The sun began to rise over the horizon and illuminated the hills and valleys of the zone. Birds began to sing, grass and flowers bloom in the light, and it shines on a bright, young golden fox sleeping in bed. Once the light hit his shut eyes, he slowly opened them. His fur is all fuzzy and messy as he rises from his bed. His body felt weak and tired still but he had to wake up and get ready. He looked at his alarm clock which displayed the time as 8:30 in the morning. He started his morning routine like normal. Brushing his teeth, combing his fur, planning the day, ect. He walked down the stars to start making breakfast but something very unexpected caught his eyes. He noticed his blue hedgehog friend in the dining room… reading books… lots of books…

"Sonic?"

"Huh? Oh! Hey, Tails." In the sudden realization of his buddy catching him reading, he quickly shut the book he was reading and put it aside.

"What were you just read-"

"Reading? Nothing, just some old books. I was really bored last night so I thought what else could bore me more than I already am." Sonic chuckled.

He looked closer to his friend and noticed his tired expression more than anything else before.

"Did you not sleep at all last night?"

"I did sleep… For a couple hours…"

Tails gave a look with one eyebrow raised.

"Ok, maybe an hour…"

He continued to stare,

"Ok, a half hour. I just couldn't sleep."

A sigh escaped the fox's mouth.

"Sonic, you need sleep! You're gonna pass out without-."

"Aww come on, Tails! You worry too much."

"I worry too much? Coming from someone who kept his past a secret and now he and his family are struggling."

Sonic pointed upward about to say a comeback but froze with his mouth open when he was caught.

"Fair point…"

"Sonic, you have to-"

"Tails, I'm fine." He interrupted.

"No you're not-"

"Yes I am."

"Sonic, you're pushing yourself too mu-"

Tails' talk was interrupted by an alert from their home computer. They both looked at each other for a brief moment before they rushed over to see what it was. Tails started using the keyboard so fast that not even Sonic could catch up. It looked to be that he was trying to decode a message but every attempt failed which left Tails stumped.

"What's wrong Tails?"

"We received a message of some kind but with no digital fingerprint on who sent it. I can't open it, every attempt just ends up failing. I don't understand…"

Sonic noticed his friend's frustration and took a look himself. He looked at the message and tried to see what it was about.

"Wait, look here." He pointed at the file name with a confused face.

"What is it?"

Tails looked at the title and read it aloud,

"Matters of Health: A Royal Update? What kind of title is that?"

"The kind of title from a resistance message. I remember a few of these back then. The reason you can't open it is because you never knew the resistance's code for messages."

Then, Sonic took over and ran a decode sequence of his own. A few seconds later, the message revealed itself. When he read it, his reaction was not too different from Manic's when he read it.

"Sonia's condition… No improvement… Current condition: Stable… All relatives are requested to rendezvous… There's no way…"

Before Tails could get a word in, Sonic ran out of the house in a blur. Leaving his fox buddy in the dark. Tails could've gone after him since he knew where he was going because of the coordinates attached to the message but he needed to pack. He quickly grabbed his backpack, filled it with scouting supplies, food, water, and anything else he needed for his journey. Then he walked around the corner into another room and activated his robot companion. Once it powered up, it barked loud and clear as it jumped onto its owner and licked his face. Tails laughed as he tried to get back up from being jumped by his faithful robo dog.

"T-pup! Get off me! Ha ha! Come on, I need your help. We're gonna go for a bit of a scavenger hunt!"

"Arf! Arf!" The robotic pup agreed.

It began to follow him as he grabbed some last minute items before taking off. Just before he reached the front door, he placed a note on a table with a picture frame of him and Sonic together in Station Square. He looked at the picture for a few seconds, took a deep breath, and left with his companion in tow.

"Come on, T-pup. We gotta go."

Off they went on the path toward a town forgotten and destroyed.

Time passed as Tails traveled from his home to what's left of Mobotropolis. His watch on his wrist displayed the time as 9:24. He had nearly spent an hour walking the journey. He didn't want to use his tails because his backpack was too heavy for sustained flight.

The area was exactly as it was when he first arrived. The destroyed building, robots, and other debris. One thing that was missing was the smoke and fire. Once he found a suitable spot, he pulled out a device from his backpack, pressed a button, and placed it on the ground. After a few beeps, it began to expand into a large tent. He opened the flap of the entrance and his robotic canine jumped in. He pulled out another device which unfolded into a table. Then, he pulled out a drone and a computer. A few key presses later, the drone spun its propellers and flew out of the tent.

