SonicVsSonic

## Another Eggman

Sonic and Tails were sitting around eating Chili dogs one day on Angel Island. They had just finished beating Eggman at another of his schemes. He had recently battled Eggman aboard the Death Egg, which has fallen apart as its pieces came crashing down into the ocean.

They have also formed an uneasy truce with Knuckles, who is mostly OK so long as no one gets to close to the Master Emerald. He is grateful to them for having helped restore the emerald to its place, where it helps keep the island afloat.

Sonic is also relaxing, after managing to evade a certain pink girl named Amy. After their initial encounter on Little Planet, she had since been stalking him, and he has been struggling to evade her since then. He thinks to himself he is now free of her, having not seen her for months during this whole ordeal with Eggman.

In the time after she lost track of him, she has since moved to Station Square, and in having a sense she will meet him again someday, she tries to keep her hopes up, a cheerful exterior to try to cover her inner despair, a creeping doubt that maybe he really is lost to her. She thinks to herself that she must not give up hope, one day he will return to her, and then he will not be able to run away from her again, she WILL stake her claim on his heart, eventually.

Knuckles then starts yelling from the altar. Something is happening. Sonic rushes over to see what all the fuss is about, running up the stairs from the place he and Tails had been resting near the base of the altar.

The master emerald was shining brightly, and an energy bubble has formed around it. Another bubble starts for emerge from the side, and in a flash of light the bubble turns into Eggman.

His outfit is damaged, and he appears dressed more as he did several years ago, mostly as he did before this whole mess of trying to take over the world. While he is wearing his earlier outfit, under it Sonic can see that he is wearing his powered combat suit, which he only started wearing after Sonic had started handing his ass back to him in his robots. In Sonic's mind, this means he is probably looking for a fight, despite his otherwise odd choice of attire.

Eggman looks terrified, and initially backs up in fear at the sight of Sonic, but after a moment stops, and takes a good look at Sonic. He then stops and proceeds to try to take a more calm and confident stance. Sonic responds, "Eggman?!", at which Eggman shows a look of confusion by this response.

Another bubble forms near the Emerald, at which point Eggman exclaims "Run!" and proceeds to run off at high speed. One feature of Eggman's suit is that it allows him to temporarily achieve high running speeds, in addition to increased resistance against physical attacks, and ability inflict more physical damage in close combat. In most respects, there are few things which can stand up to him in close combat.

In another flash, someone else is present. Sonic is initially just mildly surprised and amused by Eggman's seeming show of cowardice: it is only Amy. But, something isn't quite right. As she looks at him, her face seems to weirdly warp as if it were made of fluid. She then makes a weird smile, as if to happily acknowledge his presence, before turning back to face in the direction in which Eggman had started running. She lifts her arm, which then starts to transform into a sort of energy cannon, and she opens fire in Eggman's general direction.

Feeling a sudden sense of Dread, Sonic runs to Knuckles and Tails and says to them, "OK, time to go!" before himself running off. Knuckles and Tails get the idea, and quickly chase after him. As they proceed to flee, several other figures emerge from the emerald.

As much as Sonic doesn't like the idea, it seems catching up with Eggman is his only hope of figuring out just what the hell is going on here.

They make their way to the lake where Eggman had set up a temporary base. Sonic saw him standing there, in his usual outfit, as modified badnicks proceeded to load pieces of heavy equipment into shipping containers. Eggman looked surprised, "Sonic?! Look, I don't want any trouble. Just let me recover my equipment in peace. All this stuff isn't cheap, you know!"

Sonic responds, "Eggman! Just what is going on? Why did you just pop out of the master emerald?", "Whatever do you mean? You just come along, wreck my robots, wreck my facilities, and you just destroyed my space station! Here I am, minding my own business, trying to recover some of my assets, and you just come along and accuse me of, well, whatever the hell you want to accuse me of doing. Well, I don't want any part of it. All I ask, at this moment, that you leave me in peace." Eggman, looking clearly flustered, gets in his Egg Mobile and proceeds to fly off somewhere, presumably to another part of the lake.

