Author's note: Hello friends. It has been more than three years since I last updated this story and more than seven years since I published chapter 1. Despite all the time that has passed, I haven't ever forgotten this story. I still love Sonic X and its characters, and I've been meaning to continue this ride. My only hope is that despite the passage of time, there are still readers interested in it. There were a few reasons for the lengthy delay: real life was busy, of course, but I also think I may have suffered from a bit of perfectionism, as I spent a lot of effort tweaking this chapter to get it to the point where I felt it was ready to publish, and even now as I hit the publish button, I am still a little worried that its quality isn't up to par. However, I have come to realize that, you know what, it's been three years, and this is as good as it's ever been. Might as well get this out so the story can move on. I estimate the story will require about 5-6 more chapters to complete. I'm hoping I can get back into the groove of writing now that I've cleared the hurdle of this chapter.
Awake. That was Shadow's first thought as his consciousness returned. His eyes were still closed, but he could feel the coolness of the grass beneath him, slightly damp from the morning's dew. Shadow grunted softly as all of the events of the past few days rushed back to him, and he remembered that he had spent another night sleeping outside, without a home. Slowly, he opened his eyes.
The sun was still halfway underneath the horizon line. He appeared to be in a park inside of a large city. Surrounding the park were large buildings, some of them skyscrapers. Around him was a set of bushes that concealed him from the view of anyone passing by. Peering over the top of the bushes, Shadow could see that the park wasn't large. In front of him was a bike path that went up a grassy hill, atop of which stood a large oak tree. Next to the tree was a bench where he could see an old human sitting.
Suddenly, he felt his stomach grumble. Shadow groaned. It had been quite a while since he last ate anything. He knew he had a mission to find the Chaos emeralds as soon as possible to leave this strange and unknown world, but he decided that his first mission of this particular day would be to find something to eat.
Shadow got up and stretched his legs, then started jogging down the bike path, moving slower than usual to conserve energy. He expected a long day ahead of him. ("Slower than usual" to Shadow still meant "fast" in human terms.)
As Shadow ascended the hill, the old man's eyes widened. This was an expected reaction. It wasn't likely that this world was used to seeing a hedgehog like himself running in the park on any given morning.
And yet there was something about the old man's eyes that caused Shadow to slow down and study him more closely. These were not horrified eyes, nor were these disgusted eyes. These eyes betrayed a sense of surprise, to be sure, but they had a bit of a spark to them. It was the same look you might see when running into a long lost friend.
"You…" said the old man. "You're Shadow, aren't you?"
Shadow froze. What? He had never seen the man before in his life.
"Shadow the Hedgehog?" repeated the old man.
"Who are you?" asked Shadow.
"Wow," replied the old man. "Wow, so it's true. You're back. I can't believe it's really you."
Shadow's head was spinning. "How do you know who I am?" demanded Shadow.
"What? Don't be ridiculous," said the old man. "It's really an honor to meet you, Shadow. You saved our world. We owe our lives to you."
The old man then looked up into the branches of the oak tree and said, "Hey, Annie, come down here. You'll never guess who it is."
Following the old man's gaze, Shadow saw a young girl, perhaps nine or ten, peering down from atop one of the branches. Her eyes widened with the same spark the old man had when he saw Shadow.
"This is my granddaughter, Annie," explained the old man. "She and I come to this park every Saturday morning. She likes to climb this old oak tree and read books in the branches."
"Grandpa, is that…?" Her voice trailed off.
"Annie here was only a baby when you saved us," said the old man.
Shadow's mind was storming with questions, but before he could vocalize any, his stomach growled.
The old man noticed this and chuckled. "Have you eaten yet?" he asked. "I know this great food truck that sells chili dogs around the corner. Want to try some?"
Shadow considered the old man and his granddaughter carefully. Could he trust them? On the one hand, it was so strange that they both knew who he was. On the other hand, Annie's youth was quite disarming: even Shadow had a hard time believing that a nine-year-old could be so untrustworthy. Plus, the old man had offered him food, which provided a convenient solution to his first problem of the day.
Wordlessly, Shadow nodded. Annie dropped to the ground and gaped at Shadow, staring especially at the large, pointy black-and-red spines along his back. The old man smiled and said, "Follow me!"
The food truck was on the border of the park, so they reached it relatively quickly. The streets were still pretty empty, as it was still early in the morning. As they approached the truck, the food truck operator inside donned the same spark of surprise and recognition when he noticed Shadow.
"Three chili dogs, please," said the old man.
