Recursion Error

by Writer's Domino

"I mean, my life was pretty great until I got shanghaied into the global furry resistance from another universe."

93. Chapter 93

A/N- Alright, here it is. The obligatory beach episode. Look, see, it's even called that.

Also friendly reminder that canon dates are a bit askew because of the way the story went so if questions about age come up, well, there it is. Story's time is a bit ahead of where it's supposed to be in canon despite some events not happening yet. Don't think about it too much, it isn't really that important.

Last I played a lot of Disco Elysium before this so some of that may have accidentally bled into the writing.

---

Recursion Error

Episode 93- The beach episode

---

It was one of those days.

Everybody had "one of those days". Days they didn't recount, days they didn't care to try and keep track of, maybe even dreaded when that day's date was coming up. When that one day did come most people did their best to ignore it. Most managed, others didn't, but at the end of the day one of those days was just a day. It'd pass and then it would go back to being business as usual for those experiencing their day so they could just move on with their life. That was the hope, anyways.

For Sorun it was one of those days. A day he'd made the mistake of going through the effort of keeping track of, after juggling around a calendar to line this world's dates up with Earth's. But it was locked in now, so here he was. Sitting on a park bench in the middle of the park with a bottle of soda clutched in his hand as he stared up at the morning sky.

"Here's to you, you shitty old man. Fuck you." Raising the bottle up to the sky, Sorun slammed it back and drank half the contents right there. Of all the things that managed to be preserved from the old world, thank goodness cola was one of them. He'd shake the hand of that Mobian that rediscovered the coveted drink if he ever found them. Or if they were even still alive.

... Nah, on second thought, that sounded like a lot of work.

Things would be alright. He'd finish the soda, walk somewhere, he didn't know where, just anywhere, carry on with the rest of his day and then tomorrow would get here and he'd get to stop thinking about it. Hopefully he could do all that before Nicole found him. Which would take all of a second if she put actual effort into looking for him. But he liked his odds.

He rose the bottle back to his lips. Yep, it was smooth sailing from here. No need to dwell on-

"Hey Sorun guess whose birthday it is!"

"Blegh!" The precious cola was sprayed out of Sorun's mouth in a fine mist to prevent him from accidentally choking on it in surprise. Past the quickly-fading rainbow formed from the mist he saw Sonic, the culprit responsible for sneaking up on him and startling him, all with that stupid grin plastered on his face. But none of that was important because Sorun was panicking over the words he just heard. "WHAT, WHO, HOW!? WHO TOLD YOU HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY KNOW!?"

God fucking dammit who leaked it, he never even told anyone he swore to god when he found out who the hell did it he was gonna kill them-

"Uh... well, I've known Sally since I was five," Sonic slowly began, the smirk being swapped out for a confused face. Sorun froze and reflexively sucked his own lips into his mouth. "So she, you know, told me? When she turned six? Along with all our other friends? And we just... sorta remembered? Like normal friends?"

Sorun's lips folded back out of his mouth. "Oh it's Sally's birthday, alright, yeah, good for her. Cool," he rasped out, throat surprisingly dry at the moment. "So she's seventeen now?"

"Eighteen," he corrected.

"Ah. Whole two years older, huh? Ain't you still sixteen?"

Sonic rolled his eyes away from Sorun and crossed his arms. He looked annoyed now. "I mean, we used to be the same age 'til my whole space trip sent me ten months ahead. I come back and suddenly everyone's a year older than I remember."

"Rough." Sorun tipped the glass bottle over and peered through the neck. A single drop of cola dripped out of the empty bottle. "So she got a big party or something planned for you guys?"

Sonic looked back at Sorun, looking a bit surprised. "Uh, us. As in, all of us plus you."

"Could just buy another. Two sodas in one day never killed anyone and it's a special occasion- wait, what?" Blinking a few times, Sorun switched his attention from the bottle to Sonic. "I'm... I'm invited, too?" he asked. "Why?"

"'Cause you're a Freedom Fighter?" The way he said that made Sonic sound more confused than Sorun did at the moment.

"I mean, not really," Sorun said as he lowered the bottle from being raised above his head. "I carry boxes and stuff from point A to B. I don't fight stuff like you guys anymore; I got a job. I pay taxes and buy my own groceries. And then I have to make a second trip because Nicole frets over my lack of vitamins from not getting vegetables. So then I go buy the vegetables but I'm really just feeding them to Silver so she thinks I'm eating them. Please don't tell Nicole any of this," Sorun pleaded when he saw Sonic's wide-eyed stare. "I take vitamins I bought at Station Square, I swear, I just really don't want to eat the vegetables."

"Yeah, sure, whatever." Sonic waved his hands in a reassuring manner. "But listen, back to that first thing. 'Course you're still one of us. Once a Freedom Fighter always a Freedom Fighter, y'know? Just 'cause you're not out there with us anymore doesn't change that."

It was one of those awkward situations where, once again, Sorun was touched beyond words but the person who said those words wasn't Nicole so he couldn't show it. So it lead to the situation of Sorun just blankly staring at Sonic, inwardly cringing at his own reaction but lamenting he was too far in to back out now. It was better than admitting how endearing the words were and how much it meant to him.

"You okay? Sorun?" Mildly concerned but mostly just weirded out, Sonic waved a hand in front of his face. "You're spacin' out on me, man, what's going on?"

Sorun straightened up a bit and cleared his throat. "Ah, nothing. All is fine, everything is... fine. All fine." Absentmindedly tapping his fingernails against the bottle, Sorun asked, "So is there just gonna be a party or something in the castle?"

"Actually, I don't have a clue what she's planning," Sonic admitted with a shrug. "She asked me to find you, actually. She wants to talk about it for some reason, I dunno."

He seemed to find it odd from the way Sonic said it, and to Sorun it seemed odd, too. But the request itself seemed reasonable enough regardless, and Sorun was interested. It was a distraction he needed, anyways. "Oookay. I'll head there right now," he said. And then he looked down at the glass bottle in his hand, and then reared it back getting ready to throw it.

... And then he realized what he was doing and got out of the throwing stance, bottle still in hand.

"Right, can't do that anymore. Need to find a recycling bin," he muttered out. Sonic saw the small exchange, and one of his ears flicked in curiosity.

"Sorun, don't tell me people in your old home just threw empty bottles everywhere," he said in a joking and pleading voice.

The hedgehog wilted a bit when Sorun nodded. "Broken glass was a really bad safety hazard in Detroit," he admitted.

"Yeah, but you didn't contribute to it, right?"

"... Listen, I'm a responsible citizen now. What does it matter? Nobody ever even bothered to clean out that scrapyard."

"Okay, okay," Sonic chuckled out nervously, holding his hands up. "Look, if you want I can just take care of that for you so you can just head straight to the castle, how about that?"

Another endearing moment Sorun fought not to fawn over. Instead he simply just handed Sonic the bottle. "That'd be great actually, yeah, thank you."

---

"Sooo... eighteen. The big one-eight." Sorun clicked his tongue and tapped on his knees a few times. He was forced to readjust himself slightly - this couch had so much padding on it he was genuinely worried his whole body would sink into the thing. He didn't know how Sally wasn't having the same problem since she was sitting right next to him. "It's two less than twenty, you know."

"I'm pretty familiar with math," Sally lightheartedly replied, though she was giving Sorun a perplexed look. "You okay? You're kind of acting weird."

"Never better, never better, it's all good," he assured her.

She blinked at him and gave him an odd look, but then shrugged and drank out from the glass of water she'd been holding. "You sure you don't want something to drink?" she asked after finishing.

"It's all good, it's all good, never better." She gave him another odd look. "So, birthday, big birthday, big birthday plans, what's your plan, why am I here, why am I involved in these big birthday plans?"

Instead of answering immediately she continued to regard him silently with that questioning look. She slowly put the glass down on the small table in front of them. A really ornamental table with gold fittings. Out of everything else in what looked like a meeting room in the castle Sally had invited him in to it was probably the most extravagant piece if furniture in here. Aside from this couch attempting to swallow Sorun.

Seriously, what did they pad this thing with? His hands kept disappearing into the cushions.

"I wanted to ask you a favor in regards to..." Sally slowed down when she saw Sorun adjust himself for the fifth time in the last twenty seconds. "Sorun, do you want to sit somewhere else?"

The latest position featured Sorun sitting in a way that he was facing Sally and with his legs crossed. Seemed to be stable so far - he wasn't sinking at a rate that made it look like Sally was growing. "Nah, I think I finally figured it out," he assured her. "Oh, uh, congrats, by the by. You know, for surviving eighteen years."

She smiled for the first time since greeting him after he entered the castle. "Well, thank you, but you don't have to say it in such a macabre way. My brother complains that you do that a lot." She twirled a lock of red hair between her fingers and glanced towards a nearby window. "It doesn't really feel all that different. There's a bunch of traditions members of my family were supposed to do at these times, but with everything I barely ever got to participate in many of them throughout my life. But my father was the only one who ever enforced those and he... well..."

Sorun shifted his legs so the other one was sitting above the previous. "He's still not doing well?"

She grew a somber face. "He... can't really speak anymore. Mom's spending most of her time looking after him, but. Well. You know..."

"Mm." Old age - the oldest and most reliable killer there was. Sorun wanted to make a snide comment, but held off in light of it being Sally's birthday. And her dad, too, he supposed. "Didn't mean to bring the mood down."

Sally waved his concerns off. "It's fine," she said, a bit of her smile returning. "So, listen. We haven't been able to do much because Eggman and his Legion went quiet due to us all pushing them back. Again. So we're all just waiting around on standby."

Sorun nodded along. "Following."

"So this is happening and... well, a lot's just happened in the last year," Sally said. "Pretty much the whole world's liberated now, we got the new city, things are finally going fine for everyone, and in light of all this we all figured it was a good time to celebrate. Even if it seems a bit premature. I think everyone just capitalized on my birthday as an excuse to celebrate something," she remarked with a small grin.

"Naturally."

"And to that end we all just decided to hold a small get-together. In recognition for everything that's happened and just to celebrate. Just us Freedom Fighters. And Knuckles, too, since he and the rest of the gang on the island have been with us through a large part of all of this. They're coming, too. It'll be nice. All of us hanging out like old times without some massive, giant threat looming over our heads, you know?"

Oh, Sorun knew, all right. He'd been living the stress-free dream of not having to worry about all the heavy stuff for a while now and it was sweet. "I can get behind that," Sorun said. "Plus what you guys do is important. You should totally just take a moment to yourselves-"

"Ourselves. You're coming too, remember?" Sally interrupted. "You're still one of us, Sorun. We wouldn't be having this conversation if we didn't think so."

There was that warm feeling again that Sorun had to hide by shifting positions on the couch once more while looking away. "Yeah, well... I got the time, so I'll go." He had a hard time keeping up his indifferent composure when he saw Sally beam a smile at him. "But why'd you need to talk to me about it like this? You could have just come to my house."

"Oh, that." Sorun looked back at her in interest when Sally's expression suddenly became mildly sheepish. "So... way back in the day during one of our operations we found this one island, right?"

"Ah-huh." He nodded along.

"It's a really nice place, remote, large beach, I remember it being really great," Sally continued. She was twiddling her fingers as a distraction. "We all want to go there, half because it's nice and half because of where it is in the world it'll be morning in a few hours so we'll have a whole day to enjoy there."

"Ah-huh..." Sorun started smirking in amusement because he saw where this was going. It was a reaction Sally caught, which made her twiddle harder.

"And what with it being so far away and Angel Island currently being in an inconvenient spot I just wanted to ask if you just transport us all there? With your sword?"

"Ah-hah, I see." It was allll clear now. The nice invitation to the castle, buttering him up with all these nice words and this impractically soft couch. And of course he would do it, but more importantly than that the door to teasing just now was opened and Sorun would be a fool not to capitalize on it. "You never call, you never write-"

"We live in the same town," Sally dryly commented.

"-rarely visit," Sorun revised, "I mean I get you're all so busy with the Freedom Fighter stuff and this is the first time you've had some time off in a while, but... but I thought we were friends. But now it just seems like you only ever give me the time of day because I have this super convenient katana thing. It's almost hurtful."

She made a small sort of chuckle. "Come on, Sorun, it's not nice to tease. And you know it's hard to find time when we're both living in different circles now."

A bit of dissatisfaction grew in Sorun. Was always hard to get things past Sally - nigh impossible, almost. Not like her brother where it was so easy Sorun probably should have felt bad doing it. She was too "people smart". People genius, even, in the same way Tails was a mechanical genius, or Honey a fashion genius, or Sorun a gaming genius. Or Nicole being a genius in general.

"Really should have been you holding the crown," Sorun off-handedly muttered, sounding a bit bitter over his teasing being seen through. Sally grinned wider, and whether it was because of his remark or his mood, Sorun didn't know.

"It's something Elias and I talk about," she admitted. The grin dimmed somewhat. "He's entertained the idea of stepping down to pass the crown to me one day in the future. Even if the position's power is diminished from an active council, it's still the highest position in government now. We... don't really want to talk about it so much with dad still around," she added. The grin faded altogether. "He's a serious traditionalist and the change of a monarchy to a republic... well, the stress didn't do wonders for his health."

"So what, you're waiting for him to pass before you start swapping the crown around like a hat?"

Sally flinched at the wording. "I wouldn't put it quite like that," she said, "but... it'd make things in our family easier, yes." She made a small sigh. "Our mother isn't as set in the matter as our father, but with his health and me being busy with the Freedom Fighters along with everyone else, it's just not a good time. The people need a leader and there's only so much a single person can do at once. Maybe one day, after we win. But I think my brother's doing a fine enough job that I'm not really worried about it."

He didn't have much more to add. It seemed like sensible enough reasoning and he agreed with her wholeheartedly. "Alright. Now, moving away from that dour stuff..." he started, "I have always wanted to go to the beach. To have fun. Not-" He pushed the memory of drunkenly crashing a plane out of his head, "-for any other reason than the one I just stipulated, nope."

The bright smile returned to Sally's face. "That's great! And, say... since we're on the subject, when's your birthday?"

Red alert. Deflect it. Deflect it right now. "Kind of a weird thing to bring up out of nowhere, ain't it?"

"Not... really? We were talking about my birthday, I'm asking about a birthday, seems pretty related." Instead of answering Sorun silently stared, making Sally shake her head. "Fine, don't tell her I said this, but... Nicole's been trying to figure it out." Sorun felt himself still as Sally continued with, "It's just that you've been here for over three-quarters of a year and she's a bit worried she'll miss it. It doesn't help you've never talked about it."

"Ah. Well ain't that a thing?" He probably should have figured something like this would happen, but for the most part he'd been ignoring the possibility in hopes that it would kind of just go away on its own. By and large that was still Sorun's strategy and at this point he was hoping Sally would drop it really soon so they could get back onto another topic.

"So...?" Sally hedged, seemingly awaiting a response.

Evidently she wasn't dropping it. "So what?"

"So are you gonna tell her when it is?"

No. He wouldn't tell anyone. He wouldn't tell Sally right now because for all he knew this was some sort of convoluted plot she concocted with Nicole and the AI was listening in from somewhere. Or more realistically she'd just tell her later. Either event was a disaster Sorun couldn't abide.

To that end Sorun did the thing he was reasonably good at: continue to deflect. "I don't think today's really an appropriate day to be talking about something like this. It's your birthday, it's your day. Shouldn't have me crampin' it."

"I wouldn't go that far." She tried to make light of the reasoning, but all the same still looked off-put by his words. She seemed to shake the mood off after a brief moment. "She cares about you a lot, you know. She just wants to do something nice to make you feel more welcome when it gets here."

"Yeah. I know." Part of why the situation sucked so much. He'd usually just consider lying about it but Nicole was the one person he didn't really want to do that to, so... back to hoping the situation would just go away on its own. Which it probably wouldn't. Eh, he'd wing it if it ever became a problem. "I'll talk to her about it. One day." Probably. If she remembered.

... Ah, dammit, she always remembered.

"I'm glad to hear it." She smiled "So you've never went to one in your old home? A beach?"

"... There was a beach in Detroit. I never went." Sorun's face soured. "Except for that one stupid contest at the youth center next to the beach my mom and Dave's parents dragged us to. But other than that, no, I never went personally."

"How come?"

Because how the hell was he supposed to grind experience points out on a beach? "Just never found a good opportunity," Sorun said, shrugging. He smiled a bit. "But no, I'd like this. I'd like to have fun on the beach with you all. And hey, it'll be nice seeing the gang from the floating island place again. I haven't seen them since... I said goodbye to everyone before trying to go back to Earth." Sorun frowned a bit. "And then I never saw them again until I almost died again and you all shoved me in the giant glowing crystal..." He frowned deeper and looked Sally in the eyes. "Um... did, did you guys ever, like, tell them? What happened with me? And Earth? Because it kind of looked like everyone assumed I did leave and acted surprised I was there. Shadow was freaking out."

The first thing Sally did was awkwardly cough. Not a good sign. Then her eyes darted away from Sorun's as she said, "Well... the truth is nobody was really sure how to handle it. A good time to explain things never came up before... you know."