## A Terrible Mistake

A moment later, they hear a call from the nearby jungle: "Hey, over here!" They look over, and it is Eggman, looking as he did when he came from the emerald. They go over to Eggman, and he says, "It may come as a surprise, but I have made a terrible mistake.", Sonic responds, "Really, who would have thought?", "I really should have never gone against you, we should have been friends, allies even. With my technology, we could have had a better world. But, my ambitions and arrogance ruined all this, and led to the near destruction of the world.", "So, what else is new?" Eggman looks confused, looking around and seeing the otherwise clear blue skies and lush vegetation. Eggman, "I see you fail to get my point. Where I am from, things don't look like this, not anymore. This world, as you see it around us, has been all but destroyed, and I wasn't able to do anything to stop it. It has all been reduced to a barren waste, as towers and machinery rose up and all but blocked out the sky." Sonic, "What? How? By who?", "Well. By you. In a manner of speaking.", "In a manner of speaking?", "Well, you from my timeline. After one of our earlier encounters, you became, different, in a very bad way, and I could do little to stop you after this point. I fled with Miles, and together we have been trying to find a way to recover the situation. It seemed to us, that, in effect, you are the only one's who may be able to help us in our fight."

Sonic asks, "I became different, how, exactly?", "Well, I assume you saw her, Rosy was it?", Sonic sighs, "Her name is Amy. And, yes, I saw her.", "You became like her. In fact, you were the one who made her that way. After a fateful accident, I fled to Little Planet. When I was there, I met her. She was waiting there for someone, and we sat and talked for a while, and shared some food. She said there was someone she was destined to meet there, someone who would change the world, someone who would save it from destruction. It seemed you had followed me there, and as me and her sat there talking... You showed up. You grabbed her of the ground by the arm, and then embraced her and made out with her, as she struggled to break free. After you let go of her, she fell to the ground, choking and then convulsing, grabbing at her throat before seemingly having a seizure. As she did so, she began to melt away into a black metallic sand, and then reformed into the thing she is now. I was able to grab some of the time stones and get out of there before Little Planet turned black, and started spreading a black sand on the landscape. As it did so, the vegetation withered away, and in its place large towers and other structures began to spring up. The black-sand was also able to take control of many of my robots. Me and Miles have been able to suppress its effects, so that if we get to them in time more people don't become like that, but we haven't been able to recover the damage done to our world."

Sonic, "Yeah, I remember things going a little differently. So, what happened? What was this accident?" Eggman, "Not long after meeting you, and seeing your abilities, I started work on a robot, a near replica of you I had named Metal Sonic. To make him complete, I needed to get you around to make a copy of you life data, so that he could effectively copy your abilities. I had reverse engineered some very old robots in designing him, and admittedly I may not have fully understood all the technology I had used in building him." So, "This means you are talking about Metal Sonic then, not me per-se?", "Well, in a manner of speaking, in my world, Metal Sonic is you. Shortly after activation, he started acting on his own, he chased you down, and he merged with you. Miles was barely able to get away, and he feels you are the only one who may be able to help us recover from this."

Sonic, "But, Metal Sonic is just a robot right. I faced him before, and he basically just seemed like similar technology to your other badnicks, nothing that would be capable of, well, the sorts of things you seem to be describing here." Eggman, "That is basically what he was going to be originally. However, at one point I saw a man wandering alone in the desert. As he did so, he reached down and laid his hand on fallen robots. As he did so, they would instantly recover, and within a short period of time would return to being fully functional, seemingly able to heal damage that was inflicted on them. I called them back, and they seemed otherwise normal apart from their ability to regenerate, and tendency for their contained animals to disappear. They would often drop bits of this sand, which is where things got interesting.", "How so?", "Well, at first I thought it was debris, like from rubbing metal and leaking oil, but closer inspection revealed it was able to replicate if given the right conditions. Give it some organic material and some chaos energy, and it will replicate, turning the organic matter into more of itself. The seemingly indestructible robots were coated all over the inside with the stuff.", "So?", "Well, I tried a little experiment, and in the still incomplete Metal Sonic, I added a small jar of corn meal with a little bit of this sand mixed in. I intended to collect it later for observation, but after Metal Sonic was activated by you, when I went to retrieve it, it was gone. It wasn't long after this point that he went after you. After this point, then my robots started acting on their own, following the will of Sonic rather than my own."

Sonic, "Does it have a weakness?", "For small exposures, its progress can be slowed with strong magnets, and its activity can be slowed or disrupted via exposure to strong electromagnetic waves in the VLF band. It was after I started setting up large VLF towers that the other Sonic started making a more active assault, and sand-contaminated robots who get too close to the radio towers will start to melt. However, the other Sonic and Amy are a lot more resistant to this."

