Author's note: ninjachief547, thank you very much for your kind words. They're really interesting to me because characterization is something I find challenging. I can say that it is a big relief to know that I didn't butcher it completely. :) The Sonic X universe is weird in that six years have passed for the humans, but only six months have passed for Sonic and his friends. As a result, I have to make some of the human characters that were previously children more mature, but still maintain some of the same fundamental personalities, whereas I don't have to adjust the personalities of Sonic's friends very much at all. It was a fun challenge to try to capture that dynamic in this chapter.

"5… 4… 3… 2… 1… Welcome to Stella's Ice Cream and Donuts!"

Everyone cheered. The announcer was a large, somewhat heavy man wearing a red-and-white striped shirt with overalls. He was bald, in his fifties, and had a brown mustache sprinkled with bits of gray hair. To his right stood a younger woman with blonde hair brought up into a ponytail—she was in her early twenties and wore a pink dress with yellow flowers. The girl held a large pair of scissors, which had just cut through a long red ribbon that had barred the entrance to the outdoor dining area of the newly opened Stella's Ice Cream and Donuts. To the left of the man was the mayor of Station Square, a somewhat short, though resolute man who had just won reelection.

As soon as the ribbon-cutting ceremony was over, the mayor shook hands with both the man and the girl, then turned to gaze over at a set of cameras. His office was holding a press conference to remark on the "booming economic activity" of his new Station Square, as supposedly evidenced by the opening of this new ice cream and donut shop.

The time was 8:00 AM, and as the mayor and the owners of the shop dealt with the politics of the ribbon-cutting ceremony, the family and friends of Christopher Thorndyke were far more eager for their breakfast.

"Wow, look at all the options they have!" said Frances.

"That's right, Frances," said Ella. "The advertising for this shop said that it has over 50 different kinds of ice cream flavors and several dozen kinds of donuts."

"Variety is one thing, quality is another," cautioned Danny. "I'm more curious to see how these things taste."

"It's a rather ingenious business idea, actually," said Chuck. "In the summer, everyone wants ice cream, but in the winter, when it gets cooler, most people would rather have something warmer. This shop will manage to stay in season all year round because it also has donuts!"

Suddenly, they heard a soft moan coming from behind them. When they turned to look, they discovered Nelson Thorndyke, Chris's father, rubbing his eyes—having just yawned rather loudly. "Sorry, guys. It's been a long night, I guess. I haven't had my coffee yet."

The group chuckled. "Well, what are we waiting for then?" said Chuck. "Let's order!"

"Chris, what do you think you're going to get?" asked Helen.

Chris didn't respond. Instead, he was staring blankly at the large menu posted above the counter, where a cashier was already taking Nelson's large coffee order.

"Chris?" Helen probed again.

Finally, Chris shook his head and turned to look at Helen. "Hmm?"

Helen frowned. "Chris, I was asking you what you were going to get."

"Oh. Uh, I don't know yet."

Helen reached her hand and gently touched Chris's arm. "Chris, you really have to get your head out of that lab at some point."

Chris slumped his shoulders resignedly. "I know. You're right. It's just, I really thought this was it, you know? When Grandpa told me that time wasn't slowing down after all, I really thought that that was the missing piece of the puzzle—that we could finally solve it."

Chris let his fist clench. Helen noticed this and brought herself closer to Chris. There was something else that was troubling Chris, something that made him angry. She knew that Sonic's departure had deeply affected Chris. In many ways, Sonic was his first true friend, and he had felt that without Sonic, his life would revert to the lonely life he had lived before Sonic arrived. It hurt Chris to see him go, and for a time, Chris had been angry about it—to the point where he grabbed Sonic just as he was about to step through the portal to leave and ran away with him.

However, that time passed long ago, and Chris had since realized that through Sonic, he had been able to befriend Frances, Danny, and Helen herself. Through these friendships that lasted both because of Sonic and after Sonic, Chris was eventually able to accept the absence of his best friend. For this reason, Helen figured there must be something else that made him angry now.

