A/N- This one went on way longer than I thought it would. I wanted to cut it into two chapters, but I made that stupid promise that I'd wrap it up in this chapter and we'd make it back to Mobius Prime by the next one, so here, you get this.
Recursion Error
Episode 87- The big weird
"..."
"Sorun?"
"I'm going to scream if they named the village after him."
Apparently there was a main, central village that most of the people on this island lived at. They'd asked around when they ran into some people while walking around the island. More animal people, because apparently the term "Mobian" wasn't used here despite the fact they seemed visually indistinguishable from Mobians Sorun had seen. Probably a quirk of this zone. Or maybe even a quirk of Mobius Prime in that the animal people there were called Mobians.
Sorun didn't know, nor did he care. He'd still call them Mobians, if only because it sounded more dignified than calling everyone an animal person.
Anyways, they'd been pointed to this village. It seemed rather large, at least compared to that last village they'd been to. The buildings from the outside looked to be of modern make and the handful of Mobians Sorun saw wandering around the inside had modern clothing on. He even saw a cop wander past in police dress blues. It almost seemed out of place with all the trees around them.
It was a genuine breath of fresh air until Sorun looked up at the sign in front of the village and saw what the place was called.
Hedgehog Village
He'd shoot himself if he could.
"What's wrong with the name?" Silver asked. He seemed worried over the fact that Sorun was visually seething at the sight of the sign, and took a tentative step towards Sorun. "Seriously, what's wrong?"
"If there's an Eggman here, then it's pretty much a sure thing that there's a Sonic here, and the idea people here like him so much they named the village after him just- ugh, I can't even put it into words." Sorun spun away from the sign in anger, pacing back a few times while putting his free hand on his face to try and calm down the throbbing in his head. "It'd be just like him to let them, too, him and his ego."
"... Sorun, what's your problem with Sonic?" The question caused Sorun to turn back towards Silver, who was giving him a questioning look. "Every time we run into an iteration of him in one of the other zones you get this look on your face like you'd rather be anywhere but near him."
"That's mostly due to the fact I'd rather be back on Mobius Prime right now."
"Yeah, sure, but you always act differently around him no matter what version it is." The deflection hadn't worked, so Sorun had turned his back to Silver so he didn't have to address him anymore. But the white hedgehog kept questioning him. "Sorun, come on, I'm trying to help. What do you have against Sonic?"
What didn't he have against him? Sorun didn't really want to answer that question, or pursue the matter any further with Silver, but he could tell from his tone that he didn't want to let it go. A large part of him hoped that he could say the bare minimum and get Silver to drop it so they could keep going, but it hadn't worked. So with a deep sigh Sorun hung his shoulders and turned back around towards him.
"Our personalities just don't really mesh," Sorun answered. "Sonic Prime, guy I know, is a genuinely good person but the more I got to know him the more..." He trailed off, frowning slightly at his own words. "No, that's not a good way to put it. Back when we first met he..." No, he didn't want to get into that, either. "... It's complicated. I don't want to talk about it."
"Does... does he know you have some kind of problem with him?"
"No, I never told him. He thinks we're completely cool with each other." Sorun sighed and looked back up at the sign. "I mean for all intents and purposes we are, so I never really brought it up since I didn't want to cause problems, but it, uh... look, just leave it alone, Silver. It's nothing."
"Okay, I guess." Silver didn't look like he especially understood what Sorun was saying, but he'd shrugged it off when Sorun kept looking up at the village sign. "So are we going in?"
"Yeah, sure."
Walking into the village proper Sorun felt mildly underwhelmed with the place. Silver seemed to like it based on the way he kept looking around at everything, but he always did that no matter where they visited. Still overwhelmed by all the new sights despite them doing this for a week now, but the guy had been living in an empty apocalypse before now, so Sorun couldn't blame him all that much.
As for himself, he couldn't say much. Looked nice enough, but New Mobotropolis spoiled him on nice-looking communities. The tropical texture was at least a nice change of pace. The people seemed... well, like people, not much Sorun could observe there. Seemed like overall a nice place.
"Fuck am I doing?" Sorun mentally sighed at himself. "Trying to distract myself with the sights so I don't have to think about the fact I have to scramble somebody's brains? Still don't even know if I should. If it comes down to it I might gotta, but..."
Sorun's eyes wandered over to Silver. He wouldn't approve. At all. Hell, he took aversion to just robbing people, so Sorun could imagine what his stance on a forced magical lobotomy would be considering how horrifying the concept was. In fact Sorun didn't think there was a single person he was acquainted with back on Mobius Prime that would agree with what Sorun was planning. Not even Shadow, and he was the only single person on board with the whole "hey why don't we just kill Eggman?" plan.
That probably said a lot for how bad an idea this was.
And this wasn't a crime he could just do behind Silver's back and then forget about when they left the zone like he'd been doing this whole time. If by some chance Sorun really did pull this off Silver would probably ask how Sorun magicked them up a way home, and he somewhat doubted telling him this zone's Eggman was feeling generous with their plight would quite cut it. He'd object, heavily, and even if they still got to the Prime Zone regardless he'd likely tell the others and Sorun would have to deal with that for the rest of his life. Best case was that Silver would shun him forever, worst case... well. The whole roboticization disaster made every Mobian over there skittish about things like this, so he could see how this could go so wrong so quickly.
And that was all assuming this Eggman even could get them a way home. For all Sorun knew he couldn't after all and he was stressing about all this over nothing.
Even still, if he had half the brain of his prime counterpart, that'd still more than likely make him the smartest person on this planet. A chance at getting back was still a chance, which was a lot more than the whole lot of nothing they had otherwise. Push came to shove Sorun was getting this Eggman to get them a way back if it was in his ability, one way or another. He just didn't know how to mitigate the consequences yet.
"So what's the plan for finding this zone's Eggman?" Silver suddenly asked, causing the pair to come to a stop. He fully turned to Sorun, asking, "Are we just going to ask around or what?"
Sorun shrugged. "Probably will have to, yeah," he admitted. "I don't have a better idea, but if he's as infamous as the prime one then it shouldn't be that hard. Besides, I don't think we're gonna run into him just bumbling around town-"
"This is outrageous!"
If he was in a better mindset Sorun would have been startled over how the world was so quickly tuned out from his senses. How the edges of his vision darkened, how sounds became muted and his breathing became oddly even. He couldn't even take note of any of this because his entire being was instantly locked onto that voice he heard. It was almost an exact match for Eggman Prime's voice. Tiny bit different, maybe, but it was all too recognizable.
With a stiffened body, Sorun turned towards the source of the noise. Silver had turned as well, but at this moment his very presence wasn't even registering with Sorun. The only thing in the whole world that existed right now was that voice, the person it was attached to, and the sword resting in his itching hands.
He was there. A couple houses over, right there in the middle of the street. Standing out in front of a shop and in front of a Mobian. All the rest of the details flew past him when he saw the man himself. Tall, large, wearing red, bald head, the damn goggles on his forehead and mustache. An image that was superimposed on all the memories Sorun knew of the man, flashing in front of him and blurring them all together into some twisted collage Sorun felt a burning hatred just witnessing.
At that moment, all the reservations he felt over using the Yamato so invasively on him faded in an instant. Sorun's right hand grabbed the Yamato's handle, with his eyes glaring scornfully at the man. Green began to flash in his blue irises as he made the motion to pull the sword out-
"I mean, come on! A thirty dollar late fee!? You're more evil than I am!"
It was almost like all of Sorun's anger was welled up inside a balloon, and hearing that sentence leave Eggman was like somebody popping that balloon with a needle. It all faded in an instant. The pounding rage in his ears, the muffling of sounds and tunnel vision he had been experiencing, and all the tenseness left his muscles so violently he was practically limp. His arms simply hung lifelessly at his sides as he stared with solid blue eyes at the sight in front of him.
"What did... what... fucking what?" He'd misheard. Had to have. The idea that this Eggman was even abiding by enough laws to be in a position to complain about late fees, implying he'd rented something through legal means, was mind-boggling enough. And then he focused on the actual issue. "THIRTY DOLLARS!? That's highway robbery!"
"It's highway robbery!" Eggman bellowed out. Sorun silently screamed as he stared on, completely baffled. "You're acting like I've been hogging the movie when I was only a day late on the return! You're really telling me 'Tale of a Troubled Tumbleweed' is so popular everyone here is chomping at the bit to see it!? It's a five-year-old movie, for crying out loud!"
"Dude, I just work here," the Mobian standing in front of him said in an uncaring, apathetic tone.
Sorun's jaw hung open. It was only through experience dealing with worlds' worth of nonsense that let him keep up, and even then he couldn't believe what he was seeing. "... Where the hell am I right now?"
"Hey, Sorun?" A small tug on his sleave caused a dumbfounded Sorun to turn his head. Silver was staring at the spectacle with what seemed as much confusion as Sorun held, though even while looking away he continued to tug on Sorun's sleeve. "Is that the evil egg person you keep talking about? He doesn't look like those egg things I ate for breakfast in that one zone."
"W-w... well he's not exactly Humpty Dumpty, but- wait, you're more right than you think." Upon further examination Sorun realized this Eggman didn't even look like the one he knew. That Eggman, Eggman Prime, had proportions that were borderline grotesque. Spindly arms and legs that were too thin attached to a spherical torso topped with an equally round head. Something that would have defied rational design if Sorun didn't know that the body he used had originally been mechanical in nature before being turned organic, though from what he heard the original organic body hadn't looked much better in comparison. Nobody ever took a picture for Sorun to compare. Probably for the best, really.
This Eggman wasn't at all like that. He wasn't even fat, not by Sorun's definition at least. Still weirdly disproportionate, maybe, but this one's limbs had actual meat on them. And his torso was less fat and more just large and extremely barrel-chested. There was still something distinctly inhuman about it, but it was less monstrously disproportionate like Eggman Prime and more being simply top-heavy.
"... Dude looks like a 'One Piece' character," Sorun muttered out after a few long moments of observation.
This time Silver did look towards Sorun when he spoke to him. "What's a 'One Piece'?"
A deep, heavy sigh left Sorun. "I'll never know now, will I, Silver?" he bit out angrily. Years of keeping up with that series and pirating manga chapters all for naught once life on Earth ended...
"Listen, man, I'm gonna level with you. Contrary to what the scale of some of my greater machinations would imply I'm not exactly rolling around in dough. You know how much it costs to ship materials all the way out here?" It was so odd to Sorun's ears to hear Eggman, even if it was alternate version of him, speak so casually. No condescending tone, no clever snark, no veneer of insanity. It almost sounded wrong to hear. "You can't let it slide just this once?"
The Mobian shrugged. "Store policy, man. Can't help ya."
Eggman crossed his arms. "Well maybe I just won't pay the late fee. What do you think of that, huh?"
"Then, uh... I guess I'm just have to call the cops."
"I should call the cops on you for price gouging! There's probably laws against this kind of thing!"
The two continued to argue back and forth, to a point that it just became incomprehensible jargon to the pair watching. Sorun himself was still stuck on the strange juxtaposition between the Eggman he was seeing now and the one stuck in his memories, and was barely even paying attention to what they were arguing about. Silver, on the other hand, was making a vested effort in keeping up, his head going back and forth to look at each speaker, but eventually he made a frustrated groan to signify him giving up, and then turned back to Sorun.
"Okay, I'm completely lost here," Silver said, throwing up his hands in the air while shaking his head. "What are they even arguing about?"
"Huh?" Sorun blinked his eyes a few times to give his brain time to catch up with the question. "Oh, Eggman's trying to weasel his way out of paying a late fee. Guess he returned a rental movie too late or something."
The confusion on Silver's face didn't falter. It only increased. "And what's a late fee?" he asked in a lost voice.
With a completely straight face, Sorun answered, "It's an evil practice perpetrated by people with no compassion for the common man, Silver."
"Oh. Okay." Nodding in understanding, Silver turned back to the arguing pair. "So is the store clerk in the wrong here?"
Sorun followed Silver's gaze. "Nah, I think he just works there."
"Um... but wait, hold on." Silver eye ridges furrowed. "Why is a late fee a bad thing? Don't they need to give people some kind of incentive to return stuff they borrow?"
"Yeah, but it's thirty dollars, Silver," Sorun argued, gesturing out towards the rental store. "You know how much thirty dollars here is?"
"Well, no. Not really. We just got here. We actually don't know what the value of money here is," Silver reminded Sorun. "It changes every zone we go to."
"... Since when?"
"What do you mean, since when!? You should be paying more attention to it than me! You're the one that keeps buying us food every time we run out!"
Sorun made a sharp inhale, and then he quickly coughed. "Oh yeah, right, that, now I remember. Totally."
"Enough of this!" The indignant yell from Eggman nearby caused Sorun and Silver to look back over at him. Both did double-takes, with Sorun in particular stuttering a bit in confusion. He was more than sure there hadn't been twenty robots standing around Eggman ten seconds ago when he'd been looking at him. Now there were, as if they'd been pulled in from the middle of nowhere.
If that weren't enough these weren't even the same robots that Sorun got used to in Mobius Prime. They still looked cartoonish compared to the ones he knew by heart, but somehow these seemed moreso. All painted red with big, blue eyes for visual sensors. And they weren't modeled after him. They seemed to be modeled after creatures. Bees and crabs. And ladybugs that had a wheel for a body for some weird reason.
It felt strange to Sorun to go from killer robots with guns and lances to these things. They didn't even seem half as threatening. Like downgrading from a Terminator to a little RC drone.
"People like you that are enabling these cutthroat business practices are part of the problem!" Eggman roared out. With a stomp of his foot the robots threateningly... or at least as threatening as they could look... advanced on the Mobian clerk. Apparently to him they were threatening because he'd gulped and taken a step back. "I won't let you maintain a stranglehold on my wallet any longer! You're going to void my late fee or else! Or at least give me a steep discount, I'm not unreasonable, because come on, man, really? Thirty dollars?"
Silver gasped out at the sight of the robots converging towards the store. "Sorun, he's going attack that guy with those robots! We gotta help him!"
"I dunno." Scratching the back of his head, Sorun gave the group of robots an unsure look. The next words that came out of his mouth pained him to say it, but he couldn't lie in this case. "I kinda agree with Eggman on this. Thirty bucks is pretty bogus."
Silver whirled to Sorun. He looked aghast at what he just heard. "That doesn't give him the right to attack someone over it!" he yelled out. "Why aren't you more worried about this!?"
"Silver, I grew up in a city where people shot each other for less. This isn't all that new to me."
The hedgehog flinched at that, but continued unabated. "W-well, we can't just stand here and do nothing!"
He had a point there, even if Sorun didn't want to admit it. He couldn't let this slide in good conscience even if he didn't want to get involved at all. It was a realization that made Sorun slump his shoulders and sigh out loudly as he lethargically turned back to the source of the impending attack where the robots were advancing on the store clerk. Still. They were still approaching him at an agonizingly slow pace.
"Okay they're going really slow for some reason, but whatever, let's go." It was probably the unenthused tone of voice Sorun adopted that made Silver shoot him a unimpressed glare before running off towards the robots. Sorun followed behind at a significantly slower pace, enough that his feet were dragging on the ground and leaving small trenches, with his sword bobbing up and down he had such a loose grip on it.
Silver had already planted himself between the group of robots and the store clerk by the time Sorun got close enough to matter. He stood just to the side of the altercation. Despite his involvement, he couldn't bring himself to appear that eager to be in the middle of this. He could practically feel the tired, I-don't-want-to-be-here-right-now expression dragging on his face. And he certainly felt it.
Then again, maybe in some weird way this was a good thing. It was technically an in with the Eggman of this zone, so now all that was left was getting around to coercing him for help. How that was gonna work with Silver so close was something Sorun had no clue on how to pull off. The wait and see approach it was, then, if only to see how this played out. Maybe he might learn something to help with their problem. That's what the shriveling optimist inside of Sorun hoped for, at least.
"Hey!" His arms and legs spread wide to act as a shield to the store clerk behind him, Silver had glared up angrily past the small legion of machines and up at Eggman. Unlike Sorun, he seemed fully awake right now, and more than that genuinely angry at what he was seeing. "I don't care what your problem is! You can't just attack somebody for charging late fee prices that might or might not be expensive!" He looked behind his shoulder and at the clerk. "Hey, is thirty dollars a lot here?"
"Yeah, it's a lot," the clerk confirmed with a nod.
"Oh." Expression cracking a bit, Silver whipped his head back towards Eggman. "Uh, s-still!"
