Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Eggman had spent the last few weeks scheming, and studying the fluctuations in chaos energy. 

at first he thought this could be his chance to either return home and leave those meddling nuances behind, or get them go back and leave this world to him. but further study showed that travel between the two worlds would be more complex than that. both worlds existed in the exact same spot in two otherwise identical parallel universes and needed extreme amounts of chaos energy to stably open a way between them.

But Eggman discovered something very interesting. there where more worlds out there.

Entire parallel universes with different versions of Him, Sonic all his annoying little friends. take your pick of anyone. you could find a multitude of alternate versions of them. all with their own differences and similarities.

“Hmmm, if I find a world where sonic and his friends are the villainous ones, I could team up with them and team Sonic defeated by their own hand. Oh how delightfully evil.” 

"you really are a genius doctor" "yes, your brilliance is unmatched" Decoe and Bocoe coursed.

"yes thank you, i know. And the best part is because the worlds aren’t directly on top of each other we don’t even need all the chaos emeralds to open the way, there’s nothing sonic can do to stop me." Eggman grinned and posed self importantly.

"Dr Eggman! Dr Eggman!" Boukun's shrill voice sounded throughout the room

"what is it now Boukun?" Eggman was extremely annoyed at the intrusion.

"Sorry dr, but you gotta see this." Boukun took the tv screen off his back and pressed play.

and imedeatly blew up

"Eh heh heh. oops worng button."

the blast made the machine behind Eggman start to spark.

"you nincombot, look what you've done."

"what has he done doctor?"

"that explosion caused a malfunction in my machine. that means intead of being able to choose who i bring here it's picked them randomly. they could be anyone and be anywhere in this world." as eggman spoke a light expanded from machine and blasted past them.

Tails had been sitting in Chris' when all his gadgets suddenly went haywire.

"Tails look somethings up with the chaos emerald." Amy was peering at the gem in question and it was glowing and pulsing.

”huh? That’s strange.”

"Everyone look.” cream pointed out the window to a bright white light that expanded then faded away.

“That kinda looks like chaos control.” Tails looked at the Chaos emerald in his hand. “But how can that be? They’re not all in the same place?”

"whatever it is i bet eggman's got somthing to do with it." Sonic was sat leaning on the window silll.

a wave of blue lightning run over the house and shut off all power, plungeing them into darkness.

”ah! Blackout! Sonic help me! you have to protect us.”

”calm down Amy, you’ve been without power before.”

”but Sonic, what if Eggman caused it?” 

“Do you think so?” Chris questioned

”maybe, that blue lightning was really strange” Tails had a thoughtful expression on his face

”oh my, is everyone okay up here?” Ella climbed up the ladder to check on them.

”we’re fine Ella” 

“oh what a relief. Mr Tanaka and master chuck are trying to get the back up generator working, hopefully we’ll be able to get power back” everyone cheered at that 

”that blue lightning was so strange. I wonder what caused it?”

sonic wachowski had been enjoying an afternoon picnic with his family when a bright light had engulfed them and blinded them.

And when he blinked the light away he found himself in a dark alley in the evening.  

“Ugh my eyes, what happened?” When he looked around nothing was familiar to him. Was he even still on earth? The buildings looked like the had a similar style and architecture to what he was used to.

Sonic wasn’t sure what had happened but he wanted to go home.

now a days Sonic always kept rings with him, just in case something went wrong. Like it just had.

sonic rifled through his quills and found two rings.

”hoh boy, should probably save them until I find tails and knux” Sonic didn’t want to risk leaving them behind. So he put them back into his quils and peered out the alley.

there where humans everywhere so he did still seem to be on earth.

”hey look! It’s Sonic!” One of them pointed to him and sonic was suddenly crowded with strangers bombarding him with questions.

”hey wait.” Sonic felt himself getting stressed and his power start to act up.

”oh, no no no. not now please” a few people had noticed his distress and where trying to get the other to back off.

”Sonic! Over here!” “No answer my questions Sonic!” “You’re my hero Sonic!” 

this was too much.

Sonic’s power bubbled to the surface and released. It blasted across the city and plunged it into darkness

Sam speed had been speeding along in his car when he saw a wave of blue lightning approaching.

Sam slammed on the breaks and a moment later all the electronics in his car where fried.

”what? This is the most advanced car in existence! How could it be shut down like this?” Sam fiddled with everything he could to see what was working.

the car could still drive at least. But without any of the electronic systems active driving at sams preferred speed would be too risky.

”oh come on” Sam leaned back into his seat. Looks like he he was going to have to jumpstart the car manually.

When Sam got out of his car he was shocked to see Tails fiddling with some kind of handheld device and wearing a backpack.

”Nice to see you again. think you could help me with my car? That weird blue lightning did something to it” Tails looked at him with a confused expression.

”I’m sorry, you must of mistaken me for someone else, I don’t know who you are.” Tails who was apparently not-Tails looked at him apologetically.

”what do you mean by that? I was talking to you this morning. Did the lightning mess with your head or something?”

”um…” not-Tails was look around like he was trying to process what was going on. The fox stopped his looking around when he caught sight of Sam’s car behind him.

”Sorry about this, but my brother needs help.”

”huh? Sorry? About what?” Sam didn’t get any more time to react before Not-Tails tossed something at his legs. Sam fell over and when he looked down he saw that yellow electricity had wrapped around his legs. And all he could do is watch as Not-Tails or maybe actually tails, whoever this was was, hop in to his car, spend a few minutes fiddling with it and drive away.

”hey you can’t do that! That’s reserved only for the members of the S team”

Knuckles took as role as the protector of the Wachowki tribe seriously. Tom and Maddie may be the leaders and their parents but knuckles knew that he was the strongest and most experienced fighter and thought that it was only logical that he take responsibility for keeping them safe, so that he never looses anyone again.

but he couldn’t keep them safe if he was split from them like this.

and if Sonic’s blue blast of energy was anything to go by, he’d already found trouble.

this wasn’t that supriseing, he and his brothers had a tendency to draw trouble.

he just hoped Sonic had enough sense to run and hide before he got tracked down.

Chapter Text

Chuck and Tails had not gone to sleep since the blackout. they had been busy trying to work out what had caused the blue lightning. and so far all they had was that it was an intense pulse of chaos energy. 

"i have to say Tails, i'm stumped. i can't think of how this could of possibly happened ."

"Couldn't it have just been a chaos emerald?"

"we thought about that, Amy but nothing about what happened matches with what we know about the chaos emeralds" 

a knock sounded at the door

"it's midnight, who that could that could be?"

"don't worry master Chris, ill get it" Mr Tanaka gave a small bow and got up to open the door.

and in fell an exhausted looking Sam speed

"Uncle Sam! what's the matter?" Sam took a few heavy breaths and pointed at tails.

"did you steal my car?"

"what? no!"

"well last night someone who looked exactly like you stole my car and tied me up with this." Sam held out a small yellow device and Tails took it.

Tails inspected the object and was shocked to find a stylized symbol of two tails etched into it.

"two Tails? did you make this buddy?"  Sonic peered over Tails' shoulder for a better look.

"no i've never seen it before."

"wait. Sam, you said the looked exactly like tails?" Chuck turned to Sam in hopes of getting some answers

"yeah, the only difference i can think of is that he was wearing a backpack. but then again, it was dark and i couldn't see him properly."

"so a weird light messes with Tails' gadgets, strange blue lightning causes a city wide blackout and now a there's copy of Tails running around.” Amy looked over at at Chuck and Tails for confirmation. Tails shrugged that was pretty much all they had to go off of.

"no doubt Eggman's behind this" Sonic voiced what everyone in the room had been thinking.

"Don't you dare go running of at this time of night." Ella blocked Sonic from leaving.

"but if Eggman's behind this we need to stop him as soon as possible."

"Miss Ella is correct. with the sudden blackout the city will be in a state of confusion. and while it is possible Dr. Eggman will take advantage of the confusion it is just as possible he has lost power as well. it would be unwise for us to attempt to investigate on so little sleep." Mr Tanaka leaned down to Sonic's height as he explained.

"All right you heard them, we better get to bed. there's no arguing with them when they're like this."

Knuckles watched the blue energy crackle across the city and shut off all the lights within it from his place on Angel Island. even with it's distance from station square it was obvious the effect the Energy had on the city.

Knuckles knew that something that could create a pulse of chaos energy that strong would require an investigation.

so for now he would have to spend some time off Angel Island to see what could possibly have caused it.

when the blue lightning hit Eggman's base it shut down everything. 

Eggman was left in the dark and silence.

the lightning had even affected all of his robots.

Eggman stood still for a while trying to process what to do next.

the backup generator had kicked in and the most vital of systems where up and running but there would be a lot of work to do to get his base up and running again and he was not doing it alone, so his first mission was getting Decoe, Bocoe and Boukun back to normal.

"ugh, my head." "i feel like a toaster" the three robots thankfully only needed to be rebooted and had basically just experienced the robot version of being knocked unconscious.

"doctor? what happened?" Boukun was rubbing his head in a daze.

"I don't know. but whatever it was shut down everything in the base and i'm going to need you noncombots to get to work immediately.

"But Doctor we have still not recovered." "yeah have a heart."

"Do you two want to end up in the scrap heap?" Decoe and Bocoe began to panic and rushed to start getting everything rebooted.

"Are you going to try and find the thing that caused it?" Boukun hovered next to Eggman's head curiously 

"Yes Boukun, i've never seen anything like it.  that level of intense energy is something i need on my side."

"What do you think it is?"

"i don't know, perhaps it is one of the other worlds version of a chaos emerald. or maybe it's something else entirely. but as soon as the monitoring equipment is back i am going to find out.

Knuckles Wachowski had gotten distracted by the moon.

it was half mechanical.

Knuckles had been on some very strange worlds with equally strange moons in his search for the Master Emerald. but this would now be the strangest moon he seen, dethroning the shattered rainbow moon that orbited Barenda II from it's long running position.

he'd seen moons with artificial additions before, but nothing like this. Something had happened and then Someone had actually fixed the moon.

Well it confirmed that he wasn't on Earth anymore. and he had no guesses to where he actually was. something like this would surely be big news everywhere in the galaxy.

Perhaps when he found Tails they could work out where they where.

and that was exactly his mission. to find his brothers and parents.

the Master Emerald was also a concern. before the light that brought him here he had given it to maddie look after while he played a game with his brothers. he felt safe in doing so because he trusted the diligence and observant eyes of his adoptive parents and if anything went wrong he was right there anything went wrong. he hopped that he could find them quickly 

All Knuckles had to go on what the blast of chaos energy that had shut off the power an hour ago. and all that told him was that Sonic would not be in that exact spot.

But Knuckles would not rest until he found that his brothers where safe.

and after finding some very sonic like skid marks his search brought him to the outskirts of the city. Knuckles appreciated the distance, there was too big of a risk of being seen by citizens and he had no clue to what kind of reaction they would have to him.

this area looked abandoned and was littered with robot parts. some of them looked eerily similar in design to some of Robotniks. Knuckles shuddered at the thought of the man and quickly reassured himself. that man was gone. he couldn't hurt them anymore.

"Doctor Eggman, look" they had finally got all the monitoring equipment active and the reading that was the most interesting was that the machines had picked up three new intense signatures of chaos energy.

one was stationary, one zipping along at high speed and one right out side of the base.

"Are the exterior cameras working?"

"yes Doctor."

"bring it up." 

Bocoe tapped a few buttons and a large screen showed out side of the base.

"is that Knuckles? whats he doing here?" the Echidna in question was looking through the piles discarded robot parts and seemed to be inspecting them carefully. a few of them seemed to disturb him for some reason and after staring at them for a few seconds he shook his head and stopped looking through the robot parts.

"maybe he is looking for a chaos emerald?" he was certainly looking for something, and judging by the way he was stomping around he wasn't having any luck.

"Wait..." Now that Knuckles was closer to the camera Eggman was able to get a better look. and he started to notice some oddities.

He had a slightly buffer build than he remembered and his general facial structure seemed... off. he still looked recognizable as Knuckles but there was defiantly some differences. and there where coloured threads hanging amoung his dreadlock like Quills, that also seemed more dense and thick than he remembered.

Eggman squinted at the screen. where those coloured threads friendship bracelets? the Knuckles he knew would never. probably. Eggman didn't actually know them that well but it didn't seem like something Knuckles would do.

"That's not the Knucklehead we know. that must be the one from the other world. that would explain the unusually high levels of chaos energy. although, i've hardly ever seen a living being with such a high level of chaos energy before..." Eggman's brain started to fill with plans. his original intent of his machine was to find a version of the Sonic crew that would have the same goal as him. but this was Knuckles! and if he anything like the one he knew it would be a breeze to convince him over to his side.

it would just take a little acting.

"you two! keep monitoring the chaos energy signatures, and Boukun i want you to go and investigate the stationary one. if they are also alternate versions of who we know i want them to be on our side."

"you got it boss"

looks like this could be a big break for Eggman

 Rouge had been having dinner with Topaz when the power went out.

"Darn. i was rather enjoying myself."

"Okay everyone stay calm i'm sure that they'll be able to get the power back soon." Topaz had got out a torch and was beginning to direct people in the darkness.

Rouge could still see well in the darkness and by her judgement the people where mostly shaken and confused and the Lightning hadn't caused any more problems.

"any ideas about what caused it?" Topaz looked down at Rouge with a questioning expression.

"Not a clue, i've never seen anything like that. not even on my world." Rouge shrugged and shook her head.

"Gun will have to look into this. who knows what else the thing that caused this can do."

Whatever Rouge was about to say was interrupted by the sound of tires screeching and a car spinning out. Rouge and Topaz ran out to help whoever was in the car.

"Wait. isn't that sam's car?" but the person who got out of the car wasn't sam. but instead Tails.

"Sonic?! Knuckles?! Mum? Dad? are you there?" Tails was looking around 

"He's calling for his parents?" Rouge had never heard Tails called out for his parents before, and why was he using Sams car and not the X tornado?

"Hey Tails, long time no see." Tails jumped at Rouge's voice and she was able see a surprisingly high-tech looking backpack sitting squarely on his shoulders

"Uh.. Hi? i'm sorry but i've never seen you before." now that was interesting. not only did Tails not recognize him, he also sounded different to. and it was pretty suspicious that he was acting like this right after the blue lightning knocked the power out.

"My, i am so sorry kid. i must of been mistaken, i'm rouge." Rouge spoke slyly and leaned over and offered a hand to the fox who was apparently not Tails.

"well, i am Tails, you got that right. But that's probably pretty easy to guess." Rouge was very curious about this fox who seemed to be another version of tails.

"Well Tails, it's a pleasure to meet you"

"Hold on Rouge. what if he's got something to do with the lightning?"

"This adorable little guy? you don't have anything to do with it do you hon?" Rouge could see the unfamiliar Tails was starting to shift uncomfortably and Rouge was certain he knew something about it.

"uh....no!"

"look at him he's clearly lying"

"Now calm down Topaz, i'm he'll be more than willing to tell us all about what he know, wont you?" Rouge could see the unfamiliar Tails was looking around, possibly for an escape  and fiddling with a device in his hand.

Rouge and Topaz could not have predicted what happened next.

multiple green glitchy effects came from the device and where each of them landed a perfect copy of Tails formed performing basic actions like waving, hovering just above the ground or calling out to them.

"Holograms?" Topaz waved her hand through one of them and it glitched away, a few seconds later the rest of them followed suit. The unfamiliar Tails had used the confusion of the holograms to escape and was nowhere to be seen.

"Well that's one smart kid." Rouge had to admit she was impressed. "he could even make a good spy."

Sonic Wachowski was practiced at hiding, he had spent ten years doing after all.

he had run away from the location where he had unleashed his power, it was giving him uncomfortable memories of being discovered last time.

"Okay Sonic, you panicked and caused a huge blackout. Again. But it's fine right? you just need to-- HOLY CRAP WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MOON!" Sonic's stressed out rambling was interrupted by him catching sight of the moon for the first time.

Sonic could do nothing but stare.

"okay. not Earth. got it."

"SONIC! SONIC! I GOT A MESSAGE FOR YOU!" Sonic startled when he heard a shrill voice he didn't know called out for him, and when he turned he saw a small imp like creature with a rocket booster strapped his back and a bag slung over his shoulder.

"say... you look different." the creature seemed to be studying him carefully. "the doctor was right! you are from a difference universe!"

a different universe? that would explain some things.

"speaking of the doctor, he's got a message for you."  The creature pulled a shockingly large tv monitor out of his bag and press a button, bringing the screen to life.

a silhouetted figure in a dramatic pose started to talk about an offer to join him.

this was giving Sonic major villain vibes. in his recent quest to show his brothers as many Earth things as possible he had been binge watching his favorite shows and movies with them. and this guy fit in with them perfectly.

Sonic had no intention of listening to this message any further and decided to take a page out of his dad's book. so he leaned forwards.

and turned off the monitor.

"HEY! THAT"S TOTALLY UNFAIR! YOU CAN"T DO THAT!" the little creature started throwing a tantrum and turned the monitor back on.

which Sonic immediately turned off again.

"STOP!" Sonic was getting very entertained by this back and forth between him and the stranger and pressed the button again.

"I'M TRYING TO GIVE YOU A MESSAGE! WHY WON"T YOU LET ME SHOW IT TO YOU??" the strange little creature waving his arms around wildly and yelling at Sonic with his shrill voice.

"Because that guy's like a classic villain. there's no way i'm going to work with him."

"oh that's it! i'mm telling on you! then you'll be sorry!" Sonic was confused. tell on him? to who?

"Wait you're telling on me?"

"Yeah! to doctor Eggman. you're going to regret this!" The imp like creature flew off into the sky with a mischievous giggle 

"Eggman?" Sonic's excitement from the back and forth game faded. surely Robotnik couldn't be here. he just couldn't 

Eggman watched this other version of Knuckles carefully inspecting some cracks in a wall that had come from a battle a few weeks ago. Other Knuckles hadn't realized he was here yet. Eggman grinned. tricking the Knuckles he knew, was something he was quite experienced in, so it probably wouldn't take much to manipulate this one.

after a few breaths to ready himself Eggman took a step Forwards. the loud crunch of his shoes against the debris covered ground alerted the other knuckles to his presence. who whipped his head around in Eggman's direction and began to approach him.

"you! stranger who is standing in the dark. i have noticed your attempt to sneak up on me, Do not attempt to hide yourself. your heavy footstep have already  betrayed your location." Eggman was thrown for a loop. Other Knuckles had a different accent and spoke far more eloquently than the Knuckles he was familiar with. hopefully he was still just as gullible.

"please, i'm sorry i didn't mean to scare you." Eggman kept his head down and played up his distress 

"pfft. you did no such thing. i have seen far scarier than one such as yourself." Eggman thought it was going well. Other Knuckles seemed like he was being strung along successfully.

"That a relief to hear because i need your help"

"Help?" and there it was. hook, line, and sinker.

"Yes, you know someone called Sonic don't you?" Other Knuckles' entire stance changed, his expression changed to one of suspicion and Eggman swore that an electrical static filled the air. 

"...yes...?"

"I saw him earlier, and when i told him that he's in an entirely different world, he laughed and said that was wonderful." Other Knuckles' expression was difficult to read.

"another world? what one? i do not recognize this planet" Eggman had to think for a moment. he hadn't expected a question like that.

"Earth"

"You. Lie." Other Knuckles sounded so certain. At first Eggman had no idea how to recover from this, but then he remember that he was from an entirely different universe unconnected to this one. maybe he had been to his universe's earth. Now this had turned into an opportunity to get more information.

"I'm not. What makes you think i am?"

"Earth's moon dose not look like that." Interesting.

"OH! i get it now, you're thinking of 'world' as 'planet' i mean it as 'universe'" Eggman tried to make himself as sympathetic as possible.

"A different universe?" Other Knuckles contemplated it for a few seconds with a serious expression. "i see." oh good it looked like the situation was back under control.

"Now that's cleared up back to Sonic. I told him all about him being in a different universe and he laughed in my face when i suggested helping him work out a way back to his world, he said that he was going to stay here as long as he wanted and that if Knuckles and the others wanted to go home sooner it was tough luck. you know how selfish and reckless he is, he doesn't care about how you and the others are feeling, all he wants is the thrill of the next adventure." Eggman played to role of "worried messenger" perfectly if you asked him.

and it appeared to be working. Other Knuckles was quivering with rage and Eggman could hear him growling. perfect.

"now i need-"

and in a second everything changed.

Other Knuckles eyes changed from an amethyst purple to a glowing red, and his quills flowed with a bright red energy. Eggman didn't get long to contemplate any of this before the now glowing Echidna leapt at him and pinned him to the wall with one hand, the other hand was filled with red electricity that was reminiscent of the blue version that had knocked out the power.

"YOU SPEAK BLASPHEMY! you clearly know nothing of me or the elder of my younger brothers." uh-oh. Other Knuckles just called his Sonic 'brother'. this could be bad for Eggman after what he said.

"Sonic may be reckless, and act before he thinks, but uncaring and selfish he is not. his home and family mean more to him than anything, and i know for a fact that my brother is upset. so tell me where you saw him." when Other Knuckles asked Eggman about where sonic was his grip on Eggman tightened and his other fist raised threateningly.

"Alright, alright you got me. aside from the whole different universe thing, i made it all up. i don't even know if your Sonic is here. just calm down and leave me alone." at Eggman's confession Other Knuckles looked almost disgusted at him.

"you are a deceiver and a coward. and a waste of my time. i must find the rest of my tribe and if you attempt harm them or sully their honor i will not take it lightly." Eggman was too nervous at the moment to process the information he had just been provided with and watched in silence as the red glow faded and Other Knuckles disappeared into the night. none of it had gone to plan and Eggman might have just made a very dangerous enemy. 

Chapter Text

Maddie had been sitting on a picnic blanket watching her three alien sons goof around with a lemonade in her hand and and the Master Emerald sat safely in a tote bag in her lap.

"Lucky" Tom teased her with a smile. Knuckles trusting her to watch such an important item while he played around was a huge honor. The teenager had given her a very serious speech about how he trusted her to keep it from harm while he joined his brothers in a game of “go hide yourself and be found”

She didn't get to say anything further because of the bright light that blinded her, and when she regained her vision she was not sitting on a blanket during the afternoon but instead in an unknown dense forest in the evening. with the Master Emerald still in her lap.

Maddie had experienced many strange things since becoming a mother to three super powered aliens. not many parent could relate to half the issues she'd had to deal with.

but this could definitely be a contender for the strangest.

Maddie made sure the master emerald was secure before she got up from where she sat.

She wandered for a while but the light was beginning to fade and she was no closer to working out where she was.

Maddie was beginning to question if she was dreaming, because when squinted through the trees and got a glimpse of the moon it looked like half was an entirely different Colour.

she had ended up so distracted by this that she wasn’t watching where she was going and crashed into what was unmistakably a person.

”oh!” A soft thump indicated she had knocked the other person to the ground.

”oh sorry. You okay?.” Maddie extended her hand to the other person who took it delicately.

”oh, it’s quite alright, I was rather distracted myself” The person that grabbed her hand had pulled herself up was not a human but a mature, neatly dressed rabbit.

Tom felt extremely disoriented.

the weird light cleared and Tom was somewhere completely different.

”Maddie!? Boys!?” Tom looked around for any sign of his family, but found nothing. he didn't even look like he was in green hills anymore. had it been some thing like one of the warp rings? the forest looked like it could be found on earth, but then again based on his boys descriptions alien worlds could look very to earth. so that was no help.

Tom jumped when he heard footsteps behind him. He didn’t have much with him, he had only planned to be having a relaxing picnic after all.

but he did have one of Tails’ inventions. The three kids had insisted both of them Carry some of Tails’ inventions with them to protect themselves because they where; “far more delicate and at risk of being harmed” 

Tom and Maddie had followed their kids wishes and had agreed to carry some with them.

Maddie had ended up with a boomerang as one of the things she had with her and Tom had a (thankfully) weakened version of the gravity pulse that had sent a G.U.N solider a ridiculous distance into the sky.

man, their kids could be scary sometimes.

”I'm warning you, my kid made this and he’s very talented. You don’t want to know what he’s capable of building.”

”Hey whoa pal, no need for that. I didn’t mean to startle ya, you just looked as lost as I feel”

Tom blinked a few times in shock when the person who appeared in front of him was a giant crocodile with headphones and a gold chain. Thankfully he looked like a pretty chill guy. Tom wasn't sure but he didn't look like a teenager, maybe mid to early twenties? 

Had this happened before he adopted three super powered alien he would of been far more surprised. Now the most confusing thing was that he was so tall.

Tom had gotten used to looking down at his kids who, even knuckles, the oldest, was only around waist height and far shorter than any humans his age.

But he was at practically at eye line with this guy. and was quite off put that the crocodile looked like he was taller than him.

Vanilla was rather enjoying Maddie's Company.

The two had started up a conversation and Vanilla had discovered that Maddie was also a mother. 

At first the two had bonded over their children but then Maddie had mentioned one of them by name.

Sonic.

"You're Sonic's mother? i've never heard him mention you before." Vanilla thought back across every interaction she had had with Sonic and he had never mentioned a Maddie.

Maddie was looking at her puzzled.

"Wait, are you saying that I’m not his mum in your world."

"No, I don’t think so. There aren’t many humans other than one or two that I know of in my home world.”

“Well Sonic did leave his original world a long time ago, maybe that’s why then. I wonder what other differences they could have then.”