"For Shadow the Hedgehog, they're on the house," said the food truck operator, who was still staring wide-eyed at his alien hedgehog customer.
Shadow frowned. "Does everyone in this world know who I am?"
"Just about!" said the old man. "You're famous! Don't you know?"
"I don't. Explain."
"I mean, you saved the world, don't you remember?" said the food truck operator, handing Shadow his chili dog.
"Yeah," said the old man. "People study what happened to you in history books now."
"Mmhmm," agreed the food truck operator. "Real shame what happened on that Space Colony ARK back in the day."
Space Colony ARK! They know about that? thought Shadow as he gratefully accepted the free food. Could this really be that world?
"Yes, the whole world was shocked and saddened to hear about your loss, Shadow," said the old man. "What was her name again? Marley?"
"Maria," said the food truck operator.
Upon hearing that name, Shadow stiffened and dropped his half-eaten chili dog onto the ground. Maria, Maria, Maria. That name kept coming up, over and over again, and it was driving Shadow crazy.
"Ah shoot," said the food truck man. "Sorry about that, Shadow. I didn't mean to bring back old memories. Here, I'll get ya another dog."
Shadow's eyes snapped to the food truck driver, and his expression suddenly turned cold. "Tell me," he said. "Where is Space Colony ARK right now?"
"Why, I reckon it's still on up there," said the food truck man.
"In outer space!" piped up Annie.
Shadow's mouth opened to reply, but no words came out. He could not believe what he was hearing. Out of all of the worlds he and Sonic could have ended up on during their episode of universe hopping, they had ended up on the most important world of them all—the one that could give him answers to his hidden memories. To get those answers, he was convinced he needed to revisit the source of those memories.
"How do I get to outer space?" asked Shadow.
The old man laughed. "Well, you'd need a rocket, right?"
"Not Shadow!" said Annie. "Shadow can cause Chaos Control. Right, Shadow?"
Shadow blinked. It was uncanny how much these complete strangers knew about him and his abilities.
"Well, for that he'd need one of them thingamajigs," said the food truck driver. "What were they called again?"
"Chaos emeralds," said Shadow. He turned to look at the food truck driver, who smiled at him. "Have you seen any?"
"Big shiny glowing sources of infinite power?" said the food truck man. "Sorry, 'fraid those are a bit hard to come by."
"What about Sonic?" said Annie, eyes sparkling in excitement. "Isn't he your friend? Maybe he has one!"
At the mention of Sonic's name, Shadow's scowled, causing the sparkle in Annie's eyes to disappear. The memory of Sonic and Doctor Eggman talking to each other like allies replayed in his head, and it made his blood boil.
"He is not my friend," Shadow asserted.
Annie's face appeared crestfallen. "But… why? You two saved the world together."
Shadow didn't hear Annie's question. Instead, he found himself deep in thought. Although Annie was wrong about Sonic being a friend, she did have a point that in the time since Shadow last saw Sonic, he could have had more success at finding an emerald than him. At this point, Shadow needed any lead he could get, and now that he was armed with the knowledge that this was the world in which he was created, all he needed was one Chaos emerald to discover the truth. With one emerald, he could cause Chaos Control and teleport directly to Space Colony ARK.
Without another word to the strangers in the park, Shadow took off in search of Sonic.
"Christopher to Thorndyke control, Sonic and I are now heading northwest at 140 knots. We've got a signal of what appears to be a Chaos emerald. Stand by for the results of our investigation."
"Roger heading northwest," said the voice of Chuck Thorndyke over a speaker. "Good luck, Chris."
Chris set the radio down and looked to the passenger seat of his aircraft. "How's everything going, Sonic?" he asked.
"I feel all right now," said Sonic.
"We've flown over water before," said Chris, "and I don't think I've ever seen you this upset over it. Did something happen to you in water since I left your world?"
Sonic stroked his chin, trying to think what could have made his fear of water worse.
"Hmm," said Chris. "Back when we were fighting the Metarex, there was a planet covered by water. I gave you special water shoes so that you could stay dry—remember?"
"I remember," said Sonic, shuddering a bit.
"You fought well back then, but just now, you seemed really scared by the water. Why?"
Sonic considered this thoughtfully. It was true that he was getting a little too panicky around water recently. He thought back to his fight with Shadow the other day. In the forest, he clearly would have been able to jump over the river at the rate he had been running, but because of his fear of falling into the water, he had opted instead to run along the river's edge. Had he not chosen to do this, he might not have run into Tails' workshop and recovered the Chaos emeralds. He might not have returned to Chris's world.
