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Chapter Text

Meet and Greet

Tom knew his life would never be the same after he and his wife took in a super speedy, incredibly powerful, incredibly talkative blue alien hedgehog.

But he didn't expect weird dreams to be added to the mix.

Or at least, he thought it was a dream, he was pretty sure there wasn't any other reason he should suddenly find himself in a blue void.

That was another reason he thought it was a dream. It was blue everywhere. Not a white void, not even an ominous black void, but a blue void. Who ever heard of a void that was a light calming sky blue?

At least he wasn't alone.

"Okay, seriously, where are we?" his wife, Maddie asked next to him.

"I have no idea," said Tom, looking around in confusion. "Pretty sure I'm dreaming… I'm dreaming right?"

"Not unless I'm the one dreaming," said Maddie skeptically.

They had to take a minute to let it sink in that either both of them were dreaming or neither of them was.

"Let's just, uh, try to find a way out of here," Tom said finally.

"Yeah," agreed Maddie, never mind there didn't seem to be anything around them to indicate a way out.

Or maybe the blue void also acted like fog, because they'd only been walking for a minute or two before a table and chairs appeared in front of them.

A table and chairs that had four blue and one purple alien hedgehogs sitting on them.

Yeah, this was definitely a dream.

Especially since while all the hedgehogs resembled him, none of them were Sonic.

One of the hedgehogs looked up as they approached. She (or at least Tom assumed it was a she) wore a purple dress and had longer eyelashes under the streak of blonde bangs, and was looking at them with some suspicion.

"Overlanders?" she questioned, drawing the others at the table's attention to the new arrivals. "Or…" For some reason, she looked at their hands and then concluded, "No, humans. I see. But why…?"

The blue hedgehog next to her, which Tom and Maddie were startled to realize was actually a hedgehog-shaped robot, reached over to take her hand. "Well, if they're here there's only one reason why they could be, Bernie," the robot said.

"Oh, new members," said the other female-looking hedgehog at the table. This one purple in a long white gown and a golden crown set among her long quills.

"Uhh members?" asked Maddie, now very confused.

"Would you mind telling us what is going on, because I'm pretty sure I'm dreaming?" said Tom, also lost.

The last two blue hedgehogs, who were nearly identical with pale blue fur and bushy mustaches and eyebrows, exchanged a glance. "Well, in a sense you are," said the one on the left. "But that doesn't mean this isn't happening."

"Pardon my asking," said the one on the right. "But did you happen to recently come into the guardianship of a young hedgehog named Sonic?"

Tom and Maddie exchange their own glance. Of course. Somehow learning Sonic was involved was the least surprising part of all this.

"Yes, we did," said Maddie. "We just unofficially adopted him a couple days ago."

"Not that he, uh, really sees it that way," said Tom. "As far as he's concerned we're just Donut Lord and Pretzel Lady, his best friends he happens to live with, and not parental material."

That actually seemed to amuse the hedgehogs. "What he says and what he thinks may be two separate things in this case," said the robot hedgehog with a smile (because somehow the robot was able to smile). "You wouldn't be here if he didn't see you as parents."

Well, that was a touching sentiment, even if this was all a very weird dream. Especially strange was it implied Sonic somehow thought this robot was parental material too. And extra especially strange since if he saw all these hedgehogs as parents, where the heck were they when he was alone for so many years?

Seeming to sense their continued confusion, the purple hedgehog gestured daintily towards some of the chairs at the table. "Take a seat and we will explain everything," she said kindly.

Seeing no reason not to, Tom and Maddie sat down.

"What do you know about the multiverse?" asked one of the mustachioed hedgehogs.

"That it made for a very good Spider-Man movie," said Tom slowly.

The hedgehogs looked like they had no idea what that even was.

"It's a sci-fi trope," said Maddie thoughtfully. "Many worlds with versions of the same people in it, but something about each one is different."

"Exactly," said the other hedgehog with a mustache. "Or, in our case, our worlds each have a version of one person in particular."

"Sonic the Hedgehog," said the robot hedgehog fondly.

Tom was starting to pick up what this meant. "Then… all of you are your, uh, version of Sonic's… parents? And we're here because he sees us like that too?"

The hedgehog with blond bangs nodded. "Yup. I'm Bernadette, call me Bernie," she said, then gestured to the robot beside her. "And this is my husband Jules. And no, before you ask, he was not a robot when I married him. That happened… later."

"Nice to meet you," said Jules with a friendly wave of his mechanical hand. He then pointed out the mustachioed hedgehog closest to him. "And this is my brother, Charles, who helped raise our son for years when Bernie and I were… out of commission."

"No, I am not a robot either," said Charles with a sardonic smile. He then coughed into his fist and added, "Anymore."

"What?" asked Maddie, wondering if she'd heard that right.

"I'm also Charles, but from a different world than those three," said Charles's identical twin (or, counterpart, I guess). "But you can just call me Chuck here to differentiate. My Sonic also sees me as an uncle figure."

"And I am Queen Aleena," said the purple hedgehog. "I am from the same world as Chuck, who is the current guardian of my son. It is too dangerous for our family to be together, and he is in hiding with him."

Sensing it was their turn for introductions, Tom said, "Oh, uh, well, I'm Tom. Sheriff Tom Wachowski and this is my wife-"

"Dr. Maddie Wachowski," said Maddie, picking up the introductions. "Um, hi. I work as a vet in Green Hills."

"Pleasure to meet you," said Queen Aleena.

"Welcome to the Parents of Sonic Support Group," said Bernadette with a smirk. "Because with a son like all of ours, it seemed the multiverse felt we needed it."

Maddie and Tom exchanged another glance. Somehow, that also wasn't surprising.

They were pretty sure they'd need it too. They'd only had Sonic for a short time, but for as easy as he was to love he still sure knew how to give them heart attacks.

The Doctor is In

Needless to say, for Tom and Maddie had been more than a little freaked to find out the next morning that, no, that had not been a dream last night. Or at least it had been a shared dream between the two of them and possibly five other alien hedgehogs.

Sonic could not understand why they kept looking at him funny that day too, or why they were giving him more hugs, though he wasn't complaining about that.

It seemed the support group meetings weren't every night, but about a week later the two of them were once again in the blue void sitting with the Chucks, Jules, Bernie, and Aleena.

But now that she knew it was real, this time Maddie was on a mission.

"Okay, I need to ask you all something very important," she said the minute she reached the table.

Jules, who hadn't even sat down yet, gave her a curious look. "Really? What?"

"I need you to tell me anything you can about how to care for hedgehogs like you," Maddie said firmly.

Tom, seeing them all startled at that request, explained, "In our world, Sonic came to us from another planet entirely. Our planet does have hedgehogs, but they're nothing like him or any of you."

"And because of that, I am entirely in the dark about how to care for Sonic not just medically, but culturally or just general basic care, and we've already had a close call with him injured once," said Maddie, her tone making it clear this was a point she would not let stand. "So I am in desperate need of information. What kinds of medicines are safe for him to use? What kinds aren't? Is there a specific kind of brush his quills should use (because he needs one he hasn't dug out of the trash)? What can I do to help him if he's uncomfortable? Is there a specific way hedgehogs like you show affection?"

"Any advice you can give us we'd appreciate," said Tom.

The five hedgehogs exchanged a glance and smiled.

"Well, to answer your questions…" said Charles.

All five of the hedgehogs calmly and patiently answered every question Maddie had about Sonic's care, and even a few Tom had as well.

A few meetings later, Maddie and Tom came in thanking them all profusely for that information, relief palpable in their voices. It seemed their Sonic had caught a cold, and their help had been invaluable for helping him recover quickly.

If the hedgehogs had any doubt Tom and Maddie were committed to caring for their Sonic before, it was gone now.

Those that Remain

"So, I have to ask, if you're both Sonic's mother, shouldn't you two be counterparts too?" Tom asked Bernie and Aleena a couple of meetings later. That question had been bugging him the entire time.

Bernie sighed like she knew this question had been coming too and had answered it before. "No, we're not counterparts. For some reason who a world's Sonic's parents are isn't consistent across dimensions."

"Regardless, our Sonics are still our sons," added Aleena.

Tom let out a disappointed sigh hearing that. "Okay, so then if I were to ever try to track down our Sonic's parents they might not even look like any of you. Good to know."

"Why would you want to track them down, well, aside from the obvious?" asked Chuck.

"To ask what the heck gave them the bright idea to abandon their child on an entirely different planet completely alone with the instructions to stay isolated from everybody for… I don't even know how long, but it's obviously been years," said Maddie. She and Tom had more than a few discussions of what they might say to Sonic's birth parents if they ever showed up to claim him by this point.

That made the hedgehogs look concerned. "Isolated?" asked Jules. "A Sonic should never be isolated. Our son makes friends as easily as breathing."

"And enemies, but that's beside the point," added Charles.

"Mine is a bit brasher," said Chuck. "But he gets along well with the other Freedom Fighters, and he loves attention. I don't think he could last long without at least someone around to listen to him play guitar."

"Music without an audience is simply not as sweet," agreed Aleena.

"He's never mentioned his parents?" asked Jules.