"Do they at least know I'm fine now?" Sorun pressed. "I vanished after going in the Master Emerald. Do they all still think I'm vanished?"

He felt a bit relieved when Sally shook her head. "No, we explained things. After," she elaborated, "when you came back. They know."

"It's still gonna be super awkward," Sorun muttered out in lament. He rubbed his face a bit, letting out a small sigh as it dropped back to his side. "Ah, well, nothing to do about it, I guess. But hey, since they're coming I can bring my houseguest, right?"

Sally froze. Not in the "I'm surprised you asked that" kind of way, but more in the "I need a polite and tactful way to handle this" kind of way when somebody needed a moment to think. For Sally it took less than a moment for her to find the response she'd been looking for, but Sorun had still noticed the pause. "Well, Sorun, I... suppose your pet Chao did help out with that one mission at Station Square, so technically he could be construed as an... honorary Freedom Fighter of sorts, so yes. I suppose he could. As long as you keep him away from Sonic; the two don't get along."

Sorun blinked suspiciously at Sally. "Uh... I know he's kind of dumb, but I wouldn't really refer to Silver as a pet-"

"Okay I tried to be nice about this but I'm just gonna say it," Sally interrupted, bluntly. "No. He can't come."

"A-ah, I see." Well that was disheartening to hear. He couldn't say he was surprised, but he hadn't expected to hear it laid out so raw. By Sally of all people. Maybe he really did underestimated how much damage Silver did. "Is this about the traitor thing-?"

"It's about the fact it's a gathering for Freedom Fighters and he's not a Freedom Fighter, Sorun." She crossed her arms, glowering not at Sorun, but seemingly at the mere thought of Silver, which couldn't have been a good sign. "But since you brought it up, yes, Sorun, it's because of that, too. I don't take kindly to the insinuation either I or one of the friends I've spent nearly my whole life with, who I'd trust my life with, are secretly plotting to undermine everything we've spent our lives fighting for." She looked like she was getting angrier from mentally reliving Silver's questioning. "And he was saying all that with, with such a carefree expression! Like he didn't even care-!"

"He cares," Sorun very carefully corrected, hoping to calm Sally down, "he's just, well, I don't wanna say emotionally stunted 'cause he's not, but, uh... he doesn't have a lot of practice with people. I mean he was raised by Mogul and never had contact with anyone else besides some weirdo hermit before he met me, what do you expect?"

The name "Mogul" made Sally freeze, and slowly she turned towards him with narrowed eyes. "The mammoth. That Mogul?" The name sounded icy coming out of Sally's mouth.

"Y-yeah?"

"The one who tried to usurp the old kingdom by taking a family artifact from me? The one who sent mercenaries against the Freedom Fighters? The one who kidnapped Tails and sent a clone to replace him for months? The one we were keeping in jail before he escaped?"

Okay he forgot about the body snatcher part. Goddamn. "Uh... to be fair it seemed like he chilled out after living in an apocalypse for a couple centuries. Or maybe being a dad mellowed him out, who knows?"

She didn't even seem to hear that. "You're saying that same Mogul is the one that raised Silver?"

"I'm starting to regret having revealed this information, but yes. It was that guy." Sorun gulped and nervously tapped his knee. "I feel like this isn't helping you trust him."

"No, the opposite, actually," Sally stated through her scowl. "I'm starting to wonder if we should even have him in the city."

"Hey, come on." Slightly alarmed, Sorun uncrossed his legs and sat up straight on the couch to give Sally a serious look. "I know Silver's kind of an anti-social weirdo, but so was I! You never kicked me out for being weird!"

"You weren't raised by a villain!"

"Ehhh- forget it, look, he's a good guy," Sorun said, though Sally didn't look like she believed him. "I mean I'll admit it, flat-out, he's stupid when it comes to a lot of societal cues, but it's not his fault! If anything he came out really well for where he came from! It's almost a miracle when you think about it!"

"Sorun-"

"Look I know he screwed up with you all, it's fine if none of you like him, I get it, but you can't just throw him out! He doesn't have anywhere else to go and I'm not entirely convinced he'd make it out there on his own!"

"Sorun," Sally repeated, a bit more forcefully. He quieted down and listened as she spoke. "Listen, I'll concede the fact he actually hasn't done anything illegal. Wrong's another matter, but... ugh." She made a small groan and pinched the space between her eyes. "I just don't want to think about him today, Sorun. It's supposed to be a day to celebrate, not think about your friend Silver and everything surrounding him. And I know he's your friend, but... he just can't come, Sorun, not after what he did."

He would concede the fact that it'd be a big mood killer to bring Silver, who pretty much everyone saw in a negative light. It didn't stop him from feeling a bit disappointed, though. Even a bit guilty, knowing how he'd be going to a fun party while pretty much just leaving him behind. Knowingly. Especially since he doubted Silver had never been to a beach part before and would have really liked it.

There was a small shuffle from Sally. She seemed to grow a bit uncomfortable at the sudden sullen face Sorun had. "It's not all that bad, Sorun. It just a day."

"Yeah... I know."

The response didn't sound encouraging, and it made Sally frown a bit. Then her eyes lit up at realizing something. "You know..." she began with a small grin, "Nicole's going to the beach along with the rest of us. We're bringing the handheld and a supply of Power Rings."

Silver didn't exist anymore. He never did. Large parts of the world itself fell out of Sorun's worldview when the full weight of that sentence hit him. It was like a switch being flicked so violently the switch itself was torn straight out of its housing. Nothing in the whole damn universe existed except for the single thought racing through Sorun's head:

"Nicole. The beach. The beach. Nicole. Nicole at the beach. The beach and Nicole. The beach. And Nicole. The beach. Nicole. The beach. Nicole. The beach-"

"Well, Sally, when you say it like that I guess there's only one responsible thing to do."

---

"Silver I'm going somewhere with the Freedom Fighters. Won't be back 'til tomorrow. Also I'm taking Virgil so you got the house to yourself 'til we get back."

"... Huh?" From the couch he was sitting on Silver seemed to find the news unexpected, which was to be expected. Then again he may have been off put from that having been the first thing Sorun said when he entered the house, wearing nothing but a t-shirt and shorts, but he pressed on regardless.

"Yeah, it's this, uh..." Well he couldn't go and call it a party now, could he? Not without hurting Silver's feelings. Since he couldn't come. "It's a little get-together the Freedom Fighters are doing for old times' sake. And I was one so I got invited. Tried to get you in but they said no."

"That's fine?" He either didn't understand the gravity of what was going on, which was good, or didn't care that much, which was just a tiny bit sad for Sorun to consider. His white-furred head turned a bit to the side to glance at the small, floating creature next to Sorun's side. "But your pet gets to go?"

"Virgil was an indispensable ally in that one mission we did that one time," Sorun explained. "He helped me cut up a giant robot scorpion thing and then I beat up a really small and sad man."

"Chao." The intimidating-looking Chao nodded his head in approval as the single-syllable word was said in his deep, wispy voice. More than likely both in being recognized for his efforts and that Sorun committed an act of violence.

The expression Silver was giving painted him as being ambivalent overall to the news, which made Sorun feel a bit more at ease with the situation as he retreated to the house's kitchen. Mature as Silver was he didn't want him to feel down being explicitly told he couldn't come, but he seemed to be handling it fine enough. Likely due to Sorun downplaying the event itself. Or he probably just did accept he wasn't welcome and learned to live with it, which would be the best path overall, but he was locked in enough Sorun was willing to let what was happening already ride.

After retrieving the Chaos Emerald from its resting place in the kitchen sink, he retreated to the living room to address Silver one last time before he and Virgil departed. Still looked ambivalent, fortunately, bordering uncaring, if not a bit surprised from how sudden this was. "Anyways since we're all going you're officially the strongest person in the whole city. I really doubt anything'll happen and even if it does Nicole set the automated defenses for the city up so nobody can even get in, but, erm... yeah on second thought don't worry about anything, just chill out 'til I get back."

"All I do here is 'chill out'," Silver said. "I don't have anything else to do between trying to nail down the whole 'hey the entire future's on the line' thing I have going on."

"Well if it makes you feel better I'll ask around a bit about it since they'll all be there and they actually like me." No he wouldn't. The lie brightened Silver up a bit, though. "Doubt anything'll come of it, though." And now he looked a bit sad again. "Look man, seriously. Take a break and destress. Read a book or something, I dunno, I got-" he glanced over at the sparsely-populated book shelf nearby, "-some over there. Or go out to lunch. Geez, I'll even leave you some money to eat out for dinner if you want."

"It's not that." He tried to look gloomy, but there was a small flicker of a grateful look Sorun managed to catch. "It's... you know, it's hard sitting still knowing all this and how much pressure there is. I just wish I knew how you manage to stay calm all the time knowing the same stuff I know. Like right now," he said, gesturing to Sorun. "I'm not blaming you for going out to do something, but you're... you're always just not bothered by anything. Kind of wish I could keep it as cool as you."

Well, Sorun would concede that was mostly due to the fact he internalized a lot of his feelings and he was an utter jackass, but he could still see Silver's point. "I mean, I get it. Don't get me wrong I get it. But it's times like this I need to go and do this because it has something extremely important going on and I will never be able to focus on anything ever again if I don't witness it."

Silver arched an eye ridge. "And... what, exactly, is so important you can't do anything else?"

"Nicole. The beach. Nicole. The beach. Nicole. The beach. Nicole. The beach-"

"Look, you gotta stop worrying about things like 'what' or 'who' or other unimportant details like that," Sorun said, sitting down next to Silver while draping an arm over his shoulders. "Some things in life are just too important. Arguably more important than food and water."

"What, like breathing?"

"Even more important than air." He shook Silver's shoulders with his arm and then bounded back up to his feet. "And so! I must go accomplish this great feat," he said, shifting the blue gem into his katana. "And you must do something else to occupy your time, don't care what, just relax. We're bouncing." He nodded his head to Virgil. "Come along, Virgil. The beach awaits."

"Chao."

Nodding again, Sorun split apart space behind them with a single swipe of his sword. Virgil didn't waste any time flying through. Before he crossed through Sorun turned to give Silver one last look, and then waved at him. "Bye, have fun."

"Wait, you're going to the beach?" Silver's question wasn't answered because by then Sorun had already left through the portal he'd created. And almost as soon as he left it closed, leaving Silver completely alone in the living room. He slumped further into the couch. "I... I would have liked to go to the beach..."

---

The beach.

Compared to the last time Sorun went to one there was a lot less stress going through his system. The lack of a burning pile of wreckage, a monument to everything wrong with his life back when his life was in shambles, was a good improvement. And the island itself was... eh, big. Maybe two, three times bigger than the dinky little island he got stranded on that one time during the plane incident that was in no way his fault.

But that was all secondary to the beach, which was, as Sorun stood there looking over it... well, a beach. That was about it. Was nice enough.

He looked behind him. All the others were there setting up a veritable pile of stuff that had been brought over from New Mobotropolis to further enhance the Beachtime Experience. Mostly just some folding chairs, containers for food and drinks, other miscellaneous items.

It was all very nice. Being here with everyone, doing this. Having a sense of belonging and being allowed to just relax. It'd be the perfect experience, too, if Sorun weren't standing there clutching Yamato in his hands in a fit of nervousness as he looked down at his feet.

"So you, uh... you gonna go get 'em now? 'Cause they're waiting." He didn't even look over at Sonic, who sounded a bit impatient with Sorun at the moment. He was doing that thing where he crossed his arms and tapped his foot rapidly, which was already creating a small crater in the sand. "We told them you were gonna portal them over, Sorun, come on."

"It's just been a while since I've seen them and a lot's happened," Sorun said. It was understandable to be nervous. Not overly anxious, but the sensation was still there. "I mean I saw Knuckles that one time, but what about the rest? It's gonna be awkward. I don't do awkward."

The look Sonic gave him was skeptical at best. "I really don't think they're gonna care all that much, man. You're thinking about this way too hard."

Nonsense. He never did that. "If you say so, I guess." Sighing, Sorun swung the sword through the air, cutting a blue cross shape in the space in front of them which folded into a portal. And then Sorun promptly turned around and walked away a little bit. "Well, there it is, go fetch them," he said, giving a small wave to Sonic as he passed.

"Seriously? Really, Sorun?" The flat look sent his way didn't slow Sorun down in the slightest. It made Sonic sigh and shake his head, though he still turned towards the portal right after to walk through. Sorun didn't pay much attention; amongst all the Freedom Fighters setting up the Beachtime Experience stuff was Nicole sitting in one of the folding chairs, fiddling around with the handheld she was really in. He had more of a desire to go and talk to her than to greet the people that would inevitably come out of that portal, though alas...

The sensation of air and space rapidly being displaced behind him; something coming close. Eyes flashing green, world coming into focus. Blood rushing and making everything become clear. Muscles tensing. "Dodge it."

"SORUN!"

He dodged it. The black and yellow object zoomed past Sorun after he quickly sidestepped it. He saw who it was and the world sped back up to uncomfortable levels. Eyes returned to blue as the blood slowed, muscles went lax, and everything returned to the sluggish levels of painfully normal.

The entire event barely took three seconds.

"Huh?" Sorun blinked and looked down at his feet. There was a deep groove cared into the sand about half a meter long from where he'd dodged, and a small frown wormed its way onto his face. "That movement... it's getting worse."

He tried his best to relax his face and looked up. He'd never admit to missing Charmy. Maybe to Nicole if it was in private and she asked. He was one of those people that brightened up the room. But he couldn't abide getting tackle-hugged from behind in spite of that. He had standards. And Charmy wasn't Nicole.

It didn't stop the bee from zooming forwards to try again.

Sorun sighed, left hand holding the sword while his right swung freely. That urge was easier to keep a handle on when he knew what the fast-approaching object was and that it wasn't dangerous. Fast things triggered it sometimes and it was getting harder to get a grip with it. But it was an issue he pushed to the back of his mind like always so it wouldn't bother him, and afterwards he rose his right hand forwards so his hand caught Charmy in the chest when he tried tackling him again.

"Now, now. It's rude to try and commit sneak attacks like that," Sorun jokingly remarked. "Hey Charmy, been a while. Don't, uh... please stop trying to do that."

He acquiescence and relented, thankfully, and silently Sorun breathed a sigh of relief as he allowed his hand to rest back at his side. Charmy still had that goofy grin on his face regardless. "Sorry, Sorun, but it's been so long!"

"Yeah, it's been a hot minute." He glanced over at the portal. Sonic thankfully had guided the rest of the Chaotix team through the portal. They were good people; looked like they were already having a great time. Of course when Sorun's gaze wandered over to Knuckles he couldn't help his eyes sticking on him for a moment longer. Couldn't help feeling something stir in him, couldn't help seeing a golden helmet superimpose itself over his head for a single frame of time. The moment passed and it was just Knuckles again, and Sorun breathed a bit easier.

The fingernails on his right hand felt itchy looking at Knuckles.

At some point Charmy had grabbed at Sorun's hand and was dragging him towards the group, chattering on about something. He smiled, nodding along and pretending like he'd been listening the whole time while silently berating himself for zoning out like that.

"Ah-huh. Ah-huh, yeah. Oh?" He felt a bit bad, stringing the bee along like that, but Sorun felt it was more polite than flat-out admitting he'd ignored him, even accidentally. "So how has life on the island been?" Smooth. Divert the conversation along a path Sorun could follow. Detract from the fact he hadn't heard.

"Oh, it's been great!" Charmy sounded happy enough, so he couldn't have noticed. Good. "We still travel down from time to time to help with Eggman, but otherwise everything has been going great!"

"Chill, chill." He'd been dragged right to the others. It'd been so long since he'd seen them that he barely... well alright, no, they looked the exact same from the last time he saw them. It was still nice all the same. "Hey, all," Sorun greeted, giving a small wave.

"Hey, you!" When Mighty gave his own friendly greeting by way of a shoulder pat, Sorun was pretty sure he'd felt the sand underneath his feet vibrate from the force of the impact. He'd been worried about holding in the wince, but to his surprise he didn't need to put in the effort. It didn't hurt as much as it should have. "Man, it's been so long!" the armadillo continued. "Like, wow, we all thought you left and you didn't and..." The smile started to trail off of Mighty's face. "Then, uh, then the others said what happened with you and, uh-"

"Hey, hey, hey, come on, now, none of that," Sorun said. "It's supposed to be a good time we're all having, isn't it? None of that sad stuff. It's fine."

"See? I told you he'd be fine!" This time when a reassuring arm found itself over Sorun's shoulders it'd slammed down with enough force that Sorun felt his feet sink into the sand. And this time he'd really felt this one, right alongside the realization that he hadn't missed Vector nearly as much as all the rest of them. "What'd I tell you, solid as a rock this guy!"

"Yeah..." Maybe he could have a bit of fun. It was supposed to be one of those events, after all. "You guys still don't have financial troubles since you live up on Angel Island, do you, Vector?"