Chris, for his part, also considered Sonic's behavior carefully. Chris knew that Sonic was a weak swimmer. The first time that they ever met was when Chris rescued Sonic from his pool on the day that Sonic first arrived in Chris's world.
"Hey… look!" said Sonic, pointing ahead.
Chris looked ahead and gasped. In front of him, appearing suddenly, was a set of cooling towers—the gargantuan hyperboloid towers often used in nuclear power plants. This was a mid-sea power plant that Chris had missed when he went over the maps before the trip. The large size of the cooling towers caught him by surprise. How could I have missed something this big? thought Chris.
"I'm going to land on the water near the power plant," said Chris, "and then I will move the aircraft towards the edge of the power plant to investigate. There could be a Chaos emerald down there."
Sonic nodded his agreement, frowning in concentration.
Chris landed the plane and noticed a sea-level platform, presumably where ships could dock. While the plane was on the water, Chris taxied the aircraft towards the platform, docking there. As soon as Chris cut the engine, Sonic immediately unbuckled his seat belt and jumped out of the plane and onto the platform, kissing the surface of the platform.
The two headed up a set of stairs towards a gate. As they approached, Chris began to feel a sense of dread, like something was wrong. At first he couldn't place why, but when they reached the gate, it became clear.
On the gate was a large sign:
EXTREME DANGER — RADIATION
DISCONTINUED NUCLEAR POWER PLANT
ABSOLUTELY NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL
HAZMAT REQUIRED
Sonic whistled. "Looks like someone doesn't want us inside. What do you think, Chris?"
Chris didn't reply. He was frozen, staring at the foreboding sign.
"Uh, Chris? Are you okay?"
"Sonic," said Chris. "I think we should get out of here. This nuclear power plant… I've read about it. A few years ago, something went wrong here, and it had a meltdown. I think if we stay here too long, there is a risk of radiation poisoning."
"What?" said Sonic.
"It's too dangerous," said Chris.
"But what about the Chaos emerald?"
Chris looked at his emerald tracker. "I have a sneaking suspicion that the power plant is the emerald."
"What do you mean?"
Chris sighed. "My tracker detected an energy signature that was supposed to be a Chaos emerald, but I must not have programmed it correctly because it was instead reading the energy signature from the trace amounts of radiation leaking out of this power plant."
"Meaning…" said Sonic.
"False alarm," said Chris dejectedly.
After the two again took the sky, they were silent for a few minutes. Sonic, for his part, was unfazed by the false alarm. As he had agreed, he sat in the backseat of the cockpit rather than on the wing as he usually did. He stretched his legs as far as he could in the cramped space and put his hands behind his head, leaning backwards with a relaxed expression. Chris, on the other hand, held his head down with dispirited eyes.
After several minutes of flying, Chris finally spoke. "Well, that was a bust. I'm sorry for wasting your time, Sonic."
Sonic opened his eyes and sat up. "Chris, this wasn't a waste of time."
"We just wasted a good chunk of the day pursuing a totally false lead, and it was all my fault." Chris sighed. "I'll freely admit this: I am not as smart as Grandpa or Tails. The portal that brought you guys home and let me visit your world—that tech was all pioneered by them. Same thing with this Chaos emerald tracker—they came up with the fundamental design, I just had to follow those blueprints. At the end of the day, I'm just an 18-year-old college student who's just playing around."
"Chris, you think I could build something like this?" said Sonic, pointing at the emerald tracker. "You are one of the smartest guys I know."
"You're just saying—"
"No, I'm not just saying that!" said Sonic. "When you were in my world, you built me those special shoes that let me walk on water, and you helped Tails out all the time with work on the Blue Typhoon. And that portal—you were 12 years old when Tails and Chuck created that. Just six years later you used it to come to our world and helped us save it from the Metarex. Chris, you are definitely one of the smartest guys I know."
Chris was silent. After a few moments, Sonic's eyes widened. Chris was crying.
"Chris…" said Sonic. Was it something I said? he thought.
At that point, Chris looked back towards the hedgehog with a wide grin on his face, despite the tears streaming down his face. "I'm so happy you're back, Sonic," said Chris. "You can't even imagine."
Sonic smiled back.
On cue, at this point another alarm emanated throughout the plane. Chris wiped his eyes, then squinted to look down at his Chaos emerald tracker.
"I've got it!" he cried. "It's another Chaos energy signature, and this time, it's much stronger!"