"Well," said Tom, thinking back to that first night he spent with Sonic. "He did mention someone named Longclaw, but when I later asked he referred to her as his Obi-Wan. Not his Aunt Beru, and otherwise didn't want to talk about her."

The hedgehogs around him all audibly gasped.

Startled, Maddie asked, "What's wrong?"

"Longclaw used to be here," explained Charles. "But then… one day she…"

"We saw her one last time," said Jules sadly. "She told us she got her Sonic somewhere safe and then… she was gone."

Tom and Maddie grimaced. That would explain why Sonic was so reluctant to talk about her.

"Thank you," said Bernie, drawing their attention back to the hedgehogs. "After what happened to Longclaw we were so worried about what had happened to her Sonic. It's an incredible relief to know he's still safe."

"He's a trooper," said Tom. "And a great kid. I just wish we had found him sooner."

"You're here now, and sad to say that's more than a lot of Sonic's have," said Chuck seriously as if speaking from experience.

Suddenly Tom and Maddie felt a lot more aware of just how many empty chairs there were around the table. Far more than the seven of them needed.

Maddie gasped. "Did all those-?" she started to ask, pointing at the empty seats.

The others nodded. "It seems Sonics across the multiverse tend to have… bad luck with parents," said Queen Aleena. "Some event will happen to cause them to lose whatever guardians they have at a young age, and their free spirit often keeps them from accepting any others in that role."

"Even we've not always been there for our Sonic as we should have," said Bernie sadly.

"My robotization, the event that turned me into this wasn't just done to me, Bernie and then later Charles were victims of it at one point as well," explained Jules. "An enemy of ours roboticized almost the entire population of our kingdom, turning its people into his mechanical slaves."

"And while the process was eventually reversed on Bernie and myself," said Charles, "unfortunately, my brother was injured before his robotization and would not survive returning to his former self."

Jules shrugged. "I have my mind back and I'm with my family. That's enough for me."

"But while they were enslaved, they did not appear here in this place," said Aleena. "The other parents here and I feared the worst when Charles stopped appearing as well." She then bowed her head sadly. "I myself fear I am only here due to a lingering affection my son still holds for me, as I have not seen him in years. It is too dangerous for us to be together yet, but I am forever grateful for Chuck caring for him in my place.

"I'm not the first guardian to look after my Sonic," said Chuck sadly. "He was left with a set of foster parents, good hard-working people, and friends of mine. Unfortunately, somehow it was found out one of the hidden princes was in their care and they were arrested when Sonny-Boy was still small. He's been with me ever since."

Tom and Maddie shared a concerned look. For all the chairs here, there were only representatives for three worlds that still had parents looking after their Sonic. How many others out there had no one?

Then something occurred to Tom. "Wait," he said, looking over at Chuck. "Did you say princes? As in more than one?"

Chuck and Aleena looked at him in amusement. "Oh, have I not mentioned?" asked Aleena. "It's a rarity, but my Sonic is a triplet."

"WHAT?"

What's Cooking

It was amusing to find out Sonic's love of chili dogs was nigh universal.

As such, both Chuck and Charles often spent the meetings comparing recipes.

"Zucchini?" asked Charles, looking bewildered. "You put zucchini in your chili?"

"Freedom Fighter rations were a bit sparse this time around, and I added it to give the chili more texture," said Chuck with a shrug. "It was actually quite good. You can't taste the zucchini's flavor with the chili's spices and it gives the whole thing some nice chunks. Just… don't tell Sonic what those chunks are."

Charles didn't look convinced, but said, "I'll keep that in mind," he said, before turning to Aleena. "How did your recent attempt at making chili work out, your majesty?"

Aleena looked like she'd rather talk about literally anything else. "It… had its uses," she said quietly.

Jules looked surprised to hear that. "It was edible?" he asked, prompting Bernie to elbow him in the side (and immediately regret it as it hurt her more than it hurt him).

Aleena for once didn't look very queenly as she sunk down into her seat so only her crown could be seen over the table. "It… melted the SWATbots that came after me."

Tom and Jules tried to hide their snickers, Maddie and Bernie looked disapproving at them but they were smiling too, and the Chucks both whistled in unison.

"I'd almost ask what it was you did to make a new weapon out of it," said Chuck.

Aleena just glared at him from over the edge of the table, before clearing her throat and sitting back up in her chair. "Tom, Maddie, do you have any recipes to share," she said, hoping to get the attention off her.

The human couple looked startled to be put on the spot. "Uh, well, we don't really have anything to add to the chili discussion," said Maddie. "But my husband can do a mean barbeque."

Tom grinned at her endorsement, "It's a summer staple where we live."

"Well, don't keep us in suspense," said Bernie. "Do tell."

Tom scooched his chair closer as he began, "Well, first thing you need to do is plan out what you're putting on your grill and where…"

The Eternal Enemy

"You were a soldier?" asked Tom in surprise.

Bernie smiled sweetly back at him. "Indeed I was," she said. "As were Jules and Charles. We all fought in a war together."

"Whoa," said Tom. "I see where Sonic gets his courage then. That's one of the bravest jobs you can take."

Bernadette laughed long and loud hearing that.

Tom looked at her strangely.

"I'm sorry," she said, wiping a tear away. "I just, I know you're not an overlander, but it is so ironic to have even a human say something like that."

Tom just continued to look confused.

"The war I was a soldier in was against the overlanders," she explained. "They're quite similar to humans, but with four fingers instead of five."

Tom cleared his throat awkwardly hearing that. "Ah, okay…" He then frowned. "Wait, there are humans, er, overlanders on your planet? Our Sonic implied there was nothing like us on his original world."

"We have both," said Bernie. "It's a rather long story."

"Ah," said Tom. His frown then deepened and then decided to address the elephant in the room that he and seemingly everyone else had been avoiding. "So, among those humans and overlanders have you ever met a man named Robotnik?"

Immediately, all other talk ceased at the table.

Bernie had a dark look on her face before she took a deep breath in and let it out. "When you said your Sonic had moved planets to be safe, I was honestly hoping that meant he would never meet that horrible man."

That was definitely a yes, not just for Bernie's world, but likely Aleena and Chuck's as well judging from their expressions.

"It's… how we met," explained Tom. "Longclaw told you about my Sonic's blue lightning powers, right? Well, he lost control of his powers one night and caused a blackout. That got the government's attention, and the government sent Robotnik. Sonic and I met when he was trying to hide from him."

"He chased Sonic and Tom across the country trying to get him, and who knows where else once Sonic started using his rings to portal to places," said Maddie. "Eventually, Sonic managed to knock him into a portal to another planet and strand him there."

Bernie nodded, her face grim. "Remember how we said Jules, Charles, and I had been turned into robotic slaves?" she asked. "It was Robotnik who did it. It took years to oust him from power in the Acorn Kingdom. We missed our Sonic's entire childhood only to come back to ourselves to hear our son was the hero that saved us."

"Even now, he remains a problem," said Jules. "There isn't a week that goes by that our world's Freedom Fighters don't have to save at least someone from his robots and his army."

"He is the reason I have to distance myself from my children," said Aleena bitterly. "At this very moment, he sits upon my ancestral throne and rules my kingdom, while my children remain in hiding from him."

"As well as the one who had Sonny-Boy's first foster parents arrested trying to get him," added Chuck.

Charles turned to the now horrified Tom and Maddie. "You said you stranded him on the other side of a portal?"

"Y-Yeah," said Tom. "It was a planet Sonic had as a backup plan if he was discovered on Earth. A livable but empty planet covered in mushrooms. He never wanted to go there because he'd be even more alone."

Charles nodded thoughtfully. "Well, then with a lack of technology, you may have a good while before he comes back. Enjoy it while you can."

Tom and Maddie's hearts sank even more. "Comes back?" Maddie croaked out.

Aleena, Chuck, Charles, Jules, and Bernie all looked at them with dead serious expressions.

"Yes," said Jules grimly. "He'll come back sooner or later. He always does."

"In our world, not even death stopped him for long," said Charles.

"There are many constants for Sonic in the multiverse," said Aleena. "And one of them is that that man, be he called Robotnik or Eggman, will always be Sonic's worst and most persistent enemy. You have won the battle, but the war will continue."

Maddie clapped a hand over her mouth, trying to keep her emotions contained. To hear the son she had come to love would likely be subjected to hardship over and over again was heartbreaking. Bernie and Aleena quickly left their own chairs to go comfort her.

Tom's fists were shaking as he had them clenched around the arms of his chair. "I should have punched him harder, that sonova-" he said hissed furiously.

Jules looked at him, impressed. "You punched him?" he asked.

Tom nodded curtly. "Three times. Headbutted him too."

Jules nodded in respect. "Good man. Can't wait to get the chance myself."

Tom glanced down at Jules's metal hands and thought about how much they could hurt. "Give him hell," he said

Jules grinned viciously and his electric red eyes gleamed. "Oh, I intend to."

How to Fry an Egg

Now that the egg was out of the bag. One of the most cathartic activities the support group could take part in was coming up with new and creative ways on how they would handle their Eggman if given the chance.

"I have to say, you may have inadvertently come up with one of the best punishments for him," said Chuck to Tom and Maddie.