Sorun scratched at his cheek. He wondered what the food here was like. "Kinda hungry. Really hope they have fries here. Haven't had a good fry in- ooh, wait, this is a tropical island, maybe they have coconuts! I've never had one of- oh, wait, yeah I have. Back with Razor. They're shit." His hand fell away from his face as he looked up in thought. "Maybe mangoes? I've heard good things about them."
While Sorun was preoccupied with lunch, Eggman had barked out a single, maniacal laugh while pointing at Silver. "Well, if it isn't my old nemes- hold on, something isn't right here." The wide grin on Eggman's face turned into a confused expression. He pulled his hand back and wiped at the blue lenses of his spectacles, as if attempting to clear something, though his expression only maintained being puzzled. "Sonic, did... did you bleach your fur and quills or something? And why does your voice sound really whiny now?"
"Huh...?" Silver reacted like he'd been slapped across the face. "H... hey, that's not a very nice thing to say..."
"Okay, I feel like I'm missing something. Are you not Sonic, or...?" Eggman's unseen gaze seemed to wander towards Sorun. His head snapped to him once he was noticed, and just like before Eggman pointed towards the coat-wearing teen. "Aha! Well, if it isn't my old nemes- oh come on, you're not him, either. The blue threw me off." A beat passed. Eggman leaned forwards a bit to look at Sorun, and then reared back in shock. "Egads! Well, I'll be! Another human! And here I thought I was the last one in the whole world."
Sorun's face fell at hearing that. He couldn't even tell if he was feeling disappointment or resignation right now. "Seriously? Here, too? Why does humanity keep dying out wherever I go?"
"... I have multiple questions about that statement," Eggman said. "But enough about that. Have either of you two seen Sonic and his friends around? They're usually here about now."
Sorun tilted his head in confusion. "You're... expecting them? Why?"
"I don't know, this is just our thing, you know? I do something villainous, they fight to stop me, I mean we have a whole weekly schedule around it and everything," Eggman casually answered, causing Sorun to reel in surprise. "I had to drag out the ol' 'threatening advancement of my forces' thing really hard since they're taking so long." He gestured to his feet at one of his robots. "Poor crab-bot unit two-seven-three here's an old model. He can't menacingly snap his claws like he used to and these long engagements are murder on his servos."
In response, the crab robot nearest to Eggman hefted its pincers up in the air and snapped. Instead of making a metallic tink! sound, the claws made a loud, grating sound as they snapped closed, as if something on the inside was rusted. There weren't even any sparks when the metal pincers touched.
Sorun didn't have the words to encapsulate the inane display he was witnessing. All he could do was stare.
"Well, anyways, uh... hm." Eggman examined a digital, watch-looking device on his wrist. "Okay, listen, my shows are going to come on pretty soon, so since Sonic's taking forever to get here you think you guys could sub in for him? You two are hero-types, right?"
Silver, discarding his previous hurt look, gave an enthusiastic nod. "Of course!"
Sorun couldn't have mustered a single shred of enthusiasm if he tried. "Eh... on a good day, I guess."
"Alright, good enough. You both are tagged in." After clearing his throat, Eggman began to suck in a deep breath. "Annnnd...!"
Sorun rose his right hand up. "Wait, hold on, seriously what's going on-?"
"ATTACK!"
Apparently that was the tolling bell for whatever insanity they'd been dragged into. The robots surged forwards, suddenly moving much, much faster than they had previously during their threatening approach on the store clerk. A majority of the robots were barreling towards Silver. In fact, all of them were going towards Silver. The only exception was a single robot that singled out Sorun for some reason, so it chose to go for him.
It was one of the ladybug-like robots that had a single wheel for a body. In terms of weapons all it seemed to have was two stubby, pointed arms. Sorun stood rooted in place as it converged on him, wheel screeching as it approached. Blue glowing eyes locked threateningly on him. Pointed arms were coiled back and ready to strike once it was in range.
He kicked it in the face.
The kick wasn't even that hard a one in retrospect. Sorun couldn't even call it halfhearted; he was so bewildered by what was going on that he couldn't summon up the effort. It was more a light punt than anything else. Even so, the wheel robot had fallen down on its side.
"Aww. It fell down." It didn't seem to have taken any visual damage, but it didn't seem to be able to actually get up, either. It just kept spinning its wheel, turning around in a circle as it tried and failed to right itself. It was actually kind of sad to see. "Alright, well, they can't be that tough if a scrub like me can manage." That actually caused a bit of Sorun's confidence to well back up. He'd actually began gripping his sword eagerly as he turned towards the rest of the robots that had swarmed Silver.
That confidence promptly deflated out of Sorun when he saw that every single robot that had gone for Silver was floating up in the air around him, each surrounded by a teal glow.
"Oh, you already- okay, that's fine. Cool." He'd been so excited at the prospect of fighting something marginally weaker than him that Sorun had already pulled his sword halfway out of its sheath. His mood had plummeted upon seeing Silver having dispatched them already, causing him to slam the sword back in the scabbard with a huff. "Fuck me for wanting to do something I guess, Silver's got it."
The white hedgehog didn't even seem the least bit winded by the exertion of lifting up over twenty robots with his mind. More than anything he just seemed confused, maybe even a bit irritated at Eggman, who was just standing there staring at Silver with his mouth agape. Sorun was pretty sure he couldn't add anything to this, so he decided to just look back down and watch the wheel robot spin around.
"So, um, hey, Mr. Eggman guy?" Silver tentatively asked. "Can you please not attack people with your robots? It's not a nice thing to do."
"... But that's what I do. I attack people with robots," Eggman argued in a weak voice. His entire posture screamed being defeated.
"Um... please don't?"
"This isn't even fair. How am I supposed to fight a guy that can move things with his mind?" He glanced off to the side and snapped his fingers. "Knew anti-psychic tech wasn't a scam like business stocks. Should've invested after all." With a sigh, he turned back towards Silver. He seemed to visibly wither at the sight of his robots floating helplessly around Silver. "Fine. You win. Here."
Grumbling incomprehensibly under his breath, Eggman began stomping forwards while rummaging around in his back pocket. He walked past Silver, who followed the larger male with wary eyes as he stopped in front of the store clerk. A fistful of bills was taken out of Eggman's pocket, who subsequently threw the money at the clerk's face. He failed to catch the bills, which all slowly floated down towards the ground.
"There," Eggman growled out, rounding back at Silver while the clerk knelt down to collect the dropped money. "You successfully ensured unethical consumerism lives to see another day. I hope you can live with yourself, Not-Sonic."
"I... think I'll live?" The statement felt like it was asked by Silver, who was blinking very heavily at Eggman. "I really don't understand half of what you're saying, but thank you for paying the nice man. Here you go."
The robots floating around Silver were slowly lowered down to the ground. Once their feet found purchase on the ground the teal glow faded from around their bodies, and they began to move around freely. Even the fallen, spinning robot Sorun was staring at was briefly engulfed by that teal glow, only lasting for a couple of seconds to allow Silver to telekinetically right its position so it was back on its wheel.
"Huh?" For some reason Eggman seemed taken back by the gesture. His head was bobbing back and forth between the robots, who themselves seemed confused by the way they were swiveling back and forth at each other, and Silver, before he finally asked Silver, "That's it? You're not going destroy my robots?"
"No?" Silver answered/questioned.
"Give me some grandstanding speech or heroic one-liner?"
"I wasn't planning on it?"
"Humiliate me by using me as a volleyball?"
"No!" Silver seemed equally shocked and appalled by the mere suggestion. "Goodness, that sounds horrible! Why would anybody do that!?"
"Er, yeah, right, that does sound like something really humiliating to be on the end of. Not that I would know. Ahem." Eggman turned his head to the side and coughed, and then turned back to Silver. "Okay, seriously, what's the deal? My whole experience in this kind of thing is my robots get destroyed and I have to go off and sulk about it for five minutes before I get hungry and forget about it."
If any of that actually meant anything to Silver, he didn't show it as he shrugged up at the man. "Well, you're not attacking anybody right now. And you seem like you really care about these robot things you built." He pointed his hand at one of the crab robots scuttling around him while snapping its pincers up at him. "Like this crab thingamajig, so, well, I didn't want to break them and make you feel sad."
"... Huh." The combination of the mustache and the blue-tinted glasses covering his eyes made Eggman's current expression inscrutable. He was thinking about something, but what that something was Sorun couldn't parse standing so far away while silently observing. "You're a weird guy," Eggman concluded. He lifted his wrist up and pressed a few buttons on the device strapped to his wrist. "I'm gonna go home. See you around, White Sonic with the weird haircut." He turned to Sorun and gave him a single wave. "Other guy."
Sorun could only do as much as give him a stiff wave as he stared numbly at Eggman. Out from behind a few houses some floating vehicle - a white, floating chair inside a hemisphere that was disturbingly familiar to Sorun - floated over to the scientist. He'd gotten in without another word, and the chair carried him off far enough that he was quickly out of their line of sight.
Noticeably he'd left the robots behind.
"That was whacked." Really the only way Sorun could describe the experience he just witnessed. He doubted even given sufficient time he'd be able to ever fully process what just happened. Maybe it was his personal experience that directly conflicted with what he just saw: a non-homicidal, non-genocidal, may-or-may-not be insane, Sorun wasn't sure on that one, Eggman. He wouldn't have thought such a thing possible; in fact, despite seeing it with his own eyes, he still didn't believe it. But the sight still gave him pause.
Something to think about for later. Maybe there really was something to this multiverse thing, but Sorun wasn't counting on it.
When Sorun approached Silver, he seemed to be at as much at a loss for words as Sorun. Not at Eggman, it seemed, but at the robots. How they were all still scuttling around, seemingly lost without their maker around. He was holding one of the crab robots in his arms. "I thought you said this guy was supposed to be a maniac?" Silver asked him upon approach.
The only thing Sorun could offer was a shrug. "Multiverse, man, I dunno." He looked down at the robots. "So, like... he just left them here?"
"Yeah, I think they're gonna have to walk their own way back. I guess he wasn't expecting them to make it this long." There was a deep frown settled on Silver's face. He was obviously displeased with the thought, and his feet were rocking in restlessness. "I think I should probably carry these all back to where he lives."
"You don't even know where that is," Sorun pointed out. "And also, seriously? Why?"
"Because it's the nice thing to do, and plus we need to ask him about helping us anyways."
Right, they'd forgotten to do that. The thought hadn't even come to Sorun's mind, he'd been so busy trying to understand what his eyes were seeing, and Silver had been as bewildered as him. He still had reservations over the idea, though. Regardless of what they just saw, it was Eggman. Sorun didn't trust him as far as he could throw him regardless of what iteration he was, and with his strength that was an effective distance of zero. Even factoring in what they just saw, because for all Sorun knew it was just a psycho that happened to be acting on a friendly whim at the moment.
Agreeable people didn't carry around attack bots with them. He was pretty sure, at least.
"You don't think we should be a bit more tactical with approaching him?" Sorun asked.
"Tactical? Wha- what does that even mean? Tactical? How much tactics can you stuff into knocking on a front door?" Silver questioned.
A flat look was sent to Silver by Sorun. "You wanna knock on his front door," he deadpanned. "Eggman's front door."
"It's polite! I don't wanna just sneak in through a window or someth-"
Silver's words died on his lips when something zoomed past their vision. Sorun hadn't been able to perceive precisely what it was that passed them, but he'd been able to perceive the color. That blue shape that'd zipped right past Sorun and Silver was recognizable enough to Sorun he couldn't not know who it was. That dark shade of blue alone was telling.
There was a small explosion besides them. When Sorun looked to the side at the blue leg stomping down on the remains of one of the robots, he had an uncaring expression. Silver looked shocked and horrified at the person who'd just destroyed one of the many robots surrounding them that, for all intents and purposes, was yet another alternate universe dead-ringer for the Sonic he personally knew. Except for the brown scarf he wore, Sorun didn't know what was up with that.
"What is wrong with you!? Why!?"
That shriek had come from Silver, who looked torn between morning the nameless jobber robot that just died and furious over the fact this Sonic just killed it. Sorun himself didn't have enough skin in the matter to care, but while he was keeping up a bored, neutral expression, he was laughing on the inside at seeing Silver yell at Sonic.
"Uh, saving you guys?" Sonic turned to Silver and actually managed to look offended at the outburst. "You guys new here? Never seen you around before, but here you're supposed to stay away from the evil robots. You're welcome, by the way."
It was a level of condescension that was reserved for parents scolding children. It cut the amusement right out of Sorun, and now he was silently smoldering while keeping his bored expression. Silver wasn't nearly as successful at hiding his anger; he looked downright livid, and Sorun didn't even know if it was over the words or if he was still hung up on the robot.
"We aren't being attacked!" Silver yelled out. "Everything was fine until you showed up!"
Blinking, Sonic took a quick glance around at the robots surrounding them. They weren't even doing anything but standing around to witness all the shouting, though the one that had been in Silver's arms had scuttled off in a panic after its brother got stomped to death. Sorun didn't know why. If they were just that limited in programming that they didn't know what to do without Eggman around or if they were just intelligent enough to have some sense of morbid curiosity and they were just sticking around to see what happened.
"You sure about that? Really?" Sonic asked, taking another quick glance around at the robots. "And where is Eggman, anyways? He's usually not off-schedule for this."
For the first time since he showed up Sorun spoke out to Sonic. "He does this regularly enough you planned a schedule around it?"
"Yeah, Saturdays, alternating Tuesdays and Thursdays, other days depending on the mood. He tries to be flexible with it. Unfortunately."
"..." What was he even supposed to say to that?
Another robot exploded nearby. When Sorun looked, he saw a robot completely flattened under the head of a large hammer. He didn't have to look past that and the patch of pink in his peripheral to know it was this world's Amy. "Hey, Sonic? What's going on with these guys?"
"They're being difficult is what's going on," he grumbled out as he turned back to Silver. "Listen, buddy, I'm trying to help you and your friend here, so if you would just step aside so that we, that is the heroes, could get rid of the robots-"
"You don't need to get rid of them!" Silver argued, voice so loud it was cracking slightly. "They're not even trying to hurt anyone! Just leave them alone!"
"Are- did you hit your head or something?" Sonic asked. "Dude, they're evil robots. Nobody'll care."
"Eggman will care! He put a lot of work into making these things, I don't want him to be upset!"
"What are you, some kind villain apologist?" Rolling his eyes and shaking his head, Sonic spun towards the nearest robot. "Whatever, listen just watch. As soon as we clear out all these robots-"
Sonic's words ceased right there. All movement ceased the moment his entire body was enveloped by a film of teal energy. The same energy that was roiling around Silver's hands as he stared angrily at Sonic.
"No. No, let's try not doing that," Silver suggested, his teeth grit in bitterness. His voice had inversed him high and shrill to low and harsh, and all of his anger was being directed right at Sonic.
Now Sorun did actually laugh. It was a small, breathy thing, only done once and barely audible, but it was enough to get the barest of grins out of him at seeing Sonic frozen in place like that. Amy was less amused and more panicked by the sight.
"Sonic!" she cried out. Anger overtook her features as she swiveled towards Silver, who double-turned at her in surprise as she lifted the hammer up. "Why you-!"
She'd swung the hammer. It'd come within inches of Silver's face before freezing mid-swing, along with the rest of Amy's body as his power surrounded her. The swing itself had still managed to carry enough force to blow his fur and quills back despite the fact it didn't hit, something that seemed to rattle Silver. The anger was gone. Now he just looked awkward and unsure, standing between a frozen Sonic and Amy.
"U-uh, hey, guys," Silver timidly stuttered out, "listen I didn't mean to do this but seriously if you would just listen-"
"Sonic! Amy! No!" A third voice cried out from above them. Both of the teens looked up, but unlike Silver Sorun didn't look surprised at seeing a two-tailed fox dropping down on Silver with a wrench in his hands. And like the other two he got frozen mid-air before he even touched the white hedgehog.
"Okay this is getting out of hand, guys PLEASE-!"
"Don't worry, guys! There's no way he can do that four times in a row!"
Confusion settled on both Sorun and Silver's faces when they, and in unison the surviving robots around them, turned towards the sound of the voice. Sorun almost didn't recognize it because something sounded incredibly off with it, but the shade of red covering the fourth figure sprinting towards Silver gave away that it was Knuckles. At first Sorun balked at the idea that he would do something as moronic as charge somebody who just froze three comrades in close range. Then he got a good look at him and reared back in shock.