Chris grabbed the level controlling the engine throttle and looked back towards his best friend. "Buckle in, Sonic, it's time to go fast!" With that, he pushed the throttle to the max, causing the plane to lurch forward in acceleration.
"All right!" shouted Sonic, leaning his head out of the side of the plane (and ignoring Chris's request to buckle in, now that they were back over land). "Now that's more like it!"
As the beeping from Chris's tracker increased in frequency, they looked towards the ground and noticed that they were now flying over a mountainous region about a hundred miles north of Station Square. Sonic looked down, and his eyes widened in surprise.
"Hey, I know this place!" said Sonic. "I think I ran past here before."
"I'm not surprised." Chris chuckled. "Didn't you explore the entire world back in the day? All in one summer?"
Sonic laughed. "Well, maybe not the entire world. I missed out on the places I would have had to swim to." Sonic looked back down at the mountains. "But there's something about these mountains. They look really familiar." Then, out of the corner of his eye, Sonic noticed a patch of whiteness in a valley between two mountains. "There!" he cried.
Chris followed Sonic's gaze and gasped. In the valley was a small pond surrounded by a gorgeous array of flowers and vegetation. Chris turned the plane its direction, and immediately, the Chaos emerald tracker's beeping accelerated.
"No way," Chris said. "You don't think…"
"It has to be!" said Sonic. "There has to be a Chaos emerald down there!"
When Chris landed the plane, Sonic jumped out and zipped over to the flowery field.
"Wait up, Sonic!" cried Chris. Once he caught up, he inhaled sharply. "Wow, this is place is incredible—it's like a hidden paradise!"
"Yeah…" said Sonic softly. The hedgehog knelt down, picked one of the white flowers surrounding the pond, and sniffed it, smiling.
"Have you been here before?" asked Chris.
Slowly, Sonic nodded, still sniffing the flower. "It's been a long time, but this was actually one of the first places I found in your world."
"Really?" said Chris.
Sonic walked around the pond pensively. Even though he was close to water, he wasn't afraid at all. Instead, a deep sense of peace and nostalgia overwhelmed him. Eventually, he stopped to kneel down again, as if to pick another flower. Instead, he reached down and grabbed something even more brilliantly colored. Slowly, Sonic turned and presented his finding.
In Sonic's hand, shining proudly, was a yellow-colored gem.
"A Chaos emerald!" cried Chris. "YES! We did it!"
"You did it," said Sonic. "I would have never found this so quickly on my own."
As they took back to the skies, Chris turned to look back one last time at the hidden paradise. "Wow, Sonic, how did you manage to find a place like this? The last time you were here, I mean. There are so many mountains around—I feel like you'd have to know what you were looking for to find it."
Sonic smiled. "When we first got to this world, Cream and Cheese were a little homesick."
"I remember that!" said Chris. "She missed her mom so much."
"I wanted to cheer her up, so I grabbed this poster of a field of flowers off of one of the walls in your house, and I just ran off to find it."
"Wait," said Chris, "I think I remember that day! Cream got upset at me because I wasn't appreciating my mom enough. That was also the day we told Ella and Tanaka about you guys. Man, did Ella think she was going insane when she saw Cream for the first time!"
Chris and Sonic laughed as they recalled their old days together. When the laughter died down, Chris said, "Don't you think it's amazing how we found the Chaos emerald in this place you'd been to before? It's almost as if the emeralds knew."
There was a silence before suddenly, both Chris and Sonic looked at each other in realization. "The Chaos emeralds!" they both cried together.
"It can't be a coincidence," said Chris. "Do you think maybe—maybe we could find the rest of the emeralds in other places of this world you visited the last time you were here?"
"Chaos is power, power enriched by the heart," said Sonic, recalling Tikal's famous prayer.
Chris smiled. "It's just a theory, but I think that since you were the one to scatter the emeralds, the Chaos emeralds may have scattered to the corners of this world that are most special to you. We should concentrate the rest of our search on those kinds of places."
Suddenly, they heard a grumbling noise. Chris blushed.
"But first, maybe we should head home to grab some dinner."
As Chris and Sonic approached the Thorndyke residence, it became clear that something was wrong.
"That's weird," said Chris. "Why is the gate open?"
When they landed the plane and walked to the front of the mansion, they noticed that the front door had also been left ajar, and a black SUV they didn't recognize was parked in front. Sonic suddenly felt a sense of dread, his mind realizing several possibilities for the eeriness of the situation.
