Chapter Text
Sonic yawned as he got up off the floor, rubbing his eyes as he tried to remember the last thing he was doing. But, try as he might, he couldn't remember what he was doing, but he shrugged, he was probably taking a nap somewhere, time to see where somewhere was… He stretched as looked around, suddenly very confused at his surroundings.
“The White Space? How on…” Sonic looked around, the more he looked, the more confused he got. He beat the Time Eater back on his birthday, did it come back, could it even come back? Sonic had to admit he didn’t really know much about the Time Eater, aside from the fact that the Eggheads had turned it into their weapon to attack him all across his own timestream. “YO! MINI ME! YOU OUT HERE?!” Sonic asked as he ran through the seemingly endless white void, if something similar to what happened last time was happening again, surely his younger self might be around here somewhere… Right? Sonic kept running.
The horizon was blank, the direction he thought he came from, although it was a bit unclear at this point, was blank, it was just an endless void of white… and it was becoming a little worrying for the hedgehog as he simply couldn’t find anything here. “TIME EATER! EGGMAN! WHOEVER IS IN CHARGE HERE! GIVE ME SOMETHING TO WORK WITH HERE!” Sonic yelled out into the void, with no response obviously. Sonic sighed but squared his shoulders, he wasn’t gonna give up, he would find a way out, but if whoever trapped him here was trying to bore him to death, they were doing an effective job of it. He sighed when he saw something glimmer in the distance, finally a direction to run in. Sonic wasted no time running over to where he saw that glimmer.
Sonic ran up to what looked like a faded out white forest, with one big important looking empty tree stump and a flag behind it that looked to frozen in time same as the rest of the forest, It had an acorn on it, weird, Sonic didn’t remember this place, but he felt he should. After all, the last time he had found himself in the White Void, he had been surrounded by place and people he had met over his life, his friends who had all been kidnapped had each been assigned to a location that fit them in some way, the only place he hadn’t recognized last time he went through this place was that burning city, but even that had felt more connected to him than this place. Sonic looked next to the tree stump to find what had caught his eye, a small metal PDA that looked as frozen as everything else here. Sonic reached for it and tried to pick it up, his hands closing around the case, his fingertips about to brush it…
Sonic found that no matter how hard he pulled, the thing wouldn’t budge, just like his friends the first time around when this happened. “Alright, I think I know what you want me to do, whoever trapped me here, but once I find out who you are, I’m gonna make you send me, and anyone else you’ve got trapped here home!” Sonic then leaped up and jumped down the tree stump.
“WOAH!” Sonic yelled as he slid down the subterranean tunnel, going through a loop-de-loop, down a corkscrew, then up into a zigzag, until he popped into a forest trail leading through a dense forest full of homes, a whole village in the trees, and a large mound where that same flag blowed in the wind. “What is this place?” Sonic asked, looking around, the whole place was empty, made sense, the Time Eater couldn’t recreate actual people, just fakes based off of memory, or his actual friends who sometimes felt the need to fight him. Sonic sighed as he remembered the practically pointless fights between himself and Shadow and Silver last time this happened. Sonic ran through the forest, boosting through to try and find where he needed to go, which is when a robot nearly smacked him in the face. “What the? “ Sonic ducked under the swing and looked to see these weird grey robots coming after him.
“Priority One Hedgehog. Eliminate!” the swat-bots proclaimed as they ran after Sonic. Great, more stuff to deal with, although Sonic wasn’t sure who these robots were, they didn’t look anything like something Eggman would make, but robots trying to kill him, that was definitely familiar. Sonic boosted straight through these things, they fell apart like tin foil when he boosted through them. “Jeez you fellas are weak, even Eggman’s bots can take a hit before falling apart!” Sonic said dodging out of the way of a laser blast. Some more familiar, albeit old, badniks came in from above, Buzz Bombers and Caterkillers coming down from the trees. Sonic simply homing attacked through them, but just like the weird gray bots, they fell apart without even trying. “Hey, you guys seem really fun to destroy, but I’ve got to find a way outta here, I’ll play with you some other time!” Sonic said, before boosting away through the forest, smashing apart any robots he came across, including one trying to put up a sign that said “No Fun” which Sonic took extra time to smash the sign into a million little splinters before moving on. If whoever was behind this didn’t want Sonic having fun, then Sonic would make sure to have as much fun as possible!