Eggman proceeds to pull a stack of metal bricks from his coat, and in a moment of hesitation touches them onto Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, feeling relieved that nothing happens. He then breaks off one of the bricks from the stack, and proceeds to remove a roll of tape from his coat. Putting a piece of tape on the brick, he then proceeds to try to stick it on Sonic, who backs up, "Eggman, what the hell are you doing?!", "These are magnets, one of the few defenses we have against them. I would rather be safe than sorry." He then tapes some magnets on Sonic's arms, neck, and chest, and does likewise with Tails and Knuckles. After this, he pulls out a roll of what looks like black duct-tape, and says, "And this, is magnetic shielding tape. It will help prevent them from taking notice of the magnets, and, more importantly, it will help keep the magnets from sticking together.", "Why should we care if the magnets stick together?", at which Eggman picks a small nut off the ground, and puts it between a pair of the magnets and slides them together. The two magnets then fly together and shatter into a round mass as the nut explodes, stating, "These are not weak magnets." He pours a black liquid onto the magnet ball, which turns into a spiky sphere.

He then pours some of the liquid onto the tape where he taped on the magnets, and the liquid crawls around and disappears into the tape, "This will help with magnetic conduction.", as Sonic and Tails start to get a weird tingling sensation in their limbs. Sonic, "What gives?", Eggman then pulls down his shirt some to reveal some similar tape with a rectangular bulge, and says, "This is just something we need to live with, you'll get used to it."

## A Jump Across Timelines

After all this, a voice calls over a radio, with a bit of crackle. It sounds like a more tired version of Tails, who asks, "Are you about ready over there?", at which he responds, "Almost." He then pulls out a device resembling a small star-post, and places it in the middle of a group of trees in the forest. He activates it, and then the group finds themselves near a star-post inside of a laboratory. Another Tails is there, who goes by Miles, and when Sonic tries to call him Tails, he responds coldly, "My name is Miles, Miles Prower", and he has a robotic arm and some other instances of cybernetic modifications on his head and chest. Sonic and Tails are shocked at this run-down looking cyborg version of Tails, and Tails asks "What happened to you?" Miles responds, "We haven't always been able to outrun them entirely unscathed." Eggman adds in, "He lost his arm to the sand before we were able to treat him, it could have been a lot worse." He asks, "How did it happen?" Miles looks hesitant, and then answers, "When we were trying to make an escape, Amy grabbed me and tried to make a move on me. Luckily Eggman was there to knock her off, but not long after where she had grabbed me, my arm began to erode into sand. Eggman then put me under a big electromagnet, but he was still ultimately forced to amputate and then replace my arm." Eggman adds, "I was also forced to remove and cycle his blood between a series of magnet pairs in order to try and filter out any of the sand which remained in his system."

Sonic hears sharp a whistle, sounding like it is coming from inside his head, which begins to somewhat bother him, he asks, "What is this ringing, it is really bothering me.", and he responds, "That is the VLF, another thing we have to deal with around here." He then points out the window at a number of very tall radio antennas surrounding the building in which they are currently standing. Outside, the shy is darkened, and the landscape is a dull gray color.

Sonic asks Miles, "Do we have a plan here?" Miles then points at a shelf containing a few of the time stones with his robotic arm. He says to them, "We needed someone who was not afflicted or otherwise a part of our timeline, someone like you, to go back before all this and to hopefully prevent this whole chain of events from taking place.", "You think this will work?", "It should. We don't want to contaminate the past, and someone from outside our universe should be more resistant against changes to the timeline. If someone from our universe went back, it is quite possible they would be going in blind, and would forget what it is they are trying to accomplish here. Though, as can be noted by just you being able to be here, this is a threat that expands beyond just our universe or a single timeline."

As Miles pulls back his arm, it sticks and begins to chatter, before coming to rest at his side. Seeing that Sonic had taken note of it, he says, "Not even normal machines are immune to the effects of the VLF field, but it is still a lot better than the alternative."

Miles then gives Sonic, the other Tails, and Knuckles machines resembling small yellow tablets with handles, saying "These should allow directing the time and place in which you arrive, as well as allowing for communication across the resultant timelines."

Miles then pulls the time-stones from the chest, and gives each of them a stone, before instructing them how to initiate a jump. "Because we don't have much space here to safely run freely, we have come up with a stopgap measure for the initial time jump." It consists of a triangular tube filled with bumpers. "Well, you see, you roll into a ball, and then the bumpers bounce you in a circle until you are going fast enough."