“i'll see if i have a photo with me." Vanilla opened the bag she had with her to try to find that group photo she loved. Maddie also reached into one of her pockets and pulled out a small, flat device. she pressed a button on it and it lit up. Vanilla watched as she swiped her finger across it across it until her face lit up.

"ah! Found it. this is the Sonic i know." Vanilla looked at the image on the small screen.

Vanilla was surprised to see a different looking, Tails and Knuckles as well as Sonic piled on a couch and all smiling at the camera. the photo wasn't a staged one and the three of them looked like they had been previously been watching something on the tv. she had to admit the photo was adorable. all three looked like happy kids

"I know them too, but they're different." Maddie looked at her to continue

"Here, this is how i know them." Vanilla held out the photo to Maddie who smiled at the photo.

it was a group photo of everyone. it was the only when where everyone had been looking at the camera and no one was blocking anyone.

Maddie held her photo next to Vanilla's

"well they certainly look alike."

"So, in your world are you their mother too?" Maddie smiled

"Yep. Mother of three superpowered alien children."

"i only have one daughter. Cream. that's her." 

"She's adorable."

"so are your kids"

"They've probably ended up here too. i hope they found each other."

"oh, do you think they've met up with the versions from my world?"

"Two sonic's? thats a concerning thought." Vanilla guessed that Maddie's Sonic was reckless. her Sonic certainly could be and the one in the photo looked like a young kid.

"I assume that means your Sonic is also reckless"

"Extremely." Vanilla giggled as Maddie went as into a story about Sonic accidentally running through a closed glass door and how he had roped his brothers into replacing before she and Tom noticed.

Vector thought he was pretty lucky to run into Tom. The guy had seemed surprised at first but quickly took everything in stride.

He was also a sheriff in a small town and had three adopted kids. Vector considered that to be a nice line up with him being a detective and the one to look after Charmy and Espio when they needed. But his boys where good at handling themselves so Vector didn’t always need to step in.

And during a family picnic with them he had seen a light just like he had and ended up somewhere completely different.

Vector was certain that he had been transported to the same place Sonic and his friends where.

The evidence all lined up. Sonic, his friends and Eggman had all disappeared at the same time to supposedly a huge bright light. And Vector and his new bud Tom had experienced the same thing. And then there was whole baffling situation with the moon. Vector would be willing to bet what little money he had that Eggman was responsible for it.

Chapter Text

“Good morning to those who are tuning in for more answers about last nights blackout. Power is still out in most of the city and officials are still baffled about the cause of the phenomenon. In a new development some eye witness accounts place Sonic at the site where the blue lightning started. Sonic is yet to provide any statement on the matter”

The room looked looked up from their breakfast and at the portable radio on the table. confusion was etched into their faces but no one wanted to speak over any important information.

”an Eggman attack has also not been ruled out. we continue to urge citizens to help each Other out and report anything strange to the officials. This is Scarlett Garcia providing updates on the half hour. Thank you and stay safe.” The radio broadcast ended and some calming music started to play in its place. Mr Tanaka walked over and turned the radio down.

”so there’s a copy of me to,” 

“do you think this other Sonic caused it?” Amy crossed her arms, surely no Sonic would do such a thing.

“Maybe it’s not actually Sonic? I mean, it’s not like it’s the first time we’ve with dealt with a duplicate.” Everyone thought over Tails’ words.

”well if it’s not sonic what could it be?”

”we Don’t know Amy, and that’s why we need to get searching.” Everyone turned their attention to Chuck. “Tails think you can get us a view from the sky?”

”of course.”

”Hey Tails, mind if I ride with you?”

”not at all Chris”

”Great. While you two watch from the sky, Sonic and I can search the city. I want to know who this impersonator thinks he is” Everyone scooted away from an angry Amy and her newly summoned hammer.

”of course miss Amy, that imposter won’t stand a chance against you” Mr Tanaka placed a hand on Amy’s shoulder and spoke in a placating tone.

”he better not.” Everyone let out a breath they didn’t know they where holding when Amy put her hammer away and plopped back down on the couch.

”excuse me but what can I do?” Cream was giving the room an innocent look that she was well known for.

”why don’t you come with me and Tanaka sweetie, we’re going to look around town and see if anyone needs help.” Ella placed a hand on creams head and looked at her with a warm expression.

”Okay, I like helping people.” Cream smiled brightly and rocked on her heals, with Cheese happily chirping by her side. No one in the room could feel bad when Cream acted like this. She was just too adorable.

”alright I’ll stay here and keep an eye things. Everyone know what their role is?” Everyone in the Thorndyke’s kitchen nodded at chuck, And got up and got up. Chuck, Chris and Tails headed for the garage/tornado, Amy, Cheese, Ella And Tanaka for the main door and Sonic for the window.

the amount of footsteps that filled the room woke Sam from his place on the couch.

”Hey wait! What about me? My cars still stolen you know.” No one was left in the house so Sams complaint went completely ignored.

Tails Wachowski had been avoiding the bat and human all night.

the two of them had been tracking him relentlessly.

the bat would watch from the sky and direct the human to his location. He didn’t want to get into a fight with them but their relentless chase was getting tiring and Tails was running low on tricks. They had already come up with a system to work out if he was actually a hologram or not. The bat had a seemingly endless surply of cards and would throw one every time she saw him or a hologram, and his holograms would get destabilized and disappear if touched so her technique counter his perfectly.

Tails yawned. He hadn’t got any sleep and he felt his decisions getting less thought out. he had to loose them so he could sleep.

ahead was what looked like a long abandoned construction site. Those tended to have lots of nooks and crannies to hide away in.

”Hey kid, it’s okay, you don’t have to hide.” Tails was above them in the rafters listening to their conversation.

”ugh, how hard can it be to catch one little kid.” The human rubbed her face in exasperation 

“aww is the old lady getting tired, do you need a nap?” The human blushed at the bats teasing and turned to her.

”Rouge! This is serious. He knows something about the lightning, and we need know what.” Rouge rolled her eyes.

”Topaz, hes a kid. Not a dangerous criminal.” Topaz calmed and sighed.

”I never said he was, but this is big Rouge. Gun needs know what happened.” After hearing that name Tails couldn’t think about anything else

G.U.N

The very same name as the organization that had tazed Sonic, locked him and his brother up, provided Robotnik with plenty of metal to build his robot with and had created a whole elaborate operation to marry into the family to keep an eye on sonic.

and Tails was certain they where still watching. The whole organization had been created because of Sonic to “protect the world from alien creatures” and he and his brothers definitely still counted in their eyes.

Tails sometimes had nightmares of the organization swooping in and taking him and his brothers away. There had been Enough of them For Tails to experience every possible combination multiple times.

the organization scared him deeply, so if they where the Same thing in this world (he was 90% certain he was in an alternate world) why was this bat helping them? Didn’t G.U.N dislike his kind?

and in his groggy state the only thing that he could think of was that she was being forced somehow, and must be scared even with how casual she was being. Tails was impressed at her bravery.

he had to rescue her.

Sonic Wachowski found a newspaper with another him on the front.

The hedgehog who looked just like him was posed in front of a pile of smoking rubble under the headline of “Sonic saves the day again” oh cool other him was a famous hero here.

“looks like he chose the hero life.” Sonic was perfectly content being a kid (with the occasional hero gig, nothing too major) and didn’t get why his counterpart would have that as his choice when his family was so close, but he thought he seemed pretty cool anyway.

”I just gotta make sure I never run into him. That’s the rules right? Never meet or touch yourself? Wait or is that time travel? Better avoid him anyway. I don’t wanna blow up time and space.” Sonic folded the newspaper scrap up and stuck it in his quills. Might be useful later.

”okay time to work out what to do. I’m stuck in a different dimension and I don’t know where anyone is. What’s rule one?” Sonic began to pace back and forth in the alley.

”right of course! ‘Don’t meet yourself. Maybe. I still don’t know. Rule two. Don’t be suspicious. People never let their friends counterparts know, that’s gotta be for a reason right? I’ll need a disguise.”  Sonic looked around but couldn’t see anything he could turn into a disguise.

”darn, Nothing. I’ll have to find something later. Okay rule three! Rule three… rule three.” 

“hey is someone back here?”

”uh oh” Sonic slapped his hands over his mouth. This whole time he’d been speaking aloud. He did it all the time when it was just him, but did it less when he moved in with Tom and Maddie, but the habit hadn’t completely disappeared. Sonic dived behind a dumpster and tried to stay out of sight.

The person who entered the alley was a a blonde human with glasses and a blue jacket. He looked around the alley in suspicion and took out some kind of gadget. He waved it around and it beeped a few times, the man stepped forwards and repeated the action.

Sonic was holding his breath to make sure he wouldn’t talk. the man was getting closer, and closer and Sonic's mind was going into a panic.

Had to make him go away, but how? Sonic couldn't think, panicked went with the first thing that popped into his head.

"meow!" he said it. he just...said it it didn't sound anything like a cat and was distinctly spoken.

Sonic was so busted.

the man reached for him and picked him up. Sonic did not like being picked up by a stranger and began to struggle.

"Sonic? why are you hiding behind a dumpster?" uh oh this guy knew the other him. and by the rules he came up with for being in a different dimension he couldn't make him suspicious. He could pretend that he was the Sonic he knew but that normally lead to a big confusion between the characters involved, and Sonic had no idea what the other Sonic was like.

He could pretend to be an entirely different blue hedgehog. surely they weren't that unusual right?

"uh.. who's Sonic?"

"You."

"No i'm not."

"So you mean to tell me that you're some other blue talking hedgehog who's got nothing to do with Sonic."

"Yep! now you're getting it!" the man put Sonic down and Kneeled down to his level.

"Alright then, what is your name." Sonic hadn't thought of that part.

"uh.. Kean.. reeve." Sonic held his hands together and gave his best innocent smile.

"Kean. Reeve. as in Keanu Reeves?" Sonic gulped and nodded.

"yep. thats me. Kean Reeve. my very, real name." the man sighed.

"Sonic, i'm a teacher remember, i have experience with---" the rest of whatever he said was cut off by the sound of a low flying plane over head. The man got distracted by it and looked it his direction and when he looked back Sonic had zipped away, leaving him behind.

The X tornado flew over the city with Chris and Tails inside.

"you seeing anything Chris?" as Tails flew the X Tornado he kept an eye on the chaos emerald. it had flickered a few times in response to the chaos energy last night and would probably help them find the cause.

"no, nothing- wait! i see Knuckles!" down on the ground Chris could see a red shape moving along the ground

"but is that our Knuckles, or another copy?" 

"I can't tell from up here, you'll have to land the plane Tails."

"right." Tails began to press buttons to bring them down to the ground.

as the plane flew closer to the ground The echidna stopped and watched it land.

"Hey Knuckles is that you?" Knuckles looked very annoyed at chris' question.

"Of course it's me. who else could a Echidna possibly be." Knuckles had a slightly bitter snarl to his voice.

"….Sorry Knuckles, but you saw that blue lightning last night didn't you?"

"It's the whole reason i'm even here. i need to know what could possibly cause such a huge pulse of chaos energy." 

"So you don't know anything either? but you know more about chaos energy than anyone."

"Nope. sorry." Knuckles turned to walk away but chris stopped him

"Wait Knuckles, have you seen any copies of us around?"

"Copies?"

"Yeah, apparently Sonic was seen at the origin point of the lightning but he was with us the whole time. and apparently i stole Sam's car but i definitely didn't"

"Have you actually seen these supposed copies?"

"no.. but that's why we need to find them. especially if this other Sonic was the cause of this."

"I seriously doubt he caused it on his own. No living being just naturally has that much chaos energy."

"We did have a theory about them being Eggman robots"

"All the more reason to find and stop them."

"So you are going to help us search Knuckles?" Tails hopped onto the X tornado and offered a place to Knuckles.

"You can go in the sky if you want, but i prefer to search the ground"

"Okay, we'll see you later then." Chris waved to Knuckles as the plane took off and the echidna began his search.

Rouge was in a different room to Topaz when she felt something pulling on her arm, and when she looked that way she saw the other Tails was trying to get her to move.

"Come on lets go while she's distracted." Now this was certainly interesting.

"Who's distracted, hon?"

"the gun lady, you can get away now." Rouge looked at other Tails. he looked scared.

"The gun lady?"

"yeah come on, if we go now she can't hurt us." Rouge was concerned. what had G.U.N done to this kid to make him so scared.

"Well you certainly are a little hero aren't you." Rouge decided that it would be a good idea to let the little fox lead her along, he wasn't running anymore and she might be able to get him to talk.

"i certainly try to be, it's just like one of my dad's wachowski family specials" being a hero isn't about taking care of yourself. It's about taking responsibility for other people." "

"your dad must be pretty smart."

"he is." Rouge walked along quietly watching this other Tails asking him questions about random things like his invention sand adding in some of her own tales of heists and treasure hunting. The kid was getting more an more willing to talk and was looking very sleepy now. It’s was probably a good time to ask a more pressing question.

"So the Wachowski family huh?"

"Yep, there's me, my two big brothers, Sonic and Knuckles, and my mom and dad. oh yeah! and out pet dog Ozzie, can't forget him." Rouge's brain had to take a lot of time to process that. for one thing this other Tails had just mentioned Sonic and Knuckles, does that mean that there's another Sonic and Knuckles around? Rouge really wanted to see what they where like.

"Two older brothers huh? that must get difficult."

"Sometimes. But they're great we get along most of the time, Sonic and Knuckles do bicker a lot but it always works out in the end." Sonic and Knuckles fighting sounded on brand for them, Rouge found the idea of the two of them being brothers very entertaining, especially with how unsocial the versions she knew could be.

"So do you and your brothers live together?"

"Yeah we have the whole attic to ourselves and-" he stopped and pulled out the device that he had activated the holograms and started to wave it around.

"you okay there hon?"

"i don't want to risk saying anything gun could use against me in case they're listening in."

"you're really worried about gun." the young fox paused and dipped his head down.

"they hurt my family." Rouge reached out to put a hand on the kit's shoulder and he jolted and met her eyes.

"hey, don't worry gun wont hurt you." Rouge heart tightened. She herself was a G.U.N agent and the kid was so scared of them. Rouge did not want to deal with the emotional fall out if he found out.

Other Tails yawned.

"you've been Running from gun all night haven't you" he nodded.

"You get some rest, you've been very brave." Other Tails looked anxious but eventually settled down to rest.

Once Rouge was sure he was sleeping she called up Topaz

“Hey.” Rouge spoke with just the right amount of sass that would provoke Topaz

”don’t ‘hey’ me, where did you go?” Topaz’s voice came in slightly distorted 

”keep your voice down. I’m with the kid.” 

“Wait kid? Do you mean the other Tails we saw.”

”Yep.”

”did he tell you anything useful?” Rouge sighed and spoke with seriousness 

“Some stuff about is family, it seems like it’s possible another Sonic and Knuckles are here to. And He’s terrified of gun”

”Huh?”

”he didn’t tell me anything other than they; ‘hurt his family’. that’s why I’m with him. He was trying to rescue me from ‘the scary gun lady’”

”wow. The poor little guy does sound scared.”

”I’m not bringing him to gun.”

”then what do you suggest? If we’re caught hiding him and he does have important information about the blackout we could be arrested!”

”I was thinking we keep him.”

”WHAT!?” Rouge snickered it was always fun getting a rise out of Topaz

”Relax, I’m joking. Besides he already has a family”

”ugh, you are such a nuisance.”

”yeah, but I’m your nuisance, aren’t I?” Rouge heard the splutter on the other end of the line and she could practically see the blush

”hey enough of that! We still need to decide what to do about the kid. Where are we taking him if not to gun.” 

“Where else would we take him? The Thorndykes of course”

Amy stomped around.

She had wanted to search with Sonic and confront his imposer together. Now she was looking for two speedy blue hedgehogs.

”Where is Sonic? He really has to stop running off like this, it’s unbecoming of a hero like himself.” As Amy turned to corner she saw what she was looking for.

a blue hedgehog.

Amy ran over and tackled him into a hug.

”oh Sonic there you are, I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” Amy squeezed him tight, not wanting to let go.

but when a jolt of electricity shot through her body she let go and fell to the ground in shock.

”Oh my gosh I am so sorry.” A fast apologetic sounding voice that was not Sonic's poured out of the hedgehog's mouth.

Amy brushed herself off and stood up and took another look at who she thought was Sonic.

he looked like Sonic, but more child-like and with blue arms. this was that impostor that shut down all the power! How dare he cause so many problems and potentially get her Sonic in trouble.

Amy summoned her hammer and got ready to swing it

"Okay now that's really cool, but please don't hit me, i said i was sorry." The Sonic impersonator hopped backward and away from her swings and with each step blue electricity arched across his legs. maybe this was an Eggman robot

"oww" an extremely life like one.

the possibly robotic hedgehog had taken a misstep on a discarded chip packet and had given Amy the perfect opportunity to smack him with her hammer.

"You though you'd get away with impersonating sonic didn't you? well you didn't"

"i'm not trying to be him, i just look like this, honest."

"likely story. now what what's his plan?"

"who's who are you talking about?"

"who else? Eggman of course!"

"Eggman! why would i know what his plans are?"

"You're one of his robots aren't you?" Amy lifted her hammer and pointed it more into his face.

"No! i'm not a robot. especially not one of Eggman's that guy is the wo-orst." For some reason the Sonic impersonator sung the last.

"if you're not a robot then explain how you electrocuted me!"

"i don't know. it mostly just acts according to my emotions. Knux might know a tiny bit more, he can do it to, but he told me that he doesn't know much either." wait. Knux? that was one of Knuckles' nicknames. did knuckles know this guy? but. wait... Amy backpedaled in her thought. According to the Sonic impersonator 'Knux' could do whatever that lightning thing was to. And she'd never seen Knuckles do anything like it even with the master emerald.

"Knux?"

"yeah, my big brother, Knuckles!" Amy stood still trying to posses that. From what she knew about Knuckles he wanted nothing to do with them most of the time and would only sometime show up when they needed help.

"oh great look what you've done Sonic. you broke her." okay, he was talking to himself now. "you just have to work out what you said and go from there. that last thing you said was that Knuckles was your big brother, but that can't be.." his face brightened in realization. "Wait are we not brothers in this universe? then what about Tails he-" the rambling hedgehog clamped his hands over his mouth when he saw Amy had been listening in to his discussion with himself.

"you're from a different universe, aren't you!?" Amy pointed a finger dramatically at him.

"Um.. no i'm not?"

"You have to be! that could give an explanations for all the questions i was asked to today."

"Okay, yes. i'm pretty sure i'm from a different universe."

"see? that wasn't that hard, why didn't you tell me in the first place?"

"because it's like a rule or something? that you're never supposed to tell someone that you're from a different dimension. for reasons?" that was the most ridiculous rule Amy had ever heard.

"Since when was that a rule?"

"since like, every film, tv show or video game involving time and space travel.

"You're basing what you're doing on a movie? how dumb can you be? Amy yelled at him

"hey! it's not dumb those things take a lot of people to make and that's a reoccurring thing that happens, so they've got to be on to something right?"

Amy had to admit she could see the logic it. "okay i get it. but i still think it's a dumb way to plan what to do."

"Sometimes the best plans are the dumb barely thought out ones. i can't be out planned if i don't even know what i'm doing. Improvisation, Whoop! whoop!" that sounded very much like Sonic with how reckless he could be at times except if you crossed him with a puppy on a sugar high.

Chapter Text

"...and that was when Knuckles punched it." Tom had to stop for vector and let him laugh it out.

"HA HA HA, oh man that is exactly what the knuckles i know would do”

”yeah, laugh it up. It might be funny to you now, but you weren’t the one who had to calm down two superpowers teenagers and a little kid who made another tazer net all because the mail man came twice instead of the usual once.”

”That poor guy.”

”yeah we didn’t see that mail man again. He refuses to step foot in green hills now. And now all the delivery drivers have to call and tell us if they come twice.” 

“I’d love to see the look on his face if he got my boys suspicious enough to attack. A hyperactive flying six year old and a teenage invisible ninja, the poor guy would loose it”

”then you’d have deal the aftermath of whatever they did.” Tom gave Vector a side eye

“Yeah the aftermath can be pretty rough, if your knuckles is even half as strong as the one I know, there must be a lot of trouble. you deal with a lot of broken stuff don’t you? “

”Yes, so much. but he is getting better, I’ll give him that.”

”hey that’s good.”

Vector and Tom stopped when they came across a sign giving directions on the side of a walking trail.

”Looks like we’re not in the middle of nowhere after all!”

"Great because i do not want to spend any more time pointlessly wondering around."

Knuckles Wachowski found a crumpled poster.

when unfurled the text at the top was in the same language that was common place across the galaxy and Earth. That had become one of the most puzzling things thing to him once he learned how isolated the planet earth was yet, somehow they had multiple of their own dialects of the language he referred to as common. 

Knuckles shook his head. he was getting side tracked that mystery would be for another day. For now the content of the poster was more important to his task.

"The super speedy super heroic Sonic!" Was in big bold letters along the top and below that was a picture of a blue hedgehog with a distinct resemblance to Sonic but with many noticeable differences. that was not his brother, but was apparently Sonic.

The man who spoke lies about his brother had claimed that he was in a entirely different universe and had held onto that claim even after his deception had been uncovered. if it wasn't for the moon, and now this poster Knuckles would have dismissed all of the mans claims as lies. if the man was willing to tell lies about his brother why would he then tell the truth about this being a different universe? Knuckles wasn't sure would not make any conclusions until he found someone more trustworthy or got a better look at one of the counterparts.

Knuckles heard an engine above him and looked up. he knew the plane was searching. It had been circling around and had only landed once for a very short time then had taken off and began circling again.

When the plane passed over head his power spiked for a brief moment. 

It wasn’t too big of a concern, his power did react directly to his emotions, maybe he was more unnerved about this place than he realized.

But then the plane turned around and started to circle directly over his head and his glow returned.

Thankfully that was all his power was doing, and wasn’t going super out of control or anything, but it wouldn’t fully settle and get rid of the glow.

Clearly something on that plane was the cause of it. and the occupants had noticed him and brought the plane to the ground.

Knuckles did not run and stood his ground. he wanted to know what on that plane was causing this, and if anything went wrong he could fight his way out.

Cream watched the almost identical Tails snuggled up in a pile of blankets peacefully snoring away.

"Looks like the little guy really did need his sleep." Cream turned her attention to Rouge.

"Excuse me, Miss Rouge?" the bat in question looked up from absent mindedly picking at her gloves.

"yes hon?"

"Some of the others said he might be part of a Eggman scheme. but i don't want him to be, i don't want to fight someone who looks just like Tails." Cream had a couple tears well up in her eyes and Cheese patted her face comfortingly.

"Who knows if Eggman had anything to do with it. but either way i think he's a good kid. just like you." Rouge playfully 'booped' Cream on the nose and made her giggle.

"Blast it Sam! this is more important than your car!"

"he stole a highly top secret government vehicle!"

"You're entirely missing the point. this other Tails could have something to do with the blackout!"

"But my car can't risk falling into the wrong hands!"

"If it bothers you that much Topaz is showing Tanaka where she saw it last!"

from the other room Sam and Chuck where beginning to raise their voices and yell at each other

"Quiet. you're going to wake our little guest. so If both of you don't lower your voices i'm going to squish and roll the both of you up like cookie dough."  

A click sounded from the door and Ella entered the room.

"Unbelievable. it's like those two don't even realize we have a sleeping guest." Ella walked over to the sleeping fox with a warm smile. she had taken an immediate shine to the fox the moment she saw him. 

"He was hiding from us all night. he needs rest."

During the conversation Cream had gotten bored and had wondered over to Tails' backpack.

there where lots of interesting things inside, they all look so cool. Cream picked out one at random and looked at it.

it was yellow and triangular and when she pressed a button it became a sharp crescent shape.

"oh!" 

"what is it Cream?" Cream held out the item to Ella who looked at it in surprise.

"where on earth did you get that sweetie?"

"i found it the other Tails' Backpack"

"Kids got some pretty impressive gadgets." 

"Cream can you please give that to me?" cream thankfully handed over the extremely sharp object and Ella breathed a sigh of relief, she didn't want Cream to be playing with something so sharp, she could hurt herself.

"move your arm or he will see us." "it is your leg that is in the way."

Knuckles heard the familiar voices of Decoe and Bocoe and crashing sounds behind him.

"what do you clowns want." Knuckles glared at them and clenched his fists, ready to fight

"That is not the same voice from earlier." "We have been following the wrong one the entire time." Knuckles watched the two robots begin to bicker between each other.

So he had a copy to. and it looks like theory of them being part of an Eggman scheme was correct. 

"what's Eggman's up to this time, why's he making copies of us?" Knuckles yelled at the two bots. he needed answers, the Sonic copy was apparently the one who caused the blast of chaos energy, and there could be nothing but bad things if Eggman had access to that much power.

"Dr Eggman did not make them." 

"what?" if they weren't robots designed to Chanel chaos energy then what could they possibly be?

"they are from another universe."

"Are you saying that you expect me to believe that a Sonic from another universe has enough chaos energy to shut down power to an entire city?"  Knuckles was ashamed to admit how much Eggman's tricks got to him. he wanted to go home and was getting desperate. But something like this was far too ridiculous to be believed. living beings could handle chaos energy temporarily but too much would exhaust them quickly. Knuckles was the guardian of the Master Emerald he'd lived his entire life in the presence of chaos energy and even if he was to use it the Master Emerald would be doing most of it. Knuckles just directed it. 

