Disclaimer: See last chapter.

Reflection

Shadow found himself in the middle of a dark, black void. There was no solid ground, and yet when he moved an inch forward, it landed on something solid, feeling like a year had passed.

"Is this what you wanted?" A voice called out from nearby. It was oddly grating, as if just hearing it brought screws to his head. "Is this how it ends?" The voice asked again.

"Who are you?" Shadow asked, his eyes gazing around every corner. He was expecting his night vision to kick in at any moment now, but instead all he found was more darkness, an infinite abyss of black and shadow that seemed to highlight his own existence all the more.

There was a laugh around him. "Who I am? That is a question that you should be asking. After all, who are you, Shadow the Hedgehog?"

Shadow rolled his eyes. "I've been over this," he answered simply. "You obviously know my name. Then let me ask again, what is yours," he dropped the questioning tone. There was no question in his voice anymore, ready and eager to take the fight to anyone and everyone.

The last thing he remembered was walking to the inner plaza of Zerotime. Then he felt a falling sensation, and here he was. How had Zerotime trapped him?

He couldn't feel the chaos emerald he always had on him either, so he couldn't just chaos control out of here like he usually could.

"I am but a shadow of Shadows," the voice rang out. Shadow blinked as the abyss...converged into a single point in front of him. A mirror reflection of himself, standing proud. The inhibitor rings that he had on him were almost shining, a far cry from the rusted ones that he kept on him.

A shadow of Shadows. "A reflection of me," Shadow stated simply. The reflection nodded. That wasn't the surprise then.

"Do you think you made good choices, Shadow the Hedgehog? Letting Rouge and Omega die the way they did? You told Whisper one thing, but you know you lied," the reflection said.

"I made the only choices I could. I didn't let them die."

"You could have fought more. Done more. Had you been there for them, they might have lived. And instead here you are. On another journey, with the one who abandoned you all..."

"She didn't have a choice," Shadow stated. His eyes narrowed. "Is there a point to this?"

"The point is what you may think. You are wrong. There is no getting out of here, Shadow. You may as well give up."

"I gave up once before," Shadow answered instantly. A connection that he knew he hadn't felt was suddenly there, as if it was always there. "I refuse to give up now. I refuse to give up on Whisper. She will make it home. By my name, I promise that," he snarled, the chaos energy coming easily to his hand.

The reflection laughed before a large yellow spear pierced its head, and the black dissolved from Shadow's vision.

Violet groaned as she forced herself to stand up. The last thing she remembered was walking into the plaza of Zerotime, with Whisper right behind them. She had stayed behind to...talk with the wisps? Yeah, that was it.

The wisps had wanted some words, and Violet had wanted to give them their privacy. They had admitted to her, the night before, that privacy was something that was new to them, and so they liked to celebrate it every time they got it.

And Whisper was very, very good at granting them privacy. Every time they wanted or needed something, she was there, and every time they wanted to be alone, Whisper allowed them to be, unless in combat situations, which they understood.

Planet Wisp was mostly pleasant to be in, except for the one time Eggman got involved. Sure, they had problems too, what with the black bomb wisps wanting to create new valleys and the tribe of pink spikes wisps deciding to make a new game called spikeball that only they could play, or the crimson wisps deciding that they liked being able to flow through time and so randomly decided to leave one day and then come back a moment later with random stuff stolen from the amusement park.

Violet admitted she didn't quite get it. But that was what the wisps did. They made things hard to understand.

"And you think you can start to get there?" a voice called out around her. Violet stopped, before she turned around. All good jump scares were behind the person.

It was a near perfect copy of her, except this one had her mom's gem in her forehead, her fur sharper, less organized. Less soft. "And you. Little old Violet."

It took a few moments for Violet to get it. "This is a trap, isn't it? Zerotime has a trap in place to put everyone who isn't supposed to come here to some other places, and force them to...taunt themselves?"

"And she thinks she's smart! Give the little girl a cookie. A nice, chocolate chip cookie, with a gooey center. After all, what could be better for a little girl."

"Definitely taunt," Violet said, ignoring her copy. "Which means that you're supposed to be trying to get me angry. Which tells me this place feeds on anger and fear," she reasoned.

The reflection growled. "Stop ignoring your better half!"

