Hello, Sonic fans! How are we all doing now that Sonic Prime has been out for about eight days? I watched the whole thing last Friday and I absolutely adored it. Inspiration struck and here is the result of that.

Prime… meet Boom. Specifically, my version of Sonic Boom.

SPOILERS for the ending of Episode 8, though. So, if you haven't finished watching or haven't watched Sonic Prime yet, please go and watch it first. Or read if you dare. Either way, you have been warned.

NOTE: I OWN NOTHING HERE EXCEPT FOR MY OC.

Will Our Future Be Just As Bright?

Part 1: Wherein Sonic and Shadow Get Their Minds Blown

"Home doesn't exist anymore! Because of you!"

Those words kept ringing in Sonic's ears as he was thrown against one Shatterverse shard to the other by Shadow. Another kick to the gut sent him crashing through the purple crystal and into another.

Honestly, he should have fought back. Tried to defend himself. But Shadow's words repeated in his head again and again in a vicious loop. Accompanying that were flashbacks of all the worlds he'd seen, all the new versions of his friends he'd met.

Every single one of them has had their lives negatively impacted because of his mistake.

He wondered as Shadow landed another punch on him that made him double over and cough, what will happen when this was all over? If he'd fix his mistake, that is. All the other versions of his friends hadn't been so accepting of him. Some of them - Nine, Rebel, and Renegade, in particular – were downright hostile and were angry at him for disappearing on them.

Would his friends be the same when he got back?

Heck, would they even want to be friends with him after everything he did?

Another hit sent him careening through Shatterspace and Sonic yelped as he tried to right himself.

"Look what you did!" Shadow angrily gestured to their surroundings. "None of this would have happened if you'd just stopped and listened for once!" he yelled and charged at Sonic again.

This time, Sonic braced himself and curled up into a ball. Using the shards floating around him, he ricocheted across Shatterspace and met Shadow halfway.

"You think I don't know that?! I've been hating myself and what I did ever since I ended up in New Yoke City! I've messed up all of my friends' lives and I've been trying to make things right!" Sonic exclaimed.

"Clearly you're not trying hard enough!" Shadow grunted and tackled him.

"Whhhoooooaaaa!" Sonic hollered as they were sent spinning out of control. Then he focused on Shadow's snarling face and glared back. "Look, you can hate me all you want. I'm okay with that! But if you're the only one here who's from home, then we can work together to fix this!" he reasoned with his dark equal as they floated through the Shatterspace.

"Work with you?! After you literally broke everything?!" Shadow spat and pushed himself away from the blue hedgehog.

"Well, what else do you want to do?! Float here and do nothing?!" Sonic snapped at him. He felt heat grow behind him and glanced over his shoulder. His eyes widened as he spotted a yellow portal just a few feet away. Through the faint ripples, he caught sight of an island surrounded by a blue ocean.

"Another Shard's got to be there…" Sonic murmured before hearing an enraged yell.

"Shadow, wait! There's a portal here! I think we can find another…!"

Shadow didn't listen and Spin Dashed into Sonic, which sent them falling into the portal.

"I'm telling you, Amy! Something's coming and it's gonna be big! That meteor shower last week is just the tip of the iceberg! Next thing we know, there'll be doppelgangers of us falling from the sky asking for help to fix their dimension or something!" Sticks the Badger exclaimed before a cup of chamomile tea was thrust into her hands.

"Sticks, we've talked about this. Not every day is going to have a major crisis happening." Amy Rose smiled serenely. "Let's look back on last week. Sure, the meteor shower was unexpected. But nothing particularly life-threatening or life-changing happened. Your paranoia's going into overdrive again. Might be a good time to take a step back from it and not allow it to control you," she advised.

"My paranoia has never been wrong! Except for that one time when I thought the world was going to enter a nuclear winter because it started snowing, and it turns out it was winter and that's why it was snowing. And then there were those other times I thought government agents bugged my burrow to whistle at lunchtime when it turns out it was just my tea kettle…" Sticks muttered.