"Dear fucking god, why are his legs so much smaller than his arms?"
He was making somewhat of a joke before, but now Sorun was wondering if there really was some kind of 'One Piece'-esque irregular proportion thing going on with this zone. It was a good explanation for why Eggman had looked the way he had. It was the only explanation Sorun could think of for why this world's Knuckles had a chest and arms that looked five times larger than the rest of him, especially when all the other Mobians looked comparatively normal.
And apparently Silver could do it four times, because this Knuckles' war cry got cut off halfway when Silver entrapped him in a telekinetic hold like the others. He didn't even get the chance to try and punch him.
"Why do you people keep attacking me when I just want to talk!?" Silver yelled out. He made a frustrated sound, looking at all four of the Mobians locked in stasis, and then looked to Sorun for help. "Is this some kind of weird inversed zone where all the bad guys are good and all the good guys are bad? Is that what this is?"
Sorun shook his head. "Nah, that's Moebius. Or so I've been told, at least. I'm pretty sure everyone here's just a weirdo." Was that what this was? The weird zone? Was strangeness of this caliber out of the ordinary for the multiverse or did this kind of weirdness set a standard for how ridiculous things could get? Did it even matter in a multiverse of infinite possibilities? Hopeless questions like this along with the experience was the main reason Sorun was able to weather all of this with relative ease. Enough to ask the hard question at least, like why the hell this version of Knuckles looked so top-heavy. Or what that wooden thing whizzing towards Sorun's face was.
"Huh?"
That was all Sorun managed to get out before his reflexes kicked in, and he reflexively managed to tilt his head far enough to dodge the spinning object. Unfortunately for Sorun, after passing him it'd curved and began sailing towards the back of his head. And Sorun, with his back turned to it, had no way of seeing its approach.
Everything went black after the thing struck him in the back of the head.
When Sorun woke up, the first thing he felt was an overwhelming urge to commit violence.
Of course the splitting headache he felt quelled those desires immediately, causing him to groan out and hold a hand to the back of his head where it was throbbing. Opening his eyes revealed blurry vision, but it was good enough that he could make out the living room he was in. And from how uncomfortable he felt he didn't even need to look to know he was laying on someone's couch.
More importantly than all of that was the bright, blue glow of the object resting on the foot table next to the couch Sorun was laying on. Without a thought he reached a hand out and brushed his fingers against the glossy, smooth surface of the Emerald. His hair shifted into a white color, and he breathed out a relieved when the pain instantly flashed away and his vision adjusted perfectly to his surroundings.
The urge for violence had come back as well.
Another quick glance around revealed that this was someone's living room. Decently furnished, obnoxiously bright from all the open windows letting in the clear, afternoon sun. Something else he just now noticed with his enhanced nose... something... briny?
Sorun vaguely remembered that smell, from when he'd crashed a plane on an island. That was an ocean he was smelling.
He sat up. There was a window nearby that he leaned towards, and looking outside revealed he was correct on what that smell was. There was a beach outside the house he was in, with an ocean just beyond that softly crashing into the shore. Although the sights were pleasant enough, for Sorun they were all spoiled by the sight of a nearby gathering of palm trees, the hammock tied between them, and the blue hedgehog sleeping in this hammock.
"Alright, might hurt him, might not, let's see how it goes." Exhaling sharply through his nose, Sorun pushed away from the window. He only had to turn around to see the front door to the home, and conveniently enough it was already open to him. His hair turned black and the gem shifted into Yamato as he walked out of it.
There wasn't hiding the pang of envy Sorun felt when he walked out of the home and turned around briefly to examine it. By all rights it was a fairly modest hut more than anything else, but a beachside house was still a beachside house, and he never so much as went to a beach growing up. His own house in New Mobotropolis was better than anything else he could have fairly asked for, but if this was Sonic's hut something in Sorun twisted uncomfortably knowing that, somewhere in the multiverse, there was a Sonic somewhere living with a beach view when he didn't have one. Not even that there was someone with a beach view when he didn't, but that it was a Sonic with the beach view.
Holding back his grumblings, Sorun stomped his way over to the sleeping Sonic. Either the sand muffled his footsteps sufficiently or he was just that heavy a sleeper, because he didn't so much as rouse from the hammock when Sorun stopped right in front of him. He just continued sleeping contently in that hammock.
"How much of a dick could I be right now?" Pursing his lips in quiet contemplation, Sorun looked up. He only a moment to find inspiration once his eyes landed on the ocean. "Hey, I wonder if this one's as hydrophobic as mine?"
As quietly as he could, Sorun unsheathed the katana from his side. So far so good; Sonic hadn't woken up. He pointed the sword upwards and, very carefully, cut a cross into the air above Sonic which folded inwards into a portal a second later.
At the same time a similar portal appeared just below the surface of the water nearby.
A torrent of water poured out from the portal and directly onto Sonic. That had woken him up, sending him into a thrashing, screaming fit from the makeshift waterfall assaulting him. It was only after he was washed out of the hammock and fell onto the ground that Sorun closed off the portal and water, but by then the hedgehog was already sufficiently drenched.
Immediately he turned his green eyes up to Sorun's unflinching blue. He had an angry expression. "What the heck was that for!?" he screamed out at him.
"For somebody knocking me out with a boomerang. You guys are lucky I just happen to carry around the cure for brain damage," Sorun tersely answered.
"I try to make up for that by letting you sleep it off in my house and you thank me by dumping the ocean on me!?"
"... Well, yeah."
A drenched Sonic stood up to his feet. There was a slight tremor in his body, and he tried shaking some of the loose moisture off himself to no avail. He was still wet. "You're a real jerk. You know that?"
"Only to you, Sonic," Sorun answered honestly.
Sonic's eyes narrowed. "I'm having a hard time believing that Silver guy when he says you're the nicest person he's ever met in his entire life."
"To be fair I've met the other two. It isn't that high a bar to get over," Sorun said. "What ended up happening after I got assaulted?"
"Whoa-ho-ho, hold up now, buddy. 'Assault' is a really strong word," Sonic said, holding his hands up in front of Sorun. "I think what you're looking for is 'lawful citizen's arrest'."
"I wasn't even doing anything. I was just standing there."
"... Yeah, well... you got better, so does it matter?"
He wanted to hurt him so badly. Somehow Sorun managed to hold off, inhaling a deep breath, keeping it in for five seconds, and then slowly exhaling. It was a good thing he did, too, since he got an idea that replaced his growing urge to do something irrational. "Alright, cool, so you wouldn't mind me getting a cop's second opinion?"
Sonic froze at that. "Huh?"
"Yeah, sure. I saw one or two walking around on the way into this village. Had badges 'n' everything. I'm admittedly new here, but I wonder what they'd have to say if I told them... who threw the boomerang?"
The hedgehog didn't look like he wanted to answer. He'd grown a resigned look in his eyes, and he visibly deflated and hunched over while muttering, "Sticks."
"Whoever that is. I don't imagine they'd have good things to say."
"They wouldn't- okay, listen."
When Sonic lifted his head up to Sorun, he was expecting a lot of things. A resentful look, maybe even a violent look. Something that suggested that Sonic was going to take action against Sorun for threatening a friend with the police. He already started preparing for it, ready to transmute the Emerald and have it stop time so he could break Sonic's legs while in the stopped time.
But instead of all that he had a pleading look in his eyes, and Sorun had to remind himself that, even if he looked a bit different and wasn't his Sonic, it was still a Sonic. And it seemed to be a near-universal constant that all Sonics were insufferable good guys of some sort, because it was the case for all the other Sonics he and Silver had encountered on the way here.
"Look, I know we just met and I know we didn't really hit it off alright, but Sticks has a... not the best reputation, okay, whole town knows she's kinda kooky, so the cops'll actually believe you and I'm pretty sure that video store guy saw the whole thing so-"
Sorun held a hand up to stop him. He made a small sigh, fuming at the fact he was starting to feel guilty over the guy. He just had to have the moral integrity to be truthful and honest with Sorun thus far and resort to pleading with him instead of doing anything else, and now his conscience was yelling at him again. He already felt bad over the whole thing.
"Alright, fine, just... forget the cops, just tell me what happened and I'll leave it alone," Sorun bit out, lowering his hand.
The amount of relief Sonic displayed right after was almost alarming. He'd snapped right up to a straight posture with a large smile on his face. "Whew! That's a real load off." At noticing Sorun's quiet gaze he cleared his throat. "Okay, right, so... Silver got really mad after you got hit and had us all frozen. He explained everything, and we all felt bad about the misunderstanding so I took you and your weird crystal thing that turns into a sword for some reason back here to sleep it off." He backed up a step when Sorun kept staring. "Seriously man, I'm sorry. We all are. No hard feelings?"
There was no visible reaction on Sorun's part when Sonic held out a clenched fist in front of him. It was obvious he was expecting a reciprocating fist bump, but Sorun was debating if he should. He didn't want to, but at the same time he didn't want to send mixed messages by not doing it. But then again he didn't really want to.
He settled for raising his hand up and tapping on one of Sonic's knuckles with a single index finger once, and then brought the hand back to his side. Sonic made an uneasy chuckle and lowered his own hand.
"Oookay, I'll take it. Eh-heh. Weirdo." Sonic looked off to the side. Movement out of the corner of his eyes caused Sorun to look in the same direction, where he recognized the two figures walking towards them. Well, he recognized the Tails in this world, he looked about the same as his. He was still poorly coming to grips with how the Knuckles here looked.
"Sonic! Oh, hey, the guy Sticks knocked out woke up!" They stopped in front of them, with Tails being the one to displaying gleefulness for Sorun's sake. But then he'd looked over at Sonic and began to look puzzled. "Did you just get out of the shower? Why're you all wet?"
"Yeah, I wonder why," he bit out, turning his gaze to Sorun. "How'd you even do what you did, anyways?"
"Hm?" Sorun feigned confusion. "Do what?"
"Don't even play like that, you know what I mean! The whole water thing!"
"I have no recollection of the event in question." He, of course, did, but seeing the incensed look on Sonic's face was more than worth it.
"Aw, don't worry, new guy." This came from the disproportionately-sized Knuckles. "I forget stuff all the time, too. You get used to it. At least I think you do. I might have forgotten that."
Sorun blinked. Slowly. Then, with even more painful slowness, he turned towards Knuckles, who was giving him a dopey smile with an otherwise vapid expression. He tried not to let the pain he felt hearing him speak show on his face. "Is... is that so?"
"Yeah. Oh, and, uh, guess we should say sorry for the mix-up earlier." Knuckles made a light laugh and rubbed the back of his head. "So yeah, sorry for thinking you were the bad guy. I kinda thought all humans that wore coats were evil."
Sorun glanced down at his coat, face impassive. He looked back up at Knuckles' face. An eye twitched. "We are not."
"Okay, cool." The echidna's purple eyes lit up in realization. For all Sorun knew that was some kind of miracle. "Oh, wait! Did you get your big glowing blue thing back? That other guy who wasn't Sonic or the other mean striped guy that isn't Sonic said it was important."
"Uhh... yeah." Sorun lifted his katana up and lightly shook it. "Got it right here."
Knuckles squinted down at the sword. He pointed at its scabbard for some reason. "You put it in there?" he asked. "How the heck did you manage to fit something so big in something so tiny?"
For the first few moments Sorun struggled to understand what he was even asking before realizing Knuckles was under the impression he somehow fit a Chaos Emerald inside of a katana's scabbard. He didn't know how to respond to that. Literally. He'd never in his life ever had to think up a response to something so absurd and he was left silently staring at the echidna. Besides him, Tails just looked tired at hearing that question.
It was Sonic who broke the silence by groaning out quietly while pinching the space between his eyes at the same time. "No, Knuckles, the blue crystal thing turns into a sword, remember? It happened when he dropped it after he got hit?"
Knuckles didn't even so much as respond to Sonic. Like Sorun he'd resorted to blankly staring at the blue hedgehog, only unlike Sorun he seemed completely unresponsive and his face was blank. It was something that genuinely disturbed Sorun, enough that he'd risen a hand up and waved it in front of his face. He only became more alarmed when there was zero reaction.
"Does... does he have brain damage or something?" Sorun hesitantly asked as his waving became more frantic. "'Cause if he does I'm sorry, but that cure for brain damage I mentioned only works on me."
"No, he just needs a minute or two to process things sometimes," Sonic answered. "Your Knuckles isn't like this? Silver told us about the whole 'from another universe' thing."
"He's, um, no. He's normal. Most of the rest of his kind ain't but the less said about that the better."
"Oh, there's more echidna where you're from?" Tails asked. "Knuckles is the only one we've ever found."
"Yeah, you're probably better off for that." Sorun turned away from Knuckles and to Sonic. "So Silver told you? It doesn't freak you out? Us being universal aliens?"
Sonic shook his head. "Nah, believe it or not this isn't the first time something like that's happened around here."
"Ah, I see." Sorun nodded, taking the information in stride. "Sounds... exciting?"
"It's exhausting, that's what it is," he grumbled out, bending forwards a bit. "I just wanna take a nap but I can't go a week without something crazy happening around here. It's a serious pain."
That actually drew some amusement out of Sorun. "You're a snarky one, huh? More than my Sonic, at least."
Sonic straightened up. "Oh, yeah? What's that guy like?"
The question made a small jolt go through Sorun. A hundred thoughts and opinions raced through his mind. None of them were positive. He shook his head as he tried to think of something appropriate. "Uh... his arms weren't blue?"
Green eyes glanced down at their owner's arms. They rose back up to give Sorun an unimpressed look. "Seriously? That's all you got?"
"What do you want from me? You're not exactly the same but in broad strokes, yeah, I'm not seeing much of a difference. Only difference is that guy thrives on the whole hero thing and sucks at video games," Sorun said, the last sentence coming off sounding bitter.
"Ha! Figures me from another world isn't even better than me," the hedgehog boasted. "None of my friends are ever able to beat my scores, even in the new games that keep coming out. Kinda wish they'd stop pumping out so many zombie games, though. Feel like it's sorta being overdone."
Sorun made an agreeing nod. "Yeah, they were kind of oversaturating the market back where I'm from, too. Few bangers here and there, but most of them were a solid meh. Last one I played, 'Dying Light', was pretty great, though. Do not think that sequel will be coming out due to recent events." Sorun pointed at Sonic. "Actually you kinda sound like the main character guy in that game."
"Oh, really?"
"Yeah, not like the Sonic I know. Urkel-soundin' motherfucker..."
Wasn't exactly the same, and Sorun attributed the fact his Sonic's voice was at least tolerable was due to him being sixteen and puberty having done something to smoothen his voice out. But by god, did Sorun not want to know what he sounded like when he was younger.
"Snorkel-muffin what?" Sonic repeated in a confused voice.
Quickly clearing his throat, Sorun said in a slightly louder tone, "Hey, you know what, it's been great meeting you guys but I gotta get back with Silver and we really gotta go, you know? Real, er, 'portant stuff to do. Getting back home. So... yeah." A beat passed. "Where's Silver?"
"Oh, Amy took him back to her house," Sonic answered. His face screwed in concentration as he tried to remember. "Something about... wanting to talk about his hairstyle? Called him a walking fern? Eh, I don't know. I wasn't paying attention." He shrugged. "He's probably still over there. You need directions?"
He probably did, but he didn't want to be around these people longer than he wanted to. "No, thank you. I'll find my own way." He gave Sonic and Tails a polite nod, spent a second looking at Knuckles who still seemed to be thinking, and then turned around and began walking off. "Been an experience. Bye."
Sorun barely made it ten meters before he heard Knuckles' voice loudly proclaim behind him, "Oh, I get it! The thing covering his sword turns into a rock! But... wait, then where does the sword come from?"
His footsteps quickened.
After ending up needing to ask around, he finally found the house this world's Amy lived in. Somehow it was even nicer than Sonic's house; it was in a section of beach closer to the village, enough that there were other houses in sight and the village proper was not even a minute's walk away. It was over water, connected to a large, spanning wood platform that held the house up and acted as a walkway.
In a word, it was nice. Pretty, even. And Sorun tried not to act jealous over it as he stopped in front of the door and knocked on it. "Why'd I have to get dragged into the war-torn world and not the tropical paradise world?" Sorun wondered as he took a quick glance around at some of the other houses. "Shit ain't fair."