"I don't see Mata around here," Violet said with a cheesy grin. "I know I'm not the best. I know I'm not 'worthy' of my dad's name. I'm not even worthy of Dad's name. And yet I stand here, having traveled further than ever before, because I have the chance to prove I'm something better than I am."

"No powers, no abilities, nothing special! Not even smart!"

"Oh, I know," Violet admitted. "But it's in that 'being smart' category that I don't need to be. I know I'm not as smart as Mom, either of them, or even either of my Dad's. No, all that I need to be...is smarter than you," she said, smiling gently as the illusion faded away.

"You can't even move. What kind of name is Sonic for a guy who can't move?" Sonic's doppelganger announced to him.

Sonic himself was distinctly unimpressed with the trap he'd found himself in. He hadn't wandered in fast. He knew that. So the fact the trap had sprung and got him and everyone else...well, he was more impressed it got Shadow than anything. Shadow was capable of Chaos Control with an emerald, and Sonic knew he had one.

He was, however, worried for Violet. The doppelganger could say anything that he wanted about Sonic himself. It'd been going for a while, all the doubts that plagued him, that kept him up at night. Violet didn't have the years of life experience to be able to realize that was the entire point of living.

All kinds of words rankled at him. That he'd been unable to actually defeat Eggman permanently, and instead he'd been defeated by just time itself. He hadn't been fast enough to save his friends. He hadn't been able to save Rouge and Omega. He hadn't been able to save Tails and Tangle.

He'd been unable to help Jewel, or Belle. Or Shadow, or Cream, or Vanilla, or Espio, or Blaze, or Marine...friends that he'd left behind, but not really.

The words hit him hard, and yet he stared at the doppelganger. He was whole. He was fast. Sonic was not, either of those.

And yet this Sonic, a copy of him at seventeen, was telling him that he was wasting his time? He'd had twenty three years. More life experience than this doppelganger could even think of presuming he had.

"Nothing!? You are nothing, Sonic. A waste of an era," the doppelganger said.

"That's okay," Sonic shrugged. "I've made my peace with what I've done. I stopped Eggman more times than I can count, and now...I just want to relax in peace. Raise my kids. Love my kids, all four of 'em. So yeah, bring on your words of how I'm 'useless' and 'forgotten'. And I'll point you to five reasons that I'm not."

"You..."

"And hell, I'll do more than that! Yeah, I can't race Shadow anymore. But you know what? He and I don't care! We know he'll out-age me, forever immortal, and yet he still trusts me to come to me! I've never given up on Tails yet, and I doubt he'll ever give up on me. Same with Tangle, and same with Whisper."

"But you-"

"So bring it on. Bring on your words, and your failures. Lash out at me all you want, and I'll point to everyone who hasn't forgotten me, who will forever remember me for me. I've paid my price, in blood, sweat, and tears. And at the end of the day, we did a darn sight better than anyone before me ever has," Sonic smirked as the illusion faded away.

Knuckles was meditating, as he always did whenever he entered a new area he'd never been to before. This one was new, too. A dark abyss, unlike anything he'd seen before.

But there was a memory there, buried deep inside, of being in Angel Island when Lava Reef went out for the first time. He'd been...six? Or seven. He was alone, as he'd been for as long as he could remember. But he had language, so he suspected that someone had taught him.

"This is the great guardian of the Master Emerald?" The voice called out. It had his voice, and it had his memories, but it didn't know he was chaos sensitive. It was why he instinctively didn't trust Sonic or Shadow.

They gave off an uncontrolled chaos aura, and that sense brushed up against his trained chaos senses, and set off dozens of alarm bells.

He'd learned, since then, that it was the chaos emerald's way of marking their favorites. They loved Sonic. Even before he used them against The End, they'd chosen him. A harbinger of chaos, a sign of life yet to live. And he'd lived. Oh, how he had lived.

He had done every experience Knuckles could imagine, and many that he couldn't. And Knuckles was spent on the Angel Island, preventing worse from occurring. "Useless! Forgotten and pale, you can't even control the gem you think you do!"

No one controlled the Master Emerald. That was the point of the Master Emerald. It was the controller. His eyes opened to see the purple eyes of the double in front of him. "The servers are the seven Chaos. Chaos is power, power enriched by the heart. The controller is the one that serves to unify the Chaos," he recited.