Amy sighed and took a sip from her own cup of tea. "Well, maybe now's one of those rare moments where your paranoia might be leading you astray," she said.

Sticks opened her mouth to retort when something huge crashed through the ceiling and smash the coffee table, causing both her and Amy to scream.

"I just got that varnished…" Amy mumbled, looking at the splintered remains of her coffee table. A weak groan brought her attention to what had crashed into her home. Once the dust cleared, she could make out two hedgehogs passed out on the floor.

"Sonic? Shadow?"

Amy peered closer and noticed that some things were off. 'Sonic's arms stopped having peach fur years ago. And why are his gloves and shoes different?' she thought then looked at Shadow. 'And Shadow's shorter now… Why do they look like alternate versions of…? Oh, Chaos above…'

Amy heaved a sigh and then glanced at Sticks, who smirked. "Told you!" the badger exclaimed then eyed the two unconscious hedgehogs warily. "Should we tie them up?" she questioned.

Turning on her communicator, Amy prayed to the gods for her and Sticks' sanity.

"Guys, we got a situation. And, Tails, I think we'll need you to do an energy scan," she said, glancing at the other Shadow's glowing air shoes.

When Sonic woke up, he found himself staring into an orange-and-brown badger's wide blue eyes.

"Who do you work for?!" the badger, a female from the sound of her voice, screeched.

"Aaaaahhhh!" Sonic bolted upright while the badger reared back, a boomerang in her hand. She dressed a lot like a Scavenger, with a ratty tube top and skirt as well as well-worn boots. A necklace of shells with a gold ring adorned her neck. But the way she was twitching her nose and growling at him made Sonic think that she was probably halfway to being as feral as Mangey.

"Morning, Sleeping Beauty!" A tall buff red echidna strode forward and Sonic had to blink his eyes to make sure he wasn't hallucinating.

'Whoa, this Knuckles is huge…' he thought before hearing a groan beside him.

"Shadow?" Sonic cautiously shook the black hedgehog lying beside him. Grumbling, Shadow opened his eyes and sat up.

"Where…?" Shadow mumbled before both he and Sonic got a good look around.

They were in an airplane hangar, a bright yellow plane stowed away securely a few feet away from them. There were benches and tables that had tools scattered about plus a kiln. At one workbench, a two-tailed fox was working on something.

"Tails?" Sonic called out and had to stop himself from shedding a tear when the fox turned around.

The fox looked just like his little brother from the tips of his ears all the way to his iconic namesakes. He wore goggles on his head (maybe 'Goggles' would be a good nickname for this other version of his brother) and had a work belt with a strap going over his left shoulder. He smiled as he approached Sonic and Shadow. That's when Sonic noticed that he had sports tape wrapped around his shoes. Were they falling apart? Was that why he was using tape?

"Oh, good. You're both awake," Goggles greeted them and then produced four small discs from his work belt.

"Hey, what are you…?!" Shadow glared at Goggles when he approached.

"Hold still. We gotta make sure your gear can attune to our dimension's energy fields," Goggles said as he attached the discs to Shadow's gloves and air shoes. Shadow stared, eyes widening a bit, as his gloves and shoes glowed brightly before turning into…

"Huh… not as flashy as my other upgrades," Sonic remarked upon seeing that the only differences to Shadow's gloves and shoes were that they both had sports tape wrapped around them. Come to think of it, his gear was pretty much the same.

"I hope you don't mind." Goggles held up a yellow computer pad. "I scanned your gloves and shoes when Amy and Sticks brought you two in. I figured your Shadow would need something to help stabilize his energy with our dimension's. I'm guessing your Tails designed the energy stabilizers?" he asked.

"It was Nine, actually…" Sonic's ears drooped at the mention of the grumpy genius fox. Nine… was he doing okay?

"Whoa, my counterpart's got nine tails?" Goggles exclaimed in awe.

"Oh, oh, oh! What about me? What's your world's Knuckles like?" Big Knucks (the best way Sonic could describe him) chimed in.

