Part 1
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Knuckle's red aura calmed down as shock and confusion covered his face. "Wait, wait. Hold on. You took down Chaos? We're talking about the same creature right? Big water like quadruped with glowing eyes?"
"Well…Tikal was the one that sealed it away. And even then we had a lot of help. But yeah." Shadow said.
Knuckles crossed his arms, regaining his composure. "Yeah…I don't believe you."
Shadow tossed the red emerald to Knuckles shrugging. "You don't have to. But I doubt you'll turn down something that'll make you more powerful."
Knuckles put the chaos emerald away, his glowing aura vanishing. "I don't need or want power. But if having it with me keeps it away from someone like you, that's enough." He glared at Shadow. "I guess my question now is…what game are you playing? You could kill me and Amy without even trying. But you haven't even tried to arrest us."
"All I want is a way to stop Chaos permanently."
"I believe him." Everyone turned to Amy who shrugged. "Look, I'm still not convinced this isn't a hallucination. But if there's even a tiny chance that the world could be destroyed, we have to work together." Amy faced Knuckles. "Otherwise, there won't be a world left for us to save."
"Working with a murderer." Knuckles sighed. "Fine." His eyes locked on Shadow. "You bring me all six chaos emeralds, and I'll believe you. Do we have a deal?"
"Seven." Shadow said.
Panic spread across Knuckles and Amy's faces. Amy was the first to calm down. "How do you know about the master emerald?"
Shadow raised an eyebrow. "Kind of a sudden change in topic there…but…Tikal I guess? Or was Blaze the first to mention it?"
"That one stays where it is. You stay away from the master emerald."
"Ok…" Shadow shook his head in confusion. "I'll-leave the master emerald alone, and bring you all seven chaos emeralds."
"What??" This time Knuckles seemed more confused than anything. Amy and Knuckles both looked at each other. Knuckles looked for any signs of a sneak attack, but Shadow wasn't doing anything. Had Shadow just misspoken? "You mean 6?"
Shadow raised an eyebrow. "No…wait." His thought for a moment, whispering to himself. "He used 6 emeralds to fight Chaos. "Did you think there were only 6 chaos emeralds?"
"There are 6, unless you count the master emerald."
"Right…" Shadow took a deep breath. "So…about that."
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Part 2
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Tikal pointed to a few diagrams on a whiteboard. "Ok, based on the fact that we've been able to alter the timeline, and the fact that I remember the previous one, it's clear that we're not dealing with a fixed timeline." She pointed at a line of black marker with 2 x's connected by a loop.
"Right…so what exactly are we dealing with?" Blaze and Silver looked at the whiteboard.
Tikal pointed to a crude picture of her and a square. "Whatever's written in the journal seems to stay the same as well. That means we have 2 things that won't change no matter what we change: the journal and my original memories. The problem is, we need a change that will be permanent."
Blaze nodded. "Right…the grandfather paradox will prevent any change that would prevent Silver and me from traveling back in time."
"What I think happened when we made a small change, is that it didn't cause a paradox. So, that's not an issue. For a paradox, I think what will happen is that multiple changes will happen over and over until a changed event stabilizes. But I don't think that means you have to travel back. I think there just needs to be someone who does to change those events. In other words it's possible for you two to not travel back in time, if someone else does."
Silver raised an eyebrow. "So you're saying it is possible for us to jeopardize our existence."
Tikal nodded. "Yes. Please don't do that." She pointed to a line with 2 x's that were connected by multiple loops. "You mentioned that you can only go to and from certain points in time. Do you know when these are?"
Blaze shook her head. "Unfortunately, no. We only know the point we came from, and the point we came to." She thought for a moment. "That said. When you sent us back, you seemed to know the year we'd end up at. You also knew when we'd be able to travel back. So there must be some way of knowing."
"Speaking of my future self. Why didn't I come back with you?"
"Because you couldn't. You were the only one who could create an anchor to send us back from. No one can send themselves back in time, they can send others or be sent by someone else."
Tikal paced back and forth in thought. Then she took another look at the journal. "Did my future self tell you two how to find a point in time to travel to and from?"
Blaze shook her head. "She tried. Something about sensing it, but neither of us could do it. I think you're the only one who can."
"I suppose that makes sense." Tikal flipped through the book looking for any clues. She found some writing from her future self coming across a promising excerpt. "Let's see…
Anchors seem to be points that can be traveled to and from along the timeline. So far I've been able to sense 3. One is about a year away, one is the distant future, and one is in the distant past. The one in the past seems to be before Chaos destroyed the world, so there is at least a chance of it working. Blaze, Silver, if you manage to get in contact with my past self, don't bother showing this passage. I don't know how I sense the anchors. I just do."
