Chapter Text
Silver’s spent a lot of his life foraging for food.
Not all apocalypses had decimated the entirety of organic mass. By two hundred years, there would be a few patches of growing greens sprawling across the world, filled with various species of berries, mushrooms, and other edible delights Silver was able to forage. They weren’t all pleasant experiences, though- plants two hundred years in the future and one or more apocalypses later might mutate into something different than what Silver would read in foraging guides.
There was one time, in one such apocalypse, that he was able to forage a couple of delicious looking mushrooms. They tasted strange, a little too earthy for Silver’s pallet, but it wasn’t the taste that was the issue, really. It was the side effects of the mushroom.
He spent the rest of the day after eating those mushrooms fighting off strange images flitting through his head; bright lights and half memories, half amalgamations of entirely new and bizarre scenarios he’d never encountered before. It left him with an awful headache and an aversion to mushrooms.
Being inside a special zone was similar to that experience.
The zone shifted almost every five seconds, never quite staying still. Lights and colours flashed and swirled and changed along in time as the entire environment shifted. Hills became oceans, roads became sand, and valleys became cities. It was almost nauseating, watching the land continuously shift around and around and around, as the land became the sky and the sea became space and vice versa.
“I’m going to get a headache,” Vector mumbled, watching as a city shifted into a range of sharp mountains.
Charmy rubbed his eyes a few times, mimicking Vector. “This is crazy! How are we ever going to find that emerald?”
“Many travelers have lost their way in these special zones,” Tails begin, rather ominously. “Many don’t find their way out, once they walk inside.”
Silver can feel the Chaos energy buzzing against his skin. He can feel the call of an emerald, can feel the energy reaching out to him, can feel the energy lapping over him like waves over sand. Many have lost their way, but no one’s quite like Silver, anyway. They’ll find this emerald. They have too.
“The emerald on the tracker continues to shift around,” Silver notices, peering at Tails’s device. The other three glance over, watching as the signal disappears, then reappears. The screen is a bit staticky, most likely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of Chaos energy radiating from this zone.
“We really won’t be able to find it!” Charmy shouts. “It’s just gonna send us on a wild goose chase!”
Vector peers out at the surroundings, a contemplative look on his face. Silver stares at the screen for a few moments, sighing. “We’ll just have to be super fast, then, to catch the emerald before the environment shifts. Which will be hard, sure, but this is our only hope.”
“I wish I could fine tune this tracker better,” Tails murmurs, looking disappointed. “If I understood the exact frequencies of the Chaos emeralds, I would definitely be able to. But I still don’t know if each one has a unique signal or not.”
“I… don’t really understand Chaos energy, I’ll admit it,” Vector begins, cautiously. “I’m not a scientist or a mystic. But my mom told me a few stories about it, so let’s see if it holds true, since you can use the power… they say only a few people have this sort of special connection to the emeralds. Chaos sensitive, is what my ma said.”
Silver frowned. “That’s true. I'm one of them. So’s Sonic. He’s more sensitive than I am, though.”
“And you mentioned Chaos emeralds can attract or repel each other, right? Like… magnets?”
Tails’s eyes brighten. “Vector, you’re a genius!”
“I don’t follow,” Charmy states, point blank.
“Silver’s our tracker,” Vector explains, and Silver blinks a bit. “All this energy… the purpose is supposed to be kind of like a maze. It’s supposed to confuse you and trip you up so you won’t find the emerald within. But you have a Chaos emerald- you can make them attract each other or whatever, so it can guide you to the other one. And if you're Chaos sensitive, that means you can feel the energy of the emerald anyway.”
“You can’t rely on your senses,” Tails continues. “You have to simply trust in your ability to… for a lack of better term, sniff out the Chaos emerald using both your enhanced Chaos sensitivity and the emerald in your hand!”
Silver frowns. “I don’t know, I’m not that sensitive. I’ve never even used the emeralds to go super before.”
“I don’t know what that means, but it doesn’t matter. It’s either you try, or we get stranded here for all of time.” Vector rubs his hands together. “And I would very much appreciate not being trapped in a Chaos dimension for all of time, thank you.”
Silver sucks in a deep breath. He’s tracked emeralds before, but not with so much background radiation before. There was Chaos energy on all sides of him, clawing away at his skin, and even some inside of him. This entire dimension was like one big Chaos emerald- trying to find the real one is like finding a needle in a haystack.
