saw a white figure floating off the ground fly around a building's corner and then proceed to float towards Sorun, he wasn't surprised. Much. He at least managed to keep his face straight.
The Mobian, clear enough to see he was one even at this distance, finally got close enough that when he settled his feet back on the ground he was standing right in front of Sorun. Another hedgehog, he'd noted with some weariness settling into Sorun. Mobian standard of boots and gloves, had cool, glowing teal lines going through them Sorun tried not to pay attention to. Mostly because this Mobian's fur in particular was such a vivid shade of white that contrasted so sharply with everything else Sorun actually had to blink a few times until his eyes adjusted.
But those were only passing details Sorun noted. The main thing Sorun was focused on was his head. His spines were mainly clumped into two spikes curving from the back of his head to his lower back, but Sorun wasn't even looking at those. Around the top of the hedgehog's head were five long, waving locks of hair, standing up straight in a peculiar pattern. A very peculiar pattern that was very reminiscent of a plant Sorun knew of on Earth.
"Weeeed head..."
"O-oh, wow, I really didn't expect... um. Gee." The awkward greeting from the white Mobian made Sorun stop focusing on his hairstyle so he could focus on what sounded like a teenager around his age standing in front of him. "Hhhi there, uh, you."
Sorun blinked a few times, continuing to stare at the Mobian. He hadn't expect him to look so nervous, to be twisting a foot back and forth so awkwardly. And he was struggling to even meet Sorun's eyes.
It was odd to him.
He started to shy away even further, causing Sorun to realize he'd just been blankly and silently staring at him for a solid minute as he parsed his thoughts together. He mentally berated himself and shook his head a bit, and then decided to go with introducing himself.
"Hey, I'm Sorun," he lamely greeted. "Uh... yeah. That's all I got."
"Oh, alright." Just that small introduction alone seemed to gain the Mobian back a majority of his confidence. He managed to still his body and meet Sorun's eyes again. There was still a bit of shyness in his expression, but beyond that was... excitement? Maybe even a bit of joy? "It's great to meet you! I'm Silver."
Not the worst name Sorun had heard come out of the mouth of a Mobian. Hell, it was actually up there with the more sensible ones he'd heard. He saw movement, and noticed the hedgehog extended his hand out to Sorun, waiting for something. The Earthling extended his own free hand, inches away from the gloved hand. Sorun's fingers rapidly flexed and wiggled around as he contemplated what to do.
He decided to mess with him a bit by softly slapping Silver's palm with the back of his hand, then slap the back of Silver's hand with his palm, and end it with a fist bump that Silver hadn't reciprocated because he'd been too confused to react. Sorun, by contrast, maintained his straight face as he pulled his hand back.
Silver pulled his hand back, looking at it with a quizzical expression as he flexed his fingers. His yellow eyes darted up to Sorun. "What was that?" he asked.
"That's how people say hello from where I'm from." Kind of a half-fib, but it didn't matter all that much.
"Oh. Huh." He looked back at his hand. "My master said people are supposed to greet people with a handshake."
"His master?" Sorun filed that detail away for later. "He an old-fashioned kind of guy?" he guessed.
"I mean, probably? I wouldn't really know," Silver said. "So are handshakes really not a thing?"
"Yeah, nobody does them anymore. At least where I'm from."
"Oh, okay." Silver shrugged, and then lowered his hand and looked back at Sorun. "You're really weird-looking, you know? I've never seen a Mobian without fur." He paused and glanced to the side. "Granted I've only ever met the other two, but still..."
A lot of red flags popped up in Sorun's head. "I'm not a Mobian."
"Huh?" Silver blinked. "Oh, wait, he told me about these. Those, uh, the other people that existed way before, over-something, right?"
"Overlanders," Sorun corrected, his worry steadily increasing. "I'm not one of those, either."
Silver's confusion grew. "Then... what are you?"
"A human."
"... And what's that?"
"They're like Overlanders but better."
"Better how?"
"Just are," Sorun said. "I'm... getting the feeling it's not just Angel Island that's completely wrecked."
"What do you mean?" Silver asked. "Of course the rest of the world looks like this place. The apocalypse, you know?"
And just like that, a pit sunk down in Sorun's stomach. An apocalypse. The world ended. Something happened and the world ended.
"Why?" Sorun's mind whirled, but he couldn't think of an answer. Things were supposed to be fixed, he was supposed to be brought back to where things were before Sonic used the time machine to combat the time anomaly. From everything he heard the world was in a good state at that point in time. It shouldn't be in ruins. Everything was supposed to be fixed.
Why, why, why did things keep going wrong...?
Silver seemed to pick up on Sorun's sudden, visible distress. "Oh, wait, are you... are you not from here?" Silver asked. "Like, from here from here?"
Sorun didn't get his meaning entirely, but nodded all the same. "Yeah, I'm lost. Like... I'm super lost, man," he replied, his shoulders dragging down. "Like, I was here then I was there then I did some stuff and was supposed to go to one place but ended up here, and I don't... I just don't know anymore." He shook his head. "I don't know what's going on."
"... That sounds pretty bad," Silver quietly admitted to Sorun.
"It's pretty bad, yeah," he agreed.
"Yeah." Silver paused. He looked over his shoulder, and then back at Sorun. "Hey, um, you maybe wanna come back with me? You can talk with my master and, you know, he can maybe help you out. Probably."
The suggestion only needed a moment's consideration. Sorun didn't have many other options. "Yeah, sure."
It was weird, somehow, walking around with Silver, to the point that moving around in an apocalyptic city was starting to register less with Sorun the longer he was with him. Any kind of company would have worked, but in the short time he'd known him, all of ten minutes, Sorun found Silver was nice enough to get along with.
Chatty, too. Wasn't at first, but after a while the few words being passed between them were growing with time. Something Sorun barely noticed, but he didn't pay it much mind. It was nice talking with someone he didn't want to strangle.
"So your master, he's, like, a cool guy?" Sorun asked as the two of them maneuvered between a pair of destroyed buildings.
"Master Mogul?" Silver asked as he ducked under a fallen beam. "Yeah, he's great."
"Why does that name sound famili- fuck me it's the elephant guy."
"He's kind of been the only person I've ever known, you know?" Silver continued, oblivious to the fact Sorun was glancing between him and the katana he was carrying. "Well, him and Edmund. He taught me a bunch too, whenever I come and visit here."
Sorun hummed. "Oh, so you don't live here?"
Silver shook his head. "No, I just come and visit Edmund from time to time. Taught me stuff like Master did, and he's got this really big library he lets me look at sometimes. I usually just come here by myself, but a while ago Master was really insistent on both of us coming here for some reason, so we're visiting."
"Mm." Sorun gave Silver his full attention. "No parents?"
It took a moment for Silver to respond. "No, nobody. Just my master. I've been around a lot of places, Sorun, and honestly I'm pretty sure we're the last three people on the whole planet. Well, four now that you're here."
Again, Sorun felt his heart sink at hearing that. A true apocalypse, then. One that'd taken the life of nearly the whole planet. All except this hedgehog, an evil elephant person his friends warned him about long ago, and some third guy. He felt like kicking something.
"But it's not so bad," Silver continued. "Er, living with Master Mogul, I mean, not, you know, the whole world being the way it is. That's terrible. But he's nice."
Sorun's grip on his sword relaxed somewhat. "Oh, really?"
Silver nodded. "Yeah, I mean he was pretty strict at times with all the teaching, but... well, he's the only family I got. And he makes nice-tasting food and helped me out with my powers."
The white Mobian lifted his hand up. A teal glow surrounded the hand, a similar aura surrounding a couple of displaced bricks nearby. The bricks floated off the ground, formed into a circle, and started spinning around while Silver looked back at Sorun with a small grin.
"It's pretty neat, right?" he asked him. It didn't sound like how Sorun would expect it to hear, cocky and arrogant, like something that would fly out of Sonic's mouth and make him want to punch him. It was sincere and a bit excited, like a child trying to show someone something. It ended up putting Sorun a bit more at ease.
"Yeah, it's cool," he agreed. Silver smiled wide at that. "So your thing is telekinesis?"
"That's what my master calls it," Silver said, dropping the bricks. The glow left his hand at the same time. "Between you and me it kinda sounds like a mouthful, but I don't have a better name to call it. Better than just saying I can just move things with my mind, but, eh..." An airy sigh left him. "I never really had anyone else to talk to it about, so, well, yeah."
"I getcha," Sorun said. "You know, I'm technically an orphan, too."
There was something odd about the way Silver looked sad and excited about that at the same time. "Oh, for real?"
"Yep." Sorun nodded. "If you wanna get real technical I'm an extinct species. You'd think that'd get me put on a list somewhere."
"Aren't... aren't we all technically extinct?"
"... It's complicated, man, I'll fill you in later," Sorun promised.
Silver looked a bit disappointed at that, but he'd still remained silent as they continued walking. A few minutes later he glanced up and called out, "Oh, hey, we're here!"
As the hedgehog ran ahead, Sorun had to slow down to examine the place they'd come to further. It was... well, there wasn't much to say about it. It was just another destroyed, half-collapsed building, virtually indistinguishable from all the other ones they'd passed on the way here. It put Sorun off a bit; he'd expected something more, seeing as Silver and his master were supposed to live here. Maybe the apocalypse didn't let them be picky.
It was odd overall, but he still followed Silver into the building. He'd used his powers to float up a bit, towards a higher floor in the building - what was left of it, at least. Fortunately for Sorun the interior stairwell was still intact, as well as the building's front door and entrance lobby. Surprising, given how everything else looked. He'd managed to spot what floor Silver had floated up to and decided to hold off on commenting to Silver about making him climb up to the fifth floor alone when he caught up.