"it's true! and the other you was even glowing with energy. it was really cool" "and scary to"  Knuckles stared at the bots. other him. glowing.

"ENOUGH! i'm not sticking around for any more of these ridiculous stories. i am going to find out what's going on, on my own." Knuckles brushed past Decoe and Bocoe and as he left he heard the two bots continue to talk.

"but we where telling the truth, why dose he not believe us." "perhaps as the master emeralds guardian he believes he is an expert on chaos energy and is unwilling to accept that it might work differently than he thinks." "yes, if they are from a different it is not that unbelievable that they could wield it easily." Knuckles stomped back to the two robots and shouted at them.

"I'll have you know i AM an expert on chaos energy. i know how it works and they can't do that.”

"not if they're from a different universe." "yeah different universe, different rules." Decoe and Bocoe crossed their arms.

"it shouldn't matter if it's a different universe. they could not be doing that naturally. they have to have their universe's chaos emeralds."

"we will find them and prove you wrong." "you are going to be so embarrassed"

"you two are going to hate it when i find them and prove you wrong" Knuckles shook hands with both robots feeling quite confident.

"okay, what about something they do that's gives you a headache but yet is still very endearing."

"oh that's a good one maddie, let's see, Cream is a very good girl but she wonders off all the time. if she didn't have cheese or we didn't live in such a small lovely town i would worry more. she's always wondering off in town and chatting to everyone she sees. she's so good at making friends. what about your boys? i am quite interested hear about what they get up to."

"for one thing The three of them take defending our home very seriously. they fought the mail man one time."

"oh dear,"

"And the sibling squabbles are a nightmare. i used to think me and my sister where destructive but now that i've got; a son who can run to another state if seconds if he wants to, a son who can just lift the car if it's in the way and a son who can build literally whatever he wants. tearing down grandma's favorite curtains dosen't seem so bad"

"they sound like a whirlwind, i can't wait to meet them"

The chaos emerald in front of Tails flickered for a moment and lit up. 

"Is there a chaos emerald nearby?"

"I don't think so chris, it's different somehow, i'm going to circle around and see if i can pinpoint it." Tails turned the X Tornado around and started to circle around the spot where the chaos emerald had lit up.

"Tails look!" Tails followed Chris' point to a spot on the ground where a glowing red echidna was staring up at them.

"that's gotta be Knuckles' copy!" Tails brought the X tornado into a dive and landed it in front of the glowing copy of Knuckles.

Tails and Chris hopped out and stood in front of the Knuckles copy. His eyes and quills and where where flowing with a bright red energy but he didn't seem bothered or concerned by this fact.

Tails couldn't see anything that indicated that he was an Eggman robot. he looked far too much like a living being and Tails could see the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed.

The glowing Knuckles appeared to be closely studding Tails but he hadn't said anything yet.

”Tails?”

”yes i'm Tails," Knuckles looked at him closely and then to a poster in his hand.

"You and this hedgehog share my younger brothers names and appearances but are not the same." The glowing knuckles spoke in a very formal tone and completely unfamiliar voice. 

"Wait, Younger brothers?” the other Knuckles seemed slightly hurt at Tails' question

”do I not have counterpart?”

”No, you do, but he’s different. he doesn't spend a lot of time around us, i don't think he would call any of us a brother."

"....i see." other Knuckles looked disappointed hearing about his counterpart but his expression Shifted and he turned to Chris.

"you are unfamiliar to me. i have not met a counterpart for you."

"i'm Christopher thorndyke, but i usually just go by chris." chris offered a hand to Other Knuckles who lifted his arm to take it but paused and lowered his hand.

"What's the matter?"

"Human bones are fragile." Tails and Chris where startled and froze at Other Knuckles' response

"what?"

"it takes very little to break the bone of a human. i assume a child's are even more delicate." Other Knuckles was being completely serious and showed no signs joking.

"My power is also still acting unusual. you could be seriously harmed if it lashes out at you." The still glowing Knuckles gave his fist an annoyed look as a spark of red electricity arced across it.

"your power is based on chaos energy right?" Knuckles nodded. "i think the chaos emerald might be what's messing you up," 

"you have a chaos emerald?"

"I've been using one to power the X tornado" Tails gestured for Knuckles to follow him to the X tornado. when he got closer to the emerald the red electricity started to arc passively across his body.

"That's a chaos emerald?"

”yeah! Is something wrong.”

”it’s so big!”

”Wait, big?”

”yes it is about..” Other Knuckles paused and made a shape with is hands.”Half? Perhaps a third the size of the master emerald. I assume that it to has a counter part.”

”WHAT!” Tails and Chris where floored to hear that this almost certainly from a different dimension Knuckles describe the master emerald as being so small.

”Did I say something strange?”

”I’m sorry did you say that THE master emerald is only about this big?” Other Knuckles looked at the size Tails was miming.

”yes that is correct.”

”I need a moment to process this” Tails took a few steps back and started to stare at nothing in particular.

”why? is this worlds Master Emerald different?”

”well for one thing it’s huge! It’s far bigger than me!” Chris was doing his best to convey the size of the emerald but couldn’t fully show it.

”that seems inconvenient.” 

“Don’t let our Knuckles hear you say that, he hates it when people speak badly of it.”

”understandable. speaking of my counterpart, it may be better to discuss more about the Emeralds when he is present. And I have already delayed the search for my brothers long enough.”

”That’s what we’ve been doing, but we’ve only found you and our knuckles.”

”I am unsurprised. your machine won’t help find them”

”But we found you.”

“you only found me because I grew curious, and waited”

“Then how are we going to find them?”

”You, Will not. they are my brothers. I will find them.”

”But we can be an eye in the sky for you.” Other knuckles was giving them a quizzical look

”but between you you have four eyes, why would you limit your self in your search?”

”We’re not going only use one eye, saying ‘eye in the sky’ is just an expression saying that we’ll be looking from the sky”

”then you should have said eyes. Saying eye muddles your intent” 

“I guess you’re right, that does make sense.” Chris decided it was best to just go along with what he was saying. It wasn’t that big of a deal anyway.

”you can do what you wish, but my search must continue.” Other Knuckles gave them a respectful nod and began to walk away.

”wait! I have an idea. Why don’t you take Chris with you? He knows the city and i can call him from the X tornado if I see any clues.” Other Knuckles thought over this for a minute.

“An intelligent strategy. It appears that you have more in common with my brother than just name and appearance.” Tails couldn’t say for certain but he was pretty sure that was a compliment.

”Okay, bye Tails see you later.” Chris waved to tails as he brought the X tornado back into the sky. as the plane got further away the red glow flowing through Knuckles' quills faded and his eyes faded from a bright red to the amethyst purple that was more familiar.

“Come Christopher, we must find my brothers before they get into more trouble."

Sonic Wachowski had been roped into having lunch with Hammer Girl.

"Well if my Sonic is going to ignore me i might as well have lunch with you." She had then grabbed his arm and dragged him to the nearest cafe that had power back, Sonic awkwardly looked down when the first cafe turned them away because they where too busy taking stock of what food was still good after the blackout. oh dear, that was his fault.

Fortunately the next cafe had power back and was up and running, people had crowded into it and the space buzzed with questions.

"Okay Sonic, you just need to stay calm. don't let your power get out of control. you've been to restaurants before, you love them. remember? don't think about how everyone's asking questions about the thing that's all your fault."

"Hey!" Sonic jumped and blue sparked across his quills when a hand fell on his shoulder. "Are you okay?" the pink hedgehog was giving him a concerned look.

"just a bit stressed because, you know, i sent the whole city into a blackout!" Sonic almost yelled caught himself and dropped his voice so only the other hedgehog would hear him.

"Don't worry about being stared at. Being a big time hero means i get V.I.P treatment." Sonic watched with curiosity as she walked up to the counter and was immediately recognized.

"ah miss Amy, Mr Sonic, do you want the usual table?" 

"Yes please." the man at the counter lead them to a booth that was separated from the rest of the cafe by being on the other side of a kids corner.

the man took their orders, a chili dog for Sonic, a pesto pasta for Amy and a tropical smoothie for both as per Amy's recommendation. Sonic grabbed a ten dollar note from quills and went to give it to Amy, would it even work here?

”don’t worry about that. It’ll all covered in the sonic budget.” Amy waved off his offer.

”Sonic budget?”

”Yep, all the things we need to help us defeat Eggman are covered for us.” 

”ugh, that is so unfair.”

”doesn’t your worlds government have one?”

”no! Robotnik was their guy! And after all the damage he did they just gave us a gift card and made us say nothing. Then they made a whole new branch of government just to watch me!” Sonic threw his hands up in exasperation. 

"And you’ll never guess what they did next” Amy looked at him to go on. “They tried to marry into the family”

”They what? That sounds like something straight out of medieval fantasy.” Sonic gasped. he’d never thought about it like that

”oh my gosh you are so right. We so have to do that at a costume party or next Halloween.”

”that would be so adorable. Tails, Knuckles and you all dressed up in little princey outfits. Oh I have to see that." Amy clasped her hands together and her eyes where sparkling. 

"Yeah! we'd have the coolest family costume. mom and dad dressed up as a king and queen then Knuckles could wear some cool armor, oh! oh! Tails could be like a alchemist or mage or something, ozzie could be a dragon and i could wear one of those swishy princess dresses"

"you'd choose a dress over a prince outfit?"

"of course i would. pants are dumb. and i like swishy clothes like capes they look cool when you run or spin around, just not super long ones that get in the way of my running"

"i suppose that's fair enough." 

Sonic was excited to see their food come and the chili dog only lasted a few seconds before Sonic finished it off and he started on the smoothie 

"So what am i like in your world?" Sonic had never even seen another hedgehog before.

"I Don't know, i've never seen you before." The pink Hedgehog locked her gaze on to him and slammed the table.

"WHAT!! how don't you know me!?"

"i was forced from my home. and had to stay hidden." Sonic curled in on himself. it was a lot more complicated than that, but it didn't feel right to express it all to this strange so soon and he would want knuckles here to tell his side.

"oh." Amy's face lost it's anger and she sat back down. "sorry."

"But it's better now, i've got a family now. an amazing one." Sonic couldn't help but smile at the thought of them. he hoped he would find them soon.

Sonic finished his smoothie and was fidgeting around waiting for Amy to finish her food.

he was lucky he had been looking at the window when he saw a red shockwave of energy run across the ground in the distance.

"Knuckles!" he was fighting someone. he needed to go help him.

"Did you say something?" Amy had been distracted by trying to collect up her last few bits of pasta.

"Come on lets go!" Sonic grabbed Amy's hand and pulled her out the cafe.

Sonic had been looking all over the city for the doppelgangers with no luck.

"you'd think it'll be easier to find another me." Sonic ran to the highest building in the city and looked over it. many segments of the city still didn't have power.

"did you do this Eggman?" this was strange, if it really was an Eggman attack why hadn't he done anything yet? the city was scrambling to get everything under control and would have been easy to attack. and if Eggman was trying to affect their reputation he hadn't done much yet. only the shutting off of the power for him and the stealing of the car for Tails and nothing for everyone else. 

Sonic watched the X tornado circle around the city, land for a couple minutes and then take off and begin circling again. 

"i wonder what he saw?"  and then the tornado did the exact same thing again a short time later. 

"Okay, now i'm getting curious." Sonic zipped over to where the tornado took off from and looked around. he didn't see anything strange so Sonic started to zip around and look in the area further out from the landing spot.

"ah there we are." Ahead Sonic could see Chris walking along side Knuckles.

"Hey Knuckles, has Chris told told you about what's going on?" Sonic caught up to them and easily fell into stride with them.

"Christopher and i have been discussing what we know." a completely different voice came from Knuckles than he was used to and when Sonic looked closer he noticed differences. this wasn't knuckles. This was his copy!

"Chris! get behind me! that's not Knuckles! he's a fake!"

"Sonic wait! i already know he's not the Knuckles we know! but he's not bad." The fake Knuckles stared at Sonic with an annoyed glare and red electricity sparked between the spikes on his fists. So this guy was a robot.

"hey looks like Eggman's getting better at making his robots look like real people." The fake Knuckles looked offended.

"Robot? i am no machine Hedgehog."

"Yeah say what you want but you're not fooling me." Sonic turned and ran up the nearest building preparing a spindash.

”this should take care of you” fake knuckles was staring up at him but made no attempt to move or put his arms up to block. Looks like Eggman’s new Bot wasn’t quite combat ready.

Sonic dashed full speed at the Fake.

and came to a complete stop.

Chapter Text

Chris watched as Sonic spindashed at the other knuckles. 

Other knuckles caught him! he caught the spindash! and he did it one handed without even flinching!

on the hand Knuckles was using to hold Sonic in place had a red aura around it. He stood like that for a moment before charging up electricity in his free hand and slamming Sonic into the ground. A red shockwave ran across the earth and knocked Chris off balance.

The brightness of the light forced Chris to shield his eyes, and when he could see again Sonic was sitting dazed in a Sonic sized crater and knuckles was standing over him and glaring.

Sonic met eyes with the fake Knuckles.

The guy’s eyes had gone red and where glowing but that was the least of his worries.

he caught and stopped the spindash.

Sure the real Knuckles had caught it before but he hadn’t been able to hold it and was pushed back. His spindash had been nigh unstoppable before. Sonic had cut through solid metal with it before and most Eggman robots would only take one or two attacks to take down. but this this fake Knuckles just shrugged it off. He had to be being powered by a chaos emerald or something. But with how realistic he was sonic couldn’t see any obvious weak points.

Sonic turned and ran to prepare another spindash.

in the blur that was his vision he could see the bright red light grow stronger.

this time fake knuckles didn’t stop his spin dash but instead deflected it away.

”Cease your attack hedgehog. You cannot beat me.”

”that’s what you think” Sonic started to run in a circle around the fake to kick up dust and debris. Hopefully that would limit his vision and give sonic more of an advantage. 

Fake Knuckles’ glow made him easy to spot in dusty cloud and gave him enough time to dodge under the incoming punch. When sonic got another circle in fake knuckles threw a second punch. This one came far closer and Sonic could feel the electricity graze past his face.

he was too close. He had to make the circle bigger otherwise he’d risk getting hit. 

the bigger circle meant that fake knuckles was no longer directly in the dust cloud bust instead in the center of a whirlwind.

the robotic echidna’s eyes where searching the dust for Sonic’s location and he shifted into a defensive stance. His whole body was crackling with red energy.

”I have seen this strategy before. Do not attempt to strike me. I am ready for it.”  

“I doubt it. I’m the fastest thing there is. You’re not ready for my speed!” Sonic’s technique became to run in, land a small hit or two and then run out.

He managed to do this a few time before fake knuckles grabbed him by the arm and tossed him to the ground.

”you are my brothers counterpart. I am plenty ready for your speed” was he talking about Sonic’s own Robotic counterpart? Well, the most recent one he should say. He sure did have a lot of robot doubles.

Eggman had put a lot of work into making him seem real. But if his job was to be an impostor what was with the strange differences? Namely the voice and speech pattern. 

a few inaccuracies was understandable and even expected but there was no way Eggman just., accidentally gave him an entirely different accent and way of speaking. Was something else going on here?

Sonic heard the buzz of electricity from the echidna who was stood still in front of him like he was expecting sonic to say something.

it didn’t matter. He was dangerous. The other two doubles had already caused problems and who knows what the Knuckles copy could do if sonic didn’t stop him.

”Please stop! He’s got nothing to do with Eggman!” Chris. Chris was still here. In the danger zone. How could he be so oblivious. He had been so focused on fighting the fake knuckles that he had forgotten that Chris had been with him.

Sonic didn’t want want to picture what might of happened if Knuckles’ copy had attacked Chris. If he was capable of stopping Sonic’s spindash like it was nothing he could definitely deal severe damage to a human if he wanted to. 

“Come on Chris, I better get you out of here.” Sonic picked up Chris  and ran far from the battle zone as fast as he knew Chris handle.

”now, you wait here, I’m going to deal with that impostor.” Sonic ran back to the battle zone and saw that the copy hadn’t moved in the short time he had left.

”That was unnecessary.”

”I’m not gonna let you hurt my friend!”

“I had no intention of hurting your friend. Christopher had kindly agreed to be my guide.” Sonic was starting to think that maybe this guy was actually was a real person and felt a little bad about attacking him.

wait.

That was it!

that had to be Eggmans plan!

to make a robot so life like that Sonic would constantly second guess himself during the fight and never be entirely sure if he was fighting a robot!

and the way Knuckles’ way the same in some ways but different in others made sense to! It all added to the confusion!

Sonic snickered.

”Hey Sparky! It’s over now. I’ve caught on to your tricks!”

”Tricks!? I have spoken no lies hedgehog.” Sonic kept the smirk on his face. Now he just needed to work out how he was going beat him.

Sonic attempted to get more hit on Knuckles but he kept deflecting them.

”Leave my brother alone!” That and a flash of blue in the corner of his eye was all the warning sonic got before something very fast slammed into his side and sent him flying.

In truth Tails Wachowski was not asleep.

he had woken up the moment rouge picked him up and started carrying him.

Tails had automatically tensed when she lifted him up.

”you’re alright hon I’m getting yo somewhere safe”

Tails opened his eyes just a crack to see what was going on.

Rouge had him in her arms and was flying over the city. His backpack was on her shoulders in such a way that it didn’t get in the way of her wings.

He doubted that he could wrestle it away from her or reach any his inventions in his current position. He was confident that he could escape and loose her but that would leave him without his inventions and that was a situation he didn’t want to be in.

So he kept pretending and listening.

Rouge eventually found her destination and went into a gentle dive.

she walked up to the door and knocked.

no one answered.

”That’s odd this place is normally crawling with sonic and his friends”

Tails had to clench his muscles to stop himself from leaping up at the mention of his brother’s name. If people kept recognising him that meant there was a version of him. Rouge was probably referring to an alternate sonic.

Tails took account of his situation again. He was still being held by Rouge but the were on the ground now. He would probably have a better chance now.

Rouge knocked on a different sounding door and Tails could hear what sounded like a garage door opening.

”Rouge what are you-? Is that tails?” Tails could hear an older mans voice and in the tiny look he  managed to sneak he saw that he was wearing a lab coat.

”Ah Chuck Thorndyke wonderful to see you.”

”Mind explaining to me why you’re carrying an unconscious Tails?” Chuck’s voice was somewhat suspicious but he didn’t sound extremely worried.

”relax, he’s just asleep, and besides. He’s not even the Tails we know.

”oh the Tails counterpart we’ve been looking for.”

”Darn I was hoping for a more shocked reaction than that. Anyway, from what I can guess he’s from an entirely different universe.”

”another alternate universe eh?”

Tails heard footsteps approaching and a third voice call out. One that he recognized. 

”He”s the other Tails isn’t he? He stole my car and I want to see him own up to it.” Uh oh. Probably  best to keep the sleeping act up while he was still there.

”oh pipe down fly guy, he’s a kid and he’s sleeping”

no he’s not Tails silently replied with a hint of smugness.

”Well, we should probably get him inside. I’ll see if I can contact Ella. She’s probably the best person to deal with this.” 

Rouge started moving again and Tails heard the click of her heels change indicating she was walking on a different floor now. Tails counted three door opening and closing before he was laid on what was probably a couch. A short distance away he heard the thump of his bag on the the floor and Rouge’s heels clicked again and Tails felt a blanket being draped over him and the couch shift a bit as Rouge sat down on it to.

Tails guessed this was a living room and he was about to open an eye to get a better look but fast heavy footsteps filled the room followed by tiny ones.

”oh my, he really does look just like Tails.” A completely new voice sounded next to his ear. Was this that Ella person Chuck mentioned? That seemed likely.

“Miss Ella? Is he okay?” Another new voice. This one sounded like a young girl.

”I’m sure he’s okay Cream, he just needs to rest.” So her name was cream

that meant at least Ella, Rouge and Cream where in the room and maybe Chuck and Sam.

five people with unknown abilities and his bag with all his inventions out of reach. This was a bad situation.

Tails choose to bide his time a little longer

people kept on moving around the room and sometimes left it. Tails was confident in saying that it was just Rouge an Cream in the room right now. He could hear Ella scolding Sam and Chuck in the other room.

he was about to try for a mad dash to his bag when he heard the door open and Ella enter.

"Unbelievable. it's like those two don't even realize we have a sleeping guest." They still believed he was asleep. At least he still had that advantage.

"He was hiding from us all night. he needs rest."

Tails was getting bored of all this waiting. He hadn’t them say anything useful for a while and he was coming to the conclusion that they where genuine about their intent to help.

Tails heard Cream exclaim in shock. Apparently she was looking through his bag.

what ever it was Ella had confiscated it.

Tails opened an eye to try and see what it was.

and met eyes with the young girl.

”Ella look he’s awake”

Tails looked around the room.

it looked like a perfectly ordinary living room but a bit larger than the one in his home.

”hello sweetie, did you sleep well?” Okay they where being exactly as nice as they where when they thought he was asleep, that was a good sign.

”yes”

the door slammed open and Chuck ran through.

”did you say he’s awake?” Chuck came very close to Tails and started to look him over.

"so you're from a different universe?"

"it seems that way."

"Do you think anyone else is here?"

"i think my brothers are here. i hope my parents are here." Cream looked up at him with a sweet but slightly sad expression.

"i hope they're here to, it's not nice to be separated from from your parents." oh. the poor girl didn't know where her parents where.

"wait. do you think you Eggman could be here?" Tails froze.

no. he couldn't be. there was no way. Robotnik was gone. he had to be gone.

"Commander?" The man looked up from his desk at the low ranking agent who entered the room.

"Yes"

"We have a new transfer." the agent placed a file on his desk.

"Agent Onyx?" 

"Yes, apparently he's been with us for a while. he's just slipped through the cracks somehow. Strangely no one remembers seeing him around. but his paper work all checks out. so i guess the guys just shy" the commander sorted through the file.

"How could we miss this guy? incredible IQ level, speaks multiple languages, Skills in robotics, He's got an impressive list of accomplishments."

"he also makes an excellent latte"

"are we there yet?"

"Charmy how can we be 'there' if we don't know where 'here' is."

Espio had been wrestling a hyper Charmy away from getting another cookie from the jar. he had already had four in the last ten minuets! when a bright light had filled the room. and when it cleared the two of them where no longer in the detective agency and Vector was nowhere no be seen.

at first they had ended up in an area without civilization and had been wandering around for a while.

Espio was certain they where lost.

The stars looked basically the same but the moon was split in half. 

Charmy spent the next three hours after seeing it babbling theories about it and driving Espio mad. he seriously considered knocking him out. Espio was thankful for his prior experience dealing with Charmy and Vector's antics that allowed him to keep his composure.

now they where in a place where a bunch of robot parts had been dumped.

"Hey whats that?" Espio took a look at what Charmy found.

"is that an Eggman logo?" the metal was pretty mangled put if he squinted he could see it.

"i think so"

"he must have a base here"

Espio signaled Charmy to be quiet and he turned invisible. he sneaked closer to a somewhat suspicious looking wall.

he could see groves in the wall that suggested that it could open. Espio felt around for a way of opening it and had his back turned to Charmy

"Hey! what do you think you're doing here?" Espio turned and saw Charmy and Boukun getting up in each others faces.

"what are you doing here." 

"none of your businesses!"

"this is an Eggman base. isn't it?" Boukun jumped and yelled when Espio turned himself visible.

"AH! why'd you do that? don't you know it's rude to sneak up on people like that?"

"Where's Eggman?"

"he's not here." Boukun crossed his arms and looked away.

"then where is he?"

"Don't know he's on a special mission."

Boukun was avoiding all their questions. Espio looked up and met eyes with Charmy.

looks like it was time for an interrogation. 

Amy rubbed her arm in pain.

The other Sonic had pulled her off her feet so suddenly that she was worried he had dislocated her arm at first.

Amy yelled at him to stop and when he did he had been extremely apologetic. apparently he would do this all the time with his brothers and they where fine.

Other Sonic had been insistent he go help his brother, so had gone ahead and left Amy to catch up latter. after a lot of apologizing of course.

"WAIT! YOU'VE GOT IT WRONG!" Amy turned the corner to see Chris yelling at something.

"Chris?" 

"Amy!"

"What's going on?"

"Sonic's fighting the other Knuckles!" Chris pointed in a particular direction.

Amy really should of guessed.

"of course they are. well, i better go help Sonic" Amy brought her hammer out ready for a fight. her Sonic needed help. 

Chris was yelling something as she left but she couldn't catch what.

Amy heard Sonic yell and he practically fell into her arms.

"Sonic! what happened?"

"I was fighting that fake Knuckles when my fake attacked me."

"After i had lunch with him? grr How dare he!" Amy summoned her hammer and marched in the direction Sonic had flown from.

Sonic Wachowski was getting closer to his older brother 

there he was! and getting bombarded by attacks from Sonic's own duplicate. How dare he! 

Sonic felt his power charge up and he dashed forwards.

"Leave my brother alone!" Sonic dashed into his other self and sent him flying.

he was immediately scooped into a crushing hug from Knuckles who's face had brightened at the sight of him.

"Sonic! are you hurt?" Knuckles was looking over Sonic with a careful eye

"I'm fine. Have you seen Tails?"

"No. but i have met his counterpart."

