Chapter Text
Darkness.
That´s all there is, all he can see.
Floating through the endless void of Null Space.
How long has it been? Hours? Days? Or month?
Time didn´t mattered here anyway. Nothing did.
He was stuck with no way out. Only having his own thoughts were keeping him company.
Memories of his greatest victories, or his worst failures. The latter was unfortunatly more common during the end of the war.
That so-called hero and his equally pathetic friends.
He hates them. Each and every single one of them. He used to be stronger then all of them together, yet they still somehow bested him. It makes no sense.
Like causing the phantom ruby to malfunction and get him stuck here.
Then again...
Wasn´t that partially his fault, too? He shook my head. No. Don´t go down that rabbit hole again. It was all their fault. Once he´s out of here, he´ll make them pay. Make sure they never get in his way again.
IF he makes it out...
There has to be a way, right? That blue nuisance and the damn wolf got out of here, too. He tried to figure out how they managed to escape, but soon found himself going through his memories again.
“Stop it!” The yell echoed through the endless void. He had to close his eyes from the pain as a headache suddenly formed.
As he opened them again, he saw a small red light right infront of him. There wasn´t supposed to be anything here. It disappeared as he tried to focus on it. Was it just a hallucination? Was he going crazy?
Or maybe...
He reached with his right hand to his left shoulder and clawed at it, leaving red marks all the way down to his wrist.
The burning pain was irrelevant for now. The red light was back. Brighter and closer then before. He kept a close eye on the light and saw it getting absorbed by the ruby again.
That might be a way out. It had only been faint, but he could´ve sworn he saw a building in the light. An image of the outside world.
But if the ruby is keeping him trapped here...
He had to get rid of it somehow.
Only losing his most important weapon in the process.
Then again, there was no use for it as long as he was stuck in that purgatory.
Making his decision, he reached for the ruby and took a deep breath, before ripping it out of his chest. Blood immediatly started to pour out of the huge wound and soaked his entire chest, as he was holding the ruby with a shaky hand.
He clenched his hand into a fist without a second thought, turning the ruby into a million little pieces. A blinding white light exploded from it, forcing him to keep his eyes shut.
It took him a few moments to get used to it again, after having spend so much time in complete darkness. Right infront of him was what looked like the outskirt of a small town. A blue sky, trees, and a few small buildings.
It was all so close. He just had to take one step to reach it.
So he did.
As soon as his feet touched the grass, everything went black again. But it was different this time. He wasn´t sure how, but something told him that he wasn´t in Null Space anymore. He had actually escaped that hell.
Perhabs he was just unconscious somewhere?
There was the sound of people chattering. It was faint at first, but quickly got louder. The thought of someone finding him while he couldn´t defend himself made his anxiety spike.
He eventually managed to force his eyes open and was once again met with a blinding light. It took a few moments to adjust again. He then realized a few things all at once.
First of all, the pain was gone. In fact, he couldn´t feel anything. It was almost like back in Null Space. But this was the real world. Yet he still felt like he was just floating through space.
The second thing he noticed was, that he wasn´t in the same location when he escaped anymore. And there were A LOT more people then before.
He was standing in the middle of what seemed to the remainings of a big city. Both Resistance members and civillians were busy fixing some of the broken buildings.
A few people were looking his way and he froze. They would surely recognize him. The ruby was gone, but his mask was still a dead give-away.
But, to his utter confusion, they just looked away again and kept working. No one was reacting to him, either good or bad. It was like they couldn´t even see him at all.
He waited a bit longer and then walked towards a random civilian as nothing else happened.
“Hey, you!” The brown cat continued to clean some rubble off the street. “I´m talking to you!” She kept ignoring him. Talking was obviously not working. So he tried to kick her.
The cat unconcernedly kept doing her work, the boot went right through her without doing any damage. Infinite looked down and saw himself flicker for just a second. He took a step back in shock and wildly looked around the area.
A group of Resistance fighters were passing by near him. Trying to grab one of them ended with the same result. He fell right through him and landed on his hands and knees.