Getting off of the stairwell and ducking into a hallway nearly sheared in half made for a short trip, as Sorun could already hear a pair of voices the closer he got to them, past rooms closed off by debris or wrecked doors. Most of what he heard was Silver's own excited voice. The other one he couldn't make out, too quiet and deep.
The first thing Sorun saw was the room itself. Larger than most of the other rooms he'd crossed on the way here, and mainly intact. That said a lot for the rest of the place seeing as one of the walls was completely gone, giving a nice view of the rest of the destroyed city. Other than that the rooms distinctly looked lived-in: More cleaned and furbished than everywhere else, less debris. Little things like stacks of books or food here and there, some bedrolls, a literal campfire in the center of the room.
Then there were the occupants. They were both at a far corner near the back of the room, around a surprising number of stacks of books. He made Silver out immediately, talking excited and animatedly to someone. He'd saw Sorun walk in and turned towards him, smiling and waving.
The one sitting in the corner of the room talking to Silver was the one Sorun had been worried about. He didn't know much about Mogul outside of what he heard from others. He didn't think he'd be so huge, either, dwarfing Sorun by three, maybe even four times just sitting down, hunched in the corner, wrapped in a brown cloak that almost blended into the brown fur covering the mammoth's body.
It was the face that gave Sorun pause. "This dude looks fucking old," Sorun thought. It was hard to see visible age past the fur covering his face, but there wasn't hiding that look in his blue eyes as he looked towards Sorun. Half-lidded to the point of almost being closed, the way his shoulder and the rest of him was so slumped, the deep, tired look his eyes and mouth held. The slow breathing. Hell, he even smelled old if that musty scent said anything to Sorun. It felt like he was standing next to a relic.
What really put him off was the look he was directing at Sorun, specifically. He couldn't place it. Like, at all. Just that Mogul was giving Sorun a certain look, and he didn't know what that look was. Appraisal, maybe? He more than likely knew about Sorun since the Earthling was around back when he was a prisoner in New Mobotropolis, before that breakout he'd heard about. But no, there was something more there, beneath that initial, acknowledging glance. For the life of Sorun he didn't know what it was. But oddly enough the one thing Sorun didn't see in his eyes was surprise at seeing him.
Whatever the case, it caused Sorun to grip Yamato just a bit tighter. He did his best to keep as relaxed a composure as possible, but his hands were ready to snap the sword out at a moment's notice. Just in case.
"- And then I found him wandering around so we talked a bunch and you know Sorun's really neat," Silver was telling the mammoth, without seeming to take a breath, "and I was thinking maybe-!"
"Calm yourself, Silver." The baritone voice that came out of Mogul's mouth was so deep Sorun could have sworn the building rumbled under his feet from it. "I would think it prudent our guest introduce himself first, hmm?"
"Oh! Er, right." Silver stepped away, looking sheepish. "Sorun, this is my master," he said to the Earthling, and then gestured to the mammoth. "Master Mogul."
"... I know of him," Sorun said, making Silver blink in surprise. "A little, at least."
"Huh?" Blinking again, Silver looked back and forth between the two. Neither Sorun nor Mogul stopped looking at one another. "You do?"
"Yeah," Sorun said. "Sonic always described Mogul as one of the rogue's gallery villain nutballs that gave him and the others trouble in the way of petty villain nonsense."
He'd hoped to glean some reaction out of Mogul with that. Granted, he did, but not the one he'd expected. The mammoth had just heaved a heavy sigh and seemed to slump even further. Almost in a sad manner. "I've no doubt the me of the past would have demanded swift retribution for such an insult."
All of those words flew over Sorun's head with the exception of a few. "'Me of the past', huh?" he muttered. "The you of the now, then?"
"Would simply correct you in that calling my actions petty would, as you would most likely phrase it, 'undersell' it."
This time Sorun was the one to sigh. "So I'm in the future? That it?"
It was Mogul's turn to blink. "You don't seem surprised."
"Man of the world like me? What's even left?"
Nearby was the remnant of what had one point been an office rolling chair. The back of it was missing but the chair itself and the wheels seemed intact. Sorun sat down in it and turned the chair to face Mogul, who continued sitting where he was at while looking at Sorun. Silver had backed up some to sit down, keeping quiet while continuing to glance between the two.
Sorun took in a deep breath as he thought. With all the burning questions he had, Mogul was probably the only one around who could answer them, tell him just what the hell was going on. Given what little he knew of him he wasn't completely sure if he could trust every word that came out of his mouth, but he'd suppose he'd just have to judge that for himself.
"Do you know me?" Sorun asked. "Like, me specifically? Who I am, what I did?"
"The wayward youth, plucked from his own world," Mogul answered. "You aided the Freedom Fighters of old."
Sorun released a breath, and made a small nod. In a weird way, it was comforting to hear Mogul say that. He'd existed here at some point; had to if Mogul knew all that. Which meant this was the right timeline. The original one, the one he'd strived to get back to. That answered the question of where he was. Now he had to figure out when the hell he was.
Which brought him to his next question. "How far into the future am I?"
"I assume you wish to know how far from the point you were entombed in the Master Emerald? For reference?" At Sorun raising his eyebrows, Mogul raised his eye ridges. Not a smile, his mouth didn't even move, but for him it was probably the closest he could get to a smirk. "No need to give me that look. I've shared in the experience."
The statement made Sorun relax somewhat. He'd heard as much. "Fine, sure. How long since then?"
"Two hundred years. Approximately."
He probably said more after that. Sorun hadn't heard him.
It just went to show how almost nothing ever seemed to go right for Sorun on this planet. All he'd done, everything he'd gone through, only to end up here. Right timeline, wrong time. Two hundred years too late in the timeline. And then even worse was the sight he saw outside - that apocalyptic vista of a dead world. He'd already had to suffer through one of those, but seeing it again, it was wrenching at something in his chest.
There were so many feelings welling up in Sorun there was no way to articulate them. Frustration on such a massive scale that he'd come so far only to find this and end up here, so far in the wrong point in time everyone he knew would be dead, end of the world or not. Hopelessness over this being the fate of the world he'd worked so hard to set right. All that, everything he'd done, just for this. A dead world. Anger, not even the kind he could aim something at, just blind fury with no identifiable target. Aimless, all-consuming.
More than all that he just felt tired.
Silently, Sorun rose up out of the chair. It was a toss-up whether he wanted to throw the chair as far as he could or just crumple onto the ground right there, and ended up doing neither. Mogul was giving him a critical eye but was otherwise saying nothing. Silver had been silent throughout the entire exchange, listening to every word while looking towards Sorun with increasing surprise. But now he just looked worried.
Sorun turned from both of them. "I'll come back. I need a bit." There were still more questions he had, things he needed to know, but he couldn't right now, not in this state. Needed time for... for even what, just to calm down? Get into a state where he could hold a conversation without being liable to fly into a fit of rage or something else?
He didn't know, except that he just couldn't do anything at this moment.
Silver had opened his mouth to say something. A sharp look from Mogul made him pause in whatever he was gonna say, followed by him shaking his head at the hedgehog. Sorun missed all this, having already half-walked, half-stumbled out of the room to make his way towards the stairs. Nobody followed, thankfully.
"What the fuck was the point?"
It was the single question that kept burning inside Sorun's mind as he was lead back here, once again navigating broken streets in a dead city. Silver and Mogul's home, the location, was kept somewhere in the back of his memory, somewhere for him to return once he was ready, because where the hell else was he supposed to go?
But company wasn't something he was concerned about. It was the everything else.
He'd sagged onto the side of a nearby, fallen lamp post, sighing out loudly while glancing around at the destroyed buildings. Part of Sorun wanted to take Yamato and go to other parts of the world. Not to verify if the rest of the world really was dead; he trusted Silver on his word, and destruction on this scale was something Sorun was familiar with, even if he'd only ever caught a glance. He didn't need to see the rest of the world to know. No, just to see if New Mobotropolis and his old house was still there. He decided he couldn't bear the answer of if it was or not, or what state it'd look like.
Sorun didn't even know how the apocalypse began to begin with and he felt defeated. The mere knowledge, simply looking out and seeing that at some time, within two hundred years of the time he was supposed to be in, the world ended.
Another dead world. Another moment where he got to be the last one standing in what was left. He felt so useless.
He'd dipped his head down towards his feet to let out a loud sigh. When he looked up, he saw that, somehow, he'd circled back to the plaza he'd been in way earlier, where that statue had been. And, surprisingly enough, he saw that there was someone there. Standing in front of the statue. His nose wrinkled a bit when he saw it was an echidna, red like most others, and the fingers holding the sword tightened a bit, but he held off on doing anything and just chose to observe.
Observing wasn't doing much considering the echidna wasn't doing anything.
"That the Edman person Silver mentioned? Gah, fuck it." Sorun pounded a fist against the fallen lamp post, pushed off it, and then walked towards the echidna. Halfway there he saw the "clothes" he was wearing, if it could even be called that, looked more like a poncho than anything else. And he was old if all the wrinkles Sorun saw just from a back view said anything, plus the walking stick in his grasp. The old Mobian still didn't react even when Sorun stopped right next to him.
Sorun found himself blinking a few times when he realized the echidna was looking down at the decapitated head of the statue.
"It's a cryin' shame," rasped out the echidna. His voice sounded brittle and aged. "This statue stood the test of time 'til now. I always figured it'd outlast me, but it seems it wasn't meant to be."
Unconsciously, Sorun hid the Yamato behind his back. "Yeah, man, corrosion's no joke," he agreed. "I actually knew her for a bit. Didn't really like her. She had this... smile that bugged me."