He knocked on the door again, louder this time, and then leaned on the door frame while waiting. He heard soft footsteps on the other side, and after a few more moments he saw the door open up. The pink hedgehog he'd come all the way here for was on the other side, and had frozen in the middle of opening the door the moment her eyes fell on Sorun. Then recognition flashed through her features and she opened the door completely while giving him a wide smile.
"Ohhh! Hey, it's you!" she greeted him in a happy voice. Sorun flinched a bit; the Amy here was just as bubbly as the one back home and he hadn't been ready for it. "Silver was really worried about you after, um... you know. That."
"Where you people knocked me out for doing precisely nothing, yes, I remember," Sorun curtly replied. The smile Amy had withered significantly. "I fixed my broken head."
"That's good!" Amy quickly replied. He wasn't even sure she understood what he meant by that. "Please, come in! Sorry if the place is a bit of a mess I haven't cleaned it in two days and this season really isn't conducive for-"
Most of the words rattling out of Amy's mouth went ignored by Sorun as he quietly stepped into her home. It was certainly bright, what with all the colorful pieces of furniture and other odds and ends scattered around that were mainly pink with a few purple things here and there to break the color up. And the source of the strange floral scent was immediately identified when he saw a lit scented candle resting on a nearby nightstand.
Sorun scoffed. He'd fallen into that trap before.
"- and really I've tried the advice from that interior decorating magazine but really I find it disrupts the flow of the room whenever I try to rearrange- goodness me, I didn't mean to ramble so much. Did you want something to drink, Sorun?" Amy asked.
He turned back to her. She was looking at him expectantly, hands clasped behind her back and with a polite smile on her face. She dressed more conservatively than the Amy he knew, too, now that he looked. At least she went out of her way to wear leggings along with the pinkish short jacket she had on, unlike his who only wore that dress. Always made him uncomfortable, that.
"No, thanks. I'm good," he replied in an even tone. "Where's Silver?"
For some reason, Amy jolted at that. Like she had a sudden, uncomfortable thought that invaded her mind. "Right, that." She made a nervous laugh, glanced off to the side, and rubbed at her shoulder. "Really polite guy, but that haircut... sheesh. I offered to fix it for him and I think the poor guy was too nervous to say no, but, uh... yeah, I think that thing is just a part of him, 'cause I couldn't fix it," she confessed. "He left after. I don't know where."
"I guess I can see where you're coming from. Guy looks like a walking marijuana leaf with that haircut."
"Is that some kind of plant from where you're from?"
With a sad sigh, Sorun slumped his shoulders. "Yeah..."
"Ah." There was a pause of silence between them. Amy transition from rubbing her shoulder to the back of her head. "So, uh, other universes, huh? Cool, cool..." After a few more seconds of silence she asked, "So am I there?"
"Yeah, I know other you," Sorun answered. She brightened up at hearing that. "You're not exactly the same as her, though. You're... I don't wanna say more mature at a first glance, but she did this weird age thing and-"
"Uh-huh, great, sounds great, hey quick question," Amy interrupted. "Not, er, not to pry into not-me's private life or anything, but since you know her, just, erm," she trailed off, bringing her hands together to poke the index fingers together. "You wouldn't happen to know if alternate universe me and alternate universe Sonic ever, you know, hooked up? Like, in any capacity?"
"..."
"So I take it by your silence that's a yes?"
"Never mind, your personalities are pretty one-to-one," Sorun sighed out, turning his head away from the pink hedgehog, who made an unsatisfied huff at him. "Goddammit, why can't things just be normal for one seco-?"
A nearby rattle in what Sorun assumed to be the kitchen startled him and drew his attention. He couldn't see due to a wall separating the two rooms, but the rustling was a constant noise now. It was a sound like somebody was shuffling a bunch of glass bottles. When he looked back at Amy she seemed nonplussed at the noise.
"Oh, that's just Sticks," Amy explained. "She's visiting and wanted something to drink from the kitchen."
The name was unfamiliar to Sorun at first until he remembered Sonic with a brown scarf mentioned her. "You mean the one that-?"
"Amy! What is this!?" Sorun actually winced when he heard that voice hit his ears. Like somebody gargling shards of glass. He couldn't understand how somebody's voice could sound so scratchy. There was movement off to the side and when Sorun moved to look, he saw a Mobian poking her body out of the kitchen holding a carton of milk. "I told you to get the organic kind of milk that comes in the glass bottles, not this store-bought cardboard crud! You know what they put in-!?"
She cut herself off when her eyes locked onto Sorun. For his part he reamined completely still, mainly due to trying to figure out what he was looking at. Some blend of orange and brown... thing that looked like she was wearing scraps of clothes. Torn cloth covering her waist and a cloth stripcovering her chest. He couldn't even discern her hairstyle, much less her species. It was just tied off into to giant masses that jutted out to either side of her head.
Blue eyes narrowed at Sorun suspiciously. "It's you."
"That's quite a tone to take with someone you knocked out. I'm practically a victim of assault here, lady."
"Oh yeah, sure, that's what it looks like," she said. "But how do I know you didn't intentionally take that hit, huh?"
The audacity alone made Sorun's eyes widen a bit. "Because unlike most of the people around here, present company included, I have common sense, you..." He looked to Amy for help. "Ferret?"
"Badger."
"Every time!" he grunted under his breath before turning back to Sticks. She seemed to have visibly bristled at that last remark he made. "Look, I don't know what your problem is, but I want an apology."
The carton of milk was set aside near the scented candle. The badger fully stepped out of the kitchen and crossed her arms. "Oh, yeah?" she challenged. "Well I want an apology for sayin' I ain't got common sense."
"You'll get one the moment I see evidence of such a miracle."
Her face visible wrinkled in anger. "You tryin' to go for round two, pal? That what you're going for?"
"Hm. Why not?" Sorun's thumb pushed his sword out of the scabbard. "Fair's fair. I'll just win an apology out of you if you're really going to be like that." It wasn't his fault she was being so confrontational. It was bad enough he'd gotten knocked out in front of a friend; he already couldn't stand the hit his dignity took for that. He thought the least he was owed in the face of that was an apology, but not only was he not getting a sorry, but this badger had the utter gall to act this way when it was her fault?
No, forget Silver and getting back to Mobius Prime for the moment. He could spare a minute for this.
From somewhere, Sorun wasn't sure where and was becoming increasingly annoyed at how this was becoming a common thing in this world, Sticks pulled out a large stick that he assumed was whittled down to be a sort of makeshift staff. The sight of the weapon only spurred Sorun forwards, with Sticks matching his footsteps as they approached one another.
He really would have struck out at her with his sword if Amy hadn't wedged herself between the pair of them.
"Whoa whoa whoa, time out!" she yelled out, holding out a hand to each of them to stop them. "First of all, this is my house and you two aren't gonna start something and end up breaking something, and second of all you two should be ashamed of yourselves!" Her head whipped towards Sorun, who visibly flinched at the glare she was sending him. "What are you thinking, being so hostile like that!?"
"She was being mean," Sorun weakly argued, though he did shy away from her glare and push the sword back fully in the scabbard.
"And Sticks," Amy growled, turning to the other occupant, "you don't knock people out and then be rude to them about it afterwards! We talked about this!"
"He's wearin' a coat, Amy!" Sticks loudly argued, pointing her staff at the now stilled human. "Ya know people with coats can't be trusted! Especially the long ones..."
If he didn't have more self control, he would have dropped his sword over hearing the reason the badger lady was acting this way towards him. He almost looked back to Amy again for more help, but he was shocked to find she didn't even seem surprised at her reasoning. Tired and upset at it, yes, but there wasn't so much as a hint of surprise in her eyes.
What she said next only cemented it for Sorun. "Now Sticks, exactly how many times have I told you we do not judge people by WHAT THEY WEAR!?"
"Of all the inane- you don't like me because of the coat!?" Sorun yelled out. He didn't even know what he was feeling anymore, if it was anger at her or frustration over this whole situation or anger at feeling so ignorant right now. He didn't know anything except he wanted to pull the sword back out. "You really are an idiot!"
Sticks' grip on her staff redoubled. "Why I oughta-!"
Before any of them could make a move Amy's hands snapped outwards. Her left hand gripped one of Sorun's ears, who hissed out loudly in pain, while the right hand gripped one of Sticks' ears, who made a more feral sort of sound. Amy, by contrast, simply had on an irritated, fuming expression as her eyes darted back and forth between the two.
"Now then, I want both of you to simmer DOWN," she all but commanded, pulling on their ears tighter and causing them to stumble. "This is a safe place, we're all friends and friends do not hurt each other at all. Do they?" She was apparently expecting an answer, so when none came she screamed out, "WELL!?"
"Y-yeah, 'course," Sticks stuttered out. Amy made a "hmph" noise and released her ear.
When Amy looked to Sorun, he said, "I'll stop egging her on." The face she made afterwards didn't leave the impression she was satisfied with the answer, but she still released his ear all the same. It left Sorun rubbing at his sore ear and a burning sense of more of his dignity flaking away, but seeing the heated glare the pink hedgehog was sharing between him and Sticks made him ignore this for the moment.
Without another word, she slapped a hand on both of their backs and spun them towards the nearby couch. She pushed them towards it, and Sorun found himself lacking the will to actually try and resist her. "Couch. Plant 'em," she ordered. They both sat down on the couch, albeit at both ends and as far away as possible while trying their best not to look at one another.
Satisfied, if barely from the sigh Amy made, she then reached over and grabbed a nearby stool. She all but slammed it down on the floor in front of the couch, making Sorun and Sticks jump, and then sat down on it so she was facing the two of them. She closed her eyes, took in a long, deep breath, held it for ten whole seconds, and then slowly exhaled. At the end of her breath she opened her eyes again.
"Okay, then!" Sorun was nearly floored at the sudden shift Amy's personality had taken. With that single breath she'd gone from the demented tyrant that'd screeched his ears off seconds ago to a smiling, happy-looking hedgehog. She even sounded cheery now. "I think we got off on the wrong foot, guys, and I'm sensing some communication issues here. I think we need to have a talk."
Sorun groaned and sunk further into the couch. And now she was talking like a therapist. Or even worse somebody who'd read through half a psychology book and suddenly thought they were a qualified therapist. He wanted to leave right then and there but at this point he wasn't even sure Amy would let him until she was done tormenting him with talks about feelings. And he didn't like his odds fighting her. Not with the damn hammer. So, with a resigned sigh, he accepted that Silver was going to have to wait for a bit.
At least the couch was comfortable.
"Now, first thing's first," Amy began, crossing one leg over the other while clasping her hands together in front of her. "Sorun, Sticks is a dear friend of mine and I won't tolerate you insulting her. Say you're sorry."
Lazily, Sorun shifted his gaze to the right, where Sticks was sitting. She met his gaze with her own eyes, somewhat reluctantly. He considered saying something witty and spiteful, but he didn't want to risk incurring the hammer-wielder's wrath. "I maybe-"
"Maybe?" Amy repeated in a warning tone.
"I said things I shouldn't have and said untrue things about you," Sorun quickly amended. "And for that... I am..." he had to swallow something in order to actually get this out, "sssssorry. Sticks. For all that."
Sticks glared at him, but otherwise said nothing. Seeing this, Amy loudly cleared her throat.
"Okay. Sticks, Silver told us that he and his friend Sorun here are just trying to get back to their home. They'd completely de-escalated the problem with Eggman and that whole fight was a misunderstanding. You were there for all that. So, yes, you do owe him an apology for hitting him in the head with your boomerang."
The badger tore her gaze away from Sorun to look at Amy. "But he's got a coat, Amy."
"Why does me having a coat even matter?" Sorun asked as he flipped his free hand up. "I get it's not exactly the right thing to wear in this climate, but gimme a break, not every world I've been to has been all sunshine and palm trees."
"Sticks has a lot of... beliefs, we'll say, about a lot of things," Amy replied, though saying the word "belief" seemed to cause her some pain to say. "And her opinion about these beliefs are very strong, so sometimes-"
"Oh no no no no no, it's more than just belief we're talkin' about here, Amy," Sticks denied. "Coats are the clothing of the enemy!"
"The enemy?" Sorun repeated in a bland, bored tone. "Y'mean Eggman?" From what he saw that thing this world's Eggman wore could barely even be called a coat. Was more of a red cardigan than anything else.
"No, not him! The enemy!" Sticks emphasized her point by leaning forwards on the couch. "The spooks. Coats are the main article of apparel of any agent from some shadow government sect sent in to infiltrate the population!"
Sorun loudly scoffed at hearing that. "Agents? What, like the Men in Black?" He lifted his right hand up and mimicked decompressing a button. "Do they go around hitting people who've seen too much with a neuralyzer to wipe their memories out?"
Maybe mocking her for this was going against what Amy was trying to do, but Sorun couldn't resist the joke. Though that joke suddenly stopped being funny when Sticks gave Sorun a shocked look.
"You've seen them too!" she gasped out, causing Sorun's hand to fall limply on the couch as he gave her a dead stare. "That's just one thing they like hidin' in their coats! They gots all sorts'a gizmos and gadgets like that an' they need the coats to hide 'em all!"
"God, it's like I'm talking to Crazy Ricky all over again. She's almost as bad." He should have just turned around and walked out of the house the moment Amy said Silver wasn't here. That's what Sorun should have really done, so he wouldn't have to sit here and listen to a conspiracy nut. He'd already had to deal with one during his life in Detroit, and that one was enough for a whole lifetime.
"And look! Just look!" Sticks pointed to the bottom of Sorun's coat. "His coat's got three tails! Three! You know what that means?"
Amy let out a very tired sigh. "He's not a Chupacabra, Sticks."
"Well, we'll know at a new moon, now, won't we?"
They weren't going to get anywhere at this rate. Sorun knew that. Knew just from dealing with her type before. And if there's one thing Sorun knew about Crazy Ricky it was that you just didn't win with these people no matter how hard you tried; it just wasn't feasible to keep up with all the nonsensical jargon they spat out.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to say to you to convince you I'm an interdimensional traveler and not a shady something or other, Sticks," Sorun tiredly deadpanned.
"I never said I didn't think ya weren't from another universe," Sticks said back to him. Sorun didn't know how to counter that, so he just sighed and sunk further into the couch.
"Okay, guys, I think we're starting to get to the heart of the matter." Sorun didn't find himself appreciating how helpful Amy was trying to sound now. "You know what, Sorun, do you think you could maybe take the coat off just for a bit? For Sticks' sake?"
Immediately Sorun sat up ramrod straight on the couch, causing the two Mobians near him to start a bit at his speed. "Absolutely not. The coat stays on," he firmly stated. "I'm not taking it off just because you asked."
Sticks fidgeted nervously in her seat. "He ain't taking it off, Amy..."
"I know, Sticks," Amy said. She looked over from the badger to Sorun. "Do you mind telling me why you don't want to take it off, Sorun?"
Sorun's lips pressed together. He didn't want to say because it was so personal. He really just wanted to get up and leave since he had better things to do than assuage the paranoid fears of some badger he'd never ever see again once he and Silver left this zone.
But then there was that goddamn hammer.
"The coat was a gift from a friend," Sorun bit out at last, refusing to meet Amy's eyes, and expressly looking away from Sticks. "It's one of the few things I have left that I can actually call mine and it was from a very dear friend, okay? So I'm not gonna take it off when somebody I've known for all of ten minutes asks."
He could only see it from the corner of his eye, but he'd seen Sticks recoil a bit from the explanation. "Your, uh, your friend, huh?"
"Yeah, my friend Nic- oh my god Nicole. Oh my god what have I done?" The color drained out of Sorun's face when he remembered what he'd done the last time he'd seen her. "Ohhh noooooo..."
He'd forgotten what he'd done. With everything that had been going on from the time travel to dimension travel to the mad kings and gods it'd been pushed to the back of Sorun's memories to make room for more pertinent priorities. He couldn't actually believe he'd forgotten about what he did until she was brought up in a conversation but now he remembered and fuck what has he done?
The... the kiss. He'd done that. Before he went to fight Enerjak because he thought he was going to die after. Except Sorun didn't die. Sorun was very much still alive. Which... which meant that happened. Which meant Nicole... very much absolutely remembered, and...
Oh, what has he done?
"Fuck. Fuck, I forgot, I... damn, that kiss, I didn't mean, I mean... holy shit, what have I- what am I supposed to say- just- what- fuck. Oh fuck. Shit. Damn. Fuckshitdamn." He bolted right up to his feet, a horrified expression on his face. Fuck the sorry excuse for a therapy session, his head was spinning and his heart was beating a thousand times a second and he needed some air right now because he was breathing hard and fast enough that it was starting to hurt.