"Chris," she began, "we all want to see Sonic again, but is there something else that is bothering you?"

Chris widened his eyes and relaxed his fist. He looked into Helen's eyes, which he thought were a gorgeous shade of light blue. For some reason, Helen could always tell exactly what Chris was thinking. Right next to Sonic, Helen was one of the best friends Chris ever had. In that moment, Chris felt immensely lucky to be her friend.

"Yeah, I'm sorry if I've been a little crabby lately," said Chris. "I think I'll go for the strawberry-mango twist!"

Helen noticed that Chris didn't actually answer her question, but she decided to ignore it for now and save it for another time.

As the group received their orders and settled into a picnic table in the outdoor dining area, they resumed their conversations with each other. Sam Speed discussed the latest innovations in Formula One technology. "With this new engine, I will probably be able to finally beat Sonic the Hedgehog in a race!"

Chris snorted. "Yeah, right. My money is still on Sonic."

"I don't think anything will ever travel as fast as Sonic can," said Frances.

"How fast can that hedgehog even run?" asked Danny.

"No one actually knows," said Chris. "Every time we tested him and found a maximum speed, he went ahead and broke that record the next day. I don't even know where to begin if I had to guess. At this point, I would consider his maximum speed effectively infinite."

"Sam, don't you remember the time the President's aide colluded with Eggman to force you and Sonic to race?" said Chuck.

Sam rubbed the back of his head, embarrassed. "How could I forget? He beat me fair and square that day."

"I remember the race too!" said Danny. "I was in the stadium where the finish line was, and I watched the whole thing on the screens. For the entire race, you two were pretty much neck-and-neck. I honestly didn't know who was going to win."

"Exactly!" cried Chuck. "Sam, you and Sonic were almost right next to each other the entire time, but if you remember the tapes from the finish, not only did Sonic cross the finish line well before you, he jumped backward from the line, made a face at the video review camera, then went back to where you were still puttering along and crossed the line a second time with you."

Sam grinned. "Listen man, I don't know about 'puttering along' — I had to have been traveling hundreds of miles per hour! Like I said, though, he beat me fair and square, but I'm gonna get him back someday!"

"The point is," said Chuck, "us scientists have studied the tapes from the event, and we just assumed that Sonic was traveling his maximum endurance speed throughout the whole race and just gave a final burst at the end—just how you'd normally expect a distance runner to do during a race. However, the more we studied Sonic's performance that day, the more we realized that Sonic was actually running slower than his optimum race pace throughout the whole event. There's just no way he would have been able to accomplish what he did at the end unless he was actually saving a significant amount of energy the whole time."

"Wait just one second!" cried Sam. "What do you mean? Are you saying Sonic was going easy on me?!"

"Exactly," said Chuck.

Helen chuckled. "If he ran as fast as he could, he probably would have blown you out of the water!"

"He probably could have run all the way around the world and still finish in time," murmured Chris.

"Haha, he was probably slowing down just to make the race interesting for him," said Frances.

"Yikes!" screamed Sam, who covered his mouth quickly. "Sorry, I think I just got brain freeze from this delicious ice cream. How is all of your food tasting?"

Everyone laughed, as they could clearly see that Sam was trying to change the subject. They decided to go along with it.

"Yeah, this ice cream is actually not half bad," said Danny. "I might become a regular here yet."

"I dunno if it's worth the price, though," said Frances.

"For you, nothing is worth the price," Chris countered. "Remember the time when you forced us to eat at that awful fried seafood chain just because you had a coupon for $2?"

Frances blushed. "It was $2 per person," she corrected.

Chris held his hands up. "Your Honor, I rest my case."

Everyone laughed except for Danny, who shuddered. "I don't know why that chain thinks it's a good idea to fry literally everything that is in their fridge. Not to mention, I think they gave me a stomach bug. I was throwing up for days and couldn't eat anything except, like, oatmeal."

Chris laughed. "Yes, that was not optimal."

Frances crossed her arms and pouted. "Well, Chris, some people still have to work while they study at college just to pay the bills."

