It had started out as such a reasonable day, all things considered.

There was no sign of Robotnik, just like the last few weeks. The insurance people had finally thrown in the towel and agreed to pay for the repairs needed after the lunatic's last rampage (on paper, at least). The only excitement happening recently had been the boys finding one of Robotnik's drones in the junkyard and deciding to bring the darn thing home with them.

So, Tom had made the mistake of thinking that nothing was going to happen that day. The boys were playing baseball together – they'd finally gotten Knuckles to understand that while technically sending the ball into orbit was encouraged by the rules, it tended to stop the game for the day when he did that.

In the warm afternoon sun, Tom smiled as he watched the three young alien kids play.

Heh. 'Alien'. The boys were human where it counted, dang it.

Anyway, lulled into complacency by the familiar sight, Tom made the mistake of blinking.

When he opened his eyes again, it was to see the ball, mitts and bat clattering to the ground. The boys themselves were gone.

Tom continued staring for a few more moments, then stood up slowly as he started to realise what he was looking at. "Tails? Knuckles? Sonic?" He asked loudly, for a moment wondering if the boys were about to try and jump out from a bush at him or something. "Guys?"

Beside him, Tom heard Maddie get to her feet as well. "Boys? Boys, this isn't funny, where are you?"

Some instinct made Tom turn around, and his mouth dropped. "Uuuhhhh…."

Before his disbelieving eyes was the town of Green Hills, Montana. Only then it glitched, like a buggy level in a video game, and suddenly Green Hills was replaced by green hills, irregular slopes covered in grass that somehow seemed to be growing in perfect checker-board patterns.

"Boys?" Maddie was still facing the other way.

Tom's hand found her arm, and started frantically patting it to grab his wife's attention. "Maddie. Maddie! Maddie, look!"

Maddie turned around, and gasped. "Wha – where did the town go?!"

The hills glitched again, flickering between several different appearances before settling on the checker-board hills again. Tom could have sworn he saw Green Hills in the mix before the glitch settled down.

"We – we've got to do something." Maddie stammered.

"Yeah? Like what?" Tom said, sounding pretty freaked out himself. "I don't even know what on Earth that is!"

"Probability of phenomenon originating on Earth: negligible." Out of Tom's new pickup floated Unit, the Robotnik drone that the boys had found and brought home. "No doubt, this is the result of technology and/or powers beyond our comprehension. Alternatively: reality is experiencing a segmentation fault. Unit suggests contacting software provider for immediate support."

"Reality doesn't have a software provider!" Tom snapped at the silver-white egg-shaped drone as it floated towards them.

Unit 'blinked' the metal shutters over its single red 'eye'. "Interesting. I thought that the facility at 20 Shuffle Lane was dedicated to support requests?"

20 Shuffle Lane? Isn't that the… oh.

"What's he saying?" Maddie looked between Unit and Tom.

Tom cleared his throat. "He, uh, thinks reality is broken and we should all start praying."

Maddie scowled. "Well, that's useleAAAARRRGG!"

Maddie bent over at the waist, hands wrapped around her middle as she suddenly screamed in distress. The same glitching process that had overtaken the town was affecting her now, and Tom probably would have done something drastic if it hadn't started affecting him right after. "ARCK!"

It… wasn't pain. Not exactly. It was more like… the 'pins and needles' sensation one got when moving a limb that had fallen asleep, only it was your entire body that had fallen asleep, and the sensation got stronger and weaker and stronger until –

Tom gasped for air as his body fully solidified again.

"Tom!" Maddie shook him roughly, apparently having already recovered. "Are you alright?"

"Y-yeah." Tom lied. "I… I'm fine."

Unit's outline turned fuzzy just for a moment, its own glitching session unfairly shorter than Tom or Maddie's. "Unit would rather not experience that again."

"We have to move." Tom decided, striding over and grabbing the bag of rings. He opened the ice chest they'd brought with them just to check – and winced as he saw that the Master Emerald had vanished too.

"Move to where?" Maddie asked, still freaking out.

"I don't know, just… somewhere!" Tom picked up a ring in one hand, trying to think of somewhere, anywhere

Suddenly, they heard screams.

People were running, trying to get out of their houses in the brief moments when they weren't hills. Tom flinched as he saw someone not quite make it, and the empty space they were in became a hillside while they were still there. Like a watermelon seed being squashed between two wet fingers, the poor soul was sent flying out to slam into the opposite hillside with a loud thump.

Maddie swallowed. "We need to get everybody away from the buildings."

"And the hills." Tom added. "Basically anything that's not flat ground."

Easier said than done. Green Hills was a small town, but that didn't make it small.

"Unit, can you tell everyone to head for the baseball field?" Tom turned around, just in time to catch the field glitch into a meadow. "…or at least where the field usually is?"

"Affirmative." Unit agreed, before flying upward. "ATTENTION FLESHY MEAT SACKS!" Unit started booming with megaphone-like volume. "TO BEST ENSURE YOUR CONTINUED EXISTENCE, PROCEED TO THE FIELD OF POINTLESS EXERCISE! NO RUSH!"

"It's times like these you can really tell who programmed him, huh?" Maddie blew a lock of hair out of her face.