Charles nodded in agreement. "Cut off from technology, surrounded by nature, indeed it must be torture for him." He then sighed wistfully. "My ideal revenge is to get ahold of all his machines and give them a more productive purpose, and force him to watch as they dismantle his empire around him," he said. "The man stole my inventions to further his crusade. Turnabout is a fair play."

"Sounds nice, but I'll stick to punching him again if I ever see him," said Tom.

"You got to last time. It's my turn," said Maddie in a half-joking tone, while also meaning every word of it.

"We'll both punch him," Tom promised her.

"Aw," said Bernie, before glancing at Jules teasingly. "Why don't you ever promise me sweet things like that?"

"Because I know you wouldn't be content with just punching him," said Jules, reaching over to take her hand. "Between the two of us, he won't have any intact bones."

"You know me so well," said Bernie with a sweetness in her voice that promised pain to whoever crossed her.

"I can't think of a single Freedom Fighter that hasn't fantasized about breaking a few bones of his," said Chuck. "Why, I even have a hammer set aside for just that purpose should I be given the chance. Or maybe I'll borrow Sonic's guitar for it. I'm sure he'd see it as a noble sacrifice and the irony would be too good to pass up."

Aleena smiled with the same sweetness as Bernie. "And I have so many dungeons to choose from after you're done," she said. "It's so hard to choose which one to throw him in and leave him to rot. But whichever one I pick will have music playing constantly."

"Music?" asked Charles.

"He hates music," explained Chuck. "Even made it illegal. Subjecting him to what he hates the most would work out nicely."

"Well, Earth has some pretty annoying songs if you ever need some new material," offered Tom.

"Excellent idea," said Chuck. "No point in wasting good music on someone like him."

More ideas poured in about what they'd do to Eggman if given the chance.

It was always very cathartic.

A Spoonful of Sugar

One day at a meeting, there was a new face. Or, at least, she was new to Tom and Maddie.

Tom and Maddie took their usual seats and cast curious glances at the prim-looking rabbit that was now sitting between Charles and Aleena.

The rabbit looked back curiously. "Oh, hello," she said politely. "I've not seen you before. I am Vanilla the Rabbit. A pleasure to meet you."

"Maddie and Tom Wachowski, nice to meet you too," said Maddie.

"They took in Longclaw's Sonic," explained Charles, who did not seem surprised to see Vanilla at all.

"Oh, thank goodness," said Vanilla, looking relieved to hear that.

"So, which Sonic is it you have again?" asked Bernie.

"And what did Sonny-Boy do this time?" asked Chuck.

Seeing the confusion still on Tom and Maddie's faces, Jules had mercy on them and explained, "We've met a few versions of Vanilla. She's the mother of a friend a lot of Sonics have. However, those Sonics only see her as a mother figure for himself when under her care, usually because he is either sick or injured."

"And I am always honored when he sees me that way, though I do regret the circumstances," said Vanilla. "As for your questions, I have the Sonic who went to space and fought the Metarex. And as for what he did…" the rabbit sighed and shook her head. "Broken leg, I'm afraid. He landed on it wrong while catching Amy in midair after defeating Eggman. She's blaming herself, the poor dear."

Tom winced. "Ouch, with how hyper all Sonics seem to be, having one lain up with a broken leg has to be torture to him."

"Oh, I'm afraid it is," said Vanilla. "He needs to be watched near constantly to keep him from trying to run away and make it worse." She then smiled. "Thankfully, Amy has been quite diligent in making sure that doesn't happen. I've not seen her leave his side."

"Amy?" asked Maddie.

"Amy Rose," explained Bernie. "She's in quite a few worlds, and always has quite the crush on Sonic."

"Aww," said Maddie, thinking that sounded sweet.

"Let us know if you get any tips on how to handle Sonic when he's unable to run," said Chuck, turning back to Vanilla. "I'm afraid it's something we all could use more help with."

"I will do my best," Vanilla said.

Vanilla continued to appear for a few more meetings but eventually, she didn't appear at all.

"That's good," Chuck assured the Wachowskis. "It means her Sonic has recovered and is on the move."

"We'll likely see her again once flu season rolls around," said Bernie. "Her and the other Vanillas, because that boy never remembers to get his shot."

"Then I'll be sure mine gets his," said Maddie.

Sure enough when flu season hit there were no less than four different Vanillas at their meetings.

A Wrench in the Works

Despite the fact that all the hedgehogs have been coming to the support group meetings for years, it seemed there were still new things to learn about those meetings.

Once such thing was Charles arriving with an indent of a wrench on his face and the cause of said indent in his hand.

"I must have fallen asleep in my workshop, and for some reason used this as a pillow," he said, looking at the wrench in bewilderment.

"You were using it as a pillow, and now somehow it's here?" asked Chuck.

"That's my best guess," said Charles, still looking baffled.

Jules looked thoughtful, before reaching into his metal quills and pulling out a set of keys. "Well, I also have my keys here too. I didn't think to take them out before I went into sleep mode."

"So, what? We can bring things here if we sleep with them under our heads?" asked Maddie.

"Well, aside from pillows, at least," said Bernie.

They all pondered this development before something occurred to Aleena. "Do you realize what this means?" she asked, clasping her hands together in excitement.

The other parents looked at her before it also dawned on all of them.

The next meeting was going to be great.

A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words

The next meeting everyone came armed to the teeth…

… with photographs.

"Huh," said Maddie as she looked over the vast selection of photos they'd all brought with them. "Despite the whole 'other dimension' thing, I didn't expect your Sonics to look so different."

Tom nodded in agreement. While all three groups had brought photos of a blue hedgehog with quills spiked the same way, when compared side by side their differences were clear.

Bernie, Jules, and Charles's Sonic looked a good bit like their own, but also sleeker and possibly taller or that could just be the confidence he exuded in every frame, not helped by how he seemed to always know when the camera was pointing at him to strike a cool pose.

Aleena and Chuck's Sonic was more on the round side than the other two, his quills were shorter as well, and in every photograph, he also had a guitar-shaped medallion around his neck, and more often than not had an actual guitar in his hands too.

By comparison, Tom and Maddie's Sonic appeared to be the fluffiest and possibly the shortest of the bunch, and his eyes also were the farthest apart on his face (which was a good thing, in Tom's private opinion, the other two had eyes so close together they looked like one big cyclops eye), and unlike the other two, his arms were blue rather than peach.

"Ah well, different dimensions," said Chuck with a shrug. "Can't expect everything to be the same in them. Otherwise, they wouldn't be called 'alternate'."

"Our Sonic used to look like yours as well when he was much younger," said Charles to Chuck. "Give him a few more years and we'll see if he looks more like the other two."

"Ah, puberty," said Chuck jokingly. "Something to look forward to."

They all had a variety of photos to view. Charles had several of his Sonic growing up in a place called Knothole, while Bernie had more recent ones, mostly of him spending time with his friends, and Jules had more candid shots of his son just around the house or around town. Tom and Maddie didn't have as many as the others, but they still had quite a few of Sonic around Green Hills enjoying being seen by people. Chuck had some of his Sonic growing up, and even more of Sonic having the time of his life while jamming out on his guitar. But it was Aleena who had the jackpot. Aleena had baby pictures!

"Oh~ They're so cute!" Maddie squealed as she and Bernie looked at a photo of three baby hedgehogs in onesies, with the blue one cuddled between a pink and green one sleepily.

"They're still so cute," said Aleena, looking at a family picture of herself with the triplets fondly.

Bernie let out a wistful sigh. "Oh, I wish I still had my son's baby pictures. Charles wasn't able to grab them before fleeing to Knothole, and they didn't survive Eggman's occupation.

"Knowing Eggman, if he ever found them he'd use them as target practice," added Jules dryly.

"He would," agreed Charles.

Tom, however, was looking through the pictures of the other two Sonics. "I see what you meant about your Sonic having a lot of friends," he said to Jules.

Almost every picture of Jules's Sonic had at least one other Mobian in it with him. Usually a small two-tailed fox, but sometimes there'd also be a chipmunk with red hair, a rabbit with mechanical limbs, a coyote in a uniform, a walrus in a baseball hat, or a pink hedgehog in a red dress to name a few.

"Like I said, he makes friends as easy as breathing," said Jules fondly. "He's got so much charisma you either love him or hate him immediately, though thankfully the former is more common.

"A social butterfly, huh," said Tom, thoughtfully. It would be great if his own Sonic could have friends. While the town accepted Sonic, and there were even a few kids he liked to hang out with, he'd yet to make any friends as close as these ones seemed to be.

Jules, however, was looking through Tom's photos when he noticed something interesting.

With the exception of the baby pictures, all the others' pictures of Sonic had him posing atop robots he'd bested, making faces at the camera, spending time with friends, doing things with the resistance, and such like that.

By comparison, Tom and Maddie's photos were all surprisingly mundane. Sonic playing baseball, Sonic curled up on the couch to watch a movie, playing fetch with an unevolved dog, learning how to fish from Tom, trying (and failing) to learn yoga from Maddie. All regular things, yet their Sonic was smiling like the sun in each one.

It was honestly a beautiful sight.

"You're doing great with him," Jules remarked as he studied a picture of Sonic being lifted onto the shoulders of a baseball team in victory.

"You think so?" asked Tom.