Upon seeing this, Knuckles responds, "Oh hell no. I am not getting in that thing." Miles responds, "Would you rather wait here with us, and likely face your eventual demise or being converted into one of them?", "Not really.", "Well, there you go. You ARE going in that thing."

Sonic proceeds to hit a button on the tablet, and goes into "the thing". Several seconds of incessant bell ringing later, Sonic disappears. With hesitation, Tails and Knuckles do likewise.

## Sonic's Jump To The Past

Sonic finds himself on Little Planet, seemingly just before everything turned bad. He then wanders around some, and finds Eggman and Amy sitting around having a conversation on a picnic blanket. He walks up to them, and then tries to put his hand on Amy's shoulder to get her attention. On contact, there is some weird jitter, and his hand manages to somehow miss or otherwise pass through her. They both look at Sonic with a confused expression, as if he just popped out of nowhere right in front of them, and he says to them, "There is no time to explain, but you two need to get out of here right now. Another me is coming along, and it will not be pretty when he gets here." Eggman, with no delay in figuring out what Sonic means by this, seconds quickly reiterates "We need to get out of here now!" and proceeds to quickly grab up the blanket and takes Amy out of there as fast as he can carry her.

A few moments later, he sees a ghost image of Amy and Eggman flash back where they were sitting, with the other Sonic, coming up and grabbing the ghost Amy, followed him briefly by looking at Sonic with a shocked expression, his face warping and distorting as he moves, Sand Sonic's arm being consumed by the ghostly after image, as Amy and his arm now seem frozen in time. After a moment, this image poofs and disappears in a cloud of smoke along with Sand Sonic. Sand Sonic jumps back into existence a short distance away, walking away much as if had never seen anything and had just kept on walking.

After Sand Sonic walks away, Miles shows up on the screen, and says to Sonic, "Hey Sonic, I don't think we sent you to the right place. Everything is still bad here on this end." Sonic, noticing his clear lack of cybernetics, says, "Hey, Miles, Your arm and face!" He looks confused, "Hey Sonic, you know I go by Tails, right?" He looks at his arms, not seeing anything unusual seeming about them, asks, "What about them?", "They are back to normal!", "Oh, OK." A clearly unmistakable voice is heard over the speaker, and Amy pops up in the background, "Oh, Hi Sonic! Nice to see you again.", She then quickly turns her attention to Tails, caressing him and starts trying to make out with him. Tails then holds up his now normal finger, signaling for Sonic to hold on for a moment before the channel closes. A short time later, the screen shows a new location in time and space.

## Knuckles' Jumps

Off in Knuckles' series of events, he finds himself back on Angel Island. It is surprisingly peaceful, none of Eggman's crap anywhere to be seen, the Master Emerald is in its place, as are the Chaos Emeralds. Not seeing much point in hunting down some random task, nor really having a clear idea what he was supposed to be doing, nor wanting to run fast to try to initiate another time jump, just decides to relax on the altar.

After a laying around for a while, the tablet starts making noise. He looks at it, and sees a pretty lady fox on the screen. Knuckles, not recognizing her, responds, "Oh, hey pretty lady, who might this be?", clearly flustered, she responds, "Oh damn it Knuckles, isn't there SOMETHING you were supposed to be doing there?!" Knuckles, overpowered with an sudden overwhelming sense of not giving a crap, responds to her "Well, you know, there is /something/ I could be doing." She then looked rather disgusted that one of her friends could be so rude, responds "Seriously?! You know it is me and Sonic right? Or, at least, it was..." She then looks rather sad, having lost the one she cared about to the sand, and gets up to walk away. Knuckles then gets a good look of her as she does so, and then sees that she is a two tailed fox much as Tails was.

Amy then gets on the screen, also displeased by Knuckles rude conduct, and says to him, "Hey, why are you being so mean to Tails? Can't you at least try to be a little sympathetic for her loss, like girls have feelings you know." Knuckles, responds, "Wait, that was Tails, as in, Miles Prower?!", "Miles? Her name is Millie, Millie Prower." He responds, "When I last saw 'her', just before my jump, her name was Miles, and she was a guy."

