Disclaimer: See first chapter

Anger

Whisper was still partly out of it as she walked out of Mata and Violet's room. The word was bouncing around her head. Undo. Undo.

She knew what the word meant, from a dictionary point of view. It meant to make just...not happen. If she was playing chess, undoing a move would be reverting the board back to the way it was before the move happened.

But Orange had said that time travel didn't work like that. So was this future...in concrete? Was it possible to undo it? Would she want to?

Based on what she was seeing, she'd want to at least do something. If Amy and Sonic were supposed to end up together, they would anyways. If Belle was supposed to end up alone in the Restoration HQ...she'd find some way to make sure that didn't happen.

She heard voices out in the main room, and came out to Sonic and Shadow on the chair and couch, both watching the television, quietly talking to each other. "Managed to wake him up?" Whisper asked as she sat down.

"Yes. Turns out the Faker naps at the same time every day," Shadow answered with a slight smirk.

"Oh ha ha, once you get to my age Shadow you'll know what it's like to get some sleep. Especially if you have kids," Sonic responded. "Especially if you have kids. Actually that's a good question, could you have kids?"

Shadow shrugged. "Honestly, I have no idea. Gerald said it was a feasible thing, but I'm also ageless, so I don't care to test those kinds of things."

Sonic nodded, and turned to Whisper. "So, Shads-" "Don't call me that." "-was telling me that you saw something a bit weird. The news is running a major story about it, and a lot of people caught sight of your flight down. Most of 'em are impressed. What did you see?" Sonic asked.

"Black mass, moving and writhing as if real. It couldn't hurt Shadow, even though it was covering him. Angered by wisp energy, harmed by chaos energy."

"Black mass huh? Hmm...anything else?" Sonic asked. He looked as if he was wracking his head for something, anything.

Orange popped out of her canister. "Yeah. Moved through purple portals, could fly, and had no real face to it."

Sonic tilted his head. "Translation? I don't have a translator on me, sorry Orange."

The wisp shrugged, but looked determinedly towards Whisper. "She said it moved through purple portals, could fly, and had no face," Whisper translated.

"Purple portals? Like...black with purple fire on the outside? Hold on..." Sonic said as Orange nodded. He pushed himself off the chair, grabbing his crutch as he hobbled, surprisingly fast for how injured Whisper had seen him, to a small bookshelf. "After The End came down on us in Starfall, I started looking up more of the monsters that Eggman was sending after us," he explained, pulling out a small key.

Inside the bookshelf was a series of leather bound, musty smelling books. "I found most of the ones that he used, but the one you're referring to makes me think of it as something naturally occurring. Which means it's probably up there with Gaia, both light and dark. Not Chaos, not Metal Sonic, and definitely not the Nega wisps."

His hands perused the spines until he found a small one, its side coming undone. He pulled it out gently, making sure to lock the bookshelf up afterwards. "We keep these locked up because otherwise Mata might get ideas. That necromancy of hers..."

"She summoned another one, by the way. A flicky. Smarter variety, said it used to be in a robot?" Whisper asked.

"I'll ask Amy," Sonic waved it off. "Wouldn't be the first time Mata's done something like that. Honestly, we banned her from summoning Eggman at least, and I know he would come out here just to taunt me before he disappeared, so she at least hasn't done that one."

"How come you aren't nervous about that? She brings souls back," Shadow asked. "That seems like the kind of thing you'd be against."

"Have kids, Shadow. You'll learn the importance of leaving them to do stupid things once in a while. And Mata says she isn't hurting them, and as Uncle Chuck proved, they do move on after a while. It just...takes some time. And I'll be honest, it is kinda creepy but it helps them and us move on, I think."

Sonic opened the book, looking through some of the dusty pages. It was a sight that Whisper had never seen before, but he looked just at home here as he was running around. For a few moments, Whisper saw him shift, his old self that was just as old as she was.

"Found it! Okay," Sonic said, opening up the full page. "Yeah, that tracks with what I remember. So what you faced was a Time Eater."

"Time Eater? Like that one you fought?" Shadow asked. Whisper turned to him. They had fought one of those things before?

"Not quite. That one had been heavily modified by Eggman, and we were fighting it on our turf, not its. See, the Time Eaters aren't so much a race as they are just a particular body of power.," Sonic said, reading through the paragraphs. "Let's see, Time Eaters are a known danger to the Time Stones, and essentially 'eat' time energy. When a Time Eater is around, it generally means that a time traveler is around as well."