"Well, he's uh…" Sonic trailed off before Shadow growled and stood up.

"We don't have time for introductions. We need to find the shard if we're gonna fix your mess," said Shadow, giving the blue hedgehog a pointed glare.

"My, oh my…" A sultry voice came from the rafters as Rouge, dressed in a plum bodysuit with a pink heart on the chest, flew down.

"Such a grumpy face on this Shadow. I haven't seen a scowl like that in while," Rouge cooed before winking at Sonic. "Why, hello there, new Blue."

"Heh, you and my world's Rouge have a pretty similar fashion sense," Sonic complimented the bat.

"That's good. I'd be aghast if any version of me has terrible taste in clothes or gems," Rouge remarked with a flirtatious grin. Light caught against the diamond earrings dangling from her large ears and Sonic had to admit that she definitely had Rouge's love for glitz and glamour.

"Shard?" The semi-feral badger, probably Sticks, dropped her defensive stance. "That sounds like something Amy and our Sonic and Shadow ought to hear about," she told him.

"You guys have a Sonic and Shadow here?" Sonic stood up, eyes wide with disbelief. 'All the other worlds I've been to didn't have versions of me or Shadow. How's it possible that this world has versions of us?' he wondered before noticing three more people step into the hangar.

"Amy! You're not a robot!" Sonic exclaimed upon seeing the pink hedgehog. This Amy looked just like Amy from home. Albeit her clothes were a little different: a cerise minidress with a lavender sarashi around her waist as well as purple sports tape around her wrists and purple stockings. Next to her were…

This time, Sonic had to rub his eyes to really make sure he wasn't hallucinating.

"Hey, man. What kind of cosmic mess did you get yourself into?" the other Sonic chuckled.

Shadow didn't bother hiding his horror at the sight of another Sonic in the room. "I must be in Hell…" he muttered before noticing his own counterpart.

"If this is Hell, then who's Satan here? Me or him?" Other Shadow asked, an amused smirk on his face, lightly elbowing the Other Sonic.

'This Shadow just made a joke? Shadow doesn't like jokes!' Sonic felt like his mind was about to explode as he looked at their counterparts in this dimension. It took about a second for him to realize that he and Shadow had to tilt their heads up slightly to meet their eyes.

"You guys are… taller," said Sonic as he noted the very obvious height difference between him and this other version of himself.

"Second growth spurt. Maybe you guys will have one too in a couple of years," Other Sonic told him. Aside from being taller, this world's version of him had blue arms instead of peach. Sports tape was wrapped around his gloves and shoes, almost looking exactly like his. His quills were a bit shaggier with small spikes sticking out from his top and lower head quills like cowlicks. A brown scarf was wrapped around his neck and he had two metal ear studs in the lower part of his left ear.

Sonic looked at the Other Shadow next. Like Other Sonic, his quills had cowlick-like spikes but only one on each of his side quills. The red cuffs on his gloves were slightly longer than Shadow's and he had a gold earring with a hanging emerald piece dangling from his right ear.

'And he looks like he's been working out…' Sonic noted, a faint blush coloring his cheeks, noticing that Other Shadow was a little more barrel-chested and broad-shouldered than Other Sonic. But Other Sonic looked fit too. Sheesh, those thighs were looking pretty fine…

Sonic shook his head to snap himself out of his admittedly shameless ogling, only to notice the glint of amusement in his other version's eyes.

"So, since you two crashed into my house and put a hole through my roof, I'd like to ask you two a few questions," Amy announced and stepped forward. "First one: how did you two end up in our dimension?" she asked, one hand resting on her hip.

"Just give them a brief summary," Shadow whispered, still not taking his eyes off of Other Shadow.

"Okay. Well, here's a very brief recap…" Sonic took a deep breath and then began to spill.

About what must have been his shortest time recounting recent events, Sonic finished and took a few breaths. Looking at everyone's shocked faces, he felt like his heart had sunk into his stomach, which then dropped to his toes.

"Okay, that is way worse than the scenario I had in mind," Sticks gulped.

