"Sonic!"
"Whoa!" Sonic, startled out of his zen, stumbled and crashed into a patch of palm trees. Shaking his head he clambered to his feet, looking around. Maybe he shouldn't have been going so fast…
"Hello? Anybody around?"
A brief investigation yielded only flickies nearby. Rubbing his nose in confusion, Sonic shrugged it off and resumed his run (at slightly lower mach speeds) towards the cave.
"Hey bro, I've set up your reality sensors as far out as the outlying islands."
"Thanks! Hopefully I can collect data on range variations this way." Tails pressed his communicator. "Anything yet Amy?"
"Nope. Wouldn't the Emerald Scanner have picked up a seventh Emerald the last time you ran it? What's the point of running it again?"
"Last time I set it to scan certain areas based on a probability mapping algorithm I created to predict where Emeralds would go after being used. This time, it's scanning everywhere in range, which is why it's taking so long."
"How big is that range?"
"A little past the moon."
"Oh."
"...It should only take a few more hours."
Sonic wandered over to the Prism. It glowed eerily, lighting up the cave to the point where Tails' spotlights were practically unnecessary.
"Hey Tails? Do you think the Emerald is the only change?"
"It's the only one we've seen evidence of so far." The fox glanced at him. "But the very nature of a changed reality is that the shifts are difficult to find. Maybe it's the only thing. Or maybe everything changed. It's hard to tell, but right now the Emerald is the easiest thing to focus on."
"Right…"
"Do you think something else changed?"
"Well-"
"Tails! The scanner found something!"
Tails leapt over the table and grabbed his communicator. "Really?! Where?"
"It's pinging your location!"
"Our location?" Sonic looked around the cave, but Tails froze.
"The Innerverse," he whispered, before running over to a monitor.
"The Special Stage thing? You think it's in there?" Sonic followed him over.
"It would explain a lot!" Tails picked a gadget and started waving it over the Prism. "But I'm not sure how we'd get it out. The spaceship idea is still in very early concept stages. I could maybe throw something together in a week at the earliest…"
"What about Chaos Control?"
Of course.
Shadow looked at his reflection in the Chaos Emerald. It glinted innocently in the light of the portal.
This is what was missing. The Shatterverse was collapsing because the Emeralds were trying to reunite.
Chaos, he was an idiot.
Shadow pushed off his rock and landed on the portal which, as always, refused to let him through. Not even Chaos Control had been enough to get him back, but maybe on its own…
He turned the Emerald over in his hands.
Without this, his mobility would be limited. Without this, his powers would be diminished.
Without this, the home he'd worked so hard to save would be gone.
He let it fall into the portal.
"I mean, the one time you did it deliberately you were super, and I don't know how reality would react to you taking another Emerald in there…"
"C'mon Tails, it's true I'm still not sure how I did that but everything we do is a risk! If this gets reality back to normal then I say let's go for it!"
"Sonic, this could result in you being erased from-" Tails paused. The hedgehog could see gears turning in his head.
"You got something there bud?"
"Uh, guys? The Emerald just moved."
"Moved?" Sonic picked up Tails' the communicator, realizing the fox was currently distracted by an idea. "Moved where?"
"Near the loop-de-loop! And, uh, I think it's falling?"
"I'm on my way!" He set it down and sped off as fast as he could.
"Sonic! Sonic, can you hear me?"
"Wha-" Around halfway there, he skidded to a stop and looked around. "Hello?"
No one - just like before. A little weirded out, he continued until he reached the site and started looking around.
A glimmer in the sky caught his attention. He zipped on top of the loop, moved back and forth till he felt confident he was right under it, and held out his hands.
…In hindsight he probably should have just let it hit the ground of its own accord. Rubbing his wrists gingerly he inspected his find and activated his communicator.
"Sonic to everybody! I've got the green Chaos Emerald!"
"There's a green Chaos Emerald?" Rouge gasped.
"Of course there is!" Knuckles grumbled. "Red, yellow, white, purple, green, light blue, dark blue. Didn't you know that?"
"Right," Amy agreed, "Seven Emeralds. That sounds… Right? Hang on, why did I think there were six?"
"I think this proves my theory." Tails spoke up. "Everyone meet me at the cave."
"Alright, I'm coming back." Sonic stashed the Emerald securely in his quills and shot off.
He didn't hear anything this time.
"So the Emerald got stuck inside the Prism and messed with reality? Is that what we're going with?" Rouge turned it over in her hands thoughtfully.
"I can't believe I forgot it existed," Knuckles put his face in his hands, "what would my ancestors think…" Amy punched him gently.
"That you and your friends did a great job getting it back!"
"But we didn't even do anything!"
"That's true. I think there's more going on here." Tails called from where he was looking at the monitor.
Sonic hopped over. "What makes you say that?"
"Because reality still looks changed. And I think it's getting worse."
The walls of the Prism continued to shrink.