"I- I gotta- I gotta go, get out of here," Sorun gasped out. He wasn't even able to register the worried looks present on both Amy's and Sticks' face. Didn't even feel it when Sorun brushed past Amy's arm when she reached out to offer him a steadying hand. It felt like his feet were on autopilot when he stumbled to the front door and nearly crashed out of it to the outside.
The air wasn't helping. The air was worse, making him feel like he was suffocating, making everything spin as Sorun came to terms with the fact he quite possibly had made the worst mistake in his entire life and was only now remembering it. He stumbled off in a random direction, towards anything, with no clear goal in Sorun's mind as it kept spinning around the same event he couldn't help but play in his mind as he was reminded of just what he'd done.
What had he done?
"- SO! STUPID! I'M SO! FUCKING! STUPID!"
Every single word was punctuated by Sorun bashing his head against a tree. He didn't even know where he was, some random part of the village, maybe, it didn't matter. He'd found a tree at some point. Or run into it, he didn't really remember. And what else was he to do but beat his dumbass head against the tree?
"Agh! Man..." But eventually the pain in his forehead had to beat out the turmoil he felt, so Sorun was left turning around and sliding his back down against the tree until he ended up sitting against it. And after that, all that was left to do was think.
Think about that stupid, stupid decision he decided to make.
"Fuck my life, I thought I was gonna die. I wouldn't have done that if I'd known- yeah, you know what, I don't think Nicole's gonna see it that way." His head fell into his open hand. "She's gonna kill me."
He didn't even know why he'd done that kiss. It was in the heat of the moment. One of those "never gonna have a chance to do this again" things that he decided to capitalize on at that moment. And... also to maybe stun her for a second so he could get through that portal because she was genuinely getting ready to physically restrain him, but that hadn't even been that big a factor compared to the fact he wanted to do it. He'd had the foresight to at least just make it a forehead kiss, something that maybe implied something platonic, that he hadn't thought of her in that way and just considered her a really good friend, but... well, now that he really thought on it he wasn't sure Nicole would take it like that. Would she? He didn't know. He didn't know what he left her feeling. Probably horrible, since for all intents and purposes she thought he was dead right now.
Somehow the knowledge everybody else was brought back after he did what he did wasn't comforting Sorun.
In a strange way he was relieved just remembering Nicole. There really had been so much going on he couldn't focus on her at all. All because of that alternate future, probably. Or almost dying a bunch. It'd all been such a jarring experience Sorun wasn't surprised she'd been the last thing on his mind, with how focused he'd been on fixing the world and surviving. And now that he thought about it older Sonic had never even mentioned her, so for all Sorun knew she probably hadn't even existed in that future. If that was true it just helped to reaffirm he'd made the right choice in doing what he'd done - he would have destroyed that whole timeline just for that one fact alone. But she hadn't been there, nor had there been any alternate zone versions of her while he and Silver traveled to remind him of how much of a fool he was. So the memory remained locked away.
But then by mere chance that stupid conversation with Amy and that stupid badger just happened to bring her up and now that her memory was back on the surface of his mind Sorun didn't know how to deal with it.
How was she even going to react once Sorun returned? He didn't know. Literally, he had no idea what Nicole would do once she saw him. Probably kill him; he wouldn't blame her. He'd... performed the most dickish move in the world, and for what? Just to make himself feel better before walking off to his death? He hadn't even considered what state he'd be leaving her in, even if he'd made that kiss as chaste as possible, but damn, what did that even matter? After what he'd done? Sorun didn't even want to think about what he'd left her feeling.
It was bad enough that Sorun was feeling levels of shame he hadn't thought humanly possible before now. Just how strong the message of "I fucked up" was being beat into his head; something words alone couldn't describe. It wasn't even half the issue compared to how bad Sorun felt for Nicole, for how she undoubtably felt over the whole thing. When he'd promised her he'd stop doing risky things that would worry her.
And then he'd gone and died. Practically walked off and committed suicide from her point of view.
"In fairness to me it was to save the world. Aaaand there's no chance that'll actually matter." Sighing, Sorun lifted his head up off his hand to look at the sky above. "This isn't something I can ever take back, is it? Man, I've screwed things up with her forever. I'm never even going to be able to look her in the eyes again."
He couldn't. Not after what he'd done to her. After that. Which would be real hard considering his house was in a city she was omnipresent in.
"Well, I guess there's only one thing I can do."
"Uh... Sorun? What are you doing?"
He would admit it probably looked strange. Him, in a blue coat no way suited to this tropical climate, chilling out on a cheap, plastic lounge chair on the beach, facing the calm ocean. Umbrella stuck into the sand and providing him shade from the sun, thick, colorful sunglasses over his eyes, fruity drink in hand with a little umbrella. From a certain perspective this was a kind of fantasy Sorun always wanted to secretly live out, and while the circumstances leading up to it weren't ideal, fuck, he'd take anything at this point.
So Sorun could imagine when Silver found Sorun in this state, just lounging on the beach, he'd be confused. For Sorun it was the exact opposite. This was the most obvious move in the world, so much so he was almost impressed with how smart it was. Because really, what else was there to do?
"Huh? Oh, hey, Silver." He turned his head over to the white hedgehog and lowered the sunglasses with his left hand to meet his eyes. The blue Chaos Emerald sat next to him, half-buried in the sand. "Yeah, I live here now."
Silence for a solid five seconds before Silver spoke.
"You... live here now." The puzzlement on Silver's face worsened. He gestured to the umbrella and chair. "Where'd you get all this stuff?"
"Oh, people apparently just leave this stuff lying around," Sorun answered. He wasn't even lying. He'd just stumbled across all this stuff while wandering aimlessly on the beach trying to figure out what to do with his life now and decided to just go for it. And after a half hour of just sitting here in contemplation he decided... yeah. This fit. This felt right. Maybe he could just chill out here forever instead of going back to that mess he'd left behind.
Well, he'd found all this stuff except for the drink. He'd stolen that from somebody while they weren't looking, but honestly for how bland it tasted he was probably doing that guy a favor.
"... Okay, Sorun, what is this?" Silver asked. "I leave you alone to sleep off getting hit and when I find you you're... doing this." Once again he gestured to the chair and umbrella. "What's going on with you?"
Sorun took a sip of the drink. He decided banana wasn't that good a flavor for a drink. That fat monkey Mobian in the purple suit should be thankful to him for stealing this from him. "Yeah, I'm just done," Sorun answered.
"Done," Silver flatly repeated.
"Yeah, done," Sorun confirmed. "Gonna look around, maybe find an odd job or something. Even if I gotta get a labor job the Chaos Emerald pretty much just trivializes that. Figure I do that for a while then find somewhere to live here I can buy and go from there. They got video games here so I'm set."
Silver didn't say anything immediately. He just stood there staring at Sorun, face in a mixture of disbelief and confusion. Noises came out of his mouth, his hands flattened, raised with palms facing each other, fingers pointed at Sorun as he attempted to parse together what the human was saying. Evidently he failed, because then he asked, "What do you mean you're done?"
"Means just that. I'm done." The drink really was horrible, so Sorun shoved the glass halfway into the sand beside him, next to the Emerald. "Silver," Sorun began, "from minute one of getting dragged onto Mobius Prime it has been nothing but nightmare after nightmare. First I gotta be a resistance fighter and fight robots, then I gotta get cool powers that kill me so I can fight a literal super villain, then I gotta fight god, TWICE, mess with time, do all this zone nonsense with you, and Silver these are just the broad strokes, I'm not even getting into the fine minutia of insanity I've been having to deal with on a day-by-day basis.
"I never asked for any of this, okay? Not to be a fighter, not to save the world, not to save to future with you, none of it. I never wanted the responsibility, or to risk my life, or to do any of this other stuff. I was supposed to be done a long time ago but my home world died so I had to make do and then do more of all this because that's my life apparently even though I don't wanna do any of this. I don't want to be a hero. I want to chill. I want to sit down, and chill. That's all I want."
With a final, deep inhale to replenish the breath Sorun had spent laying all that out, he used a single finger to push his sunglasses back up. "So yeah. I'm done. I'm callin' it quits and staying here, because guess what, Silver, I'd rather stay on a tropical island with a nice village community and a beach. I'd rather stay here and deal with an Eggman that's a goofball who, at worst, mildly inconveniences people on a weekly basis with zany cartoon schemes instead of the one on Mobius Prime that's a genocidal maniac who wants to conquer the world. That guy almost killed me! A lot! This one, I don't even know what his deal is, but at least he isn't committing robo-slavery and killing people, so you tell me, why wouldn't I want to stay here?"
Silver fists tightened at his sides. "Sorun. You promised you'd help me save the future. My future. My home. Did you forget all that?"
Leaning back into his lounge chair, Sorun waved a hand and said, "You got cool mind powers, you'll be fine 'thout me."
"Okay, and what about the fact I'm stuck in the past without you!?" Silver yelled out. "You said once we were done saving the future you'd use Yamato to send me back to my proper time!"
"I'll still do that, just come back and see me when you're done doing whatever."
"Come all the way back here from another zone!?"
Sorun shrugged and interlaced his hands behind his head. A frustrated noise left Silver, and his clenched fists began to shake. For a single moment his hands glowed teal, and the umbrella giving Sorun shade twitched slightly. The pale teen had seen this coming and figured he was about five seconds from getting tossed by Silver out of anger.
But, that never came. To his surprise Silver had made a deep breath, and the glow disappeared from his hands. And then even more strangely, he asked in a calm voice, "Sorun, what's really going on?"
Now confused, Sorun turned his head to Silver. He wasn't upset like Sorun thought he would be. He figured he'd feel betrayed that Sorun was just giving up, leaving Silver to do everything on his own and make his own way back to Mobius Prime, and really he wouldn't have blamed him. Instead of that he saw the white hedgehog giving him a patient, but expectant expression. There was even a hint of worry behind his eyes, and Sorun already felt that look chipping away at his defenses.
"I just told you what's going on," Sorun attempted, but he already didn't sound sure of himself, and the short sigh Silver made told him he wasn't buying it.
"Sorun, this is the first time you've ever acted like this, and before this all you wanted to do was go back to Mobius Prime. I don't see what could have changed leaving you alone for a couple of hours," Silver said. "And you're way too nice a person to actually do something like just give up like this. So come on. Tell me what's going on."
It was a somewhat naïve observation, if not accurate. There were so many ways Sorun could have refuted it, but he just couldn't. Not with that soft glare Silver was giving him. Because dammit, he just liked him too much to lie so overtly. And after all they'd been through he at least deserved the truth of the matter.
Groaning out loudly, Sorun sat up and moved so that he was sitting on the edge of the lounge chair, facing Silver. He took the sunglasses off, stared at the colorful lenses for a second, and then with a grunt threw them away into the sand somewhere before looking back at Silver.
"Okay, the truth." Sorun clasped his hands together and took a deep breath to steel himself before speaking. "I screwed up."
"As in...?"
Sorun grimaced and turned his head. "With a girl."
"Huh?" Silver looked to be at a loss for that explanation. "A... a girl? You're having a fit over a girl?"
"It's not just any girl," Sorun snapped out. Silver had jumped at the sudden tone change, forcing Sorun to take another deep breath before speaking. "Okay, so... imagine a girl, but she's perfect, right? Perfect everything, perfectly intelligent, perfectly compassionate, perfect... laugh and smile and..." He forced himself to stop and hung his head before the emotions could overwhelm him. "She was there, during the whole thing with Enerjak I told you about, before I went to the bad future. And at the time, I... figured what I was doing was a one-way street, that I'd be going to die, so... Silver, I did something colossally stupid, you don't even know."
"Oh, come on." How Sorun envied that casual tone Silver held. "It couldn't have been that bad."
"I kissed her before going off to die," Sorun bluntly stated, making Silver freeze. "We weren't... we were just really good friends but I thought I was gonna die and I wasn't thinking so I just... went for it. Then shoved her away and left in a portal before I could even figure out how she felt about it. Then, um, uh, here we are."
"O-oh." The gravity of the situation obviously wasn't hitting Silver, because if it had he would have had more of a reaction than that. "Like... like was it a on-the-lips kiss like in the books?"
"No, Silver."
"Did... did you want it to be on the lips?"
"Yes, Silver."
Awkwardly, Silver scratched the back of his head. "That sounds pretty rough, yeah."
"Oh, you don't say!?" Sorun yelled, lifting his head up to Silver. "I can't ever show my face around her again after what I did. I didn't have any right to do it, I-I did it just so I'd feel better before I died! We weren't in any kind of relationship or anything and I just...!" He groaned out and buried his face in his hands. It was an entirely unsalvageable mess. Completely unforgivable. There wasn't anything he could do to fix it.
"I mean... can't, can't you just talk to her about it?" Silver asked. "At the very least don't you think it'd be better for her to know you're at least alive? Everyone over there thinks you're dead right now, don't they?"
"That's the logical conclusion, yes, but fortunately, Silver, I have you to just go ahead and tell everyone I'm fine."
Silver looked uncomfortable at the thought. "Sorun, I really... you know, I really think it'd be better if you just showed up yourself." When Sorun didn't reply Silver made a small sigh. "Sorun, I'll be the first to admit I don't know anything about the person you're talking about, but you always talked about your friends like you really liked them. And for all you know you're overreacting."
Sorun shook his head. "Not with this one, Silver."
"... Okay, well, look, I asked around and it turns out that Eggman guy lives on a small island a bit offshore, so I'm gonna go ahead and visit him to ask for help," Silver said. "I don't really know what to say about this kind of thing, Sorun, and I don't know what you want me to say. But maybe think about what you're doing? Just try and figure this out while I'm gone, and I guess I'll just come get you when I have news."
He couldn't see Silver when he departed. Only the soft sound of footsteps on sand let him know he'd left, as by now Sorun was so hunched in on himself he was staring at ground. As soon as he was gone that sound was replaced by Sorun's stomach rumbling. And he didn't know what happened with his backpack full of food after the boomerang knocked him out; he'd woken up without it.
He needed somewhere quiet to think. Somewhere with food.
The closest place in this village he could find that served food was some fast food joint in the middle. Quaint enough little place: large shack with a grill behind the window, some patio tables scattered around the front, nice open view of the whole village.
Sorun hadn't chosen to sit at one of the tables. He'd chosen to just sit at the... he hesitated to call a place so small a diner, the joint's serving window that folded out into a small bar. It didn't even have more than one employee, and that one employee was a teenager with a voice so badly cracked it made Sorun wince every single time he had to hear it.
Somehow it wasn't even the worst dive he'd ever been to.
"You really sure you just want fries and nothing else? We're running a two-for-one special on burgers for four times the price." Once again Sorun flinched at the sound of the voice of the person on the other side of the grill Sorun was facing. Some teal-furred, thin-as-a-rail Mobian mouse-ferret thing, he didn't know, he gave up on trying to classify Mobians on sight. The frankly oversized braces he had on combined with the cracked voice made Sorun feel a tinge of sympathy for the other teen. Then he'd seen the nametag he had pinned on his shirt.
Dave.
"... Yeah, it's fine," Sorun hollowly answered, folding his arms on the bar while leaning forwards on it. The guy on the other side shrugged and walked off to the side where a pair of deep fryers were. "So your name's Dave, huh?"
"Cha, that's me. Dave." He started raising baskets full of fries in and out of the oil-filled fryers.
"Mm. I knew a Dave once," Sorun said. "Realest friend a guy could ask for. Kind of guy that would have solved every problem I've had in a quarter of the time it took me if he ended up in my shoes. Man, I miss that guy."
Foolish of him to get sad from seeing a name alone, but he didn't care. He missed everything from his old life, and being here in some random fast food dive with someone named Dave wasn't helping his ill-timed nostalgia trip. He was one of the things he missed most of all.
"I don't know, I mean- you're friends with the coolest guy around forever, and then one day he and everyone and everything else is just... poof, gone, like that," Sorun mumbled out. "I'm not saying I'd wish what happened to me happen to anyone else, but at least then it'd be him alive when everyone else died, you know? And unlike me Dave could actually do things, whereas me I'm just- I'm just this idiot stumbling along barely managing to hold things together, and then-"
"Food's done." A plate of fries and a side of ketchup was placed down in front of Sorun. When he looked up from the fries he saw the teenage fry cook giving him an otherwise neutral look. "Sorry, but I wasn't listening. What were you saying?"
