Chapter Two – The Cosmos
The Multiverse – The Greater Cosmos
Sukko landed on nothing. He immediately activated his Super-Flight, to stay steady, and not float away. He blinked hard, as he was partially blinded by the bombardment of the nearby sun. He instinctively put up his hand, to block out some of the light, so he could see clearer. As his eyes adjusted to his new surroundings, he jaw just dropped. He was perfectly hovering, in thin air, or more accurately, in no air at all. He was in the harsh vacuum of deep space. He was surround by intense darkness, in the empty eternity. He panted. He could see, hear, and breath normally, without a single problem. He looked down at his hands. He should have been freezing to death, and yet, he had no shivers, and his own body was easily generating it's own atmosphere of which to survive. It did it automatically, he wasn't even knowingly casting any Magic.
The truly was a God.
He heaved. He vaguely remember this, when he traveled the universe, of his own dimension, when he ascended with the Wisps. But that was so long ago, and so much had happened, that truthfully, he just forgotten. As his initial panic settled, he looked around. But in the far distance, he could see something familiar. A planet. Activating his Super-Flight, he pushed himself forwards through the vacuum of space, not fast, but curiously, as he headed towards the blue and green sphere, which now came into view. Beautifully spinning on it's axis, the weather clouds happily moving across it's surface.
Sukko knew it. Home. Mobius, but to his confusion and downright astonishment, it wasn't alone. He could see something directly behind the planet. Sukko shifted slightly, flying sideways to look, and he gasped. There was a second planet, directly behind it, looking identical, then another, and another. A long line of planets, multiple Mobius's that stretched out as far as the eye could see. He then swirled around him, and saw the other side of the line, as further planet copies, stretching out in the opposite direction. Each planet seemed to be separated from it's neighbour, but a massive invisible forcefield that surrounded each planet, which kept the dimensions from bleeding into one other.
Suddenly, Sukko looked up, and further lines of planets, criss-crossing over and under each other, above his head, and thousands more below his feet.
The Multiverse.
But somehow, Sukko had managed to remove himself completely from the Multiverse and see it separately, from the outside in. He suspected that inter-dimensional portals could also transport from one dimension to another, but never here, the greater cosmos looking down the Multiverse itself, from above.
Sukko gulped. This was utterly overwhelming, as he saw millions of versions of Mobius surrounding him. It was stunningly beautiful, as the planets hung in space, lined up together perfectly like necklaces, lying one on top of another, both above and below him, but at the sheer quantity of planets, Sukko just gasped.
He had no idea there was that many, but as the Sorcerer frowned. Did anyone? He heaved. He suspected no one did. But then Sukko suddenly felt chilled. Despite being in among all these planets, each one of them, his home, he suddenly felt very lonely out here. Now outside of the Multiverse looking down from above, the Psychic Link, had been seriously stretched. It wasn't severed, that would kill, but his missed having his brother, his Sonikku, by his side, on the other end. But no, he was alone in this, and he knew it.
So what now? How could he fix this? Could it be solved? Sukko had no idea, as he desperately frowned. How did the Universe, then subsequently, the Multiverse become like this? What happened on Mobius to cause such a change? Sukko had some knowledge about Multiverses. That they were never created from scratch like this. All Multiverses are created when a Universe, a singular original timeline, collapses, for whatever reason, creating thousands or in this case, millions of exact copies of itself, which then co-exist alongside with it, simultaneously. But this arrangement wasn't stable. They would constantly shift and change, causing havoc for those caught on the lines of planets, leading to losses.
The ideal solution would be to return the entire Multiverse to a singular Universe again, with the original timeline. Then the constant movements would stop. Sukko gulped. That was impossible, not without killing billions, if not trillions of people, everyone on every planet, in every dimension. Sukko growled. No, there had to be another way. All he could think of was time travel. But his knowledge of this was limited. He knew it was possible to time travel between two points in time, in the same dimension, but was it possible between dimensions? Sukko shrugged, he had no idea, not entirely sure what it would achieve.
Regardless, he wouldn't find the answers here, out the cold cosmos of the Multiverse. The solution lay here, in the planets themselves, or one, in particular. The planet that was the original timeline. The one that started it all. Sukko gulped. The planet itself, and the people on it, may not even themselves know that, but as Sukko looked from one line of planets to the next, all of the looking to him, utterly identical, which one was it? It was like looking for a needle in a cosmos sized haystack, it was impossible. But then Sukko frowned. No, not impossible, improbable. He backed away from the lines of planets and observed them from a distance, somewhat removing himself from them. If being one of twins had taught him anything, was that there was no such think as identical. There were always differences, even if they were not always obvious.