Jules nodded and showed Tom the baseball photo next to one of Jules's own son posing atop a downed robot. Both looked triumphant, but for very different reasons.

"Your son is getting the chance to actually be a kid," Jules said. "Mine has been the hero for so long, I know he couldn't turn that instinct off for a second, nor do I think he would ever want to. He loves his life, and I'm happy that he does, but I do wish he'd gotten the chance to learn to enjoy the normal parts too."

Tom sighed. "To be honest, my Sonic already has that instinct. Every other morning I wake up to see something in the newspaper telling me he snuck out to try and be Batman again."

"Batman?" asked Jules, looking confused.

"Comic book superhero," Tom explained. He grimaced and added. "Though Sonic's not very good at it yet, and while he does save people and stop the criminals he also causes a lot more destruction."

Jules chuckled, "I guess that's just a normal part of being Sonic."

Their discussion was then interrupted by an excited shriek.

"Tom! Tom, come over here! Aleena has a picture of Sonic's first steps," said Maddie, waving her husband back over.

"Jules, get over here, I swear it's the same as ours," added Bernie, encouraging her husband to join too.

Tom and Jules shared an amused glance and went to look.

It was just as cute as they thought it would be.

And Then There Were Six

When they arrived at the meeting the next time, it was in light spirits and wondering if anyone had brought more pictures to share.

But the cheerful atmosphere quickly dissipated when they caught sight of the queen's face.

Aleena looked devastated! Her crown was missing, her quills were entirely in disarray, and she was dressed in a muddy green travel cloak instead of her usual white gown.

"What happened?" asked Maddie immediately as she and Bernie rushed to the queen's side to comfort her.

Aleena's hands were pressed against her mouth and she shook her head silently, tears already streaming down her face. "Ch-Chuck," was all she managed to say.

It was at that moment the rest of them realized that one of them was missing. There was only one mustachioed hedgehog in their midst. Chuck wasn't there.

"He was roboticized," Aleena sobbed into her hands. "And not just him. Lady Windermere and Ferrell. Sonia and Manic's guardians. They were arrested too!"

The others exchanged horrified looks.

"Aleena, your children, what happened to Sonic and the others?" asked Charles urgently.

Aleena sniffled and wiped her eyes. "They found each other. They escaped," she said, which soothed the others somewhat.

Aleena let out a sound like a half-sob half-laugh, "They know who I am now," she said. "They know who they are and what their destiny is. But even if they have each other they're all so alone." That part seemed to hurt her most of all.

"Then why don't you go to them?" asked Bernie, like the answer should be as obvious to her as it was to the rest of them. "Go find them! Be there for them!"

Aleena's face fell even more. "I can't!" she exclaimed. "It's not yet time. I long for my children, but I have to wait. If I act too soon, it will seal their fate. So long as we are separate they are safer than they would be with me."

The other parents exchanged glances.

"They might be willing to take that risk," said Tom quietly.

"But I am not willing to risk them!" said Aleena firmly through her tears. "I would never be able to forgive myself if I were to be the reason they-" she broke off and looked away.

Needless to say, the rest of the meeting was spent comforting Aleena and brainstorming ways to help her kids.

All while the empty chairs around them seemed to grow a lot more ominous.

Kids These Days

After several meetings of trying to convince her otherwise, Aleena would not budge on her decision, too fearful that going to her children too soon would end in disaster.

Even so, she did concede to watch them from a distance, so long as they didn't interact. Something that proved to be a good thing.

"Robotnik seriously claimed he was about to marry you, and then tried to forcefully adopt your daughter, all to make his claim to the throne more legitimate?" asked Jules incredulously.

"He did, and I will have his head for it," said Aleena, looking furious at the idea. She then smirked, "Though the look on his face when I appeared on the balcony will have to suffice for now. I've never seen the man look so pale."

The others snickered, imagining it.

"But enough about my children, what of yours?" asked Aleena. "What adventures have they been up to?"

"Well, for us, the interdimensional kind," said Bernie with a bemused sigh.

"What, like we can expect him to come by for dinner?" asked Tom.

"If only, but no," said Charles. "It involved another alternate world called Moebius with an evil version of Sonic calling himself Scourge. He took over Freedom Fighter HQ, and Sonic had to lure him back to his own world to defeat him."

Jules huffed. "I met the kid once. He was a cowardly punk that tried to attack our son in his sleep. Fortunately, I wasn't in sleep mode that night and warned him off."

"He came to my universe briefly before and attempted to help Robotnik, and was swiftly betrayed," said Aleena.

"Fortunately, after this last adventure it seems our son managed to get him locked into interdimensional jail, so you likely don't have to worry about a visit from him any time soon," said Bernie.

Maddie frowned. "Wait, if he's a Sonic, even an evil one, we're not going to see his parents here any time soon, are we?"

But Jules shook his head. "No, when he came to my house he told me that his version of Jules, at least, is no longer alive." He then grimaced and added, "And he… was fairly put off continuing his attack when I told him Sonic would miss me if I were gone. In fact, I'm almost certain he was crying."

Charles grimaced. "Well, ever since we even heard about there being an 'Anti-Sonic' I had to wonder if his parents' counterparts ever were here, and if we had met them."

Jules hummed thoughtfully. "Well, thinking of how Scourge described him, it might have been that one version of me who none of us liked. Remember, the one who was always bragging about how peaceful his world was compared to ours that were embroiled in war at the time."

Bernie snapped her fingers. "I remember him. He was never interested in talking about his own son or any of ours, and instead kept trying to give us pretentious advice on how to make our worlds more like his."

"If that was him, and seeing how Moebius is now, it seems that did not work out for him," said Charles. "To say nothing about the state of his son."

"I know you said this kid's in jail, but how likely is it he'll still show up eventually?" asked Tom.

"Well, despite his best efforts, Scourge is still a Sonic. And nothing can keep a Sonic down for long," said Charles with a sigh.

"Just keep an eye out for a hedgehog that looks like my son but green and with scars across his chest," said Jules. "He's usually wearing a leather jacket as well."

"I find it ironic his attempts to look different from one of my sons resulted in him looking more like my other one," said Aleena dryly.

"We'll keep an eye out," Maddie promised.

"Speaking of keeping an eye out," said Bernie. "What's your boy been up to?"

Tom sighed. "He's up to something right now. I went up to his room before bed to give him some comic books, and instead found a dummy he set up to look like him, complete with an audio recording warning me away by threat of chili dog farts."

The other hedgehogs and Maddie chuckled in amusement.

"Guess we'll have to see what he was up to in the morning," Maddie said.

Soon after that, the meeting came to an end.

And so it Grows

The next meeting had Tom and Maddie arriving, grinning ear to ear.

Wondering what had happened to cause that, Jules said, "Well, it seems you two have news."

"Sure do," said Tom cheerfully. "For one thing, Sonic finally started calling me Dad."

"He's been on cloud nine about that ever since," said Maddie fondly.

"Don't lie, you nearly started crying the first time he called you Mom," said Tom.

"That's wonderful to hear," said Bernie, and the other hedgehogs all voiced their agreement.

"But that's not our only news," said Tom with a mischievous smile and holding up a new photo. "It looks like Aleena's not going to be the only one with three kids here."

"But first," said Maddie, her face turning serious. "I need you all to please tell me everything you can for the care, culture, and general health of both Mobian foxes and echidnas."

That announcement had several jaws dropping in shock, and they stared at the picture. In it, at an ice cream parlor and smiling happily was the Wachowskis' Sonic sitting next to a small and very fluffy fox with two tails, and a fuzzy young echidna with a crescent mark on his chest.

"Oh my," said Charles, a wide smile splitting his face. "He found Tails."

"And Knuckles it would seem," said Aleena fondly. "Oh, how wonderful."

"Wonderful, yes, but boy are those three going to be a handful," said Bernie in amusement.

"We can handle it," said Tom.

"But we'd appreciate any help you can give us," said Maddie.

The four hedgehogs smiled back at them, and Jules said, "It would be our pleasure."

Chapter Text

Newbie

Dr. Ivo 'Eggman' Robotnik blinked.

Then he blinked again, looking at his surroundings, utterly flummoxed.

How… did he get here?

Last he remembered he was going to bed. And yet, here he was in his pajamas, standing in a blue void.

Eggman frowned and put his hands on his hips. If this were the result of someone kidnapping him and he needed Sonic to rescue him, he would never hear the end of it.

With nothing better to do, Dr. Eggman started moving forward.

Only to trip over a chair after two steps.

Eggman rolled over on the floor to glare at the chair, and kicked it for tripping him. It clattered into several other chairs and a table.

"Uh, guys, is there a Vanilla here, or did we get a new member?" asked a voice from the other side of the table.

"Is someone there?" asked another voice.

So Eggman wasn't the only one trapped in this empty void. Eager to get some answers, he climbed back to his feet.

The occupants at the table all gaped in shock at the sight of him, then-

"DR. EGGMAN/ROBOTNIK!" several people all shouted at once, making Eggman clap his hands over his ears.

"That's my name, don't wear it out," Dr. Eggman said, digging his pinky into one of his ears to massage away the pain from the noise, and started to focus more on who was speaking. "Now, who the heck are you? What is this place?"