Amy looks at some stuff on her end, and with a wave calls Millie back over. Millie was starting to realize this was not the Knuckles she knew, and was looking at a screen showing the timeline display jittering wildly. Millie then talks to an older woman in the background, who sort of resembles Eggman but with a lot of cybernetic parts. She also looked at the screen and they talked among themselves. Knuckles overhears Millie say to the old woman "Thanks Maria." Side Info: Maria is an ally of Sonic and friends, frequently helping them in their fights with her cousins, Ivo Robotnik and Julian Snively (Ivo's nephew). She is also good friends with her niece, Vanilla the Rabbit.

Millie then respondes to Knuckles coldly, "We need you to get out of there. Now! You have jumped back about 50 years too far, and the connection between you and your timeline is becoming rather unstable."

They then closed out the conversation, with the view going back to the time jump screen. At this point, the time stone started resonating. As he got up and started to walk down the steps, due to the unstable resonance this was enough to trigger a time jump.

Knuckles then found himself back on the steps of the alter, but the sky was darkened and the jungle was dead with large black flowers reaching for the sky, with all of Eggman's crap mostly back where it was, and the master emerald is missing.

The channel then opens up on the tablet, and it was back to being Guy Tails. Tails, "Something weird has happened there, and your jump seems to have gone abnormally.", "Hey, cool, your arm is back to normal! But, you were hotter as a lady, and Amy was looking pretty good as well, too bad!" Amy, in the background, "You know, I can still hear you over there, right? And what is with everyone going on about Tails' arm? How about only I get to talk about Tails' arms, OK?...". Tails responds, "OK, Right, whatever. Can you wave the tablet around so we can see and hopefully have some idea where you are." Knuckles does so, and Tails responds, "Oh, this is bad, very bad, you are in the future, we are sending you to another location now." This time around, Knuckles was feeling much more willing to try to cooperate.

After the jump, Knuckles then found himself bouncing around inside of a giant gumball machine, more pointless Eggman crap, obviously. He taps on the screen, and sees Amy there, "Oh, Hey Amy. These jumps obviously aren't working out all that well. Can you just try to get Tails to send me somewhere, tolerable?", She responds, "Tails? Why would he be here? But, no, it is just me and Eggy Poo, all by ourselves, just trying to enjoy our last moments alive, together. It looks like in another 45 seconds you be headed to a rather uneventful point in time.", "But, I was just talking to him there maybe a few minutes ago.", "Our Tails got turned into a walking cloud of dust months ago. Maybe Your Tails can make it so that this never happened." The screen then jitters, and Amy is replaced with Vector, who says, "There is something really weird going on; Hey, Charmy, you have any idea what is going on with this thing?" Knuckles pops up on the other side of the screen, "Oh wow, its me! How's it going, other me, I guess were all still alive, holed up in this shack with Eggman. Eggman thinks this is all because someone broke into his lab a few years back, stole some of this ominous black sand before it started to show up pretty much everywhere." Vector speaks up, "Eggman had called us here to investigate. From what we can tell, Eggman's old rival Snively went and managed to turn himself into a walking mountain of this stuff." Knuckles responds, "Are Amy or Tails there?", "No... Who is Amy?".

At this point, having no idea what is going on anymore, Knuckles resigns himself to just bouncing inside this giant gumball machine for however long it has left, going wherever it is fate decides to send him. He then teleports back to Angel Island, looking much as it did around the time he left. He sees dust Sonic and Amy carrying off the master emerald along with dust Tails, all 3 of which have somehow copied Tails' twin-tail flight ability, and Knuckles lefts out a halfhearted, "Oh! Damn it!".

## Tails' Jump

Off in Tails' series of events, he lands and is headed towards Eggman's lab. He gets a message from his other self, who says, "Well, first off, before anything else. Oh look, I have an arm, isn't it amazing, oh, how long have I had this new shiny, arm, oh right, my whole life. OK, that said...", Amy then jumps up on screen, "Oh, Hiiiiii, Other Tails!" as she does some slightly suggestive swaying, on the other end an annoyed Tails grabs and squeezes her hand slightly as a signal to back down, then rubs her arm reassuringly as she does so. Tails continues, "OK, you need to stop Sonic from activating Metal Sonic. Whatever happens, he must not go near that 'reactor'!"

Tails gets inside ahead of Sonic, and stands on the platform, blocking Sonic's path, "Stooop! You must not do this! If you do this, very bad things will happen!", "Tails? What is this about? Weren't you just over...", Sonic looks over to where Tails had been following him, and sees that Tails is still there, feeling rather confused about the sudden arrival of two versions of Tails.