"Darn. i hope he's okay."

"Our brother is clever and resourceful. he will not be helpless."

Sonic heard a running noise and his own counterpart appeared in front of him.

"whoa, that's me!" Sonic stepped forwards in awe, the guy looked just like him.

"Yep. take a look at the real thing"

"Wait? real thing?" Sonic looked over to Knuckles in confusion.

"Your counterpart seems to believe we are machines." 

"huh? why would he think that?" Knuckles shrugged.

"i have been unable to convince him otherwise."

 Sonic looked between himself and his counterpart. why'd he think they where robots?

"uh hey, other me? why do you think we're robots?"

"i've already cracked your plan. you can't trick me!" Other Sonic charged forwards and forced him and Knuckles to dodge.

"YOU!" Sonic turned and found himself face to with a very angry Amy. "you have lunch with me and then you go and attack my Sonic?" Amy attempted to swing her hammer and him but Knuckles got in the way and grabbed it.

"Do not. Attack. my brother." Amy's face was over taken by shock and she tried and failed to pull the hammer away from his grip.

"hang on Amy!" the other him came charging back around and bashed into Knuckles, slightly staggering him and taking his attention away from Amy.

The pink hedgehog used this tiny window of opportunity to let go of her hammer and summon another one? how many did she have? 

Sonic stopped following this train of though when he saw his counterpart zipping around and landing lots of small kicks on Knuckles. His older brother was looking more and more annoyed but remained in a defensive stance.

Sonic saw Amy approach Knuckles with her hammer ready and he reacted in an instant.

his dash knocked both her, and his double to the ground.

Sonic ended up right next to next to knuckles and the two older Wachowski brothers met eyes.

they could defeat the other duo easily. it would not take much for Knuckles to deliver an earth shattering punch to them or for Sonic to run hundreds of circles around them in the time it took them to blink.

but they weren't trying to beat them. they just wanted to get their family back together and go home.

something crashed into Sonic and he felt himself be dragged away from where he was standing.

"SONIC!" knuckles' voice sounded very far away.

Sonic got to his feet and found him self face to face with his double.

noo. he'd just found one of his brothers and now he saw separated from them again.

Sonic could feel his panic building up. how would he get his other self to listen? 

Sonic watched his counterparts breathing quicken,  and electricity arching across his body.

this was too real. he was too real.

Sonic had messed up. 

"hey, i uh-" His counterpart his panicking and Sonic had no clue what to do. Should he bring back to the other Knuckles? he'd probably get attacked almost instantly. This Knuckles had shown himself to have just as much of a protective streak as the one he knew.

"SONIC!" 

"okay Knuckles calm down. listen to me and i can explain." the Echidna in question silenced him with a glare and pulled his apparent brother into a hug.

Seeing a version of Knuckles and himself be so close was strange. Knuckles was definitely one of his pals but the Knuckles he knew would never comfort him like this.

"why?" Sonic looked over to other Knuckles. "You attacked. i want to know why." Other knuckles kept his gaze trained on him.

Sonic had to chose his words carefully.

"i thought you guys where dangerous robots and where endangering the city." other Knuckles contemplated his words.

"You acted with a desire to protect. that is respectable." Other Knuckles gave him a nod of approval.

"Wait. you're not mad at me for attacking you?" Other Knuckles let out a humorous snort.

"You did not harm me in the slightest. My youngest brother Tails hit me with car on our first meeting. i hold no anger towards him, nor do i hold anger to you."

"i'm not mad either. everyone says you're a hero. and heroes make mistakes. i should know."

"Phew. That's a relief... Wait what was that first part?" Did Other Knuckles just say Tails hit him with a car? and just moved on like it was a completely normal thing? 

Sonic had to meet this other Tails. he had stolen the fastest car on earth and had hit Knuckles with a car at their very first meeting.

"What part?"

"the part where you said Tails hit Knuckles with a car."

"oh right! that was because Knuckles was- wait no. if i say that you'll get the wrong impression i'll need tell you the context for that. and to give you context for that you'll need a history lesson." Sonic watched his counterpart ramble and gesture with his hands. How could it possibly be necessary to need a history lesson to have context for Tails hitting Knuckles with a car?

"You do not need the context. Tails hit me with a car to prevent me from-" His brother zipped over and covered his mouth.

"No Knux, not yet. he needs to know the motivations first."

"Motivation? this is not that complex. Tails hit me with a car because I-" Sonic watched the back and forth argument about whether or not he needed context for Tails hitting Knuckles with a car. It was such a petty argument. What was going on?

"listen to me, brother. That story is long and complex. we do not need it to explain our first meeting."

"Uh, yes we do. that story gives the whole reason we all met up."

"we do not need to go that far back."

"But we do. we need to keep going back for the context. all the way back to-." he paused and doubled over in laughter.

"Sonic?" Knuckles was giving his brother a concerned look.

"Knux think about this; Tails hit you with a car. because the master emerald was forged." Knuckles was giving his brother a puzzled look that Sonic was sure he was mirroring.

"You are not making any sense." Other Sonic had the biggest most cheeky grin on his face.

"Think about the order of events and why things happened" Knuckles face screwed up as he thought over what his brother said. eventually he seemed to come to a conclusion and sighed.

"you are not entirely wrong. but i would not call you correct." Other Sonic looked very happy to have Knuckles somewhat agree with him.

What was going on in their world? they naturally generate some kind of electricity, they considered themselves brothers and somehow the creation of the master emerald had some kind of butterfly effect leading to Tails hitting Knuckles with a car.

this was turning out to be one of Sonic's most bizarre days.

Chapter Text

"Maddie look!" Vanilla handed a newspaper to Maddie.

The two of them had found their way out of the forest to a small roadside cafe on its edge.

Maddie took the newspaper and read the headline aloud.

"mysterious blue lightning shuts down power to entire city. oh no that's my kid."

"one of your kids did that?"

"yep. that's my Sonic." Maddie had a concerned expression on her face. "he's upset."

"well at least we know he was in the city." If it was like the first time he'd caused a blackout Sonic would have run away from where he was when he caused the blackout and attempted to find somewhere to hide.

"hopefully Tails and Knuckles can still find him." Getting into the city would be too long of a walk, they’d have to sort out some other method of transport.

Maddie and Vanilla didn't have any currency that worked in this world, so they couldn't afford to get any lunch, but they had been given a pot of tea on the house to share. Maddie and Vanilla had graciously accepted it.

The door slammed open and jolted the whole room. Maddie looked to the door to see the culprit.

A large Crocodile wearing headphones and a gold chain had slammed the door open with a bit more drama than he intended if his face was anything to go by.

But next to him, was Tom.

"Maddie!" the moment he saw her he ran over. "i'm so glad you're okay."

"me to. i see you've made a friend." Maddie gestured to the giant crocodile that was standing next to him.

"So have you." Tom did a small wave and Vanilla waved back.

"Hey ms Vanilla! fancy seeing you here."

"Nice to see you to Vector." 

“You two know each other?” Tom pulled out one of the spare chairs and sat down next to Maddie.

"Yeah Miss Vanilla here is just on the other side of town of my detective agency."

"Yes, him and his boys are wonderful to have over for tea." Vanilla fondly smiled at Vector as he sat down.

"Tom, Sonic's already in the news." Maddie turned the paper to Tom and tapped the headline.

"somehow i'm not surprised."

"You weren't kiddn' when you your kids where a handful"

"believe me. this isn't the worst trouble they've gotten themselves into." Maddie could think of many, many moments that would qualify.

"suddenly i'm glad that i only have one child to look after." Vanilla giggled into her hand.

"you just Wait 'till's shes a teenager. she's already taking after Sonic and friends." Vector nudged vanilla playfully 

"Oh don't act like your boys aren't a dangerous influence. they get themselves into just as much trouble as everyone else.

"my boys can handle themselves just fine."

An explosion erupted below their feet, narrowly missing them.

Espio grabbed Charmy and ran. 

"HAHA! I GOT YA! I GOT YA!" Bokkun flew above them flew above them pressing random buttons on some kind of remote controller device 

"I’m gonna tackle him."

"Charmy don't" Espio jumped up and tried to grab Charmy who charged tackled Bokkun out of the air.

"HEY! no fair." Boukkun and Charmy began an aerial chase over the remote.

Charmy kept catching up to Bokkun and grabbing on to the remote sending the security defenses it controlled haywire.

"hey watch it"

"Sorry Espio" Charmy looked down for a second then immediately went back to fighting with with Bokkun.

Espio narrowed his eyes in Charmy’s direction. He might as well make the best of this distraction.

They needed more information on what was going on, surely Eggman would have plenty of notes and recordings.

he just had to find the computer room.

Espio made sure he was in Charmy’s line of sight when he made a few pre established hand gestures. Charmy caught sight of this and responded. 

Now that Charmy knew his task was to keep Bokkun busy (be as annoying as possible) Espio was confident in sneaking off and snooping around Eggman’s base.

Eggman heard a beep from his communicator.

"huh? what's this?" Eggman had been sent a file. a large one.

Schematics. a whole bunch of schematics.

For a line of 'Egg drones'

"What's going on here." they sounded like something he would name one of his robots but they looked nothing like what he'd built before. they where sleek, compact and futuristic. 

Another beep and a message popped up.

"Thought you could need some help. - a friend"  whoever this 'friend' was had connected to his communicator and had got past all of his systems. they had some impressive hacking skills 

"A friend? reveal yourself . now."

"All in good time. For now these should come in handy."  Eggman looked over the designs carefully. there wasn't any obvious signs of sabotage in the design, and they looked very impressive.

"how do i know i can trust you?"

there was no message for a few seconds. hmph. looks like the 'friend wasn't trustworthy after all. Eggman had his finger over the button to delete the schematic file.

a beep.

the 'friend' had sent him G.U.N insider info. there was so much here. future plans, base maps, agents files. the where all here for Eggman's eyes to see. What was their plan? Eggman couldn't see what the 'friend' was getting out of this.

"How does this benefit you? What are you after?"

"You're enemies with certain a blue hedgehog and his family, correct?" Sonic and his family. not friends. so they where from the other world then. interesting. 

"yes. me i assume?"

"not quite. but close."  not him? but still an enemy of sonic.

"if you're not me then why trust me?"

"you remind me of someone." this 'friend' was being annoyingly vague. if Eggman was to work with them he'd need to watch his back.

Knuckles glared at Decoe and Bocoe.

they where both walking the same way because they had picked chaos energy from the exact same place.

Knuckles was rather smug to watch the two robots fiddle with a machine to pick it up. he didn't need any fancy gadgets to pick up chaos energy, he was fine on his own.

"it is moving again."  Decoe pointed at the screen that showed blinking lights moving across the city streets.

while the two robots fiddled around with their device Knuckles started to head towards where he felt the chaos energy was. there was a lot of it there, granted it was from two different sources right next to each other, but it was still an unusually high amount to see in one place.

"Knuckles! wait for us" Knuckles growled in annoyance when the two robots caught up to him.

"Would you two leave me alone?"

"there is no point." "we are going to the same place." 

"well we don't have to go the same way."

"we are heading in a straight line." "it is fastest." Knuckles sensed that the Chaos energy was heading in the direction of Thorndykes house. of course.

As Decoe spoke he gestured, and knuckles attention was drawn to the device in his hand. They couldn't track the chaos energy without that.

Knuckles lunged forwards and snached the device.

"Hey!" Knuckles crushed it before the robots could get back from him.

"that was low" Bocoe gave him a disapproving look.

"I'm not letting Eggman get that chaos energy. bye." Knuckles jumped off in a random direction that was not towards the chaos energy. whatever it was it was heading the Thorndykes place. he'd just meet up with it there.

he just had to loose Decoe and Bocoe first.

"So how fast do you think you can go!" Amy watched in amusement As the younger Sonic began to annoy his counterpart with questions.

"Probably faster than you."

"i seriously doubt it." Younger Sonic was changing where he was walking every few seconds. One moment he was on the left the next ahead of them walking backwards.

"Do not run off brother. i have no desire to be separated again." The other Knuckles was walking beside her and scanning the city for any potential threats.

"Can we have a race later."

"won't matter because i'll win"

"no you won't"

Amy shook her head and turned to Other Knuckles.

"So, you're Tails and Sonic's big brother, huh?" 

"I am. your Tails told me that it's not the same here."

"No. The Knuckles i know isn't that friendly and mostly does his own thing. he's willing to help us out, but other than that, we don't really see him. too busy guarding the master Emerald." 

"Ah yes. i heard it's bigger here." Amy guessed that this Knuckles would still be the master emeralds guardian. it was hard to imagine him not guarding it.

"The one in your world is smaller?"

"much" Knuckles cupped his hands at met her eyes. was he implying that was the size of his master emerald? if so Amy would estimate it to be about the size of a basket ball.

“It’s that small?” Knuckles nodded and flicked his gaze over to the two Sonics who had stopped and where waving for their attention. Her Sonic was pointing down an alley.

”I’m gonna go collect Chris, you guys wait here” and with that her Sonic zipped away and left her alone with the two other dimensional visitors.

”it’ll take him a few minutes to come back. He tends to slow down if someone can’t handle his speed.” Amy shot a pointed glare towards the younger Sonic who shifted around and gave her an awkward grin. Knuckles turned to his brother and raised a brow.

”what did you do?” 

“I was in such a rush to find you, that I may have forgotten not everyone is used to my speed”

”understandable, it is easy to forget how fragile how fragile people are.” Amy was rather concerned to hear other Knuckles casually describe people as ‘fragile’. And going by what she saw during battle it was probably accurate to him.

Amy heard a noise that indicated her Sonic was returning returning with Chris.

”here we are Chris, meet not ‘actually a fake’, Knuckles and the Other me.” Her Sonic put Chris on the ground and gestured to the brother duo. Knuckles did a small nod.

”Christopher and I are already introduced”

the younger, more hyper Sonic ran over to Chris to say hello.

”hi I’m Sonic Wachowski.” Amy didn’t think she would ever get used to him having a last name.

”Wachowski?”

”it is the name of our tribe.”

”oh yeah! Knuckles mentioned you where brothers. What was it like to grow up together?”

both of their faces dropped and sad expressions over took their faces. Knuckles avoided their gazes and Sonic gripped his arm.

”we didn’t. The whole ‘brothers’ thing, its still new.”

”but you seem so close.”

”We are.”

”then where did you grow u-“

”Enough!” Amy recoiled at the abruptness of knuckles’ voice. “That. is for later. There’s… a lot to tell.” 

“Oh now you think context is nessesary” Sonic’ tone was still slightly sad but had flickers of humor in it.

”They are wanting to know about us growing up. Not one singular event.”

”Still think saying what you where going to say without context was a terrible idea.” Other sonic muttered under his breath.

Amy recalled other Sonic telling her that he ‘had to leave his home and stay hidden’ and if this Knuckles had a similar early life to the one she knew, their childhoods weren’t the happy family she had been staring to picture. 

“So you all started in different families then?”

"Kinda. None of us had had a family in a long time before Tom and Maddie adopted us."

"Wait none of you?" Amy had guessed that one of their parents had taken the other two in after becoming friends or something like that.

"Yep. None of us are even related."

"other than our cousin and aunt. they are related to mother."

"Our parents aren't even the same species as us."

"That must get you some weird looks." Sonic nodded at his counterpart

"in most places yes. Our family is different and new. but it's good and we're together now, things are better." the brothers gave each other a fond look. "ya much better."

"huh. the way you said that reminds me of Stitch from that movie where the girl makes friends with an alien." The younger Sonic turned to Chris with an excited expression

"you have Lilo and Stitch in this world? oh my god that's amazing. it's one of our most favorite movies ever." Amy wasn't able to catch what he started to say next because the little hedgehog started to happily ramble on about the movie.

"He will do this for a while. we should walk while we listen." Knuckles casually picked up his still rambling brother, hoisted him onto his shoulders and turned to them with an expectant look.

"uh alright then. my house is this way, come on." As Chris lead them home Amy got roped into the conversation. She had seen the movie once and had really enjoyed it. Judging by the look on his face, the hedgehog on Knuckles’ shoulders realated a lot to the film. Unfortunately her Sonic wasn’t interested in movies that much and had nothing to add to the conversation.

Tails had wanted to fly the tornado as fast as possible the moment he got the message that his double was back at the house, but with how low it was flying it was probably a bad idea.

When he got there he did one of the messiest non-crash landings he had ever done and flew into the house.

And there on the couch with a hot drink held in his paws was a fox that look almost identical to himself. He was somewhat fluffier and his fur was a few shades yellower but other than that it was like looking into a mirror.

The entire room was silently watching the two foxes and awaiting their first interaction.

the oranger Tails stepped closer.

"hi"

"hello" the two of them met eye, neither sure what to make of each other.

"Hey you're the little brother of Knuckles right?" His counterparts gaze snapped to him.

"yes. have you seen him?"

"i met up with him earlier. Chris went with him to show him the way around. he's still out there looking for you and Sonic." Other Tails leapt to his feet.

"Where did you see them? i have to find them. i can't risk loosing them."

"Calm down there's no need. i just got a message from Chris. he's met up with both of them and is leading them here now." Other Tails' seemed to relax and flopped back on the couch. 

"there we are dearie, looks like you won't be split up from your brothers for much longer." Ella looked to the other Tails kindly.

"Hopefully they know where mum and dad are. then all of us will be together again." Tails gave his counterpart a look.

"mom and dad?" his counterpart mirrored his confused expression.

"You know, Tom and Maddie, our parents?" Tails' expression remained the same.

"It's true, not only does he have Sonic and Knuckles as older brothers he also has parents looking after them." Rouge was reclined on the couch typing something on her communicator. probably talking to topaz.

"Mr. and Mrs Wachowski? Doughnut Lord and Pretzel Lady? anything?"

"Sorry none of those names ring a bell" Tails watched his counterpart droop a bit

"right. different world. i guess our family really would be different." Other Tails fiddled with a device in his hand while mouthing words. while he typed his notes in Rouge caught sight of the device.

"Hey, that's the thing i saw you use last night. why don't you show your copy here those awesome holograms from earlier." now that peaked his interest.

"Holograms?" his counterpart could make holograms?

"Yeah all thanks to my Miles electric." Other Tails held out the device in question. it was yellow and square-ish with a grip on the bottom. along it's side where buttons perfectly placed for his hands and set in the center was a screen that was still on the notes that he had been taking on the diferences between worlds he had noticed so far."

"hey that's really cool."

"thanks. it can do all sorts of things. i can scan for chaos energy with it, access the galactic database, normally i call my family with it but it seems a little messed up right now."

"my gadgets got messed when you guys got brought through, they're almost all back to normal now"

"that's a relief. i put a lot of work into it i would hate for it to stop working."

"But that's not all it can do, isn't it?" oh right Rouge said it can make holograms.

"i can also remotely control some of my other inventions with it. i do have a translator function but if i don't have enough data on the language it can be a bit... problematic." his counterpart laughed with slight embarrassment.

"Oh dear, miss translations can be troublesome."

"Yeah, it nearly got us tossed into a fire." A fire. How could they keep consistently surprising him like this?

"They nearly tossed you into a fire? What did you say?" hearing Sam's voice was a surprise. he had been here the whole time but hadn't said anything, Tails had pushed his presence to the back of his mind and hadn't even noticed him.

"I don't know. But hopefully it won't happen again, i've been working on improving it. Earth thankfully has a lot of data on it's diferent languages and knuckles has been helping with the ones he knows.”

”That’s all very amazing but those holograms you used where incredible. I want to see those.”

”oh yes please Mr Tails from another universe.” Cream clasped her hands together and looked up with a pleading expression.

”okay!” Other Tails looked very happy that they where interested in his inventions and started to go off into a spiel about all the different ways he could have the holograms act.

he fiddled with it for a moment and a green glitchy effect formed into a perfect copy of him performing the same basic smiling and waving action over and over again.

”That’s amazing!” Chuck watched with wide eyes.

”thanks! and watch this!” He pressed a button and the hologram started to mimic his actions instead.

”wow, now we have three tails’” Cream looked at the hologram in wonder and reached out to touch it. the moment she did Tails' hologram disappeared.

"Ah! i scared him away, i'm so sorry"

"Don't worry they just do that when they're touched."

"oh that's good i would of been so sad if i broke your cool hologram."

"Hey Cream hold my hand i want to show you something." Cream reached out and took Other Tails' hand and he pressed the button to make a hologram.

just like last time a green glitchy effect appeared and a hologram of tails appeared but so did one of Cream.

”Truely exceptional.” Chuck in awe of the small device. The little fox blushed under all the praise.

”it’s going to be great talking to you about our inventions. I can’t wait to show you the X tornado.”

”The X Tornado?”

”Yeah, it’s the plane I built. It can fly, transform into battle mode and do all sorts of things”

”That sounds awesome. I had a plane for about an hour but it got destroyed in the battle against robotnik”

”you crashed a new plane in an hour?”

”No! The wing got crushed and it fell.”

”oh you poor dear. Where you alright?”

”yep I bailed in time.”

”Good to know you’ve got sense kid.”

the door slammed open with a loud crash!

Knuckles Wachowski had never seen a dwelling for one family be so large.

“You live in a mansion?” His brother was just as amazed as him.

”Chris’ mom is a famous movie star.” His Sonic’s eyes sparkled.

”your mom’s a movie star? That’s amazing!”

”Yeah, unfortunately I don’t get to see her that much because of her job.” Knuckles searched Chris’ face for any sign of upset, but found nothing obvious.

”You said our brother had already arived?” Chris nodded. That was good enough for knuckles. 

carefuly he grabbed his Sonic’s hand and hurried to the door.

neither of them felt patient enough to knock.

And the door was slammed open with a loud crash!

”Sonic! Knuckles!” The youngest Wachowski barreled into them and Knuckles pulled both his brothers into a tight, protectivehug.

he had been so scared that they would hurt and be out of reach forever. He didn’t want to loose his tribe again.

But they where safe. His brothers where safe.

and nothing was ever going to hurt them. Not on his watch.

Chapter Text

Sonic Wachowski was ecstatic to be back with his brothers again. Sure he had been apart from them in the time since they had become part of the family but that had all been voluntary and they where never far away if needed.

this forceful separation had cut deep. He had been right next to them one moment and alone the next. A part of him feared that this was Longclaw all over again.

no wonder he caused a blackout. 

Sonic gripped on tightly to his brothers. Neither of them had had been hurt and had even made some friends.

things could of gone worse. Far worse.

Hopefully their luck would keep up and their parents where okay. He didn't think any of them could handle it they weren't.

Knuckles gave them one more squeeze before releasing them from the hug.

Sonic didn’t want to risk being separated again and instinctively grabbed each of their arms.

”Don’t worry brother, we we are together now and i will not allow harm to come to either of you.” Knuckles gave his brothers a look of absolute certainty. If anything wanted to split the Wachowskis apart they’d have to get past big bro Knuckles first.

”I swear on my honor that we’ll reunite with mother and father along with the Emerald and return home. I will not allow us to remain trapped here, that. You can count on.” Knuckles put one of his fists. “A power bump. For an unbreakable promise.”

Tails put out his free hand to join the power bump with a smile. “Yeah!”

Sonic rested his fist against the other two’s.

”Wachowskis!” The three of them exclaimed and lowered their hands.

the room had thankfully remained quiet during their reunion but the sound of footsteps and the appearance of Chris, Amy and his counterpart started up an exchange of greetings.

Sonic looked at the people present in the room. There was his counterpart, Amy and Chris who he was already familiar with. Tails’ Counterpart sat on the couch staring at them with a confused expression. He looked almost identical to his younger brother. Unlike Sonic and his Counterpart who could believably pass off as two different hedgehogs who where just closely related. Knuckles’ counterpart was nowhere to be seen.

There where others in the room that Sonic didn’t recognize. A bat reclined on the couch watching him but more so Knuckles with intrigue. A young rabbit girl sat on the floor with a strange blue creature in her lap. He’d never seen anything like it before.

There where also a few humans in the room, excluding Chris there where three. A man in racing gear, a woman in an apron with a warm expression and an old man looked like he could be the photographic example of an eccentric scientist.

Amy brushed off her dress and walked over to Rouge.

”Rouge can you move over?”

”Why there’s plenty of other seats.”

”you are taking up a whole couch. It’s unfair.” Rouge rolled her eyes and swung her legs off the couch.

”fine. I was just getting up anyway.” Rouge smirked, walked over to Sonic and his brothers and held a hand out to them.

”the names Rouge, Rouge the bat." Tails and Sonic took her hand and shook it but Knuckles just stood still looking conflicted. Sonic had talked to him a little while ago about the whole 'bone crushing handshake' thing, and Knuckles hadn't got a handle how gentle he had to be yet.

"no need to be shy, i don't bite." Knuckles looked at her in confusion.

"I am not afraid of you biting me."

"Aww, then Does little red have crush?" Rouge kept her smirk up and spoke with a teasing tone.

"You are correct, I have been told i crush peoples hands. that is why i did not shake Christoper's earlier. and why i am not shaking yours"

"it's alright i'm a big girl i can take it." Knuckles looked at her hand and hesitantly reached out.

"You got this." "yeah nice and gentle." at his brothers reassurance Knuckles grabbed and shook Rouges hand.

the crack noise was audible through the entire room.

Sonic hissed in a breath. 

"oh... i guess you don't got this." Knuckles gave Rouge an apologetic look.

"I am sorry, Lady Rouge i was trying to gentle." Rouge was rubbing her hand with a pained expression.