Take himself and Sonikku, or Sonic The Hedgehog, the famous Hero of Mobius. Perfectly identical twins. Their environmental factors made the twins easy to tell apart, but genetically, it was perfect. Not even a paternity test could tell them apart. But they weren't the same. They had the Identical Twin Markers, or I.T.M.'s. There were the one hundred or so markers, out of trillions, in the DNA that can tell identical twins apart. So no, not flawless. So each planet was different, to every other planet, in it's own but tiny unique way. All Sukko had to do was fine that difference, and it would lead him straight to the original timeline.
But checking each planet individually, by visiting each of the dimensions separately, would take eons, so there had to be another way. As he looked, he'd occasionally spy a flash of deep purple on the planet. He frowned wondering what he was, but when he looked closer, but not beyond the dimension's retaining forcefield, he realised what it was. Naturally occurring inter-dimensional portals, appearing randomly between the planets. Another thing, Sukko suspected, that was caused the Multiverse's instability. But it still didn't answer as to which planet was the original timeline.
After searching for what felt like hours, he was almost gave up until out of nowhere, it happened. Suddenly, he grabbed his ears and screamed as the Psychic Link exploded. Thousands, upon millions of whispers and noises bombarded him all at once, completely overwhelming him. He gritted his teeth, desperately for it to stop. It was horrendously painful, but then as his powerful mind, and huge mental strength, began to process what was happening, he begin to pick out the voices. Or more specifically, one voice.
Sonic.
But millions of versions of him. Sukko realised that the lines of planets, he was looking at, every single version of Mobius, his brother was down there. He could hear his voice, all his voices, out here, all at once. But Sukko's mind was extremely powerful and his sense of perception vast, so after staring at one random planet, in a long line of thousands of others, finally the Sorcerer succeeded. He heard him. His twin, down there on the planet below, minding his own business, in his dimension, getting on with his life. He had no idea that Sukko was even there, listening in, as he couldn't feel him, or even answer back.
Sukko cheered. That was the clincher. That was difference. As Sukko observed one planet after another, searching for his brother voice in each, he noticed the voice was slightly different in each. It was incredibly subtle, but it was there. With each version of Mobius, the in-house version of Sonic had something different about his life, that varied from all other dimensions. Sometimes, it was fighting Eggman backwards, or his main territory moved location, or that a weirder series of events happened, or Sonic had different friends. Something changed for his brother between the dimensions, when they were compared with one another. But what Sukko did observe was that, there was always a Sonic, a Tails and an Eggman, in every dimension, them often battling each other.
Sukko growled, that can't be coincidental, and yet, as he remembered back to his own dimension, from where he came, he couldn't remember an incident between the three of them that could have caused the creation of the Multiverse. He heaved. He wasn't going to find the answers to that here. But now he'd found the differences between the planets, it still didn't help narrow down the potential planet that was the original timeline. The Sorcerer didn't know what the planet's unique differences were. He swore. He had to find that planet. The answers lay there, as to solving the mystery of the Multiverse and why it was here.
He sighed, deep in thought. Picking a random planet to visit, was a complete waste of time, he'd be at it for the rest of eternity searching that way. Also listening into every single planet was also taking an age, he had to speed this up. He smirked. Isn't that what being a Blue Hedgehog was all about. But listening into every single voice at distance was difficult, he was just bombarded with to much noice, but he just shoved a telepathic wall up and blocked it, mainly for his own sanity.
No matter how strong Sukko was, the Psychic Link was always stronger, and if it goes, he and Sonikku, would go down with it, and there was nothing either of them can do about it. Sonikku was heavily reliant on it, and as Sukko would later find out, all 'Sonics' were. But as the Sorcerer was deep within his thoughts, he suddenly, felt a huge sense of foreboding all around him. A deep darkness. He frowned, not fearing it, at all, but was incredibly confused. He gasped.
"What the?" He stammered, then suddenly it happened. The huge numbers of infinite lines of planets all around, above and below him, all began to twist and contort, completely otherworldly. The lines of planets, a though like beads on a string, began to sway up and down, rather violently. Then out of nowhere, the entire Multiverse shifted, completely around Sukko, leaving him untouched, as the entire Multiverse, the millions of version of Mobius all moved at once. It shifted, on mass, around Sukko, in a circular motion, moving around on a pivot point. The direction was irrelevant as the Sorcerer grabbed his ears, as there was a almighty roar of noise as the Multiverse did this, and then a enormous cluck as it stopped, quickly settling into it's new position.