The other people (a pair of humans and several hedgehogs) exchanged a glance and seemed to come to a silent agreement before the human man turned to the only robotic hedgehog of the bunch. "I'd do it, but I think I remember you called dibs, Jules," he said, gesturing at Eggman like the robot had just won a prize.

The robotic hedgehog smirked (note to self, find out how he's doing facial expressions like that and install it to Metal Sonic), before launching himself into the air with his fist raised.

Realizing what was about to happen, the doctor raised his hands in surrender. "Wait! Wait! Wai-!" was all Dr. Eggman was able to say before a solid metal fist embedded itself into his face, and the world went black.

When Dr. Eggman woke up again, he was surrounded by blueish hedgehogs.

"I've had nightmares like this," he muttered.

"Unfortunately, you're not dreaming," said a blue hedgehog with a rather impressive mustache (though it didn't hold a candle to the doctor's, also it wasn't brown, so he hadn't been eating any evil cookies).

"In that case, where am I?" Dr Eggman demanded. "What's going on? And why is that man not wearing a shirt?"

The human man from before was indeed now standing shirtless with his arms crossed next to a human woman. "Well, we had to tie you up with something," he said defensively.

Hearing that, Dr. Eggman strained his hands and found they were indeed tied behind his back with what felt like flannel sleeves.

"Now, we ask the questions here," snapped the hedgehog woman who looked the most like Sonic of the group. If Sonic had blonde bangs and wore a dress, that is. Honestly, more power to him if he did, it'd be an improvement over the ratty neckerchief and sports tape he always wore. "How did you get here, Robotnik? What did you do?"

"Hey, easy on using the Robotnik name, I've been dodging taxes for years, and I'm not about to have you bring the IRS down on my head," Dr. Eggman protested.

The blue hedgehog woman's eye twitched. "What. Are. You. Doing. Here?" she ground out through gritted teeth.

Eggman shrugged as best he could with his arms tied behind his back. "To heck if I know. Last I remember, I was just going to bed."

"And what was the last evil scheme you concocted?" asked a very regal-looking purple hedgehog, and not just because she wore a crown.

"I wouldn't really call it 'evil'. Evil implies it wasn't a typical Tuesday," Eggman protested.

"Then what did you do?" asked the hedgehog with a mustache.

"And I suggest you answer truthfully," said the robotic one beside him, cracking his metallic knuckles to make it clear he was perfectly willing to punch Eggman again.

"Oh, fine yesterday, I tricked Sonic into thinking his running would make an awful noise, so that he would come to me for help and wear a pair of shoes I made that stored the energy produced from his speed to power my robot, using his own strength against him" said Eggman, proud of his own genius. His face then fell. "Of course, then he used that against me by producing so much energy that the robot was destroyed. It was all very disturbing."

"Because he produced enough energy to cause a blackout?" asked the human man, knowingly.

Eggman gave him a strange look. "Caused a blackout? No, his speed doesn't do that. I meant how he referred to himself in the third person afterwards. It was very creepy. His friends all agreed. We had an intervention and everything to keep him from doing it again. I brought the cupcakes."

His captors all exchanged bewildered looks at that story.

"Is that what you wanted, or did you want today's scheme instead?" asked Eggman.

"Does it have anything to do with how you got here?" asked the hedgehog in a crown.

"Hmmm, not likely," Eggman admitted. "I'm going to attack him with my Cowbot."

There was a beat as that name sank in.

"Cowbot?" asked the mechanical hedgehog dubiously.

"Is cow an acronym for something?" asked the one with a mustache.

"No, it just looks like a big cow," said Eggman, excited to see his plans come to fruition in the morning. "I have a good feeling about it. I even took apart some of my fortress's defense systems to make it. That's how sure I am it will work."

His captors seemed even more flummoxed at that.

"Are we sure he's Robotnik?" the human woman asked.

"I said, stop calling me by that! I refuse to pay taxes!" said Eggman.

The people ignored him and shuffled away so they could have a discussion without him hearing it.

None of them seemed happy he was there, which was just typical, but none of them were telling him where the exit was or why he was there either.

Finally, the six of them seemed to come to an agreement and came back to face him.

The hedgehog woman with the crown moved to stand at the head of them, her regal expression making it clear she was looking down on him.

"Well then, Dr. Robotnik-" she started to say.

"Eggman!" Dr. Eggman interrupted.

"- it seems we must now include you," she finished reluctantly.

"Include me in what?" Eggman demanded, getting frustrated. "Where am I? What is this place?"

"Welcome to the Parents of Sonic Support Group, Julian, where we meet to talk about our beloved son," said the robotic hedgehog, with enough sass that if he wasn't metal, Eggman would have sworn it was Sonic himself standing there.

Dr. Eggman could only stare at them for a long moment when he heard that.

"You're joking, right?" he asked. "And who's Julian?"

The hedgehogs all exchanged a glance, but the human man said, "In some universes, that's your first name… Ivo?" He finished the sentence as a question, like he wasn't sure that was true either.

"SSSSSSHHHH! How many times do I have to tell you the IRS is everywhere!" Eggman insisted, which pretty much answered that. He then shook his head and muttered, "Great, and now I sound like that crazy badger."

"And what do you mean, Parents of Sonic?" he said, focusing back on his captors. "That kid doesn't have parents. I would know."

"Maybe not in your universe," said the hedgehog with a crown. "But this support group reaches beyond that."

"The fact that you're here implies otherwise," added the human woman, even if she looked like she didn't believe it.

"BA-HA-HA-HA-HA!" Eggman burst out laughing at what she was saying, but that trailed off when he saw no one else was laughing with him. "Wait, you're serious?" he asked in bewilderment. "I'm not Sonic's parent! I mean, sure, I feed the ungrateful brat whenever I catch him, but it takes more than that to be a parent. Heck, I go to him for help far more often than he comes to me."

"He goes to you for help?" asked the mustached hedgehog, bewildered.

"Are the two of you even enemies?" asked the hedgehog woman with blonde bangs.

"We are mortal enemies, at each other's throats at every turn!" Dr. Eggman claimed dramatically.

But his grand declaration was immediately ruined when he hesitated and added, "Well, aside from the time I auditioned to be his sidekick... and the time he let me crash on his couch… and stopped my obliterator bot from destroying my fortress… and again when that evil virus took over my fortress… and the whole thing with the Buddy-Buddy Temple… and he did give me a cookie to let me be myself instead of staying his heroic clone… and when my unpaid intern went crazy multiple times… and he did help me when I had that gorilla problem… and I did save him and his friends from Lyric…" He paused as he realized how long the list was growing.

"Okay, fine, so maybe we fall more under the banner of 'frenemies' than complete mortal enemies (honestly, Shadow would probably call dibs on that role), but there is a vast difference between that and a bond that can be anyway defined as 'parental'," Eggman blustered, trying to save face.

His captors' hostility had diminished into confusion the longer he rambled on, and by the end, they were giving each other bewildered looks.

"So, what, is he a good Robotnik?" asked the human man.

"I said ix-nay on the obotnik-Ray ame-nay," said Dr. Eggman in pig Latin.

"And besides, there's already a good Robotnik, his name is Dr. Kintobor on the planet Moebius," said the robotic hedgehog.

"That world Scourge is from?" asked the human woman. "Yeah, that tracks."

Eggman didn't know who Scourge was or why he was significant, but anyone who willingly had a name like that was probably bad news and most likely attempting to be even edgier than Shadow. (But it was only an attempt, of course, no one could out-edgy Shadow, and anyone with a name like that was definitely trying too hard.)

"He may be the definitive 'good Robotnik, ' but the multiverse is vast," said the hedgehog with a mustache. "Who's to say there isn't another?"

"Although, from his protests and examples, I would argue it's not that he is good-" said the hedgehog woman in the crown.

"Finally, someone sees sense," said Eggman in relief.

"-But rather it is simply that he seems to be not very good at being evil," the crowned hedgehog finished.

"Hey!" squawked Eggman, thoroughly insulted. "I am exceptionally evil, thank you very much. I have a degree and everything! And I very much NOT in any way a parent to Sonic."

"Again, the fact you're here says otherwise. You only come here when your version of Sonic sees you that way," said the human woman.

"That's preposterous," insisted Dr. Eggman. "I demand to be shown the exit right now!"

"Yeah, good luck with that, we've never found one," said the human man.

"Have you even looked since you're all SO happy to be here and trade notes on that annoying blue rat?" Eggman asked.

The others frowned at his insult, but didn't deny his question.

"Great, then just let me go, and I'll find the exit for you," Eggman said, perking up at the idea.

"As if we'd just let you wander around," said the hedgehog woman with blonde bangs.

"What, are you just going to leave me here forever?" asked Dr. Eggman incredulously.

The humans and hedgehogs all exchanged smirks at the idea, and did just that, forcing him to endure what felt like several torturous hours of them discussing their sons and how much they loved them.

Gross.

Unable to get free, Eggman was reduced to clicking his heels and muttering "There's no place like home" under his breath when suddenly-

He woke up!

Dr. Eggman jolted awake, safe and sound, back in his bed.

For a moment, he sighed in relief that the whole thing was just a nightmare. Sonic didn't see him as a parental figure, and he hadn't just spent who knows how much time in a blue void surrounded by his angry parents.