A heavy frown settled over Sorun's features. "Nothing. Forget it," he said. Worse Dave shrugged and went back to doing whatever he was doing while Sorun looked down at his food.
French Fries had been a staple of Sorun's diet back on Earth due to the fact they were goddamn perfect. Right size for maximum grip stability, quick to eat, amazing taste, solid vector for ketchup transportation, and potatoes were a vegetable so Sorun was pretty sure they were healthy. More than that it was the food, the food he and Dave and any of their other friends would always eat at a diner while joking around about whatever.
Or he did, at least, because Dave always had to get those damn burgers.
It was a comfort food. A reminder of simpler times when Sorun's life and mental wellness wasn't hanging by a mortal threat. And that sorry excuse for a food vendor Chuck back on Mobius Prime didn't sell the damn things, jackass seemed to be under the impression hotdogs were the end-all be-all, so he was always pressed on finding some. Apparently this place had them, though, so in this time of great duress Sorun needed his fries.
So, without further hesitation, Sorun grabbed one of the fries on his plate. His expectations were already low from how limp the poor thing was, but he simply shrugged, dipped it in the ketchup, and ate it.
"... Somehow this is fry is soggy, burnt, and cold at the same time," Sorun said as he finished the fry. The ketchup was admittedly stellar, but by god that fry. He didn't even mention how it tasted like Worse Dave tried drowning the fries in salt.
Worse Dave didn't even seemed surprised at how unremarkable Sorun made the fries sound. "Yeah, we get that complaint a lot," he reported. "You don't like it?"
"Just the opposite. Tastes like home," Sorun said as he ate another fry. No matter where he went in Detroit for fries it was never consistent. Sometimes they were the best, or the worst, or were treading on some middle ground. Made the journey for fries somewhat exciting, Sorun supposed, since he never was able to guess what he was getting. Somehow this fry seemed to hit the same note as the worst he'd ever partaken in back home.
"Oh, that's great," the fry cook said. "My employer says I should try and not to feel self-conscious about the fact we use month-expired potatoes to save on costs, but so far all the complaints we've gotten have been all the normal complaints. You wouldn't mind filling out a performance review sheet for me, would you?"
"... No. Go away," Sorun requested.
Dave simply sighed. "Yeah, alright."
The Mobian went off to do whatever inside the kitchen. Sorun returned to his own fries, trying to get deep in thought but failing every time. Too focused on the fries and not wanting to focus on his problems. It was a dangerous loop, but the fries helped to take the edge off that.
He felt a presence sit down next to him. He knew who it was from all the orange and brown from the side of his vision, but she hadn't said anything, yet. She'd just sat down next to him.
"So, uh... hi." There it was. She'd started speaking after his fifth fry after sitting down. "Eatin' at Meh Burger, huh?"
"Is that really the name of this place? 'Cause I can believe it eating these fries," Sorun said as he downed another fry. "What do you want, Sticks?"
"Amy wanted me to apologize for being too, quote, 'me' to you," she explained, making Sorun snort in amusement. "Aaaand after I thought about it a bit I realized, yeah, I was wrong."
"Yeah? How's that?"
"Well, ya wear a blue coat. Everyone knows the reptilians can't see blue 'cause of their eyes, so there's no way you're with 'em. Even if you wear a coat," Sticks said. "And that Silver guy seemed pretty legit, so if he vouches for you, you're cool."
"... Ah, yes, it's so obvious. Of course." Fuck it, he'd take it if it got her off his back. "You come all this way here to tell me that or is there an actual reason you're here?"
"Just... y'know, just checkin'. Ya kind stumbled outta Amy's place in a panicked daze and she was kinda worried." She leaned in closer so her face was in his vision, eyes narrowed as she scrutinized his face. "You're looking fine now, though."
"Right, that." Sorun sighed. Both at the memory and the fact he was almost through the fries. "I suddenly remembered why I'm the biggest idiot in the multiverse and have been dealing with that. Nothing that groundshaking."
"And what's that supposed to mean?"
He didn't really want to tell her, but Silver went off somewhere and there wasn't really any other sympathetic ears in sight. Not that Sorun thought he'd find one in Sticks, but upon further review, he realized he didn't have anything better to do right now than to air his dirty laundry out. So, rolling his eyes, he decided to go for it.
"As far as stories go it's about as sad and pathetic as you could get," Sorun started. "A fool of a fool decided to go on a suicide mission 'cause the whole world was doomed because of a guy in a stupid gold mask. But there was also this girl he had this super huge crush on, so, figuring he was gonna die within the next hour, he decided to go for it, kissed her on the forehead and then left without further explanation. Then the fool did his thing, stupid gold mask man was stopped, planet was saved."
"Okay?" Sorun was honestly surprised Sticks managed to follow along to the entire story. "So what's the problem here?"
"I survived."
Well now he was just impressed at how she was maintaining a straight face. "Were you not supposed to live or something?" she asked.
"Sticks, at the time the method I was using to beat the guy had a hundred percent chance of killing me. I was dead-certain I was gonna die. Still went with it, though, 'cause one guy's life versus the whole planet, no-brainer, so I made a choice. Then a bunch of nonsense happened and I lived, so now here I am trying to get back with Silver," Sorun said. "It'd be great if it weren't for the fact I did the absolute worst thing possible by doing that kiss and then dip out right after."
"Why?"
"'Cause I never really told her how I feel, we were just really good friends, so what I did was really bad."
"Why?"
"Because you... because you don't just go and kiss someone without consulting their feelings. It's beyond rude, invasive even." Sorun rested his head against his palm and leaned his elbow against the counter. "I mean maybe she won't look too hard into it 'cause it was just a forehead kiss, I got that going for me, but god, man, I really don't think that'll matter."
"Why?"
"You say why one more time, Sticks," Sorun warned, shifting his torso so he was facing her. He probably would have lashed out if she was grinning at him, but her face was just that of a curious person. But instead of being angry with her he thought more on that question, on why, and he found himself coming up blank. "I don't know, Sticks," he admitted, "I guess I just don't wanna face the fact I did wrong by someone I respect more than I respect myself. In itself not that high a bar, but in her case she far exceeded that bar. I mean she does all these things for me, even gave me a house for crying out loud, literally a house, and how do I repay her? Doin' that? She got devastated the first time I died, so I don't even know how she's reacting with this one."
Sticks leaned her head back in surprise. "Does... you dying over there happen a lot?"
"That's the thing, it's actually pretty common over there," Sorun glumly replied. "But in the end I don't know, except that I managed to hurt her one way or another. And I'm such a terrible person I didn't even remember doing it 'til that talk at Amy's house. 'Cause her name just accidentally came up. Maybe I subconsciously blocked the memory knowing how bad I screwed up, maybe I just had too much going on, I don't know. But it happened. And now I'm here."
"And your plan for dealing with that is eating the worst fries on the island?"
"It's gotten me this far," Sorun said as he ate his last fry. "I kind of just don't really want to deal with it. Think maybe I'll stay here."
At hearing that, Sticks snorted. "That just sounds stupid."
Tapping his empty plate, Sorun muttered, "Yeah, Silver thought it was pretty stupid, too."
"Ah-huh, I bet." Sticks shifted around in her stool a little bit, and then said, "Listen, Sorun, I ain't really good at the whole feelings thing, so everyone else usually just handles that for me. But even I can see running from your problems isn't gonna help you out that much."
"... Probably not, no..."
"Even then if you really like this girl so much don'tcha think ya owe it to her to at least let her know you're still around? Even if she smacks ya around for what ya did? You're bein' a moron, you should just go back."
She wasn't even wrong. He did owe that much to Nicole. And if not that Nicole at least deserved to know he wasn't dead. Good old Nicole, who always went out of her way to help Sorun when he didn't really deserve to be helped. Good old Nicole, who visited him every day when he was in such a sad state he couldn't even speak after seeing what happened to Earth. Good old Nicole, who was honestly the best video game partner and friend he could have asked for in that world.
He'd done a phenomenally shit job repaying all that kindness by doing what he did. The worst part was the more he thought on it, the more Sorun severely doubted, would stake his life on it, she'd go so far as to hit him over it when she didn't have a violent bone in her digital body. Sorun felt that made what she could do instead that much worse.
But... there was some truth in those blunt words of Sticks'. He couldn't leave it how he left it. And if he was being honest with himself, if he really did stay here Sorun knew he couldn't escape that damn question of 'what if he just went back?' for however long he stayed here. Could see it growing worse with every passing day until he eventually caved and just went back anyways, and made the situation all the worse for it.
"Fuck it, guess I'm going back after all. For Nicole." Surely a disaster waiting to happen, but he could accept it was a disaster of his making. Whatever happened was on him and him alone, and he could live with that. People that actually cared about him deserved to see him alive and kicking, anyways. "Guess I'll finish here and do what I need to go back," Sorun said, fully turning in his stool to face Sticks. "Thank you for... helping me with this, Sticks. You're not that bad."
She waved a hand at him, smiling slightly. "Eh, you're not so bad yourself. And hey, I really am sorry for the whole boomerang thing. Even if it kinda sounds like ya need some sense beaten into ya's."
"That I do," Sorun agreed in an amused tone, watching as Sticks pushed herself off the stool. "So what's next for you?"
She shrugged. "I dunno. Go home to my burrow, maybe. Got a pet that needs walkies. Should probably be heading home yourself." She walked off after speaking, turning around to call out, "See ya!" before turning back around to leave. Sorun quickly lost sight of her, and made a weak wave of his own at her back.
"Bye. Man, what a weirdo." With that done Sorun spun back around towards the bar to attend to his empty plate. And then he jumped in his seat when he saw the fry cook from earlier standing there. Just... staring, and not doing anything else. Sorun looked to the left and right, not seeing anybody else. He turned back to the cook and asked, "Did... were you just listening to that whole thing?"
"Pretty much, yeah. It's a slow day and I don't have anything else to do," he admitted.
"I really don't like you."
He didn't looked fazed in the slightest. "Yeah... I get that a lot, too. So anyways, it's five seventy-nine for the fries."
"Five seventy-nine!?"
"Yeah, you got the medium size which we charge for the same as a large but with twice the smiles."
"You... haven't smiled once during this whole thing," Sorun pointed out. When the braces-wearing Mobian just shrugged he sighed out and reached into his pocket.
It was only then Sorun realized that he didn't have any money from this world.
"Uh-oh." Shortsighted by grief yet again, it seemed. He slowly removed his hand from his pocket, asking Dave, "So any chance you have a tab system up and running, or...?"
Sorun winced when he shook his head. "Uh, noooo, dude, you really need to pay or I'll call the cops."
"I see." Sorun swallowed thickly as Dave took his plate and walked it over to a nearby sink in the kitchen. He looked down at his feet, where the Chaos Emerald was resting against the stool he was sitting on. sorun then looked up and took a quick glance around the perimeter. There was nobody else around. "You know, it's situations like this that remind me of the lessons imparted onto me by the streets of Detroit."
"Um, whatever that is," Dave said as he ran the plate under the faucet. "I'm also gonna have to ask you to pay in exact change, the register hasn't been working for a month and I can't really-" When he turned around from the sink after dropping the plate in he saw the stool Sorun was sitting on was empty. "Huh?"
That was as far as he got before Sorun rushed in from behind him, sword in hand. He held the sheathed katana in front of Dave, grasped both its end and the handle, and pulled it towards himself and against Dave's throat.
The Mobian's eyes bulged out, and instantly he began making gagging noises as his airflow was cut off. The gagging noises soon turned into choking sounds, and his arms rose up in an attempt to try and pry the blunt implement off of his throat. This only caused Sorun to pull the sheathed sword harder against his throat, making him quietly wheeze as he attempted to reach behind him, though this was in vain as his arms couldn't reach Sorun.
Sinking down to his knees, Dave's wheezes and movements began to grow quieter and slower the longer the sword was pressed against his neck. His body began to list off to the side, eyelids blinking slower and slower as he began to still. It was after Sorun felt no struggling at all that he removed the sword from his neck, and then pulled his body to the side so that his unconscious form was leaning up against the bottom of the grill on the other side of the bar.
"Man, that was... surprisingly easy, wow, you really must be the wimpiest Mobian around," Sorun whispered out as he finished propping up Dave's body. He'd only gone for the choke in the first place because he didn't want to cause too much damage with the Bringer Claws, but even then he'd expected more resistance than almost none at all from a Mobian. Maybe in this zone they just weren't all that up to snuff compared to Prime Zone Mobians. Or Dave was just that unfortunate, and after eating those fries, Sorun could believe it.
He got up, ready to make his egress from the stand to get away from his crime as quickly as possible. He bolted towards the back door leading out of the shack, but then froze halfway when he saw something sitting on a nearby counter. There, next to a bunch of other condiments. A nearly full bottle of ketchup. The same ketchup he'd had with those fries.
After a moment's deliberation Sorun backtracked, grabbed the bottle of ketchup, and then stuffed it into one of his pockets. And then he'd exited the shack and ran away from it as fast as possible.
"Alright, boat, boat, gotta find a boat, need a boat, where's a boat?"
If what Silver was said was right this zone's Eggman lived somewhere off the shore close to the island. And since he'd gone over to personally talk to the man, in theory, Sorun probably could have just waited for him to get back to Sorun on his own with news for whether he could actually help or not. But that was before Sorun decided to have lunch, so now he needed to expedite the process before somebody found Dave.
Since swimming around the island trying to find it wasn't ideal to Sorun, since he didn't trust himself to not get exhausted and drown at some point, he needed a boat to get there. He was planning on stealing one from somebody, but he couldn't actually find a boat anywhere. Or even so much as a dock no matter where he looked. Everywhere he searched either lead to the beach or the forested areas outside the village. And walking along the beach just lead to more beach for Sorun.
Needless to say after ten minutes of walking along the beach without so much as seeing a single boat Sorun's patience was wearing thin.
"What the hell, it's a island people live on, there's not a single boat anywhere that anybody uses?" A frustrated sigh left Sorun as he kicked at the sand underneath his feet. He lifted Yamato up, looking down on it with a mixed expression. "If I knew where the damn place was I could just make a portal there, but I can't- I can fly, goddammit, god fucking dammit."
If it were physically possible he might have might have snapped the sword in half, he was squeezing down on it so hard due to the anger Sorun felt for himself. Wasn't the first time he could have solved a simple problem if he could only remember half the things this Emerald let him do, and dammit, he wouldn't be surprised if this wouldn't be the last time. His only solace was in the fact it was a rare occurrence when somebody else saw him make these mistakes. He wasn't so sure how far he could keep going otherwise.
In a flash of blue light and particles, the sword transmuted back into the Emerald. More blue light washed over Sorun's shoulders as blue, feathered arms appeared jutting out of his back, the clawed hands resting on his shoulders.
"Ten minutes of my life I'll never get back," Sorun spitefully muttered under his breath as the Bringer Claws extended outwards. The spectral wings flapped a few times, and Sorun felt his body lift off the ground as the wings carried him away.
He decided not to go too high. Sorun wasn't that knowledgeable about weather but he knew winds on large, open places like oceans were more intense than other places. That and looking out at all the blue in front of him flying around was nauseating to Sorun. Fortunately enough he didn't even have to look that hard for what he was looking for after a few minutes of gliding around the outer perimeter of the island; it was right there. A rock island out in the distance so small it could barely even be called an island, not even a mile out. Almost the entire surface area was taken up by a large, round building with reflective, white walls. He could have taken the place for some kind of observatory. Or the lab of a crazy scientist.
Good enough.
He couldn't fly over to the place and land down on the ground fast enough, and he almost sighed out in relief when the spectral limbs were replaced by the familiar weight of a sword in his hands. Never could get used to the flying thing. Tried to avoid it as much as possible. Sorun'd prefer walking any day of the week as long as it didn't involve a headache.
There was, fortunately enough, somewhat of a path in the rocks that lead up to the... evil lab building thing he assumed Eggman lived in. On the way there Sorun expected something annoying to happen that he'd have to take five seconds to deal with. Sentry turrets popping up out of the rocks or a security patrol of robots he'd come across and have to cut down or something. Surprisingly he didn't encounter anything in the way of security on the way to the lab. There wasn't even so much as a wall surrounding the place, something that had Sorun slightly baffled as he walked right up to the lab's front door.
At least... he was pretty sure this was the front door. It was just a wall with an oval outline cut into it, so he assumed it was one of those pneumatic sliding doors. A rather imposing one too, he'd thought annoyed, since the door itself seemed to be about three or four times taller than Sorun himself. He almost cut the door in half just for that alone, but he managed to restrain himself as he thought about what to do.