Did more than bug him. It pissed him the hell off. Particularly after she'd disabled King Shadow, she'd stood there with that wide smile on her face. Sorun sure hadn't felt like smiling at the time, even after that ordeal was over with. Not after what he'd gone through, was still going through. Not after what he saw them do to that other Rotor. Nothing about that situation suggested a smile was appropriate. But yet she'd stood there, with that wide smile on her face, like nothing was wrong with the world while Sorun's whole world was falling apart around him.
The old echidna next to Sorun made a hum. "Is that so?"
"Yeah." Sorun glanced to the side at him. A wrinkled, bearded face with a small set of glasses met him. "Why? You know her?"
"Mm. She was my mother."
There was a moment of awkward silence. For a single second Sorun felt bad, but then it was overrode with his previous feelings. He leaned in a bit closer to look - the echidna's eyes were a familiar shade of purple, if not a bit faded. "You certainly have his eyes," Sorun mumbled, leaning back so he stood straight. "Well, I'm not taking back what I said. She was irritating and I didn't like her."
Surprisingly, the old man just laughed. "There's a strength in that, not backing down even after being tripped up. Something I can respect." His eyes glanced up to meet Sorun's. "You could at least say you're sorry."
"To say I'm sorry is to admit I made a mistake and promise I won't do so again. I didn't make a mistake by saying I had a poor opinion of your mother."
"No, I meant for cutting the statue. Corrosion doesn't make that fine a line where the head separated from the neck."
"Sharp for an oldie." Sorun didn't so much as flinch at the accusation. "Fine. I apologize for defacing a historical monument. In my defense there aren't many people left to appreciate it."
"There's truth in that." A withered sigh left the echidna in recognition of Sorun's words. "Well, regardless of your feelings she was an excellent Guardian, just like her own old man. And a good mother, along with my croc of a pops father."
"... Wait, what?"
"My pops. Old man. Dad, daddy, father." Edmund rose his tick up and poked Sorun in the chest with its tip. "What about this ain't you getting?"
"No, I got that part," Sorun said, slapping the cane away, "I meant... croc as in crocodile? Really? Your dad was a crocodile?"
"Mhm, and he saw fit to remind me of it whenever I asked him," Edmund grumbled out.
"... By any chance do you know his dad's name?"
Edmund shook his head. "It's been so long by now I just plain don't know. Best I can do is remember what it sounded like. Had a kind of... vvv sound at the beginning."
That was enough for Sorun to go on. "Vector managed reproduction? How the hell he'd pull that off?" He shook his head. Not the time to think about that. "That's cool and all, but... that doesn't, you know. Seem physically possible?"
"Eh?" Aged eyes ogled at Sorun as if he'd just gone insane. "What you mean by that, youngin'? What, your own ma never tell ya how child-makin' works?"
"Way too vividly," Sorun sighed out with a slight shudder. "But, like... crocodiles are cold-blooded reptiles, and echidna are... I'm assuming not so cold-blooded." After an uncomfortable silence Sorun began idly tapping Yamato's scabbard. "I'm not getting how that's possible."
"What's to say it ain't possible?"
"I don't know, biology?"
"Look, sonny, what'd you say your name was?"
"Sorun."
"Sunder, listen." Once again he jabbed Sorun in the chest with his cane. He had to resist knocking it out of the old man's hand. "Dunno how it works with your kind, but Mobians're special. If cross-species compatibility weren't a thing we wouldn'ta made it as far as we did before the big end." A third jab with his cane. "Heck, maybe if your attitude weren't so sour you could get yerself a lady friend of your own and see with your own eyes. 'Least if there're any left."
"Yeah, I think I'm good there, old-timer." Once more Sorun batted the cane away. "And as relieved as I am that my humanity didn't automatically lock out my ability to have kids on a planet full of not-humans, I've been nuked more than microwave popcorn, so I don't think it matter- actually, Devil's Body would've probably fixed that," he suddenly realized.
"Hmph." Edmund clacked the tip of his cane on the ground. "Whatever that means, Souther."
Sorun's eyes narrowed at the echidna. "You know, believe it or not you're only the second decrepit old man I've met that couldn't pronounce my name right. And you know what, it's not getting any less annoying."
"Feh!" Edmund gave him a displeased look." You know, back in my day people respected their elders."
"Back in your day there actually were elders and people to respect them."
"... You're not a very likable person, Soujourn."
"I wouldn't go that far. I knew your grandpa, Knuckles. He liked me, at least during the times he wasn't possessed and trying to kill me," Sorun said. "At any rate I liked him more than his daughter."
At hearing that, the old echidna gave Sorun a curious look. "Really? You knew him?" he asked. "And who did you say you were again?"
Letting out a mirthless laugh, Sorun shrugged his shoulders and stepped forwards a bit. "Oh, I'm all sorts of things. Sorun the Gamer, Sorun the Freedom Fighter, Sorun the Delivery Boy." He turned around and sat down on the statue's head while looking up at the echidna. "Right now I guess I'm Sorun the Time Traveler, and right now I'm lost by about two hundred years."
The echidna didn't respond at first. He let Sorun's words sink in, and then closed his eyes to give a brief nod before opening them back up to look at Sorun. "Alright. Well, back when she was alive my mother called me Edmund. I suppose you could call me the last echidna. And the last Guardian, or a failure of one at any rate."
"Hey, from one failure to another, could be worse. I think," Sorun said. "What makes you such a failure?"
"I inherited the position of protecting an island halfway sunk into the ocean. So far, not too great," Edmund informed him. "I've long since learned not to worry about things I cannot control."
"I hear that, man." Sorun blew out his mouth, shook his head, and then turned back up to Edmund. "So you think- huh?"
Something had gone wrong with the echidna's face. He suddenly seemed more distant, eyes glazed and staring off in a random direction. His mouth was moving up and down, as if he were whispering something, but nothing but airy sounds were coming out of his mouth.
"... You alright, man?" Sorun hesitantly asked, resisting the urge to reach over and poke him. A few seconds later the old Mobian seemed to snap awake.
"Oh! Er... right." Edmund blinked his eyes a few times and looked over at Sorun. "What were we talking about again?"
"For the love of- another friggin' one?" A sort of sad frown found its way onto Sorun's face, and he shook his head. "No, uh... just thinking," he said. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do now."
Because what was left for him? He couldn't go backwards in time to before all this, back to the others. He could, technically, but using the Yamato to go back presented the risk of time paradoxes and the likely death of everyone in the whole zone as a result. He was effectively stuck here in a dead world with someone he was honestly okay with, someone he didn't really trust or like, and a third guy who looked like he wasn't long for this world anyways.
None of that even covered the world was dead. There was just too much to unpack in that bit of information alone and Sorun was still coming to terms with it, all the implications behind it. It was bad enough he was sitting here airing out all his grievances to an old man halfway to being senile.
"You said you were a time traveler, didn't you?"
Sorun glanced towards the speaker. "A fairly lousy one, but yeah."
"From where, may I ask? Time from my grandpops?"
Sorun nodded. "If the elephant dude is to be believed, I'm two hundred years too far ahead of where I'm supposed to be," he answered. "World was still alive back then. Seeing it now, it's..." Heart-wrenching? Nauseating? Awful, horrifying, grim, hopeless? "... It sucks."
Edmund made a hum of acknowledgement. "I can sympathize with that. Somewhat. Never really got to see the world in its old-world glory, if you get my meaning."
That caused Sorun to raise an eyebrow and fully turn to the echidna in question. "Mf. Really? Just how recent was all this, anyways?"
"Hmf. Couldn't tell ya. Might have to ask that 'elephant dude' of yours if you're so inclined to wonder," Edmund suggested. "Think I know who you're talking about. That old sad sack of bones lookin' after Slither."
Sorun made a withered sound. "Silver?"
"Yeah, Simmer. Good kid, real bright. Let him poke 'round my library some whenever he comes visit. Good heart on that one. Nothin' like that mentor o' his, an' the only reason I tolerate his ilk lookin' after the boy's 'cause of how well he turned out," Edmund said. "But, given how long that codger among codger's been kicking, well... goodness. He'd be your best bet on answers unless you wanna go digging up the past along with Shiver, but the man's an honest downer to hold a conversation with."
"Yeah, immortality'll do that, I guess," Sorun dryly remarked, though his voice was quiet as he pondered the suggestion.
To be completely honest, he didn't want much to do with the guy because of how the others described him. Power-hungry blowhard that used big words to demean people was the basic gist of the accounts he'd been given. Admittedly he hadn't seen much of that meeting the man in person, but then again maybe time and/or the apocalypse changed that. Or he was that good a actor, but with how everything was dead Sorun honestly didn't see the point in him going that far.
And he still did have questions, and there were a scarce amount of people around to answer them. Mogul was in all likelihood the only one. And it wasn't like Sorun had anything better to do.
"Fine. I'll go talk to him." Sorun stood to leave, but then stopped and looked back down at the head. "Er... you know, the world's supply of duct tape and glue's probably all bad by now, but I could probably... uh..."
Sorun trailed off when he saw Edmund had that vacant, unfocused look on his face again. The sad frown returned to Sorun's face, after which he turned the other way and began backtracking the way he came from. He could swear he still heard the old man muttering behind him as he left.
He'd gone back to the building Silver had lead him to previously, but Mogul wasn't in the same room he'd been in prior. Some searching around eventually found Sorun on the roof of the building - what was left of it, at least, though compared to most of the other roofs around this one was mainly intact.
He found Mogul there, resting against one of the large ventilation units one would typically find on top of tall buildings. There were more books scattered around him, and he had another one in his hands. His eyes were still down reading the pages, though he still spoke up as Sorun approached him.
"Finally found a moment to compose yourself?"
"Still had questions that needed answering," Sorun said. "Good book?"
"A difficult question. I'm fairly confident I've read every single book on the entire planet by now," Mogul rumbled out as he turned a page. "Whatever ones survived at any rate. I've found myself rereading a vast majority of them. Even before that, with my age, the plot of many a tome became rather predictable."