"There, now all I have to do is wait until the scans are complete. Then, I could try to scout the points of interest from any unusual data."

He placed his computer on the table and began to set up his recreational supplies. He pulled out a pillow and sleeping bag. Food and water and a book he reads in his spare time. He never really got back into the book since this whole ordeal. Now he could because of the wait. He sat on his sleeping bag and started reading with his T-pup laying in his lap. He chuckled and started petting him before he continued reading. But after he read a few sentences. He glances back to his computer screen which now shows a map beginning to grow progressing larger.

"Hold on, mom. I'll find you, even if it takes me all day…"

As the sun rises and shines on more land, one could see a streak of blue zoom across the fields from afar. This would've been his normal routine, running his morning jog. However, it was for a more serious reason. He ran and ran until he found the rendezvous point in some kind of forest. Now comes the worst part, waiting. He never liked to wait for any reason, let alone waiting to see his sister in her condition.

"From studying something beyond your comprehension to waiting to see an anonymous individual. Can't say this wasn't an improvement."

"If you were beyond my comprehension, I wouldn't have gotten this far."

Sonic was getting tired of hearing that same voice over and over again.

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean you are not as divine as you think."

He's been trying to find anything relating to Nyxus or the dark magic of old times but many of the history books he read had very little information. It was useless to him. However, the cave ruins from Angel Island might give more than any other book on the planet.

Nyxus chuckled,

"Let your feeble mind dream that all you want if it will make your end more comforting."

"Listen here, Nyx. I've about had it with you acting all high and mighty. You have been saying a lot of words about how great you are, but all I see is you stuck in my head not doing a single thing! Just you wait until I'm done seeing my sis. Because after that, I'm gonna make you regret it! It's time we- GAH!"

A sudden jolt of pain ceased his speech as he tumbled to the ground. Aura circled around his head as he lay unconscious.

"Fool. If only you knew of my plan to escape this mortal mind. I just have to wait until the time is right. Then, my associate will free me and I will have the pleasure of killing you…"

Sonic's eyes slowly shut into darkness. Unaware of someone appearing through the bushes and trees approaching him.

The drone scanned the entire area at least 3 times before he had any clue to his mother's location. In between searches, his drone had to return to recharge before its battery died completely and went into freefall. When it reached noon, he pulled out his packed lunch to eat while he worked on some calculations. He packed a small sandwich with celery. While he ate however, his companion whined. He stopped what he was doing and looked over with a smirk.

"What? You want this? You're a robot, you can't eat this!"

His T-pup whined even more in response. His head looked down as he laid on his blanket. His fox owner laughed to himself.

"Did you think I would forget about you?

The T-pup's eyes flung back up and a smile appeared as he saw his owner reach in his bag and pulled out a treat. The T-pup jumped up and down while barking, almost begging, for Tails to give it to him.

He chuckled once more,

"Here, take it."

He tossed and T-pup caught it in his mouth, enjoying every last bite of it. A few barks of joy escaped its voice box and jumped onto Tails' lap.

"H-Hey! You almost made me drop my sandwich!"

The T-pup just closed its eyes and started to sleep in his lap. Tails froze for a few moments before slowly placing his hand on its head.

Once he finished his lunch, he put his computer to the side as it ran multiple calculations in the background. With T-pup in his lap, he was pretty much stuck there until he absolutely needed to move. His eyes felt tired and heavy all of a sudden. Maybe he didn't get enough sleep as he thought. He couldn't fight the urge any longer and his eyes fully shut, drifting off into dreamland.

Sonic slowly regained consciousness with a throbbing pain in his head. His vision was blurry and spotty. It felt like he jumped head first onto a moving truck. His senses began to return and immediately felt the cold air around him. His eyes opened fully and noticed the darkness around him. He tried to move but soon realized his limbs were restrained, metal chains locking his wrists and feet. No matter how hard he tried to break free, the chains wouldn't budge.

"Well well well. Look who finally woke up."

"You…" Sonic gritted through his teeth.

Nyxus appeared from the darkness. Still in the same form as Sonic only darker with pure white eyes.

"What? Too harsh? Good."

"Twisting my brain so that you could knock me out? Impressive, but why the chains? If you did this just so you would have a private chat in my mind, what's the point? I'm not letting you out."