“Whats going on?!” He hit the asphalt in frustration. “It can´t be!” Another hit. Some other pedestrian walked through the kneeling jackal. Not that he cared anymore. He was just angrily screaming at this point, punching the ground a few more times.
Once his tantrum was over, he took a deep breath and got back on his feet. He had to keep moving. Maybe he can find a way to fix his current predicament.
So he aimlessly wandered around the streets. He at first moved out of the way of other pedestrians, but eventually stopped after a few dozen or tho. He still flickered each time he walked through someone.
Hours past by at it was getting dark. He would normally try to find some shelter now, but the jackal couldn´t bring himself to care.
He still felt nothing.
No hunger, no exhaustion, no cold.
So he just kept wandering until the sun was up again. And it set again. Time became insignificant to him as the days past by him in a blurr. He just kept wandering through the same city he had woken up in. A broken city he had once destroyed.
It was the third night when something caught his attention. He followed another mobian down the otherwise empty sidewalk, with several feet between them. A group of mobians, probably from the Resistance given their uniforms, suddenly walked around a corner and into view.
They talked loudly with each other and walked past the single mobian, only for them to stop talking and looking after her.
Infinite was right behind them as they decided to follow the girl, who in return started to walk a bit faster. Curiosity got the better of him and he decided to follow them. He walked right beside the group like he was part of it, despite them being unable to see him.
The three teenager had eventually enough of chasing the girl around and just cornered her. Seeing her up close now, he realized it is the same brown cat he saw a few days ago.
The cat kept telling them to leave her alone, which just caused them to laugh and get even closer. She soon had enough and tried to make a run for it.
One of them managed to grab her wrist and the others were immediatly right upon her, pulling her into a dark alleyway. The way they had looked at her was all Infinite needed to figure out what they would do to her.
He remained at the beginning of the alley and soon turned to leave. “The glorious Resistance.” He mumbled with a sneer. Calls for help echoed out of the alley, but they fell on deaf ears. Needing help is for the weak, after all. If you´re not strong enough to protect yourself, you don´t deserve to live in this world anyway.
The next day, he walked by the spot where he first saw the cat. Unsurprisingly, it was empty. No one came to pick up the rubble and it remained like this for the rest of the day.
After that, he had somehow developed a routine, walking the same path through the same streets each day. Almost like he was patrouling. It made it easier to notice when something else was off. Like when crowds were gathering somewhere.
It happened twice so far, always attracting him as well. Much to his dismay, the reason for this gathering was the return of his previous prisoner.
From what he heared from other bystanders, Sonic just saved the day again in some other world and would stay here for a while. Several people also mentioned something about ´Titans´.
The blue pest was currently surrounded by a bunch of his fans. Some of his friends were also standing near by, bathing in the glory aswell. Only as he turned to leave, he noticed something that instantly made his blood boil with rage.
Shadow.
The black hedgehog was standing a few feet away from the crowd and watched his blue counterpart with his arms crossed.
“You again.” He angrily growled and took a step towards his nemesis.
At that, Shadow looked away from the hero and into his generally direction, even locking eyes with him for a split second.
The hedgehog eventually shrugged and continued to stare at Sonic.
He can´t see me, can he? Infinite thought as he tried to make sense of what just happened. After making sure nothing behind him might´ve caused Shadow to look over, he decided to make a little experiment.
“Yeah, you!” He angrily shouted, taking another step forward. Shadow looked over in confusion again, letting his arms fall down to his side this time. He still looked around aimlessly, but it was a lot closer to where Infinite is actually standing.
Sonic must´ve noticed the otheres distress, since he was walking over to him. Not wanting to listen to the upcoming conversation, Infinite decided he had seen enough and walked away from the crowd.
As he walked by (and sometimes through) other pedestrians, he was so busy figuring out how it was possible for Shadow to seemingly be able to sense him, that he didn´t noticed another familiar face among the other people.
Only as someone called his name, he abruptly stopped and turned towards the voice.