Silver grips the emerald in his hands as tight as he can. Come on, he’s Silver the Hedgehog! He’s fought alongside heroes of absolute legend- he’s legendary himself, in some timelines. He’s Chaos sensitive, and he can Chaos control. It all has to mean something. He has to be able to do this.
He closes his eyes, lifting the emerald close to his chest. He ignores the bright lights painting across his face, ignores the lingering Chaos energy flowing around him, even ignores his friends as he tries to focus solely on the energy of the Chaos emerald in his hand. A warmth envelopes through his chest, though it's more like the warmth of electricity- sharp and harsh. It flitters through his veins, pumped all the way through his body, buzzing underneath his skin.
The Chaos emerald glows a bit brighter in his grasp as he steadies himself. Harnessing Chaos energy requires complete focus and control- without either leads to Chaos energy either destroying its vessel, or destroying everything around its vessel. Sonic and Shadow always make this part look easy, but controlling the pure concept of Chaos, controlling the natural state of the universe, is damn near impossible.
The emerald does answer his prayers, however. Its energy becomes magnetic, attracting some of the energy innate in Silver towards it as it begins to seek out another emerald. He feels the magnetic pulse search through the lands, ignoring the strange geographical shapes and shifting environments around him.
Finally, he feels the emerald reach its target.
Without a word, Silver moves. His feet start walking without him even realizing it, and in the back of his mind, he can hear his friends shuffling along beside him. He passes through stranger terrain, walking right through mountains that don’t even exist, unphased by valleys and hills that await him. None of it is truly real, and Silver finds himself walking straight towards the emerald with undisturbed steps.
He only opens his eyes when he finally reaches his prize. It’s smack in the middle of this Chaos dimension, surrounded by false forests. It’s centered simply on an ancient looking pedestal, and Silver quietly swipes it off without much preamble.
The colours of the zone begin to fade, and the environments slowly shift. White floods the entire zone as Silver marches back to his friends, now two emeralds in tow.
“This is freaky,” Charmy simply states, watching as an ocean dissipates into nothing but pure white.
“Great job!” Tails cheers, noticing the two emeralds in Silver's hand. “You actually did it!”
“Don’t sound too surprised,” Silver mutters, tossing the new red one in the air.
Vector’s eyeing him wearily, and Silver remembers the first time he saw Sonic treat these artifacts with such haphazard behavior. He nearly had a stroke at the sight of something so sacred being used as nothing more than juggling balls. Now, they’ve become such a household item in every apocalypse Silver’s beginning to develop that same blase attitude. Great.
He crosses his arms, feeling the energy begin to heat up beneath his fingertips as he calls, “Chaos control!”
A portal appears, ripping a tear into the special zone. On the other side resides Marble zone, just as they left it. Silver grins at his three friends before diving right in, jumping through the portal and landing easily on the ancient, smoothed stone. He swears, though, as he’s in the space between Marble zone and the bleached out special zone, he heard someone whisper his name.
He glances behind him, but is only met with the sight of Tails following after, excited eyes never leaving the two emeralds in his hands. Charmy drags Vector through, who immediately complains about becoming dizzy. Space-time travel can be a bit tricky, so Silver doesn’t bother telling him to suck it up. Sometimes Silver still messes up time jumps and ends up missing his lunch afterwards.
“That was riveting!” Tails exclaims, watching as the portal begins to fix itself. “The last known person to make it out of a special zone and survive was a man named Gerald Robotnik! This is incredible! So few have ever even gazed into a special zone, let alone escaped it, and let alone with a Chaos emerald!”
Tails grabs one of the emeralds out of Silver’s hands, holding it up to the sky, watching as the surface refracts a few rainbows across his face. “This is incredible! That special zone just gave me a whole new understanding of Chaos energy! I see now, why the universe's general state has a predisposition to undergo spontaneity! I only wish I could have properly recorded this sighting…”
“As… fascinating as a scientific discovery as this was,” Vector starts, popping his arm as he stretches. “I think you’ll get more chances to ‘properly record’ those things when we get a move onto the next emerald. What was the closest location again?”
Charmy snatches the tracker away from Silver, peering at the map. “Oh! It says it’s in Station Square!”
Vector grabs it away from Charmy, before flipping the device right side up. “Remind me to teach you how to read a map. The next closest emerald is in… Mazuri. Looks like it’s pretty close to Never Lake.”
“Fascinating. I wonder if perhaps the Chaos emeralds are prone to forming special zones near more ‘magical’ locations.” Tails taps his chin. “Considering South Island’s reputation for having a treasure trove of mystical objects, either that wash ashore or are typically housed there, and Never Lake’s history with Little Planet.”