"It can track Whisper, then?" Shadow asked.

"It can track them all," Sonic confirmed. Orange nodded.

"I knew I saw something back at the valley. I knew it! I just didn't know what it was!" she said. Green and Cyan came out of their canisters, followed by the other two.

"How come you didn't say anything!? That's kind of the thing you should speak up about!" Green hovered.

"Because I didn't know for certain! And Cyan was too busy upchucking bus stop sushi-"

"To be fair, it wasn't bad. Also to be fair, that wasn't me, that was Pink," Cyan interjected.

Pink nodded. "Actually wasn't half bad either, although I could do without the latter half-"

"Please be quiet," Whisper whispered. Immediately all five wisps fell silent. "Thank you. How do we beat it?" she asked.

Sonic shrugged. "As far as I know, you don't. Chaos energy exists beyond time, which is why the chaos spear was, to quote Mata and Thunder's Pokemon games, super effective. Wisp energy though, usually doesn't, but it could be that because your wisps are out of time too..."

"So effectively only the things its hunting and chaos energy can actually hurt it. How did you win last time, exactly, again?" Shadow asked with narrowed eyes. "Because if I remember, the rest of them were too busy getting in the way and screaming at you for me to see anything."

"Joined up with my younger self and went Super Sonic on it. Two Super Sonics? Even one would be enough...eventually," Sonic answered.

"I can't go Super," Whisper said. The wisps looked at each other, subtly shaking their heads. Did they know something that she didn't?

"Yeah, it's a rare skill apparently. Tails and Knuckles actually grew out of it, but I'd done it so many times I still have the ability. Shads-" "Don't call me that..." "-may still have it too. But that also takes all seven chaos emeralds."

"Which Tails has one."

"Yep! So...no going Super on this one. Which is a good thing because it's probably wild, which means they're a lot tougher. See, Time Eaters only go for prey they know they can beat. We beat the other one because it was controlled by Eggman. If It hadn't been, there's no way we would have won."

"It's tougher without the augmentations?"

"Much tougher. Even two Eggman...Eggmen? Even with two of him, the augments actually pulled the Time Eater apart so it wasn't capable of most of its actual powers."

"And you know what these are?" Whisper asked.

"Probably the only one who has any idea," Sonic shrugged. "What I figured out with Tails' help, Time Eater's don't actually have mass. That's why they can fly. They can coagulate, but it's only when they have full physical form that they're truly dangerous. If you had let it hit you, the most you would have felt is a little nibble."

"So I overreacted?"

"Nah, because those 'little nibbles' would add up quick. And it'd probably reform around you, so you'd be trapped...not a good way to try to fight it from the inside. Not to mention we'd have no way of knowing what happened."

"What do you mean? She'd be right there," Shadow said. "We'd hear her over the radio. As much as we wouldn't want to."

"Time Eaters literally eat time. It's in the name. Which means something that's out of time? It eats them. And then erases them, so no one would even remember they exist."

"And that's what Eggman was trying to do to you?" Shadow asked Sonic. Whisper felt her face pale; she had been that close to just being...erased?

No. To being undone. Was this what Mata was talking about? The feeling of being so close to the end...of having defied death and fate by just the hair?

"Eh, he didn't know it at the time. He thought the Time Eaters literally ate time, versus eating time energy and eating anything that was out of time. if he hadn't augmented it so it listened to him, it would have eaten him too."

"That...would have been bad."

"Could have been worse. If it ate us but not him he would've succeeded at taking over the world. Multiple times! Try resolving that paradox...you okay there Whisper?" Sonic asked.

The wisps came down and slowly bumped her on the shoulders. "I'm all right," Whisper answered. She wasn't, of course, but she could at least make them think she was telling the truth. Sonic gave her a raised eyebrow, but shrugged.

Sonic looked back down at the book, before he snapped it shut. "And that's about all the information I got. Tails may know more, if he has them on his lab computers but that's at the Mystic Ruins or Central City."

"What happens if the Time Eater had caught Shadow, while he was using chaos energy?" Whisper asked, dreading the answer.

The blue hedgehog shrugged. "Not sure. Probably nothing, maybe it would've gotten him eaten too."

"You know, Faker, if there's a chance of me being eaten, that's probably something I should know."