"What's your next question?" Shadow asked, already impatient.

"Okay, since we have our Sonic and Shadow here, what should we call you two?" Big Knucks asked next.

"I think we should let Faith meet them. She can come up with the nicknames," Other Sonic suggested, the rest of the group smiling knowingly amongst themselves.

Sonic and Shadow glanced at each other, confused.

Who was this Faith? Why was everyone smiling at the mention of that name?

"If this Faith's gonna give us nicknames, would it be okay if we had code names for you?" Sonic asked, raising his hand.

When the others agreed to it, he pointed to each one and named them.

"Goggles, Big Knucks, Sticks, Glamour, Rosey, Scarf, and…" Sonic then looked at Shadow. "Well, Shadow? You gonna give your other self a code name?" he asked.

Shadow rolled his eyes but looked at this dimension's version of him up and down. "Terios," he said finally.

"Hmph, haven't heard that name in a while," Terios said, smiling slightly.

"Ooh, I haven't been called Rosey since I was a kid," Rosey giggled.

"Well, now you guys know what happened. Now we just need to find a way home," Sonic said.

"You mean the home we no longer have because of you?" Shadow scoffed.

All the lightheartedness from the last minute was suddenly sucked out of the room. Scarf, Terios, Rosey, Goggles, Big Knucks, Glamour, and Sticks all glanced at each other worriedly while Sonic and Shadow glared at each other.

"I already promised that I was going to do my best to fix it, didn't I?" Sonic grumbled. "Sheesh, you're being a buzzkill again…"

"At least I'm serious enough to know the gravity of the situation, unlike some reckless idiots who go charging in without heeding anyone's warnings!" Shadow shouted and shoved Sonic back.

"Yeesh… I almost forgot that you two used to hate each other," Big Knucks remarked to Scarf and Terios as they all watched the two hurl insults at each other.

Scarf and Terios looked at each other, a weird sense of déjà vu falling over them.

"That prism shard they mentioned… Maybe it was one of those meteors that fell to the far west side of the island. We can scout the area with my plane…" Goggles managed to say before Shadow slammed Sonic into a wall. Upon seeing the two hedgehogs graduating from yelling at each other to throwing hands, he sighed. "But first we gotta make sure they don't damage my plane."

"We'll handle these two," Terios told him, pulling out a red Chaos Emerald from his quills.

"You guys scout ahead of us. We gotta make sure Eggman doesn't get his hands on that shard," Scarf told his brother before he and Terios walked over to Sonic and Shadow.

The two brawling hedgehogs were suddenly picked up by the scruffs of their necks.

"Hey!"

"What're you?!"

"Chaos Control!" Terios shouted and held up the red Chaos Emerald. In a flash of light, the four of them were gone.

"Okay, team. We know what we're looking for. A bright yellow shard with the power to open portals to other dimensions AKA Shatterspaces. Let's get searching," Rosey told the team as Goggles started the plane.

Meanwhile, Sonic and Shadow found themselves suddenly standing in a wide-open dirt field.

"Hey, what gives, guys? Where are we?" Sonic asked Scarf who folded his arms across his chest.

"Clearly, you and Shadow have a lot of unresolved tension that needs to be released before you two can have a civilized discussion on how to move forward with solving your problems," Scarf said before running off to who knows where.

"So that's why we brought you here. It's a training ground we use for more intense sparring," Terios said before walking away to stand at the sidelines just as Scarf came back with two lawn chairs. "Feel free to duke it out. Just don't kill each other," he advised while he and Scarf sat down.

"Seriously, you guys are just gonna sit there and let us…" Sonic managed to say before Shadow rammed into him.

Scarf and Terios didn't bat an eyelid at that. Not even when Sonic got up and shrieked, "Dude! What the heck?!"

"This! Is! All! Your! Fault!" Shadow yelled back and threw a Chaos Spear that Sonic dodged by bending backward.

"I know! That's why I'm trying to fix things!" Charging forward, Sonic tried to punch Shadow. "But! You! Keep! Hitting! Me!" he shouted with each swing of his fist.