It wasn't the Emerald. Or maybe he'd sent it back too late? Had something else split when the Prism shattered? Were they just doomed to fail no matter what they tried?
Shadow grabbed his head and paced back and forth on top of the portal. No, no, this was neither the time nor place to give up. They others were still working on a solution in Green Hill, he had to do the same. For them. For home.
What. Else. Was. Left?!
He ran through the checklist.
Prism. Check.
World. Check.
Rouge. Check.
Amy. Check.
Knuckles. Check.
Eggman. Check.
Tails. Check.
Come on, think. There had to be more.
"Emeralds. Check."
"Sonic. Check."
He let out a guttural scream of frustration that pierced the void.
Something! Anything! What else mattered?
He panted from exhaustion and stared at his reflection in the hexagons lining the edge of the portal.
Oh.
"Me."
"Eggman has a theory that the Emeralds are sentient." Tails paced in front of the Prism. "He shared it with me once while he was trying to use me as a hostage. Personally, I think he's just looking for excuses why we always win. But I think we'd both agree the Emerald didn't just escape the Prism on its own. In the same vein, it probably didn't get there on its own either."
"You think someone put it there?" Knuckles scowled.
"I think someone took it there." Tails stroked his chin. "Someone with the ability to travel using Chaos Emeralds."
The group looked at Sonic, who raised his hands defensively.
"Wasn't me! At least, not that I can remember…"
"No, not you." They all turned their attention back to Tails. "But someone like you. Someone who can go super and help you fight a giant lizard in space. Someone who taught you what Chaos Control was. Someone who could send this," he tossed the green Emerald into the air and caught it, "back to us." He faced them.
"Someone we forgot."
Shadow leaned over the edge of the portal. The abyss stared back at him, oblivion at the bottom of the void.
None of the Council's robots had actually made it back from that. As he'd gathered, the biggest of the lot had just barely been able to throw the Emerald out of the abyss before being consumed.
By what, he did not know.
But now, as the walls closed in, he found himself faced with few choices - if any at all.
His continued existence left reality in flux. He could not enter the real world, but he could not stay here.
Shadow took a long look at the portal. Through it was a place he'd come to call home. The kind she would have liked him to have. Not just because he lived there. But because of the others who lived there too.
Because of the others.
He chuckled, closed his eyes, and let himself fall.
"...That voice…" Sonic murmured.
Tails looked at him critically for a moment.
"...Sonic, you need to go."
"Huh?" At the hedgehog's confused look, Tails gestured to the rest of the Emeralds he'd had Amy bring from the workshop.
"If reality keeps changing, we might forget all of this before we can fix it. More than that - a changing reality isn't stable. We might be in more immediate danger than we realize. And if we're in danger," he pointed at the Prism, "they're in danger."
"...So now you want me to Chaos Control in there?"
Tails bit his lip, hesitating. Then he steeled himself and looked Sonic in the eye.
"I know you'll make it back. Go save our friend."
Sonic smiled.
The darkness was… Smooth.
He slipped into it, slower than water, lighter than oil. It seeped into his senses, a gentle flow coursing through his veins and ballasting his heart.
It tugged gently at his eyelids. He hadn't realized they were still open - it was getting hard to realize anything at all. The abyss pressed down all around him, not constricting but firm, guiding him to the bottom, inviting him to the close. Everything was getting heavy…
A shift.
A ripple in the silence. Something that… Wasn't supposed to be here.
It wasn't gentle. It wasn't smooth.
It was loud.
And as it gripped his hand and blinded him, he turned to face it and swore he felt a smirk, set in gold and tinged with pink.
"We're not letting you go that easy, faker."
Rising out of the darkness, he finally allowed himself to rest.
"I know."
"Shadow."
"Tails." The hedgehog nodded at him. The fox fidgeted with his namesakes.
"Did you and my other self… Interact much?"
Shadow looked confused, so he quickly elaborated.
"I know you explained most of what happened, but you kind of glossed over the end, and since I can't remember any of it I'm curious."
"Hm," he crossed his arms thoughtfully. "A few times. Are you looking for something in particular?"
"Well…" Tails sat down on the rock next to him. "I'm not sure why, but something's telling me I need to thank you. I don't know what for."
In the distance, a sonic boom echoed across Green Hill.
Shadow nodded. "You're welcome."
"Are you going to tell me?"
"Probably not."
Tails opened his mouth to retort, but stopped himself upon noticing, almost imperceptibly, an impossible truth.
Shadow was smiling
A/N Sorry, I was going to post this chapter late October but wound up travelling for a family emergency and didn't get back till after Thanksgiving.
This marks the end of this little fic! We'll be getting the next season next month, so we'll see how it actually shakes out lol
And hopefully find out where it fits within the Sonic timeline, since the creators said it's canon (I know, I know, everything is canon lmao)
Personally I think Prime would fit well between Shadow The Hedgehog and Sonic '06 characterization-wise (ignoring the obvious plothole of Orbot and Cubot existing). Thoughts?
Thanks for reading!