"Oh, thank goodness, someone who knows what's going on!"

"Uh, I wouldn't exactly say that Miss Ugh…" Tom turned around to face the new voice, then unexpectedly found himself looking down.

The young cat lady standing in front of him, about three feet tall, tapped her foot against the ground and raised an eyebrow as Tom stared. "Yes? Is something wrong, young man?"

Tom blinked several times in quick succession. "Yes? Er, no! I mean, yes, the whole town is wrong – no wait I mean the actual town, not the people – well, something's wrong with the people, but not wrong wrong… no, wait…!"

Maddie kicked him in the shins, breaking him out of his run-on sentence before his foot could cram itself any more firmly into his mouth.

People were starting to trickle into the clearing. A few were people Tom recognised – there was Wade, his deputy and friend, and there was Ms McLaren from down the street – but they were outnumbered by the people who weren't human. Two dogs with young puppies held tightly ran frantically in on their two legs. A raccoon girl and a squirrel boy arrived, the raccoon supporting the squirrel with an arm under his as the squirrel seemed to have a broken leg. Hawks, bunnies, chipmunks, even what appeared to be a horse woman!

Some of the humans were giving the animal people curious looks (Tom found himself glad that this was Green Hills, the town with Sonic as their hero, not somewhere more jumpy), but for the most part the animal people where busy shooting worried looks at the glitching landscape and looking to him expectantly.

Tom tried to clear his throat, his mouth suddenly very, very dry. "Uh, hi folks! As you can see, uh, the town… shouldn't be doing that."

The crowd started muttering.

Tom tried again. "Which," he insisted, trying to project some authority into his voice, and wishing once again that the boys were here "is why we are going to move to somewhere safer! We are going to move to… ugh…"

The library.

"The library!" Tom yelled, so glad at having an idea appear in his head that he immediately yelled it out.

Maddie blinked. "The… library?"

I can get you to safety from there.

"There's… uh, a friend there with a portal!" Tom added. Some of the animal people were nodding slowly, seemingly accepting his words. "She can get us to safety from there!"

Maddie grabbed his arm. "'She'?" She hissed in his ear. "Tom, who are you talking about?"

Before he could give Maddie an explanation – or even think of one – Unit came back, descending from the sky.

"Badnik!" Somebody yelled from the crowd, and a wave of fear passed through the people –

"He's a friend! A friend!" Tom hurriedly shouted, trying to get ahead of the panic.

"He's a poet, not a bad-whatever." Maddie added.

Unit floated up and down, as though he was nodding. "That is correct! Unit would be happy to recite Unit's latest masterpiece, 'Ode to engine grease'!"

"Maybe later." Maddie hurriedly deferred, knowing that Unit could and would recite poetry for hours. "Unit, is that everyone in town?"

"Ah, yes. Unit has good news and bad news." Unit tilted to one side, like a person cocking their head. "The good news is that Unit's scanners now read the town as empty, though not all have heeded Unit's message. The bad news is that Unit's IFF systems read several squadrons of Unit's compatriots as incoming. They are proving distressingly resistant to Unit's invitations to a recital."

Panicked cries erupted out of the crowd. "More badniks? We're doomed!" "Where is the Restoration?" "'Restoration'? Who are they? I wanna know where the Freedom Fighters are!" "Where's Sonic?"

"Sonic?" Tom and Maddie both spun around to find whoever had said that, but the crowd was loud and everyone was talking.

Boom.

Everyone flinched at the sound of a giant explosion, several people throwing themselves to the ground and covering their ears.

One of the animal people walked forward, adjusting something on their wrist. They were a wolf boy wearing red pants – flicker – no, they were a cat girl in a yellow dress – flicker – no, a bird woman in a plain white shirt – flicker

Despite seeming to switch endlessly between different people, the… whoever this was, held up the thing in their hands up to the sky. With a pull of a trigger, the green egg-shaped device let out the same loud burst of air that they'd heard before, the blast sent rocketing off into the sky.

Heads started to rise up, staring at the species-switcher in confusion.

Abruptly, the person turned their… weapon? Around so that the handle and trigger were facing Tom, offering it out to him.

"Uhh…" Tom blinked, gingerly taking the weapon off him. "Thanks… buddy?"

'Buddy' (now a yellow hedgehog boy, then a black rabbit, then a –) gave him a thumbs up, pulling another one of the weapons out, only this one was red. Giving it a quick test fire (shooting a line of flames up into the sky), Buddy nodded in satisfaction then took a step back.

Gesturing for him to take the lead.

What even was his life.

Remembering the other object he was holding, Tom flicked the ring up, trying to open a portal to the library. However, it glitched on the way down and landed on Buddy, disappearing with a ding sound.

Tom's shoulders slumped even as Buddy alternated between looking confused and thankful. "Looks like we're walking to the library."

"Unit's compatriots will try to stop us." Unit warned.

"And that's not counting all the crazy that's going on with the glitching." Maddie winced.

"Well, uh, anyone else have any better ideas?" Tom winced.

Nobody did.

"Well then," Tom grit his teeth. He was going to get these people to safety, and then he was going to find out what happened to the boys. And nothing was going to stop him. "here we go!"