"Eh, you would've been fine. You have Chaos Control. Whether or not you would've thought of that or not, that's up to you."

"You know anything more about Time Eaters, Orange? Actually that would've been a White thing, huh?" Pink asked.

"That sounds like a White. Maybe Crimson, if one of them were here. Hey Whisper, you gonna get any other wisps while you're here?"

"I think that would be a bad idea."

"Nah, see, Crimson's are kind of out of time all the time already, it's how they lock on to people because they're actually partially blind," Cyan explained. "So a Time Eater probably couldn't hit a Crimson, or they're natural enemies and we didn't even know."

"I doubt it," Shadow said. "Sonic, did you see any Time Eaters in the Lost Hex?"

Sonic blinked, wondering where this change of subject came from. "Uh...no? I wouldn't have either way, because I technically wasn't out of time, I was in the proper time just out of the proper time frame. It's a...weird kind of thing."

"Is that what happened on Little Planet?" Shadow asked.

Sonic looked away. "What's Little Planet?" Whisper asked.

"A small planetoid above Never Lake. It's where Sonic met Amy," Shadow answered. "Amy has mentioned about the time travel that occurred there."

Sonic rolled his eyes. "Not quite like that. So the time travel on Little Planet was facilitated by what's called the Time Stones, like the chaos emeralds but attuned to time energy. What that also means is that normally they'd be like the Time Eater grill on steroids. But they also project a barrier that prevents any Time Eaters from getting there, protecting its inhabitants who are used to all sorts of random time travel shenanigans."

"Could they bring me to the past?" Whisper asked. This was potentially another route they could use, if finding Tails didn't work out. Although how and why it wouldn't, Whisper didn't really want to know.

The word pounded in her head, again and again. Undo. Undo.

She was going to undo everything, wasn't she? She wondered if this is how Sonic felt the numerous times he went up against Eggman and victory seemed so hopeless and so far off.

Sonic shrugged. "Don't know. Probably. Little Planet's constantly going back and forth through time because of the time stone effects. Only comes to the present once each year, above Never Lake actually. If you need a place to run to, I'd suggest there. Little Planet's not supposed to be there for another four or five months though. You have time."

Time. Right...when there was what was essentially a boogeyman coming up from any which angle that could sneak up on her and eat her existence, she had time. There was supposedly a barrier though...but could she trust that?

Also it would eat the wisps existence too, and she couldn't have that. "Hey...we're gonna get out of this, okay Whisper? Why don't you talk to Violet, outside?" Orange suggested.

"How likely is the Time Eater to attack?" Shadow asked. "She's been in this time period for a while, and she managed to get all the way from one of Eggman's bases to the Restoration without seeing it."

"I wouldn't know. That's something Tails would though, I have no doubt he pulled a lot of research on Time Eaters as a whole. Including hunting patterns. It's likely this one barely even knew that Whisper was here until now."

"I'm going to get some air," Whisper said, pushing herself up. The wisps surrounded her like a protective halo of color as she opened the glass door. Immediately she could hear the sounds of someone working on the Tornado, small flashes of fire from a blowtorch.

She followed the rocks, ignoring the way she saw the small goalpost having been moved another twenty feet away, and stood outside the hangar's open door.

The purple fox was there, underneath the main fuselage. She was on some kind of skateboard thing that Whisper had only seen in Tails' workshops, on her back as she stared up at the opened up circuitry and boards. "Everything alright?" Whisper asked quietly.

Violet didn't seem to have heard her, as she didn't respond and probably hadn't looked up. It was hard to tell because of the welder's mask she had on, a long with the lead colored apron she wore. It was probably lead based, if she had to be honest. "Here, I know!" Cyan said.

Whisper tried to say something, anything, before Cyan went and imbued the blowtorch in Violet's hands. The flame extended to nearly four feet, a deeply colored cyan, and it probably heated it up by a lot considering that Violet started cursing anything and everything as she dropped it, making sure that it was nowhere near anything flammable.

The tirade went on for a surprisingly long time, and Whisper felt her ears cool as Violet took off the welder's mask. "Oh, hi Whisper," she said, her face almost Knuckles red rather than her usual violet. "I was uh...you heard all that?" she asked.

"I like her. I like her a lot. Can we keep her?" Pink asked. "Seriously, I think I learned new words from her."

