"Shadow."
The aforementioned hedgehog looked up from the monitor. "Nine."
The fox glanced at the mouth of the cave, where Sonic was performing handstands while keeping lookout for any more threats. The trio had flung the Chaos Council back into New Yoke City and rendered their remaining tech useless for traversing the Shatterverse, so now all that remained was to restore the Paradox Prism - which the fox had finally agreed to help with, as said Shatterverse was on the verge of collapsing in on itself if he didn't.
Nine grabbed Shadow's arm and pulled him close.
"Listen. When I place the last shard into the Prism, all of the worlds will converge on each other and our split selves will merge together to become the people you knew."
"As it should be." Shadow tossed the Chaos Emerald the Council's robots had managed to retrieve from the abyss into the air nonchalantly. "What's your point?"
"My point is that I'm not in New Yoke. When 'Tails' comes back, he'll be missing the parts of him that made me."
Shadow froze, looking at Nine. His gaze shifted over to Sonic, who had found a ledge and was doing backflips off of it. Then he narrowed his eyes back at the fox.
"No. You can't do that to him. He'll be devastated, and I refuse to deal with that."
"I'm not trying to do that to him. I'm the only one who can fix the Prism, and it has to be done here, or none of this will work and we'll all die. Just… Promise me you'll take care of him."
"I'm not his damn babysitter! There has to be another way."
"We're out of time." Nine looked him in the eye. "Please."
"Hey uh, guys? The sky's looking kinda… Wavy?" Sonic bounced over. "How we doing on the Prism?"
Shadow stared back at Nine for a moment, before giving a slow, almost imperceptible, nod.
The fox looked at Sonic. "We're ready. Hang on to something, it's going to get bumpy."
Sonic ginned and grabbed a stalagmite. Shadow remained standing with his arms crossed.
Nine carefully maneuvered the last piece into place, and with laser precision (and one final look at the blue hedgehog), inserted it into the Prism.
Sonic turned to the mouth of the cave, where everything - the rocks, the trees, the sky - was starting to glow, and whooped. "Here we go!"
And thus failed to notice Shadow grabbing Nine and Chaos Controlling away at the last second before everything went white.
Sonic blinked several times, shaking the momentary blindness off, and looked around. He saw his friends - one of each of them, though he wasn't sure why that was important - and Eggman, sprawled on the ground around the glowing crystal.
What had Rouge called it? He racked his brain for a moment.
Paradox Prism! That was it.
Amy was the first to sit up, groaning. "What just happened?"
Tails followed suit, gripping his head. "Ugh… Sonic, I told you not to hit the Prism."
Sonic scratched his quills. "Sorry bro."
"Eugghh…" Eggman climbed blearily into his overturned Egg Mobile, pressing a button to reactivate it. It emitted a puff of smoke and trembled as it rose.
Looking between it, the destroyed robots littered around the cave, the fading Prism, and the team of heroes quickly getting back on their feet, he sighed and chose a tactful retreat. Once he was gone, Rouge swooped down to inspect the gem.
"Don't touch that!" Knuckles yelled cautiously. She scoffed.
"I wasn't going to touch it!"
They continued to bicker, but Sonic was distracted by a sudden - flash? - of deja vu. Amy saw him rubbing his head and moved over.
"You alright?"
"Yeah, just a headache… Anyway," he glanced around, "we done here? A hedgehog's got places to be!"
She rolled her eyes.
Tails approached the Prism and pulled out a gadget to scan it with. "This is incredible! These readings are on a completely different wavelength than the Emeralds, but the power level is comparable. Hey Rouge, do you think you could get whatever files Eggman has on this thing while I do some research?"
"You got it!"
"I wouldn't trust her anywhere near it," Knuckles grumbled. "And speaking of things she shouldn't be trusted with, I need to get back to the island."
She stuck her tongue at him as they both made their way outside.
Sonic started to follow, but paused at the mouth of the cave, frowning.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Amy asked.
He looked around the cave.
"Yeah. I just… I dunno. I feel like I'm forgetting something." He looked at the group. "We're all here, right?" He counted. "Me, you, Tails, Knuckles, Rouge, and…"
"And?" She raised an eyebrow. "And Eggman? He left, but I'm not sure why you're including him."
"No, not him." Sonic thought about it for a minute, then shrugged. "It's probably nothing. Anyway, I'm outta here!" With a grin he zipped off.
Amy looked at Tails, who shrugged.
"It's possible he's disoriented from slamming into the Prism. There's a lot of energy here."
"Huh, alright then. Need help with anything?"
"Actually, if you could grab some stuff from my lab that would be great…"
Outside, Sonic inhaled a deep whiff of Green Hill's fresh air. He took off, running down the mountain, weaving between rocks and trees, and narrowly avoiding collision with a certain purple cat.
"Oh, sorry Big! Can't seem to miss you today huh?"
"It's okay Sonic, it's nice to see you too." Big waved cheerfully. Sonic waved back.
Right, Big! That's who he was forgetting. He wasn't sure why he'd think the cat would have been in the cave, but it's not like he'd seen anyone else today. He smiled and sped off once more.
Shadow drove one more half-hearted punch into the wall, before finally allowing himself to fall backwards, exhausted.
It was similar to before. All he could do was float and catch brief glimpses of the Prism's surroundings. The only difference was that now, there was only one world left - the real world.
He rested on a rock and fiddled with the Emerald, gazing into the abyss below.
Not much else to do in the void, after all.
A/N
Hypothetical ending of Prime I thought up during my second S2 rewatch. Probably going to conflict with the actual ending of Prime whenever we get that, but for now, it fills the little Prime-shaped hole in my heart so shrug
Short threeshot fic that's already written and just needs some light editing. I'll be posting once a month :)