Sukko gasped, panting hard. He looked around. He was in an entirely new part of the Multiverse, despite the fact he hadn't moved from his exact position in space. He frowned.
So the Multiverse's instability, was causing it to shift? He looked at the one of the planets, and listened in. The locals, including his own brother, were completely non the wise as to what had just happened to them. The shifting of the Multiverse seemed to have no effect on them. Sukko frowned. No, it would have had some effect. Something like the shifting of the Multiverse itself would have been felt, but how noticeable was it? Would the locals have even understood what it was? Sukko suspected not. But as he thought more about the shifting, he noticed the entire Multiverse had moved, like it was circling around it, a pivot point.
Suddenly, Sukko had a brainwave. With so many millions of versions of Mobius, criss-crossing in lines of planets over each other, which one was the main timeline? The central privet point. It had to be. The very centre of the Multiverse. The only world not affected by the shifting, which Sukko now suspected materialised as strange occurrences and mysterious happenings everywhere else. But now, he could only find the central pivot point, when the Multiverse shifted itself. He swore. When would that happen again? The Sorcerer suspected the events were entirely random, but he didn't get a change to debate that as he heard an almighty roar, shaking the entire Multiverse right to it's core. Sukko stopped.
"What was that?" He hissed to himself, but when a second roar rang out, Sukko found himself putting the accelerator down on his Super-Flight, and heading straight towards the gruesome sound. He screamed at speeds far beyond Mach one, weaving perfectly between the vast numbers of perfectly identical planets. His anger exploded as he sped out if the Multiverse and upwards towards the nothingness of the cosmos. He flew with a mixture of intense curiosity as to what the vast noise was, and deep loyalty. Multiverse or not, Mobius was his home, even if he wasn't wanted or even known there, he didn't care. He was from a family of heroes and giving up was not the Blue Hedgehog way. Finally, he saw it, on the very edge of the Multiverse.
Sukko learned to his horror, as it shifted, it had ripped a hole in space and time, creating a huge bright white tear right across the cosmos. Unfortunately, it was allowing gigantic monsters to get in. It roared again, it still shaking the Multiverse, Sukko without a moment's thought, just charged right at it. It was a most horrendous looking monster, Sukko had seen in his life. It seemed to consisting of a enormous, spherical, dark grey jelly-like substance for the main body, with hundreds of dark, extremely blank, black eyes. Un between the eyes, were even more very long, incredible thick tentacles, waving around everywhere. When the creature roared, then whole thing just vibrated intensely, creating huge amounts of sound. It was grotesque, and Sukko had no idea which was the front or back end, but it didn't matter. The creature began to slowly make it's way, from the tear in space time, by rolling across the cosmos, towards the Multiverse, to devour planets. The Sorcerer had to act, now.
Innocent people would die of he didn't. Especially if a planet got devoured, included his own brother of that planet. As he quickly charged up is Magic, Sukko wondered how many planets had been lost, from the Multiverse, in this way. More then he dared admit, suspecting that versions of his twin must have died out there, and he didn't even know. But as he looked back to the Multiverse behind him, before facing the monster, the Doctor in him, kicked him. The Multiverse was just too large and too vast to save everyone. That was impossible. He was just one Hedgehog. A God, but still only one person. A Doctor could never save everyone, but the Doctor's Code always stated to save all they could.
Sukko growled. Well, the Multiverse now was no longer undefended. It had it's champion, as the mighty Sorcerer, threw powerful bright white balls of Magic at the oncoming monster. But they just bounced right off him, but caught his attention, as the monster just charged straight at Sukko. The Sorcerer quickly realised that using Magic for Magic's sake, and sheer power alone was not going to defeat this monster. He was going to have to weaponise his Magic more specifically, to even stand a chance. He thought quickly as he desperately dodged the monsters attacks, but when one of the tentacles grabbed his leg, Sukko instinctively sent a Magical mixture of blue fire and telekinetic daggers, to slice through the horribly thick tentacle, granting him his freedom.