"I think that's just another idea to keep her far away from you honestly..." Blue muttered under his breath.

"Yes. It was...I assume your parents don't know?" Whisper asked as she walked in. Cyan finally disimbued the blowtorch, immediately settling herself in the pilot's seat of the Tornado, starting to make plane sounds as she probably imagined herself an ace pilot.

"Who, Tails and Blaze, or Sonic and Amy?" Violet muttered. "Because the first two don't care, and the second two have more problems than the primary!" she answered. She bit out a growl before she grabbed the blowtorch again, this time making sure that it wouldn't burn her hands, and got back down on the skateboard. "And no, they don't."

"She's angry at them," Orange translated. Whisper nodded. She'd gotten that part at least.

"Not angry. Just...disappointed. Mata knows what's going on as well. How Thunder and Velocity don't, I don't know."

"What do you mean?" Whisper felt herself asking. This wasn't her fight, she was going to undo all of this, but...there was something more going on, something going on with all of them.

"Eh, don't suppose you'd tell them..." Violet sighed as she skated back out, making sure the blowtorch was out. "Mom, Amy, thinks we don't know about her shopping journeys out of the house. Mr. Sonic doesn't like it, so they fight about money a lot. And then there's the messages that they don't want me to see. Dad...Tails...had gotten a message from somewhere. I remember that much, and so he left us with Mom...my actual mom, Blaze. But then she had gotten a call to go to the Emerald Chamber, a special room in the house that Dad had built for her when they got together, to help with some emerald or another. Don't think it was the chaos though."

Whisper remembered seeing those emeralds that Blaze had. Seven colors, much like the chaos emeralds, but differently shaped. She remembered seeing Blaze charge herself with them, becoming a one woman army and taking down an entire armada of ships by herself. She nodded for Violet to continue.

"She drops us off with Sonic and Amy, telling us that she probably won't be gone too long. But then...the Emerald Chamber never opens up. It's locked from both sides, and the lock won't disengage from the outside until the lock from the inside is also disengaged. We know she's still alive from Mata constantly searching for her in the River, but...I don't know. Why hasn't she come back out yet?"

"Maybe she can't. Maybe something on her side is keeping her there and there really isn't much anyone can do about it?" Green suggested.

"See, I'd thought that. So uh...I hope you don't mind, but before you go to Spiral Hill can we stop by Central City?" Violet asked Whisper.

The wolf gave a quiet sigh. By all rights there was nothing wrong with it, but honestly she was already missing Tangle. But this was personal to the girl, which meant that she'd probably go even if they didn't want to. "That depends. Are you piloting us? I heard that Shadow was going to," Orange said quietly.

"Shad...? I hadn't heard that, but I'm not staying here," Violet answered vehemently. "No, I'm not just going to wait around! I'm going to be coming with you, I want to save Dad! Just as much as you want to get back to your time, I want to make sure Dad's safe, and then maybe we can figure out a way to save Mom too," she said, looking away quietly.

That was a good point. It was unlikely that Sonic and Amy would let Violet go with them. Whisper didn't blame them; the girl was young, and while she'd proven an able pilot already that didn't mean that she should come with them. "Please, Whisper!? You have to let me come. I'm the same age as Dad was when Sonic and him were going on their adventures."

"Oh, she has adventure in her blood alright," Pink murmured. "Seriously. Cyan, care to have an input?" he asked the cyan wisp, still in the pilot's chair.

Cyan made a 'whrrr' sound effect and pulled the imaginary stick upright. 'Mrrow, Mrrow, Mrrow,' she repeated.

"That'd be a no. She's rather involved," Blue mentioned. "Hey, Green, want to help me out here?" he went over and spoke into his...ear? Ear.

"I don't have any control over that. That's something for Sonic and Amy to talk about," Whisper answered. "I'm just a guest in their house."

Violet sat back down, a disgusted sneer on her face. "Yeah, and that's as likely as them talking for all of a few seconds," she cursed.

Whisper was telling herself that she shouldn't get involved, that this wasn't her time, but by the time she managed to convince herself this wasn't her problem she was already sitting down next to the girl. "And this is where you tell me to tell you all my problems and then magically nothing happens." Violet snarled out.