Little Planet!
Silver recognises that name, and not just from his forays into the future. He’s spent enough time with one Amy Rose to know that planet has significance in relation to Sonic and his friends. Perhaps Amy lives around there? It would explain why it’s a place where Sonic and her agreed to meet for the first time, before Metal Sonic intervened.
“One of the people I’m looking for might be there,” Silver says, excitement only further amplifying the energy slithering under his skin. Silver honestly rather likes Amy- she’s been nothing but kind to him every time they meet, and taught him how to garden. She can be intense at times, and has a rather short temper, but Silver’s always appreciated being able to see her again. “Amy Rose. I hope, anyway. In the other timeline, she met Sonic on Little Planet.”
“You mean at Never Lake, right?” Vector raises a brow. “No one actually… goes to Little Planet. Even before Eggman.”
Silver debates telling them the whole story about time travel and the like, but decides against it. The time stones won’t be relevant to this- they can only influence the timeline on a small scale, and travel through time at a small scale, too. The emeralds are necessary for actually getting this timeline back on track.
“Well, you know what I mean. She’s gotta be around there, somewhere.”
The sounds of rustling catch Silver’s attention. He glances around, but Marble zone is a pretty open space. It might have just been the lava splashing over in the pools a few feet away.
Tails peers at the emerald in his hand. “I guess we better get to it… I’d love to meet this Amy…”
There’s the sound of a bang, and that’s the only warning they get before something small but fast knocks the emerald out of Tails’s hand. The emerald goes sailing through the air, and Silver watches as a green blur appears out of nowhere, rolling onto the scene and snatching it up from the grass.
It’s a bird, he can tell, though he’s got no idea what kind it is. He ogles the jewel for a moment, holding it up to the sunlight not unlike Tails did a few moments ago. “Woah, boss, you’ve gotta check this out! It’s even shinier up close! No wonder the bigger boss wants a piece of this!”
The bird’s ‘boss’ moves away from a hunk of marble ruins a few feet away, blowing the smoke from his gun. A polar bear flanks his left, and the boss grins cheekily at the four kids. Silver clutches on to the emerald even tighter at the sight of him; he seems very very familiar, a purple weasel of some sort. Where has he seen him before…?
“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you all. You’ve been quite the thorn in Emperor Eggman’s rump for a while, now. Especially that stunt in Gigalopolis.”
“That bomb was impressive!” The bird chirps, moving closer to the four of them, eyes only on Tails. “There was so much punch packed behind one tiny little bomb! It was so adorable, especially when it destroyed all those robots! You’re a fascinating little terror! After the Emperor tortures you, I’d love to swap recipes!”
Tails shuffles further behind Vector, eyes wary over the strange bird. Vector, however, blanches. “Torture?”
“You didn't think you could get away with terrorism without some sort of punishment, did you?” The person with the gun tsks. “Come on now, our spy said you were supposed to be a hard boiled detective in Silver’s timeline. You’re supposed to be smarter than this.”
“You know who I am?” Silver asks, clutching the emerald in his hands even tighter. Great, these people might remember him, and they’re trying to turn him into the Eggman Empire? Just his luck.
“And.. you don’t know who we are?” The boss asks, appearing very annoyed at the concept. “You’re kidding, right? We’re the rotten Eggman’s right hand men! We’re the trio of terror! We strike hearts into the most vicious of terrorists! We’re the most famaous assassins in the world!”
Assassins… oh! Silver snaps his fingers. “Oh, that’s where I know you! Yeah, Sonic’s talked about you a bit before. I didn’t think he actually knew a pair of assassins. Next, I’m gonna be told the Perfect Chaos flood was real!”
The boss tilts his head, while Bean grins brightly. “Oh, you remember that timeline? I’m glad I’m not the only one.”
“Great, so we’ve established you’re as crazy as Bean,” the boss mutters. “But yes, I am an assassin, and I’m here to play judge, jury, and executioner. My name is-”
“Wait! Wait, it’s on the tip of my tongue here-” Come on, Silver can totally imagine Sonic telling him a story about him and some Chaos emerald tournament. “Aang? Fan? Fawn? Feint?”
The weasel’s patience is wearing thing. He’s about to object, when the name finally comes to Silver. “Oh! Fanny, wasn’t it? Fanny the Sniper or something?”