"Yeah, I've heard being immortal has a way of sucking the fun out of everything after a while."
Though Sorun had said it with a bit of snark, Mogul didn't stir in the slightest. "Not inaccurate," he simply replied, and then turned a page.
The response threw Sorun off for a moment, going as far as to make him stop for a second, but after he continued walking until he'd made it to the mammoth's side. A few more seconds passed, after which, without making a sound, Sorun decided to sit down next to the mammoth.
Minutes passed with them just sitting there, Mogul silently reading his book while Sorun stared out into the destroyed world beyond, the hollowed buildings and orange sky. From this high up he could see that the city itself was off-kilter slightly, like the whole island was slightly tilted. Questions whirled through his mind, but he didn't even know where to start, what the ask first. What to do, even after this. He could barely even figure out his own feelings on what was happening and could scarcely keep up with it all.
"It's supremely tragic, isn't it?" Mogul asked, breaking the silence without even looking up from his book. "The state of the world?"
"... I remember back when I was with a bunch of people that tried their best to save the planet," Sorun answered after a few seconds. "Started as early as five, most of them. Was even with them for it for a bit of it. Them, foreign governments, everyone trying to make the world a better place. I even went forwards far enough to see them pull it off, even after Sonic-"
"Irrevocably damaged the time-space continuum in his youth and was forced to alter the stream of time in order to rectify it," Mogul finished.
Slowly, Sorun turned his head towards Mogul. "How do you even know about that?" he asked. Nobody but him alone should even be aware something like that happened. Mogul wasn't even there for any of that.
The mammoth simply turned a page. "Some knowledge has a way of burdening those who shoulder it. Some would curse others with knowledge out of simple spite or greater machinations. A few passing words to shatter the psyche. I like to consider myself above such pettiness. As such, Sorun, I'll do you the benefit of not answering that question." He sighed a deep breath. "If it will ease your mind, however, know that I'm unique in this regard. Nobody, back when everyone was alive at any rate, was ever aware of any changes or alteration in the timeline."
"But how do you know?" Sorun pressed. "It shouldn't be possible."
"Indeed. It shouldn't. But what I encountered long ago was an impossibility unto itself." A page in Mogul's book was flipped. "How I wish I never encountered it. That cursed abomination."
The teen's grip on the sword's scabbard tightened. "Did this 'abomination' of yours tell you something about me? Because you sure didn't seem surprised to see me walk in with Silver."
"I couldn't comment on that. I also couldn't comment on us meeting when I just so happened to have asked Silver to transport me here along with him on one of his voyages to the island. Quite the coincidence, two relics of the past meeting during our little vacation here." His voice lowered a few octaves. "I would strongly recommend you disengage from this line of questioning."
Sorun scoffed at his refusal to answer, but didn't comment further on it. "Fine, be that way," he muttered. He was still interested, didn't care enough to press it at any rate. Not without risking making him upset enough he'd stop talking. "So I really did fix it? Time, all that? Considering we're two hundred years past the fact I imagine the time anomaly isn't a problem since we're alive and talking about it?"
"A hundred and seventy-five years past the fact," Mogul corrected him as he turned a page, his voice returning to its normal, albeit it baritone, pitch. "It didn't make itself evident until twenty-five years after you were locked aw-"
"Whatever. You know what I mean."
Mogul made a hum. Sorun couldn't tell if it was in displeasure or indifference. "The results speak for themselves, do they not?" he asked. "That event never occurred in this time. I'm admittedly not privy to every detail, but my knowledge of time and its workings is complete enough that I know multiple streams of time in a single zone is impossible. I don't know anything pertaining to the alternate timeline you went to, but as we're here now, discussing it, it is more than safe to say that alternate world is no more."
Despite it all, despite everything being displayed to Sorun, it still managed to make him give a sigh of relief. The alternate history with King Shadow was gone and dead. Deleted. And seeing as Mogul had knowledge of Sorun before they'd even met, it meant this was the original one Sorun had strived to return to after all.
So in the end he'd managed it. He'd did it. He came back.
Fat lot of good it did.
It left a bittersweet taste in Sorun's mouth. Everything he'd done to get back here, everything everyone had done to set the world right... "Everything my friends did to try and fix the world, only for this to be it's fate," he mumbled out, looking at the city beyond. He could swear from this high up he could see the outermost edges of the island, and the glistening surface of water beyond its border. "Was there a point to it all? Any of it if this was the end result?" He looked up at Mogul. "What even happened to the world?"
Because he had to know. If this was manmade, Mobianmade, whichever, or if it was some kind of natural disaster. If whatever invalidated the efforts everybody had put in to save this world could have been prevented or not, if it was all in vain or not. If it was even worth trying when the world was just going to end anyways no matter what. If it was all a waste of time.
He wasn't sure he wanted that answered after all when Mogul spoke. "A cataclysmic event two hundred years ago wiped out civilization. Some survived and managed to carry others further, but the conditions of the world proved too harsh to sustain anything long-term. Silver is the last generation of sapient species as a whole on Mobius."
The world got wiped out two hundred years ago.
That couldn't be right.
"But... but that's before the time anomaly almost destroyed the world."
"That is correct."
"And I got rid of the time anomaly. It's gone, never happened. It shouldn't have posed a danger to anyone because I made it so that time anomaly never happened to begin with."
"That is also correct."
Sorun's voice became frustrated. "So then why did the world end up getting destroyed anyways!?"
Calmly, Mogul flipped a page in his book. "Because the cataclysm that destroyed the world and the time anomaly you discarded away with were two wholly unrelated events."
So it was something else after all? "That makes even less sense," Sorun argued, shaking his head in denial. "You're saying this all happened before the time anomaly. That doesn't make sense, because nothing happened! I wasn't there for long, but I talked with people during that time. I talked with Tails and Sonic while he was king, and they never mentioned anything like this! The world never ended, it didn't... everything was peaceful! So why did it get destroyed this time? Because this timeline, it's the original, nothing should have been altered except for the time anomaly disappearing. You said so yourself! So why did something change?"
Why did something cause the world to end when it didn't the first time? What changed when the only thing Sorun did was get rid of the time anomaly so there could be a future past that point a hundred and seventy-five years ago? What happened?
"Who can say?" Mogul wondered as he turned a page.
"..." Sorun's eyes narrowed in Mogul's direction. "You were there," he pointed out. "You must know something."
"I wasn't in the direct vicinity of the event."
"What do you- the whole world got destroyed, so doesn't that mean the entire world is the vicinity!?"
Mogul didn't answer and instead just turned a page.
Irritated, Sorun stood up. Half of him wanted to cut that book in half just so he could gain his attention, and the other half wanted to chop a limb off to get the point across. When he had questions he was desperate for answers for and the only person who could give them to him was ignoring him. He was already reaching for the Yamato's handle when the mammoth finally spoke up.
"Do you honestly think a show of bravado and violence will get you far in life?" Mogul asked him, baritone voice as calm as could be. He didn't even look up from his book. "Believe me and my millennia of experience when I say that intimidation can only get one so far before they encounter those immune to its effects for one reason or another."
"Yeah, you would know that, wouldn't you?" Sorun bitterly remarked. "What with all you were doing back in the-"
"I find it amusing, you choosing to judge me for my actions when you yourself were present for precisely none of them," Mogul interrupted. "You've never met me before now. You were never victim to any of the consequences of my actions. So why the hostility against an old man you've only recently acquainted yourself with?"
Sorun huffed out a breath. All the same, his right hand dropped away from the sword's handle. "You gave my friends a hard time back in the past. That's all," he answered in an honest tone.
"What would you have me say? Profess my deep regrets for my past actions? Prostrate myself before you? Spare me," Mogul rumbled out as he turned a page. "I'm not ashamed to admit my wrongdoings. Yes, I heavily interfered in the lives of your friends in the past all for the sake of what amounted to petty power plays that ultimately proved futile in the end."
"... Why, though?" Sorun asked, now more genuinely curious than anything else. "You... you're... I knew you were old and immortal, but you're seriously thousands of years old?"
"Thereabouts. Quite honestly the number becomes meaningless at a point."
"Yeah, I imagine, but..." Sorun shook his head in confusion. "Seriously, why?"
"I've come to understand that no amount of age and wisdom is sufficient in resisting foolish temptation in the pursuit of one's ambitions," Mogul told Sorun. "You couldn't fathom living a life as long as mine. I saw Mobian civilizations rise and fall. I'd risen to the pinnacle of power in some ages only to fall back to rock bottom when those ages crumbled. I'd taught wizarding arts to Mobians only to see those techniques fade and die out with age as their practitioners perished with time." Mogul paused, and though it was hard to make out, Sorun could have sworn he heard the mammoth's voice grow quieter. "I believed it to be my right to stand above all others."
"Just because you were the oldest? The most experienced? Because you had powers an abilities nobody else had?" Sorun questioned.
"Yes to all that and more," Mogul answered. "I won't get into specifics, but you understand the barest gist, I see. I very well am one of the, if not the, first fully sapient Mobians to walk the surface of this planet, mainly due to my exposure to a Chaos Emerald in my 'youth'. So believe my words to be true when I say that the Kingdom of Acorn was by far the most successful and largest Mobian civilization that had ever been erected. At the time I thought it logical and prudent to engage with them."
"Sure, but what did you actually do?" Sorun asked. "All I ever got told by the others was that you did some villainous junk that got you thrown in jail."
Mogul turned a page. "Employed the services of mercenaries in the efforts of purloining an artifact of great power that had been held in the Acorn family for generations to usurp their position of authority. Kidnapped that prodigious two-tailed child and replaced him with a perfect double for a time before his speedy friend rescued him. Became a god incarnate utilizing the energies of Chaos and wreaked havoc across the worlds."