"But you see Sonic…"

That voice, it can't be…

A figure of darkness formed besides Nyxus. A rather egg shaped form. He approached through the darkness and it faded away as he breached it.

"He didn't need you to escape your ignorant mind."

"Eggman?! But how?! How did you find me?"

"Oh Ho Ho! It was quite simple really, I interpreted a transmission that was sent to you and and rewrote a few details of the message. I knew you would run towards the given coordinates with no hesitation. After I captured you, the dark chaos power within you was easy to spot. Easy enough to pinpoint the source and extract it from your body."

"Yes. Now all I need is a body of my own and I will finally be complete!"

Sonic's anger rose but not as intense as before with Nyxus. He turned his head back to his doppelganger,

"Body of your own?"

"Dr. Robotnik has been designing and constructing me a body to call my own. Then, I would have the pleasure of eliminating you."

"All this time you were working with him? I thought you wanted to kill him?"

"Foolish child, I only pretended to kill him so that he could begin the process."

"Process?"

This time Eggman took over,

"Before Nyxus supposedly annihilated me, I was transported to one of my bases. Thankfully, it was the one I needed to prepare the tools I needed for the extraction. Then, I used a device from the plans I intercepted from your comrades of the past to instantly transport me to your brother."

It all came together, each explanation they gave started to add up in Sonic's mind. It all made sense.

"You let yourself open in that beam… You wanted to get captured… And you were actually willing to kill Cream… JUST TO KEEP UP THIS FACADE?!"

In an instant, Eggman rushed forward and clutched Sonic's neck, almost crushing his airway shut.

"At this point, rodent, I am willing to do anything to get rid of you and your pesky friends. I've dealt with you long enough. Maybe I should just-"

A hand with a dark aura grabbed onto Eggman's arm tightly.

"I still need him alive. We can kill him after I get a new body."

He reluctantly released his grip and backed away. Once the hedgehog was able to breathe again, he spoke with more questions.

"How is this possible? How could you remove Nyxus from my head? How could you even know about all of this?

Eggman chuckled as he turned away,

"You see, Sonic, I would've never known anything about it if it wasn't for Nyxus himself. One night, a vision of him appeared in my mind. You could say he appeared in my dreams."

"I used the same connection technique your ignorant mother used to contact Dr. Robotnik."

The doctor tapped a few buttons and a variety of holographic screens appeared above the consoles.

"I did some more digging and found rumors of a dark chaotic being known as Nyxus was foretold among those with advanced chaos powers. Nyxus was trapped in the confines of chaos energy itself, only to be free if one's heart was impure enough from rage and sadness and had the power strong enough. Many believed Nyxus was a myth, but your actions have proved the opposite."

He turned back to Sonic as an array of new screens appeared with designs of some kind of machine.

"As for how I was able to remove Nyxus from your mind, I created a sophisticated device that would pinpoint the most potent source of dark chaos energy and extract it. With the help of this…"

He pulled his hand away from his back and revealed a cyan chaos emerald shining between him and Sonic.

"Where did you get that?" Sonic shouted.

"Oh, a couple of your friends were holding onto this emerald for me. Once I arrived to pick it up, they graciously handed it over."

"That's a lie!" Sonic spat, "No one would willingly give you an emerald."

Eggman laughed as if he already knew Sonic was going to say that.

"You're right, but I persuaded them to give it up and they obliged…"

He pressed another button on his console and all the screens but one faded away. That screen didn't display any research or schematic like before. Instead, it showed 2 live camera feeds of two different cells. One was made of ice and rock and the other was made of metal and heat. Each of them had one mobian inside. At first, it looked as if he captured two civilians and put them inside but he slowly recognized those two. One was a purple cat and the other a silver white hedgehog, both beaten and bruised in their cages.

He attacked and captured Silver and Blaze…

"After I was done with them, I threw the cat in the most freezing cell I ever constructed so she could not use her fire. Then, I threw you time traveling friend into a cell of pure fire. Not only would the heat tire him out, but I believe it has some- psychological effect on him as well."

Sonic hung there in horror watching his friends in cells specifically made to torture them. To do something like this is beyond evil. Maybe he should've made sure he was dead instead of capturing him. He stayed in silence but his body language and appearance showed otherwise.

"Are you impressed, rat?"

Bad move…

"I'm not… a rat… I'm- a- HEDGEHOG!"