"Okay, so... I thought I'd run into Silver out here but I guess not," he mumbled out, turning away from the door to take a quick glance around. Nothing but him and some rocks out here. "Eh, maybe he got lost or is already in or something, I dunno. Find him later if I need to."
He turned back to the door. A small, red button off to the side of the door caught Sorun's attention. On a first glance it might have looked like a doorbell, but knowing Eggman it probably did something else. Like open a trapdoor under Sorun's feet or something else like that, so he was hesitant to reach out and actually touch it.
Then again... that'd be something he'd expect of Eggman Prime. This was a different, and Sorun would begrudgingly admit this, more subdued Eggman. So for all intents and purposes it probably was just a doorbell, but he didn't know if it was trapped or not.
"I even wanna knock on the front door? I mean I can just... ugh, I don't know." Maybe Silver had a point and he really should just be straight with him and ask. It'd probably even go further than just fighting his way to him. But try as he might, Sorun just couldn't shake the fact it was an Eggman he was dealing with. Surely not as worse a one as his. But still. There was a principle to consider.
"... Fuck it, what do I have to lose?" Sorun asked under his breath. Silver wanted to play it peaceful; he'd get mad if he found out Sorun tried the violent route, and more than that he didn't want to accidentally jeopardize their shot of getting back home. So against his better judgement he decided to hit the doorbell. He still used the tip of Yamato's scabbard to hit the button, though, for fear the button really was trapped and would shock him.
Except it didn't. There was no electrical buzz, no traps, nothing. Sorun was almost shocked to hear the sound of a doorbell ring out once he hit the button, but was even more shocked when nothing else happened.
"Well... alright, then." He supposed he really was just going to go through the front door here.
The minute after hitting the doorbell was spent with Sorun standing there, softly rocking back and forth on his feet as he waited for something to happen. Halfway through he wondered to himself if anybody had even heard the bell ring and should try again, but he held off on not wanting to appear rude. He made the conscious decision to ring the doorbell again, though, if another few minutes passed with nothing happening.
Right as he made that decision, the front door slid open with a small whish noise. The thing on the other side that opened the door certainly was round, but it wasn't the tall scientist Sorun was expecting.
No, it was a robot. A small little thing that barely reached up to Sorun's knees, and he wasn't even sure what he was looking at. Its "body" was a red, floating hemisphere that was connected to another red hemisphere that had two blue circular lights for eyes and a bunch of rectangles for a mouth. Two hemispheres connected by a mechanical torso about as thick as one of Sorun's fingers, with two equally thin arms and hands attached to its midsection.
Seeing it, Sorun couldn't help but scratch his head. Somehow this robot looked even less threatening than the ladybug wheel thing.
"Oh! Hello there." The little robot waved a hand up at Sorun. He even sounded polite, with that quiet, refined voice of his. "I don't suppose you're here about that part we ordered? That's been due to arrive for a few weeks now."
Sorun's eyes glanced off to the side, and then looked back down at the robot. "No?"
"Ohhh..." The robot slumped forwards in visible disappointment. Sorun opened his mouth to speak, but was waved off by the machine. "No, no, it's quite alright. There's always tomorrow." The robot perked up a bit, and then said, "I do have to say, though, that today is becoming an unusual one. It's not often the Doctor gets more than one visitor to his home. Actually, it's an odd day if he even gets one visitor now that I think about it..."
Sorun straightened when he heard that. "Was the first guy a hedgehog? White fur? Goofy haircut?"
"Why, yes, that's the precisely what he looked like," the robot confirmed to him. "A, uh, bit of an odd one, him. The way he talked you would assume he doesn't even know what a package courier is."
"Yeah I don't think he does, listen, you know where he is?"
"Ah, but of course. Your friend arrived inquiring about the good Doctor. Seeing no reason to object Cubot volunteered to show him to the Doctor. Though... hrm, that was admittedly some time ago," the robot admitted to Sorun. "It's very possible he may have gotten lost and lead your friend astray along the way. That tends to happen when I'm not around to correct him."
Sorun rose a questioning eyebrow. "A robot that gets lost, huh?"
"A number of his logic subsystems are faulty, but he tries his best all the same."
"Ah-huh. And you would be...?"
The robot seemed taken back by what Sorun assumed to be an innocent question. He floated back a couple inches and held a hand in front of his static, unmoving mouth that glowed brighter whenever he spoke. "You... you want to know my name?" he asked. By how reverent his tone was one would assume he was just given a marriage proposal.
The sudden shift made Sorun warily tilt his head back. "I did until you said it like tha-"
"Oh, what a remarkable day! Nobody ever asks about me!" the small robot gushed out, loud enough to startled Sorun. Apparently noticing Sorun's distress, the robot coughed - or at least attempted a cough-like sound - into his closed hand and seemed to compose himself. "Terribly sorry, sir, but nobody here or on the main island ever really talk to me. You may refer to me as Orbot."
"... Ahh, 'cause you're all round like an orb and a robot, so you're Orbot- ah, yeah, I get it," Sorun said with a nod. "So, like, you're a buddy Eggman made when he got lonely or something?"
"Oh, no no no... well yes, but no," Orbot denied with a shake of his head. "I'm one of... and decidedly the more intelligent and refined of the pair of us... two assistant bots the Doctor created to help with his daily going-ons. The other I referred to earlier, Cubot, would be the other."
Sorun made a half-nod. "So you help him make robots?"
"Well, somebody needs to hold all the tools and spare parts. Clean the lair, make the Doctor's breakfast, sort out his clothes in the wash because that blockheaded simpleton can't remember to separate the reds from the whites..." When he noticed Sorun's blank staring Orbot cleared his nonexistent throat. "But you certainly didn't come here to hear me ramble, please, come in, come in!"
So far the tiny robot seemed nice enough, and Sorun liked to think he had a good sense for these sorts of things. He was actually somewhat surprised one of Eggman's robots of all things was being so genuine and courteous with him, but, well... it was becoming increasingly evident this Eggman really may have been of a different breed. And even so it wouldn't stop surprising Sorun.
During his inner ruminations Orbot had said something and began floating down the hall. Seeing no reason not to Sorun decided to follow the little robot, taking the time to examine the inner surroundings of the "lair", as Orbot had called it.
Calling this place a lair honestly seemed disingenuous, at least in Sorun's opinion. The place was so clean and the lights were so bright that the place was practically shining white and chrome, and yet somehow it was just bright enough not to be nauseating to Sorun's eyes. If anything the sterile environment was almost pleasant, which was baffling to think considering an Eggman built this place. It was a total stark contrast to the interior of places Sorun had been in that had been designed by the Eggman he personally knew.
Dim lights. Cold, dark metal, uncomfortable angles, tight spaces, a dreary atmosphere, the heavy stench of metal and chemicals. Any place designed by that Eggman was by default gloomy and made Sorun want to leave as soon as possible. It didn't even fully encapsulate how terrible that man was, and they were still places Sorun could never stand to be in.
This place was so far on the opposite end of the spectrum that it was almost staggering to Sorun. He dared to say it was nice. Especially when Orbot lead him into a kitchen that for all intents and purposes just looked like a really well-furnished kitchen.
Afterwards Sorun slowly blinked in confusion as he wondered why he'd been lead into a kitchen.
"Um... hey, Orbot?" Sorun asked, making Orbot pause and turned back around towards him. "Why are we in a kitchen?" He took an appraising look around the kitchen, and then looked up at the ceiling. Again, he blinked. "Man, the dude even has a skylight in here. I want a skylight."
Orbot tapped his fingers together. "Oh, well, I'd assumed you wanted something to drink after taking a trip out here, and I took your silence when I posed the question as a sign of confirmation."
Sorun winced. "U-uh, right, sorry, man, I kind of spaced out and wasn't paying attention. And thanks for the offer, but I'd really rather- well, actually those fries were super salty and now that you mentioned it I actually could go for-" He cut himself off and shook his head. "No, never mind, Orbot I really, really need to see Eggman, okay?"
"You... sound rather distressed," Orbot noted. "Heavens, I hope everything is in order."
"It's fine, I just need, well, it's, uh, you see, it's sorta complicated- look, man, can you please just take me to the guy?"
"Well... that in of itself may prove to be a difficult request to fulfill at the moment," Orbot confessed. "The Doctor is currently in the middle of his shows and doesn't like to be disturbed."
Sorun cocked his head to the side. "Are we talking cartoon-length shows here or something more along the line of a soap opera?"
"The latter."
"Aw Jesus, dude, I ain't got that kind of time," Sorun breathed out. "Listen, can you please, please just take me to him? I'll take all the heat for interrupting him, I promise, but this is super important."
It was a bit startling how a robot that couldn't change his facial expression managed to look so pensive. Mostly in the hand motions, the way he kept wringing his hands together while floating back and forth so nervously. The longer this went on the more Sorun was silently cursing Silver for ingraining the idea that a peaceful resolution was actually a viable option, which was the only reason he was bothering to go through this nonsense. But he'd gone too far and committed, and by now the sword weighing down his left hand was nothing but an uncomfortable reminder how things could go if he got desperate enough.
"Well... if you're completely sure," Orbot finally said, making some of the tension leave Sorun. "Very well, then. This way, if you would."
The small, red robot lead Sorun out from the kitchen and into more clean, white hallways. And through a couple more rooms full of technological bits and pieces Sorun couldn't even begin to classify. Some time later they wound up in what was, as far as he could see, just an ordinary living room. A living room that was about three times wider than Sorun's own living room in his house, a fact he had no choice but to begrudgingly accept.
And in the middle of the room was a sight that forced Sorun to blink his eyes a few times to clear out the obstructions that were surely messing with his vision. He didn't know how to feel when he realized he was seeing completely fine. The sight of Eggman just... sitting there on a couch. Watching TV. Eating from a bowl of potato chips next to him. Like a normal person.
"Man, this day is just weird," Sorun decided, shaking his head at what he thought was an impossible sight. The only way he'd be more baffled was if it was the Eggman he knew, and he suspected the fact he at least barely comprehended all this was because they looked completely different. But even so, it was a hard sight to accept.
"Um... thank you, Orbot, you've been very helpful." The way Sorun spoke made his voice sound distant, and he was so transfixed on the sight of Eggman he couldn't even tear his eyes away to look at the robot. "I-I'll take it from here."
Orbot nodded up at Sorun. "Of course, sir. In the meantime of you conducting your business with the good Doctor I think I will go search for your missing companion. If they haven't shown up by now I truly do fear he was lead astray by Cubot. As if that would be the first time..." he grumbled out quietly, turning around to float out of the room. Sorun hadn't heard him, though, still so focused on Eggman as he was.
By now Sorun was contemplating how he should proceed from here. Go in with sword drawn, making demands right out the gate? Sounded reasonable, left the least amount of room for Eggman to make an aggressive act. He hadn't even noticed Sorun yet he was so engrossed in his TV show; if he really wanted to Sorun could just sneak up behind him, stab him through the couch and separate things out of his brain. That was a guaranteed win.
Yet... he'd gotten this far being nice, and by now that last option, using a katana to rewrite someone, was growing increasingly unappealing by the second the longer Sorun was here, to the point he was trying desperately to not see it as an option. But yet again past experience, all those encounters Sorun had with Eggman Prime, was screaming at Sorun that trying to peacefully talk with him was a bad idea, that somebody would get hurt as a result and he needed to attack him now to mitigate the risk. His skin was itching just being in the same room as him.
"It's not the same person," Sorun reminded himself, breathing out slowly to try and calm himself. It was working, albeit barely. "He's not an evil person, not like the other guy. Absolutely nothing about him screams evil like the other guy. And Silver's around, he wouldn't... fuck, fuck fuck fuck..."
With great apprehension, Sorun took a step forwards. He clenched his right hand to stop it from shaking due to the anxiety, but he couldn't do anything to stop it from feeling so clammy no matter how hard he tried. His feet were automatically carrying him forwards, even if Sorun's mind was still in a whirl, voices arguing with each other over what he was supposed to do, how to go forwards, if he should just talk or not, voices yelling at each other over trusting the man in the couch even though every instinct Sorun had was telling him not to trust him.
He must have gotten close enough for Eggman to notice him, because eventually he turned his head from the TV to look at Sorun. "Oh, hey, other guy. How's it going?" he greeted, making Sorun freeze in his tracks. "Orbot let you in?"
"U-uh... yeah," Sorun stuttered, completely unsure as to how he was supposed to proceed.
"Cool." The scientist turned back to the TV. "You a big TV guy, Sorun?"
"Used to be," Sorun muttered.
"Ah, well sit, sit! You caught me in the middle of a commercial break, show'll pop back on any second now."
Sorun had doubts Eggman was being serious until he actually scooched over to make room for Sorun on the couch. He'd barely even made the conscious effort to move forwards and sit on the couch next to him. It was more an automatic reflex made out of morbid curiosity than anything else, the same kind of fascination that lead people horrified at the sight of a dead body to poke it. He couldn't understand what was going on but some baser, curious part of Sorun compelled him to sit down on the couch.
And so he did. Against all his better judgements. Against all the fears and warning voices. And once he did Sorun considered how terrible of a choice it was that he just made, that any second now a bunch of mechanical hands would pop up out of the floor to restrain him, or the couch would mechashift into some sort of stupid containment cell, the TV would start broadcasting some mind control beam, Orbot was just being so courteous to lull Sorun into a false sense of security because he was a robot and that was what Eggman programmed him for and now Sorun was fidgeting and breathing heavily, he made a mistake, he should have just attacked when he had the chance.
None of that happened. The commercial ended and the program switched to a bunch of Mobians on-screen talking. Eggman shifted his attention back to the screen and started eating out of the chip bowl. Sorun couldn't find it in himself to pay attention to the particulars of the show, what the characters were talking about or even the broad points of the plot. He'd noted a canned laugh track but nothing else. That and the soft crunching sound from Eggman eating the chips next to him.
It was such a surreal experience Sorun felt like he was in a fever dream. The voices warning of him danger devolved into a sputtering, confused mess he couldn't make sense of; his whole mind was like that. Stunned and confused at what was happening, shifting between states of disbelief and bafflement, drowned in incomprehensible noise.
He... really was just sitting around and chilling out.
"So you're not from around here, huh?"
The fog of confusion around Sorun only lifted up enough for him to hear, process, and respond to the question Eggman asked him. "Huh?" was all he could manage to say.
Eggman popped another chip in his mouth, and then said, "I thought about it for a bit and realized it's impossible for another human to be here. Trust me, I've looked. So you're either a time traveler from back when they were around or you're from another universe. Or a shapeshifting alien, I guess, but I mean come on, what are the odds of that?"
Somehow he couldn't fault the logic. "I'm, uhm, from another universe. Silver, too."
"White hedgehog guy?"
"Yeah."
"Called it." Eggman celebrated by throwing another chip in his mouth. "So what's your deal? You guys just going around visiting places or what?"
"No, we're... we're trying to get back home. We accidentally got dropped out of it when... well, it's Silver's home, technically, I'm not actually from there," Sorun corrected, "but I live there 'cause... stuff happened, and... uh, yeah. That's the long and short of it."
"Huh. Alright."
And that seemed to be the length of interest Eggman held on the subject, because he went right back to watching the show right after. Sorun blinked heavily, switching back and forth from the TV to Eggman, and then, fed up with feeling lost, he asked, "What is this?"
"What's what? The show?" Eggman shrugged. "It's only been running on for two seasons now but personally I feel they nail a lot of the characterization with the core cast-"
"Not the show, this," Sorun nearly hissed through grit teeth. "This, this whole thing, what is this? What are you doing? A random stranger comes into your house and you invite them to watch TV with you?"
Sorun nearly lost it when Eggman slumped down in the couch a bit. "I don't have any friends so I thought it'd be nice, err... never got your name, what was it again?"
"I-I'm Sorun, I..." At a loss for words, Sorun tiredly mumbled out, "Aren't you supposed to be an evil scientist person?"
"I am an evil scientist." The amount of pride he had in the statement mixed with the utter lack of evidence Sorun saw on his part made him not believe him. "I got everything an evil scientist needs. Sweet evil lair, army of henchbots, I even have my own nemesis and his team of friends to contend with. What more do I need?"
"And you're evil 'cause you, what? What do you actually do?"