"Eh, don't worry red. Nothing's broken."

"That's an improvement at least." Sonic could vividly remember the bruise that formed on his hand from Knuckles' handshake.

"If that's you being gentle i'd hate to see you when you're being tough." Despite the pain in her hand Rouge went back to playfully teasing Knuckles

"I am trained in lethal combat, won countless battles and have been granted the title of 'most dangerous warrior in the galaxy. Your concern is reasonable."

The rest of the room had no clue how to process that and looked to Sonic to confirm it.

"Yeah, he's not lying or exaggerating at all"

"...Alright then." Sam's voice was strained and he started to keep a very close eye on Knuckles.

"Well, You're certainly interesting, but the Knuckie i know is far more fun to get a rise out of." Rouge tossed her head back and crossed her arms. Knuckles looked back at Sonic with a still puzzled expression. He didn't have any good answer for his brother and just shrugged.

”so now that we’re all here, didn’t you say you were going to tell us about how you met?”

”we are not all here. My counterpart is not present.”

”Don’t worry about that. Our pal Knuckles has a habit of showing up randomly at the right place and right time. He should be here soon.”

”and Tanaka is not back from collecting my car. Are you two aware that your little brother stole my car.” Sonic peered down at his brother.

“Another one?”

”Another? You mean he’s done this before?” Everyone had their eyes on his little brother.

”Yes I believe this is the third time he has done such a thing.”

”yeah and he crashed both of them within the hour.” Sonic playfully elbowed his Tails in the side.

”hey! In my defense the plane was attacked and the police car was on purpose.”

“YOU DID THAT ON PURPOSE!!?”

Knuckles had been picked up by Tanaka on his way to the Thorndykes. It was currently in its mode that more or less acted like a regular car and Knuckles was sat in its front passenger seat.

as the car got closer Knuckles was getting a clearer picture of the chaos energy.

It felt slightly different to what he was used to, the alternate universe theory had a bit more weight to it.
the chaos energy was coming from three different sources that where extremely close together. Knuckles focused on them and growled when he didn’t get much more information.

”are you alright Mr Knuckles?”

”I’m fine. Just keep driving.”

”You know Mr Knuckles I’m quite looking forward to meeting these other versions. Miss Topaz tells me Tails counterpart gave them quite the run around last night.”

”And apparently Sonic’s caused the blackout. I want to know what he has to cause that.” Even though Tanaka's focus was fully on the road Knuckles could practically feel how much the butler wanted to say something.

”What.”

”forgive me Mr Knuckles but I was wondering if you had given your counterpart much thought.” Knuckles had but only briefly. Other him would be an echidna, That was obvious. But was he the last one in his world to? If so, does he even know what happened? 

Mr Tanaka must have sensed some kind of distress from him and spoke up.

”I know you have a preference for your own space Mr Knuckles, but you aren’t alone. They all care an awful lot about you.”

”funny way of showing it.” Knuckles grumbled under his breath. 

They would never listen to him if he had any complaints they would all gang up on him. Even the pure kind little Cream would join in.

”I won’t lie, Mr Knuckles you can be hard to get along with sometimes. You can be brash and rude at times and it can take a lot of pushing to get you to do something with us when it’s not an emergency. but even through all that you have a good heart. You’re just, for lack of a better term, prickly.”

”Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?”

”I simply mean that like the hedgehogs, porcupines and echidnas of this world when you feel threatened you put up your defenses and make it hard to reach you. ”

”Are you implying that I’m afraid of Sonic and the others? They don’t scare me in the slightest.”

”there are many different kinds of fear Mr Knuckles.” Wait. Knuckles knew what this was.

”HEY I DIDN’T AGREE TO A LIFT FOR THIS TO BECOME A THERAPY SESSION!”
Knuckles leaned back into his chair and made a very clear show of turning away from Mr Tanaka and staring out the window.

thankfully he kept quiet and the rest of the drive was spent in silence.

”Mr Knuckles, we’re here.” Knuckles got out of the car and didn’t wait for Tanaka to follow after him, he could feel the intense pulses of chaos energy from inside of the house and they where spiking up right now.

his sense lead him to the living room which door was currently closed, an unfamiliar Voice sounded from within it.

“YOU DID THAT ON PURPOSE!!?”

when knuckles opened the door there where plenty of people knew but he didn’t care about that right now. His entire focus was on the trio in the center of the room.

it was Sonic, Tails, and himself. They all had differences to what he was familiar with, Sonic's arms being a notable example. But they where unmistakably them.

And they where exactly where he was sensing the chaos energy from but he couldn’t see any chaos emeralds on them.

The trio hadn’t even noticed his presence and where instead too focused on an argument between themselves.

”I told you I had a plan didn’t I?”

”I didn't think it was 'drive off a cliff.'" Wait What. was he missing something? what was this about other Tails' plan being 'drive off a cliff? Knuckles looked around the room to ask someone for context but everyone else looked just as he was.

'i took the wheel from you, and drove straight for the cliff. what did you think i was doing?"

"I don't know. but i thought it was an accident."

"This just proves i am the most responsible Brother." Knuckles looked around to see if anyone had caught what his double had said. if they had no one was showing it.

"YOU!? you jumped off a plane remember?" Other Sonic dramatically whipped around from Other Tails to Other Knuckles.

"i knew what i was doing"

"we where in the middle of planning!" Other Sonic threw his hands up in exasperation. 

"Sonic, your plan was to taunt him. that was it. you where basically swinging a baseball at a wasps nest and hoping for the best." Other Tails had quickly jumped in with his point and after that the three of them started to talk over each other and Knuckles could no longer tell what any of them where saying.

Knuckles had way more questions than he had before seeing them. 

Did other him call them brothers? surely he must of heard wrong. Sonic was an annoying but decent ally at best and Tails was nice. and what was this whole conversation even about? all he'd managed to catch was that Other Tails had intentionally driven them off a cliff for some reason and his counterpart had jumped off a plane during some kind of planing.

most of the rest of the room looked as confused and curious as him. one notable outlier was Chris' uncle Sam who was watching the argument like it was perfectly normal.

"Oh hey Knuckles, glad you're here."

"Hello Sonic, any clue what's with those three?" Sonic put his arms out and shrugged

"Nope. this is the second time they've done this to."

"Huh."

"Should we do something?" Amy looked over at Ella for advice.

"nah." all attention other than the trio's, who conversion had gone to something about a broken vase, went to Sam.

"What? uncle Sam, look at them." Sam looked at the trio fondly and chuckled.

"Did i ever tell you about the time your mom locked me in the cupboard under the sink?"

"no!?"

"Just ask her how much of an annoying little brother i was and she could go on and on. But anyway i really liked this truck toy she had and i would always take it from her. it got so bad that dad got me one of my own. it was identical except for the windows on hers were clear and mine were blue, i still liked hers better and kept trying to take it and replace it with mine. Lindsey didn't care about the windows until i cared, and the two of us would argue for hours about it and this one time she had had enough and pushed me under the sink and hid it from our parents for two hours i think. once she was caught  she was grounded and i got to play with both trucks for the whole week." Sam kept smiling through the whole story even when he was describing being pushed under the sink.

"Mom did that!?"

"Yeah she wasn't always perfectly mannered you know."

"That was a great story and all but was does it have to do with them." Knuckles gestured over his shoulder at the trio who where still on about something.

"well they said they where brothers. this is just a standard sibling argument.”

“Did you say brothers?” 

“That’s what they’ve told us.” Knuckles looked over at the trio and then to the Sonic and Tails he knew.

”how did that happen?”

”they haven’t told us yet.” Knuckles was very interested to know what events could have possibly lead to other him calling Sonic and Tails brothers.

”hey you three!” The trio paused whatever they where talking about and turned to him.

”Knux look, it’s you” Knuckles’ counterpart was staring at him with a mixed expression and his breathing had quickened.

Knuckles felt a prickle along his spine as the chaos energy in the room increased and the air became staticky.

as the other echidna took cautious steps forwards knuckles swore that he saw a red light flash across the other echidna's fist for a second.

they where face to face now and other Knuckles was looking at him with scrutiny.

”You are me.” 

“what gave you that idea?” Other Knuckles seemed to miss the sarcasm in his voice and provided an explanation.

”You are an echidna who has the same traits as I do, Sonic and Tails have their own counterparts and your friends mentioned you and said you would show up soon”

“They did, did they?” Knuckles looked over at the group he was familiar with.

”Yes, the Sonic of your world claims you have a habit of showing up at the right place and time." Knuckles worked alone didn't see the others that much and mostly just showed up when they where in trouble often jumping in just in time to give them a last minute save.

"i guess i do."

Other Knuckles was shifting his weight and staring at him awkwardly.

"Hey knuckles, are you okay?" Ella sounded concerned. he didn't think he looked upset

"yes." "i will be fine." both of them answered. right. they where both called Knuckles. this could be a problem.

"Oh right. both of you are knuckles." the two echidna matched each others gaze.

"I believe we are in need nicknames or additional ways of saying who is who."

”The three of us could just go by Wachowski”

”I mean, you could. but for example saying 'Knuckles Wachowski' every time might get tiring this is the perfect opportunity to get a cool nickname. I think you should take it.”

"oh! oh! we can a theme." Other Sonic was bouncing on his heels and looking around excitedly.

"Why do we have to have a theme exactly?"

"it's cool."

"He's got a point Knuckie." Knuckles whipped around to Rouge

"If you dare use 'Knuckie' as my nickname i'm gonna knock your lights out."

"Don't you mean 'Knuck' your lights out?" Knuckles turned around to Other Sonic who looked very proud of him self. Beside him Other Tails was laughing into his hand and Other Knuckles had a big grin on his face.

"HA! father would be proud."

The rest of the room where either groaning or snickering at the pun.

"i can't believe none of us have used that one." while most of the room where still on the pun, Cream turned to Ella for some clarification. 

”if they're choosing nicknames Dose that mean I can’t call them Sonic, Knuckles and Tails anymore?”

”Don’t you worry Cream, it’ll just be like how we call Christopher, Chris. This is just a way to say which one you’re talking about without having to say something like, 'the other one' or 'the one i know'. i'm sure that if it's obvious who your talking about or to you can just use their name.”

"Can we please pick Nicknames and move on?" Knuckles put his head in his hands in exasperation. he just wanted his questions answered.

"Well for one thing the Sonic we know has to be Cobalt, it's perfect." no one voiced any complaints, not even the now nicknamed Cobalt Sonic.

"Ooh! and i can be Azure.”

"Yeah that works." Cobalt Sonic stated simply. 

The two Tails looked at each other.

"I'm slightly yellower"

"and i'm slightly oranger." if they weren't standing next to each other and you had only seen them a couple of times the difference in shades wouldn't be noticeable, but right now looking between them it was noticeable enough.

"we're settled." 

"Really, you're just going with the basic colour names?"

"Sorry Rouge but--"

"Nope. we have to be more creative than that. we can't have the Sonic's going around with nicknames like; Azure and Cobalt and you two just using ‘yellow’ and ‘orange’”

”Alright then, what do you suggest Rouge?”

”hmm… How about Amber, and Citrine.” Rouge pointed to the Oranger Tails and then the Yellower Tails.

the two, two tailed foxes looked at  each other and nodded.

”That doses sound cooler.”

Knuckles ran over the names in his head.

”Amber and Citrine… wait. This was just to give them gemstone themed names, wasn’t it?” Knuckles looked over to Rouge who looked quite proud.

”Yep”

”Oh my god that is so cool! I gotta change mine now to fit the theme.”

”You have no need to. There is a crystal called Azurite and Cobalt is a type of metal.” At Mr Tanaka’s explanation Azure Sonic’s face brightened.

”We absolutely have to keep the theme up for Knuckles. Gem Gal what’s some red gems?”

”Gem Gal? Now that’s a nickname I can get behind. As for red gems I’m thinking copper and Bixbite.”

“Wait. Copper’s not a gemstone.”

”neither is cobalt or Amber technically. So it fits just as well. And that means the brothers over there can have a more closely connected crystal theme.” In the background Azure Sonic happily pumped his fist with a small ‘yes’

“Okay now that we’ve got that sorted. And everybody's here can you please explain how you guys actually met? because you three are just giving me more, and move questions." Kunckles definitely agreed with Amy. he felt like he was the most out of the loop here.

"Hold on one more thing." Knuckles looked to Ella in exasperation.

"what now?"

"i just thought that is we're going to be listening to their story we might as well have some refreshments. i'm going to make every one a nice hot chocolate." that did sound good. no one else made any protests.

while Ella got them their hot drinks the trio pulled each other into a quick huddle, and by the time she returned they seemed to come to a decision and Bixbie Knuckles stepped forwards and begun the story.

"Our story begins in the distant past, when a group of my ancestors came together to forge the Master Emerald"

"Hold it!" the room shifted their attention from one echidna to the other "what dose the creation of the master Emerald have to do with you three meeting?”

”I don’t know but according to azure sonic here its creation lead to Citrine Tails hitting Bixbite Knuckles with a car" ignoring how jarring the nicknames still where Knuckles couldn't comprehend how the ancient and powerful Master Emerald could have caused such a thing.

"Trust us it'll all make sense soon” Citrine Tails took a sip of his drink with a happy smile.

"as i was saying. My ancestors forged the seven chaos emeralds into the Master Emerald." Bixbite Knuckles paused when he heard shocked sounds throughout the room. he sent a glare at them so they wouldn't interrupt again. 

"To this day it is unknown why they created it. Every story is contradicted by another. some say they made it under order of the gods others say they made it in defiance of them, in some stories it was a last desperate resort to fight an inconceivable foe and others tell of the Echidna forging it so only they would have the power of the chaos emeralds and be able to have the galaxy under their control but whatever the reason the Master Emeralds power was feared across the galaxy, for with it a single warrior could defeat an entire army or rewrite reality to their whims."

When Bixbite Knuckles paused it looked like everyone wanted to say something on what they had just heard. they had only just started and already things where so different. they actually knew the origin of the Master Emerald, and the Echidna had made it. they where pretty sure that it wasn't the same for theirs because the Master Emerald they knew was defiantly not made from the chaos emeralds.

"the echidna weren't they only powerful group of warriors in the galaxy. there where also the owl warriors. they saw the echidna and the power the master emerald held and they believed that no one should have that sort of power and fought to take it. there where a lot of casualties but the owls won and hid the Master Emeralds away."

Copper Knuckles felt himself growing angry as the story progressed. in their world the echidna created the master emerald it was theirs by right. in his eyes what the owls did was unjust and he got ready to shout. but he stopped himself. maybe there was more here. they didn't look like they had finished the story yet, and his counterpart did say their motives for creating it was unknown and muddled.

"The Echidna saw this act as unjust and refocused everything to reacquiring the master Emerald and where willing to cut down anything that got in their way of getting it back." Bixbite Knuckles looked down sadly and picked up his mug for another drink.

"okay that's the ancient history backstory stuff out of the way now on to our part." Azure Sonic paused at the end of his sentence like the words where stuck in his throat.

"Right our part." a few red sparks arched across Bixbite Knuckles and he stared down at his cup with trembling arms. one of the echidna's fists twitched slightly and the mug shattered into dust.

the mug shattering jolted him out whatever thoughts had been distressing him.

"Apologies. this is difficult to speak of." he dropped to his knees and started to gather the shards into his hands

"Here sweetie i'll show you where the bin is." Ella's tone was just warm as it always was and she showed no sign of being mad at him.

once he returned from throwing away the remains of the mug Bixbite Knuckles sat down on the couch next to his apparent brothers.

Citrine Tails didn't seem as distressed as the other two and gave both of them a sympathetic expression.

"Hey, i can start it off." Both of them nodded.

"After many years of battle all that remained of the two orders was a small tribe of echidna and a single owl warrior watching over her apprentice."

"My tribe had located the last of the owl warriors and we believed we where finally close to returning the emerald to it's original home and relearning all it's secrets than had been lost over the centuries long war. The entire tribe had gathered to prepare for the fight. i to prepared myself but my father, my blood father that is, stopped me and told me that my moment will come but it wasn't this moment. i was the only child at the time so i waited alone in the village for them to return home victorious. but none of them ever did. no one survived the battle."

the room was silent. no one could come up with anything to say, quite a few people in the room looked close to tears and cream had buried her face into Ella.

"The last of the owl warriors was my mentor. Her name was Longclaw. and she was amazing." Azure Sonic had a small soft but sad smile. "she was good to me. Took me in because of my power, she warned me that people would always want it and tried to keep me out of trouble she did her best but i'd always find trouble. one day i went further than i normally would, i just wanted to get her a flower. just to see her smile, that's how they found me and then Longclaw. i just got back to her and the echidna surrounded our home and attacked us, they where all in their war gear and armed with spears and bows. One of them hit her with an arrow and she fell, she opened a ring to a far away planet and sent me through, that was the last i saw of her." Azure Sonic curled in on himself and a few tear formed in his eyes. Bixbite Knuckles placed a hand on his shoulder and Azure Sonic leaned into him.

The story was heart breaking. both of their families had destroyed each other, how could they possibly become brothers after that?

"Do you boys need a moment?"

"no. we can keep going. most of the sad parts done now. so after Longclaw sent me through the ring i landed near an amazing little town, green hills, Montana and that's where i grew up. i had a great little cave set up out in the woods and i could hang around the town and hang out with everyone, even if only one guy actually knew i existed." Azure Sonic looked a bit happier talking about the town.

"after the loss of my tribe i chose to do what they could not and return the Master Emerald to the home of my people. so for those ten years i searched the galaxy for any sign of it. in my search i went to many planets and encountered many obstacles. There are many stories I could tell of my journey, too many to tell right now. Perhaps another day.”

”Hold on, sorry to interrupt. But did you say Ten years.” Chuck look at doppelgangers In concern.

”yep, that’s about how long it was between that day and meeting up with Mom and dad. Give or take a few months.”

the room stayed quiet. no one was sure what to say. Ten years was a long time, even longer to everyone who was under thirty.

”pardon me if it’s too much of a prying question but how old are you boys?”

”I’m eight”

”thirteen.”

”I turned fifteen a few months ago”

“Hey, that means I’m older than you.” Cobalt Sonic’s expression was a mix between shocked smug.

“That means you where getting beaten by a younger version of your friend. That’s gotta be embarrassing.” 

“hey, our battle was actually pretty evenly matched you know.”

”it was not. I chose to hold back. If I had the intention to kill you, I would of. Easily.”

”yeah sure”

”You are doubting my ability?” Bixbite knuckles narrowed his eyes.

“nah, I’m just not that scared of you.”

”Sonic he stopped your spindash remember? With one hand. Like it was nothing.”

everyone who hadn’t been present for the event faces where over taken by shock. They’d all seen how powerful the spindash could be.

”well sounds like Bixie here’s the stronger one.” Rouge smirked and looked to Copper Knuckles for his reaction

”was that a nickname for a nickname?” Someone muttered to themselves.

”I’d like to test that one out.”

”we should have a sparing match then. I look forward to seeing how you fight.”

”hope you can look forward to getting thrashed.”

”I doubt that. But I shall enjoy our fight none the less.” Bixbite Knuckles placed his right fist over his heart and lightly nodded.

”can we please hurry up and get back to the story, you still haven’t explained how your little brother is a repeat vehicle thief.”

”right of course, don’t worry things get a lot less sad and a lot more cool from here on out.” Azure Sonic gestured to the room and got slightly more dramatic with his pose

”it all started when I decided to play a game of baseball by myself”

”by yourself?”

”Shh, I’m on a roll now, no more interruptions. Anyway I could play every part on the baseball field all except the admiration and support from my teammates and then I got upset and did that whole big blue lightning explosion and caused a blackout across the entire Pacific Northwest.”

”What!” Chuck practically fell off his seat. “That’s approximately 655,000 kilometers. You knocked out power to an area larger than France!”

”never mind that. Do you mean To tell us you did that by yourself. Completely naturally. With no chaos Emerald or anything like that.”

”yeah.” Copper Knuckles tried to process what he had just heard. The intense levels of chaos energy he had been sensing was completely natural and normal to them. he’d never seen a ‘regular’ living being have so much chaos energy. These three went in the face of everything he knew about chaos energy, and the more he thought about it the more concerns he came up with.

For one thing It would react to their emotions like chaos energy often did ‘power enriched by the heart’ and all that. Azure Sonic had already caused two huge blackouts by getting upset, who knows what else they they could do.

Copper Knuckles groaned and leaned back until he was lying on the floor staring at the ceiling.

”uh, you okay there?”

”im fine. Just keep going.”

”if you say so. so I could pick up that big blast of energy all the way from my home planet. That was when I started watching sonic, I didn’t have any friends growing up so seeing Sonic who was weird like i was, was amazing to me. But I don’t come in till much later.”

”Yeah, tails wasn’t the only one who caught on to me after that. The head government guys got together and sent their ‘unconditional’ guy after me. Robotnik.”

”your Eggman is a government agent?”

”Was. Anyway he started to send all his freaky egg drones after me and I had to get ready to leave the planet. The next safe world with a breathable atmosphere was a planet entirely of mushrooms. It was awful. But they where too close and I couldn’t risk them following me through. So I went to the only person I could think of. The donut lord.”

”I’m sorry, who?”

”Donut lord. That’s the nickname I used for dad before he became my dad. oh! and mom’s nickname is pretzel lady. but anyway, I broke in to his shed and just before I threw a ring he saw me, panicked and shot me with mom’s tranquilizer gun and I lost my rings through the portal that opened to san Francisco when i dropped the ring i was holding.

“well that sounds like it’s not off to the best start.”

“yeah dad wasn’t to happy that he was now responsible for escorting a superpowered alien kid on a multi day road trip while escaping from an evil scientist guy with a mustache. OH MY GOD I ALMOST FORGOT!! Dad punched him in the face. It was so cool”

”punched him in the face eh? Now I can see why Bixie accepted him as a father figure.”

”The lord of Doughnuts is not hesitant to throw a punch to protect those in need. It is Admirable.” 

“And after a whole trip bonding we got into a car chase then on thing lead to another and I got hurt. Luckily mom was staying with her sister in the place we where headed and she was able to make me better cuz she’s a vet.”

”well that pretty lucky.”

“Yeah, it really was. While there my cousin jojo gave me new shoes. They where the first gift i ever got.” Azure Sonic smiled warmly.

”then because dads car was totaled we took aunt Rachel’s”

”now when you say ‘Take’ you mean…”

”borrowed with out permission.”

”So you’ve done it to!”

”hey! She got it back! Just a lot more smashed up.” 

“I can’t believe this. You are an entire family of vehicle thieves.” Sam put his hands into the side of his head and pulled on his hair.

”come to think of it didn’t Rachel steal a golf buggy at her fake wedding?”

”yeah and she tried to run over Randall. No wonder she warmed up to you the fastest.”

the Room was once again puzzled but turned to Bixbite Knuckles.

”why are you all staring at me?”

”Everyone else in your family has stolen a car.” Amy had put on her teasing expression.

”Cousin Jojo has not.”

”not yet at least ,” “oh she will.”

”you two better not be planning to corrupt our cousin.”

”Who, us? Knux, we would never,”

”I do not believe you.” Bixbite Knuckles crossed his arms and stared at his brothers.

”I know it was my fault for bringing it up but can please get to the story, those two haven’t even shown up yet.”

”okay so we got to the place where my rings fell and I was all ready to say my goodbyes and go live forever on that uninhabited mushroom planet, then Robotnik shows up. And somehow he has one of my quills. I don’t know when or where he got it from but anyway, he used it to power his ship and he was able to catch up with me no matter where I went.”

”hang on a damn second.” Copper knuckles interrupted and shot up from his place on the floor to many annoyed groans.

”you’re telling me, one of your quills was enough to power an entire ship the same way that Amber Tails is using a chaos emerald?”

”I guess so, we don’t really know how it works.”

”…I’m done. Just keep going.” Copper Knuckles heavily flopped back down and glared at the ceiling.

”don’t worry I’m almost done with the first adventure. So I couldn’t loose him and the only place I could think of was green hills, so I ended up there and followed me, but he blasted me with a rocket and I couldn’t get up and a bunch if people in town gathered to help me, Carl even threatened him with a chainsaw! Oh yeah Carl was that one guy who knew about me. Wade, that’s dad best friend nearly shot him to. Dad got to punch him again and then I changed up, dad threw a ring to the mushroom planet and used my spindash to send him through.  after that the government cleaned it up, pretended he never existed and tried to track me down but Tom and Maddie took me in, and gave me a place to stay, they looked after me for the next few months even though I didn’t quite see them as parents yet.”

”now can you guys please try to leave questions to the end.” Citrene Tails begged

everyone nodded but they doubted it would last long.

”the next adventure, as my brother called it, begins because of me. I believed that Longclaws apprentice was the key to finding the Master Emerald so i searched for Sonic and  My quest lead me to a barren world. when I was ascending the volcano it erupted and I fell. It was not enough to seriously harm me but it was enough to weaken me and allow scavengers to pick me up.” Bixbite Knuckles sneered when he mentioned the scavengers.

”They took me to the fighters arena of casino night and tossed me in as the challenger, it was well known that I am the last echidna and with my reputation of the most dangerous warrior in the galaxy I was a valuable fighter They had been trying to recapture me for years. So when they finally got me they put forth their greatest champion, a massive beast with many heads and crablike claws. it had defeated many skilled fighters before but With my power it did not take much to defeat the beast and after my victory I was awarded rings. The scavengers where skilled at finding things and i asked for their help in tracking down Sonic."