Tails continues, "You will have to believe me on this. This whole thing is a trap, not just Eggman's usual trickery, but even something he has not foreseen, something which will doom the future far worse than any idle threats of some 'Metal Robotnik', which we all know full well was just him in a large robot." Sonic, "How are you there, and also over here." Tails, "I am from an alternate version of your future, I don't really want to say how it will go, only to say that, in this case, you need to go back, everyone's' lives depends on it."

Eggman is then heard over a loudspeaker, "Just turn the damn handle already!" Tails, annoyed, shouts back. "You, most of all! What if I told you that it is you who sent me back on this mission, you realizing most of all, what a disaster this particular incarnation of 'Metal Sonic' ends up becoming. Oh what was it, a little jar of self-replicating black sand?! Oh look, the jar is gone, now what, oh look, horrible monsters are now eating everything! Get my point yet?" At this point, Eggman realizes that Tails knows what he is talking about here, and says over the loudspeaker, "Yeah, he's right, Metal Robotnik was a hoax, sorry for wasting your time. You can head back now." A female voice then calls over the intercom, "Hey guys, I see you, my this has been a fun little adventure, hasn't it? But I guess we all gotta go home now."

Sonic says, "Who is that?", and both Tails shrug at roughly the same time. She responds, "Hi, I'm Sara, you met me earlier. We were captive earlier, but, really, this was all just a big ploy to lure you both to Ivo's shiny new robot unveiling party. But, I guess this can't happen now." Eggman responds, "Yeah, Unveiling Party, well, why don't we all head back to my lap anyways, there will be cake and champagne, and lots of other snacks, even if I can't show off my new shiny robot yet due to... issues..."

Tails then sees shadows of the original activation of Metal Sonic, which proceeds to fade away from view.

A short while, the tablet starts making noise. Tails looks at it, and Eggman is on screen. "So, did we prevent the whole thing with Sonic yet?", "Sonic? He's right here.", Sonic, "Heya, nice you are doing well! ... Damn it, Amy, what are you doing..." Eggman, "Yes, Sonic is fine, you are fine, Amy is fine, Sara is fine, ...", "Sara? What is she doing there?" She then pops up and waves at him hearing mention of her name. "Yeah, Tails, she is my wife, why wouldn't she be here?" Tails, "You! Married! What?! Aren't you too busy taking over the world for that sort of thing.", "Well, no, world domination isn't really my thing anymore, and why would I turn down someone as sweet and nice, and fine taste in large robots, as Sara here?... The problem, and what we sent you back for, was to prevent the black sand from falling into the hands of Julian Snively, a rival of mine, who turned himself into a world-destroying monster after exposing himself to it. He shows up to the party a few hours from now and breaks into my lab, you need to stop him. We just have no idea why you arrived several hours earlier than the target."

Tails, now shocked and dismayed, says, "Snively. Right. Well, I guess both of me are going to that party then...", "Yes, stated that way, it seems a little awkward. Well, don't skip out OK, and try not to get too hammered this time.", "OK, now you are saying I can't drink either.", "Well, last I remember, I think I saw 3 of you there, and all 3 of you were wasted when Snively broke in. Though, stated this way, it sounds almost like a lost cause to have sent you on this mission."

By the time of the party, Tails was thinking about how pointless it seems to try to change the future, and maybe fate isn't really something you can escape even if you change the specifics of the events which lead up to it. He meets up with another time-traveling Tails there, and they strike up a conversation over this apparent futility, debating whether or not it is in-fact possible to change all this. The Tails from that timeline shows up, after having drank a bit too much of Eggman's punch, and one the other new Tails responds, "You realize Eggman puts vodka in that stuff, right." A moment later, Eggman shows up worked up that someone just broke into his lab and stolen a bunch of his stuff. Eggman catches a glimpse of Snively flying off in one of his Egg Mobiles loaded up with stuff.

Eggman is annoyed, but is calmed down by Sara, who brings him back to hosting the party, even if "that damn Snively" keeps breaking in and running off with his stuff, he responds to her, "Yeah, I guess you are right. Well, I may still need to call your father and inform him of the situation.", she responds, "No, not just yet." They then go off somewhere together.