"Because hitting you is the only way for you to actually stop and listen!" Shadow punched his rival in the ribs, his sensitive ears picking up the cracking of bone. Part of him felt bad for it, but his fury overruled.

"Our world is gone! I can't find Rouge, Knuckles, or anyone! None of this would have happened if you'd just stopped and actually listened for once!" Grabbing Sonic's right arm, Shadow spun and flung into a few rocks.

Sonic coughed, his chest burning with pain, and slowly got up. Clenching his fists, he ignored his cracked ribs and the rubble embedded into his fur. And just focused on releasing all of his frustrations at himself in the only way he could: trying to beat Shadow at his own game.

"Wow, they're really going all out." Scarf watched as Sonic did a Spin Dash and successfully clocked Shadow in the back of the head. The black hedgehog retaliated by teleporting and reappearing right as Sonic uncurled from his Spin Dash form to roundhouse kick him in the face. "Kind of reminds me of how we used to duke it out," said Scarf, smiling at Terios.

"Yeah…" Terios watched as his counterpart hurled Chaos Spears alongside insults at Sonic who frantically dodged the attacks. "Man… we were such idiots back then," he remarked.

The two taller hedgehogs watched Sonic and Shadow fight. And fight. And fight. And fight some more.

"They've been fighting for a whole hour…" Scarf sighed as he looked at the time on his communicator. His blue ears perked up as he glanced at Terios. "Hey, what was the record for our longest spar?" he asked.

"Four hours and 50 minutes, I think," Terios replied before his eyes widened slightly. "Didn't we tell Faith this morning to meet us here after school?" he asked Scarf who facepalmed.

"Crap. Those two are gonna keep on going until nightfall if we don't stop them…" Scarf sighed before both he and Terios picked up the sound of rapid footsteps approaching.

"STOP!"

Both Sonic and Shadow skidded to a halt as a pink blur came rushing, planting itself firmly between them. It took a second for them to see that a kid had stopped their brawl and was looking at them with furrowed brows.

"Please don't fight! I don't like seeing you two like this!"

Sonic felt the guilt clawing at his insides again as he gazed at the child. She was a little tenrec with pale pink fur and lavender-tipped quills. She sported peculiar markings around her eyes that were the same color. And she was dressed in a yellow polo shirt and a baby blue skirt with teal fingerless gloves and boots, both of which had copper coiled around the wrists and ankles.

Sonic was just about to open his mouth and apologize for upsetting the kid when Shadow shoved him back and approached her, scowling.

"Beat it, kid! This has nothing to do with you!" Shadow snapped, glaring at this kid who came out of nowhere.

The little tenrec froze, staring at Shadow with wide eyes. It looked like she'd been slapped in the face by the black hedgehog's words alone. Then, to Sonic's worry, tears started welling up in those big wine-colored eyes.

"Shadow, take it easy on her!" Sonic scolded the Ultimate Lifeform.

"She's a kid, Sonic. What does she know about us?" Shadow scoffed before seeing the little girl raise a trembling hand. "Go! Leave us alone already!" he yelled at her.

Just when he was about to try and pull Shadow away from the kid, Sonic noticed dark clouds forming above them. Lightning started flashing across the sky, purple sparks flying through the air as thunder rumbled.

It's at that exact moment when the tenrec kid burst into tears.

That's when Scarf and Terios ran to them, and they were livid.

"I don't care if you're me from another dimension!" Terios stomped over to Shadow and poked the latter in the chest. "You do not speak to my daughter that way!" he growled.

'Shadow's a PARENT here?' Sonic thought then glanced at the little tenrec who now ran to Terios in tears.

"Waaaaaaahhhh! P-Papaaaa…" she cried, wrapping her arms around Terios' middle tightly. "I don't like this other you, Papa! H-he's mean! Waaaahhhh!"