"Oh please," said Danny in a tone which clearly indicated this was the hundredth time they had this conversation. "Frances, you haven't worked in months since you got that paid internship offer at the International Consortium on Extraterrestrial Intelligence."

"Wow, Frances!" said Chuck. "Congratulations! Chris hadn't told me about that yet. That's such a wonderful opportunity. When do you start?"

"Thanks, Professor Thorndyke," said Frances. "It's going to be—

BOOM! There was a sudden explosion that rocked the city, accompanied by an impossibly bright explosion of light that came from above. The explosion was so powerful that it knocked over some of the camera equipment that the journalists were using. Both Danny and Chris's ice cream fell off their cones and splattered onto the ground. The bald restaurant owner was knocked off his feet and lay sprawled across the ground.

Before anyone had time to react, they heard an ear-splitting scream from above them. "ENOUGH!" said the voice. Everyone looked up and tried to see what was happening, but their eyes hadn't adjusted to the light. After a moment, they could make out two balls of bright light that shone brightly against the blue sky. The points of light began to circle each other and grow larger in size as they descended towards the crowd watching in disbelief below.

Then, remarkably, they saw about a half dozen pinpricks of light materialize, then suddenly scatter away in all directions. Once this happened, one of the balls of light separated from the other and raced away in pursuit of one of the pinpricks of light that scattered. Meanwhile, the crowd on the ground saw the remaining ball of light grow larger and larger in size as it slowly descended. Several people in the seating area realized that the ball was on a direct collision course with their table, so they immediately vacated the table, running into the street in fright, eyes still glued to the bright ball of light. As the light descended further, the group realized collectively that the "ball of light" was actually a living creature with arms and legs.

The creature landed onto the empty picnic table. So thoroughly dumbstruck at the entire sequence of events that they could no longer think, the group gaped with their eyes widened and mouths opened stupidly as the creature's yellow quills turned to blue and then as it gazed lazily at them before collapsing.

Silence.

For seconds that felt like minutes, no one moved or said a word. They were unable to comprehend anything that just happened. It went against every piece of their intuition.

It was Chuck who was the first to act after this initial shock. The old man jumped up out of his seat and ran toward Sonic, laying his right hand on his forehead and using his left hand to check the hedgehog's pulse.

"He's still alive, but unconscious. He must be exhausted from his battle. Sam, I need you to fire up your police car and take Sonic back to the Thorndyke residence. I need you to do this now. Do you understand?"

With his eyes still widened and mouth still agape, Sam nodded slowly, but didn't move.

Chuck sighed. He'd have to beat it into his son-in-law. "SAM! GET THIS HEDGEHOG HOME RIGHT NOW!"

This triggered everyone into action. Sam, Chris, and Tanaka all jumped up at the same time and ran toward Chuck. Carefully, the four of them lifted Sonic and carried him toward Sam's Formula One police car, where they strapped the hedgehog into the one passenger seat. In reality, Sonic was very light—weighing only the amount an eight-year-old human child might—so only one person was probably required to carry him. On the other hand, the four men looked very heroic as together they carried Sonic the Hedgehog to safety.

As soon as the unconscious hedgehog was strapped in properly, Sam Speed immediately started the engine and sped off, sirens blaring, in the direction of the Thorndyke residence, while the rest of the group scrambled to get into their own cars and follow Sam.

"Hurry, Helen!" said Chris, who impatiently grabbed the handlebars of Helen's wheelchair and breaking into a sprint toward the parking lot.

"Whoa! Slow down, Chris! You're going to break something!" warned Helen, who tightly gripped the side of her wheelchair. In reality, her wheelchair was fine—when she was younger, Sonic would push her wheelchair up to speeds comparable to those of cars on a highway, and the chair would be completely fine afterwards. Instead, Helen was more concerned that Chris might recklessly crash her into something. Once they got to the car, Chris opened the door and strapped himself in as if his life depended on how quickly he did so.