Shadow's chaos emerald glowed from wherever he was, and Knuckles knew he was nearby. He felt Sonic's chaos emerald, although why he had it Knuckles wasn't sure. He felt another one nearby, too. He'd been traveling with Whisper, but it was unlikely that she had one.

Whisper was powerful enough not to need one. She may not have been chaos incarnate, but what she was, was resourceful. Her wisps were powerful, but she never let that get to her head.

He had another word of power for her, not that she was aware of that. He doubted she was even aware of what they were. He'd felt it through the Master the instant the first had been given, the most powerful of them all. He'd felt it when the second had been found, and etched.

He didn't know what it meant. But he wasn't meant to know, because the Master Emerald made sure that the message was made clear.

"An incapable guardian. You sat on your island while your nieces and nephews flailed on the ground, unable to see the sky that you sought to protect!"

"Flailed?" This one he would respond to. "They didn't flail. They failed. And that's okay. Just as it's okay on all of us. Because it's what I needed to understand," he said. The doppelganger gave a look of shock before the illusion vanished.

The doppelganger of Amy was crushed under the weight of the Piko Piko Hammer. "Give me back Sonic! This really isn't hard!" She yelled.

More doubles of Amy appeared in the dark abyss, each one seemingly more and more afraid. "Come on! You act as if I'm a failure to a mother because of some financial troubles!? I've met far worse couples than that, at least Sonic and I work through that!" She yelled.

"And yeah, he has times when he bothers me. But I have mine when I bug him too, and we both know that. But at the same time, I don't see a younger me changing Velocity's diapers while trying to catch him running at mach one!" She yelled, hitting another one in the face. It flew back into a second, both of them disappearing a moment later.

"And yeah, maybe I could trust my kids more. But you know, this place is really, obviously dangerous. What mother would I be if I allowed it without so much as a 'by your leave'? Sonic could do it, and I could do it, but that didn't make it right!"

A third and a fourth were cowed under the words. The hammer swung, and they disappeared into black mist. "If this is some kind of trap, it's a really bad one!" Amy roared. "Seriously, I feel him, and he's right there!" Amy pointed to a random direction.

In all honesty Sonic was with her wherever she went, and when she couldn't get a hold of him she did feel the worse. So she entrusted Tikal with watching Velocity, Mata, and Thunder. And made sure that she knew of everything she could possibly need to know about the three.

Tikal's eyes were reasonably spiraled and confused by the time Amy was done handing her the list of things her kids preferred. Of course, if Violet was there it would have been easy. But the girl wanted to leave.

And really, if she wasn't safe with Whisper, then who was she safe with? Certainly not Shadow, but Amy didn't blame the black hedgehog for that. He just led a dangerous life. And Whisper had all the wisps to help out, to make sure that Violet didn't take things too seriously.

And there was the fact that she snuck out. Really, Amy had to hand it to her, if she didn't already know that she was in the Tornado's storage area she might have been worried.

Another slam of the hammer on the ground, and a wide-eyed version of Amy stood there. "Please don't kill me," she said quietly. She was much younger than the Amy of now.

Amy tossed it around in her head. "Can you give me Sonic back?" She asked. The doppelganger shook her head, and was immediately dropped to the ground. "Then no," she said as the illusion was disrupted.

Metal Sonic stood, his blank eyes staring out into the black abyss. Of course, he knew that it wasn't. It was a chaos-empowered illusion trap, meant to attack the weak minds of those that didn't know better.

But he did know better, and he was a robot. It was quite likely that it shouldn't have worked on him, but it did.

A double version of him, from twenty three years ago, popped out. It had the same call sign, the same ID number, and the same hardware dates as his own. It was a nightmare of his own software and hardware, manifested into a form that his visual cues could catch.

"Metal Sonic of now," it said quietly.

"Metal Sonic of then," he responded instantly. "As you can see, I have no doubts."

"You have plenty. You do not know if you are following Master's wishes. You do not know if your Master's words still apply. You do not know if Violet has listened to your words, and this worries you. You have many doubts."

"You are correct," Metal Sonic said quietly. It was an odd feeling, to have it spelled out to his auditory sensors. "And yet while the doubts plague me, they are far from the only thing keeping me here."