“Fang the Sniper!” he explodes, stomping his foot and shaking his gun at Silver. “You imbecile! It’s Fang the Sniper, and I’ll make sure you remember that name, because it’ll be the last thing you say when I kill you!”
“Why would it be the last thing he says?” Bean asks. “That’s kind of weird.”
“Because he’ll be begging for mercy from me!” Fang shouts. “Do I have to explain all of my threats to you? Why couldn’t I have been assigned to Metal Overlord's team? Ugh!”
“Are you sure it was Fang?” Silver frowns. “Huh, maybe this timeline changed more than I realized.”
“I’m going to throttle you!” Fang yells, and lunges towards Silver. He side steps, a finger on his chin as he moves. Fang’s face skids across the dirt, and the polar bear snickers.
“Oh, who are you guys again?” Silver doesn’t remember them from Sonic’s tales, but admittedly, he wasn’t listening to Sonic very much. There’s no way Sonic saved the world that many times, of course. But if he knew Fang, he might have known these guys, and they might know what happened to Sonic. “I don’t think I ever met you.”
“That’s Bark!” the little green bird says as Fang gets back to his feet. “And I’m Bean the Dynamite! Hello!
“Bean the Dynamite?” Vector repeats, eyes wide. Silver glances at him, curious- so he recognises these losers?
“Yeah! But if Nack gets to make up a name, I want to, too! I want something as badass as Fang! How about Claw? I feel like that’s cool!”
“Remind me again why Emperor Eggman teamed us up with this maniac?” Fang wails, twirling his gun.
Bark points to Bean’s fanny pack, and Fang sighs. It seems like he’s willing to get back to business, which would be nice, because Silver’s patience over this encounter is running thin. If these idiots are going to try to get in his way, they’ve got another thing coming!
“Right, the bombs. Which leads me to say this: all four of you are wanted terrorists in the eyes of the law. All of your assets will be seized as property of the Emperor, and you are to be arrested and brought back to the Death Egg for proper punishment.” Fang’s eyes latch on to the Chaos emerald. “I recommend handing that pretty thing over and making this easy on yourself, kids. Emperor Eggman doesn’t want us to use lethal force… but accidents happen.”
Bean’s smile shows off sharp teeth. “Especially when explosives get involved.”
Silver grins right back. “You know, it’s four against three.”
“We’ve done worse odds. Grab the kid!”
Bark suddenly lunges towards Charmy, who shrieks. Vector yanks Charmy back and releases a wave of fire breath, singing Bark’s arm fur as he tries to dodge. Bark looked more annoyed by this turn of events than anything; while his compatriots wearing matching grins.
“So you want to do this hard way?” Fang leers. “Fine by me! Let’s tango!”
A brawl begins to take place. How annoying! Silver has much more important things to do than waste time with these idiots. They’ve given him no good information, and now they’re trying to arrest them! Silver doesn’t really know what that means, but if it’s related to Eggman, it can’t be good.
Fang sends off a volley of shots, and Silver activates his telekinesis, causing them to change trajectory and strike the lava pit instead of them. Fang’s eyes widen in surprise before Silver telekinetically grabs the gun from Fang, who starts shouting. “Hey, you can’t do that! Let go!”
A tug of war starts between them, Silver trying to pull the gun out of his hands while Fang holds on for dear life. Vector and Bark are wrestling each other while Tails and Charmy try to face off against Bean, who’s throwing bombs in every direction.
“Watch it!” Fang shouts, kicking a bomb that got a little close to him for comfort. Like a soccer ball, it glides across the terrain and lands next to Vector and Bark. Vector’s eyes widened and he suddenly abandoned his wrestling match with Bark, who peered at him in confusion. The bomb explodes, sending Bark flying back.
The slab of marble they had started to fight on starts to crack. A giant splinter forms in the center of the piece, and slowly begins to slide into two separate directions. Tails stumbles back, right into Bean, who shouts triumphantly. “Aha! A hostage!”
Bean yanks Tails into his arms, shoving a bomb in his face. The fight between them halts, and Fang cheers while Bark rubs his head. Vector growls at the sight while Charmy cries, and Silver frowns. Great.
“Give us the pretty emerald!” Bean shouts. “And I won’t blow his cutesy-wootsy face into smithereens!”
“You’d blow up too?” Tails cries, more in confusion than anything.
“Wouldn’t that be cool?” Bean asks in reply.
Fang sighs, taking his gun back and aiming it at Silver again. “Surrender now. You’ve still got a chance to walk out of here alive, you know?”