Once Helen was in the car, Chris immediately began to race in the direction of home. Normally, Helen would never sit in the same car as Chris while he drove—although he would never admit it himself, Chris was not a good driver—but this was a reasonably good excuse to make an exception. Tanaka had originally driven this car to the laboratory, but he now rode with Chuck in his car.

As Chris broke the speed limit, he heard Helen in the passenger seat start to giggle.

Chris frowned. "Why are you laughing?" he said accusingly. "Sonic could be hurt! We don't even know what happened to him."

Helen beamed at Chris, smiling wider than he had ever seen her smile before. In between gasps of air as she laughed uncontrollably, Helen managed to say, "Sonic will be fine." When her giggles died down, she wiped a tear away, then said: "Don't you remember what I said back at the lab?"

Chris, whose mind was in five different places at once, curtly replied, "What?"

"Who knows?" said Helen simply.

As Chris drove, his faced shifted from one of annoyance to one of realization. "Who knows…" he whispered.

"… maybe we'll see Sonic there!" Helen finished happily, beginning another outburst of uncontrollable giggling. Finally, Chris broke into a wide grin as the reality of the whole situation set in.

After more than six years, Sonic the Hedgehog was back in Chris's world.

As it turned out, the day was otherwise fairly uneventful once the group made it to the Thorndyke residence. Sam and Chuck brought Sonic into the attic room where Sonic and his friends had stayed when they last stayed at the residence, and once he was in place, the group let him rest alone and undisturbed. They would talk with him only once he woke up.

At the moment, Chris was pacing back and forth in the living room of his old house, while his friends and family surrounded him, either sitting on couches or standing.

"I have so many questions," he said.

"I can't even imagine," said Frances.

"We checked and rechecked," said Chris. "No more than two hours ago, the connection between this world and Sonic's world was completely severed. I am 120% sure of this. There should have been absolutely no way that anything could have travelled between our two universes."

"Travelled directly between our two universes," corrected a voice, entering the room. It was Chuck, and with him he was rolling in a large chalkboard. "For a brief moment after we placed Sonic onto the bed, he woke up and saw Sam and me. He explained very quickly what happened, then went back to sleep. Now that he knows he's safe, he really needs rest after what he's been through, so I suggest we leave him alone until tomorrow morning."

Everyone grunted their acceptance of Chuck's proposal.

"Now, I want to know every single world that came out of Sonic's mouth," said Chris.

Chuck smiled. "Sonic was battling Shadow."

Everyone except Chris gasped.

"What?"

"Shadow?"

"As in, the Shadow?"

"He's alive?"

"I can't believe it!"

"I could have sworn he died!"

"Yeah, during that whole Space Colony ARK adventure!"

Chris, however, knew that Shadow was still alive, having interacted with the black-and-red hedgehog while he was in Sonic's world battling the Metarex. "Eggman rescued him," he said. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you guys sooner. I guess I just didn't want to think about Sonic so much."

"That's okay, Chris," said Danny.

Chris smiled at Danny, then resumed: "After he and Sonic caused Chaos Control on Space Colony ARK, Shadow lost all of his energy and lost consciousness in space. We all thought he was lost, but in reality, Eggman rescued him and brought him back to his ship."

"Was he okay after that?" asked Helen.

Chris looked at the ground. "Not exactly. He lost his memory. He couldn't remember who any of us were anymore—me, Sonic, or anyone. He was back to taking orders from Eggman like he owned him."

"And that's a big part of how both Sonic and Shadow came to land back in this universe again," said Chuck. "Shadow asked Sonic to tell him about his past—the past that he could not remember. Unfortunately, it seems that Shadow didn't believe Sonic, and when Sonic tried to confront Eggman about withholding Shadow's past from him, Shadow thought that Sonic was working with Eggman to hide something from him."

"Oh no!" cried Helen. "Sonic would never do something like that!"

"I'm sure he wouldn't too," agreed Chris, "but Grandpa, that doesn't explain how Sonic managed to get here."