When he looked up, had to crane his neck back, really, Vector, who Sorun still thought had an unusually expressive face for a crocodile, looked down at Sorun in confusion. "Whatchu talkin' 'bout, Sorun?"

"Sonic didn't tell you about my rates?" Sorun asked, feigning mock surprise. "I make a living teleporting stuff around, since, you know, it's such a convenient thing only I can do. I get complaints from couriers for stealing work from them. And even with the friends discount I gave you all it's gonna be two hundred mobiums for a round trip." A pause. "Each."

Vector stiffened stiffer than a statue. If he looked closely Sorun could almost see the green color draining out of his scales and took a small sort of delight out of it. All of the others were in similar states of shock. Even Espio, who should have been the most composed out of all of them, looked visibly sick. Like he was about to throw up on the sand.

Ray was the first one to speak up. "I-i-i-isn't that a b-bit high?"

Shrugging off Vector's frozen arm and stepping back a bit, Sorun scratched the back of his head. "Is it? Because that discount I waved your guys' way scratched off ninety percent of the overall cost. I'm being generous here."

"IT'S STILL TWO HUNDRED WITH NINETY PERCENT OFF!? YOU'RE CHARGIN' A RACKET!" Vector bellowed out. "It's highway robbery! And to us, of all people! I take it back, you're just as cold as I remember you!"

It was with supreme self-control and discipline that Sorun managed to keep from chortling, or even so much as grinning from the display he was seeing. A feat not so easy from the amount of amusement he was seeing before him. Alas, somebody had to come along and ruin the fun. Even went as far as to grab his ear like a strict mother would do to a misbehaving child.

"Guys, relax, Sorun's just having a bit of fun with you all," Sally assured them with a lighthearted grin. A grin that seemed a lot less sincere when she turned her head to Sorun and tugged harshly at his ear. "Because in no way is Sorun seriously charging for this kind of thing, right?"

This time he couldn't hold back the wince of pain, but he was less upset at that and more at his fun being ruined. He got over it a second later, rolling his eyes and waving Sally's hand away from him. "Yes, I'm kidding around. You guys get the full hundred discount. This time," he assured them. And then paused when he turned and saw all eight of them slumping down with so much relief that he could have sworn they were about to pass out. "Um... you guys are still bad off, huh?"

Espio was the one that answered. "Our efforts dedicated towards protecting our home isn't the most prosperous of efforts. Mainly due to the fact there's no longer any major infrastructure on the island and no one to pay us," he informed. "We appreciate you waving any fees charged for your usual services for our sake, Sorun."

"I mean I just wave a piece of metal around in the air a bit, it ain't all that much effort. But you're welcome for being the most generous person you'll ever meet in your entire life, Espio."

Once again he found an arm slamming over his shoulders. It was Sally's arm this time. And she put a lot of effort in because he almost doubled over from how hard she slammed the arm on him. "You know what, Sorun, I think I should catch up with the rest of the Chaotix while you go do something else, what do you say?"

"Didn't you go on a mission with them all like three days ago?" Pressure from the arm was increasing. Shoulders were feeling like they were about to fall off. The argument was lost and Sorun took three steps back. "I see your point, though, I'll get out of your hair."

The only response given was a sickly sweet smile from Sally. With a roll of his eyes and a scoff, Sorun turned away as he heard the nine Mobians behind him begin to converse. Sorun, the sole human on this entire island, wandered a few steps down the beach with his eyes glancing around towards the one sole AI on the island. Alas, Nicole wasn't sitting down where he'd seen her last. And he couldn't find her by sweeping his eyes around the immediate vicinity.

With his girlfriend nowhere and sight and motivation temporarily plummeting, Sorun found himself collapsing into a sitting position on the sand. He huffed out a defeated breath, but then felt his ears perk up when he heard a soft, scratching sound nearby.

"Hm?" He looked towards the source of the noise, but lost all interest completely when he saw it was just Tails sitting in the sand. Drawing something with his finger. Which actually did serve to draw a bit of Sorun's interest, and after evaluating that he didn't have much better to do at this exact moment, he scooched over so that he was sitting next to him.

"Is this work I see here, Tails?" Sorun accused, moving over so that he was shoulder-to-shoulder with the fox. "During a sacred beach trip? Have you no shame?"

"Hey, Sorun." Tails didn't even so much as look up from whatever he was drawing in the sand with his finger, but a small smile did grow on his mouth. "It's not work. I'm just trying to figure out what to do about the sandcastle."

"Sandcastle?" Sorun repeated in a murmur, craning his head down a bit lower to look. Indeed, the diagram in the sand was that of a castle. A really intricate 3-D rendition of an otherwise basic castle structure quickly and expertly sketched into the sand. For the plans to a sandcastle it sure did look like the most complicated thing in Sorun's life. "You really have to go this far for a simple sandcastle, man?"

"Not really. It's a blueprint. You need those to build things."

"So just... build it," Sorun slowly said, looking up from the diagram and at Tails. "Like, do you really? What's stopping you from just building it? It's a sandcastle, man, not a plane. Its main ingredient is sand and literally nothing else."

Tails' finger stopped mid-drawing of a castle turret in the center of a long diagram of lines and measurements. "I guess... the others did say I need to relax more. Hmrf." He made a short sigh, and then in a move that mildly surprised Sorun he completely wiped away the sand diagram before turning to him. "Alright, then help me out here."

"With the sandcastle?"

"Yeah!" He nodded at Sorun. "It'll be fun, right? And plus I've never seen you build anything before. We can make one together!"

"..." The enthusiasm Tails was displaying was completely lost on Sorun as his own gaze fell down towards the sand. "Sandcastles, huh...?"

---

Four years ago

Detroit City Community Youth Center

Everything about this was stupid. The stupid contest, the stupid youth center, all this stupid sand. Useless.

Get out of the house more. He didn't know what mom was talking about when she said he should get out more. He got out fine enough. He went to school. Except for right now since it was summer but that didn't change the fact he went to school. And it wasn't just his mom, either, because Dave's folks were apparently acting the same way and dragged them to... to this.

Stupid youth center. Stupid plots of sand everywhere crowded by other kids. Parents all standing in the back watching them all. Weird moms dragging them to stuff like this when he just wanted to play his games.

At least Dave was here. Suffering with him and making the suffering easier.

"Okay, so..." Sorun languidly blew past his lips and looked down at the plot of sand they were sitting in. "'Ooh, build a sandcastle, it'll be fun for you kids,' goddamn shitty-ass fuckin' broke-ass MC," he thought hatefully, glaring at the "event organizer", a title much too prestigious for the fat woman who organized all this, sitting in a booth nearby with the other judges. Because this shit was being judged.

Fucking hell.

"Dave," Sorun tiredly mumbled out as he rubbed at his face, "look maybe we can just half-ass it and go home early 'cause-"

The world itself rumbled when Dave's fist struck down on the sand supporting their weight. It was in that frame of time Sorun saw it: Dave's entire form, outlined in a golden corona of sand that matched his blonde hair and yellow hoodie. His smile wide and near-manic as he stared at the very sand itself, like it was an enemy to be defeated. The very image emitted a sense of confidence so alien and yet captivating that Sorun couldn't help but be drawn in to the sight.

"THE SANDCASTLE BUILDING TECHNIQUES OF THE MILLER FAMILY IS AN ART THAT HAS BEEN PASSED DOWN FOR GENERATIONS, SORUN!" His will, unwavering. His belief in conquering the challenge, absolute. Every single facet of the other teenager sitting next to Sorun exuded nothing but the utmost confidence. Unyielding charisma he couldn't help but not be drawn into. "We'll build a sandcastle that'll rival heaven itself," Dave proclaimed. The sand around him settled as he pointed straight up at the ceiling. "One that'll blow all these guys outta the water!"

Sorun didn't understand the meaning behind a single word David had said but goddamn was he in from that alone. "Yeah, alright, fine. So speaking of water should I grab some?"

"Huh? Oh, uh, yeah, dude." And like that, like a light switch had been flipped, the charisma was mostly gone. Mere eddies of the glory he'd held for but a single moment wafting off of him as he looked at Sorun. He seemed a bit off-put by Sorun's mood. "But I mean come on, man, get hyped! We're gonna beat everyone! You love doing that!"

Sure he did. When they were on the other side of a screen and couldn't overpower him by virtue of Sorun having bottom-tier strength. This wasn't that. And yet, looking around... he supposed Dave had a point. Shying away from a challenge was a real anti-gamer move a self-respecting gamer like him could never commit to. Especially if Dave wasn't talking out his ass and he actually did have some ancient family technique for building sandcastles. However the hell that kind of legacy managed to manifest.

"... Well I guess we, as gamers, can't go and let everyone beat us. Just ain't right," Sorun finally admitted with a small smile. He became much more startled when Dave wrapped his arm over his shoulders and roughly shook him, laughing all the while.

"Ah-hah! That's the spirit, my dude!" He swept his free arm out in front of them. "I'll teach ya how to create a work of art, Sorun. By the end'a this you'll be able to make sandcastles whose light will pierce the sky! Just like a real man should!"

"Yeah, sure man, can't wait..."

---

Present

"..."

"Erm, Sorun?" Tails' voice shook him out of the memory. His eyes drifted towards the fox, who was giving him an odd look. "You kind of spaced out there. You doing okay?"

"... We'll make a sandcastle whose light will pierce the sky, Tails." Sorun's head tilted up to gaze at the infinite blue above them. "One that'll rival heaven itself."

"Okay?" The divine meaning behind Sorun's words were lost on Tails due to a lack of context. He just stared on at the human, slightly confused but otherwise he was mainly focused on the sandcastle. "So should I get the buckets-?"

"The buckets. Yes. And water. All is required."

"... Alright, Sorun." He was obviously weirded out by Sorun's sudden demeanor, but quickly shook it off and rose up to his feet to go get the supplies needed. Sorun himself didn't even notice the fox leave; his eyes were solely focused on the sand below him, his mind envisioning the first steps needed to construct his masterpiece.

There wasn't much thought that was needed. The designs were as fresh in his mind as day-old memories.

---

At approximately 10:37 A.M., in the complete center of the multiverse, in the centermost universe known as the Prime Zone, within the Milky Way Galaxy, located inside the Sol system, on a small, unassuming planet known as Mobius Prime, formerly known as the planet Earth Prime, home to a miniscule island located within the planet's tropics, on a completely clear and cloudless day, a human being and citizen of the Republic of Acorn created history.

From Sorun's perspective, the process had passed by in a blur. Barely any thought put in as his arms had moved automatically to shape and mold the sand as needed into the shapes desired. At some point Tails had become a non-entity. Relegated to standing back and observing Sorun in mute amazement as he constructed it.

The best damn sandcastle this planet would ever have the privilege of bearing witness to.

The instructions in his mind were as fresh as the day they had been instilled into Sorun by Dave. Every step, every meticulous detail, all plotted out and acted upon perfectly by his body. Perfect mimicry of the movements Dave had displayed to him, now being displayed to Tails as the sandcastle slowly took form. As if the memory itself was guiding Sorun's hand as sand walls were smoothed over, as intricate detailing was bored into the castle walls, as shapes heretofore thought unattainable by Mobian kind to be implemented in sand sculptures were indeed sculpted and implemented.

Sorun had always remembered perfectly with his hands. It hadn't been a difficult task on his part.

When he stepped back to admire his great work he felt a sense of pride befitting such a great work. It'd come out exactly as envisioned: a perfectly identical sandcastle to the one he had helped Dave build that day. The walls, perfectly symmetrical. The canopies to the turrets, perfectly conical. The gaps in the parapets, spaced perfectly. The sand surface itself perfectly smoothed even to the point it shined not as a sculpture of sand, but as a porcelain work of art. One that was as fragile as it was beautiful.

The waves softly crashing onto the beaches shores staggered, if only for a few beats, and the wind itself blowing across Sorun's had picked up in intensity if only for a few moments. As if the very planet itself was taking a shuddering breath in awe at his works. At the work of indescribable beauty lying just in front of him; a piece of talent and art that would never be replicated by any pairs of hands for as long as the stars burned. Such was its splendor. It was an image the world would treasure and hold in its memory until the universe grew cold.

It was... the true essence of a sandcastle.

"Wow, that's pretty neat, Sorun!" Tails praised.

"It's okay, I guess," Sorun said. "The ancient Miller family sandcastle building techniques, passed down through generation upon generation, has served us well." Shame it'd die with him in all likelihood. Unless Tails had been paying real close attention to the craft, but part of Sorun sincerely doubted even a genius mind of his caliber could fathom such an intricate and complex art. Hell, Sorun didn't even understand it. He just copied what Dave did.

"The ancient... uh. Um?" Blinking in clear confusion, Tails looked back at Sorun. His tails slowly swished in the air to match his visible confusion. "Is... so your last name is Miller?"

"No." Sorun said, gaze stoic, unceasing from the sandcastle.

"Oh." The answer didn't cede Tails' confusion. It only grew. "So what is it, then? I've never asked."

"I have a new life, Tails. Why taint it with things like names? I'm Sorun. It doesn't need to be more complicated than that." That was the bonafide truth and certainly not an attempt at erasing his embarrassing last name from the annals of history. Certainly not. He was who he was.

Sorun. The Ultimate Gamer. Mail courier and employee of the fashionista Honey. Sandcastle artisan.

"U-um, uh... okay." A small, defeated breath left Tails. His shoulders sagged, and whatever questions he had burning on his tongue were snuffed out as he made the decision to just accept the words coming out of Sorun's mouth and not question it. "We probably should have brought a camera or something."

"I hear you." Distant laughter drew Sorun's attention momentarily from the sandcastle. It was further down the beach. Nicole was with a group of their friends and she was laughing at something someone said. And here he was without a camera. "Be different if I still had my phone. But who knows where that went."

Tails' eye ridges furrowed in confusion. "But a camera isn't a phone? I don't know what you mean."

Sorun looked back at Tails with a deadpan expression. "You know, it amazes me this world has laser guns, robots, and nanotech, but somehow a common smartphone from my world seems more advanced than half the stuff here. Gives me really weird 'Final Fantasy' vibes, y'know?"

Tails' face changed to mimic Sorun's deadpan. "No, Sorun, not really. I didn't understand any of that."

"The suffering continues." He pocketed his hands and rotated fully to face Tails. "Do you even have touchscreens? You're telling me Nicole can make holographic displays you can interact with but you don't have touchscreens? You skipped that and went from analogue straight to the future haptic stuff?"

The deadpan mimic upon the fox's faced turned into a fresh, puzzled one. "Why would I want to touch the screen to interact with it? Why would anyone want to do that? That... no, seriously, I can't see a practical use for that."

"It was mainly to save real estate on space. Less keyboard and more screen for your phone," Sorun explained. "We're talking about a pocket-sized rectangle that was, like, a millimeter thick here, Tails, you needed as much screen as you could get."

Something about something Sorun said caught Tails' attention. No, more than that. He seemed focused now on something, his interest piqued and his eyes going inquisitive as he asked, "Your people really made communication devices that thin?"

"It's weird when you call it that but yeah." Communication device. Huh. Sorun didn't know how to feel about that one. "Had a bunch of apps in it, too. Clock, calendar, compass I never used because why would I, interfacing widgets to connect to local networks, software to download and install other apps people made, high definition camera and recorder, video playback software. All sorts of stuff."

"... How much storage did they have?"

With a shrug, Sorun answered, "Some of the higher-end ones had hundreds of gigs of storage. Might've even worked their way up to a whole terabyte, but I dunno, I didn't follow those circles too closely." As far as he was concerned computer tech and the latest SSD chips were a whole different world than the one the phone techies lives in. Things of that nature he could go on about for days. Phones? He was pretty much clueless in that area.

That'd done it; the gears were turning now in the young inventor's mind. His eyes weren't even focused on Sorun anymore. His head was tilted down, chin cupped in thought as quiet, indiscernible murmurs left his mouth while Sorun watched on, likely rambling on about theories and tech-speak that would go far over Sorun's own head. All because he made the mistake of talking about a phone.

"Tails?"

"How could they fit so much- no, unless, but maybe- but then how would, oh, the materials needed alone, maybe Sorun knows-"

"Come on, man, we're on the beach." Bending forwards a bit, Sorun softly flicked Tails on the forehead. It seemed to snap him out of whatever funk he'd been in as he blinked up at Sorun with wide eyes. "It's beach time, not tech time."

No, it wasn't working. The fox still seemed pensive about something, worked up. His fingers were curling in an out like he wanted, needed, to get his hands on something to take it apart and examine it. And now Sorun was thinking maybe it was a good thing that he'd lost his phone. Probably was a kinder fate than whatever he planned on doing.

"Sorun, you... um, said you lost the one you had. The commu- phone, I mean, you implied you had one but no longer have it." God, he was scratching behind his ear the same way a meth head would scratch at their neck. Had the same frenzied look in his eyes, even. "What, um, what happened to it? Your phone?"