Silver frowns. Maybe…
Silver snatches Fang with his telekinesis and slams him to the marble slice Bean and Tails are on. The pressure on one side of the marble piece causes the other side to flip up, launching Bean and Tails into the air. Bean screams in glee and launches his bomb back at them, and Vector knocks it out of the way, causing it to go flying off in the distance. It lands smack in Bark’s face, causing him to fall back down, before it drops into the pit of lava next to him.
The bomb goes off, spraying lava everywhere as Silver grabs Charmy and Vector with his telekinesis, and starts to float off. Fang scrambles to get to his feet, sliding a big on the unsteady piece of marble that has begun to sink. Bean landed on another marble piece a bit away, and was watching the rain of lava and fire with a blissful expression.
“This isn’t the last you’ve seen from us!” Fang shouts. “We’ll get you executed for sure!”
“I’d be more worried about your hat!” Vector shouts, and Fang frowns, looking up to find his hat having caught on fire from the turmoil. Fang screams, and tries to put it out, and Silver takes that as their cue to make a big exit.
Silver slingshots them all a safe distance away. Bean laughs at Fang’s hat, while Bark remains blissfully unconscious. It’s at that point when a new figure leers over them, safely landing on a marble slab to Fang’s left.
Fang finally manages to put out his hat, before glancing over at the figure. He blanches, embarrassment coloring his face, before he straightens his back. “You didn’t happen to see all of that, did you, Nails?”
She grins. “What do you think?”
“Ugh!” He stomps on his hat again. “Just go back to tailing them again! I’ll call in the reinforcements and we’ll get them good, next time!”
Nails laughs at him, and Fang’s blood boils. “Go do your job!”
“I’d make the same comment to you, but we’ve seen where that gets us.” Her wings flutter as she takes to the skies. “Eggman’s going to love your field report on this.”
Fang pales.
Silver and the others made it safely to the other side of Marble zone while this occurred, thankfully. Silver huffs, leaning against a tree. Flying with just himself is pretty easy, but three extra bodies was not a great experience. Vector, upon landing, immediately began to flip out again.
“Those are assassins trailing us!” Vector cries. “Those are actual, genuine assassins! They tried to kill us! They wanted to torture us! Oh, Gaia below, we are so doomed!”
“Relax,” Silver half suggests, half orders, because he’s not in the mood to deal with this. “We beat them, didn’t we?”
“They’re the lowest tier of Eggman’s forces! Who knows what they’re going to send after us now! What if he sends the E-series robots after us? If Gamma is sent, we’ll be slaughtered! And don’t get me started on that freak, Emerl!”
Hm, those names sound familiar. “I wonder if they know what happened to Sonic…”
“Silver.” Vector’s expression is serious, and Silver straightens. “Those guys are not to be taken lightly. Your powers are cool and all, but it’s not enough. We might be captured, and I need to know that you have a plan for that.”
“We won’t get captured,” Silver insists. “We already have two of the emeralds. We just need to find the other five, and then I can fix everything.” He doesn’t add that he has absolutely no idea how, exactly, to fix everything. “Stop worrying about it!”
“These are assassins!” Vector puts his face in his hands. “How am I not supposed to worry about that?!”
“Vector’s right,” Tails adds, gently. “The Hooligans were the lowest tier, It only gets worse from here. And Eggman’s got spies everywhere! It’s going to be impossible to avoid confronting them.”
“Stop being so dramatic!” Silver orders. “Look, we can’t just give up, okay? We have to save the future! There’s no going back, at least not for me, so stop whining so we can get this done sooner, okay?”
“I wanna go to Little Planet,” Charmy decides. “Let’s go to Little Planet!”
“We’re all going to die,” Vector mutters, and Tails pats his back as Silver pulls the two Chaos emeralds from his quills. They glimmer in the light of the sun. He just needs five more, and then he can set things right. Oh, he really hopes he runs into Sonic… he’ll definitely fight him for causing such an awful timeline, and then hopefully get all the information needed to fix everything.
But if they don’t find Sonic, and if none of his friends know what’s going on…
Silver huffs. “Come on, we have another emerald to find.”
He grips the emeralds tight to his chest. Charmy places a hand on his shoulder, while Tails settles his hand on Charmy’s helmet. Vector looks absolutely miserable when he places his hand on Tails’s head. “Lets just get this over with.”
“Chaos control!”
In a flash of white, the four of them disappear. Nails smiles.