"now this is where i come in. i heard that Knuckles was searching for Sonic and i knew i had to go warn him but i didn't know what planet he was on so i gathered my inventions and set out, tracking whatever chaos energy signatures i could."

"The scavengers where also searching for Sonic, but instead they tracked Tails. We eventually picked up a huge surge of energy and tracked it to the mushroom planet. That. is where i met Robotnik. He still had Sonic's quill and i knew exactly what it was. so in exchange for me getting him off the planet he would tell me where Sonic was."

"Alright so remember the wedding thing from earlier? my parents where going to that and left home alone, i defiantly didn't trash the place and was perfectly well behaved. So i was settling to watch a movie and there was a blackout, not my fault this time. and that was when it got really creepy and Eggman appeared at the door."

"that was when i showed up and punched him through the wall, we had a very one sided battle and i had him pinned to a tree, ready to deliver the killing blow."

"And that was the moment i hit knuckles with the police car."

Finally they got to the part where Tails hit Knuckles with a car. that had been bugging everyone for ages.

"So you three-" Bixbite Knuckles silenced Chris with a glare.

"We are not finished."

"okay, so Tails stops Knuckles from killing me, and this big car chase happens an then he drives us off a cliff intentionally!" Azure Sonic looked over to Citrine Tails.

"Hey it gave us a chance to escape didn't it?"

"While those two made their escape Robotnik confronted me. he must of overheard me speaking to Sonic about the Master Emerald because he offered to be my earth guide. he had been nothing but helpful so i made an alliance with him."

"Dad told me that if anything went wrong i was to go see wade. so tails and i went to his place and the map Longclaw gave me glowed and it showed a message from her, it showed us where to find the compass leading to the master Emerald. so then we went to Siberia, nearly got tossed into a fire, saved ourselves with a dance battle and set out in the morning to collect the compass." that was a story everyone wanted to hear but another detour probably wouldn't be appreciated. 

"Robotnik and his minion the goat milker had found a way to track Sonic and Tails and let them lead us to the compass. Robotnik chose to ditch his minion who had shown loyalty to him. this was when i began to grow suspicious of him. But my quest was too important and i stayed with him. We intercepted them at the temple and intended to take the compass from them."

"Sonic and i got the compass but Robotnik's missiles caused a collapse and we had to flee, i took to the skies and Sonic and Knuckles had this big snowboard chase down the mountain and Sonic nearly convinced Knuckles over to our side by talking to him about the day that they both lost everything, but i fired a taser trap at Knuckles and he thought it was all just a trick."

"Do not blame yourself, i had Sonic backed against a cliff. your action is understandable now."

"then Knuckles got angry at us because he thought we tricked him and went to attack me, so i threw the compass to Tails bit Robotnik got in the way, grabbed it and used missiles to cause an avalanche and knock out tails."

"Sonic chose to help Tails over pursuing the compass. Robotnik dismissed this as weakness."

"so the avalanche was coming at us super fast and Tails couldn't fly us out of there so i had to call dad and ask him to use the ring i gave him earlier. he did and brought me, Tails and a whole bunch snow to the wedding all the way in Hawaii. Remember how i mentioned the wedding was fake? well it turns out the government created a whole new task force just to keep an eye on me and other alien threats, Guardian Units of Nations, G.U.N, maybe you have them here, i don't know, and they where trying to marry into the family so they could keep an eye on me. But once they saw us right in front of us they all revealed themselves and locked us up. on the bright side dad got to punch more people and mom and Auntie Rachael pulled an awesome rescue mission with Tail' inventions."

"While that happened Robotnik and i made our way to the location indicated by the compass and placed it where it needed to be."

"You should have seen the beam of light, it was huge."

"Yes the intensity of the beam had been... a surprise to say the least. the power of the emerald split the sea open and revealed an ancient temple. as we made our way through temple we watched each others back and i believed a warrior's bond had formed." The distressed look on Bixbite Knuckles said a lot. they could all guess what was coming up soon.

"after the rescue Tails was still unconscious and i felt responsible for what happened to him and didn't want anyone else getting hurt because of me and ran off before anyone could stop me."

"With Robotnik's help i had reached the chamber of the master emerald but before i could reach it Sonic fell from the ceiling and we fought over it. this battle was not as one sided as our first clash but i was still able to bring sonic to my mercy, I was ready to crush him when he pointed out that Robotnik had used our fight as an opportunity to take the Emerald for himself. he revealed his true intentions. and escaped with the Emerald." 

"without the emerald the temple collapsed and the water came pouring in." Cobalt Sonic's ear twitched at the sound of that. 

"i got trapped under a fallen pillar and was unable to escape the rising water." Cobalt Sonic gripped his arms tightly and grimaced

"i saved Knuckles from drowning, he saved me from drowning, then we made peace on the beach."

"Then i showed up with the plane i... acquired and picked them up. then we headed to green hills where Robotnik was headed."

"Okay, finally we're at the final battle. here we go." Azure Sonic rubbed his hands together

"When we got there Robotnik was already using the Emeralds power to create something. when the smoke cleared an impossibly huge robot towered over Green Hills."

"our best attacks did nothing, alone we could not beat him. "

"But then we teamed up and attacked together. but with an actual plan. He hated me the most so i distracted him while Knuckles and Tails sneaked around back.

"i cut a hole in the side of his robot and distracted him with my holograms while Knuckles got ready."

"once i was in position I prepared my power and knocked the emerald out of him, bringing him and his robot to their knees.”

”But the battle wasn’t over yet! Robotnik must of had some kind of back up power because the robot got up and was ready to crush me, I managed to grab the emerald and mom and dad rescued me using a truck from one of the guys in town before Robotnik stepped on me with the giant robot. But he still managed to prevent us from escaping, I tried to use the master emerald but it's colour faded and it fell to pieces. All hope seemed lost but Mom and Dad choose to stay with me until the end. But then the chaos emeralds that where within the master Emerald rose up and I got to be this cool golden god thing and I kicked Robotnik’s butt and we won.”

”The overwhelming power of the emerald was known to have a corrupting effect and I feared that sonic would now be our opponent but Sonic proved that to be false. The emeralds power amplify the thoughts and feeling had when it is used. Sonics where pure, the hedgehog only acting on a desire to protect his family.”

”Yeah, and to have a chili dog.” Copper Knuckles groaned at Citrene Tails words, did he use the power of the chaos emeralds for a simple street snack?

”I choose to give up the emeralds power, being a hero can be great, but I’m not done being a kid yet.”

”Once the chaos emeralds where sent away I gathered the shards of the master emerald and reforged it. i finally had it but i did not know what to do next. The owls and echidna fought a long battle for the emerald. Both sides believing they should be the ones to guard it and in the process wiping each other out. We choose to let the conflict die with them. We formed a new tribe and made a vow to protect the master emerald and galaxy from each other.”

”and that’s pretty much it. Knux and Tails moved in and we’ve been learning to be a family.”

most of the room where trying to gather their thoughts. Amy was the first to say something.

“Wait, so in your world Earth and your home planets are in the same galaxy and you have a way to travel between them with ease?” 

“yep”

”Then why are you staying on earth?”

”it’s our home.” The trio smiled warmly or nodded.

“Wait if they moved in and are staying on earth how are you guarding the master emerald?” 

“We keep it with us, and Tails has improving the security system.” Copper Knuckles wanted to ask about angel island but his counterpart had not mentioned it and if the Master emerald had been hidden on earth angel island would be nothing like what he knew.

Amber Tails and Chris looked over at Copper Knuckles trying to process what he had been learning about the other worlds chaos energy and master emerald.

"Should we tell him that it's tiny?"

"I don't think so, this whole thing has been confusing enough." 

The brother trio sat on the couch awkwardly, telling their story had taken a lot from them and they could tell the others wanted to bombard them with questions.

Cream felt sorry for the trio and wanted them to feel better,

"Ella? can i take them to my favorite flower patch? i want to make them some flower crowns."

"if they want to Of course you can dear, just be safe." Cream 'yayed' and ran up to them.

"Would you three like to come make flower crowns with me?" The trio only needed one glance with each other know the answer.

"sure" Azure Sonic lead his brothers over to the little rabbit

"Hey, what about our questions?" Amy stepped in front of them as they walked

"Do you mind asking them a bit later, we kinda need a break." Citrene Tails namesakes swished behind him

"The young masters have shown a great deal of trust in us by opening up and speaking of such a troubled past. the least we can do is respect their boundaries." Everyone silently agreed that what Mr Tanaka was reasonable.

"Come on, cheese and i already have ideas for what flowers to use." Cream grabbed the arms of Azure Sonic and Citrene Tails and begun to pull them to the garden. Bixbite Knuckles went to follow them but paused in front of Ella.

"Caretaker Ella, do not be worried. i shall watch over them and keep them safe. No harm will come to the young rabbit while she makes us the crowns of flowers." Bixbite Knuckles placed a hand over his heart and bowed his head respectfully before following the others out into the garden.

Chapter Text

Eggman hit the console of his Eggmobile in annoyance.

Decoe and Bocoe had ended up crossing paths with the knuckles they already knew in their search for the more chaos powered doubles. and they had let Knuckles destroy the chaos energy tracker and now they had no idea where the doubles where.

"we are sorry Dr Eggman." "He broke it before we could stop him"

"Grrr. i'll break you." Eggman turned his attention away from the quivering bots. thinking about it logically the doubles had probably met up with Sonic and the rest of his crew and had teamed up with them. and if that had happened Eggman's plans of establishing the Eggman empire could be in jeopardy. This other Knuckles had literally glowed with chaos energy and the other two where presumably the same.

Those Egg drones where starting to look really appealing. He looked over them again with the materials he had he should be able to make a decent amount of them. their primary function seemed to be surveillance but they did have a decent weaponry system in them, their software was extremely basic with the drones being listed as low-sentience. Eggman had been searching the the files over and over for some kind of override code he suspected there would be one, his 'friend' was still extremely suspicious. But he didn't find any and since they apparently weren't the other Eggman there was no way they could out smart him and hide it.

"you two! lets go back to base we have a project to work on"

When Stone had been practically handed a cover story on a silver platter he couldn’t help but take it and Tailor it to his needs.

when he had been dragged to this ‘other world’ he had been wearing his G.U.N uniform and was able to blend in with a group returning to their base. G.U.N was his best bet for finding out what was going on and where he was.

The blue lightning and blackout meant Sonic was here, And the rest of his family probably was to. they where very close to Stone when the light had blinded him. Not that the knew that. he was spying on them after all.

The whole family would pay for what they’d done.

yet again the doctor had gone missing at the hands of Sonic. Stone didn’t think he was dead. There had been no sign of a body and there was no way the brilliant Doctor Robotnik didn’t have a back up plan in mind. A simple fall wouldn’t kill him.

so until the Doctor re-emerged from where he was hiding Stone would work in his stead

Sonic was the main target. Robotnik hates that hedgehog and everything was his fault. and While stone disliked the entirety of the Wachowski family and wanted to get revenge on Sonic, special mention had to go to Knuckles.

He was the only one Stone had actually interacted with personally and during that meeting the echidna had crushed his arm, caused a mess and proven himself to have less than stellar intelligence. 

Now was Stones dislike of him petty? maybe. 

But for Robotnik to take on a living lackey they had to be the best of the best. stone was the only living being Robotnik could stand. That was a high compliment from a man who regularly expressed disdain for humanity.

But fortunately Robotnik held no loyalty to the red imbecile and had cast him aside when he was no longer useful.

Robotnik may have laser focus on Sonic but stone saw the potential danger that the little fox possessed. he wasn't quite at Robotnik's level, but the kid definitely had skill.

Stone tapped away at the computer in front of him. occasionally flicking his gloved hand.

It hadn’t taken Stone much to make his presence more creditable. Their systems where easily breached, Compared to what he saw while working with the Doctor their technology was incredibly archaic. the computing power that was contained in his glove out classed almost everything they had here, so changes where easy to make. 

He had no past here and had to make one up. ‘not existing’ both credited and discredited him. His initial story of ‘paper work sucks and I got the bad end of it’ had been taken on board but Stone wasn’t sure how long that would last without making a trail for himself. 

"Agent Onyx sir?" At the sound of his alias Stone looked up to see an agent from earlier. he didn't really care about the guy, he was another agent simply playing his role. there was someone new with him she looked like just another face in the crowd.

"Ah hello" remaining polite was necessary for his plans.

"This is Agent Topaz. She and her partner Agent Rouge will be making sure you know the ropes of your job. if you've been lost in the cracks for as long as you say we need to make sure you're up to date."

"Good to meet you agent topaz." Stone couldn't see anything about her that was useful yet she seemed like the average soldier you'd see in G.U.N.

"Good to meet you to sir. sorry Rouge couldn't be here, she has some personal business to deal with." She was acting a twitchy. she was hiding something.

"that's fine. i just hope everything's alright."

"Yes, don't worry about it."

Stone heard a barely audible beep from his communicator. looks like the other Robotnik had responded.

"Hey, i get off in half an hour why don't you meet me down in the break room and i'll make you coffee"

"couldn't we just go out a buy some."

"oh trust me, you're gonna want to try one of his lattes, they're amazing." ah yes, the way to almost everyone's heart. a good coffee. probably best to hold back on the steamed Austrian goat's milk for now.

"alright then if you say so."

"great, i'll see you in thirty." Stone waved as they left the room and activated the ear piece he had hacked a connection to the eggmoblie.

"afternoon." Stone flicked his wrist to type with his glove.

"i've decided to make some prototypes of theses drones of yours.” If he had spotted the glove override he hadn’t said anything. it was very well hidden The software was nearly and brilliantly designed by doctor robotnik after all.

”wonderful news”

“There’s still something that’s been bothering me. What do you plan to do once we have them built?” A reasonable question. Stones currently had two goals. Destroy Sonic and the rest of the Wachowski family. Bring the chaotic ruffle of humanity to order as by Robotnik’s wishes.

"Same as you. destroy the hedgehog. Both of them.”

“Hmmm well I have to say these are very well designed. Are they yours?”

”I had a hand in making them.”

”you are frustratingly vague, do you know that?”

”yes.”

”ugh I’ll go make a couple prototypes. Than you better start talking.”

”very well, if that’s what you want.”

Charmy heard this hiss of machinery and a door open, a grumbling Eggman could be heard getting closer.

"Hey Espio eggman's coming!" Espio grabbed Bokkun, covered his mouth and ducked behind a box, the little robot protesting the whole time.

Charmy placed his ear to the wall and attempted to listen in.

It sounded like Egggman was yelling at Decoe and Bocoe to get to work. 

Through the clanking noise it was hard to tell exactly what was being said.

Charmy could however tell it was something about defeating Sonic with his new robots, pretty standard stuff.

But it did show that Sonic was here to and possibly in a need of a warning.

"Egghead's making some brand new bots and he's going to attack Sonic with them." 

"Nothing unusual there." Espio shrugged and looked down at Bokkun who had given up on struggling and had instead begun to pout. "What should we do with him?"

"We don't want him telling Eggman we were here. let's take him with us." Bokkun's eye widened and the little bot started to struggle again. Espio kept his grip strong and the messenger bots struggle was fruitless.

Espio nodded and readjusted his hold. 

"We'll have to find Vector as well. he probably knows things that we don't. we'll need to discuss with him." Espio took the lead in sneaking out of the base, being sure to discretely disable as much Eggman tech along the way.

vector looked over the train station with a keen eye. It was filled with people pushing and arguing about the mess of delays that had been caused by the power outage.

”before we get involved in that mess we gots to make sure we go the right way.” Vector saw that a piece of paper with scheduling information had been haphazardly slapped over the regular schedule board.

”everyone look, it’s Cream and cheese.” Vanilla was on the verge on happy, relief filled tears

On a rack of magazines, leaflets and booklets was a magazine that had a collage of photos of all sorts of people as it’s cover. One of them was a group photo of some humans along with Cream, Cheese, Amy, Tails and Sonic. 

“Stars homes eh? Looks like our pal Sonic really knows how to pick em.”

Tom grabbed the magazine and flipped to the indicated page.

”Christopher thorndyke, son of ceo of Thorndyke industries, Nelson thorndyke and famous actor Lindsey Thorndyke opened his home to the other worldly visitors and given sonic and his friends a place to stay. Chris continues to aid our heroes in the never ending fight against the villainous dr Eggman.”

“We know where cream is now and if she’s with sonic, Amy and Tails that means she’s safe.”

”We should probably head there anyway. It’s our best lead to finding our boys.” Vector knew that even if his and the Wachowskis boys went at this mansion it was better than endless wondering around hoping to bump into them by dumb luck.

Tom’s eyes scanned the page a few times.

”Find the tour on page 4-8…” Tom flipped over to page and found a map.

”there. That’s their address.” Maddie tapped on the magazine. She took it in her hands and started to cross reference it with the train map and schedule.

”The closest station to their house looks like it’s in station square and then we’ll have to walk the rest of the way.”

the four of them looked over to the huge crowd. There where regular trains going back and forth but with how many people there where who knows how long it will take to get to Cream.

"oh dear that crowd is still just as big. this could take ages to get through." 

“don’t worry miss Vanilla we’ll get to Cream in no time. We just gotta play this smart.” Vector looked around the train station. Technically they could wait, but Tom and Maddie’s boys had already caused trouble and Vector was getting a nagging feeling that his where up to something.

“Hang on, I got an idea.” Tom straighted up his clothes and tried to make his stance more professional and walked up to the ticket desk.

”hi, our friends here need to get to station square and meet up with sonic-“ as Tom spoke the ticket seller looked past him at Vanilla and Vector.

”ah, of course you must be some more of his friends come on, I’ll get you on board.” Tom had been clearly caught off guard by how easy it was.

”oh wow, thank you so much.”

”Well Sonic’s done so much for us the lest we can do is help his friends.” The ticket seller lead them to the front carriage and let them in.

”not that I’m complaining, but that was surprisingly easy”

Vector had been expecting they would need an elaborate plan to get themselves on the train and he was all ready to start one up.

”hey wait until they hear you guys are Sonic’s parents.” Vector’s statement earn a laugh from everyone.

a few moments later the doors opened and more people started getting directed in. As they found their seat most people gave vector wary, but still friendly looks.

and once the train was full it pulled away from the station.

Chapter Text

Knuckles Wachowski watched the young rabbits actions carefully.

She was a skilled flower weaver and had crafted his brothers crowns of flowers and was currently working on one for him.

”and… Done!” She held up the finished product to show him.

There didn’t seem to be any particular order or pattern to the colours or size of the flowers but small purple ones where speckled regularly throughout.

”I wanted to use the purple ones, they match your eyes really well.” She explained with a smile.

Knuckles bowed his head and allowed her to place the crown upon his head.

”Thank you flower-weaver Cream I will wear this crown with honour.” 

“Cream! Cream! Look what we made for you!” Sonic and Tails ran over with a comparatively shoddy flower crown.

”Sorry it’s not as nice as yours, we tried our best.” Cream didn’t seem bothered and looked at it happily.

”oh it’s beautiful.” Once the crown was placed on Cream's head she gave a small Curtsy and each of the brothers returned it with a bow. A few flowers fell out of Cream's crown and it became looser.

"Yeah, we had a bit of trouble. Can you show me how you did it?" Tails asked.

"Of course"

Tails plopped down opposite from Knuckles and plucked a few flowers from the ground, Cream shuffled closer and guided his hands for a neater weave.

around them, Sonic ran from place to place in the garden collecting other flowers and adding them to a small pile next to them.

“Do you want to try making one?” Knuckles Looked between the little rabbit’s happy expression and the flowers gently swaying in the breeze.

”They are small and delicate. they will crush easily.” Knuckles tensed when she placed her hand in his palm. Her hands where so tiny compared to his and if he wasn’t extremely careful he could seriously hurt her. 

“it’s okay, I think you can do it.” Knuckles scanned her face and found no sign that she doubted her words.

”You’re able to handle the fruits and vegetables at home alright… mostly.”

Ah yes. The watermelon incident. There was no denying that he was at fault for the sticky juice going everywhere, but still, his brothers did not need to be that close at the time.

The moment their father had seen state of their fur they had been sent back out into the garden to get hosed down immediately. Knuckles accepted without complaint. it was a direct consequence of his actions after all.

Tails and Sonic had also accepted after a small grumble aimed at knuckles. getting soaked was preferable to sticky fur after all, but every time Tom would aim it at the three of them Ozzie would jump in front and try to bite the water. After a few minutes Knuckles was delegated as 'the dog holder'. Maddie returned home that afternoon to Sonic running after his brothers with the leaf blower.

Shaking himself back to the present Knuckles reached for a bunch of flowers and took a hold of them. the stems crunched under his grip and a slight dampness formed on his glove.

"It's okay, we can still use them." Cream took the flowers from him and showed Tails another method of weaving. As Knuckles kept an eye on her movements he took a quick note of his surroundings. He would feel unsafe if he didn't.

Tails was still being helped with his flower weaving and Sonic was still running around gathering extra flowers.

They where in a walled in area so this was probably just a less well kept part of Christopher's family's garden. the house was still in view and knuckles was certain they where being watched. He did not mind. they would be unwise not to. The young Rabbit was small and did not seem like she had seen many fights and probably would not do well against most foes on her own.

He couldn't tell her exact age but he was sure she was older than he was when he lost his tribe. He hoped that she would never have to go through anything like that. and As long as he was here she would be under his protection.

But perhaps he should teach her before they returned to their home world. it was good to know how to defend yourself. She should be old enough to wield spears and bows, he had learned from a far younger age after all.

Knuckles' observations where interrupted by a thump and a squelch sound followed by an 'oof' noise. By the time Knuckles looked over Sonic had already gotten up and was pretending nothing had happened. the fact that he was now covered head to toe in mud was the only sign that anything had actually happened.

"Are you Alright Mr Sonic?"

"Yep! totally fine nothing wrong here." Since Sonic didn't seem to be bothered everyone else just went back to cream's flower weaving lesson. Knuckles was pretty confident that he now knew how to make a flower crown now but he still doubted he would actually be able to do all the tiny dexterous movements required. 

But that was okay, he would be alright just sitting here with his brothers and the Flower-weaver.

Knuckles changed his position and stopped watching Tails and Cream work on the flower crown. he seemed to be just in time, because he met eyes with Sonic who was sneaking up behind Tails covered in mud with full intent to hug him.

Sonic shook his head at Knuckles, and mouthed 'don't'

Knuckles not could in good conscious stay quiet and let his youngest brother become a victim of sonic's prank.

"Sonic Don't." Tails turned just in time to stop Sonic from giving him a muddy hug.

"Aww Knux, why'd you do that, now i can't-" Sonic paused and faced Knuckles with a grin.

Knuckles' eyes widened in realization.

"No. I know what you are planing. do not do it. you will regret it." Sonic was not deterred and begun to approach Knuckles with a teasingly slow speed.

"Don’t you dare." Knuckles got up and backed up a few paces.

Sonic leapt forwards and tackle hugged Knuckles.

"SONIC!" Knuckles got up and stamped his foot in annoyance.

"HOW DARE YOU! DISHONOR!" Sonic was apparently not done and was gathering mud in his hand to throw.

Ella Watched a very muddy hedgehog tackle hug his older brother. The now muddy and electrically charged echidna got up and started yelling something at the mischievously grinning hedgehog.

they really where children. The poor dears had been younger then Cream is now when they had lost everything. And they’d been alone for so long to. Ten years. Then whole year where they could only rely on themselves.

What problems had they face when by themselves? What did they do if they got hurt or sick? Did anyone ever help them?

And How did a fifteen year old end up with the title of “most dangerous warrior in the galaxy”? How much had he had fought to earn it. And when did he get it. How young was he?

Ella wasn’t the only one with questions. around the room various conversations could be heard.

“For one thing, I want to hear how they saved themselves from being thrown into a fire with a dance battle.” Amy said to the room in general.

“They must have been pretty crafty to get out of that” rouge responded.

“I don’t get how they’re so close when they haven’t even known each other for a year.” Cobalt Sonic glanced over at the trio outside the back inside to their counterparts.

It had taken Knuckles quite a while to warm up to everyone and he still wasn’t quite there.

”If I hadn’t been here to hear the story I would be just assumed they knew each other for their whole lives.” Sam said.

”their power sounds so interesting, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Right tails. By the sounds of it they’ve got a lot of it.”

After Chuck spoke there was an annoyed groan from Copper Knuckles who had been staring up at the ceiling and pointedly ignoring everyone in the room.

“Hey knuckles, are you alright?”

”no!” He shot up very dramatically from where he was sitting to glare at Chris.

”what’s wrong?” Sonic was trying to hide the slight chuckle is his voice.

”Those three!” Knuckles got up and dramatically gestured out the window to the trio who where all muddy now and showing cream something in Tails’ backpack.

”what about them?”

”none of you have a clue do you?” Most of the room where aware to some level that the trio had more chaos energy than normal but no one more so than knuckles.

at the lacklustre response Knuckles took breath and began to explain.

”Saying ‘they’ve got a lot of it’ is a huge understatement about their power. the amount of chaos energy flowing through those three is absurd.”

”well the chaos emerald did light up in response to bixbite.”

”….of course it did. They’re practically radiating chaos energy like a chaos emerald does. Do any of you realise just how much their energy was acting up when they were telling their story?” The other all shook their heads.