He had to take a short breath to clear out the irritation the memory brought on before answering. "I lost it when you grabbed me at the store. Way at the beginning. Fell outta my pocket or somethin', I dunno. It either got left there or fell out somewhere inside the portal, and if it's that last one then I go no clue where it wound up." He looked up and scratched at his cheek. "Lost my wallet, too, man. I had some stuff in there."

"Oh..." The way Tails slumped over in defeat almost made Sorun sad from the secondhand sadness alone. He genuinely looked like someone just murdered his parents in front of him and Sorun didn't know whether it was out of guilt or disappointment he didn't have a smartphone to dissect. "Um, uh, I mean, sorr- wait, that's not-"

"Chill, dude, it's fine. Apocalypse, remember? Managed to dodge all that 'cause of you?"

The reminder did serve to massively relieve Tails mood. Even so he still looked a bit sad. Must have been really bummed over that phone. "Yeah, I know. But, uh, hey! I could maybe pay you back for it? You know, the phone? How much did they cost, anyway?"

When money was mentioned it was like a spike of adrenaline going through Sorun's entire system. Time slowed to a crawl, lost all meaning, really, as that single word reverberated through his mind. "Money, money, money..." He stopped moving. Tails stopped moving. The world itself refused to move. Time itself became irrelevant as all sorts of thoughts began whizzing through Sorun's mind, all around that single concept. The idea of getting paid.

"Hey. Dude." Sorun could see him. Himself, a mirror image of Sorun, standing next to Tails with an incredibly mischievous smile on his face. "You know what you gotta do, dude."

"Do we really wanna lie to Tails about how much a smartphone costs just to milk as much money out of him as possible? I don't know, man, that's kind of rude. We're friends. I'm not even upset about the whole abduction thing anymore."

"Forget about Tails," Sorun said. "Just, like, just think about it. No way does Tails' have the money, but what about his mom?"

"That stone-cold bitch."

"My man. My homie. My thoughts exactly. I mean, I mean come on, think about it, she's one of the councilors, the whole family's probably loaded. They can super afford you ripping them off."

He had a point. He did not like Tails' mom. Or even his dad, now that he thought about it. Uncle was a right bastard whose teeth he'd knock out if he ever saw him again. But he did like Tails, which was the problem. "Do we even need the money? We're pretty much set on funds. What am I supposed to do with more?"

"We can buy Nicole a really nice gift from Station Square. They got all sorts'a pricey shit in that one district."

Once more, he had a point. "Let me consult my moral compass for a bit here." He looked down on his left shoulder. A miniature Sorun with silver, cylindrical horns and a barbed, silver-scaled tail was standing on it. "What do you think?"

"Fiscally speaking this is the most responsible course of action we could possibly take," said the Devil. "Strictly speaking we're well-off enough that we could afford not to take such a reprehensible action. Unfortunately we may have a moral responsibility to do so."

"Huh?"

"Think about it from a logical standpoint: the socioeconomic policies of the Republic of Acorn are fairly decent even by our standards. It features many socialist policies such as free healthcare and education while adhering to capitalistic values that allow individuals such as Honey to own and maintain their own businesses, which feed into funds towards funding the city in the effort of further improving its own welfare. It is, by all rights, a near-ideal society we have found ourselves in. We have a duty as citizens of this society to help nurture it. In matters such as this though we need to think of what we can do to help us in order to help others."

"Huh?"

"Because of the economic structure of New Mobotropolis independent businesses such as Honey's bring in a, while not substantial, otherwise rather large sum to be added to the Republic's pockets. We are an employee of said business, who has played a large part in its success due to our unique circumstances and abilities."

"I'm following you."

"We are indispensable to the business. We're integral, which means, logically speaking, we ourselves are vital to the health of the entire Republic as a whole."

"Ahh..."

"It stands to reason we would need to monitor our levels of motivation and keep them elevated in order to continue to perform exemplary within Honey's business. High motivation leads to high success of the business, which leads to success of the Republic. Procuring additional funds in the effort of acquiring expensive gifts to court the AI you have been dating will go a long way towards increasing motivation levels. An AI, I remind you, who is charged with the responsibility of maintaining the city. Surely making her happy would improve her performance and further support the Republic."

"That does make sense."

"Further support of the Republic leads to a slow increase in funds. As Tails' mother is a politician of the Republic, those funds are inevitably funneled back into her as well as the Republic so she is able to make a living. She will make back the money given to us. More than that, she will make more money. This is basically an investment on her part."

"Whoa."

"So you see the course of action we have to take," the Devil concluded. "We must steal from their family. It's for the good of the Republic. It's for the good of everyone who lives in the Republic. It's for the Prower family's own good we steal money from them. It is the only clear, morally righteous path available to us. It's our duty as proud citizens of the Republic of Acorn."

"You make a solid argument." Sorun looked over on his right shoulder. The miniature Sorun standing there had a pair of silver horns that curved up in a way that they formed a halo coming out of his head. "What do you think?"

"You should gouge the fuck out of him," said the Angel.

"I see no problem with either of your positions."

"Sorun? Hey, Sorun?" Tails' voice brought the human back to reality. Time once more existed. The waves were softly crashing into the beach once more. Dave's ivory sandcastle stood tall for as long as the tide receded. "You've been standing there staring off at nothing for two minutes, are you alright?"

"Yeah, I was just doing the mental calculations converting my world's currency to this one's. In case it interested you mobiums almost completely match the value with US dollars one-to-one. So that phone's gonna set you back five thousand mobiums," Sorun said with a completely straight face.

The face Tails made in regards to that news was the same face somebody who just got shot with a gun would make. He even stumbled back as if he'd been shot, and his fur was standing up on end, too. "Fi-fi-fi-five th-thousand, huh...?"

"The wallet was five hundred, too, so not to add to your burdens, but..." That was a lie. The wallet had only been eighty dollars. But who was he to stand in the way of profit and the future of the Republic?

"Five hundred for a wallet!?"

Sorun shrugged. "It was a birthday gift." Was made of real fake leather, too.

Nearby, within the group of Mobians she was conversing with, Nicole had stopped talking and went dead still the moment the word "birthday" spoken in Sorun's voice reached her audio receptors. Her ears had flicked backwards towards his direction, and after her head spun so quickly towards him that, were the body organic, the head would have twisted right off.

"Look," Sorun continued, completely oblivious of the lynx staring intently at him, "if you don't want to actually pay it's cool, man. It don't care too much about it for it to matter all that much."

"No, no, it's..." Tails sighed, rubbing at the temples of his head. "Look, maybe I can talk to my mom about it or something. Or I could just make... I dunno, I'll figure it out."

"Yeah, no, that's cool. 'S cool," Sorun said, hands in pockets as he watched Tails spin up his tails and fly away. And as he turned his head to watch the fox fly away he'd noticed that, funnily enough, Nicole was standing there. Her back turned to Sorun but also with her startlingly far away from the rest of the group while being really close to him. Hands folded in front of her and ears perked up unusually high.

Sorun blinked, and then tilted his head at the odd behavior. He couldn't really figure out why it was she was just standing her like that, like she'd been just kind of... standing there, listening to Sorun and Tails speak. He was about to ask her when she turned her head and decided to speak first.

"Oh, hello, Sorun," she greeted. "I trust you're having a good time?"

"Er, yeah?" He looked around a bit. It was just the two of them standing there. "It's nice, doing this. It was great of Sally to invite us all along for her birthday."

"Yes. Speaking of birthdays, I happened to overhear you talking about one with Tails."

Oh. This is what this was about. It was red alert time again. "Yeah, we were just talking about stuff. Wasn't anything important."

The smile Nicole had dimmed a bit. "Are you sure?" she asked. "Can I ask what the topic-?"

The master of deflection interrupted her with a wave of his hand. "Eh, it was just about some lost stuff I was talking about with Tails, nothin' serious."

"I could assist if there is something-"

"Nope, all good. Thanks anyways."

"If... if you say so." She didn't even try to hide the visible disappointment from her face, or the way her ears drooped at bit as a result. They perked right back up when she noticed the small structure standing behind Sorun: his immaculate monument fit to rule a granular kingdom. "What is this?" she questioned, immediately moving over to it and crouching down to get a better look at it.

Ah, new topic. One Sorun wasn't uncomfortable with. He was happy to answer. "It's a sandcastle. Of the sand variety."

"You made this?"

"Well, Tails helped. He carried the water. But otherwise, yeah, I made it."

"It's...!" She really did seem to be examining Dave's sandcastle in depth. Moving her head all around the structure, green eyes darting left and right as they scanned the structure. "The dimensions are near-perfectly symmetrical, the walls and parapets evenly spaced, everything about its overall aesthetic is... you constructed such a thing out of sand and rudimentary tools?"

Sorrun glanced down at the plastic bucket and small shovel sitting nearby. Rudimentary? Maybe by her standards, but he wouldn't use that kind of word with those tools. Whole civilizations were built on shovels. It was almost insulting calling them rudimentary.

"Sorun, you should have told me!" Nicole's voice made Sorun look back at her. She was smiling at him widely for some reason, practically beaming with pride. "I didn't know you could sculpt so flawlessly!"

Ah, that's where the confusion was. Now it all made sense to him. "Oh, no, I can't," he corrected her. "I can't sculpt to save my life. I can only exclusively make sandcastles. That specific one, actually."

The beaming pride dimmed down to near nothingness. In its place was the look of hopeless confusion Nicole was now adopting as she looked at Sorun. "I-I don't understand what you mean by that." It was obvious from her face, the slight twitches to her features, that she was trying to piece together the statement she just heard, but she was having difficulty making sense of it. "Surely if you could make something like this your skills-"

"Nope. Only sandcastles," Sorun said. "I can do sandcastles and nothing else."

"But... but that doesn't..." It was almost like the logic was causing Nicole pain just trying to figure it out. The distress continued as a particularly large wave rolled in and washed over Dave's sandcastle. Walls crumbled and were washed away. Rooftops collapsed as the structure became unstable. All too quickly the once great monument was transformed into nothing but a malformed ruin as the wave receded back into the water. Somewhere else in the world the land flooded as the planet wept at its loss.

"Ah, well, easy come easy go," Sorun said. Nicole said nothing, electing to simply look at the ruined sandcastle with a completely lost expression on her face. "So how's the beach going for you, Nicole?" Sorun asked.

"Hm?" Whatever was going on with her must have been severe, because even after Sorun spoke out she continued looking down at the sandcastle with that lost expression. Then she shook her head, looking extremely dissatisfied at whatever conclusion she'd come to before looking back up at him. "Oh, yes. The beach." Her smile seemed to return as the conversation shifted away from the topic of the sandcastle. In fact, Nicole seemed to be taking great, concerted efforts to not even look at the remains of the sandcastle, and stepped around it so she was closer to Sorun with the destroyed castle behind her. "I'm having a wonderful time, thank you for asking," she continued. "I like being here. It's an interesting new perspective to experience the beach in person."

He heard a small rustling sound and looked down. She was moving her toes through the sand, letting them shift through the spaces between. He remembered when they first arrived on the beach he'd seen her jump from the moment her feet first touched the sand for the first time. She spent five minutes after the fact standing there, just looking at her feet, with Sorun snickering all the while. It was another moment he lamented the loss of his phone.

"I could fill a small spot in the house full of sand if you want," Sorun offered.

Nicole's smile froze. "Please don't." He didn't know why but for some reason that didn't sound very much like a request to Sorun. He shrugged and decided to let the matter drop.

"Alright." He gaze traveled upwards. With the sun sitting there so bright he once more was thankful for his choice of dress for the occasion. He didn't want to imagine roasting in his immaculate coat and was glad he'd just come with the shorts and t-shirt. Nobody else had really done the same, on account of the fact that pretty much all of his Mobian friends already wore a strikingly small amount of clothes to begin with. He saw that Bunnie left the short jacket she usually wore behind and Antoine traded out what he normally wore for shorts and a shirt like Sorun did and that was literally it.

And Nicole did the same. Wearing the same purple dress-robe-wrapping thing as always. It didn't matter, he guessed. The important part was that she was here and having a great time. That was most important. He wasn't at all disappointed she hadn't attempted to change into something more beach appropriate. Or that she was the one percent of Mobians in the world that didn't walk around practically naked. Usually a positive in Sorun's eyes but this was a case where it wasn't.

"So you're just gonna keep wearing that?" Sorun asked. "Not, uh, nothin' else? It is the beach."

Nicole just smiled and shook her head. "I'm completely fine as-is. Why do you ask?"

Clearing his throat, Sorun quickly turned his head to the side. "Oh, no reason, just wondering, wasn't- yeah, no, was just a question. Don't look too far into it." His eyes quickly scanned for a distraction. He settled on the ocean itself. "I'm gonna go in there," he said, pointing to the ocean.

"The ocean?"

"I mean it's the beach. It'd practically be a crime not to." He looked back at Nicole. "Did you want to...?" The questioned dragged on as Sorun dared to hope.

Politely, Nicole shook her head. Hope burned once more. Sorun soldiered on and didn't let it show. "No thank you. The handheld's range is limited and I don't want to risk something happening. I've made concerted efforts to keep it and myself as far away from the water as possible."

The legitimate safety concern was a good enough distraction for keeping Sorun's mind away from lost bikini dreams. He nodded sagely at her and said, "Alright, that's fair. Well I'm gonna go in anyways. In fact, uh..." He briefly paused and look down at his shorts. His quite-obvious normal shorts and not shorts meant for swimming. "In fact I completely forgot to get- ugh, where's the Chaos Emerald, I gotta dip out for five minutes to buy something from Honey's."

---

It was hard to conceptualize times like these. Feeling weightless, floating in an endless sea of blue. Staring up at an endless sky of blue with blue eyes. Wearing nothing but a newly-procured pair of blue shorts.

Nothing but blue, blue, blue...

The sensation was weird. Sorun had only ever had one opportunity to do such a thing, just mindlessly floating on his back in the water. But that had been in a public swimming pool so noisy it was impossible to find peace there. Here in the water off the island there were barely any sounds. Just waves and the wind. The distant chatter of all his friends had faded out eventually, just leaving Sorun alone with his thoughts. It was a unique peace. One he didn't prefer to his quiet moments alone with Nicole, but it had its own charms.

Right now his thoughts were mainly on himself. Seeing himself in bright sunlight without a shirt. How so many things had changed.

"Man. I almost look... healthy? What happened?"

Used to be he was an emaciated skeleton. The level below skinny but the one above being actually anorexic. The "Shaggy Special", as it was known on Earth. Little muscle, showing ribs, whole nine yards. It was a stark contrast to the body he'd have whenever using Devil's Body - a perfect specimen of lean, muscular physique. The apex of human form. Literal Adonis bod. Something people worked a lifetime just to sculpt. Of all the powers given up by Sorun that one probably hurt as much as Yamato.

Nowadays it was... better? Still skinny, but more filled out. He would daresay, normal-ish. And he actually felt better these days, too, beyond the emotional aspect. More awake. By all appearances it was a solid improvement.

It was Nicole's fault.

She always fretted over the littlest things, he swore, and he should have known something was up when she'd always been subtlety pushing him to eat more than he usually did. But then... but then she'd had to go and do it. She had to go and open his refrigerator and he had to watch as all the bags of french fries he'd been stockpiling spilled out from it right in front of her.

He didn't think he'd ever forget that accusing glare she gave him.

So after the health rant where he hadn't even been able to get a word in edgewise he'd been diversifying a bit. Half because she seemed genuinely worried and he wanted to relieve that for her sake, half because he wasn't convinced Nicole wasn't sneaking looks inside his fridge when he wasn't aware just to make sure he was actually being truthful with his diet. It got to the point where she'd even come over sometimes to show him all these recipes she found, going all, "I care too much about you for you to jeopardize your health to bad eating habits" and, "It really is for your own good, Sorun, I can give you reading material on the subject if you're truly inclined." He'd managed to dodge vegetables so far but if she ever decided to start cooking for him he was doomed.

"Women, sheesh..."

But the changes he'd undergone on the road to being a functional, healthy human being had been an eye-opener to Sorun, and he had to admit that, once again, Nicole was right. As always. And... maybe a small part of Sorun regretted that her boyfriend's physique was tantamount to a fleshy skeleton.

It was something he'd suspected for a bit, that her attitude had something to do with that, but no, when Sorun looked further into he found she really was just worried about his health and couldn't care less about the rest. In fact nobody cared. It was another one of those Mobian cultural aspects that was completely foreign to Sorun - how visual looks just mattered strikingly little to them as a whole. He suspected it was in part due to the fact that Mobian bodies were so diverse from one another due to all the varying species, doubly so since everyone was compatible with everyone, which was near-opposite from where he'd come from.

Still... as endearing as it was that Nicole, really Mobians as a whole, were so socially progressive with matters like that... well, Sorun wasn't, so he couldn't help but be a bit self-conscious about himself and how Nicole deserved better than his bony ass. So he was somewhat glad he was filling out a bit more. He often wondered what he'd be like if he actually tried to obtain the same physique Devil's Body afforded him - that Adonis bod.

But something like that would require work. Like, a whole lot of work. Sorun didn't want to do that.