A bright flash of blue light blinds his captors. With this temporary advantage, Sonic used his newfound strength to break through his chains. One wrist broke free, then the other. Then, he pulled off the chains from his feet and spin dashed out of the room. He spun so fast he shredded the door with his quills and almost left a faint fire trail as he bolted down the corridors.

Eggman was enraged from his escape.

"Oh, no you don't you little-"

Nyxus grabbed his arm and held him there.

"Let him go, he is not essential to our plan. You make my vessel, destroy the village, take down his friends and family, and last of all we finally end his miserable life."

Eggman's smile returned and a few chortles escaped his throat.

"Right… he won't last for much longer."

Sonic sped through corridor after corridor trying to find his friends. They won't survive much longer in the conditions he's seen them in. If he doesn't find them soon, Blaze might die of hyperthermia and Silver might die of heatstroke! He's got to go faster than before to find them. So fast that he almost didn't notice the heat rising around him.

"Phew, who turned up the heat? Wait, heat!"

He honed in on the source towards a large cargo door. The door was extremely hot to the touch, this had to be where Silver was trapped. He punched the control panel which short circuited the locking mechanism. Once the door opened, a wave of stronger heat hit him like an actual wave. He entered and found Silver locked in a cage above molten lava. He had no time to lose.

He used his power to chaos control into the cage, pick his time traveling friend up, and chaos controlled back outside. He carried him away from the heat and somewhere safe so that his temperature would stabilize. He arrived at one of the escape pods Eggman usually has whenever his plans fail. Once the cold air reached him and entered his body, he instantly regained consciousness.

"Ugh…"

"Silver, are you alright?"

"B-Blaze… S-She's t-trapped…"

"I'll get her, just wait right here."

He sped off in the other direction trying to feel any drop in temperature like how he felt the heat to find Silver.

Nothing.

He moved into some kind of lift which lowered him to another floor. He continued his search and noticed another temperature drop as he reached a similar door. He busted in once more and there was ice and mist of cold air flowing all around him. He noticed the purple cat huddling in a corner trying to conserve heat. He ran over and noticed the ice forming sporadically across her body. He quickly picked her up and jumped out of the room. He entered back into the lift which sent him up to the floor where he left Silver and arrived at the escape pod. He carefully placed Blaze next to Silver and noticed her blank expression.

"Blaze? Blaze, can you hear me?"

He placed two fingers on the side of her neck attempting to feel a heartbeat but he didn't feel one…

"No…"

As fast as he could without injuring her, he carefully placed Blaze's head down on the floor and tried to resuscitate. Both hands on her chest and pushing down in intervals.

"Come on, Blaze. Stay with us."

The commotion caught Silver's attention and fear. With what little strength he had left, he crawled over almost out of instinct trying to get to her. Sonic kept trying to revive her but not a single change occurred. After a while he slowly ceased his attempts and moved back much to Silver's dismay.

The silver hedgehog inched closer and placed a hand on her cheek.

"Blaze.."

A hand touches his shoulder and he knew who it was but he didn't care.

"I'm sorry, Silver…"

He gave no verbal response but his eyes said it all as tears began to flow. He gained even more strength and stood on his knees and cradled her in his arms.

"Come back, please…"

Sonic gave him a few more moments of silence before opening the escape pod. Usually he would face resistance from bots but there wasn't a single one to stop him.

Silver didn't want to move. He just wanted to hold Blaze for the rest of his life. Not caring about anything else around them.

"I'm so sorry, Blaze."

Another moment of silence passed as he continued to hold her. But then, another hand touched his shoulder. He thought it was Sonic but it was too cold. He opened his eyes and saw the purple cat's eyes open with life behind them. She barely had a smile on her face but it was holding. All sadness and pain faded in an instant and he hugged her with all his might.

"Blaze!"

She didn't say anything but returned the hug in kind. They separated and looked at each other.

"Blaze, I'm so-"

"It's okay." She whispered.

"Um, I hate to interrupt but we should go." Sonic motioned to the pod.

Silver picked up Blaze bridal style and jumped inside. Sonic wasn't too far behind and followed. He shut the door, pressed a few buttons on the console, and the pod began to power up.

"Brace yourselves!" He announced as he jumped into a seat.

They all braced as the pod ejected itself and flew quite a distance away from the ship and crashed landed in a field.

They escaped but never knew what really awaited them from Eggman…