Sonic jumped into another empty stump and went down another slide same as before and ended up in some kind of base. It had old wooden chairs, a meeting table, a staircase going up, some cozy furniture and an old TV hooked up to a video game console which made Sonic feel oddly nostalgic, and a few doors leading to other rooms. “Huh, cozy. Wonder who lived here…” Sonic slowed down a little and picked up one of the black controllers, it felt like it fit his hands perfectly. He carefully set it down, and sat down on the couch. It was so comfy, like it was made for him! Sonic adjusted and found a spot that felt right, like he had sat here like this before… Sonic hopped off and walked over to the Kitchen where… “WOAH! SWEET!” Sonic rushed over to find a plate full of Chili Dogs, still hot, freshly made. Sonic grabbed two and nearly swallowed them whole. “Wow! Best Chili Dogs ever! These taste great!” Sonic ate the rest and looked around to see who could have made them, but the more he looked around, the more empty the place seemed, even the weird lab upstairs. Something about it felt… wrong… Like this place shouldn’t be empty, ever… Sonic quickly zoomed out the door, back into the forest, blasting through more of the robots to clear his head of the weird feelings that place gave him.
Sonic ran up and saw one of Eggman’s old animal containers, the ones with the big buttons on top. “Yep, definitely time travel and the past and stuff, but… if this is the past, then why don’t I remember any of it?” Sonic looks around, before leaping up, pressing the button. A whole bunch of noise came from the machine before it collapsed and fell apart, and inside was… “Of course, why am I not surprised.” Sonic said as he grabbed the Green Chaos Emerald from inside the machine. As soon as he did, the world around him faded away and he was back in front of the Tree Stump, the forest around him now matched the color of the world he was just in, and that PDA from before, its color filled in.
“Alright, time to get some answers!” Sonic said, grabbing the PDA. Sonic kinda just stands there holding it for a second. “Huh… Why did I think something would happen?” He shrugged and cracked open the PDA and a flood of green light nearly blinded the Hedgehog, causing him to nearly drop the PDA. “Ah Jeez! Give a guy some warning will ya!” Sonic complained, rubbing the spots from his vision. Standing before Sonic was a girl? She was a lynx by the look of her, wearing some kind of purple dress, but she was all green and glitchy kinda like those holograms Eggman sometimes used to make announcements before his next inevitable failure of a plan.
She turned to Sonic, tears welling up in her eyes. “SONIC!” She cried with joy as she ran to hug him, and phased right through his body. Sonic shuddered at the weird feeling as he turned to face her again. “R-right, no nanites, Sorry, I forgot about that. Oh Sonic, I knew it, I knew that you would save me! I knew if anyone in the Freedom Fighters would be able to find me, It would be you!” She said, smiling from ear to ear, clearly overjoyed to have been saved by Sonic. Sonic wished he could just agree with her, not ask her questions or pop her bubble, but he needed answers in order to find a way to escape.
“Hey, it's just what I do, Sonic the Hedgehog, hero of earth, but… and I’m really sorry about this but… Who are you? And what’s a Freedom Fighter?” Sonic asked, wincing as he watched the joy fall from her face faster than he could run, the smile replaced with a look of concern, maybe even fear.
“Sonic, what are you talking about, what’s an earth? It's me! Nicole, your friend! We’re in the Freedom Fighters together, We fought the Eggman Empire for years, this is…” She looked around, realizing where she actually was for the first time. “Knothole Forest… but how is that possible? Eggman razed the whole forest to the ground with the Egg Fleet, how can it be standing now?” A loud gasp escaped her speaker as she rushed to the edge of the little area to look out onto the White Space, which was now slowly being filled in with grind rails, buildings, and other areas to explore, including other areas Sonic knew he would have to explore in order to escape. “S-sonic, where are we?” she asked, the concern evident in her voice.
“This is the White Space, from what I remember when Tails explained it last time, it's kind of a void between timelines, it gets filled up with places from your past, present, and future… At least, that's what happened the last time I was here, but I don’t recognize any of these places… Or you… Sorry.” Sonic winced again as he faced the look of hurt betrayal on her face.
She looked into his eyes, concern evident. “You really don’t remember me, or Knothole? Or the Freedom Fighters? Rotor, Antoine, Bunnie, Sally… But you remember Tails?” She asked floating around Sonic, as if looking for something.
“Of course I know Tails, and from what you're saying, supposedly you knew him too?” Sonic asked, he felt he should be skeptical of the hologram lady saying they knew each other, especially when waking up randomly in the White Space, for all Sonic knew she was just a glitching broken machine who had been in limbo for so long, or was part of whatever plot that dragged him back to this place… But the concern and recognition in her eyes, the joy she had when he saved her, the hurt when he didn’t remember her, was too genuine. Sonic wanted to help her, but they needed to get on the same page.