"I was just about to get to that," said Chuck. "Shadow attacked Sonic, and once they got ahold of the Chaos emeralds, they turned themselves into Super Sonic and Super Shadow, and then they were able to use the Chaos emeralds to cause Chaos Control. Apparently, Shadow was the first to cause Chaos Control, and he sent them to a world—not this one—that was adjacent to theirs."

On the chalkboard, Chuck drew a circle and labelled it "Sonic's world", then drew a line connecting that circle to another circle, which he labelled "World #2".

"This World #2 is the universe that is most aligned with Sonic's world. It used to be our world that occupied this position," Chuck explained, "but since the quantum alignment shifted, the universe that was most aligned with Sonic's world became this World #2. Sonic told me that Shadow's plan was probably to leave him in that world once they got there."

"Wait, why would Shadow do that?" asked Chris. "He wants to know more about his past, right? And Sonic is one of the few who know about his past life. Knowing this, why would he try to get rid of Sonic?"

Chuck shrugged. "Shadow doesn't trust Sonic. My guess is that the move was impulsive—an attempt to gain an upper hand in their battle. Besides, with all seven of the Chaos emeralds, it's likely that Shadow would have been able to return to World #2 and retrieve Sonic if necessary, so he wouldn't have been getting rid of Sonic forever.

In any case, the plan failed. When Shadow tried to cause Chaos Control to return to Sonic's world, Sonic managed to tag along for the ride. Shadow ended up misfiring his Chaos Control and the two landed in a completely different universe instead."

On the chalkboard, Chuck drew a new circle, labelled World #3, and connected it with a line to World #2.

"This new world was connected to World #2, but not to Sonic's world," said Chuck. "In order to get back to Sonic's world from World #3, they would have needed to jump from #3 to #2, then from #2 back to Sonic's world."

Realization dawned in Chris's eyes. "Wait a second… what you're saying…"

Chuck grinned. "I think you see where I'm going with this. They tried Chaos Control again, but no dice—they ended up traveling to a fourth world: World #4."

Chuck drew World #4 on the chalkboard and connected it to World #3 just as he did the others.

"As it turns out, World #4 is the world that is currently aligned the most with our world. The reason we couldn't detect it in the laboratory is because Chris and I were looking for the signature of the Chaos emeralds, which we knew were in Sonic's world, and we couldn't find it. Since World #4 didn't have any Chaos emeralds, it wouldn't have shown up on any of our calculations."

Chuck drew a new circle and labelled it "our world", then connected it to World #4.

"So as you can see," said Chuck, "there was no direct connection to Sonic's world from our world. But through hopping universes, Sonic and Shadow were still able to find their way here."

"It seems kind of like a web," remarked Tanaka.

"Yes, exactly," said Chuck. "Once Sonic and Shadow landed here from World #4, Sonic apparently had 'enough', and he scattered the Chaos emeralds, which were those little points of light that we saw scatter in all directions."

"Ohhhh," muttered the group collectively in realization.

"There's one thing I still don't understand," said Frances. "How did this happen so perfectly? I mean, imagine all the possibilities of universes there could be. Sonic could have decided to stay in World #3 and scatter the emeralds there. I mean, why was the quantum alignment to our world specifically on World #5? Why wasn't it on, say, World #64? Not to mention, what are the odds that of all the places in our world that Sonic and Shadow could have appeared, they appeared directly above us, the friends who knew him best that last time he was here? It all just seems too perfect."

"Those… are really good questions," said Chris.

"I'm not sure anyone knows the answer to that," admitted Chuck.

"Well, here's what I believe," announced Helen. "The Chaos emeralds are power, right? Power enriched by the heart? Sonic—and probably Shadow too!—had all of us deep down in his heart, and that's how the Chaos emeralds knew exactly where to send them each time they did Chaos Control. It was our friendship that transcended time and space to make it happen."

"Ugh," said Danny, sticking his tongue out. "That sounds like a lot of cheesy hooey to me."

"Well, if you have a better explanation, then be my guest," retorted Helen.

"I have to say, that's a really good explanation, if I did hear one," said Chuck, winking at Helen. "I think I'm a subscriber."

"So am I!" said Chris.