But then he tried to get up, and to his horror, he found that his arms were still tied behind him. He twisted around, hoping desperately that his arms were just tangled in his sheets.

… They weren't. Instead, his arms were constrained in a knot made from a flannel shirt.

Dr. Eggman froze when he saw that, and it sank in for him that it wasn't a dream.

Then he had to shout for Orbot and Cubot to come and untie him.

"I did not realize you wore flannel, Doctor," said Orbot as he worked on the knots.

"Are you planning to lose weight?" asked Cubot, noting that the shirt was much too small to fit their creator.

"Shut up," Dr. Eggman grumbled.

(Meanwhile, in a different world, Tom Wachowski lamented the loss of one of his favorite shirts.)

Scrambling

Despite the clear evidence from the flannel shirt, Eggman still managed to somewhat convince himself that the whole event had been a dream and put it out of his mind.

Sonic didn't see him as a parental figure. There was just no way. They were bitter enemies to the core. That dream was just the result of him eating three-day-old Chinese food before bed.

This was a conclusion Eggman would have happily come to… if not for the fact that a week later, he once again found himself in the blue void.

"Oh, come on!" he shouted as he saw the parents sitting around the table again.

At least this time, he wasn't in pajamas. He fell asleep working on his evil projects.

"This is going to become a thing, isn't it?" said the human man.

"Looks like it," agreed the hedgehog with blonde bangs.

"Nope! It will most certainly not become a thing! I refuse!" Dr. Eggman insisted.

He then turned on his heel and stomped away.

"Where are you going?" asked the robotic hedgehog.

"I'm leaving!" Dr. Eggman declared. He then paused and added, "Why do you ask?"

The parents all exchanged a dubious look.

"What?" asked Eggman. "Don't tell me if I wander off, I'll be walking into my own doom or something."

"Well, we're not sure," admitted the hedgehog with a crown. "None of us has ever actually tried to leave before. We don't actually know what is out there."

Eggman gave them an incredulous look. "Really? Not once? Who knows how many meetings here, and you never had the urge to see what's out there? You just sit around and yap about Sonic all night?"

"No one else understands what goes into parenting a boy like him but other Sonic parents, and ours usually give us plenty to talk about," said the mustached hedgehog dryly.

"Not to say there weren't some prior members we wished would take a hike," grumbled the hedgehog with blonde bangs.

That got Eggman's attention. 'Prior members.' Past tense, as in they weren't here anymore. "There's a way to stop coming here?" he asked eagerly.

"Two possible ways," said the hedgehog in a crown. "The first is that you die or suffer another terrible fate that leaves you unable to think for yourself-"

"Yeah, not doing that," Dr. Eggman shot down immediately.

"-Or the second, your Sonic ceases to see you in a parental role," the hedgehog in a crown finished.

"He doesn't see me in a parental role in the first place!" Eggman cried in frustration.

Seeing that they were no help, the doctor turned on his heel with a huff and stomped off into the void. At least out there, he'd be away from these six weirdos.

However, he'd barely walked a few feet from the table before the fog parted, and it appeared in front of him again.

"What the?" he cried, making the parents at the table wheel around from where they'd been facing the opposite direction.

The human woman pointed at him, then in the direction she had just been looking. "Did you circle around?" she asked.

"No!" Eggman snapped. "I was walking in a straight line the whole time. Here, watch me do it again!"

He turned around and marched away from the table.

Only to appear on the opposite side once again, this time with the parents somewhat expecting his arrival, given they were all looking in his direction when he arrived.

Growling in frustration, Eggman turned and ran alongside the table instead, intending to take off past the head of the table since leaving from the side wasn't working.

Only to find there was no head of the table, and instead the table and chairs acted as a giant loop, bringing him back before the parents once again.

"This is like something out of a cartoon," said the human man, looking like a mix of amused and freaked out.

"Very much so, trust me, I'm an expert at that," said Eggman, only growing more frustrated.

For his next attempt, he tried running to get out of there. Maybe if he could just outrun whatever distortion was keeping him here…

But all running did was cause him to crash his stomach into the table when he came back.

He kept trying, but no matter what he did, no matter what direction he took or how he tried to walk away, he would always find himself coming back from the opposite direction.

Finally, he was just so exhausted that he crawled back to the table and collapsed into one of its chairs for the rest of the meeting.

"Get him to stop seeing me in a parental role and I don't come back here, right?" he asked between breathless puffs of air.

"Yes…" the robot hedgehog said.

"Fine, I'll just do that," Eggman said, since it was clear just walking away wouldn't work.

"And how do you plan on doing that?" asked the blue hedgehog woman.

"By telling him to knock it off!" Eggman declared.

Sure enough, when Eggman next woke up, he immediately marched out of his fortress and straight to Sonic's house to pound on the door until Sonic dragged himself out of bed and opened it.

"What is it, Eggman?" he asked crankily. "Is your new plan to subject me to the sheer evil that is mornings?"

"One, you should stop playing so many video games late at night, and maybe you'd wake up at a decent hour-" Eggman lectured.

"Pass," Sonic interrupted with a yawn. "Midnight to four AM are peak hours to play Tomatopotamus, and I am not sacrificing my speedruns for something as useless as sleep."

"-And two, STOP SEEING ME AS A FATHER FIGURE!" Eggman said, ignoring the interruption, to get to what he really had come there for.

Hearing that made Sonic snap wide awake, and he gaped unattractively at Eggman. "Wait? What? Dude! No, I don't!"

"Good!" Eggman said, jabbing his finger into Sonic's face to emphasize his point. "Keep it that way!"

With that, he turned on his heel and stormed off.

Unfortunately, as he did so, he didn't hear Sonic scoff behind him. "Who'd want him as a father," he grumbled to himself with a yawn as he turned to go back into his house and crash onto his hammock. "He's a reeeeeeeally weird uncle at best," he muttered as he drifted back to sleep.

As such, Eggman was irate when he appeared at the next group meeting.

"What the- But I- He said I wasn't-" Eggman sputtered as he looked around at the other parents. "I confirmed with Sonic myself that he didn't see me as a father!"

"Yeah, and sometimes he's in denial," said the human man, looking amused at Eggman's meltdown. "Mine took a year to call me Dad after I adopted him, but Maddie and I had been showing up here for a lot longer."

Eggman groaned and finally just gave up.

Taking a seat at the table, he said, "I guess I'm stuck with this. My name is Eggman, and I am not a parent. Is this the part where I say if I have a problem or not?"

"We're not that kind of support group," said the hedgehog with a mustache with a roll of his eyes.

"Maybe not to you," Eggman grumbled. "And who the heck are you all anyway?"

If he was stuck here, he might as well learn all their names so as to mock them properly.

The other parents exchanged looks that were a mix of amused and resigned.

Unfortunately, on both sides, it looked like they were stuck with each other.

Intervention

The most annoying thing about the support group was the other members' pestering for Eggman to give up evil. All of them seemed to have come to the agreement that if Eggman was their captive audience, they'd use the time they had to get him to change his tune.

"But I don't wanna!" he whined after the umpteenth time he was nagged to do so.

"Tough cookies," said Bernadette with zero sympathy. "I will not have you coming here and putting a version of my son in danger."

"Danger's such an ugly word," said Eggman. "I prefer to see it as extreme excitement. He loves it, trust me."

"Not as far as I can throw you," said Chuck dryly. "And as 'exciting' as your plans are, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing."

"Yeah, but there's such a thing as a worse thing if I stop, like boredom," Eggman replied. "Besides, evil is my whole career. I have hours, we schedule our fights weekly."

"So take a vacation," said Tom, no doubt thinking he was referring to himself being bored.

"And without evil, think of all the hobbies you could try, like music," said Aleena, who always portrayed herself as sweet, but Eggman was convinced she'd smother him in his sleep if given half the chance.

Despite knowing it was a bad idea, Eggman sighed as he gave in to peer pressure. "Okay, fine, I'll give up evil for one week, and you'll see. My evil is necessary for my world's ecosystem."

While none of them really believed him, the other parents nodded and seemed pleased they'd managed to get him to do that much.

However, at the next meeting, they arrived to see Eggman had arrived with a pained expression and a laptop.

"Alright, I tried giving up evil for a week, and yeah, can't do it, it's unhealthy," he said.

"As a medical doctor, I disagree, you can-" Maddie started to say, but Eggman cut her off.

"It's not me that it's unhealthy for," Eggman said. "It's Sonic. Without my evil schemes to thwart he gets so bored he- oh, just see for yourself."

Eggman opened his laptop to a video.

On the screen, a scarf-wearing Sonic that was taller than average and covered in sports tape was zipping around a beach, looking like he was about to have a nervous breakdown.

"How much longer is this going to take, Tails?" he asked somewhat desperately, his eye twitching in a concerning way.

"Just a little bit longer, Sonic," said a Tails with a belt and goggles perched on his head as he worked on some machine. "I just need to add a little more C4, and we're all set."

"Uh, see four what?" asked an absolutely massive Knuckles who was also decked out in sports tape, and actually had fingers rather than boxing gloves. The echidna looked up and down the beach with a confused expression, before it faded away to a look of pride. "Oh wait, why am I asking that? I can't count that high anyway."