That last one threw Sorun for a loop. "Ah... huh. You really did all that, huh?" He gave the mammoth a quizzical look, but he didn't budge in the slightest from it. "Became a god?"
"In the basest sense of the word, yes. A being so omnipotent in power that I'd crushed entire zones in the palm of my hand." Mogul blinked. Sorun wasn't sure if that'd been the first time since he arrived on the roof if the Mobian had blinked or not. "The young fox had thwarted those efforts as well. Undid my actions and stripped my power. Those events among other, less-important recollections are the primary reason those in that kingdom-turned-republic viewed me in an unfavorable light and why you evidently dislike me so."
The mammoth turning into a mad god that honest-to-god crushed whole universes in his meaty, furry palms should have been a more nerve-wracking piece of information. It wasn't, not to Sorun, at least. Not at this point. He was actually more focused on the part where Tails had been the one to stop him. He'd somehow beaten a multiverse-level god and saved everyone he'd destroyed, if Mogul's words were true. And they sounded very true.
"Listen, when you fight a guy radiating so much power the air around him is literally boiling then you can fucking talk. 'Til then you can't say shit about what I did, so shut the fuck up about it already."
Well, apparently Tails had done that after all. That and so much more. Sorun wasn't even sure him beating Enerjak measured up to that. And he didn't even so much as bring it up with Sorun when he'd said that to him in the other timeline after he'd killed King Shadow. Why? To patronize him? No, even worse: he'd been trying to be humble and sympathetic with someone being open hostile with him. Someone who'd later on threatened his family.
And honestly, Sorun hated that. Because he didn't think he would have done that. He didn't like how Tails ended up being the better man after all. How he'd been in the right.
"Fucking Prowers," Sorun thought as he shook his head. "Wow," he ended up mumbling out, halfway between sounding impressed and scathing. "You wanted to be the top guy so bad you went around killing an uncountable amount of people to make a point? I'm not even talking numbers in the quadrillions or quintillions, like literally I'm talking an unquantifiable number because you were destroying whole universes like it was nothing."
"They were restored upon my defeat," Mogul pointed out.
Sorun breathed out in disbelief. "I really don't think that matters."
"Then does you erasing an entire timeline just to preserve this one not matter?"
"..." Once more, Sorun felt his eyes narrow. His breathing intensified slightly. "Don't you dare start this. Did you go on this whole tirade about past regrets just to make a point?"
"An intriguing word, 'regret'," Mogul said, ignoring Sorun's question. "I used to think myself above such a word. I'd considered it such a paltry emotion, something to be discarded in the pursuit of something greater. A useless crutch for the weak. I was mistaken, of course. It was only after the entire world was lost and I was left with nothing but time to reflect did I realize just how far I'd erred. But it's a fault I believe anyone is susceptible to - losing sight of what's truly important in pursuit of personal goals." For the first time since Sorun stepped onto the roof Mogul tore his eyes off his book to look at Sorun. "Or am I wrong? Is you destroying a timeline for personal reasons not the same as my abusing omnipotence out of a foolish and selfish desire to be recognized as the most superior being in the cosmos?"
It was more similar than he'd care to admit. True enough that he felt his arms go slack, all the hostility washing out of Sorun. "Sure. I had to do things. I had to hurt people to get here. Back in that other timeline," he quietly admitted. "Break one woman's jaw, completely cripple a man. Kill a king, kill a friend, threaten another friend's family. Tell myself that none of it matters since all those events got erased, never happened, that all those people got replaced with this time's versions. Lives getting brought back, others being snuffed out and erased, everybody changed but me. It all sticks to me regardless.
"I don't know. I didn't kill anybody in the end, since those actions and consequences were deleted, but..." But it still unsettled him, somewhat. Back then he'd been so laser-focused on his one goal, "get back, get back to the true timeline, get back," that nothing else had mattered. Not events, not people. He hurt and threatened without a second thought. Killed and shrugged it off, like it didn't matter. It technically didn't, not really, but something about how Sorun had still managed to do it with borderline casual ease shook him somewhat.
Nevertheless...
"Where'd that get me? Here?" Sorun quietly scoffed. "I set the world back to the way it's supposed to be, and for what? Just for it to be destroyed anyways?" He made a breathy laugh, and then collapsed back into a sitting position next to Mogul. He lifted his free hand up, and let it fall down and slap against the concrete roof. "Where'd it all end up getting me in the end? Talking about all of this to some sad old guy on a roof somewhere."
"And yet," Mogul drawled, "you look down on me for committing practically the same crimes."
Sorun clenched his teeth. "It's not the same."
"Isn't it?" Mogul challenged. "Lives rewritten. People and their very existence simply vanishing without so much as a memory to fit the events of this timeline."
"Lives saved. Lives brought back. Lives that would have remained gone if I did nothing," Sorun argued back. "You did what you did because of a power high. Your words. I-"
"Supplanted the lives and memories of every single being in this world, irreversibly altering an inordinate number of beings throughout this world. Trying to weigh the lives you changed versus mine on a scale seems quite pointless when the numbers become so large it's arguably arbitrary. What use is there?"
There wasn't any. Sorun would be a hypocrite to argue it. "I just wanted to go back home," he mumbled out. "Nothing else mattered but that. I didn't care if I actually had a right to make that choice. Just that I could make that choice. Just me and my special sword." He shook his head and glanced up at Mogul. "But you're wrong to compare us. Even if there are people in that other timeline that would have never been born in this one, if they never get to live now solely because of me, there were people that got to live here that were never even born there. I did what I did to save people. I stand by my decision. That timeline wasn't even supposed to exist to begin with; I arguably did nothing wrong but make everything how it was supposed to. You-" he said, pointing at Mogul, "didn't save anyone, going around squeezing whole universes like they were stress balls."
At the end of the day, he refused to be put on the same pedestal as an egomaniac like that. Even if what he did was selfish, at least some good came out of it. Not like what Mogul did. Nothing like what he did.
"There's truth to that," Mogul admitted. "In the end it is us who are left to wrestle with the consequences of our actions when no others remember. Or the lack thereof consequences, in our unique circumstances."
Sorun would amend that he had a point there, and made an agreeing grunt in response.
Mogul continued. "With age and experience comes wisdom, or so they used to say. To that I say you could have thousands of years of experience sccrued wisdom. Without perspective, though, what use really is all that knowledge?" he wondered. "I'm... simply ashamed it took the end of the world and the pending isolation for me to realize what I lost sight of. Perhaps my gifts are to blame. More likely it's me searching for excuses."
"Okay, but why are you telling me all this?" Sorun finally demanded. He'd tried going along with the old man's ramblings as best he could, but the teen's patience had finally wore thin. "Are old people just that compulsive towards imparting wisdom on the youth and long-winded speeches about morality because of how screwed a past they had?"
"I'm afraid Silver's already taken my focus in that regard," Mogul informed him. "It's as I said. I'm bereft of distractions." Again, he flipped a page in his book. "And perhaps I wanted to see just what kind of individual you are."
"... Why do you even care? We barely know each other."
Mogul didn't answer him. He just continued reading his book.
After rolling his eyes and muttering under his breath, Sorun tried changing the topic. "Okay, fine, speaking of Silver," he began, "what's his whole deal? I don't even mean the whole telekinesis thing. Powers, sure, it's whatever at this point, but how do you go from..." He almost asked him "how do you go from being a power-mad schemer to someone's caretaker?", but with his previous words Sorun already managed to figure that out on his own. Instead he asked, "Why'd you decide to look after him?"
"In this desolate, lifeless world, it seemed too cruel to abandon a helpless child," Mogul answered plainly. "A combination of me learning from the errors of my past, a desire to atone for my actions, and perhaps a chance at adding a bit of good in a world I'd fostered so much bad. Among other reasons I'm sure I'm not even aware of, and a small few I won't divulge to you. So between leaving a babe to die of exposure and raising him, yes, I took him in, formally educated, and trained him to the best of my abilities."
His mouth moved. It seemed impossible, but Sorun could have sworn that may just have been the smallest of smiles on his mouth. Or a wince. Hard to tell, really.
"..." Sorun wasn't sure of how he was supposed to respond to that at first. "He doesn't seem like you. At all," he pointed out.
Mogul made a "humph" sound. "I'm beginning to suspect that you don't think I sought repentance at all for my past deeds. I didn't indoctrinate the boy, as your accusing tone would insinuate. I taught him. That's the limit of my influence over him. That old Guardian he oft visits certainly colored his view some." Something shined in his eyes. Fondness, maybe? "And... perhaps some of him rubbed off on me. I'm not nearly as verbose as I once was in life."
"This is you at low-level verbosity?"
"Yes."
"... Alright." He would believe that much. About his use of words and actions with Silver. With how Silver's demeanor was a near polar opposite of Mogul, he'd be hard-pressed to think otherwise. "So what's his deal? Just trying to eke out an existence in this wasteland along with you?"
"Hardly," Mogul denied with a shake of his head. "Silver fancies himself... hm. 'Historian' is too strong a word, unbefitting. He oft spends his free time exploring, digging through old ruins. Seeking answers."
"Answers? To what?"
"The world before this. What happened and how it happened." Mogul paused, eyes pausing in his reading as if he was contemplating something. "It isn't immediately obvious, but the state of this world burdens him greatly. It's a burden that grew the more he learned of the old world, through either my words or Edmund's teachings or from whatever documents he managed to dig up. Either in the library here the old Guardian cares for or elsewhere when he explores."
Sorun looked back out into the dead, slanted city. "I mean, I'd be pretty upset, too, if I had to grow up here."