They each were sharing smiles when Ella burst into the room. "I was thinking everyone could wind down the excitement of the day with some fresh pumpkin pie, right from the oven!"

To this, everyone announced their assent.

"You did WHAT?!"

"Amy, please calm down! I didn't mean for this to happen!" cried Tails desperately. He hated seeing Amy so upset—primarily because she would sometimes take her hammer out and start threatening people with it.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Tails." Amy started taking steps toward Tails, who warily moved backwards away from Amy. They were in Amy's house, and Tails was backing himself into a corner. "I completely understand how you went and threw my boyfriend into another dimension! That's something that I'm sure everyone has done at some point in their lives. No big deal."

"Amy, please, I'm sorry!" Tails panicked as he felt the wall against his back and realized he had nowhere left to go to escape from Amy's rage. "I don't know how it happened. I gave Sonic the Chaos emeralds, and for some reason, they both turned Super. They were fighting in the sky, so I used the X Tornado to fire a shot at Shadow to distract him while Sonic attacked. That was the plan! The next thing I knew, I was racing away and I saw a bunch of light and Sonic was… S-Sonic was gone…"

Tails panicked even further when he realized that it could have been his fault that Sonic was missing. Tears started to well in his eyes, and he collapsed to the ground, hugging his knees.

"It was m-my fault, Amy. I shouldn't have fired that sh-shot at Shadow. If I had done something else, I… I…"

While Tails hated seeing Amy angry, it hurt even more for Amy to see Tails like this. Immediately, she forgot her anger and sat besides her two-tailed fox friend.

"No, I'm sorry, Tails." She said it genuinely this time. "I didn't mean to get so angry like that."

Tails merely buried his face in his knees, letting his two bushy tails enclose him.

Amy kicked herself for letting her tear Tails down like this. Tails' emotions were still somewhat volatile from the loss of Cosmo during the Metarex battle—to lose Sonic too, potentially due to yet another shot that he himself fired…

Amy was determined to set things right with her friend. "Listen, whatever happened, it was not your fault. I am 100% sure of this. You said that you fired a shot to distract Shadow as Sonic attacked? That was a perfectly good plan, and I'm sure I would have probably done the same thing myself."

Tails didn't respond.

"Tails?"

"Just leave me alone."

The words cut through Amy like a knife. Resignedly, she began to walk away, when suddenly, a thought occurred to her, and she whipped around.

"Say, Tails… Sonic probably still has the Chaos emeralds on him, wherever he is, right?"

Tails looked up—his eyes were red from having cried so much, and that tore Amy up. "Y-yeah," Tails replied.

"Well, can't you find the Chaos emeralds, then?"

Tails shook his head. "It's really hard. You probably have to be near the emeralds in order for it to work well, and right now, we're not even sure if they're in the same universe as us."

Amy bit her lip. Well, at least it was worth a shot, she thought. "What about the Master Emerald?" She didn't really know how the Master Emerald might help, but she was trying to brainstorm for Tails.

One of Tails' floppy ears flopped up. "The Master Emerald?"

"Yeah! Isn't that linked to the seven Chaos emeralds in some way? Couldn't you use that to help?"

Tails considered this thoughtfully. "Yeah… yeah, it's linked to the Chaos emeralds. I guess it's possible that we could use that connection, but I'd have to study it, and it could take weeks, if not months!"

Amy closed her eyes at first in disappointment, then opened them with resolve. "Then you'll just have to go for it!" she declared.

Tails nodded in agreement. The Master Emerald was the most promising tool they had to finding Sonic, assuming he is in a different universe now with Shadow. He needed to find how they could use the Master Emerald's connection to the Chaos emeralds to find which universe the Chaos emeralds were in. Hopefully, the universe that the Chaos emeralds were in would be the universe that Sonic was in.

As Tails left Amy's house pondering how he would accomplish this, he realized he needed to gather more information, and to do so, he needed to talk to the one who knew the Master Emerald best.

With resolve, Tails set his course for the floating Angel Island, where a certain red echidna stood watch.