But then there was Nicole, and she deserved Adonis bod. The treacherous part of Sorun's mind whispered that there was an easy, effortless way to get that bod - just use a Chaos Emerald to get Devil's Body and he'd have it forever, no work, no muss, just straight to the results. Be the easiest thing in the world.

Of course... he had his health to consider. And he did not think Nicole would ever forgive him for shredding off over a decade of his life just to look hotter - and she wouldn't even see it from that perspective. Plus he needed that Emerald for something already. His job security depended on it.

"Ugh... should I just 'Johnny Bravo' it?" Sorun wondered. "Mf. Sally and Bunnie are fitness nuts, maybe they'd have tips. Amy, too, but... I can't go to her with this. Gossip'd reach the whole town within an hour with her mouth. Ah, but wait, Nicole's really close friends with Sally. And Bunnie. Man, this is already too hard."

Something brushed by Sorun's side, in the water. He'd caught it from the peripheral of his vision. The object looked startlingly similar to a shark's fin.

"I'm going to ignore that. I didn't see that." The memory of what he just saw was already forgotten. "It's for Nicole sake thou- would she even care all that much? Beyond me just looking healthy? Ugh, this really seems like a serious discussion I should have with her, but... yeah, I just won't."

Something brushed by Sorun's foot.

"That didn't happen," he decided. "Eh, then again maybe it wouldn't hurt to at least have some light exercise thing in the morning at the very least. If nothing else then for the health benefits. That's a pretty good balance between laziness and health, right? Yeah, it's gotta be."

Nope, this time he'd seen it for sure when it swam past the side of his head. Shark fin. In full view of his eyes.

"Maybe it's not a shark's fin. Maybe it's a dolphin. They're practically indistinguishable." Sorun rolled his body over so that he was facing the depths below, and then dived under a bit to get a better look.

That proved to be a mistake. It was right there - jaws wide, right in front of Sorun. All he could see were rows of teeth mere inches away from his face in the water. He was pretty sure dolphins didn't have teeth like that which only lead to one conclusion, one that he reached in an instant.

He panicked. Cursed his own ineptitude and rose up through the surface of the water, flailing his arms in the air and screaming. He expected it to happen any second now: to feel a massive bite clamp down somewhere on his body, forcing him to fight off the shark. A shark he didn't think he had much of a chance of beating. It was a Mobius-brand shark, so probably no amount of nose punching would deter it. Sorun'd probably die right here. To a random shark of all things.

Except none of that ever happened. A bite never came. What did come was laughter that wasn't Sorun's voice. Familiar laughter, at that, and when Sorun put a face to the voice he started scowling something fierce. Performing a feat that to most would be moderately impressive seeing as he was floating in water, Sorun turned. Rigidly, near motionless with that scowl affixed to his face at the culprit floating in the water alongside him. Pointing with one hand and holding his laughing head with the other.

And then without so much as a single word Sorun grabbed at Razor's throat with both hands and pushed him under the water in an effort to drown him.

It wasn't working. The shark was still laughing at him, just underwater now. "He can breath water, dammit," Sorun realized seconds later. He let him go when he realized his efforts, while merited, were ultimately futile. All it did was cause Razor to burst back out of the water while still laughing at Sorun.

"Ahahahaha-!"

"Yeah, that's- that's great, man, real great, you, you can stop any time now."

"-hahahahaha-!"

"Any time would be appropriate, now, for instance, but please, by all means."

"-ahahahahah-!"

"My kind turned his into soup," Sorun bitterly thought.

"-hahah...! Man, that was... that was great. I needed that."

"Yeah, it's great you got your jollies out," Sorun replied in an unamused tone, "now you mind answering how it is every time I go out to the ocean I keep finding you? It's the ocean!"

The sharklike grin Razor was holding faltered a small bit. "Because you keep coming back to the same spot?" One of his hands rose up out of the water so he could point in a direction. "Look, the island we met on is literally right over there."

In a move that startled Razor slightly, Sorun's entire body spun around in a complete 180 while still floating in the water. He squinted - oh, yeah, there it was. Even more it was less of a black dot on the horizon and more of a greenish-brownish blob it was so close. Huh.

Sorun spun back around, startling Razor again. "Ocean's smaller than I thought," he said.

"Uh, if you say so." The shark's wide grin returned. "Anyways, hey! I didn't know you'd come back! Did you crash another one of your plane things?"

Irritation played over Sorun's face. "Why you always gotta focus on things like that, huh? On words like 'crashing' and 'me' and other things that don't fit together?" He huffed out a breath and crossed his arms. "And anyways, I'm here 'cause, uh, well no reason, really, we're all kind of just hanging out here 'cause it's my, er, friend's, one of my friend's birthday today."

"... Oh, you mean all those Freedom Puncher guys you said you were friends with?"

Sorun smiled in an amused way. "Yes, Razor. Those words exactly. But what are you doing out here?" he asked.

"Eh, I just wanted to get away from the city for a bit. Like to hang around the area here." He grimaced and turned his head a bit. "Some of the guards were givin' me a harder time than usual. Didn't feel like hanging around."

The light smile Sorun had on died. The fingernails on his right hand itched again. "They're still harassing you?"

"It's not 'harassing', it's... y'know, foreigner, former pirate, all that," Razor said, making a lighthearted chuckle while shrugging his shoulders. It didn't do much to change Sorun's expression, making Razor continue with, "Look, I wouldn't be comfortable, either, so I kinda get it. My friends are still lookin' out for me. Sister ain't. She's, er... still in jail. You know. With all the others. Won't really see me when I visit."

"... Yeah, sorry, man, I don't really have anything to contribute to that one," Sorun admitted.

"I getcha." Razor made an awkward cough and rubbed the back of his head. "So, um. How have you been?"

"Some stuff happened, but otherwise I've been... well, better off than I've ever been since coming here, actually," Sorun admitted. He glanced around at the water around them, and then realized something. "You didn't bring your Chao with you, did you?"

"'Course I did!" Razor happily replied with a wide grin. Sorun just barely resisted sighing and palming his own face. "He goes wherever I go! Why?"

"He ain't here. He on the island?"

"Probably!"

"Okay." Maybe wasn't the big deal, but Virgil was there with all the rest of them and he didn't know what that kind of meeting would bring about. And he guessed all the others would wanna meet Razor, anyways, so Sorun turned towards the island and- "Whoa, wait, why's it so far!?"

He'd been, like, right off the coast of the beach when he'd began mindlessly floating in the water. Not even five meters away from the shore. Now it looked like he was a hundred meters away from the island, maybe even two! And he wasn't even facing the right side of the island where all the others were!

Noting his confusion, Razor responded with, "Oh, yeah, the currents in these parts are kinda strong. Surprised you went in without knowing that, actually. I'd think it'd be kind of dangerous with your whole 'can't breath water' thing." He turned to face Sorun. "Did you ever get that fixed, by the way? Just seems weird."

"That ain't a thing you can fix, man," Sorun bemoaned, staring off towards the island. "Freakin' currents, man, how do they work...?"

---

The beach, Virgil concluded, was boring.

Nothing to do. Nowhere interesting to go. No one to fight. Nowhere to sleep - this sand stuff was just as irritating a substance as the first time he'd went to one with Sorun when he crashed them on that other island for some reason. It was terrible. He couldn't comprehend why anybody would want to spend time here.

Which was why he was so confused looking around and seeing all the other Mobians having a great time. Somehow. Here, of all places. A place where enjoyment shouldn't be possible. They were somehow enjoying this wasteland.

He'd bug Sorun about it but he wandered off somewhere and Virgil couldn't find him.

The Chao's head picked up suddenly. Maybe it wasn't a complete waste being here, because something was rushing up on him from behind. Wasn't hard to get out of the way, quickly zipping to the side to dodge what just tried tackling him. The silver-horned Chao's mood instantly became elated when he saw who it was. One of his own kind, an evolved one like him, but more importantly he'd recognized the green and black colors. The one joined with that one shark Mobian in the same way he was joined with Sorun. Crusher.

Crusher was fun. Crusher could actually put up a fight and be amusing. Crusher didn't whine and cry like the unevolved trash joined with the young rabbit Mobian. He was actually fun to be around as opposed to that bowtie-wearing weakling.

Wearing a stern, yet lighthearted and amused frown, Virgil had spoken in the language only their kind seemed to understand. "Chao chao-chao, chao chao chao chao-chao."
("You still haven't learned that doesn't work, even after all this time. Yet you try.")

The words seemed to fall on completely deaf ears when the green and black Chao whirled around, manic grin on his face. "Chao-chao chao!"
("Doesn't matter! Still gonna getcha!")

He wouldn't. But it was nice he was so spirited.

And thus, there they went, colliding into each other, rolling around in the sand as one Chao tried to force the other to submit. The coarseness and overall terrible feeling of sand didn't even register with Virgil at the time; why did sand matter at all when something fun was finally happening? The stares of all the other Mobians around didn't even matter to Virgil, even if everyone stopped to stare. He couldn't really blame them. This had to be better than whatever they were all doing to amuse themselves in that wretched sand.

"Uh... is, uh, is anyone gonna stop... whose Chao even is that?" Sonic wondered aloud, watching the display with wide, startled eyes. "I mean, that's... that's Sorun's Chao, it'll probably really hurt him."

Before anybody could respond there was another sound: the sound of a body crashing through the nearby brush and then landing face-first on the beach's sand. One only needed a momentary glance to tell it was Sorun lying in the sand. And then in the next instant he'd pushed himself up, shaking loose sand out of his hair while exhaling an exhausted breath.

"Ugh! Finally!" he groaned out, rising up to his feet as he brushed the remainder of the sand off his body. "Flippin'... swimming all that way and the mini-jungle... agh. I hate currents." He looked up, locking eyes on the two Chao wrestling in the sand - and then made a loud groan once again while rising a hand up to cover his face. "You gotta be kiddin', I rushed all the way here for nothing. They're just playing around."

When Razor burst out of the foliage next to Sorun, everyone just stared. Mostly in mild surprise and interest, though Razor himself had the same reaction multiplied a hundredfold seeing the entire group of Mobians spread out in front of him. He'd looked at all of them excitedly, pointing at them while looking at Sorun and asking, "Oh, are those all those Freedom Puncher guys you keep talking about!?"

The mute interest morphed into stunned surprise on everyone faces. Sally was the worst off; she looked mortified hearing that. And for Sorun's part, all he could do was laugh.

---

The time had come.

An opportunity like this was one that appeared only once in a lifetime. Some people didn't even get the opportunity, such was how rare this moment was. As such even thinking of squandering the opportunity was nothing less than a crime against life itself. And Sorun tried to not be a criminal.

He sighed, hands folded behind his head as he looked over towards the beach. Some of the others were missing, having gone off... somewhere, he wasn't sure where, but most were there. After the initial shock of his appearance wore off most of them wanted to talk to Razor since apparently nobody had much experience with aquatic Mobian culture. Sally had been the most interested one and had been asking the most questions when she wasn't glaring at Sorun out of the corner of her eye, like it was his fault he kept calling them Freedom Punchers because he didn't bother correcting Razor because he thought it'd be funny.

Nevertheless. It was keeping them busy, which meant Sorun had a chance to sneak off from the main group to fulfill a lifelong dream every aspiring man had. He'd be a fool to waste such an opportunity.

"This truly seems unnecessary, Sorun..."

Of course she had to be a naysayer to the aspiring dream. Sorun lowered his arms back to his sides and turned his head to Nicole, who was standing besides him. "This is the most necessary thing we will ever do in this relationship."

"It's just..." She was rubbing at her arm and looking away, wearing that extremely apprehensive look and yet wearing that reluctant and amused smile. She was digging the idea, or at least considering it. She'd outright deny Sorun if she was completely against it. "We have a home we can do this sort of thing in. With walls. And privacy."

"Look, Nicole," Sorun began, "you're always going on about how you want to experience now things, yeah? This is one of those things people do."

"You're goading me using past behaviors," she accused, but that nervous, apprehensive smile wasn't disappearing. "I don't see why... just tell me why it would be any different here than-"

"Because it's a tropical island," Sorun explained, as if that alone was explanation enough. "Making out in a tropical paradise setting is a wholly different experience to just doing that at home, and I don't know if we'll ever get this opportunity again so we need to strike now while the iron's hot and everyone's distracted. It's basic science."

"It is not," she firmly denied. "There is no scientific foundation to these claims of yours. And I really don't know why you must phrase it like that..." She was tapping her arms with her fingers in a nervous manner, and Nicole's face had grown flustered. It was a rare day he managed to make that happen.

"But you don't know because you've never done something like that in this kind of setting," Sorun challenged. He was grinning in a very much opposite manner to how Nicole was apprehensively smiling, but he knew he was getting through to her from the very obvious lack of any variation of the word "no" on her part. "You need data to ascertain these sorts of claims. Data that can only be accrued through personal experience, Nicole. We have to kiss in this tropical paradise to prove or disprove my hypothesis that it's a different experience. It's for science, Nicole, and you love science. You wouldn't want to deny the science, would you?"

Her head sharply turned towards him. "This has nothing to do with science and you know it," she accused. "You're twisting words to try and make this course of action sound reasonable when it is not."

Shrugging, Sorun said, "Weeell technically speaking chemistry is a science so-"

"Sorun...!" She couldn't even look at him she seemed so flustered, and she had to resort to holding the side of her face with a hand. But at the very least he knew he hooked her with the scientific intrigue, because she had this certain look in her eyes that Sorun had grown accustomed to that told him he'd already won her over. Those same eyes had darted over to their group of friends nearby on the beach. "But all of our friends are here, Sorun, and if any of them were to accidentally come across us doing that I'd-"

"Nicole, Nicole, it's fine," Sorun assured her, waving a hand aside to ease her worries, "I talked to Razor on the way here and apparently he's super familiar with the island. There's all sorts of spots he told me about that nobody would ever find us in. We're in the clear!"

Because he needed this to happen. Because it was every man's fantasy to kiss the girl of their dreams on a tropical island. Dave had said as much to Sorun one time. That a true man needed the perfect setting to kiss the girl to express their true feelings. He'd gone on and on about how it was one of his greatest desires if he ever met a girl he liked enough to make that kind of commitment - to kiss her on a tropical island.

Well, Dave was gone along with everyone else on Earth, but Sorun was still alive to carry on the dream. He didn't want to tell Nicole this; didn't want to inadvertently guilt trip her into going along with it and ruin the mood. Had to be of her accord to set the mood, but that part was already taken care of, because despite of how vocal she was against it that smile combined with the looks she kept giving him said enough, and the moment he said he knew of spots they could do this in secret without being discovered she looked completely agreeable to the idea.

The dream would be fulfilled.

And... well, he did just genuinely want to kiss her since there wasn't a bunch more going on at the moment.

"Fine, Sorun, we can... convene somewhere. Privately. If you truly know of a location where we assuredly won't be discovered." There it was. She was smiling more openly now. Only hints of apprehension remained on her face. "But only for a few minutes. Just long enough that the others won't begin wondering where we went and come looking for us. Five at the most."

A bit of disappointment made its way on Sorun's face. "Wha- seriously not eve ten min-?"

"Five minutes."

"Five minutes, okay, sure." He'd take it. Arguing further would only serve to jeopardize the dream and he didn't want to pressure her any further anyways. He never reacted anymore whenever Nicole just grasped his hand without any warning, but it still made him feel a bit warm inside when they both walked further into the island brush, away from all the others.

If nothing else, the sights were pretty. And mostly green, but while they were walking around Nicole kept glancing around at all the plants around them. Never made any idle comments or pointed out anything in particular, but he caught her eyes tracking some of the plants they'd passed by.

The plants weren't all that interesting to him. All except for what was up ahead: a small alcove in the brush surrounded by a curtain of vines hanging off from the trees above. Unless one were to push their way past the vines nobody would be able to see whatever was on the inside. For all intents and purposes it was the perfect hiding spot.

The absolute... perfect... spot.

"The perfect spot," Sorun vocalized in whispered awe when the pair had stopped in front of the curtain of vines.

"... Sorun, truly?" Nicole didn't sound in awe at all. More slightly amused but mostly skeptical. "I understand you wanted to be a bit adventurous, but this is-"

"The perfect spot." There was no denying it. Complete coverage. Out of the way. On a tropical island. There was no better spot that would suffice.

"You've certainly said as much." With the hand not holding Sorun's own Nicole palmed her own face to hide the amused smile that had grown. "Very well, just... I'm not exactly sure how we're to-"

"You don't need to know anything when you've found the perfect spot, Nicole," Sorun explained when he reached out towards the vines. "It's like, uh, it's like when you do stuff without really thinkin' about it so ya just do it," he continued as he moved the vines aside, "so in this instance we'd-"

There were people in the perfect spot.

The perfect spot was compromised.

More specifically it was Knuckles standing there. Julie-Su was standing there, too, right next to him. Both were standing rigid and staring at the pair of them with wide eyes. Coincidentally Sorun and Nicole were doing the exact same thing, even holding the same postures. It was a solid ten seconds of awkward silence before Knuckles cleared his throat to speak.