“This is impossible, all my scans are showing you are the Sonic I know, not from another timeline or zone.” She had Charles recalibrate her scanners after the whole Patch situation to ensure she could identify alternate dimension versions of her friends, just in case. “Do you think whoever brought you here messed with your memories? Took out everything involving the Freedom Fighters and Mobius? Put this Earth stuff in to make it seem like everything was normal?”
Sonic shrugged. “I don’t know, nothing like that happened last time, The Time Eater didn’t mess with my memories, if it could, I’m sure Eggman would have used it against me.” Sonic explained, but before he could continue, Nicole came up to him quickly
“EGGMAN?!” She saw she might have been too loud and backed off slightly. “Sorry, I mean, Eggman was behind something this big, to break Time and Space? How?”
Sonic sighed as he set Nicole’s PDA down and explained the events of his Birthday not that long ago, running into his younger self, saving his friends, and collecting the Chaos Emeralds, and everything he could remember leading up to this point. The Emerald he had on him he pulled out. “I found this at the end of the forest down in that Tree Stump.”
Nicole looked, pardon the pun, stumped by all the information she just heard. “None of it makes sense, I don’t understand what is happening.” She glitches out a bit as she tries to logic through it. “I-I-I don’t even know how I got here, or where anyone else is! Sally or Rotor or-” , but Sonic cuts her off and picks up her PDA with a comforting smile.
“Hey, it’s okay, we’re gonna figure it out, but we’re not gonna be able to do it just sitting around here, I’m sure if we find more of the Chaos Emeralds, the guy behind this isn’t gonna like that and he’ll go into some kind of Monologue about his evil plan. They always do, guys like Eggman can’t help but monologue about how evil they are. Let’s show this guy he can’t mess with me or my friends!”
Nicole’s eyes widened at that. “But you don’t remember me, As far as you know, I am a stranger, why would you call me your friend?”
Sonic simply shrugged. “You said that we were friends, and you haven’t given me any reason to doubt your telling the truth. If we were friends, then we still are friends. If I remember you at the end of all this, then we can go right back to where we left off, and if I don’t, then it’ll be fun getting to know you all over again!”
Nicole looked at Sonic like he was crazy for just a second, before finally giving Sonic a small smile and nodding. “Yeah, you’re definitely Sonic the Hedgehog, memories or not. Okay Sonic! Let’s take whoever this guy is down! Let’s do it to it!”
Sonic looked at Nicole and raised an eyebrow. “Huh, I haven’t said that in ages.”
Nicole blushed slightly. “Well, that was one of your catchphrases, it just… well it felt appropriate to say.”
Sonic chuckled and nodded. “Well, then Let’s do it to it Nicole!” Sonic said as they ran towards the next area. Sonic smiled as Nicole followed, a tear stricken smile on her own face as they headed towards the next location.
...
“So, I was dating a Princess, fought two different versions of Eggman, knew my actual mom and dad, and both Tails and Knuckles were supposedly the Chosen Ones for some kind of ancient prophecies… and you said my Adventures were weird.” Sonic laughed as they walked through a section of the White Space.
Sonic… Someone she considered a very close friend, her best friend’s boyfriend, a teammate… but now he had all these alternate memories in his head, didn’t know her, or Sally, or even Uncle Chuck. It was a confounding mystery, who had messed with Sonic’s memories? Why had they done so, and what were these memories? Were they real? In which case what happened to Mobius? And if they weren’t… Then why and how had they been made?
Nicole had to admit, the longer she spent with Sonic, the more she saw the subtle differences between the Sonic she knew, and the one she was currently travelling with, technically speaking the same hedgehog, but there were differences. Sure, both Sonic’s were heroic hedgehogs who would do anything to save people’s lives and freedom, both were the fastest things alive with a love for chili dogs and destroying robots. But this Sonic felt… different. She wasn’t quite sure how to put it, the Sonic she remembered felt more open than this one, more willing to talk, to emote, to say what he was really feeling about a situation. Whereas the Sonic she was floating next to felt distant, almost aloof, nothing could bother him because nothing was allowed to bother him. Were people more than just their memories? Granted, this discrepancy just might be because Sonic doesn’t remember her, and she doesn’t know his new memories of life, on top of the fact that her ability to gauge organic’s emotions wasn’t always the best. Sure, Sonic had said they were friends earlier, but they still didn’t really know each other, why would Sonic confide anything to her when she was practically a stranger to him.
Which then reminded Nicole of her other dilemma, how did she get here? Her memory banks showed nothing but blank between her fight with Tails Doll and waking up in the White Space. What had happened to New Mobotropolis, to her friends, to- “Rotor!” Nicole cried out as she flew up to the chalky white frozen form of one of her closest friends. “Wh-what happened to him?”