"Quite," Mogul agreed. "In that respect, Silver is like you, albeit in the barest of senses. He has a desire to fix this."
If he'd been building to that the entire time, Sorun would admit, he was hooked. Intrigued in all possible senses of the word. Part of him didn't want to dare to hope that the desire to fix this world actually had a foundation, to not be disappointed, but he couldn't help it. He'd latched right onto that sentence.
"And just how does he plan on 'fixing' all this?" Sorun asked him.
"... This world was once home to many objects whose depths of power were limitless," Mogul began. "The Chaos Emeralds, for instance. In this age they, as well as the Master Emerald, are gone, but you understand my meaning."
"They're gone?" Sorun asked, confused. "Where'd they go?"
"They're not here," was the only response Mogul chose to give Sorun. He chose not to pursue the topic. "But very few knew that other, similar objects existed. Objects labelled the Time Stones once existed, though all but one of them were lost." Mogul paused. "Silver has, in his possession, the sole remaining Time Stone in this universe."
Sorun's heart stilled. With a name like that... but it couldn't be true, could it? "And what," Sorun asked, swallowing despite having a dry mouth, "does the Time Stone do?"
"It allows its user to travel through time. Even backwards, if the user wished."
It was too good to be true. Sorun desperately hoped that wasn't the case. "But... but I thought that wasn't possible," he said, partly confused and partly hopeful. "You can't travel back in time because making changes in the past would break the whole zone, wouldn't it?"
"The Time Stone is unique in that any changes made to the past via traveling with the Time Stone retroactively reshapes the future," Mogul explained. "As such, the timeline is preserved, if not changed by use of the Time Stone."
"Aw, seriously?" With some annoyance, and a face full of disbelief, Sorun held the Yamato out. "I can't use Yamato to go to the past without incurring the wrath of horrible time paradoxes that would tear the zone apart, but this Time Stone thing gets a free pass? That's bull."
"It's by design," Mogul said. "Would I be correct in assuming that sword's function was not intentionally designed to go through time?"
"No, I..." Sorun hedged, looking sheepish as he lowered his left arm, "well... kinda just used a loophole in its power to brute force my way through time travel."
A sigh left Mogul. He almost sounded annoyed. "As I thought," he rumbled out. "That sword is how you restored the timeline?"
Sorun nodded. "Needed the Master Emerald from the other timeline, but I made my way back here," he said. "Then there was white, and I woke up here. Still trying to figure out how that even happened."
"An impossibility in time caused by your meddling. Paradox, as you put it," Mogul asserted. "Fortunately enough it seems the only damage it incurred was correcting the fabric of space and time by wiping out that alternate timeline to preserve this one, likely through your own actions. It's not surprising such an... unstable method catapulted you here to this time by mistake," he explained. "You're fortunate this method even worked. It's miraculous you even survived the ordeal. But perhaps that was by design as well."
Sorun nodded at that, though with some hesitation at not understanding all his words. Even so, he wasn't feeling very lucky seeing as the world around him was the outcome. "So, Silver?" he pressed. "He wants to fix this? Un-apocalypse the world?"
Mogul's large eye ridges twitched, almost in pain at hearing the word "un-apocalypse" uttered. "Yes, quite," he replied in a clipped tone. "He's fully informed me of the breadth of his plan, and I've aided him in his pursuit by giving him whatever knowledge I can. He's been piecing as much information about the past as much as possible in order to be successful, but, regrettably, not much was recorded in regards to what happened it was so sudden."
"So Silver wants to go to the past and alter events so the world doesn't end." As far as goals went it sounded reasonable enough to Sorun. "And you're telling me this because...?"
"It was my assumption that you wanted to return to your rightful place in time. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but you'd rather not see the world in such a dismal state as this, correct?"
"No, Mogul, I am, in fact, not very pleased that I died a bunch of times and went through all these time shenanigans to save the world only for it to end up like this," Sorun said. "More than that I already lost one planet. Not gonna lose another. And it wouldn't be fair to all the effort everyone put in to saving it. It's an insult."
"Then go," Mogul suggested as he flipped a page. "As he is, Silver... quite frankly has absolutely no experience whatsoever when it comes to a world completely different from the one he grew up in. Words can only do so much to prepare him of an age of thriving civilizations. It's familiar territory to you, and he will have enough to worry about without being lost in it all."
Sorun didn't respond, unsure of what he should say. He wanted to prevent all this from happening, yes, but he also didn't want to fight to save the world anymore. He'd lost count of the amount of times he'd said he wanted to be done with it all only to end up being dragged back into the fray over and over. Didn't help nobody knew what even preventing all this entailed - assuming it was even doable.
But... he also didn't want to see the world end. Again. And since nobody else managed to do anything it seemed it was up to Silver. And Sorun if he chose to help out. And Mogul was really making it sound like Sorun should help out. And with his first impression of Silver, he wasn't sure he should leave the fate of the world in his hands alone.
He made his mind up.
"... I mean Silver seems like a capable enough guy. But since he's my ride back and I'll owe him one, I guess I'll help out. You know, for the world," Sorun said. "Where is he, anyways?"
To answer Sorun, Mogul lifted a hand and pointed in a direction - towards a far-off, leaning building that was largely intact compared to the ones around it. "Before civilization fell that building was a housing complex comprised of rental domiciles."
"You could have just said it's an apartment building, dude."
Very slightly, Mogul scowled. "As of late Silver has taken a pension for exploring such places for documentation to give further details of the past. Newspapers and journals and the like. I imagine he's there in preparation for his journey."
"Alright, great." With that, Sorun finally stood back up to his feet. After taking a moment to stretch his legs out to wake them back up, he looked back up at Mogul. "Well, I'm off then. To go back home and potentially save the world, because for some reason it keeps falling down to me. And, uh, hey, it sounds to me like you did a lot of raw stuff in the past, but you seem to be doing good now, so... yeah. Good on you." He flashed Mogul a thumbs-up.
"..."
"... I'm gonna go now," Sorun said. "Good luck with all this." He gestured to all the books surrounding the mammoth, and then turned to leave.
He made if halfway across the rooftop before Mogul spoke up.
"Wishing me good fortune is irrelevant, Sorun," Mogul called out. "I surrendered to the inevitability of it all long ago. It doesn't matter, in the end. None of it does."
Confused, Sorun turned back around to face the Mobian. "Whazzat s'pposed to mean?"
"Nothing of importance to you," he said. "Just try to remember on what I said. Not to engross yourself in something so deeply you lose sight of what truly matters."
"I'll try not to, I guess?" It came out as more of a question than Sorun intended, due to his sheer confusion over the words. He would have spoke further until he finally saw that look Mogul was giving Sorun. And for the first time since meeting him Sorun was finally able to figure out what that look was.
The look Mogul was giving Sorun held nothing but pity.
"Do have safe travels, Sorun. You and Silver both." And with that, he turned back down to his book. Sorun finally turned and left.
For the life of him Sorun didn't know what he did to warrant that look.
It took some time to get to the apartment building. Didn't look like one on the outside, too tall and not wide enough compared to apartment buildings Sorun was accustomed to back on Earth, but he saw it for what it was once he entered through the entranceway that lost its door. Check-in desk at the lobby, wall of mail boxes, small map that was halfway gone near the stairs.
He didn't know where Silver was, exactly, so Sorun just started going floor-by-floor while poking his head in random rooms. Some were gone completely, fallen away from the building and piled into debris on the ground below. Others largely intact, some even accessible because the doors were unlocked, broken, or just gone completely. He might've even taken some time to explore them if he wasn't in such a rush to get to Silver.
It was just his luck he happened to be on one of the upper floors. Sorun had found him when he'd poked his head into an apartment's living room, seeing the white hedgehog surrounded by papers and notebooks. He didn't even notice Sorun had entered until he'd cleared his throat, causing the Mobian to jump a bit and drop the journal he'd been holding in his hand.
"Yo," Sorun greeted, giving him a small wave. "I calmed down, talked with Mogul. We, um, we gotta talk about some stuff, man."
"Er... yeah, I'd like that." He looked almost relieved that Sorun wanted to talk, and gestured towards a nearby couch that still seemed to be in one piece. They sat down next to each other, Sorun leaning back on the couch to be as relaxed as possible while Silver was hunched forwards, hands clasped together as he thought, a foot tapping nervously.
Finally, Silver looked towards Sorun. "So you're really from the past?" he asked, eagerly.
"Yyyyep," Sorun answered.
"Okay, like- like how far? Master mentioned the Freedom Fighters, did you- he was talking about the Freedom Fighters, right!?"
"As far as I'm aware," Sorun answered again, waving his right hand in a circle. "I hung around them for a while."
"Oh my goodness, this is huge. This is amazing!" Silver'd gone from being nervous to being incredibly excited. Enough that he was slightly bouncing up and down while sitting on the couch. Sorun would believe he was vibrating. "Sorun, this changes everything!"
"Cool?" Sorun leaned up a bit so that he was sitting straight, finding it hard to keep looking towards Silver's white smile without being blinded. "I- it's cool you're happy an' all, but what's so important?"
"YOU!" Silver shouted, startling Sorun some. "I've been going left and right trying to get as much as I could to piece together some kind of picture so I had an idea of what I was getting into, but if you're from there then-!" He paused abruptly, and then gave Sorun a questioning look. "Wait, what are you even doing in the future, anyways?"
"I don't even know where to start with that one," Sorun told him. "Um... like, it's a lot, dude. I'm not even supposed to be in this zone technically."
"You're not?" Silver tilted his head a bit to the side. "Why? What happened with your zone?"