"Uh..." His eyes darted between Sorun and Nicole and landed on Sorun. "So, uh, wow, you two-?"

"'Splorin'," Sorun automatically replied without any thought.

"Exploring?" Knuckles repeated.

"Exploring," Sorun confirmed. "What, uh... what're you two doing here?"

Both the echidna looked at each other before looking back at Sorun. "Just exploring, you know?" Knuckles said.

"Exploring?"

"Exploring."

"Yeah?"

"Mhm, yeah."

"Ah. Okay." Slowly, movements robotic, Sorun began to move the vines to re-obstruct the view of the interior of the alcove. "Just gonna... put these back."

"Alright," came Knuckles stilted voice from the inside of the alcove. And that was the end of that conversation once they disappeared from sight.

"..." Nicole blinked a few times at the vines and then looked questioningly at Sorun. "What was that?" she asked.

He didn't respond. He just wordlessly took her hand and guided her further into the brush.

---

Dave had been right, it seems. The way to the true man's dream was found through kissing your girlfriend somewhere on a tropical island. Why else would Knuckles be all the way out there? In the middle of nowhere, away from the others? With a girl?

Good for him, but that left Sorun without a viable path to fulfill the true man's dream entrusted to him by Dave. As of yet. There had to be more than one hidden spot here somewhere, Razor had said there were tons, and Sorun was determined to find another one yet.

Nicole seemed increasingly puzzled by the lengths Sorun was going through but was going along with it nonetheless if only to satisfy his whims.

"You know what? I was wrong. This is the perfect spot," Sorun claimed once they'd found the true perfect spot. A waterfall. Not an overly huge one, just a small stream running off a mound of rocks. But behind that waterfall was the obvious makings of a cave - a sight only one with the trained eyes of a gamer could ever spot. "It's thematic and everything, Nicole, it can only enhance the experience."

The grip in Sorun's hand was limp by now. Once more she sent him a questioning look that conveyed just how mystified she was with the entire experience thus far. "A hidden cave behind a waterfall is thematic for us?" she echoed. "In what way?"

Gesturing to the waterfall, Sorun answered with, "'Cause they always hide stuff behind waterfalls in video games. And we're gamers, so, like, it's perfect."

Yes. Truly. That other spot? Nothing but a random assortment of vegetation. Knuckles could have it to do whatever he was doing with Julie-Su. This spot had everything. Atmosphere, significance, sound dampening from the running water. It was better by a factor of ten, maybe even eleven. There was no way they could leave this island without kissing in there.

"I've yet to encounter that particular trope in games. Perhaps it's a quirk from the games of your old home." She made a small sighing sound and released Sorun's hand. "If you truly think this is that important then by all means we can, but can you do me the favor of at least looking in there first to see if it's suitable?" She looked around a bit, paying attention to some of the plants hanging off the rocks nearby. They had colorful orange and yellow flowers growing out of them. "I want to stay behind for a bit to examine some of the local flora."

"Alright, sure." He was already moving towards the waterfall while Nicole stayed behind to look at all the flowers. He couldn't begrudge her that, it was new things to look at and he doubted she could really resist cataloging all the plants she saw to memory, but he had more things to worry about than plants. Like scouting out the true perfect spot to ensure it was as perfect as it looked. He didn't have any doubts, though, because there was no way-

"Wait..." Sorun stopped, right at the front of the waterfall, inches away from the mouth of the cave. There were sounds, sounds beyond the rushing water right in front of his face. Voices. Indistinguishable in both the words those voices were saying and how many there were, but voices were voices. But more startlingly was the fact in addition to the voices he heard... high-pitched giggling! "No, no, no!"

An alarmed Sorun burst through the waterfall, nearly sprinting into the cave in a mad dash to confirm his fears. Those fear were realized when he saw two distinctly yellow bodies in the cave. He wasn't sure what happened next - he'd been rushing too fast and the movement in front of him had been too frantic to make out, but by the time he came to a stop he was face to face with Charmy. Just... floating there, right in front of Sorun. With his hands folded behind his back and the guiltiest smile Sorun had ever seen plastered on his face.

"H-hey! Sorun! It's so weird seeing you here, what do you know! Ha ha!" Oh, the poor guy. It was so obvious what had been going on Sorun couldn't poke fun at it. It was just too sad. He'd feel nothing but pity if he weren't currently embroiled in unyielding rage on the inside for the perfect spot behind occupied. "So what are you doing here?" the bee asked rather quickly.

He was too tired and distraught to tease. With a resigned breath and sunken eyes, Sorun tonelessly said, "I heard some noises and grew concerned." He looked a bit to the side. He wasn't at all surprised to see Saffron hiding behind a rock and poking her head out to look at him. Sorun lethargically turned his eyes back to Charmy. "It would seem, however, my fears of danger were unfounded. You and Saffron were just exploring this cave. Absolutely nothing else to note, it seems."

Rapidly, Charmy nodded. "Yep, yeah, completely! Totally! Just us looking around, y'know, 'cause this island's so neat and she wanted to-"

Goddamn it all. "Look I'm just gonna leave. This didn't happen. I wasn't here. Just...-" Exhaling through his nose Sorun shook his head and turned around, "-pretend this didn't happen, alright?"

He didn't hear Charmy respond as he exited the cave and passed the waterfall. Honestly, he couldn't blame him; a situation like that was so awkward it was natural to look for a way out, to turn the other way and forget about it as quick as possible. Sorun'd do the exact same thing. He was happy to leave the matter alone as quick as possible, in fact.

Didn't change the fact his will was being crushed at a worryingly alarming rate, because dammit, that spot had been so primo. So much, in fact, that Sorun knew, deep within his soul, that there could possibly be no spot on the island that was as good as that one. Not without the hidden waterfall chamber. He wasn't even sure he wanted to do this anymore if the best spot on the island got swept on up from right under Sorun's feet, but, well... the embers were still burning within him. The dream wasn't quite dead yet.

"Ah, you've returned," Nicole commented when he returned back to her side. "Sorun, a quick question. Do you think your shark friend is knowledgeable of the names and classifications of the genus of plants we keep finding here? A number of these flowers have unique characteristics and traits I want to file away for future reference and I'm not wont to try and classify something as important as species of flora if official labels already exist."

Sorun made a noncommittal grunt. To most that would mean nothing. Fortunately for Nicole she knew him well enough to understand he was greatly upset at something and didn't have the mental fortitude necessary to formulate an articulate response. That specific grunt meant that he didn't know and would ask Razor later.

"I see," she said, nodding. "Was something wrong with the cave?"

"..." He looked up at Nicole with hollow, vacant eyes. "The spot is compromised."

This, Nicole did not understand. "Pardon?" she asked, visibly confused.

Sorun didn't elaborate. He merely took her hand once more, and continued on further into the island. Nicole wordlessly followed, more for his sake than anything else.

---

Maybe in the end it was all a pipe dream. A stark, unreachable goal only meant for those who struggled to obtain it to struggle in vain. All except for the people that actually seemed to be accomplishing it because they'd acted faster than Sorun on this.

Damn it all. There had to be something.

"Maybe here?" he wondered. It was a rather innocuous-looking spot he'd found after some wandering. Some tall rocks surrounded by a gathering of palm trees. Slightly uncomfortable, maybe, but... well, it was hidden. And really, could it be any worse than making out in a cave? On the hard rock? On second thought, yes, this had to be much better than a cave. What was thematic ambiance to the padding of actual ground?

He looked in the other direction. He wasn't even sure Nicole cared anymore - she was crouching down near some plants and examining more flowers. At this point Sorun wouldn't even be surprised that half the reason she was putting up with this was because they kept finding interesting-looking plants along the way and she was just using the excuse to look around. Couldn't really blame her, in fact he was happy she was having a good time, but dammit, what about him? What about his dream? Dave's dream?

A quiet laugh broke Sorun's thoughts and made his head whip towards the newest spot he'd discovered. A laughing voice. Two voices, actually. A female voice and a male voice. The male one was noticeably French-sounding.

"Son of a bitch."

There wasn't any surprise on Sorun's face when he leaned past a gap in the rocks to look inside the small spot. Absolutely no surprise when he saw Antoine and Bunnie sitting rather closely towards one another, arms around each other. He didn't get a laugh out of the way they were frozen and staring owlishly at him. He didn't even know what he was supposed to feel at this point.

"Er... hi, Sorun," Bunnie awkwardly greeted. She'd untangled her arms off of Antoine and looked to the side in an embarrassed manner. "We was just, uh, lookin' around, y'know, all curious-like, an'-"

"Bah, I'm not ashamed enough to caramel-coat it," Antoine interrupted, shaking his head. He actually looked a bit defiant when he turned his body towards Sorun and crossed his own arms. In a weird way it felt a bit refreshing to the human. "Sorun, we are a married couple who are very much loving each-"

"Save it, man, I ain't gonna ruin your little mack-on fest here." Evidently Antoine didn't understand what Sorun just said, because he looked at him in confusion. Bunnie looked like she did, though. She was trying to hide as much of her face behind the sunhat she'd brought along as possible. "I'm leaving. This didn't happen."

"Oh. Uh... okay." Antoine blinked, like he hadn't expected this to go this way. Or be resolved this easily. "Then-"

But it was too late. Fed up with it all, Sorun had already gone.

---

The dream truly was a futile thing in the end, it seemed.

"I don't know, Nicole, I just wanted... I dunno." They'd settled on sitting next to each other, both resting against a palm tree on the beach. It was a mutual agreement that exploring the forest was done, on Nicole's part for having seen all she wanted to see and on Sorun's part for giving into the futility of achieving the dream. "Just a nice moment or something we could share," Sorun glumly continued as he threw a small stone into the sand.

Nicole glanced over at him. "We have many moments together," she pointed out. "I don't see how this was supposed to be any different from all the other times."

"Would have been unique? I dunno. I just thought it'd make a nice memory."

"And this isn't one? A nice memory?" Sorun thunked his head on the back of the tree when he heard the teasing tone Nicole had grown. "I'd thought we were all having a wonderful time here, but it seems I was mistaken."

Sorun crossed his arms and shifted a bit where he was sitting. "Not saying it isn't a good memory. Just could have been a bit better is all I'm saying."

"Hmm. Fine."

He was about to ask what that was supposed to mean, but then he'd seen Nicole lean over to where he was sitting. And then she'd quickly pecked him on the cheek before moving back to where she'd been sitting prior.

By all accounts it was the most chaste kiss he could have possibly gotten, but at this point Sorun would take it. Even if it meant he had to look away from Nicole out of sheer embarrassment. It still made him happy. It counted.

"I did it, Dave. I did it."

"Well?" Nicole asked, sounding expectant. "Did it live up to everything you were hoping for?"

"... Well, you always outperform my expectations," Sorun mumbled as he rubbed at the spot on his cheek he'd been kissed. "But nah, it felt about the same." Not that he was expecting some heretofore unfelt emotion due to a simple switch in location from the normal locale, but he'd been open to being surprised. For the dream to be more than just a dream, even if attainable. Still worth it.

"I told you so it would be like this, Sorun," Nicole stated. She crossed her own arms and put on a self-satisfied, smug look. "And you had us traipsing through all of that jungle, too."

"You liked looking at the plants, you can't complain," Sorun shot back. She didn't refute it, but when Sorun glanced at her she was still holding that smug smirk. He rolled his eyes, shook his head, and stood up to his feet. "Alright, well, we're having a huge bonfire and I gotta go help Razor track down a bunch of dead wood." He pocketed his hands in his pockets, mumbling off to the side, "Offered to just cut down some trees with my sword that can cut through anything, but nooo, gotta preserve the environment..."

"It's good to do things like that, Sorun, yes."

His eyes snapped down at Nicole. She wasn't even looking at him; just sitting there, eyes closed while still holding that smirk. He couldn't say anything as a good comeback. She'd won too thoroughly. "Er, yeah, I guess," he'd simply said in reply as he turned around to walk away. "See you later."

"If the kiss was that disappointing we can always try again when we go home."

His footsteps sped up a little bit. He could he felt that smug grin burning a hole in his back as he fled away from Nicole.

---

Okay, so it wasn't much of a bonfire. More a campfire. A modest campfire at that in the middle of the beach. As it happened there wasn't all that much wood on the island, and with the risk of invoking the wrath of his friends present he elected not to cut down any of the healthy trees. So he and Razor had tried - they really did. But this is what they came up with in the end.

A modest pile of sticks they were gonna set on fire later. Might last them a half hour if they were lucky.

"I still don't get why you guys mess around with this fire stuff," Razor huffed out when he tossed the last handful of sticks on the pile. "That stuff burns, you know?"

Sorun paused from unfolding one of the folding chairs the others brought as he looked up at the shark. "Is this one of those underwater things I don't understand because I breath too much air?" he asked as he set the chair down. "You... you cook food, right?"

"The, er... the others I used to ride with did," Razor said, "but I never got it. Sis didn't, either."

"I mean, I can respect eating raw meat. In that same vein of thought I can't respect salmonella, though. So yeah." And that was just Earth standard. He didn't want to risk an encounter with whatever hyper-evolved, Chaos-laden super salmonella was probably running around on this planet.

"What's wrong with salmon? I think it's great."

"God." There was a soft crunching sound as Sorun stabbed the legs of chair into the sand beneath him. "Look, it's a species barrier thing, alright?" he continued as he looked up at Razor after rubbing at his eyes. "Ocean people like it raw, land people like it cooked, it's just how it is even if we can't understand why the other likes their way of eating so much. It's like a two-dimensional being trying to comprehend a three-dimensional being. It just ain't happening."

With a chair in his own hand, Razor looked up at Sorun before he planted it into the ground. He blinked at him, giving him a look that clearly lacked comprehension for a few seconds before shrugging and planting the chair. "Eh, I don't really understand what you just said, but if you say it then it must be true. You're smart like that."

Smart? That didn't sound right. "What gave you that impression?" Sorun asked as he placed another chair.

"Well, you're the smartest guy I know, so... it makes sense, doesn't it?"

"..." With his eyebrows raised high in disbelief Sorun went back to placing the chairs. "I worry for your people if that's your takeaway," he muttered out.

Having placed the last chair down, Sorun stepped back in admiration of their work. A circle of folding chairs around a pile of sticks amidst the setting sun. Paired with the image of crashing waves in the background and the orange lights from the setting sun dancing along the ocean's surface, it was... certainly one of the better sights Sorun had seen in his life.

"Huh..." Razor had traced Sorun's eyes to the sight he was looking at. From the serene look on his face it was hitting him about as hard as it was hitting Sorun. "Y'know, sights like these are pretty much half the reason I bother coming up here. You don't get stuff like this under the surface of the ocean."

"Hrm. Move to the surface," Sorun suggested, without hesitation. "You'd get to see this every day and you wouldn't have to deal with the people in your city. In fact just move to the city I live in. There's room."

"Eh-heh, yeah, that'd probably be nice." Razor had laughed it off in a tone that suggested he took what Sorun had said as a small joke. It caused him to frown a bit. It hadn't been a joke. "Couldn't really leave my friends, though."

"Bring them."

"Nah. One of my friends really likes the temple she looks after. Don't think she'd leave it for anything." Razor turned to Sorun and approached his side. he pulled something out from a small pouch strapped to his waist - afterwards he tossed it to Sorun. "Anyways, here. Check out what I found."

Sorun caught the object midair and looked down to examine it. A cursory glance revealed it to be a yellow fruit of some kind dotted with green spots. "What's this?" he asked.

"Dunno!" Razor grinned and gave him a shrug. "These fruits all grow on the islands around here. Everyone back home likes 'em enough so whenever I'm around I bring some back with me. Try it!"

"Hm." Well, he was kind of hungry. And exotic, tropical fruit was exotic, tropical fruit. If Razor vouched for it that was good enough for him. "Hey, if you say so."

Sorun bit down into the fruit.

His pupils dilated.

---

Did anyone ever look up into the sky and think to themselves... man?

Like... like cloud watching, but into the soul. Soul watching. Like the sky was a mirror and all of Sorun was up there looking down on him along with the other million and a half colors swirling up there.

It was questions like these that would baffle even the most studious of philosophers, would stump the greats like Play-Doh and Scrotumtease, that'd been whirling through Sorun's mind at a million snails a minute ever since he ate that fruit Razor gave him. He didn't know what the fuck was in that fruit, but it was eye-opening. Literally. He felt the third eye in his brain opening up, and it was... it was dark in there. There wasn't light in his skull. Maybe that's why he couldn't see out of it.

Could Tails put a lightbulb in his skull? He'd, he'd ask. One day.

There were a bunch of noises, too, but what even was noise? His brain told him noise was vibrations in the air picked up by the cochlea organ in his inner ear within a range of twenty hertz to twenty kilohertz which converted those vibrations into electrical signals interpreted by the brain as noise. But when did he ever listen to his brain?

"Are his eyes supposed to be all big like that?"

"Razor, what did you give him!?"

"I-I thought it was harmless! Everyone from where I'm from eat these things and nothing like this ever happens! I ate one before I gave him the other one!"