In the background, unnoticed, female Tails' sneaks around and stands there watching the others' with a confused expression upon seeing her male counterparts. She sees a confused looking Sonic walking her way, and in happiness and excitement runs towards him and embraces him. As she holds herself against him they start turning ghostly together and then spread away like a cloud of smoke. Sonic then reappears a short distance away refilling his cup from Eggman's large glass punchbowl, with no memory of having seen the alternate Tails.

## Sonic's Final Jump

After a few more time jumps, Sonic finds himself in the desert. It is a place he doesn't recognize, but there are a lot of destroyed robots around, looking as-if he had been there.

In the desert he sees someone approaching. He is covered in robes. Remembering the story, Sonic goes up to him. At this point, the wanderer reaches out and tries to put his hand on Sonic, but an intense whistle is heard as the wanderer's arm crumbles into sand and then reforms as he pulls it back. The wanderer continues heading towards the battlefield, but now Sonic is determined to stop him. As Sonic approaches him, in various ways, waves of phantom images start appearing, but just as fast as they appear Sonic can move to block the wanderer's new path. The wanderer tries to disintegrate and reform somewhere else, in the process leaving his robes behind. Sonic manages to block his new location, causing him to reform back in his original location. Sonic can see the wanderer, who now looks like an older and more worn down version of himself, a version who has been through a great many battles.

As Sonic continuous moving, more ghost trails form around the wanderer, until they catch back up with him. At this moment, the older Sand Sonic himself starts turning ghostly, and and makes a last ditch effort to dash towards one of the fallen robots. Sonic gets in his path, and in this moment the Sand Sonic explodes in mid air, into a mass of ghostly after images.

A lone surviving robot approaches, a Crabmeat who has seemingly been spared, over which Eggman's voice can be heard, "Sonic?! Why are you so intent on always destroying my robots and ruining my plans? We could rule together you know.", Sonic can see that this robot is also corrupted, and says in a calm voice, "This wasn't my doing this time. And, no, we can't be allies, and we can't be friends. And as for this robot, just the same, it must be destroyed." Sonic then hits the robot, which then itself explodes into ghost trails and disappears, as all the other robots in the battlefield disappear and briefly reappear back in undamaged condition, and then again disappear entirely, leaving an empty desert. Sonic finds that he himself is starting to jitter, and after a moment he is gone as well.

## A New World

Sonic awakens back at the base of the alter, where he finds himself back with tails, having apparently dozed off after eating a lot of chili dogs. Waking up, he finds everything as it was, Knuckles still doing his thing off by the master emerald, wondering about this disturbing series of images in his mind, but everything around him seems fairly calm. Well, except for the silence being broken by a certain unmistakable shrill, "Sonic!!!" It seems she has found him again, but after what he just went through, he decides to sit there and roll with it, it is still nowhere near as bad as all the things he has just seen.

Things are still a mess after his recent battles with Eggman, and the remains of the launch base still clearly visible. Tails then gets a video message, where Eggman shows up on screen, "Well, no hard feelings about you guys wrecking my space station and all, but, me and Sara were wondering if you guys felt like coming over to our son's birthday party. I am sure I can find some old junk to put out for Sonic to do some 'destructive testing' on, maybe some newer junk as well... Oh, Damn it, Sniiivleeey!!!" at which point the stream closes.

Knuckles comes over, takes a good look at Tails, and Tails gives him an odd stare, "He says, I just had an odd sense to coming over here and check if you had just magically become a pretty lady, yeah, but it seems not. Still as dude as always."

Sonic responds, "Wait? WHAT?!", but after a moment he calms down, saying to himself "just roll with it."

At the party, Metal Sonic serves drinks, him being a particularly expensive experimental robot that Eggman never could quite get working correctly, and Sonic is underwhelmed by the selection of badnicks, and voices his opinion to Eggman, who responds "Well, you did just ruin my space station, I am kind of going to need to save costs for a while. I still need to pay back that loan I took out from Sara's father to build the Death Egg.", Sonic responds, "You know, I still don't trust you with something like that.", and he responds, "Yeah, I know, you never did. But it isn't really like that now, I was just going to use it as an orbital amusement park, like, you know, to make money. But now I have to pay back its construction costs, just now without the benefit of customers paying for admission. Maybe, if you let me, I can build another sometime. Like, a Death Egg 2!", "Well, you could start by not calling it 'Death Egg', That sounds a little, ominous.", "Come on man, it sounds edgy!", ...

Amy and Sara stand around, reminiscing about the picnic they all had together on Little Planet that one time, where Amy and Sonic showed up and first met.

And, so, it continues.