"Dunno about that universe as a whole, but my planet? Dead. Lot like this one," Sorun said. Silver flinched at that, and his smile dropped off completely in place of a sympathetic look. "Yeah, I don't even know why it died. I came to this zone, stayed a while, and when I tried going back found out it was gone so I just stayed. It's... it's not really related to why I'm here specifically, tell you later if you really wanna know, but it's part of why I'm really interested in your whole 'fix the future' plan. 'Cause this-" he waved a hand out towards a nearby window, "- this ain't cool." He leaned closer to Silver. "That's what you're doing, right?"
"Oh, uh, right. Yeah, yeah that's right." The saddened expression Silver held lightened up, and his ears perked up as he began to explain. "It's just... we have the Time Stone, and we could go back and fix this. Make it so the world never ended up, you know, like this." He nodded his head towards the same window Sorun pointed to earlier. "People would be alive, the world wouldn't be dead, my parents... I mean maybe I could finally meet my parents," he mumbled out. "And other stuff, I don't know. What did people back then even do, Sorun?"
It was too broad a question for Sorun to answer adequately, so he just shrugged. "Stuff?"
"Stuff," Silver repeated in a morose tone. "Yeah, I'd like to do stuff. Not the stuff I've been doing all my life, but... you get it."
"Yeah, I get it. I'm not exactly thrilled with how the world turned out either, Silver," Sorun said. "Believe me, I wanna fix it just as much as you do. It's all I've been doing is trying to fix the world."
Silver smiled at that. A small, easy smile that made him sag with relief as he gave Sorun a hopeful look. "Right, so... the thing is, I don't really know much about the past. Well, Master's told me a bunch and I've been reading some, but I haven't... it'd be really new for me," he explained. "So... you know, if you want to save the world as much as I do, well, er, you know your way around so maybe you could...?"
"You're going back two hundred years, right?" Sorun asked.
Silver nodded. "Yeah, two hundred exactly."
"Well you're in luck, Silver, because that just so happens to be when I need to go back," Sorun told him.
Silver smiled wider. "That's great!" The smile dimmed. "There's just, ah, one little thing."
Before he could ask what the hedgehog meant, Silver began digging into one of his gloves. He removed an object from the inner folds: something that fit in his hand and was glowing an intense orange color. He held it out for Sorun to see, who leaned in with interest as he peered down at the item in Silver's palm.
He almost mistook it for a Chaos Emerald, except the color was wrong as well as the shape. Where normal Chaos Emerald were shaped in the class round diamond shape, this gem was square in shape. Much like how a classic normal emerald would look, Sorun had considered with some amusement. Other than the shape and color it looked about the same: an orange gem pulsing with orange power.
But... there was something off about it, as well. It seemed dim, somehow, and its entire surface was marred with cracks, some pieces of its surface even chipped off. Like it'd been run over or dropped a bunch of times. Damaged. It made an unsure feeling pop up in Sorun, who glanced up at Silver with a quirked eyebrow.
"Looks busted," he observed, making Silver sigh and pull his arm back.
"Yeah, we don't know why. We found it like this," Silver said. "Master or Edmund could never figure out why, but somehow it got damaged. It's still good, in a sense that it works." There was an uncomfortable pause. "Once."
Sorun's face grew flat. "It's one and done."
"Yeah, as best as Master and I figure, it's gonna break completely after a single use."
"... Okay but you put a bit of practice into using it, right?"
"Sorun, I just told you it's gonna break after we use it."
"Fair point, fair point." A small, steadying breath left Sorun. "How confident are you about using it?" Because he didn't want something like Silver making a mistake and blasting them back too far or not far enough or something else. Not after he'd come this far. His heart couldn't take it all ending because of a stupid mistake like that.
The look Silver gave him, however, told Sorun that Silver was sure. "I've been training real hard with Master to make sure I get this right. Both with this and my powers," he said. "They help with using it. I'm telling you I can do this." He looked down a bit. "It's just... well, this is the only way back, you know? And if it breaks... sure, I'll save the future, but I'd be stuck in the past." His shoulders fell. "I guess I'd still be happy, but... well, I wouldn't be able to see Master again. Or Edmund. Or my parents, maybe other family I don't know about that'd come back. It's part of why I've been kind of dragging my feet on this, because I don't have a way back."
Sorun nodded. Made enough sense - more than enough sense, even. A large part of why he'd gone with setting the timeline back to normal was because of the people he'd lost. His... new family. He could understand how hollow a victory it'd be to save the future if Silver didn't even get to enjoy it afterwards. Hell, he sort of felt it right now with everything that'd happened.
The weight resting in Sorun's left hand offered him an answer, though.
"This day of yours just keeps getting luckier, Silver." When the hedgehog gave him a questioning look, Sorun held Yamato out. "'Cause I got this."
Silver blinked. "Okay." He blinked again. "How does that help?"
"This is how I managed to even get here in the first place," Sorun answered him as he shook it. "It's a super cool sword that can do super cool things, bypassing time among them. I can't send things backwards without inviting horrible consequences, it's not the same as the Time Stone, but I'm pretty sure I can still send stuff forwards without anything bad happening." Made sense in a logical way of thinking. Couldn't cause a time paradox by just going forwards, right? At that point it was just time acceleration with a few less steps.
"So," Sorun proposed, "here's what I'm thinking. You use the Time Stone to send us back, and we undo whatever it is that caused the world to end. And once it's done, once we are a hundred percent sure we did it and the future is safe and secure, I'll just use the Yamato to send you forwards in time back home. It'll be one-way, but, well, them's the breaks." He lowered Yamato into his lap. "So what do you think?"
He could see the gears in Silver's head turning. The idea had merit, and indeed if they went through with this it meant Silver had a viable way of going back once the problem was solved. And though he seemed excited by the prospect, there was still a hint of hesitation in his face. "Yeah, but... b-but we don't even know how long this is gonna take. It could be weeks, months, maybe even years! And I don't know anything about living in the past, I don't know where'd I'd go in the meantime and what I'm supposed to-"
"Dude, just come live with me," Sorun deadpanned.
Silver went completely still. His eyes went wide. "Seriously?" he asked in a quiet, disbelieving voice. "For real? You'd do that for me?"
"I mean, I got a guest room at my house. Nobody else is using it. Might as well be you." Sorun gave a shrug. "It's not really a bother, and you're cool enough."
"Oh." Despite still looking somewhat shocked Silver appeared happy at the offer. "W-well, uh, geez, Sorun, that's... that's really great. Thank you, really. I'd be glad to if you'll have me" He turned away from Sorun when his eyes became glossy. "Sorry, I didn't mean... w-well, you're just a really nice friend, you know?"
"I'm throwing him out on the streets if he tries to hug me." He didn't fortunately, though Sorun was still ready to fend him away in case Silver tried. He sort of looked like he wanted to, though, a prospect which deeply frightened Sorun. He quickly tried to shift to a different topic to avoid this. "So," Sorun quickly said, "what are we actually working with towards the whole 'save the future' thing?"
"Hm? Oh!" Bolting up a bit straighter, Silver seemed to remember something and bent down. There was a leatherbound journal resting near his feet that the hedgehog picked up, and then sat back up straight while showing it to Sorun. "The latest info I've gotten is from the contents of this journal I found in Edmund's library. Lot of the pages were missing, though. Or destroyed. Some water damage, too." Silver looked at the journal with squinting eyes. "Penmanship's kina hard to read too, actually."
He opened the journal up to a random page and showed it to Sorun. The human tried reading the contents, but already he could tell that he wouldn't be able to read anything at a single glance.
"Oh, yeah, this got written in a really girly cursive font. Kinda familiar, actually, but I can't place it." He looked up from the journal and at Silver. "And what else?"
"Right, well..." Silver opened up the journal and began skimming the pages. "In terms of what actually happened to end the world, we... don't really have anything. I don't even know when it really happened, just when it started: sometime two hundred years ago."
"So it was a long process, or...?"
Silver shook his head. "No idea. I just know some threat showed up two hundred years ago to cause all this."
"Hm." Sorun gave a short nod. "So we know a bit of the when, but not the how, why, what, or where. Do we got a who?"
"That's actually our biggest clue," Silver informed him. "According to what the Master told me, and it's corroborated by some of the things in this journal, it was a traitor in the Freedom Fighters that caused all this."
Sorun's mind came to a screeching halt.
A traitor. In the Freedom Fighters. The same ones he was acquainted with. All of his friends. One of them caused the end of the world and the desolation he only needed to look out a window to see. One of his friends caused the extinction of planet Mobius.
...
He didn't believe that.
"You're mistaken," Sorun said, voice firm.
Silver looked a bit taken back by Sorun's tone. "Sorun, I'm pretty sure-"
"You're wrong. The journal's wrong. Mogul's wrong." He shook his head. His grip on Yamato tightened, his anger flaring at the mere idea one of them caused all this. It was a ludicrous idea. Ridiculous. There was absolutely no way, zero way whatsoever, this was all one of their doing. He knew them too well to know it was impossible. None of them would even consider harming the planet for any reason.
"Then how do you explain what the journal says, Sorun?" Silver asked. "It says that a member of the Freedom Fighters, the same Freedom Fighters that helped free the world from whoever this Eggman is, whatever an egg even is, turned traitor. Master Mogul said this same traitor is directly responsible for causing the end of the world. I don't have much more than that because of how damaged the journal is." He flipped through some of the pages, and then stopped at a place. "The only detail it describes," he said, gloved finger running down a page, "is that it was a red-eyed Freedom Fighter that did it."
The anger and disbelief Sorun was feeling shifted into confusion. "Come again?" he asked.
"Yeah, says right here. Red-eyed Freedom Fighter," Silver repeated. He looked up at Sorun. "Can't be many like that, right? Maybe you could point them out to me?"
"Well, there's a serious problem with that, Silver."
"What's that?"
"There were no red-eyed Freedom Fighters."