"He can't handle mild substances!"

"R... really? 'Cause they make baby food outta this, too."

"We all figure his tolerance for pretty much everything is nonexistent, it's... it's a human thing, we don't really know. I think we can fix it, though. Nicole, can you...?"

"I'm already looking for it, Sally. Does anybody know where he left it?"

"He left it half-buried in the sand over there because he got too tired of carrying it around. I'll show you where."

"Thank you, Tails."

See? The brain was nothing but pain.

Except it wasn't anymore. Oh, it'd been there - that deep, gray fog weighing everything down that only grew more and more oppressive the longer he stayed here. And then he found out everything he knew was gone, washed away in invisible fire, and his body was chained beyond the fog. Into the great nothingness.

He felt nothing. Nothing mattered. Anything was nothing. Hey, Nicole was visiting again. Why was he bothering to breath when there was nothing left?

But that was gone! It's over! There's stuff again! No fog or chains or darkness. Stuff. Tangible, edible stuff. 'Cause... 'cause he had money? Yeah, 'cause of the job he had.

Holy fucking shit, he had a job now, and a house he could call his own. He wasn't a total failure and a waste of space anymore like he'd always been. And there was a whole community that actually gave a damn about him. He never even thought things like that even existed. He had friends? And a girlfriend even? And it was Nicole?

God, he was so fucking happy. His life was going so great and he didn't want it to stop. He could just live there like this forever, right? That'd be nice.

"Heeeeey~... you." He didn't even care he was latching onto Antoine like this. He might care, but it was hard to tell since his face was kind of an amorphous blob right now. But nah, he wouldn't care. He was good people. The goodest of people. "You're, you, you're the greatest, man, come here, just, just come here."

It didn't feel as good hugging him as it did hugging the angel lynx computer lady person but that didn't matter. Still warm. Could he just do this forever? Ev- everyone should just do this, the world would be such a gooder place if everyone just hugged their problems out.

God, they took him to the beach with them and he couldn't be happier people cared about this much, he fucking loved them all so much.

"Th-that, that iz nice, Sorun," he heard Antoine say, a bit lighthearted but nervous, as he pulled him off of him. What he sitting in a chair right now? Was that what that was? Oh, he put the chairs there, yeah. "You're a very good friend, too, oui."

"Nah, but, but you're better," Sorun protested. "Not as good as the, the... the nice kissy gamer kitty. She's best." He poked Antoine in what was either his chest of his forehead. "But you're so great, man, I, I don't wanna be around if you're not around, 'cause you're so great 'n' just, man I just like you so much, man, I'd hug all of you if I could but, but like you're here an' everyone else is... like, I don't know where they are. There's oxygen an' stuff keepin' us apart. But invisible, like glass. The invisiblest glass, Antoine, can you believe that? So smooth. So breathable."

"I really do think you are needing to do ze lying down until Nicole comes back with ze Emerald, mon ami."

"I'm so glad I have so many friends like you, Antoine, you're all just the best. Wonderful, all of you. Man, I have so many friends, I... I had more than this? Oh, yeah, the, uh, the one. That one. Yeah."

The coyote he was clutching onto shifted under him. "Sorun?" He sounded more flustered than anything else for some reason. Sorun couldn't imagine why. This was great.

A picture of something he didn't remember appeared. "Mhm, the, uh... that one, her. We were... we was cool." Cool as ice because ice was always cool. But then he broke something and the ice had turned warm. He'd laughed while doing it. "Everything was fine until it wasn't, and then she got real mad and everything got all bright and HOT. But then it was fine!" Sorun cheered out, throwing his arms up. "'Cause I heal good." He felt oddly sad for a moment. "She couldn't heal good."

"I really am not understanding any of zis," Antoine said, now more bemused than anything else, "but I am seeing ze picture. You ate ze strange zing and now are seeing all ze strange zings, non? Imaginary people and ze such."

"Nahhhh, man, it was... she was..." He wracked his brain for an answer. The picture was disappearing, the words evaporating, but the word was... a path to the word was there! "'They're in the net, Command. Send it. Authenticate: Solutions 0-8-1-6.'"

"Okay, Sorun, it iz ze obvious sign zat you are ze spinny-noodle-y type in ze head right now." Sorun giggled when Antoine picked him up and set him down so he was sitting on the soft sand. "Just sit here."

There was another picture. It was that place.

Frantically, like his life depended on it, Sorun grabbed at the collar of Antoine's shirt. His life did depend on it, this was so important, he couldn't believe it, why wasn't he there right now!? "Antoine, I need to go there. The tower. There's something important there, Antoine, it's waiting for me, Antoine it's in the tower I need to go there! I need to go to the tower!"

It was there. It reached up so high into the skies it breached the clouds. It was the only thing left alive.

Gently, Antoine pried Sorun's hands off of him. "Sorun, zere iz no tower," he softly mumbled out. "What tower?"

"It's there, Antoine, it's right there. I need to go in it."

"Why? What's zere?"

"It's... frrrreeedom, Antoine. Truth."

"Okay, Sorun." His hands were softly placed back into his lap by Antoine. "Just please be sitting still and you'll be right as ze raindrops licking splitted."

"That sounds right," Sorun agreed. There was a crunching sound of sand, and he looked towards the source. "Oh, h-hi!"

There were no words. "Radiant" was insufficient. If the words did exist his mind was running a bit too soupish to remember the collection of letters. All he could tell was that the person standing in front of him was bright. Striking. Not just in their features but in their spirit. That's as best as he could describe it. The person in front of him was truly beautiful beyond words. A person whose mere presence was so blinding Sorun was beyond words and could only stare in awed silence. A figure that shone so brightly that the glowy blue thing they were holding in their hand seemed dim in comparison.

He couldn't understand the feeling he felt looking at the person. The feeling of warmth just from being in that light. The sheer joy from being in its direct vicinity. The feeling of sheer devotion he had towards it, like he had to accept this light and this person as an immutable part of his life. Every single fiber of his being was telling him to love and cherish this light. His soul was telling him he should fight anything that ever threatens them. He was pretty sure he had a sword that could help with that, but he forgot where it went.

This person was beautiful. He was compelled to poke them in the face.

"Ha ha." He tried poking the light. It was too bright, and he missed. In reality he was just too far away due to sitting down while the light was standing up and away from him, but Sorun had no possible way at the moment of comprehending what that ordering of words even met. Distance didn't exist.

The light shifted. "Sorun, please take this," it said. The cochlea organs in his ears quivered in pleasure at the sound of the light's voice. He didn't even know light could speak like that. It held out the glowy blue thing, and the first thought he had was that he didn't want that dull piece of shit. He wanted to hold the light forever because things were always great when the light was around and he didn't have to worry anymore and he felt like his life had just a little bit more meaning if it meant he could make the light happy. But he got the sense that the light would be unhappy if he didn't take the blue thing, so he took it.

The blue thing was hard and smooth. Not at all like the light. The light was soft and had fur.

The light... had fur.

God, if light had fur then what the hell was the sun made of? The thought scared Sorun, and he dropped the blue thing as a result.

The light sighed. They crouched down and picked it up, and then placed it in Sorun's hands. He was able to feel the light's hands when they brushed past his.

The hands were everything. The hands of a gamer. An artisan. A coder. A kind and loving person. He was definitely one of these things. Maybe two. Did sandcastles count?

"Now Sorun, can you do something for me?" The light asked him.

"Mmmmmm... hm. Yeah, I'll do anything for you."

"That's nice, Sorun."

"Even tax fraud."

"Don't do that, Sorun, Elias will get mad and I don't want to put you in the jail."

"Alright." Crime was illegal. Couldn't do that. Got it. "But what do you need me to do right now, then?"

"Do you know that one power you have? The one where your hair turns white?" the light softly asked him. "Do you think you could use that? Just for a moment so you can go back to normal?"

"Huh? But... o-oh, wait, you're Nicole! The light's name is Nicole!"

The light named Nicole seemed to need a moment to pause and try to understand what he just said. It gave up, saying, "Yes, Sorun, it's because you needed a minute to remember my name that I need you to fix yourself. That's not normal."

"I mean that body feels great an' all, but..." He looked down and attempted to grab at Nicole the light's wrist. He got lost and grabbed his own wrist by mistake. "But I feel so happy right now, Nicole. Because you're here and everyone's here and everything's great but because you're here everything's greater than great because you're here and I feel great and I don't wanna stop feeling great. I don't want that to go away. Let's just stay like this forever. I'm fine with that."

Nicole patted him on the top of his head like a lost dog, unsure of what else to do in this situation. "You can be happy without being under the effects of whatever was in the fruit Razor gave you that intoxicated you, Sorun," she soothingly said to him. "But I'm happy to learn you have all these feelings, even if it took all of your inhibitions being obliterated by poison to get the words out. Now please cure yourself."

Well, if the light was asking him, he had to obey. To not listen to the light was blasphemous. That was a bad thing, he knew that. "'Kay," he simply said.

Sorun's hair turned white.

He blinked. Reality snapped back to normal.

Currently Sorun was sitting in the sand in front of one of the chairs circling the pile of sticks and and Razor made. Everyone was sitting in a chair except for Nicole, who was staring at Sorun. Actually everyone was staring at Sorun.

He glanced down at the blue Emerald in his hands. He didn't remember everything he just said, but he remembered enough to know the embarrassing parts. "Oh. Huh. Wow. Yeesh. How do I salvage this?"

"I got nothing for ya, bro," Sorun thought.

"Dang," thought Sorun. "Uh... alright, plausible deniability here we go." If he pretended he never said all that vulnerable, mushy stuff then it was the same as it never happening in the first place. That's how it worked.

"What just happened?" Sorun asked, looking back up at Nicole. "I was standing next to Razor and now we're all here. What happened?"

Nicole looked confused at his words. So did everybody else, who glanced at each other questioningly. It was Nicole who spoke. "You don't recall a single thing that happened?" she asked, sounding a bit incredulous.

Damn. She wasn't buying it. "I remember a fruit," he helpfully replied, trying to garner just a bit of credibility for his case. "I remember eating it. Now I'm here. What's with that?"

"... I think I see." She closed her eyes and offered a small smile. Sorun instantly translated that as her knowing he was completely faking not knowing what just happened, but would go along with it anyways for his sake. It was hard to take any solace in this fact because he knew she was going to tease him about it relentlessly when they were alone later. "Razor gave you a sample of some of the local fruit and you fell under a stupor of sorts. I managed to goad you into curing yourself with the Chaos Emerald."

"Oh, wow, really? That's nuts. That's real nuts, guys." Yep, and that was that. No need to dwell on the matter if he didn't remember anything. Case closed and shut. He hopped up one of the remaining empty chairs. "What a wacky adventure, everyone, glad it's over."

Once more everyone glanced around at each other. "We're really not gonna talk about-" Rotor began.

"Nah, nope, nothing to look at." Sorun snapped his gaze to Razor. Miraculously somebody miscounted the amount of chairs they needed and an extra just happened to be brought for him. "Razor, why'd you poison me?"

The shark floundered at the claim. "How was I supposed to know you'd react like that!?" he yelled. "I've seen people eat tons of those things and they turn out fine!"

"Well, that's how it goes, Razor. Mobians get all the biological advantages over humans," Sorun glibly remarked. "But the crisis is averted, so we can all go back to what we were doing before."

Once more everyone stared. Sorun was fairly confident the bead of sweat rolling down the side of his face was imaginary. Phantom sweat.

"... Okay, if ya say so," said Bunnie. Sorun breathed out a sigh of relief as Nicole sat down in the chair next to him. "Jus' try'n watch what ya eat from now on. Wouldn't want any more crazy episodes on our hands."

"Ha ha, yeah, crazy, I-I didn't do anything actually crazy, did I?"

He didn't like that smirk Bunnie grew. Dammit, everyone had it. "Oh, nah, Sorun, you ain't gotta worry 'bout a thing."

Well, it was clear enough to Sorun. Everyone but Nicole bought the memory loss lie. Didn't erase all the stuff he said that he knew they heard. He supposed he should be lucky they were all giving him a break and pretending nothing happened. Except for Sonic, who looked like he wanted to say something about it, but Sally was glaring at him and pinching his shoulder so he was keeping his mouth shut.

Eh. He'd take it.

"So we gonna start this campfire or what?" Sorun asked, desperate to get away from the shame of it all.

Again, everyone looked around at each other, and Sorun felt glad to be a part of the group now. Espio was the one who spoke out.

"Charmy. You did remember to bring the fire starter, correct?" the chameleon asked.

"Why would I pack it?" he asked back. "You're the ninja with all the ninja tools. Shouldn't you have packed it?"

"Does starting a fire truly sound like something a ninja would do?"

"How would I know? I'm not a ninja."

"..." Espio sighed and looked at the rest of the group. "We didn't bring a fire starter," he said.

Groans of disappointment all around. Sonic looked ready to get up off his seat. "Alriiight, I'll rub some sticks together really fast to try and-"

"Nah, hold on, I got it," Sorun interrupted. His hair darkened back to black as he held the Emerald up.

Sonic blinked a bit in confusion, but settled back in his seat. "Er, thanks, Sorun, but you really don't gotta go all the way back home for a fire... huh?"

The hedgehog's eyes widened in surprise. Everyone's did, really, when the Chaos Emerald in Sorun's hand instantly transmuted into a weapon. Not a weapon any of them were familiar. Indeed, it was the first time any of them had ever laid eyes on such a weapon. A... guitar, by the looks of it. A wicked thing covered in sharp edges with a scythe's blade folded inside of it.

"No, not that one," Sorun muttered out. A few small bolts of purple electricity danced along the instrument's strings before the weapon disappeared and turned back into the Chaos Emerald. "Lemme cycle through a few and find something," he said.

The Mobians all around stared on in sheer fascination. The Emerald changed again, this time into a large falchion blade. The hilt seemed to be fused to an engine and there were exhaust tubes jutting out the back of it.

"... Bit too violent, no," Sorun muttered. Another shift. Now he was holding a cleaver-like, serrated sword. The blade itself was dyed red. "Too unruly."

The weapon changed again. This time it was three intricate metal rods, the ends frozen with blue ice. They were all connected to a central metal ring via... vaporized ice, of all things. "This'll work," Sorun claimed.

Before anybody could say anything, he spun the three-headed nunchucks around. They shifted, the ring disappearing and the rods combining into a singular, long staff. The ends glowed orange with heat. And with the nonchalance of somebody sticking a fire poker into a fire, Sorun touched the end of the blazing staff into the pile of sticks.

The sticks alit within a second. The campfire had begun.

"Fixed it," Sorun said. The staff disappeared and the Emerald settled into Sorun's hands once more. "Alright, so where'd we leave the food, 'cause-"

"Whoa whoa whoa, wait up just a second there," Sonic interrupted, waving his hands in front of him to gain Sorun's attention. "What was that thing you just made? Since when have you been able to do that!?"

Sorun quirked an eyebrow at Sonic, and then made a look of understanding. "Ahh, I guess you haven't been paying attention. So I'm a void-type, right, which means I get to turn Chaos energy into all sorts of wacky stuff-"

"No, I get that part, Sorun," Sonic said, a bit exasperated, "I mean all that stuff you did! All the weapons! Since when could you do that!?"

The confusion on Sorun's face didn't fade. "... Since I got the ability to pick the powers and hold Emeralds without absorbing them?" He turned the Emerald into another weapon. This one was a longsword. The hilt was stylized to look like the blade was jutting out of the mouth of a gargoyle, and the guard was stylized to look like wings. Blue lightning sparked over the blade's surface. "I've got dozens of weapons I can cycle through. This is Alastor."

"And that other one? The nunchuck thing?"

"King Cerberus. Sixty-six percent cooler than normal Cerberus," Sorun said. "Like literally it's the same exact thing but without the lightning and fire configurations. It's pretty useless."

"Okay, wait..." Exhaling through his nose, Sonic started rubbing the sides of his head. "So... so this whole time. You had all these great weapons this whole time but haven't been using them? You didn't think back then any of them would have been useful?"

"Not really." The sword shifted into a metallic suitcase covered in glowing, maze-like yellow lines. There was a three-eyed, fanged skull imprinted in its center, the slit eye sockets glowing yellow. "For one, I didn't get a choice of what I got back then. Second, even if I did I would have just stuck with Yamato. It's the best one. Why would I use any of the others when I already have the best one?"

The answer didn't seem to satisfy Sonic. "But why? If they all have different powers like the one sword-"

"None of them are like Yamato," Sorun interrupted, somewhat firmly. "All of the weapons are... gimmicky. Difficult to use with abilities that don't really measure up to Yamato's. Actually I probably can't even use half of them without the white-haired body; they're too intense for a normal human to use. By contrast Yamato is easier to use. The power's simpler and more flexible, versatile. It's the most efficient. It's... cleaner to use than all the rest." The suitcase shifted into Yamato. He laid it down on his lap, eyes gazing over its form. "You saw me use it against all those robots so you see what I mean. I wouldn't have got nearly as much mileage using any of the other ones. So I stick with Yamato because I never needed any of the others."