“Of course not. None of you can sense chaos energy the way I can.” Knuckles rubbed his face in annoyance.

”chill out knuckles, aren’t you being a bit dramatic?” Knuckles whipped around to face Sonic.

"NO! THEY DON"T MAKE SENSE! they shouldn't be able to have that much chaos energy all the time! None of you realise just how unusual this is. Most beings couldn’t handle that much on their own for even a short time. And they just… have it. All the time.”

”But if they’ve had it their whole life wouldn’t they be adjusted to it?" Amy tilted her head in confusion.

"That's mostly what i'm concerned about. Chaos energy is very reactive to emotions. and if it they've had it their whole life it's going to be even move reactive to the emotions."

"Well they're on our side so everything should be fine right?'

"it doesn't matter if their on our side or not. their energy has been reacting automatically. even if it's unintentional do you have any idea the kind of disasters they could cause?”

BOOM! 

okay, maybe giving cream that laser pistol was a bad idea.

the four of them stood in a still shock at the new hole in the wall.

They could hear a door open and footsteps approaching.

"SEE! WE LEFT THEM ALONE FOR FIVE MINUTES AND LOOK WHAT THEY DID!" Copper Knuckles was angrily yelling at the pile of rubble they had just caused.

"Okay this looks bad. But let us explain." Azure Sonic was pushed aside by his older brother before he could say anything.

"Forgive us, we only wanted to give Flower-weaver Cream a way to defend herself.

"So you give her that?" Sam was eyeing the small pistol in creams hands.

"A spear is a preferable first weapon. but Tails' inventions are suitable to learn with."

”She's a little kid. she shouldn't be learning about weapons in the first place." Sam chided

"i was given one at a younger age. Why can’t I give her one now?"

”She blew a hole in the garden wall.”

“Okay, yes. But we promise to fix it. We have….. Experience fixing up thing we broke.” Azure Sonic awkwardly ran his hands through his quills 

"I'm scared to ask.”

”I'm not!” Amy pushed cobalt Sonic aside.

”eh heh, yeah, when we said ‘Knuckles punched me through a wall’ there wasn’t just a me sized hole. He basically blew up one whole side of the house.” Bixbite Knuckles looked down with a twinge of guilt.

”I did not care for the consequences of my actions at the time. Only for my goal.”

“BUT! With all of us working together we got it back to normal.” Interrupted Citrine Tails

Ella sighed and turned to copper Knuckles.

”I’m thinking you’re right. These three are trouble.”

”You think they’re trouble now, wait until their powers get more involved.”

”That is a good point. Our powers can be pretty destructive. And I haven’t even done the lightning thing yet.”

”Wait, can’t you use chaos energy?” Amber Tails gave his counterpart a puzzled look.

”well not like my brothers can, but we’re all sure I’ll be able to do it to when I’m a bit older and with training. Besides it seems like I’ve been subconsciously enhancing my inventions with it this whole time.”

”…of course. I really have to stop being surprised by you three.” Copper Knuckles rubbed his face with one of his hands.

A faint ringing noise could be heard and Tanaka excused himself to answer the door. 

“I'm willing to bet That’s someone wanting answers about the blackout.” Chuck went to follow after Tanaka

 Azure Sonic's expression flashed concern for a moment and a few blue sparks traveled over his body.

"Relax Azzie, they're not going to take you away or anything. and if they do try anything, we'll help you fight 'em off"

"Thank you, Lady Rouge. your ally ship is much appreciated." Bixbite Knuckles met rouge's gaze with sincerity, and beside him Azure Sonic relaxed and the electricity calmed.

Copper Knuckles muttered a small 'told you so'

”hey, if that’s all it takes for your power to act up, i'd hate to get caught in the middle of a sibling dispute." Citrine Tails laughed at Sam's little joke.

"Yeah, we, but mostly those two, can be pretty dangerous to be around if we're fighting."

"See, what have i been saying this whole time." Copper Knuckles' expression was one of vindication.

"You don't have to be worried. they might be dangerous, but they're not bad." Copper Knuckles looked down at Cream.

"I don't get why none of you are taking this seriously. They get slightly annoyed and they mess with chaos energy." Copper Knuckles trailed off and seemed to be talking to himself at this point.

"I'm sure the three will be able to handle keeping their powers under control while they're here right you three?" Amy crossed her arms and looked at them

"we can't promise that. but, we will try." Azure Sonic gave a little thumbs up.

"That's the spirit. but maybe if you do start to do the whole 'lightning thing' you can go outside, then Ella won't have to clean up as much." The three brothers looked between each other and nodded.

"That seems fair."

A door opening alerted everyone to Mr Tanaka's return.

"Pardon me everyone but Ms Garcia wishes to ask some questions."

"Who?."

"Scarlett Garcia, she's a news reporter."

"is it really wise to speak with this reporter of news? would that not give away our presence?" Bixbite Knuckles raised a brow and tilted his head.

"I have to agree with Knuckles. We don't want Gun to find us. you've already said we're dangerous, they might try to lock us up." Rouge's ear twitched a few times.

"Gun trusts us with the chaos emeralds and we don't have to tell them everything."

"So we just have to watch what we say and everything should be fine, right?"

"right."

"Well if all of you are heading in i think i'll take my leave." Rouge stretched her arms up and her wings out behind her. "It was nice meeting you boys, see you round."

"Are you sure you'll be okay? and gun won't get you?"

"Don't worry kid. You can't catch Rouge the bat twice. i'm too crafty for that." Copper Knuckles rolled his eyes at Rouges dramatics.

"Ta-ta" Her voice faded as she flew into the sky.

"Umm... we're still kinda muddy, are you going to let inside."

"Sure, just let me put a towel down or something first"

Scarlet Garcia considered herself a respectable journalist who would inform the public with what they needed to know whenever disaster struck. And a blackout with a seemingly supernatural origin was definitely one she needed to check out.

And that was why she was in front of the Thorndyke's mansion. if anyone knew anything it would be professor Thorndyke and Tails.

The public where getting restless about the rumored sightings of Sonic at the origins of blast. It was best sort out the rumors as soon as possible.

Scarlett walked up to the front door and rang the door bell.

there wasn’t any answer.

Scarlett waited a few moments before ringing again.

inside she could hear rushed footsteps and the door opened to reveal mr Tanaka.

”ah, ms Garcia, what brings you here?”

”Good afternoon Mr Tanaka, we where wondering if we could ask professor Thorndyke some questions about the blackout?”

“Apologies, but Mr Thorndyke is currently busy with other matters.”

”it’s alright Tanaka, I can answer some questions.” 

“Do you mind if we come inside.” Chuck paused for a few moments.

”we’d rather you stay outside.” 

"Well could you at least ask sonic to come out here?"

"I'm afraid Sonic doesn't know anything about the blackout." Chuck started to close the door on her.

"Wait! he was seen at the sight where the blue lightning started and people are starting to blame him." Chuck paused in the doorway.

"Alright. but you'll have to hold off on the camera's for now." Chuck stepped aside and let her in.

"Of course." Scarlet had dealt with sensitive subjects before and Chuck was placing a lot of seriousness on the subject.

She was lead to the main lounge room, where strangely no one was.

”Take a seat Ms Garcia, I’ll fetch everyone.” Tanaka bowed and stepped outside.

”I would like to warn you that this situation is an unusual one.”

”I understand Professor Thorndyke,”

Scarlett heard a door and Mr Tanaka reentered the room.

”Apologies but miss Rouge had to take her leave.”

”That’s quite alright.”

Following after Mr Tanaka where some familiar faces. Sam, Ella, Amy, Cream, Sonic, Tails and to her surprise, Knuckles. He didn’t hang around the other much. It was nice to see him around.

Ella rushed to another room and came back with a towel. she laid it down on one of the couches. Scarlett didn't have time to consider this because Sonic, Tails and Knuckles walked in again?

there where two of each?

Scarlett blinked a few times. she didn't think she was seeing things. Everyone else saw them and where acknowledging them to, Ella directed them to sit on the towel. Ah that made sense, all three had mud splattered over their fur.

The three that she already knew spread out in the room. Tails went to Chuck, Sonic to the window sill and Knuckles stayed by the door away from the group.

The other three where the opposite. they all chose to sit next to each other on the towel and where all leaning on each other, like they where anxious about leaving each others side. Sonic and Knuckles seemed insistent that Tails stay between them.

as everyone found their seats Scarlett made a few mental notes. the two Tails' looked almost identical aside from one of them wearing a backpack and a slight difference in fur tone. the two Sonics had different coloured arms so that made things easier and the two Knuckles had a different build. 

And their body language was very different to.

Scarlett had many years of experience as a journalist. and many years observing different peoples body language. all three of them looked tense and unsure of her in someway

The new Sonic's foot was bouncing up and down at high speed causing the table to vibrate. The new Tails' pointed at one of the cameras and whispered a few things to the other two. The new Knuckles was staring directly at her with a sharp gaze like he was analysing her every move.

Many strange things had happened since Sonic and his friends showed up, but the copies of Sonic, Tails and Knuckles sitting in front of her might just be the strangest thing yet.

Rouge Touched down outside of the G.U.N base and was immediately met with one of the commanders she didn’t care to remember the name of.

”Where have you been?”

”Cant a gal spend some time to herself without everyone hounding her?”

”You’re an agent. You can’t just wonder off whenever you please.”

”Yeah, Yeah, relax I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”

”I doubt that. Now come on. you and Topaz are working with a new partner.” Now that was certainly interesting.

the commander lead rouge in the direction of the break room and when they got there an unfamiliar man was sitting with Topaz. This must be the ‘new guy’.

”well hello there,” the man startled at her sudden appearance.

”What’s the matter? Never talked to a pretty girl before?” Topaz, who was a girl and the one he was literally just talking to grumbled in anger and took a sip of her coffee. Eh, she wasn’t that worried. Topaz knew she was just teasing. That’s just how they were.

“sorry, I just wasn’t expecting an alien to be one of my new partners.”

”Alien? I’m a bat hon. i'm from a Different universe, not planet.” 

“Right. Still not used to all of this.”

”hey, think of how I feel. I'm long way from home you know." It may weird for the humans to have them all here, but at least they where all home.

Rouge pulled out a chair and sat down next to Topaz

"Anyway we still havn't been introduced. i'm rouge." Rouge held out a hand and winced when the man took it. His grip was no where near as strong as Bixie's from earlier but her hand was still slightly bruised from the echidna's handshake. and the odd mechanical parts on the man's glove certainly didn't help.

"Onyx."

"Topaz and Onyx. Anymore teammates and i could have a necklace's worth" And with the gem themed nicknames she'd given to the doubles she technically already did, but gun didn't need to know any of that.

"Hey Onyx why don't you make Rouge up a coffee."

"Oh, yes please a coffee would be amazing." As Onyx walked past her Rouge swore she could hear a voice coming from a small earpiece. Was he listening to something right now? Well that's rude. and what was with those twitches he was doing with his hand?

They weren't random. he was doing very specific movements and his mind looked like it was somewhere else. Rouge couldn't come up with answers right now, so she filed away that information away for later and took the coffee she was being offered.

"Say, this is really good."

"Thank you. i always love to see people enjoy my coffees"

There was something that sat wrong about this guy with Rouge. she would have to keep an eye on him.

Eggman held one of the newly completed prototype Egg drones in his hands.

He had been having a back and forth conversation with the 'friend', who was still refusing to tell him much or even actually speak to him. Eggman had wanted to send the drones on a direct attack to test them out but the 'friend' had suggested he send them along side another robot as an asistant rather than the main attacker. Eggman suposed that was logical, to have a back up for an untested drone.

One of the mid sized robots should be fine.

And sending them after Sonic would be the perfect plan.

"Bokkun! Come here i need you!" unlike what was normal the little bot didn't come flying over immediately.

"Where is that flying little pest?"

"We have not seen him dr Eggman." "Yeah, he's not here."

"Guess I'll have to change plans then." No matter where he attacked Sonic would show up pretty quickly, but Eggman wanted him there and testing as soon as possible. and without Bokkun around to deliver the message he would need to attack somewhere obvious.

the train station would be perfect.

Vanilla felt the train come so a stop and saw the people start to get up and make their way off the train.

None of them really wanted to get involved in the bustle of the crowd so Maddie took out the map and opened it for all of them to see.

"from here it looks like it'll be about an hours walk." Tom looked over the page.

"We'll probably be able to find some kind of public transport, won't we?"

"Here's hoping."

the way was clear for them to get up now and the four of them got out of their seats and off the train.

"Alright. we need to head this way." Maddie pointed in a direction and started to lead them but a rumble sent the four of them off balance.

they could hear screams and mechanical sounds ahead of them and From around a corner a large robot twice vectors height stomped out. it had a silvery metal sheen and was vaguely human shaped with two large bulky arms and one single eye.

"That's one of Eggman's robots! I knew he had something to do with this." At Vector's shout the large robot turned to them and prepared to fire a laser in their direction.

Maddie reacted fast and pulled a small yellow triangle from her pocket. She pressed the center of it and  From it's sides sprung two sharp blades. Oh! it was a boomerang!

With a clearly practiced throw Maddie tossed the boomerang at the bot and landed it directly in it's eye.

"NICE SHOT! Now let me have a go." Vector rolled his shoulders and stomped up to the robot. It tried to hit him but Vector managed to avoid it’s blow, but The crocodile was clearly struggling and would not be able hold it off for much longer.

"Vector move!" Vector didn't waste any time and ducked away from the robot. Fully trusting in Tom's warning.

Tom tossed a small disk bellow the large machine and a moment later it released a pulse and sent the machine backwards into a wall. it twitched for a second and went limp. seeming to deactivate.

"that was incredible!" the people who had scattered during the short attack surrounded them and started showering them with praise.

Vanilla was left out of the circle. she supposed that was fair, she hadn't contributed to defeating the robot. the others had reacted quick enough so that she didn't need to.

It was barely audible over the crowd, but there was a clunking sound. no one other than Vanilla acknowledged it.

The clunking sound was coming from the Robot, it had shifted one of it's arms underneath it and was trying hoist it's self into a standing position.

Vanilla had to act now.

There was plenty of rubble in the area, but what caught vanilla's eye was a broken metal pole that probably used to be a part of a sign of some sort.

"Look out!" Vanilla grabbed the metal pole as she dashed past the group and rammed it into the robots chest, sending sparks flying. Once again it went limp and She had do dodge out of the way as the Robot started to collapse to avoid getting crushed.

Vanilla could feel the breath knocked out of her when she hit the ground.

"You alright?" Vanilla took the hand that Tom offered to her and once she got to her feet she brushed down her dress and took a shaky breath.

"I think so. Oh that was scary. I think I'm running on pure adrenaline right now." Maddie put her hand on Vanilla's shoulder and encouraged her to take a few breaths.

"thank you, i feel better now."

"Hey, Ms Vanilla you did pretty good with this, i think you should take it with you." Vector had collected up Tom and Maddie's weapons and was handing her the pole she had used.

"alright. But to be honest I'm just as surprised as you that i was able to do that. i just acted on instinct and I have no idea if I'll be able to do it again." Vanilla held the pole in her hands and tested a few movements. Maybe she could defend herself against a basic robot, but a more complex foe would be a struggle for her.

They probably should tell someone about this so it could get cleaned up as soon as possible. Someone could possibly still get hurt with it lying around.

A few paces away There was a police officer blocking the corner the big robot had come from. It was probably best to let them know.

Thankfully, Tom had already gone up to them and started a conversation.

”Thanks for dealing with that robot for us. The small Ones back here were giving a lot of trouble.”

”Smaller ones?”

”Yeah a bunch of white flying, egg shaped ones, ‘Bout ‘this’ big. They must be new, I’ve never seen them before.” Tom and Maddie’s expressions got very frightened.

”can you show us?”

”hey wait. I can’t just let you through. This place is off limits to civilians.

“Oh, I’m not a civilian. Here.” Tom dug through his pockets and showed the police something in his wallet.

”Sheriff Wachowski? From Montana? You’re a long way from home.”

”Don’t I know it. I’ve found these two all lost and confused. My wife and I decided to escort them here, Ms Vanilla here is Creams mother.” Vanilla noticed that technically nothing Tom said was a lie.

”Oh yeah I can see the resemblance. But why do you guys need to know about these egg drones?”

”Something about your description sounds familiar. We need to check it out.” Vanilla nodded to give credit to Vectors statement.

”well I guess I’ve got no reason to stop you. Go on through, just don’t touch anything. But you should know that shouldn’t you sheriff.” The police officer stepped back to let them past.

”Dont worry I well aware of what to do in a crime scene.” The little team of four walked past the police officer and around the corner. 
the moment they where out of eat shot Vector posed a question.

”You two looked concerned when that guy mentioned the drones. Did they sound familiar or something?”

”yeah, they sound pretty close to something Robotnik’s makes. We just have to be sure.”

”you think your Eggman could be here?”

”we don’t even know if he’s still alive.”

”So hearing the possibility of his robots being here must be scary.” Both of them nodded.

”if he is still alive there’s no doubt he’ll be out for blood against our whole family.”

”well if he does try anything against you I’ll gladly assist in hitting upside the head.” Vanilla had a preference for dealing with things passively, but she was a mother. And she knew what it felt like to have her child in danger. If their Robotnik hurt any of the kids he would not be getting her mercy.

Chapter Text

Scarlett had many questions for the doubles and her mind was buzzing with excitement.

They all seem very nervous about her and out of respect she hadn’t brought the cameras up yet. She would have to gain their trust first. Looking at each of them Scarlett couldn’t pick out who would be the easiest to reassure.

Sonic was tapping his fingers together and was practically bouncing out of his seat. The constant hyperactivity she was seeing was quite the contrast from the Sonic she already knew. The Sonic she already knew was perfectly content to sleep on a roof and stay still as long as he could run if he wanted to. but this new one looked like staying still for even a minute would be a huge challenge for him.

Tails had an anxious expression on his face and was holding a device tightly in his hand and his gaze kept flicking around the cameras. The little fox appeared to be analyzing each of them carefully, what was he worried about? The Tails she knew was smart and analytical so this one was probably similar and had come up with something. But the exact reason for his concern was currently unknown to her. 

Knuckles sat still and tense, like he was ready to spring up and attack at any moment. His gaze was locked onto her and Scarlett had a good feeling that if he deemed her a threat he would not hesitate to attack her.

So she just had to be friendly and non threatening.

"Hello, my name is Scarlett Garcia, i'm a reporter and i was wondering if i could ask you some questions."

"What kind of questions?" Newer Tails tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. He had a slightly different voice and spoke quite similarly to the one she knew but it was hard to tell from just one sentence.

"Well for a start. who are you? The three of you Look just like Sonic, Tails and Knuckles. Are you clones, robots, from another universe, something else?" Newer Tails pulled the other two closer and started to whisper to them while pointing at the cameras. Was newer Tails scared of being found by someone or something?

"They aren't recording."
Tails still appeared tentative but the trio nodded at each other.

"Yep. We're Sonic, Tails and Knuckles from a different universe. I know, it’s totally mind blowing." Newer Sonic sound like a kid. an actual kid. Where all of them younger or something? They where smaller and fluffier, even with the mud caking their fur.

"Amazing, two Sonic the Hedgehogs, fans all over are going are going to go wild over this." Something about what she said seemed to slightly offend newer Sonic.

"Okay, first of all it's Sonic Wachowski. 'The Hedgehog' is only a part of actual name when i'm in trouble."

Wachowski? That was a shockingly human sounding name.

Most of Sonic's friends just used their species in place of a last name, with the two exceptions being Amy 'Rose' and Tails' actual but rarely used name of Miles 'Prower'.

Neither of their last names felt too far away from the literal naming conventions that people from Sonic's world seemed to follow.

But Wachowski sounded like it belonged to someone she could meet on earth.

"And Secondly don't forget about my brothers. They're awesome to." His brothers? Did he mean Tails and Knuckles? She was pretty sure that wasn't the case with the familiar versions as far as she knew.

"Yep those three are brothers. We where as surprised as you."

"Then i assume you are Tails Wachowski and Knuckles Wachowski." Newer Knuckles gave a small nod.

"Yep! You got it." Newer Tails’ namesakes twitched and he had a happy expression as he got squished in the middle of a hug.

”You three must of had a very different past to end up as brothers.”

”That appears to be so, while We have not heard their story, but we know their past is very different to our own.” Newer Knuckles spoke far more formally than she was expecting and in an entirely different accent to. It was a far contrast from the familiar Knuckles who could be rather rude and blunt at times.

”Would you mind saying a few words on that during the interview?”

”We literally just told our story to these guys and it was pretty difficult. So maybe not.” Sonic rubbed the back of his neck quickly.

”We do not wish to repeat our tale at this time. It is long and begins with tragedy. Telling our counterparts required a great deal trust. We will not tell it to strangers we cannot see.” Scarlet stayed quiet. looks like the most interesting part of this will be off limits.

”Alright, if you really don’t want to. I understand.”

”thank you.”

“Alright, now I have one more thing to ask you before we begin the interview properly. Apparently one of the Sonic’s was seen at the origin of the lightning blast. Are you able to comment on that?” The trio pulled each other into a huddle again to whisper something to each other.

”It’s probably not smart to tell everyone about what happened.” Scarlett looked over to Chuck.

”The lightning and subsequent blackout was a massive city wide event. Without answers to their questions The public are going to start coming up with their own theories and they might come after Sonic.” Scarlett couldn't be completely sure yet but she was pretty sure her prediction was accurate.

“No. there’s no way we’re letting everyone know they where involved.” Familiar Knuckles just confirmed her suspicion.

”So he was the cause!” Familiar Knuckles eyes widened in realisation at what he just revealed.

”…shit.”

Newer Knuckles let out an offended gasp and covered newer tails’ ears

”How dare you use such an impolite word in the presence of my youngest brother and the flower-weaver”

“No need to get Snappy It’s not that bad.” Familiar sonic shrugged.

”dishonour.” Newer Knuckles muttered under his breath and crossed his arms.

”The honour of swearing aside, why don’t you want to tell people about these three’s involvement?”

”these three aren’t like anything you’ve seen from us so far. It might be dangerous for some things to be common knowledge.” Scarlett searched the Familiar echidna's face. He did take pretty much everything seriously. Was it really this big of a deal?

”I think we should go with Mr Knuckles on this one. We do not want Dr Eggman to know much about them and Even if Gun has no intention to take them away, some people may fear them and demand action.” Mr Tanaka stepped forwards and most people voiced some level of agreement.

Scarlett’s could understand their hesitance now, Gun did attempt the bring Sonic and his friends into custody when they first arrived here and Gun’s history wasn’t exactly clean in this world. Perhaps in theirs similar or maybe even worse things had happened.

but one thing was still bothering her. Everyone was so insistent that they where dangerous. Well, Newer Sonic did cause the blackout but what else could the trio do to garner such a reaction?

"Don't worry, if we begin the interview with me i can explain that the lightning was a result of them being transported here and is not something the public needs to be concerned about.” Scarlett nodded and signalled for her team to start setting up the cameras.

"So... this means we can be seen by everyone. on live Tv. and not be in danger?" Excitement begun to creep into Newer Sonic’s expression.

”I’m always ending up on live Tv and I’m fine.” Familiar Sonic shrugged. He wasn’t really bothered by the fame or public opinion he just did what he thought was the right thing to do.

”oh my god. This could be my chance! I can finally achieve one of my dreams!” Newer Sonic excitedly shook his Tails’ arm. “I’m going to be on live Tv and everyone’s going to see me.” The young hedgehog’s eyes were shining with excitement.

Scarlet couldn’t help but smile at him. She’d experienced many kids try to get on Tv by trying to get in the background of one of her news reports. And this Sonic seemed just like them.

While the newer Tails and Knuckles didn’t look as enthused as their brother they did look more relaxed.

”So, what will you be asking us?” Newer Tails tilted his head slightly. 

”We’re just going ask some questions to get to know you better, like what’s your favorite Colour? For example.”

Newer Knuckles huffed. “I do not see how what Colour I like is significant.”

”I gotta agree with the other me, I never get why people ask questions like that”

”it’s just small talk Knuckles. A jumping off point for a bigger conversation.” Familiar Knuckles looked at Amy with a puzzled expression before shaking his head and muttering under his breath.

”Ms Garcia, we’re ready to go.”

”Wonderful.” Scarlet brushed herself off and Everyone shuffled around the room to prepare for the interview.

Vector looked over the damaged street.

it was a familiar sight. he had seen the aftermath of plenty Eggman battles and this was a perfect example of one.

The scorch marks, the rubble, the senseless destruction. Whatever bot had done this had already fled the scene and left no identifying features behind.

"See anything that proves your Eggman's here?" Tom and Maddie looked back and forth.

"Aside from an entire street being destroyed, no. But i suppose that's standard for yours to."

"Hmm, So all we gots to go on is that guy's story."

Vector concentrated and went over what he knew. Both Sonic's, his worlds Tails, Amy, Cream and Eggman where all defiantly here. His boys, Both Knuckles', Tom and Maddie's Tails, and possibly their Eggman were probably all here to despite it not being confirmed. The moon had one of it's sides made out of mechanical parts (probably Eggman's fault) and the world was mostly populated by humans.

“Wait listen!” Vanilla had lifted one of her ears and was pointing to where it sounded like a struggle was happening.

A silent look passed between the group and each of the got their weapons (or fists in Vectors case) ready to fight.

"he's going to escape you know."