Now Silver looked confused. "What? No, that... that can't be right." He went back to flipping through the journal's pages again. "None of them, really? Not this Bunnie person it mentions a lot?"
"Nope."
"Rotor, Tails, the guy who became the king, Sonic? The queen Sally?"
"No, uh-huh, nadda, none of them," Sorun said, shaking his head. "... Hey, am I in there?"
"Nah, I don't think... no, nothing," Silver said with a shake of his head after flipping through the journal once more.
An admittedly large part of Sorun was disappointed to hear that, and his head dipped a bit as a result. He'd figure him stabbing a god a bunch of times would only get a footnote in history, but not even that? With him making multiple sacrifices that cost him his life that quite literally saved the whole planet he should have at least got a whole page for that alone. He felt insulted.
"Maybe you're in the missing pages, I don't know," Silver informed him. He still seemed troubled by the earlier detail Sorun mentioned about the red eyes, and looked up at him. "There seriously isn't a single one of them that has red eyes?"
Sorun cupped his chin in thought. "I don't think so, no. Sonic and Amy had green, Tails and Sally had blue... actually, I'm not even sure I know anyone with red eyes. Knuckles had purple, Charmy had yellow, Vector had yellow, Espio had yellow, Honey's are more of a gold than yellow, that one guy Razor I met had yellow... man, I know a lot of people with yellow eyes." Sorun glanced up at Silver, who blinked his yellow eyes at him. "It's spreading."
"Sorun, this is serious!"
"Alright, alright." He went back to thinking. "Nah, I'm not getting anybody." He thought harder. "Well, except Shadow, I guess."
Silver made a loud gasp.
"Nope, no no, it ain't him," Sorun instantly denied, shaking his head roughly. "Nope, no way, I already went through the whole evil Shadow thing. It ain't him."
"But if he has red eyes-!"
"Silver, he's not even a Freedom Fighter," Sorun informed him, making the hedgehog back down. "He's this weird secret agent guy for the Overlander government. He did some joint work with the Freedom Fighters back when I was with them, but that was it. He wasn't actually a member."
"Alright, then it isn't him. Master made it pretty clear it was a Freedom Fighter." Silver flipped through a few more pages, but evidently didn't find more when he made a dismayed sound. "You really don't know anyone else with red eyes?"
"Other than him, no. And Eggman, with his weird black and red eyes, but I don't even need to tell you it ain't him. He's the exact opposite of a Freedom Fighter. He's a... Oppression Offender or something, I dunno."
Disappointment reigned over Silver's features. His shoulders fell, and a long sigh left him as he gazed at the journal's pages. "It doesn't make any sense, though. This is the biggest lead I have, and it's wrong?"
Sorun's mind went to work. "to be fair, 'traitor' doesn't really tell us a lot, because that could mean anything," he argued.
"I don't really see how that makes any sense."
"I don't know, man, it could be a number of things. Maybe somebody got brainwashed and it caused their eyes to turn red, or mind controlled, or it was an evil clone or robot doppelganger, an imposter, something along those lines." As Sorun rattled off possibilities Silver began to look up at him with wide eyes. "Geez, we don't even know who wrote that journal, so for all we know they were mistaken with something or some important detail was lost. You're seriously gonna put all your trust in an incomplete journal you just randomly found?"
"Wow, I... I didn't think about any of that!" The way Silver looked at him, he seemed almost amazed at Sorun. He was practically beaming at the Earthling with those bright eyes of his. "Sorun, you must be some kind of genius or something!"
The compliment did wonders for his ego, and Sorun found himself preening heavily under Silver's praise. "Ah, well, it's nothing too special, just some anime and video game logic," he said, rubbing his knuckles against his chest as a smile grew. "But the fact is," he continued, face turning back serious, "the only thing we have to go on is your master's word and a unreliable source of information that isn't even complete, Silver. I'm not a detective and even I know that's not nearly enough."
Silver's features tightened. He looked like he wanted to argue, but didn't seem to be able to come up with anything. He slumped in defeat instead and dropped the journal. "You might be right," he admitted. "So what do we do?"
"Well, seeing as we have almost nothing to work with and don't actually know what we're doing..." Sorun made a short hum, and then nodded. "Yeah, I say we do nothing."
"..." Silver stared.
"What?"
"The future's depending on us, and nothing will change if we do nothing... so you want us to do nothing even though we want to save everyone," Silver said, flattening his hands so they were parallel with each other and bouncing them up and down with each point he made. "I'm really hearing that from you?"
"Well yeah, sure, we're gonna do something when something pertinent to the situation pops up, kind of have to address it at some point, but we don't know what we're addressing, when it'll show up, in what form, how to prepare for it, practically nothing unless this traitor thing of yours is legit. Which it probably isn't," Sorun said. "But, like, until then there's literally nothing we can do but just kinda wait around for something to happen. So we'll just do that and improvise along the way."
"The future's riding on us and you wanna wing it!?"
"Dude, you wouldn't believe how far winging it has carried me."
By now Silver looked like he wanted to tear some of his fur out. It wasn't out of frustration for Sorun, though. There was a flicker of understanding on his face, and after a few moment he slumped forwards in defeat with a sigh. "Yeah, I guess you're right," he mumbled. "It just seems kind of reckless, though, doesn't it?"
"Well, there's nothing to do about it." It was incredibly reckless, but they were in the weeds, as it were. With all the nothing they had at their disposal the wait-and-see approach was really all they had going for them. Even Sorun hated the idea, except for the part where it didn't sound like it required much work, but he couldn't think of a better alternative. "So does that about sum up our plan? Or the lack of one? Go back to the past, do thing, save future, bunch of question marks thrown in? Profit?"
Silver opened his mouth a small bit and squinted a bit. "What?"
"Uh, we're good? Nothing else to talk about, go over? We're set to leave?"
He gave Sorun a nod. "Er, about as could be, I guess."
Grinning, Sorun slapped his knees and rose up off the couch in a standing position. "Well then pack your bags, Silver my man," he said, turning to the hedgehog, "'cause we gotta go back, back to the past, Samurai Jack."
"Again, what?" Silver repeated.
The grin left Sorun's face, and small, stuttering breath left him. "Just... how long until we can go?"
"Huh? What do you mean? We can go right now."
"Right now?" Sorun repeated in surprise. "Like, 'right now' right now? So soon?"
Silver stood up off the couch. "I don't really think soon is a thing with time travel."
"Probably not but, but I mean don't you wanna go say goodbye to Mogul or something?"
"Oh! Yeah, good call." Silver stood up off the couch, and then closed his eyes. After that he just continued to stand there, eyes closed with a slight look of concentration on his face as Sorun gave him an odd look. Before Sorun could make the motion to wave in front of his face he opened his eyes. "Okay, we're good. Let's go."
Sorun blinked a couple of times. He pointed at Silver. "So do you have a telepathy thing going on, or what?"
"Yeah, we- oh, you mean me. No, that's Master's ability. I can't, er..." Silver made a small grin, and began wiggling his fingers around his head. Then he stopped while looking a bit embarrassed. "Or, well, I do have mind powers, but they're not very good and kinda make me sick and-"
"You can only affect physical things, got it," Sorun finished. Silver gave him a grateful nod at the short explanation. "Mogul say anything important?"
"Erm, just goodbye. Safe travels and all that. We talked a bit about this beforehand," he confessed. He cupped his hands together, the orange gem resting in the center. "So... yeah," he said, quietly. "This is it. We're going right now."
"Uh, cool." A second of silence passed where Sorun rubbed the back of his head. "I was joking about the 'pack your bags' thing, but seriously is there anything you wanna bring with us? Memento, toothbrush? Anything?"
Silver shook his head. "No, I'm good." He looked up at Sorun. "What's a toothbrush?"
"God." Sorun lifted a hand and rubbed at his eyes. "Maybe Mobians have freakishly strong enamel or something. Who am I kidding, I'm gonna have to take this guy to a dentist when we get back. Quack does teeth, right? He sets bones. Teeth are basically just bones on the outside, practically no difference-"
"If you're talking about the tooth thing I do where I go like this-" Silver said, dragging Sorun from his thoughts. He took his hand away from his face and saw Silver hovering his index finger around his teeth. There was a teal glow around it, "- then yeah, I'm good. Master was... weirdly insistent about self-appearance and grooming techniques raising me. Especially teeth." He hovered his hand over the side of his mouth and leaned in closer. "I think it's because of the tusks he has. He's really sensitive over them," he whispered.
It was a unique person that could make Sorun feel so relieved and at the same time want to strangle them for making him worry so much. "... Silver, just... just do the thing with the crystal already."
Silver nodded. He looked down at the gem in his hands at the same time a glow started to emanate from the object. Soft, translucent coronas of orange, blue, and teal colors began to pulse out from the damaged gem, and a soft, orangish-yellow glow began to spread up his arms.
"Well, alright. Here we go. we're really doing this." Silver's voice sounded higher and more nervous than normal, and he'd made a gulp. "Um, you're gonna wanna grab onto my wrist so you come with me, Sorun. Or, you know, my shoulder. Anywhere on me, really, actually just go ahead and do whatever you're comfortable with-"
Without a word Sorun stepped to Silver's side and loudly clapped his shoulder with his right hand, and then squeezed tight. Silver winced a bit at the force used, but said nothing as he continued working on the Time Stone.
The pulses of light shining out of the gem began picking up in frequency. The orange-yellow glow by now had completely covered both Sorun and Silver, bathing them both in its glow as the gem brightened up the entire room, enough that it was too bright for Sorun to even see Silver's hands. He felt a small buzz humming through his body, like a current being run through him. And then, suddenly, there was a bright light that engulfed both Silver and Sorun.
And then they were gone.
A/N- Small changes to cannon here and there. If you're in the know with the comic lore you know, if not don't worry about it.