"You are also correct. The chaos empowerment in this trap was not meant to last forever."

"Zerotime is Local Time. The heart of their complex is the local time, manipulated into the fabric of the fourth dimension."

"You are quite intelligent, for a robot."

"I am a robot. I am forced by programming to look at things logically."

"And yet logic has failed you, because if this illusion cannot affect robots...than how are you here?"

"For the same reason Sage could be here, if she so chose."

"And yet you do not feel fear? You are a robot, which means you can be destroyed, remade, and forced to work for a new master."

"They may change my outside all they wish. They may dent me, burn me, all they wish. They will never see me bow to another Master."

"You have doubts."

"As you see, I understand now that my programming has grown beyond that of what I once was."

"Which means you are capable of doubt."

"It also means I am capable of reading into orders, to act in the best intention of the order as possible. It also means I can choose to not listen to specific orders."

"You will be destroyed."

"I do not fear the bleakness of non-objectivity. I was created out of such, and I will return to it when my time is done."

His doppelganger, a faker of Metal Sonic, slowly disappeared. He did not fear death, as he was not truly alive, either.

The illusion slowly disappeared from his vision.

Surge was snarling as she glanced around, before she straightened herself up. Why was she doing this again? Oh right, she wanted to prove to Wolfy she wasn't some kind of one-trick pony.

A dark place, with an even darker horizon. "Huh. Still nothing compared to Starline," she humored herself thinking of the duck.

She had to use humor, because she wasn't sure if he was dead or not. The damn duck had managed to defeat death multiple times, and although everyone said he died, Eggman most of them, she still wasn't one hundred percent sure. She'd never found the body.

Even if she did, she doubted she'd believe it.

No, she was here to prove to Whisper that she could be better than she was. And it sounded like the group had needed help, and although she wasn't eager to actually help Sonic, she knew it was the best way to prove that she was an actual hero.

Or at least, she wished she was. She'd gotten the taste of it before, but then...well, things happened, and Clutch was lying to her, and then she was down on the outs again.

She threw up her hands behind her hand, staring out into the abyss. "So what's this supposed to be? A purgatory for those who can't even die right?" She asked no one.

"No. It's a purgatory for those who can't live right," a voice said behind her. A vile voice, a voice that was in her head this entire time, and she gathered electricity to her hands because she wanted him out-

The blast went into the darkness just as quick. She hadn't seen him. "Where are you," she snarled. That was Starline's voice, definitively. How he was here, she didn't know, but she knew he was alive now, and she wouldn't rest until he was put down like the damned he was.

"Why Surge...is that anyway to ask me how I've been? I'm surprised to find that I'm your inner voice," Starline's voice said behind her. Another turn, and another surge of lightning. Nothing but darkness once again. She snarled.

"Most of the others have an earlier version of themselves guiding them through this, because of the time spent with a non-local timed version of that...wolf, ess, thing. What is the name for a female wolf? Besides bitch, that is," Starline's oily, slippery voice said to her side. She turned, expecting to see his face-

She was met with her own. Starline's voice came out of it though. "You do see yourself as him, in a way. Tell me Surge...why do you do what you do?" The doppelganger asked her.

Surge snarled, throwing another bolt of lightning at the thing. It went straight through, and Surge saw that more power would...probably not help. But dammit, she was better than this!

"You don't know, do you? To go from day to day, without ever knowing why," the voice was merging from Starline's to a less raspy version of her own.

"You ain't gonna tell me. And my reasons are my own."

"But that's not the point, Surge...the point is...do you know?" The doppelganger asked. The illusion...stayed up.

Kit looked around, not seeing Surge anywhere. "Surge? Surge!" He called out, expecting to hear some kind of echo, even in the pitch black that it was.

He couldn't feel any water nearby, either. He normally always had some on him, especially for things like this.

Metal Sonic had called him on the radio, asking for him and Surge's help in assuring that Whisper made it to Zerotime, and that she would be able to free her friends. Why Whisper was so important, Kit didn't know.

It could be that because she traveled through time already. But she was far from the only time traveler. Sonic had done it. Shadow...probably had? It wouldn't have surprised him.