"Then help me."

"No way. I Don't want to get hit in the face."

Vector knew those voices. It was Espio and Charmy! Vector Dropped his fighting stance and ran towards them.

When rounded the corner he found Espio struggling to keep Bokkun in his arms while Charmy flew around his head adding unhelpful comments. At the sight of them Vector couldn't wipe the grin of his fight.

"BOYS!" All three of them paused and turned to Vector.

"Vector!" Charmy instantly flew over and latched himself around Vector's neck.

"Good to see you boss." Espio walked over calmly and fondly smiled at him, with Bokkun gripped tightly in his arms.

"Whoo-hoo! team chaotix is back together!" Charmy pumped his fist with a cheer.

meanwhile Tom and Maddie where giving Bokkun a confused look, both trying to work out what he was.

"HEY! WHATCHA STARING AT?" The two humans jumped back at the loud shrill voice, their confusion increasing as they failed to figure out what he was.

”Why do have Bokkun?” Vector questioned.

“We infiltrated an Eggman base and didn’t want him to alert Dr Eggman to our presence too soon.” Espio spoke calmly despite him struggling to keep Bokkun’s tangle of limbs under control.

”I suppose you didn’t get spotted?”

”Nope! And we even messed with his equipment too.” Charmy had a very proud expression on his face.

”Nice one boys”

”So boss, what do we do about him?” The group looked down at Bokkun.

"Well you could just keep him." Vanilla teased with a small smile on her face.

"NO!" all of team Chaotix leapt back and Bokkun took this as his opportunity to escape.

"YOU JERKS. WAIT 'TILL I TELL DOCTOR EGGMAN ABOUT THIS. then you'll be sorry. Bokkun laughed as he flew off into the sky.

"Should we be concerned about that?” Tom watched Bokkun leave with an apprehensive expression.

“We messed with a lot of things in Eggman’s base, he’s gonna have a lot to deal with.” Charmy’s smug expression was slightly concerning, but to group took that to mean they where in the clear to head to the Thorndyke mansion.

Eggman had to admit the egg drones had done a solid job. They where efficient and did their job well.

Once they started to get damaged Eggman recalled them. He didn’t want to risk the government getting their hands on their design.

Seeing them in battle Eggman could see that they would do better in large overwhelming numbers or as searchers.

Yes he would definitely be putting resources into making more of these. 

His own bots performance was something to be desired.

The thing had barely had a chance to cause destruction when Vector, Vanilla and two humans he didn’t recognise had defeated it with quick efficiency.

Eggman had to admit who ever made the gadgets they used was skilled. He was especially impressed by the gravity pulse. Eggman would love to have a chat with it's inventor.

”Dr Eggman?”

”What do you nincombots want?”

”the rest of the city has power back.” “And Scarlett Garcia is doing a news broadcast about it.” The blackout was caused by chaos energy  It would be stupid for Eggman to pass up an opportunity to gain more information about it's cause.

”put it on” 

“yes Doctor.” Decoe tapped a few buttons on a keyboard and the screen in front of Eggman flicked to life.

The broadcast hadn’t actually started yet and the news channel was instead showing a screen with the text 'Important update incoming. please standby' 

Eggman tapped his fingers while waiting for the broadcast to start.

After the blackout he had detected three chaos energy signatures and one of them had lined up exactly with the other Knuckles’ position. At first Eggman had suspected he had a chaos emerald with him or something, but the echidna had literally light up with chaos energy when angered. so Eggman could deduct that the blue lightning was from other Sonic.

That was a frightening thought.

The other Sonic had shut down the entire city with chaos energy, including Eggman's base. He would have to deal with the other Sonic first if he wanted to keep his machines running.

Some of them had already malfunctioned since he got them working again. although Eggman did suspect foul play, he just didn’t know who did it. They had hid their identity by choosing the security system as their main target. 

a melodic chime sounded and the screen switched to a close up of Scarlet Garcia.

"Good afternoon, thank you for tuning in to this important update. A sense of normalcy is being restored after last night's mysterious blackout, with power being restored over most of the city. I'm here at Thorndyke mansion with professor Chuck Thorndyke Who will be answering some questions about recent events." Chuck Thorndyke walked into view and Scarlet pointed the microphone at him.

"Thank you Ms Garcia. I would like to first reassure everyone that the situation is under control and there is no further danger."

"Now, professor. Can you please explain the cause of this event." Chuck nodded.

"Of course. I'm sure everyone is aware that Sonic and his friends came here from their world when Eggman activated chaos control." That wasn't quite accurate. While Eggman was just as happy to take over this world coming here was never part of his original plan and it was in fact Sonic's actions that had caused chaos control.

"Last night a similar event occurred." Okay, Eggman did have to admit some part in this occurrence of chaos control. But yet again bokkun had ruined his plans and made everything worse.

”and that event caused another version of Sonic, Knuckles and Tails to be brought into this world. ” The camera panned away from the professor and to the couch where the other versions where sitting. Nothing in particular stood out, they looked like Trio but with a few changes but that was to be expected.

Eggman had to wonder why they were muddy though.

"During this event there was a huge blast of chaos energy. That was what caused the blackout." Eggman's face screwed up in annoyance. He already knew that. this didn't tell him anything useful.

"These alternate versions aren't a perfect parallel and in fact have very different histories to the versions we know. In a surprising turn of events these three are brothers who share the last name of Wachowski." Eggman's eyebrows raised. He already knew from when other Knuckles had done the whole glowing thing that they where brothers, but them sharing a last name was a surprise.

"Now some of you might be wondering about how you will know which one we are talking about when they share the same name.”

”oh I can answer this one!” the other Sonic excitedly grabbed the microphone from Scarlet and began to ramble into it.

”we got themed nicknames! We don't use them all time, only we need to refer to on of us in particular. Anyway the nicknames! i got Azure, my brothers got Citrene and Bixbite. Then our other selves got Cobalt, Copper and Amber." Eggman huffed as Azure Sonic pointed out what nickname belonged to who. This wasn't relevant or useful information for him.

"Come on. tell me something useful." he yelled at the screen.

Scarlet took the microphone back from back from Azure Sonic.

"Well, now that we have that out of the way. Why don't you tell us about your world." Eggman perked up. From what he could tell from his encounter with Bixbite Knuckles travel between different planets was a normal thing, and he had also visited Earth at some point.

Citrene Tails leaned over and Scarlett pointed the mic in his direction.

"We're currently living on our worlds version of earth in a small town with our parents and dog." They had parents? and they lived on earth in a town? Did Bixbite Knuckles not live on Angel Island? What about the Master Emerald? He doubted he was going to get answers they probably wouldn't be telling this information to just anyone.

"does that mean in your world humans and anthropomorphic animals are living together?"

Citrene Tails answered again "No. it's just us. Earth is isolated from the rest galaxy. We chose to live there instead of our original planets."

"Yeah aliens are very real in our world, and it's us." Azure Sonic pointed towards himself with a dramatic pose.

”are there other kinds of aliens?”

”Of course. There are plenty of different species living across the galaxy but none look like the green creatures shown in your movies.” Bixbite Knuckles waved his hand dismissively." Eggman didn't think that the information would be helpful but it certainly was interesting. He was pretty certain that his own world had civilizations beyond the stars but if any had visited recently they hadn't made a big scene.

Citrene Tails added more to what Bixbite Knuckles said. "Yeah! for example there's the seedrians, an evolved race of plants that were in on a planet in my solar system. i actually got to meet some of them when a group of them took some of their children on an adventure!"  Eggman tapped his fingers on his arms. sentient plants forming a society. their universe got stranger the more he hear about them. unless, did Seedrians exist in his home world to?

But what of this one. it was parallel to the one Sonic had came from but how far across the universe did that extend? Eggman shook his head. if he got too caught in his thoughts he'd miss something important.

"There is also the hive mind species, the black arms. It is best to avoid them." Had Eggman heard of them before? He though back to his grandfathers notes. yes he had! they had a brief mention in Geralds notes for project shadow. They weren't from earth's universe but the same one as sonic. all though it talked about specimens being rare due to an attack from a strange robotic army years ago. How Gerald had access to them despite earth being

"I've never really met any other aliens, but i know there's these scavenger dudes that travel around and don't really live anywhere." Azure Sonic shrugged but his brothers nodded to confirm the accuracy of what he said.

"Well that's absolutely fascinating. But back onto you three. You said you live on earth with your parents, what about your Dr Eggman do you have a version of him in your world." Immediately the trio became more serious.

"our Eggman did a lot of bad things. But he's gone now. he shouldn't bother us anymore." Both Eggman's lair and the room was silent after Azure Sonic spoke and the implications sunk in. As far as these other versions knew the other Eggman was out of commission in some way. His 'friend' was supposedly connected to the other him in some way. Now Eggman was even more suspicious of them. 

"...Alright." there was a slight shake in Scarlet's voice. "Well, then what's something you three spend your days doing?"

There trio relaxed and Azure Sonic smiled again. "Oh well some days we go on adventures all over Green Hills, we help out the town and some days we go to school. Not all days though. We're still kinda in a weird transition phase. We're not exactly used to human schools, so we're doing things a little different to normal" The room of the interview expressed their surprise.

the other him and this 'friend' where going after what was very clearly a group of children. How severe where these fights? Bixbite Knuckles had proven to be pretty powerful. that was probably a part off the other hims motivation. That level of chaos energy was truly something to behold. Eggman wanted some of it, surely there was a way to get some of it without being too cruel to a kid.

"These adventures of yours, i assume you get covered in mud regularly?"

"Yep!" "It is a common occurrence."

"May i ask why you are covered in it today?"

"His fault." Azure Sonic did not look sorry at all as his brothers pointed at him.

"If one of us get muddy. all of us get muddy. Wachowski brothers law."

"i shall keep that in mind next time i am muddy." Bixbite Knuckles narrowed his eyes and Azure Sonic look a tiny bit regretful but kept the smug expression.

Citrene Tails turned to the camera. "Knux is one hundred percent serious about that. He will not be forgetting."

Eggman grimaced and let the interview fade into the background as switched to less important questions. He didn't care about their favourite cartoons, movies, food. he didn't care that the trio's prank wars would escalate to ridiculous extremes. It was all so mundane. they where living peaceful lives. Well as peaceful as they could when they where powerful children living on an unfamiliar planet.

Eggman let the interview play in the background, just in case something relevant would come up. He had more important things to do. like working on his plans for world domination.

Plans had to be adjusted due to these new versions no doubt. but between what his 'friend' had sent him and the brilliant idea Eggman had just come up with this one had to be a slam dunk.

While he didn't full trust them this 'friend' had provided some genuinely good insight. So he was going to run this plan by them first.

Eggman could hardly believe he hadn't thought of it before! 

Half of the moon was His technology. he has the potential for more influence now than ever before!

Tom, Maddie, Vanilla and team Chaotix stood at the entrance to a massive house.

Maddie rolled her shoulder that had the tote bag with the Master Emerald in it.

"i guess this is the place."

Maddie took a breath and Knocked.

It took a few seconds but a sharply dressed man appeared to the door.

"can i help you?"

"Uh, hi. Is this the Thorndyke mansion?"

"yes, it is." The mans gaze lingered on Tom and Maddie before flicking over to Vanilla.

"Pardon me if i am assuming, But are you the mother of a young lady by the name of Cream."

"Yes, yes that's my daughter. is she here?" the man nodded once before turning back into the room and calling into it.

"Miss Cream, there is someone here to see you." There where light footsteps and then a little rabbit girl squeezed her self past the man. Once she caught sight of Vanilla she ran to her and Vanilla dropped the metal pole and scooped her up into a hug.

Those around the scene's hearts where warmed at the reunion.

The man turned back to Tom and Maddie.

"may i ask who you two are?"

"I'm Tom and this is Maddie. we're-" Tom paused for a second to think. This man knew about Cream and was in the photo they saw so it should be safe to ask him. "Wait, do you know about another version of Sonic, Knuckles and Tails?"

"You are Tom and Maddie, Wachowski, yes?" They both nodded. "ah i see, you are their parents."

"yes, yes we are."

"This is wonderful news. right this way." Tom and Maddie looked back at team Chaotix and the two rabbits.

"Go on, we'll see ya in a minute."

The man introduced himself as Mr Tanaka and he lead them to what appeared to be a lounge room where a news crew was packing up. They knew there where other people in the room but the two of them where laser focused on their three kids sitting on a towel on one of the couches with dried mud blotches all over their fur. They would of expect nothing less from the little troublesome trio.

Sonic was the first to spot them.

"MOM! DAD!" the little hedgehog launched himself of the couch and into their arms, with their other two kids following seconds after.

All five of them had tears of joy in their eyes and none of them wanted to let go of each other. Maddie ran a hand along each of their heads comfortingly and they pressed themselves further into the hug.

"Mother, Father, We are so happy you have found us."

"Us to, Red." Tom tapped his eldest son on the shoulder with a warm smile.

The Wachowkis kept a hold of each other for few more minutes before feeling comfortable letting go.

"Mom! Dad! look! there are other us's here." Tails pulled their arms and pointed to the rest of the room. The camera crew in one of the far corners had paused in the middle of packing up to watch the scene and a few humans they recognized from the magazine earlier were watching silently. And scattered around the room where the alternate versions of their kids as well as a pink hedgehog that had been a part of all the photos, Maddie believed her name was Amy.

"oh yeah! to make things easier we got a nickname system!" Their Sonic ran around and rambled about the nicknames for each person and pointing out the names of the others in the room. Tom and Maddie where well used to their middle child's quick ramblings by now and could easily follow along with what he was saying.

When he returned to them Maddie booped him on the nose.

"I think you should of gone with 'blueberry'" Her kid playfully pushed her hand away.

"Mo-om. You're embarrassing me in front of me."

"Perhaps we should of gone with one of mothers nicknames instead." Bixbite Knuckles smiled at his brother while he playfully pouted.

"That's a good idea, Spiky little Elmo."

"Mother!" Knuckles jaw dropped and Beside him his two brothers giggled at his indignant shout.

While Maddie teased their kids Tom walked over to the alternate version of Sonic. He was reclining on the window sill with his eyes casually watching the room. If only his version of Sonic would sit still like this. it was not an ability he appeared to possess.

"So you're the other me's dad, huh?" it was very weird to Tom to talk to someone who looked so much like Sonic and yet acted so different.

"Yep. I do my best to look after him. give him a good place to grow up." Cobalt Sonic shrugged.

"I don't need anything like that. But if that's the life other me wants. i don't get it though. To me home's whatever place i'm free to run."

"What happens if you get hurt?" Cobalt Sonic looked at his counterpart.

"Well my friends are often around if i need them." Tom found it very interesting how his Sonic had such a strong sense of home and how important Green Hills as a place and it's community was to him. While this other Sonic was more of a wonderer and traveler.

Maddie finished teasing her kids and reached into the tote bag to pull out the Master Emerald and handed it to Knuckles. Immediately the echidna latched onto it and pulled it close to his chest.

"Thank you mother, it is a relief to know the Master Emerald is safe."

"What." Copper Knuckles' voice was flat. "you mean to tell me, THAT. is the Master Emerald?”

”Yes, this is the Master Emerald." The younger echidna shifted his hands so his older counterpart could see it better.

Copper Knuckles stared at the Master Emerald with a befuddled expression. He reached towards it slightly but didn't touch it. He let out a heavy sigh.

"If i keep questioning your world i'm going to get a headache."

Citrene Tails turned to his parents to provide an explanation. "It turns out our worlds have lots of differences. And it's kinda stressing the other Knuckles out." Tom and Maddie looked at the alternate version of their eldest son, he did look very frustrated.

"Those three go against basically everything about chaos energy works in our world." Copper Knuckles flopped down onto one of the seats and it became very apparent that the room was rather crowded

"Oh my, there are so many of us now." Ella did a quick count of those in the room and the group still at the front door. It's going to take a lot of time to cook up a dinner for all of us."

"Oh, no. We don't want to intrude." Maddie tried to politely decline but Ella smiled warmly at her.

"Nonsense! by the sounds of it your boys didn't have dinner last night. I simply have to remedy that."

Azure Sonic jumped in before Ella could continue "Thank you for offering, but we really just want to go home."

"How? you're stuck here just like us." Despite Amy sounding mostly cheerful annoyance still made its way into her voice

"Nope! Cause we got Warp Rings!" Azure Sonic reached into his quills and pulled out two small golden rings.

"These rings look quite similar to the ones Cobalt Sonic uses to boost his power." Chuck looked at the ring in curiosity and the little hedgehog handed one over for the professor. He held it up to the light and turned it over in his hands a few times before handing it back. "how do they work?"

"It's really easy. All you gotta do is picture where you want to go, and throw the ring. Like this." Azure Sonic tossed one of the rings behind him and a 'tink' sound followed a few seconds later.

"Huh?" Azure Sonic picked up the and looked at it with a puzzled expression.

He tossed the ring again.

nothing happened.

Azure Sonic's breath quickened slightly. He tossed the other one.

nothing happened.

"They're not working?" Maddie questioned as she picked up the thrown rings.

Tom noticed that his hedgehog son was beginning to panic and crouched down next to him to provide comfort.

"Dad? Do you have any spare rings?" Azure Sonic looked up at his dad and leaned into his side.

"Hold on, let me check." While Tom opened his wallet to check Citrene Tails looked through his backpack.

"Maybe that's not the problem." Maddie peered out the window, and threw a ring.

A golden portal of light opened, revealing the garden outside, an identical one could be seen through the window.

Collective gasps could be heard from everyone who had never seen a warp ring active.

"It's beautiful." Amy reached out in awe towards it.

"They're perfectly safe you can touch it." Citrene Tails had finished looking through his backpack and had zipped it up.

The group unfamiliar with the warp ring all got up and stood close to it. Some circled around it and a few apprehensively stepped through and back.

Cobalt Sonic stepped back and forth multiple times through the ring.

"Say, these things are pretty cool. How many you got?"

The Wachowski family had checked and between them they had five.

A noise got everyone's attention and the large gold ring disappeared, leaving Chuck outside. The man was unbothered and simply climbed through the window.

"Yeah they don't last that long. But anyway, How are we going to get home now? No offence, but i don't want to be stuck here forever."

"Don't worry Sonic, Just because the Warp Rings didn't work doesn't mean we're stuck here forever. We still don't know what sent us here." Citrene Tails tapped his chin thoughtfully and added some notes to his Miles electric.

"For us it was the chaos emeralds." Amber Tails started to run through possibilities in his head.

"Whatever brought us here i am sure there is a way to reverse it. Our tribe is strong, and we will return home." Bixbite Knuckles spoke with confidante and surety, his two younger brothers nodding in agreement.

"Yeah and now that we're all together- OH my god i just remembered Ozzie! If we're stuck here whats going to happen to him?" Azure Sonic gripped the side of his head in a panic.

"Baby relax. He's at clinic remember? he got that bee sting on his foot and we wanted to make sure he stayed off it for a few days."

"oh yeah." Azure Sonic breathed a sigh of relief.

"Our canine companion will be well cared for during our absence."

"Well, if you are stuck here for now, you might as well stay here." Mr Tanaka extended the offer to team Chaotix as well.

"are you sure?

"Of course. this is a mansion. we have plenty of rooms.

"We wouldn't want to intrude."

"Don't worry, we've already been dealing with this lot," Chuck pointed a thumb over his shoulder. "we'll be happy to have you." The Wachowskis looked anxious but accepted the offer. the evening was starting to approach and they didn't really have any other options.

"So you'll be staying for dinner after all then." Ella clasped her hands together and excused herself from the room, Vanilla, Cream, Amy and Mr Tanaka followed her into the kitchen. Team Chaotix attempted to follow but Vanilla stopped Vector and Charmy, claiming that she knew how messy cooks they where. Especially when together. Espio however was allowed into the kitchen. He was supposedly quite skilled with a knife and could make delicate and precise cuts.

"Well, I think that's my cue to leave." Sam swung himself out of his seat and stretched himself out.

"But Uncle Sam, aren't you gonna stay for dinner?" Chris looked up at his uncle and the man responded by apologetically rubbing the back oof his neck.

"Sorry Chris, I gotta get my car back to base. I've already been here for a while. Besides you know me, i prefer a quick meal." Chris looked disappointed that he wasn't staying, but still waved goodbye as the man left.

"Well it sounds like you're settling down for the evening. We'll take our leave to." Scarlet Shook hands with Chuck and thanked him for allowing her to do an interview. She briefly introduced herself to Tom and Maddie before leaving.

With the news crew gone and a few people in the kitchen the room didn't feel as crowded.

Vector grumbled slightly that he wasn't allowed to help cook, he didn't like feeling like a moocher and sitting around like this while others cooked for him didn't feel quite right to him.

The Wachowskis stayed close together on one couch with the three kids sat in between their two parents.

Their counterparts watched this interaction with a mix of emotions. It was so strange to see how close they where.

Bixbite Knuckles tap Maddies arm, call her mother and ask her if they could play a game of 'base of ball' once they returned home. He was quickly joined by his brothers who where just as enthusiastic about the idea.

"I'll have you know i'm quite a fan of baseball." The three boys turned to Chuck with interested looks.

"Now, you've got their interest." Tom smiled hearing that the boys connect with someone in this world over something they loved.

"and we once played against Eggman for two chaos emeralds."

"Did you win?" Citrene Tail's eyes where shining with curiosity.

It was Cobalt Sonic who answered "Almost. But Ol' Egghead cheated. He attacked me with a robot and escaped with his chaos emerald. We never actually finished the game."

"Yeah and who said that it was a bad idea? me. and who saved you from the bot? oh yeah, me again." Copper Knuckles crossed his arms and gave Cobalt Sonic an annoyed look, who simply shrugged it response.

"Yeah, but you gotta admit you where having fun." Cobalt Sonic had a small smirk on face, remembering seeing Knuckles enjoy himself during the game

Copper Knuckles huffed. "Yeah whatever. if it wasn't against Eggman and we weren't risking a chaos emerald it would of been a blast."

The Wachowski children looked between each other and nodded.

"Then we challenge you to a game." Copper Knuckles raised an eyebrow at his smaller counterpart.

"There's less of you. You sure you can beat us?'

"We are a greatly skilled team. I believe we can."

"Grandpa, this sounds like an awesome idea! can we do it?" Chris looked up at his grandpa with a huge grin.

"Hmm, Well we'll have to see if we're able to reserve the diamond stadium for a game. and with a match up this interesting we'll no doubt get it."

"Who-hoo! Wachowski vs Thorndyke. A match up that spans different dimensions!" Copper Knuckles opened his mouth to interrupt Azure Sonic and remind him that he wasn't a Thorndyke but was cut of by the little hedgehogs continued dramatics.

Chuck left the room to make the call and once Azure Sonic settled the conversation eventually drifted to Chris' family.

They were often not around and left Chris under the care of Chuck, Mr Tanaka and Ella most of the time. Vector wanted to meet and talk with his parents. By the sounds of it they loved him, but were very out of touch. Poor kid missed them often.

The Wachowski brother could sympathize with that feeling of loneliness.

During the conversion Copper knuckles was noticeably antsy, he told them that the unusually high levels of chaos energy was messing with his senses.

The other Master Emerald was also messing with him in more way than one.

Firstly, it’s smaller size was something he would have to get used to, and the simple fact that it was here was giving him a headache.

It was the Master Emerald and felt like the Master Emerald but it was wrong. He felt a vague connection to it. But not a full one.

The older Echidna got up and stepped outside. he really needed a break while he got use to the fact that there was a whole another master emerald here that was so different yet so similar to his one.

The kitchen had a gentle warmth to it. even when none of the ovens or stoves were on the room was rarely cold.

Espio enjoyed this warmth, the Chaotix detective agency building wasn't always warm enough for it's reptilian members and they often had to wrap themselves up in warm clothes.

The chameleon concentrated on making careful cuts while the others bustled around kitchen. He held a tomato in one hand and a knife in the other. They needed to be finely diced and Espio was perfectly content doing this, he found the rhythmic motion rather relaxing.

Chop, chop, chop. slide them into the bowl. Chop, chop, chop. grab a new tomato. Chop, chop, chop. slide them into the bowl. Chop, chop chop.

Vanilla Stood by the stove watching two simmering pots of pasta, occasionally stirring them so they wouldn't burn up. she pulled one from a pot and tasted it. She considered it for a moment before adjusting the heat and adding a pinch of salt. She then repeated the action for the other pot.

Ella had a large bowl of ground beef in front of her, she opened a tin of tomato paste and tipped it into a bowl and then use a large wooden spoon to mix it all together.

Amy had been put in charge of creating a mix of herbs and spices to Ella's recipe. She had eaten Ella's spaghetti bolongnese for dinner before and it was very tasty.

Mr Tanaka looked after all other preparations with the help of  Cream and Cheese who where on standby ready to do whatever was needed.

"Cream dear, could you get the tomatoes from Espio once he's done chopping them?"

"Sure Ella" The little Rabbit wait for Espio to chop his last tomato before grabbing the bowl and bringing it over to Ella.

Ella tipped the tomatoes and herb mix into the large bowl and stirred it together with the big wooden spoon. She divided it out into saucepans that Tanaka had already prepared.

A loud sizzle filled the room and a delicious smell wafted through the air.

Agent Stone stepped into the basic, standardized dorm room given to him by G.U.N. it was very plain, but it was a place to stay and Stone was thankful to be able to rest. He would need his mind working at full strength for tomorrows plan.