Sonic ran up a second behind her and tried to put a hand on her shoulder, but it phased right through her. “Sorry, forgot about that. But that is what happens to people when they get picked up by the Time Eater, they get frozen in time, the only way to free him is to go through whatever this is.” He said, indicating a large metal door that leads into what looked like a massive set of buildings. Nicole looked at the buildings with abject horror. She knew those buildings, she knew that door. “Robotropolis, but… it was destroyed, it can't be real.”
Sonic shrugged. “You said the same thing about Knothole, remember, all of this stuff is being pulled out of moments in time. So this was from a point in time when it wasn't destroyed. Same with Knothole.” Sonic said, knocking on the door, it slid open with a sickeningly metallic clang.
“This is Robotnik’s old base of operations, once the capital of the Kingdom of Acorn called Mobotropolis. When Robotnik was defeated, we tried to take back the city, but Eggman arrived and took it right back, at least until Station Square nuked it to hell.” Nicole explained, still looking at the place uneasily. Real or not, she didn’t want to think about what might be in there. “I should stay here, when Rotor comes to, the first thing he sees really shouldn’t be a restored Robotropolis.” She sighs.
Sonic simply nods, stretching a bit before heading into the robotic city. “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea, I know the last thing I would want is to wake up and suddenly find myself on the Egg Carrier or something. Right, see ya in a flash Nicole!” And with that, Sonic vanished into the city.
Nicole sighed as the blue hedgehog ran off, the more things were different, the more they stayed the same, memories or not, Sonic still loved to run headfirst into danger without thinking of a plan. It's what made Sonic and Sally such a good team, Sally could plan things out quickly enough for Sonic to not mind waiting a bit for them, and Sonic could execute those plans faster than anyone else… If only she was here… Nicole turned to the terrified frozen face of her long time friend. “What happened to you, Rotor? How did we get here?”
...
Sonic looked around the foul smelling robotic city and wrinkled his nose. This wasn’t anything like Eggmanland from when he was a werehog, nor was it anything like the Interstellar Amusement Park. Didn’t even look like this during the war, this place was disgusting, totally beneath Eggman’s normal standards. “Alright, time to take this place down!” Sonic said as he boosted through more of those Swat-Bots, as Nicole had told him their name, breaking them to pieces of scrap metal. Sonic ran through a loop and smashed through a wall into a large building. He ran straight up the wall, causing two Swat-Bots to run into the wall, breaking into pieces. “What pieces of junk.” Sonic chuckles as he looks down at the pieces of scrap metal. Sonic was about to run off again, when a TV screen turned on nearby and a recognizable, if different face appeared on it.
“Eggman?” Sonic asked, confused by the way the figure looked.
“ATTENTION ALL SWAT-BOTS AND BADNIK FORCES! SONIC IS IN MY BEAUTIFUL CITY! DESTROY HIM AT ONCE!” The Eggman on the screen looked different from the one he knew, his face was longer and wider, his eyes were red with black in the eyes instead of white, he had a robot arm and was shorter and wider than the Eggman Sonic knew.
“This must be the Eggman Nicole said I fought first, before the one that looks like the Egghead I remember. The one she called Robuttnik.” Sonic snickers to himself under his breath. “Yeah, I can definitely see it. I got to use that one on Eggman one of these days.” Sonic shook his head laughing to himself before zooming off to destroy more of the city. Quickly turning to head down a large hallway, when he heard a massive explosion behind him.
“What was- OH CRAP!” Sonic turned and booked it down the hall as fast as he could as a massive tidal wave of water roared down the hallway, flooding everything in its path as Sonic dodged sparks of electricity shooting out at him from different sparking ruined pieces of machinery.
Sonic shot out of the hallway and out into the city as lights flickered and turned off as the water ruined Robotnik’s energy production. Sonic ran over and under different structures, passing signs that had Robotnik’s ugly mug on them with words like “All Work and No Play is a Productive Day.” “Come to Robotropolis, never leave.” “All non-robots report to the Roboticizer at once.” “Taco Tuesday is cancelled for Snively.” Sonic didn’t know who this Snively was, but if he was working for this guy, he didn’t deserve tacos.
Sonic approached the container holding the Chaos Emerald, ready to grab it and save Rotor and-
The device was suddenly snatched up by a giant robot hand as power was restored to the city, Sonic took a step back as a massive Swat-Bot, the size of the Death Egg Robot, held the Chaos Emerald out of reach. “Did you really think you could go parading around my City without my knowing about it Hedgehog!” Robotnik said from inside the giant Swat-Bot. “Prepare to cease existing Sonic! SNIVELY! CHARGE THE ULTIMATE ANNIHILATOR!”
To Be Continued…