Blaze and Silver both looked at each other. "Third point?"
Blaze murmured to herself before speaking again. "Do you think it's possible we had our memories altered about that line of text?"
Silver shrugged. "Tikal probably just didn't bother telling us. If it doesn't help us, what would be the point?"
"If there's a lapse in your memory, that's a concern." Tikal said. She looked through the journal finding something about a temple. The description sounded familiar, a cave made entirely of marble in the jungle. But she hadn't been able to enter that place. Tikal racked her brain.
She hadn't lived in that area since before the first humans. There had been an inscription. Levasu speratt? But it didn't make any sense, why would a temple have "flying rodent" written on it? No, not flying, spirit. Was it a metaphor? The only other option was Silver…
She looked at Silver. Maybe it was just a coincidence, and she was probably just reaching. But she couldn't take that chance. "Silver. I want you to look into something."
Silver jumped over to Tikal, looking over her shoulder at the journal. "Did you figure something out?"
"Maybe. Do you know where Mt. Surasu is?"
"Isn't that just a myth?"
Tikal did a double take. "What? No, I used to live there. Head to Ersuka. If I'm right, you can find your way from there."
Blaze and Silver looked at each other, then Tikal. "Wait, aren't you coming?"
Tikal shook her head. "There's something I want to discuss with Shadow. Besides, I can't enter that temple. You, on the other hand, might."
Silver shrugged. "All right. Been a while since I got to drive my motorbike anywhere cool. Blaze, you coming?"
Blaze nodded. "Yeah, but I'm driving. You'd just crash us a 4th time." She grabbed a set of keys before heading out the door.
Silver followed her. "Oh come on! You're the one that lit it on fire!"
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Part 3
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"Are you kidding me!?" President Nitro looked as red as a tomato, scrunching up his already crease covered face. "How can you possibly justify working with a terrorist!?"
"Technically he hasn't killed anyone." Shadow stopped himself. "I mean, he is Mobius's best chance for survival."
Nitro facepalmed. "Fine, whatever. The press is gonna have a field day when they hear about this. But if this backfires I'm going to assign you to the night watch in Cactus, with Benny and Heinrich."
Shadow shuddered at the thought of hearing nothing but Gorvaseth poetry. "Thank you sir." The phone hung and he turned around, looking at Tikal with a smile. "Well, that's one less problem to worry about."
Tikal smirked, wiggling her eyebrows. "I guess even war heroes have trouble getting their way all the time. Thanks for doing that by the way."
"No worries. I still owe you for finding Chaos so soon. No telling what it would've done if it got any more powerful. So, what's the plan?"
"Right now, I have 2. I've been looking through future me's journal. The plan I choose depends on what I find, and what Silver finds." Tikal handed her journal to Shadow. "But there's something I want to try first. Are you familiar with general relativity?"
"I'm not a physicist, but I've heard of it."
"Well, I think we can use it to travel through time, sort of. You just need to run really, really fast." Shadow raised an eyebrow. "Basically, the faster you go, the slower you move in time. Or from your perspective, time speeds up around you. We can go to when Chaos escapes. Of course, that's assuming you can even go that fast. Time stops moving at light speed, at least theoretically."
"Ok, I can break the sound barrier. But light speed's crazy. How fast would I need to go?"
"Well…how many years do you want to travel per second? Chaos will escape within the next thousand years."
"Oh, uh, how about 50 then?"
Tikal grabbed a calculator. Let's see…50x365x24x3600…square that. Subtract 1, and multiply by 3x108. Gonna assume you can't run this fast, but 4.73x1017 m/s…and I definitely did the math wrong. Hang on, let me try this again. Square of 50x365x24x3600=1576800000… 1/1576800000=6.3419*10-10…square root of 1-6.4319x10-10…multiply by 3x108…2999999.904871 m/s. That's…basically light speed. Well then, plan A it is.
A call came across Tikal's watch from Silver. "Hey Tikal? Did your people ever turn gravity off?"
A/N:
Time dilation formula t=to/sqrt(1-(v2/c2))
v-velocity
c-speed of light
t-time for viewer
to-time outside
Comment Responses
@momojifan: Thanks. Glad you're enjoying the story.
@chaos: Yeah, we'll see about that. My power grows and I will affect your comments. Wait what the heck?