Chapter Five:

The Multiverse Is Real


Sonic blasted across the countryside at double speed, Furtree Village was well behind him, even as the events were still fresh on his mind. It was unbelievable, Eggman had teamed up with a myriad of versions of himself from other universes?

Teaming up with his past self and his descendant Eggman Nega respectively in the past was beyond unimaginable, but partnering with variants from other worlds was a whole new level of crazy.

And after almost getting it handed to him, Sonic needed time to think of a strategy and how to send the other Eggmen back to their worlds and, in Classic Eggman and Nega's case, their places in the timeline.

Knuckles glided alongside the speedster, Rouge following suit with Omega. An airplane flew over, the Tornado, piloted by Tails. Shadow caught up, his rocket shoes blazing across the ground.

"Cowards run; I win." The dark hedgehog told Sonic in a stern manner.

"Yo, dude." Sonic replied, "Did you not see all of those Eggmen?"

"I did and you ran when we could have taken them all down. I tried to warn you, hedgehog, but you acted recklessly and that could have cost us almost everything."

"SOOOOONNNIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIC!"

The hedgehog rolled his eyes, he'd forgotten that she was there too, trying to help out. Amy Rose, one of Sonic's most-valuable allies, was soon running alongside the blue hedgehog as fast as she could, gasping for breath, but she still kept running at an impressive rate.

"Am I goin' too fast for you, Ames?" Sonic asked.

"Don't leave me behind again!" Amy begged, "I can't stand being left in the dust while everyone is running! Are you okay, Sonic? Those Eggmen had some serious firepower there, I was worried that you were obliterated to kingdom come until I remembered you had super speed."

"We all know it'll take a lot more than that to take down the blue hedgehog, Amy..." Shadow told the pink hedgehog.

"Yeah, well, what can I say?" Sonic nodded, "I die hard."

The heroes dashed through the countryside until they'd arrived the lush and rocky groves of Gem Valley. Sonic came to a stop, seeing his old pal Big the Cat sitting by Crystal Pond with Froggy at his side, holding his fishing pole with the line in the water, fishing as usual.

A radio sitting next to Big vibrated as it played the news with the announcer mentioning the events in Furtree Village.

At this point, Eggman teaming up with other versions of himself was the talk of the news, a lot of people in various towns and cities were probably taking precautions in the event of an attack by the Eggman Alliance.

Either way, just hearing Big listen to the news was something that Sonic didn't see or hear every day, but at least the big purple cat was not consistently oblivious to world events, unless someone told him.

Tails landed his airplane in a clear patch, the Tornado's engines winded down slowly, even with the breeze spinning the propellers as they came to rest, making them twirl like air turbines.

Sonic headed over to the twin-tailed speedster and bro-fisted him, Knuckles looked up at the air and Shadow leaned next to a tree with his arms crossed, somewhat keeping his distance from everyone else including Rouge and Omega. No doubt he wanted to brood to himself for a while, at least he wasn't constantly angry.

Amy ran up to Sonic, her arms spread out as if she wanted to hug him. Then she backed off, deciding to give the speedster some personal space.

Sonic turned to Amy, noticing her behavior. He walked towards the pink hedgehog and pat her on the shoulder in a comforting gesture, then he hugged her and let the teenage hammer-wielder hug him back.

*Click*

Sonic and Amy pulled away, seeing Rouge the Bat photographing them with her cell-phone. She smirked and started texting, obviously wanting to share the scene with some friends.

Nearly everyone in the area watching this just rolled their eyes.

SonAmy shippers; typical.

"Maybe we should go inside?" Tails suggested.

The twin-tailed fox pointed to tall wooden house standing next to a tree, an orange mailbox with a flag shaped like Tails' namesakes stood by the porch. Tails' Gem Valley residence, also another one of his workshops that he had around most of the world's regions.

Sonic followed his little buddy inside, Knuckles and Amy following suit along with Rouge, except for Omega, who volunteered to stand guard outside with Shadow.

Both heroes went inside the house, taking in the spacious and near-cozy environment of Tails' minor living space. A couple of pictures depicting him and Sonic decorated the walls, some hanging above a yellow couch in the living room.

Tails grabbed some milk from the fridge along with a soda, pouring them into separate glasses while getting a chili-dog for Sonic.

"Finally, some time to relax after a fight…" Knuckles said, sitting back on a chair.

"I think we can wait until the current situation has been resolved." Rouge suggested.

"Way past wild, huh, guys?" Sonic remarked, "Eggman must have gone crazy after we last defeated him if he's recruiting doubles of himself from other universes and partnered with his past self and his descendant again. How desperate is he if he's going to do that?"

"Try dangerous!" Tails told the hedgehog, "Whatever Eggman did recently to make it possible, it can potentially create enough damage to the fabric of reality and threaten the existence of the multiverse itself, and together, both Eggmen can cause some very immeasurable damage and you almost got creamed out there…"

"First up, did you just say the multiverse exists?" Sonic asked.

"C'mon, Sonic. Remember Blaze's world, the world of the Arabian Nights and the realm of King Arthur." The twin-tailed fox replied with wide eyes, "That should be a hint that our universe is not the only one, you're talking to a genius here and I along with many others have calculated that there are multiple realities out there, probably millions of them."

"And if those other Eggmen are to go by, we probably made contact with half a dozen…" Knuckles commented, "I'm not counting the past or the future, that's our world or something…"

"Going back to our discussion, we need to even the playing field the next time we go up against Eggman and his variants, a variant is a version of the same person but from another universe." Tails went on, "But our universe has one Sonic, the only other people who look like him are Shadow, who's outside, and then there's…"

BOOM! An explosive rumble shook the house and lights flickered intensely.

"Oh, great." Tails groaned, "What did they do this time?"

"Tails, what's going on?" Sonic asked, "Is Eggman or one of his counterparts attacking?"

"If he was, an alarm would be going off. It's probably one of my other selves down in the lab or the other Sonics got antsy and wrecked something..."

"WHAT?" Amy yelled.

"Did you just say that we have alternate versions of you and Sonic here?" Rouge asked.

"They've been here for a few days." Tails said.

"WHY THE HECK DIDN'T YOU TELL ME?" Sonic yelled, "I can't believe you waited until after that crazy Eggman-fest to tell me that we already have visitors from other universes. Are there several Sonics down in some secret cave in the dark, running around being all like 'gotta go fast' with their Tails' doing an experiment."

"I was just about to tell you..." The twin-tailed fox finished his drink of soda and then gestured for the blue hedgehog, Amy, Rouge and Knuckles to follow him, "And I'm sure the situation is under control, it was probably a chemistry accident, but we're going to pay them a visit. It's time to the meet the League of Sonics..."

"Here comes the Council of Tails'." Knuckles said sarcastically.