It was somewhat of a struggle to not let the phrase "Devil Arm" slip out of Sorun's mouth. But part of him worried how they'd react hearing him call them that, so he let the true title of the weapons go unsaid.

"Besides," Sorun continued as he looked back up at Sonic, "I kind of depend on Yamato to make a livelihood. And I don't really have much pragmatic use for a pair of gauntlets and greaves that'd probably blow my limbs off if I tried using them. And I've got, like, four sets of those."

"Uh... four?" Sonic blinked at that, looking a bit surprised. Everyone did, really - Sorun didn't blame them all that much. He supposed he did just drop a lot of sudden info on them. "Sorun, I figure I gotta ask. Where does all this stuff come from, anyways? Like not just all the weapons but the, er, the powers and everything." He shrugged. "You just always seem super familiar with them all. Even have names for 'em ready and everything. I was just wondering."

Ah, yeah. The origin of all the powers and weapons. Yeah, no way in hell was he ever telling them all he aped them from video games. Too much embarrassment. "That's a secret," Sorun said. There were more than a few disappointed groans all around. "Maybe I'll tell Nicole if she asks."

"Oh, come on!" Sonic complained. "You're seriously gonna pull that card!?"

"Yeah." Without missing a beat Sorun tossed the sword away. It turned back into the Emerald as it sailed away and landed in the sand somewhere. In the process he'd found it - the cooler they brought the food in. "Enough about all that, though," he said as he got up to pull the cooler towards the group, "we've been out here all day, so I think it's time we-"

Abruptly, Sorun's voice cut out. It was at the same moment he'd opened the cooler to see the actual contents of the cooler. The "food" that laid within. Hunger was all but forgotten in lieu of the pit that'd dropped in his stomach.

Hot dogs. There were nothing but hot dogs in this cooler.

After witnessing the crime against nature, Sorun's head snapped up to Sonic, his eyes accusatory. What made it worse was that the hedgehog seemed genuinely puzzled as to why Sorun seemed so upset at the moment. It only served to make Sorun more upset.

"There's more food on this planet than hot dogs, Sonic," Sorun stated in an icy tone. "This is cruel and unusual treatment, you know. They imprisoned people for stuff like this where I'm from."

"I really doubt they did," Sonic flatly responded.

"You don't know that. What are you gonna do? Fact-check me? You won't." He glanced at all the others. "You guys couldn't talk him out of it-!?"

Something hit him in the face. Sorun sputtered out, grasping at what hit him. Something soft - a bag of some sorts. He pried it off his face, but the initial panic Sorun felt was mollified when he saw it was a simple bag of marshmallows.

"We brought other food," came the deadpan statement from Sally. He looked up from the bag and saw her looking at him, a handful of metal rods in her hand. "You said you weren't gonna make up Earth laws to mess with people, Sorun."

"Yeah, well... thanks," he muttered out in meek thanks. He grabbed a marshmallow from the bag and tossed the rest towards the nearest person, and then grabbed the metal rod tossed to him from Sally out of the air. He trudged back to his seat, though he didn't even manage to get the marshmallow on the skewer before he heard a disgruntled yell from Sonic.

Looking up, Sorun saw the problem. The problem took the form of his Chao floating next to Sonic with a marshmallow skewered onto one of the blades jutting out from his arms. The hedgehog was giving the small creature the stink eye, and then began reaching out for another marshmallow. He grabbed it, but only for a second before Virgil blurred forwards. Now there was a marshmallow skewered on both blades.

Sorun laughed at the sight on the inside and pretended to ignore it as he held the marshmallow over the fire. It brought him back...

---

One year ago

"Wow, Dave, yeah, this is... this is totally where everyone wants to be on their sixteenth birthday. You're a fuckin' genius." The sarcasm was less dripping and more pouring out Sorun's mouth. "I feel like a goddamn hobo."

"Hey, now. That's disrespectful to Crazy Ricky."

"Dave, we're roasting marshmallows over a barrel fire in the middle of a scrapyard."

"Yeah and you didn't wanna actually go anywhere, so the hell else were we supposed to go?"

Sorun bit his tongue. He had him there, admittedly. If Sorun had it his way he'd just be huddling in his room and they'd all be playing something together online like sane people. But nah, it's his sixteenth birthday, they said, we all gotta do something special. "Let's all go camp out at the scrapyard!" they'd cried out. Meanwhile Sorun was wondering why he bothered to go along with this.

It's 'cause Jarod was bringing those damn imported chocolates, that's why. And Dave all but begged him.

Still, it wasn't... it wasn't the worst locale, he guessed. This was the spot, after all, on the rare occasion going outside to hang with the others was a decision Sorun committed to. A playground made of junk left to the whims of the imagination of a bunch of boys. It was good times. Except for the tetherball incident but that was besides the point.

Wasn't the worst place to spend his sixteenth birthday. Wasn't the worst place at all.

"Oh, hey," Dave suddenly said, head picking up to look beyond the flaming barrel in front of the two, "Jarod, you made it! It's so dark out here I barely saw ya coming."

The dark-skinned teenager who'd just walked into view was holding a plastic bag with his left hand. His right hand was holding up a middle finger at Dave, who was cheekily grinning as a result. "Ah-huh, yeah." He nodded his head to the fourth, white-skinned teen that'd been walking next to him. "So head's up but Billy forgot the graham crackers."

Both Sorun and Dave's heads snapped to Billy, who sheepishly rubbed a hand through his ginger locks while looking down. Dave was the first to speak out.

"Seriously, Billy?"

"Yeah, for real, Billy?" Sorun followed up.

"We were really counting on you, Billy."

"You had one job, Billy."

"Can't believe you've done this, Billy, just can't."

"I mean, really, Billy?"

"Billy, I just, I can't, man."

"What are you doing, Billy?"

"Foolin' around, Billy, that it?"

"Havin' a laugh, Billy?"

"Fun at our expense, Billy?"

"Of all the times to be let down, Billy."

"Worst time imaginable, Billy."

"Absolute worst, Billy."

"Bite me, both of you," Billy snapped, looking back up at them. "I forget one little thing and it's all, 'nyeh, Billy, how could you, it's a crime against humanity,' I mean what the hell?"

"Because you forgot one of the main components of s'mores, man!" Sorun argued. "What're we gonna sandwich the marshmallow and chocolate against, huh? I ain't spending this whole night with sticky fingers."

"Would you eat a hamburger without buns?" Dave added. "Would you eat a grilled cheese without cheese? That's just toast, man. You gonna give me pancakes with no syrup, huh?"

"Gyro with no sauce," Jarod added.

"A gyro with no sauce, Billy," Dave agreed. "Do you wanna live in a world like that?"

"We already live in that world. We live in that world every time we go to that damn diner." Billy looked to the side. There was a fifth teenager sitting against a pile of tires. Light skinned boy. Squirrely-looking with curly, brown hair. "Hey, Jamie, are you getting in on these or not?"

The teen didn't respond. He seemed incredibly engrossed in whatever he was sketching in the sketch pad he held.

"Yo, Jamie!" Jarod yelled out.

This time he'd heard. He looked up, blinking brown eyes in surprise as he looked at the group of four. "Huh, what? What's going on?" he asked.

In response, Jarod held up the bag of chocolate be brought. "S'mores but without no damn crackers 'cause someone forgot them," he explained, shooting a glare at Billy who rolled his eyes. "Guess we can just sandwich them between the chocolate but it ain't gonna be the same no matter what we do."

"Oh, no thanks." Jamie turned his gaze back down to the sketch pad. "You guys know there's a certain weight range for fighter pilots in the military? I thought it was because of fuel concerns but apparently it's more because of safety concerns with ejection systems, though they've been phasing it out on some models of planes-"

"Jamie you don't even wanna be a fighter pilot, why do you care?" Sorun interrupted, sounding almost worn out from the other teen's words.

He shrugged. "It's just cool. That's all. And I don't want to get my sketchbook sticky."

"Hey, that's fair." Fair enough that Sorun almost wished he'd just lead with that one and left it there. "What're you sketching this time, Jaimie?"

"SU-30." He flipped the sketchbook over to show the rest - to Sorun's eyes it was a drawing of a fighter plane so realistic he could have mistaken it for a black and white photograph at this distance. To anybody else it'd look like a work of art, but by now Sorun had seen Jamie sketch out so many planes that it became par for the course.

"Huh. That's cool." He wasn't even sure if Jamie heard that; he went back to sketching. Shaking his head, Sorun turned back to the other three. "Any idea what we're gonna do for Jamie's sixteenth? We ran out of airplane museums."

"We'll go skydiving," Dave said with complete confidence. "We'll scare the very idea of planes out of him. For the next week or so, anyways."

"You say that like he would be able to take his attention off the plane itself long enough to remember he's supposed to jump out of it," Jarod remarked.

"Ain't there an age limit, though?" Billy asked. "Gotta be eighteen or whatever, right?"

Multiple sounds of realizations and disappointment resounded from the four teens standing around the barrel fire. Jamie remained silent, wholly intent on sketching.

"Well, whatever we do it can't be worse than roasting marshmallows in the middle of a scrapyard for cars," Sorun sighed out. "With no graham crackers."

"Some would say the lack of crackers would build character."

"Fuck off, Billy, we're talking about a whole third of the snack here." Sorun's eyes glanced upwards, towards the black Detroit sky without a single star shining in it. "Gotta say, though, I don't feel a whole lot different, turnin' sixteen and all."

"Yes," Jarod agreed. "We all thought for sure the minute you turned sixteen you'd hit a magic growth spurt and reach normal size."

One of Sorun's eyes twitched. "I want you to keep making these short jokes while bearing in mind I'm holding a really pointy metal stick," he said. "And stop reminding me I'm old now. It sucks. This sucks and you all suck."

"Yeah, well, you suck, too, so we all suck together," Dave countered.

There probably would have been a cricket chirping somewhere if the conditions in the scrapyard didn't make life nigh-impossible to propagate in that particular region. The soft crackling of the fire was all that was heard in place as all the other teenage boys turned to look at Dave. Even Jamie had looked up from his sketchbook.

"You, uh... you wanna try that one again, man?" Billy asked.

"Nah," Dave said in utter confidence, shaking his head. "A true man stands by his convictions, and I meant what I said. You guys are are all the ones at fault for misinterpreting."

"Sure, but, like, you could rephrase it or-"

"Fine, it's like crabs in a bucket," Dave tried again, never losing his cool composure. "A crab by nature is a complete bastard so we're never getting out of that bucket 'cause we'll keep dragging each other down. But hey, at least we'll be in that bucket together."

"Yeah, I know that feeling," Sorun muttered out. "We ain't ever getting out of Detroit."

"You even wanna leave?" Jarod asked.

Sorun looked at him like he was mad. "What? Hell no. The fiber optic internet here's too good. I'm good never leaving the bucket. Bucket's got wi-fi."

"Uh-huh." Jarod pulled his marshmallow out from the open fire. He made a dissatisfied face and went back to roasting it. "You figure out what you wanna do with your life yet, then?"

At hearing that question Sorun couldn't help but scoff. He rotated his marshmallow around in the fire. "Hell if I know, man. I'm sixteen years old now and I have absolutely no aspirations whatsoever."

"Hey, you're good at games. You win all those tournaments all the time. You could go pro, try doing that," Billy suggested. "I mean, didn't you recently win that one 'Smash' tourney?"

A sour look crossed Sorun's face. "It's too soon for that one, Billy."

The reactions all around were near-universal. Jarod winced in pain, Dave glanced down at his feet, Jamie nervously returned to his sketchbook, and Billy shuffled around on his feet while nervously coughing to the side. He couldn't speak for the others but the last thing he wanted to talk about was what happened with that, and by the looks everyone else had it was a topic nobody wanted to talk about.

"Anyways," Sorun continued, trying his best to change the subject, "I dunno about the pro leagues. Maybe. I mean, I dunno how my mom'd react to me telling her I wanna be a professional gamer. She's a doctor, man. That's a hard enough standard to live up to."

"Yeah, but your mom's chill," Dave argued. "Like, the chillest person on Earth. She'd be cool with it. You know, assuming you pull it off."

"Which, by all means, you could," Jarod added. "If you really want to split hairs you already do play professionally. Give it a couple more years and you won't have to have your mom sign you off on all the tournaments."

"Guys, I don't even wanna know if I wanna do that for a living," Sorun said to them. "Games are more a hobby than anything else and I don't even know if I wanna turn that into a living. And I mainly do the tournaments 'cause I like beating people. The money's secondary."

"Well, hey," Billy said, "they say if you're gonna do a job you should make it something you love doing."

It was a fair point. It didn't change the fact Sorun felt unsure about the entire thing. About life in general. "Look, at the end of the day I dunno where I'm gonna end up in the future. Don't think anyone ever does," he said as he stared into the fire. "This world's messed up in all sorts of ways but that's one of the great things about it, ain't it? That anything could happen, an' life's this big journey that could take us anywhere? Some shit like that? I dunno, feels like media keeps drumming that idea into our heads but there's some truth in it. We can go anywhere and do anything we want. And 'cause I'm lazy as hell I'm gonna wait around 'til I figure out what to do with myself. And the world'll let me. 'Cause the world's cool like that."

The marshmallow on Sorun's skewer melted to a point that it slid off the skewer entirely. It fell into the barrel fire, bursting into flames at it shriveled into a black, charcoaled mess.

Sorun glared at the fire, as if trying to combust the flames themselves with his eyes. "I take it back, the world fucking sucks."

At first there was nothing. And then a few snickers coming from David. The small chuckles spread to everyone else, and soon enough all five of them were laughing.

---

Present

"This... this is fine, right? Guys?"

He'd never thought being nostalgic over roasting marshmallows could ever be a thing, but by now Sorun's life was so atypical the abnormal was normal at this point, so he didn't bat an eye at it. Everybody had gone on to talk about their own things as they all held the sugary cylinders over the fire. Sally, Sonic, Antoine and Bunnie were chatting about one thing or another. The entirety of the Chaotix were talking and laughing together about something. Tails and Rotor were having some deep discussion, probably about something heavily technical that would go over most people's heads. Amy and Nicole were laughing about something, and it was probably related to Sorun since they kept glancing his way. Razor wasn't even roasting a marshmallow, electing to just eating one of the hotdogs raw as he watched Virgil and Crusher go at it again in the sand.

It was serene. A weird sort of peace Sorun found himself enjoying. Just being there, surrounded by friends. Included. Knowing everything would be alright when they all went home later tonight because everything in his life was sorted. Knowing Nicole was over there and would go home with him.

Everything was so peaceful, in fact, that it hurt. Literally. It still hurt sometimes to smile for long stretches of time since his face just wasn't used to the action, but this was one of those rare occurrences where he couldn't help it. He felt complete. There wasn't a better way to describe the sense of belonging he felt being there. They were the closest he had to family.

He still sometimes wished Dave was here, though. The peaceful feeling was familiar enough he couldn't help but think of him. Everyone, really, his mom especially, but he often kept wondering how Dave specifically would have reacted to this whole situation. All things considered out of everyone Sorun knew Dave in all likelihood would have handled it the best. Would have adjusted way quicker than he did; unlike Sorun he actually had charisma.

It just figured. As far as Sorun cared charisma was a dump stat no matter what game you were playing. But Dave had always pumped charisma on his characters. It was probably the only argument they never settled.

"Ah, man, Dave... I'll always maintain you shoulda been the one to be sent here 'stead of me," Sorun thought to himself. "They're still fighting Eggman 'cause I screwed up on killing him at the last second. You wouldn't have done that. Knowing you, you would have solved every damn problem this world had in the span of a month. But I'm here and you're not, so... yeah.

"But hey, man, listen. I made it work." Sorun's eyes glanced over at Nicole. "Dunno how but I did. The pro gamer dream is pretty much dead in the water at this point, but despite all that and despite the world doing its damnedest to do me in, I did it, Dave. I got a normal life going for me. You'd all be stunned with disbelief that I, Sorun, managed to carve a workable life out in an alien world... but I did. And I got a girlfriend, too. So you all owe me five bucks from that one bet."

That barest amount of humor had Sorun make an airy, silent chuckle as he leaned back in his chair to look at the rest of the people sitting around him. He rose the marshmallow out of the fire. Perfect golden brown. "So... in light of all that, I think things are going to be fine. If you were here you'd call it the proudest moment of your life. You would, don't deny it. Geez... But yeah. Yeah, it's all gonna be fine, Dave.

"I made it home."

---

A/N- Alright, so listen. This chapter just wouldn't cooperate with me at all while I was trying to write it. I dunno if it was because I tried putting nearly the whole cast in one place which alone is a nightmare to write around because there's just too many people, or trying to get the idea of a beach episode out or the fact I just don't mesh with happy chapters like this. I dunno. I just kind of wanted to make it special since it's the last big filler chapter in the whole story. Nothing but straight plot from here on out. And I think on some level I managed to pull that off, but yeah, here it is.

Anyways, 93 chapter-long happiness arc is over. Sadness arc starts now.