Scarf raised a fist at Shadow, who was now staring at Terios with his mouth agape. Terios gently placed a hand on his shoulder and shook his head as he picked up the little tenrec. For a second, the two of them looked into each other's eyes. Sonic saw Scarf give Terios a nod before they started comforting the child crying in Terios' arms.

"Shhh… there, there…" Terios gently rocked the little tenrec in his arms. "It's okay, sweetheart. Your Dad and I won't let him be mean to you anymore. I'm sorry the other me is a jerk," he murmured.

Eventually, the little tenrec stopped crying. "Y-you're not going to be like him? Will you, Papa?" she asked, sniffling.

"Never." Terios shook his head. "I'm not that grumpy jerk Shadow anymore. Isn't that right, love?" he asked, smiling at Scarf.

"Nope. You're the nice and cool Papa now, Shads," Scarf replied with a wink.

'Did he just call Scarf 'love'? But that's… that's usually something couples say to each other… Don't tell me…' Sonic thought before noticing the glint of gold on both Scarf and Terios' left ring fingers.

While Scarf's ring had a ruby embedded in the center, Terios' had a bright emerald as his ring's gemstone.

'Holy frickin' Chaos…' Sonic was certain that, if he were a computer, his entire systems were crashing. Pop-ups saying 'Error! has stopped working' appeared in his brain as he stared at this couple of married hedgehogs.

Married hedgehogs who just so happened to be dimensional counterparts of himself and Shadow.

Beside him, Shadow was also experiencing his own brain overload. So overcome with shock that he didn't notice Terios giving Scarf the little tenrec ('That's their child.' His brain helpfully reminded him) and whispering, "Turn around for just a sec…"

Finally, Shadow managed to gather enough of his wits to mumble, "I have a dau-" right before Terios rushed forward and punched him.

Sonic, still in total shock, watched as the smaller hedgehog was sent crashing into the pile of rocks they'd obliterated during their fight earlier.

"No, I have a daughter. And that's for making her cry in my presence, you little jerk!" Terios snapped before looking at Sonic sternly. "Now, are you and that sorry excuse for another me done beating each other's brains out?" he asked.

Sonic nodded meekly, still struggling to process the last five minutes' worth of things he'd seen.

"Are you two ready to sit down and talk like mature hedgehogs?"

Another nod.

Terios' stern demeanor softened. "Good," he said before telling Scarf to turn around with their daughter.

"Papa, why's the other you over there now?" the little tenrec asked, pointing at Shadow as he limped over to Sonic.

Terios gave her a sheepish look. "I had to teach him a lesson, sweetheart. He was mean to you and I wasn't going to let him get away with that," he admitted.

"You okay?" Sonic managed to ask, noticing that Shadow's gloves were stained red.

"Shut up, faker…" Shadow grumbled as he tried to stop his nose from bleeding.

"You do realize that you punched yourself, right?" Scarf gave Terios a teasing smile.

"I have no regrets. In a way, I feel like I've disciplined my past self," Terios said with a shrug.

"Yeah, the past Shadow who was a brooding edgelord until he and I did away with the rivalry and tried something else," Scarf joked before leaning in to kiss Terios.

On the lips.

A squeak left Sonic's mouth as his entire brain shut down, much to Scarf and Terios' amusement. Meanwhile, Shadow's eyes were the size of dinner plates.

"Dad? Papa? Why are their faces like that?" the little tenrec girl tilted her head to the side upon seeing the absolutely dumbfounded look on the smaller hedgehogs' faces.

"I think we broke them, babe," Scarf whispered with a light chuckle.

"It's nothing, Faith. Their brains are just trying to process some big things right now," Terios reassured their daughter.

Faith Tenrec-Hedgehog looked at the two hedgehogs that looked a lot like her Dad and Papa. She didn't like the other version of her Papa and made a mental note to not go near him in case he got angry at her again. But the other version of her Dad didn't yell at her. Did that mean he was nice like her Dad?

'Guess I'll find out soon,' Faith thought to herself as her parents led their counterparts away from the training grounds.

The thunderclouds began to dissipate as the family of three made their way home, two hedgehogs from another dimension silently following them.