It could be that it was because the Time Eater was chasing her. But why would Metal Sonic care if the Time Eater was? The only reason he even knew what it was because Shadow had told him while heading to Mt. Mary's.

He'd done a lot of research afterwards, trying to figure out what it was, and each time he barely got further than the name.

"Hey. Look at you, trying to be all grown up and not useless," Surge's voice called out from the side. A bright grin showed up as he turned...to see only inky blackness.

"Oh. This is one of those doubt things, isn't it, where you try to claim I'm full of doubts and things like that."

"You are, though. Full of them. I barely need to think to get 'em," Surge's voice said from behind him. "Nothing compared to me, can't compare to Tails, can't compare to even Violet, who's only twelve years old. And yet, you try to claim your superior?"

"I never did that. I don't care about any of that. I just want to be useful to Surge. That's all I've ever wanted."

"Is that all you've wanted? Or is that just...you? What is it that you want to do, Kit the Fennec? You think you're comfortable with simply following Surge around, letting her make all the decisions...but are you? Really?"

"It's what I was made for."

"But is that what you want!?"

"Yes!" Kit screamed back. "No! I don't know!"

"You've had so much time to figure it out, so much time, and yet what do you do with it? Instead of trying to live, you hide out in the mountains, complaining that to live amongst normal people would put your research at ease."

"I have to finish it. I have to protect Surge, and I have to protect her from her own mistakes!"

"But did you think of this, Kit the Fennec...?" The voice called out, and Kit knew that it was about to voice the one doubt that had haunted his nightmares and dreams for years.

"Did you think of what would happen if Sonic didn't want it?"

She woke up with a massive headache splitting her head. "Ow..." She muttered, putting one hand on her head. It felt worse than it normally did when she overexerted herself.

She did that a lot, nowadays. Always questioning if someone had seen her mom, or her dad. Anyone she knew. Some of them had, and she got to say her goodbyes again, even if they knew she didn't even know they left.

Most of the time they were okay with that. They recognized that she was inverse of what she should have been.

She should have been brave. She was a coward. She should have been smart. She was dumb. She should have been the older sibling. She was the younger. She should have been better. She was only worse.

She wanted to be like her sister as much as she could. Her sister, the brave one, the smart one. Who cares that she didn't have powers?

Certainly she didn't. The younger sister had never cared that her older siblings never had the same powers. She was her sister, and that was that.

"You are, by far, the youngest person that has ever been caught," her voice called out. She turned to see a duplicate of herself, a yellow-tannish cat, with two triangle, almost fox-like ears on her head.

And two long tails stretching out from behind. "Yeah. Sorry..." Mata said, as she held her arm close to her.

The duplicate of herself blinked, before she walked closer, sitting down next to her. "What brings you here?"

"Don't you already know?"

"I do know. But I want to hear you say it. I need to hear the conviction in your voice."

"I don't have conviction. I thought it was a bad idea, and I knew it was a bad idea, but I had to follow Mom."

"You 'had' to? She was making you?"

"No, I had to save Violet! I'm the only one who can. The inverse of life, the inverse of death, and so many people were worried about this time, right now!" Mata shouted.

"You think you're weak," the duplicate answered for her. "You think you're a coward, unskilled. But...you're not," she kept going. "You can push yourself farther. You already have."

"I can't live up to my Dad's, either of them! And I never will!"

"Why would that matter?" The duplicate asked. "Would you think they care? Do you think they're love is that much of a transaction?"

"...I don't know. It's been so long since I've seen Dad..."

"Do you trust him, Mata?" The duplicate asked, putting her hand out. "Either of them, Sonic or Miles?" The voice started to change a bit.

"Of course I do."

"Then trust in their love for you. Trust in Amy's love for you, trust in my love for you..." The duplicate had fully changed by now, the tan fur changing to a beautiful lavender, the likes of which Mata only recalled in her dreams and in photos. "And wake...up..." Blaze said once more, dropping out of the blackness as the illusion around Mata dropped.

When writing this, I was aiming to keep the same length for all characters, and for this to only last one chapter. That was a mistake. I should have brought this out to two chapters, and have the secondary characters in the second chapter.

Five hundred words per character is not enough. Not for me. I'm a wordy person.

Until Next Time!