"Quite likely," Whisper agreed. "Which is why I wasn't going to. But I'll be here to listen, if you happen to gripe. Besides, Cyan's having fun," she pointed out to the cyan wisp, now acting even more in control of the Tornado. Green and Blue were creating fake blocks and small wind tunnels, actually hover tunnels, and reacted to what Cyan was doing. Pink was grinning and making some of the blocks spiky, adding an additional level of difficulty to it.

"I don't understand how they do it. They're so smart, and yet...they spend all day doing things like this. When I was fixing the Tornado up last time, they were just...chatting. And playing. And that's all they do," Violet complained. "How?"

"Childlike innocence, really, the same kind that was ripped away from your dad," Orange answered. "It's...hard to describe. We're energy beings. We're not like you or Whisper. We never have been. No one except Mother truly knows where we came from, although most of us have ideas."

"You have to be old. How can you be so old, been through so much...everything and still do this?" Violet said. "I'm just so tired of it. Tired of the faking. Tired of Sonic and Amy acting like they care when they don't. Tired of Mata and her endless optimism. Tired of Thunder and Velocity, acting like they're our cousins when they aren't."

Whisper nodded, but said nothing. This was a tired Violet, one who didn't know what their end path would be. She'd once cornered Tails who had done the exact same thing. It was kind of astonishing how similar they were.

Violet's fur color was different, obviously, and her snout shape was much more cat like than foxlike, but the eyes...those were all Tails. The intelligence behind them, that was all him. Not that Blaze wasn't smart, from what Whisper remembered of her she was, but not the way Tails was. A one in a million genius, and even luckier to be able to actually do something with it.

"You don't care, do you?" Violet asked. "That's why you're here. Because you don't care."

"I was taking into memory just how similar you and Tails were," Whisper answered. "You act a lot like him, even if you don't realize it. He was the optimistic one, but even he got tired at times," she continued.

"...Tell me the story?" Violet asked, her voice light and wistful. "I...only know the good things about Dad. I never heard any of the bad."

"I wouldn't call it bad. But...have you been told about the Metal Virus?" Whisper asked. Violet looked at her and slowly shook her head. "It was terrifying. The most terrible thing I've seen. Eggman unleashed a virus that could turn anyone into robots. These same robots could do the same to everyone they touched. An endless spreader, consuming the world."

"I...he beat that?"

"No. He didn't," Whisper shook her head. "I wasn't in the best of places either. Tangle hadn't made it out either. The only one who could beat the virus, who was infected by it, was Sonic. Tails though...he was this close," Whisper said, showing an inch between her thumb and forefinger. "This close to securing a cure."

"And...?"

"He failed."

"I...this doesn't sound like a happy story."

"It wasn't. He was kicking himself for days afterwards. Months. We holed up on Angel Island while we scouted out the chaos emeralds, letting Sonic and Silver go Super to handle it. But Tails...he never stopped kicking himself for it. If he had just been that much smarter, that much faster, he'd have been able to finish..."

"..."

"There was a time, some months later, that he and I talked, right outside the Restoration. He said the same things as you. 'How do they handle it? They got taken by Surge, used against you, and still they play!?' he railed. 'I'm just tired, Whisper, of it all. Tired of Surge, tired of Kit, tired of Metal...tired of Eggman. Tired of Sonic, even, sometimes.'"

"That...didn't sound like him."

"It doesn't," Whisper agreed, "But everyone has those times, Violet. Everyone," Whisper said as she hopped off the stool. She gave a small whistle, and immediately the wisps stopped playing, giving a small salute in the best way they could before going back into their canisters, except Orange.

She turned to the Tornado. "Can you outfit the Tornado with enough supplies to last a crash landing for ten days? I have a bad feeling," Whisper admitted. "We'll need fuel, too."

"Fuel's no problem for the Tornado. Just tell me when you want to go, and I'll make sure the Tornado is in ship-shop shape!" Violet said. There was a depressed look in her eye, that no matter how much she tried to fake it Whisper could see right through it. "Wait, how many people? For the supplies?"

Whisper glanced at her. She made a show of winking at her. "Two...better make it three. Just in case."

Violet grinned.

And we have our third. Fun fact: the first draft of this had the most amount of cursing I'd used in a long amount of time...by Violet of all people! Every other word was 'fuck' or 'shit'. I didn't think it was too in-character for a twelve year old girl, so I toned it down. Also Amy in the first draft was essentially cheating on Sonic, and the kids all knew. I got rid of that little subplot too, changing it to financial troubles instead.

Until Next Time!