"Depends on what the mood is, I dunno, Sorun, I'm a mastermind. I have to mix it up every time or I get stuck in a rut," Eggman said as he ate a chip. "I enact some diabolical scheme on the town, Sonic and his friends stop me, I go out to the village every once in a while to catch lunch or a movie or something but that's about it. Otherwise I'm just kicking my feet up in my lair."
And just like that the paranoia and fear was rapidly draining out of Sorun. The slight shaking stopped, his breathing normalized, everything ceased. Now it was just Sorun staring up at Eggman in pure contemplation, followed by him making up his mind, scoffing, and sitting back against the couch.
Different zone, different rules. Something Sorun kept trying to remind himself of, but past experiences colored his perceptions too much that he couldn't help but be biased. Sitting next to the man of his ire, though, hearing him talk and what he does, it finally painted a clear picture for Sorun. He wasn't "evil" by any standard. Or if he was this whole zone's standard of "evil" was wildly below what it was on Mobius Prime, and that world's standard was already wildly, wildly below what was considered "evil" on Earth. With that kind of thinking now Sorun couldn't help but feel silly over being so worried with this Eggman. Different zone, different rules.
Hell, the multiverse was a multiverse for a reason. Infinite possibilities, he had to remind himself. For all he knew there was actually a good Eggman out there that wasn't evil in any capacity. Maybe in that Moebius place where everything was backwards.
A small shake in front of Sorun drew his attention. It was the bowl of chips, being held out to Sorun by Eggman. There was only a small amount of hesitation when Sorun took a chip and ate it. The chip was pretty good.
Well, that settled it. No person truly evil would ever offer another their share of chips.
"You're not sho' bad," Sorun said through the munching of the sole chip he'd taken from the bowl. After swallowing, he said, "Unless you're gonna tell me this is all some façade and you get off on putting people in the hospital with your robots?"
"What? Of course not!" Eggman shouted, sounding affronted. "What do you take me for, some deranged lunatic? I'm a evil genius, not a psychopath."
"Mm." Sorun's eyes drifted off to the television screen. "I really do hesitate to call you evil."
"Oh, really? Then by all means, tell me. What's your definition of evil?"
"Why ruin a good thing and tell you?"
He decided to drop the subject there and just watch the TV. Eggman didn't seem very satisfied by the answer, but he seemed to acknowledge Sorun was done with the topic, because he, too, turned back to the TV and went back to eating his chips. Once more they were left in silence, with only the odd crunching of chips to break up the sound of the program.
He disagreed with Eggman, though, now that Sorun could actually focus on the show. Characters were halfway decent, plot was shit. Once again he found himself missing Earth entertainment.
"Saw that twist comin' a mile away," Sorun thought to himself, slowly starting to mentally tune out the show the longer he watched. The movement of something slightly slipping in his grasp made him remember the katana he was holding, making Sorun turn his attention down to it. Yamato, of course, was still there in his grasp, patiently waiting. His eyes flicked back and forth from it to Eggman, and immediately new emotions welled up in him. Shame and guilt, mostly.
"I can't hurt this guy with the Yamato. I just can't. He's too nice." This was the man he'd come in here with plans to threaten, hurt, violate and irrevocably damage. Intent on twisting his very being by carving out pieces of memory and personality. He would have hesitated in doing such a thing with even Eggman Prime, to the point Sorun still doubted he'd be able to commit such a thing to that man. But this one? This Eggman? Someone who shared chips?
No. Couldn't be done. Sorun just plain refused to do it. And the more this went on the more he realized that Silver was right and they really should just ask nicely. Maybe once he actually found him they-
"Oh, hey, Sorun!" The familiar voice made Sorun's head snap up. In the entrance of the living room was Silver, who was standing there and waving at him. In front of him was the little red robot, Orbot, from earlier. And he was carrying in his arms a yellow, less round and more square counterpart whose mouth and eyes were completely dark.
Coincidentally, this was when the credits to the show on the TV began to hit. Eggman chose that time to look away, and then, upon seeing Orbot carrying the defunct cube-like robot, he set down the empty bowl and stood up from the couch.
"Orbot, there you are! What's wrong with Cubot? Don't tell me he's been sticking his finger in the electrical sockets again," Eggman groused, all but completely ignoring Silver as he stomped in front of the robot, who awkwardly shuffled off to the side near the couch where Sorun was sitting.
The small robot let out a sigh. "No, sir, according one of your guests Cubot got lost while attempting to lead him to you, and then summarily shut down all on his own. It's quite fortunate I managed to find them when I did, I assure you. The yellow fool almost wandered into the munitions vault."
"What!? I'd threaten to scrap him for parts if he was conscious enough to forget my threat! Let me see him." Eggman bent down and snatched up the yellow robot in his hands. He turned him over a few times while examining him, and then began feeling up his head. He opened a small hatch on the front of his face, peering in for a few seconds and then recoiling. "Ugh! Smells like a landfill in there. Why is there so much acid damage?"
"I believe Cubot has been getting into the battery packs and consuming them in an attempt to power himself, sir," Orbot replied.
"Again!? I ordered that childproof lock specifically so he couldn't get into the cabinet where I keep those batteries! That was weeks ago! Why haven't you installed it yet!?"
"We're still awaiting for it to arrive in the mail, sir."
"Grrr, the one time I don't pay for advanced shipping. Curse you, Stork & Co. Courier Service!"
Somehow it was more fun for Sorun to watch this exchange than the trash that was playing on the TV earlier, so he'd moved to the edge of the coach to watch Eggman and Orbot bicker over the yellow robot. Silver, who didn't seem nearly as interested, slinked closer to Sorun's side and tugged on his sleeve.
"Oh, hey, Silver," Sorun greeted, tearing his eyes away from the spectacle to face Silver. "You doing alright?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah, fine. Thanks," Silver said. "What are you doing here? I thought you wanted to sit on a beach forever because you were scared of your friend?"
He wasn't even being facetious when he said that - nothing but straight honesty poured out of Silver's mouth with that statement. It felt like a punch to the gut for Sorun, but somehow he managed to soldier on with a straight face. "I changed my mind, okay!? What, I'm not allowed to do that, change my mind, well I did, I do that a lot, my mind changed, Silver, okay, alright, I changed my mind!"
"O-okay, alright." Chuckling nervously, Silver backed up a step while facing his palms at Sorun. After, he said with a sincere smile,"Thanks for coming, Sorun."
"... Yeah."
"Confounded robot, I swear, you try to cut corners on programming an AI and this is what happens," Eggman grumbled out, stepping over to where the two were. Orbot floated a ways back, holding Cubot in his arms. "Take it from me, kids, it doesn't pay to rush these things."
"I will definitely take your word for that, Mr. Eggman," Silver promised him. "Is your friend going to be alright?"
"Eh, no, probably never, but I can fix him so it doesn't really matter," Eggman answered with a wave of his hand. "Now, why don't we get down to talking about why you two are visiting me? Not that I'm unhappy to have the company, but if you two are looking for a place to crash because you just came to this universe then you can forget it. Orbot has enough chores having to wait on one person."
"Oh, no, we're not looking for that, mister," Silver denied, shaking his head. "We... well, it's actually pretty funny, you see me and Sorun are trying to get to this specific universe, but it's, well, it's kind of far, actually, and since you're such a big genius we were hoping you could, you know... help us get there faster...?" A large, hopeful smile spread over Silver's face as he looked up at the Doctor's blue spectacles. "Pretty please?"
Eggman made a humming sound, examining Silver with a hidden expression who continued to smile at him. Then he glanced up at Sorun, who was looking at him with an otherwise impassive face. In a move that surprised both of them, he shrugged and said, "Yeah, sure, here, gimme a second."
Before any of them could respond he reached forwards and grabbed one of Silver's quills. The Mobian cried out when he plucked one free, and then turned around and walked out of the living room with Sorun staring after him and Silver rubbing at the spot his quill had been yanked out. The silent whish of a door closing marked his departure, leaving the two alone with the floating robot.
Nothing was really said between the three of them. Sorun didn't have any words, Silver looked like he wanted to start some conversation but seemed unsure of what to say, so his eyes just kept drifting between the other two. Orobot was just hovering there silently, still as a statue carrying the other robot. It was a rather uncomfortable silence, only broken up when Silver had cleared his throat at one point. Meanwhile Sorun was silently hoping Eggman actually did have some solution for them and that he and Silver would be gone before the cops found that guy he knocked out.
A few minutes of anxious waiting later and Eggman returned, holding a machine in his hands. A white, metal, box-like thing that barely fit in the two hands he was using to carry it. With a loud huff of exertion he set the metal box down on the floor, causing a loud clunk! to be heard, after which he stood up and straightened his back out, eliciting a few cracks.
"Ahh, oh yeah, there we go," Eggman groaned out. "Orbot, plug it in, would you?"
Wordlessly, the red robot hovered towards the boxy machine, and while balancing the body held with one hand reached with another to grab at an electrical plug sticking out of the side of the box. He pulled it away, revealing an extending cable spooling out of the box that Orbot carried to a nearby electrical socket. After plugging it in, a heavy whirring sound was heard from the box as it started up, and the few gaps and lines in the box's surface began glowing an intense purple.
"So... what's that?" Silver asked, eyeing the machine with interest while Sorun silently observed.
"Eh, dabbled with going to alternate universes once. Didn't really end well. Made this during one of my late-night benders before I realized going to other worlds often ends horribly so I just chucked it in my broom closet. But hey, if you guys need it I can break it out for a few minutes," Eggman explained.
"That's great, mister Eggman, but why did you pull one of my quills out?" Silver asked. He was still rubbing at that spot. "It kind of hurt."
"Different universes are beholden to different laws of physics. Usually these differences are so minute as to not matter, but it's a large factor in explaining a particular universe's makeup," Eggman said. The top of the box opened up, and a small funnel extended out from the opening. Eggman dropped the white quill in the funnel, after which a purple, holographic keyboard and screens were projected up from the box and in front of Eggman. He fixed his covered eyes on the screens and began typing on the keyboard while continuing to speak. "Every single universe has its own completely unique energy signature, and matter is really just energy with extra steps. It's like using a dosimeter to measure background radiation, and everything emits radiation, even if ninety-nine percent of it is harmless. So if I have a sample of matter from a particular universe, I can read that signature and pinpoint where in the multiverse is a universe that registers that same signature using this machine. Any evil genius worth their salt can do it, really, it's not that hard."
With skeptical eyes trained on the box, Sorun asked, "And... you can power a machine able to do all that by plugging it in a wall outlet?"
"The cold fusion reactor I have powering this place can do a lot of things, Sorun."
"Eh, alright." Sorun decided to leave it there. It seemed if there was one commonality among Eggmen across the multiverse it was that he had no idea how their inventions worked, but if it got them home he didn't really care enough to know the details.
"Mmhm, just a sec, and... wow, really?" Eggman seemed taken back by what he was reading on one of the floating screens in front of him. He turned his head to look at Sorun and Silver, visibly surprised. "You guys are from that big universe that's smack-dab in the middle of the multiverse?"
"Yep," Sorun confirmed, nodding. "That a problem?"
"Well, yeah. Now I get why you guys wanted help getting there. That place is forever away."
"You said you could get us there," Sorun reminded him, voice a tone lower.
"I thought when you said that you just needed directions or something! I didn't know it was a matter of distance! You weren't specific!" Eggman argued out. "I can give you a precise set of coordinates to where in the multiverse it is but that's the best I can do for you. This thing can't actually make a portal to other worlds. Had to trash the last invention that could because it almost blew the world up."
Coordinates. That single word alone made Sorun sit straight up on the couch he was sitting on. It was like a switch in his brain was suddenly flipped on from hearing that word; suddenly it made sense why he wasn't able to just use Yamato to cut a portal to the Prime Zone. That was it. The missing piece. Knowledge on where exactly in the big, wide multiverse his destination was.
While Silver seemed crestfallen at the news, Sorun was the exact opposite. He felt an immense wave of relief wash over him as he dared to hope that finally, finally he could get home to sleep in his own damn bed. "Oh, that's actually perfect. I can work with that," he said, sliding off the couch and walking towards Eggman. "Just gimme the coordinates and I can do the rest."
Eggman looked at Sorun oddly. "Um... if you say so." A sound was emitted from the machine, like an old printer going off. All eyes present turned towards it as a slip of paper was slowly ejected out of a slot on top of the machine. When it finished Eggman tore the slip of paper out and gave it to Sorun. "Here you go. Dunno know what exactly you're planning with it."
Taking the piece of paper in his hand, Sorun looked down at it. He didn't know what he expected; it was just an incredibly large string of numbers that was otherwise incomprehensible to his eyes in how they related to anything. A random mess of nothing, really, at least to someone like him that didn't know what he was looking at.
But knowledge of function wasn't a requirement, just knowledge of the numbers themselves. Because they clicked with him. He felt something, like a small pulse or harmless static shock from the Yamato he held trail up his arm and to his brain, and suddenly he just knew. Or more accurately, he knew he was suddenly able of doing something he previously couldn't. Something he couldn't do but had attempted. Now he could. It's what the sword was telling him.
He could open a portal to Mobius Prime with these numbers.
"... Why help us with this?" Sorun suddenly asked, looking up from the paper to Eggman. He may have been relieved beyond all relief to finally put this damned trip to an end, but it didn't help quell that question burning in his mind. "I mean don't get me wrong, I'm super grateful, but why?"
"Uh... it's not really that big a deal. Really, it's, like, five minutes out of my day," Eggman answered. He glanced up at Silver, and then leaned down closer to Sorun's face while holding his hand to the side of his mouth. "And also between you and me, Sorun, we're cool, but that Silver guy stopped all my robots with his mind and he comes off as a kind of goody-goody guy. I got enough on my plate dealing with a blue hedgehog that can run faster than sound, I don't need a white telekinetic one running around, too. That's too much work even for me, so if you could take him with you when you leave that'd be great."
"Ah." That Sorun could actually buy over Eggman doing this out of the kindness of his heart beyond it not costing him anything more than a few minutes. Accepting the answer, Sorun nodded up at the Doctor. "Sure, I get it. You don't have to worry about him much longer."
He was given a grateful look by the Doctor, who went as far as to flash him two thumbs-ups. Ignoring him, Sorun turned to Silver, who was looking at him expectantly. "Silver," he announced, "I got what I need. We can get to Mobius Prime now."
"Wait, what? Really? Really!?" In a blink Silver's eyes lit up in excitement, and a wide smile broke out on his face. "You really can now!?" he nearly screamed. His body was nearly vibrating he seemed to excited.
"Yeah, assuming I didn't get anything wrong." After pocketing the slip of paper, Sorun grasped Yamato's handle with his right hand. The sword was pulled out of the sheath, glimmering slightly in the light. Silver looked on with anticipation while Eggman and Orbot watched with curiosity.
A blue cross was cut into the air. For Sorun, it was just like opening up a portal anywhere else. He felt the location, the destination locked on as the cross folded inwards to form a blue portal hovering in front of him. That was it right there. The way back home. All that was left was to go through.
"So, uh... yeah. That's it," Sorun said, turning to Silver. "It's through there. We just need to step through and we're good."
"Wow, uh... just from the paper thing Eggman gave you?"
Sorun shrugged. "Apparently."
"Oh..." Hesitantly, Silver took a step towards the portal. He seemed just relieved as Sorun felt at the news, still smiling widely as he let out an light chuckle. "Well, that's it, then." He looked towards Eggman, smiling wide enough to show teeth while waving at him. "Thanks for everything mister Eggman and mister Orbot! We never would have made it back home without your help!"
"Er, yeah, sure, don't mention it." Visibly off-put by the compliment, all Eggman could do was awkwardly wave as Silver stepped through the portal. He watched him go, then turned his head down to Sorun. "So you just carry around a magic sword?"
"Pretty much, yeah," Sorun said. His mouth thinned a bit at the sight of the larger male, and the gratefulness he felt made him look away and towards the portal. "I can't really overstate how much you've helped us out here. It's something I can never repay, mostly 'cause I don't want to, but... yeah. Thanks. You're one of the good ones." He turned and made his way towards the portal. "Better than my Eggman at any rate."
"You know, the other guy that just left is way better at compliments than you," Eggman remarked with a dry voice.
One foot already in the portal, Sorun couldn't help but chuckle. "It just ain't my style. Neither is the long goodbyes." Taking a final glance back at Eggman, Sorun held up two fingers and flashed him a V symbol. "Been an experience. Seeya."
And after that, he disappeared through the portal.