"He's talking about explosives," said a badger in cave-girl clothes next to him. "Like the ones we're going to use to take down the government  and  the shadow government."

"Oh, yeah, Sticks, right," said Knuckles, still looking completely lost. "And… why are we doing that again?"

"Because without Eggman attacking, I am so  bored,  I will do just about  anything  at this point! This is my villain origin story, and you all wanted in on it," said Sonic who was wearing a deep trench in the sand with his pacing, his eye still twitching manically. Everything about the hedgehog just screamed that he was five seconds away from a complete mental breakdown.

"Oh, right," said Knuckles, seeming not to see a single problem with that. "Hey, where's Amy?" he asked as if noticing she wasn't here for the first time.

"Well, we needed someone to be the hero, and she drew the short straw this time. She gets to be in on it next time, and someone else will be the hero," said Tails as he seemed to finish whatever he was doing. "Now come on, we need to get into our disguises so we can still go out in polite society after we become enemies of the state."

Feeling his point had been made, Eggman shut the laptop. "I sent one of my robots after them once this was recorded, and their plans to turn to villainy were postponed. And to be clear, I did not use any mind control or subject them to evil cookies to get them like this. This is just what they devolve to when left to their own devices... Also, I was bored too. Watching them slowly come apart at the seams is only entertaining for so long."

The other parents were left gaping at him.

"Wait, so he really got so bored he was going to turn evil?" asked Jules in disbelief. "There's really nothing else he could do to entertain himself?"

"Eh, maybe for a bit, but it's a small island. Like, really small. There's a mediocre burger joint and that's about it," said Eggman. "There is not a lot to do there. Honestly, my trying to take over is the highlight of their day."

"You can't be serious," said Aleena. "Are you saying your attacks are a good thing?"

"Oh, I'm serious alright, and no, they're an evil thing, haven't you been paying attention?" said Eggman. "If it were just Sonic, I'd say just let him suffer. But an evil Tails is a scary idea I don't even want to fathom. And he was way too enthusiastic when he agreed to go along with it. Can't say I blame him. One of the best parts of being an evil genius is not having pesky things like ethics hold you back in the name of science. And I'll have you know he was pouting the entire time he had to put the doomsday weapons away and be a hero again."

The disbelief was palpable around the table.

"That can't be real," said Bernadette.

"It is," said Eggman.

"Did you doctor it in any way?" asked Maddie.

"Only in the sense that I am a doctor and my spy bot recorded it," said Eggman.

"H-how do we know he wasn't lying to lure you out? Lull you into a false sense of security?" asked Aleena, grasping at straws at this point.

Eggman gave them all a deadpan look and opened his laptop again, and played another video.

This one had Sonic crouched right in front of the camera, apparently having hitched a ride on the Eggmobile in the middle of the fight, his cocky grin on full display.

"So, Sonic, would you state for the record your opinion of me retiring from evil permanently?" asked Eggman's voice off-screen.

Sonic's confidence immediately evaporated on the spot, and he looked absolutely horrified. "NO, DON'T DO IT!" he shouted desperately.

He then seemed to realize what he'd just said, and glanced down from the Eggmobile at whoever might be standing below. "I mean, ah-HA! You can't fool me into a false sense of security," he said, his acting stilted and absolutely terrible, making it clear he was lying through his teeth. "I'm ready to fight you anytime, anywhere!"

Then, he looked back in Eggman's direction with big pleading eyes and said in a much quieter tone, "But seriously, please never retire! It is  SO  boring!"

At that, Eggman paused the video on Sonic's puppy-dog eyes and gave them all a pointed look. "There, see, straight from the hedgehog's mouth."

Charles rubbed his hand down his face before asking, "Is it really that boring where you live?"

"So, so boring," said Eggman in exasperation. "You'd think there'd be more to do in a gorgeous tropical paradise, but there's not. Honestly, my own villain origin story kinda plays out like Sonic's almost did. Very unoriginal of him."

Bernie groaned. "I can't believe you're advocating that we should just sit back and let you kill him!" she said as the whole situation was beginning to give her a migraine.

Eggman blinked at her with an expression of absolute bafflement. "Kill him? Who said anything about killing him?"

That gave the other parents pause.

Seeing that they had legitimately thought that, Eggman's confusion melted into indignation. "I don't want to kill him! I want to defeat him! Don't you know proper villain etiquette? The best measure of your villainy is the might of the hero that opposes you. The struggle of fighting them and then one day defeating them just shows how strong the villain is when he or she succeeds in their hostile takeover. If I just up and killed Sonic, it'd make him look like a total chump, which in turn would make me look bad. The other villains would all make fun of me."

They all could only stare flabbergasted at that logic.

"Killing Sonic would make you look bad," Jules said at the sheer lunacy of the statement.

"Of course," Eggman said, not understanding their confusion. "The whole point of defeating a hero is so that they make a big comeback later to beat the odds, showing how strong they are, and therefore making the villain look strong for being able to hold them back for as long as they do. If I just killed him, then we wouldn't be able to do the comeback portion. Not unless we switched genres altogether, and I like my schemes NOT hampered by dark and gritty revenge quest storylines, thank you."

Tom fell forward so his head hit the table with a thump as the truth of the matter finally sank in for him. "It's Looney Tunes!" he groaned into the woodwork. "It's Dr. Doofensmirtz and Perry the Platypus!"

Maddie was the only one who understood his references and slapped herself on the forehead. "You're a kid's show Saturday morning cartoon villain," she said as an explanation to the others.

"I'd argue we're enjoyable for all ages, and have many jokes and references that would be lost on the younger generations," Eggman said with a frown, but didn't deny it. "And besides, just because a cartoon airs on Saturday mornings does not automatically make the villain goofy, am I right?" he added, glancing at Charles for support.

Charles looked like he had no clue what he was talking about.

"So what you're saying is…" Aleena asked slowly.

Tom and Maddie exchanged a look that clearly said, 'How is this my life?' before addressing the rest. "He's… probably fine. Or at the very least, the laws of his universe will make it so Sonic will always win."

Everyone else looked relieved.

"HEY!" squawked Eggman. "I win sometimes!"

"Name five," said Tom dryly.

"Ah, well, er," said Eggman, struggling to come up with any, before slumping in his seat. "How is it that my only victory is when I sucker-shot Lyric? That wasn't even against Sonic! Heck, that may even count as saving him! I need to step up my game!" he ranted, clearly disappointed in himself.

The fact that he had nothing to brag to them about, despite clearly wanting to do so, finally convinced the other parents to let it go.

For now. So long as Eggman was in their meetings, they'd be keeping a stern eye on him in case that ever changed.

And so, in the next meeting after their intervention, there was an awkward pause at the start, and then Jules reluctantly asked, "So, Eggman, what was your… evil scheme today?"

"No evil scheme, Sonic and I accidentally switched bodies after we both touched a meteor. I don't want to talk about it," Eggman said, looking put out by the whole thing.

The parents all just stared at him.

"Are you… okay?" asked Jules, not knowing what else to ask.

"No! With my brains and his speed, I would have been unstoppable, but then the rotten brat threatened my mustache and we had to switch back!" Eggman bemoaned the defeat.

The sheer absurdity made the other parents laugh.

Maybe things in that world would be alright.

Chasing Shadows

When everyone arrived at the meeting, they were alarmed to see Maddie slumped over the table, her head in her hands, and Tom notably absent.

Fearing the worst, Aleena and Bernie hurried to her side to comfort her.

"Oh, Maddie, is he-" Aleena started to say, but trailed off, unable to voice it.

Maddie shook her head, which was some relief, but her face remained clenched in her hands. "Tell me about Shadow the Hedgehog," she said, her voice giving no room for argument.

Everyone else exchanged surprised glances at that request.

Not grasping the severity of the situation, Eggman spoke up first. "Oh, he is evil," he said, awe in his voice. "Complete edgelord loner. Would probably rule the world by now, but has no ambition to do much other than prove his own superiority. Hates Sonic and his friends with a passion I don't fully grasp, and he'd sooner punch someone in the gut than say hello. We've teamed up a couple of times, but… eh, it never ends well. I try to take advantage of him, he finds out, takes offence, and chases me off into the sunset. But I respect the guy. He's a good villainous foil."

Maddie tensed up at Eggman's 'punch someone in the gut' comment, but only a few hedgehogs noticed.

One such hedgehog was Bernadette, who had a much different take on Shadow. "Shadow is… complicated. He was created as a science experiment by Robotnik's grandfather ("Wait, he was?" Eggman squawked, but was quickly shushed by Chuck and Jules.) to be the Ultimate Lifeform, but then GUN came to fear him and killed the person he loved most. A young girl named Maria. He was locked away in stasis for a long time, and when he woke up, he was angry and wanted the world to pay."

"But Sonic and his friends got through to him," said Jules, picking the story up from her. "And while it took some time, he's since turned his life around. Especially after he met Hope, Maria's cousin, and a very sweet child. He now works with Team Dark to do dangerous missions to protect the world. His goals still don't always align with Sonic's and they'll clash because of it, but they also more often than not work together well, and have a mostly friendly rivalry."