The creature recoiled, squealing in pain, and Sukko quickly noticed, that one, that worked and two, it didn't try to regrow or even heal the tentacle. Sukko doubted it could as he quickly formulated a plan, and flying though space, all around the Multiverse, and when he found a moment's peace, he set to work.
He growled, concentrating hard. The Magic exploded, and he pushed it down to just one hand. An almighty ball of light appeared in his clawed fingers, which quickly expanded to fill his entire hand. Suddenly, he held it aloft and and it elongated into something long and thin, which was being materialised out of thin air. It solidified into a somewhat short, but incredibly ornate, silver lined, pale blue staff, with a stunning crystal on the end.
Conjuring.
Immediately, Sukko grabbed it, his eyes still glowing a deep vivid blue, and immediately pointed the crystal of the staff, straight at the general direction of the monster. He teeth gritted and charged up the staff's crystal, with huge amounts of Chaos Sorcery, in the form of bright white light. Suddenly, he let it rip, the staff ricocheting back in his arm, it sending an enormous super-concentrated bright white ball of pure Chaos Energy, across space, straight at the creature.
It punctured right though the vast monster, him desperately squealing in pain, it tearing straight through the creature as deep disgusting orange thick goo, dripped everywhere from it's gruesome innards. He wildly panicked, waving it's tentacles around erratically, but then intense anger kicked in, as it charged at the Sorcerer yet again, using his tentacles to pushed himself across the cosmos, as well as roll, despite his horrendous injury.
Sukko was panting hard. That chaos energy power shot took a lot out of him, the most powerful one he'd ever done. He used to do them regularly fighting the war against Eggman, back in his own dimension, but it had been years since he'd done it. Literally not since the war against Eggman, in his dimension, ended. He hadn't needed to. Casting such high level Magic, far beyond his limit, should have put him on his knees, but with the monster coming for him again, the Sorcerer could only see one outcome of this fight and he was hating it with a passion. He couldn't see the creature and the Multiverse happily co-exist, so the monster had to go.
Which meant killing the creature.
Sukko heaved. He'd never killed anything in his life. He was a Doctor, and that had to mean something. But he didn't have a choice. Then Sukko's thoughts turned to someone dear to his. His husband, Stripes. A professional assassin by trade, he killed people for a living, and always said that killing was never pretty, but if it must be done, then to make it as quick as painless as possible. That was why Stripes always favoured the headshot between the eyes so much, it was an instant kill. Taking those words to heart, Sukko growled, grabbing the staff with both hands, and roaring with both sheer power and painful drain, he charged up the staff again, and sent another almighty power shot at the creature.
The aim was perfect as he blasted the creature, right in the centre, causing yet more damage, but Sukko didn't stand on ceremony, as he charged up staff again, sending ruthlessly powerful power shots, utterly bombarding the creature, not even giving it a chance to fight back. It panicked and screamed, then within minutes, as the final power shot landed perfectly, it disintegrated the creature to pieces, the screaming instantly stopping, leaving nothing but silence
Pieces of monster, eyeballs and tentacles, now lay scattered across the cosmos, the Multiverse was now safe and completely untouched from the battle. But as Sukko just let go of the staff, abandoning it, allowing it to drift slowly away from him, as he just curled up into a ball, right where he was floating in space and cried his heart out.
If you have to kill, to it quickly.
He did, but he now hated everything, intensely mournful and regretful. This was not what he had sighed up for when he became the God Of The Cosmos. But in hindsight, he shouldn't have been surprised. He was an incredible warrior, despite hating the fight, it didn't matter, he had the skills, the power. That's why he was chosen.
But Sukko knew that he couldn't stay where he was forever, he still had the original planet of the Multiverse, the main timeline, to find and an enormous tear in space time to repair. That was relatively easy, as he used his vast and incredibly powerful bright blue telekinesis, to grab both sides of the almighty tear and stitch them back together, and with his skills as a flyer, the job was done quickly. But as Sukko finished and turned back to the Multiverse, which has been behind him, he noticed something odd out the corner of his eye.
A planet.
Singular, alone, completely removed from the main Multiverse. Sukko frowned. What? Who was this planet? It was bathed in the light of a beautifully powerful yellow sun, which was practically right next to it, almost on top of it. But he quickly realised with the planet's layout of oceans and islands, it wasn't Mobius. But as he stared at the planet from above, he knew it. The feeling, the arrangement of land verse the oceans, and the enormous amounts of a very specific type of energy it was emanating. Suddenly, Sukko exploded in pure joy, as he realised he'd found an old friend.