"Hello?" shouted Chris into the house. "Ella? Tanaka? Grandpa? We found a Chaos emerald!" Chris held the emerald up into the air, as if it would summon his missing family.
At first, no one responded, but then, they both heard a faint noise—a shout—coming from the kitchen. Sonic and Chris briefly looked at each other to confirm that they didn't just imagine the noise—as soon as they made eye contact, they sprinted to the kitchen.
Sonic reached the kitchen immediately, but for Chris it took several seconds. Just before Chris got to the doorway, he heard Sonic shout out, "Wait, Chris! Don't come in—"
But it was too late. Chris stepped into the kitchen and was face-to-face with a man in a black suit.
The man grabbed Chris by the shirt with his right hand, then pinned him against the wall of the hallway. With his left hand, the man grabbed the Chaos emerald out of Chris's hand. All in one motion, he then flung Chris back towards Sonic, who caught Chris in his arms.
It was at this point Chris realized the man was not alone. A group of five similarly dressed men and women had occupied the Thorndyke's kitchen. They were all armed with handguns, and four had drawn their weapons. The one that didn't was the one that had pinned Chris to the wall. In the center of the kitchen, Ella, Tanaka, and Chuck sat on the floor with their hands raised as several of the agents held them at gunpoint.
Sonic assessed the situation in less than a second. The top priority was getting Chris, Ella, Tanaka, and Chuck to safety. He curled into a ball and launched himself at the agents with their guns drawn. Sonic moved faster than the agents could move their fingers to their triggers, incapacitating the four of them in less than half a second.
"Get out of here!" Sonic shouted.
"Oh my goodness," Ella cried out, and the group sprinted towards the back door of the kitchen, which led outside.
Once Sonic confirmed that they were outside of the danger area, his attention then returned to the remaining agent that had stolen the Chaos emerald. That agent had disappeared from the hallway. Sonic sprinted back out the hallway and to the front door, where the man had entered his car and was driving away.
Sonic easily caught up the car and hopped onto the roof, where he then walked onto the hood, obscuring the driver's view of the road. Sonic smirked at the driver through the windshield. "It isn't nice to steal. Didn't your mom teach you that?"
The agent drew his gun and fired a shot at Sonic through his windshield.
Sonic saw the movement before the agent pulled the trigger and was able to dodge by jumping off of the car and back onto the road. This achieved the agent's desired effect, however, as it allowed the agent to see the road again, and it gave him a few precious seconds to floor his vehicle as backup arrived.
Three more black SUVs appeared, placing themselves between Sonic and the driver with the Chaos emerald. In sync and while still in motion, they each opened their trunks. Out of each trunk, a robot popped out.
Sonic's eyes widened. They were using replicas of Eggman's robots! Sonic growled in frustration as he curled into a ball to spin dash the badniks. I could really use a power ring right now, he thought.
BOOM! Suddenly, a loud explosion cracked through Sonic's ears, shaking the ground.
"What the—" said Sonic, preparing for a heavier fight. He looked to the side of the road, where the explosion had been accompanied by an impossibly bright amount of light. There, a large metallic capsule had appeared from thin air, and out from the capsule stepped multiple familiar faces, prompting Sonic to feel a mix of joy and fear.
"Tails!" cried Sonic. "It's not safe! Get Amy, Cream, and Cheese out of here!"
The two-tailed fox widened his eyes and beamed when he saw his best friend and brother, but then he saw the robots that Sonic was fighting against.
"Are those—?" Tails began.
"—my robots!" finished Eggman, who stepped out of the capsule behind Tails. "Who were the jerks that stole my designs?"
Sonic pointed at the black SUVs that were getting away. "That would be them," he said. "They're trying to steal a Chaos emerald."
As they all turned to look at the SUVs, they all noticed a sudden blur of motion appear from the left of the road, intercepting the SUV leading the pack. To their amazement, the SUV flipped over and landed on its roof, grinding to a halt. The blur of motion that they had seen stopped moving and materialized himself on top of the flipped SUV. In his hand was the Chaos emerald that Chris and Sonic had found earlier that day.
For a brief moment, the figure paused to survey the situation, looking at the three SUVs approaching him, at the replicas of Eggman's robots that were keeping Sonic busy, and then at Doctor Eggman himself, who had somehow appeared next to Sonic on the road. He then closed his eyes and raised the Chaos emerald above his head, shouting a familiar phrase at the top of his lungs:
"CHAOS CONTROL!"
Just as quickly as he had appeared, Shadow was gone.