The Sol Empire.
It was still interconnected to the Multiverse, as inter-dimensional travel between the Sol Empire and every version of Mobius was possible, but the Blaze's dimension was far enough removed from it, as not to be affected by it and it's position in space and time remains the same. The deep purple inter-dimensional portals don't land in the Sol Empire, not even manufactured ones, but there were several ways that inter-dimensional travel between Mobius and the Sol Empire that can be achieved. One, Magic, and two, the Sol Emeralds. Tails had managed to achieve travel using a inter-dimensional portal generator and a fake Chaos Emerald. But that was a total fluke and the process couldn't be repeated. The Sol Emeralds when travelling, just lands on the nearest Mobius, depending on the current orientation of the Multiverse.
That was why Blaze had rarely landed on the same Mobius twice, especially if the Multiverse was shifting frequently. Travelling inter-dimensionally, using the Sol Emeralds, didn't damage Blaze in anyway, and she was able to do as long as she liked, as many times as she wanted. The Multiverse shiftings, the purple inter-dimensional portals, which never landed in the Sol Empire, and the monsters attacks, left the planet completely unharmed, and due to it's permanently fixed location right next to such a powerful sun, safe by comparison. Blaze's Sol Emeralds, and it's resulting Fire Tornado, was the only method of inter-dimensional travel on and off the Sol Empire, as well as Sukko's incredibly powerful Magic.
He listened deeply from above. He happily heard Sonikku, from his dimension, down there, still in hiding, completely oblivious that his brother was home. The Psychic Link between them was somewhat numb. It had been for some time. Strained, as the twins were naturally drifting apart, and even though they couldn't talk, certain not when one of them was off planet, they could still send each other emotions as the usual happiness erupted all round. The Sorcerer could feel his brother's joy as he played with the children below. He smiled, but heaved. He'd missed his brother recently, but knew he'd have to move on from that. They couldn't stay together forever. They'd have to go their own ways and soon. But were they ready for it?
Sukko sighed, as he then tried to listen out for Everglade, Arthur and Blaze, but he couldn't through the dimensional forcefield barrier. He rolled his eyes at that. He have to inter-dimensional travel down there, if he wanted to talk to them. Truthfully, he was tempted, to try and iron things out between them, but suddenly, the enormous feeling of dark foreboding was back, creeping down his spine.
It immediately caused Sukko to whirl around, and speed fly right across the cosmos, back to the Multiverse. It was shifting again, except this time Sukko was outside of the Multiverse of intertwined planets of identical Mobius's, observing it from the outside. Watching hard, finally, he saw it. The entire Multiverse span on the central pivot point, and it was indeed a planet. The only planet in the entire Multiverse to remain stationary during the shifting. It's position in space and time was definitely fixed. The original. However, the shifting Multiverse didn't move much as last time, and span in the opposite direction, causing Sukko to conclude that the shiftings of the Multiverse didn't always rip a hole in time and space, and that in turn, didn't allow a monster through.
But it all was random, which made Sukko growl. That meant he'd have to be on standby, a lot, with large quantities of downtime, but when those monsters did arrive, he suspected they'd become the hardest and most difficult fights of his life. He really didn't want to do this on his own, for the rest of eternity. But who could he ask? Was anyone out there strong enough or as powerful as him? Could they be even trusted? Sukko had no idea, but regardless, that was for another time. Sukko now sped straight into the heart of the mangled mesh of identical planets, in long lines everywhere, right at the centre of it all.
The main timeline.
He'd found it, but as he approached it, it looked no different to any of other millions of version of Mobius. But then he heard something, straight down a telepathic connection, through his Psychic Link, and that immediately stopped him in his tracks. As he hovered above the planet, he listened in and heard his brother of the main timeline, the original, say something that no other 'Sonic', in the Multiverse at this point, since his arrival in the Greater Cosmos, had yet to say.
His name.
"Sukko?"
The Sorcerer's heart just leapt. There was no way he would have known, that the Sorcerer was out there, it must be entirely coincidental, but regardless, it meant one thing. The main timeline Sonic was looking for him, and right now, after that horrendous fight, he needed him right now. He heaved. The Sol Empire can wait, this was more important. Plus he knew he'd be back, to fight further monsters out here in the Greater Cosmos. He gritted his teeth and concentrated, activating his Magic to inter-dimensional travel down to the planet. He promptly vanished with a flash of bright white light.