"If a Shadow exists in my world, he remains in stasis," said Aleena. "After hearing about him here previously, I've been seeking him out, but I've not had much luck thus far aside from the barest of whispers. And even if I found him, I often wondered if I should wake him or wait due to the state of the world. But from past stories I've heard, I know he's just a child, and I pity him."

Maddie listened to their words before taking a deep breath in through her nose and letting it out through her mouth.

"Tom's in the hospital," she said finally. "Shadow… he put him there. The doctors are doing everything they can, but… I just want to know why?"

The others all looked alarmed.

Eggman let out a low whistle. "If he took a hit from Shadow, then he's lucky to still be alive."

Chuck elbowed him in the gut for his lack of tact. "Tell us what happened," he said to Maddie. "Let us help you piece it together."

Maddie took another deep breath, then lifted her head and began her tale. "It was Sonic's Earthday-Birthday. His B-Earthday is what we called it. Everything was going so great. Then, GUN suddenly rocked up in a helicopter, telling our boys they needed their help for some dangerous mission in Tokyo. None of us trust GUN, but there were people in danger, so my boys didn't hesitate to get in that helicopter and go with them."

"That's Sonic, ever a hero," said Jules fondly, even if it wasn't his own son.

Maddie managed to crack a small smile at that, but it fell as she continued. "Then, next thing Tom or I knew, the three of them were popping back up in our living room, chained to a metal post and saying they needed us for a top secret mission. Apparently, you were all right, and our world's Robotnik was alive."

"Wait, that was in question?" asked Eggman, looking disturbed.

"And so was his grandfather," said Maddie, ignoring him.

"WHAT?" Eggman squawked again, and Jules kicked him in the shin with his metal foot to shut him up.

"The older Robotnik apparently woke Shadow up, and now the three of them were planning to steal the key to this incredibly dangerous weapon, GUN had to take over the world. So we needed to pull a heist on GUN to steal it first," Maddie said.

"I'm guessing it went poorly," said Aleena sympathetically.

Maddie let out a humorless laugh. "I'd say so. We didn't know what the last trap guarding the key was, and GUN was ready for us, so needless to say, things went crazy. Everyone was caught, Tom, Tails, and I nearly got crushed by concrete and rebar. It was a mess from start to finish. Then, just when we were thinking it was over, Tom radios us that he's got the key and we can leave, but… when I found him…" She clapped her hand over her mouth and blinked back tears.

"Oh, Maddie," said Bernie sympathetically.

"Sonic found him first," Maddie said, sounding close to tears. "He was so angry. He said Shadow attacked Tom for the key, but even he didn't know why the attack was so vicious. After that, I think I went into shock, or I blacked out, or something. The next thing I'm aware of, I'm next to Tom's hospital bed, I have no idea where my boys are, and there are lights in the sky like something out of a Star Wars movie. I'm left beside myself with worry until the three of them come tromping in a few hours later, covered in ash and looking like they've been through hell. I still don't know even half of what they went through."

"But they're alive," said Chuck knowingly. "All that matters is they came home alive."

Maddie nodded in agreement. "Sonic told me they talked, and Shadow had a change of heart. He sacrificed himself to save the world. Sonic's forgiven him, but I… I just need to understand. And from what you say, he's either an evil edgelord or a hero on a redemption arc. I just… I don't know."

"He's a child," said Aleena sagely. "Whatever world he's in, whatever mess he's in, he's still a child."

Maddie turned to look at the queen.

"That is why I still search for him even in my world, where the odds of him staying loyal to the Robotnik bloodline are high," Aleena said, her face making it clear this was something she'd thought long and hard about. "He's a child, a powerful, messy, traumatized child, and he deserves a chance at life."

"He had a chance at life. There's no way he's still alive after all that," Maddie corrected, looking glum.

"I wouldn't be too sure," Chuck said. "If that space battle you say you saw is what I believe it to be, then there's still a chance he survived. Ours did, though he lost his memories for a bit there."

"The guy's called the Ultimate Lifeform for a reason," said Eggman. "He once bragged to me that there wasn't anything he wouldn't survive. Proved it too. I almost had a heart attack from the stunts he pulled."

Maddie looked conflicted, but nodded to herself. "Then I guess I'll reserve judgment until I can meet him and can ask him questions myself. For now, I'll just focus on my boys and doing anything I can to help Tom recover." 'If he'll recover' was left unsaid.

"That sounds like a good plan," said Jules.

Eggman let out a relieved sigh. "Does this mean we can move on from the heavy subjects now?"

Maddie sent him an annoyed look. "Oh, one more thing," she said. "I know you said not to expect death to stick, but our Robotnik also just died heroically helping Shadow stop the Eclipse Cannon. He live-streamed his final words and practically confessed his love for his loyal henchman during them."

Eggman choked on air and once again shouted, "WHAT?!"

"On a totally unrelated note, do you happen to know a man named Stone who makes amazing coffee?" Maddie said, as the others around them snickered. "I have a hunch you and he would get along great."

Eggman could only sputter incomprehensibly.

Everyone tried to keep their spirits up for the rest of the meeting, but all of them breathed easier when Tom turned up at the next meeting, bandaged up but on the mend, and providing some much needed context that Shadow hadn't intended to attack him, but the person he had been disguised as.

There was hope for the Shadow of their world, but only if he was willing to take it.

Blackmail

The next picture day came, and it was clear Eggman had not understood the assignment.

"You know you were supposed to bring good pictures, right?" Maddie said as she put down a cute photo of Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles curled up on the couch, having fallen asleep during movie night.

"I did bring the good pictures! These are all my best blackmail!" Eggman said brightly, holding up a picture of Sonic with an aghast look on his face. "Look, this one is from when I framed him for stealing my particle accelerator. I had a whole angry mob after him and everything!"

"Why would anyone even care if you, a bad guy, had something probably set to be used for an evil plan, was stolen by Sonic?" Jules had to ask, not seeing the logic in it. "Shouldn't they be happy you don't have it anymore?"

Eggman shrugged. "I don't know if you noticed, but everyone who lives on that island is pretty stupid. Like, take this one," he said, holding up a picture of Sonic sulking in a courtroom next to his giant version of Knuckles, who was holding a briefcase and beaming. "This is when I pretended my previous defeat left me injured and traumatized, so I sued him. I had the jury eating out of my hands. I almost won that case, and all it took was a neck brace and a few fake casts."

"I still find it so odd that your Knuckles is so large," said Aleena as she looked at the picture.

"Is it really that he's large, or are yours just puny?" asked Eggman rudely.

"There are other temporary members, and they've all shown that their Knuckles are roughly the same as ours. Yours is the anomaly," said Chuck.

Eggman just shrugged it off. "Well, he wouldn't fit the himbo archetype if he weren't broad of chest. Yours all tend to have half a brain, so then the label doesn't apply to them."

"Don't talk about him that way," said Maddie, who, as an adopted mother of her Knuckles, was offended on his behalf.

"I'm not saying it to be mean, it's a fact," Eggman said, holding up another photo, this one of Knuckles with a trashcan on his head and strutting around like it was a crown. "I have literally met rocks with more brainpower. And that rock is currently snoring in my zen garden for the next hundred years. Honestly, the only thing I've seen him not be a meathead about is feminism. He's surprisingly well informed about that, and a solid ally."

Maddie looked ready to protest again, but Tom leaned over and whispered, "His Knuckles did say he couldn't count to four on that video, and was kinda, you know…" which just made Maddie shift her glare to him.

"Really, Eggman, everyone on your island is dumb?" asked Bernadette with a sly smirk.

"Oh yeah, dumb as posts, and anyone who moves there immediately loses brain cells," said Eggman.

"Don't you live there too?" Bernie asked.

That gave Eggman pause as he realized what he'd implied about himself. "Oh, uh, no, I live in a fortress on my own little island off the coast. I don't live there there."

"But you want to live there," Aleena pointed out, catching on to Bernie's game. "Given that you want to take it over."

"Er, well, I…" Eggman paused as that occurred to him, and he tapped his chin. "I'm… going to have to rethink the logistics of where I build my new fortress of evil once I take over." He then shook himself and changed the subject. "But anyway, back to the blackmail, get a load of this!"

He slapped down a photo of his Sonic with a deadpan expression, dressed in a sunflower costume that covered him from head to toe with only his face poking out.

The image was just too hilarious, and more than a few of the parents had to hold in their snickers.

"What prompted that?" Jules had to ask.

"Oh, it's a funny story, you see, Tails accidentally turned himself part bee-bot, and we had to lure him out to change him back," said Eggman, like this wasn't the most ludicrous explanation imaginable.

"You didn't want him to stay part robot?" asked Bernie slowly.

Eggman looked confused as to why she would ask, and why the question brought out an intense look from everyone else. "No… why would I?" he asked. "He synced up with my other bee bots and declared himself their king. They weren't listening to me anymore and were a real nuisance. And besides, I'm a villain, not a monster. Leaving an eight-year-old in that state is a step too far, even if he did do it to himself."

He then snickered and added, "Although, to be honest, Sonic didn't need to dress up to lure him out. I just told him he had to for my own amusement."

He then burst into cackles, and while some of the other parents chuckled along (it was an amusing picture, after all), his words gave them something to chew on.

A villain, not a monster.

Crazy as it was, they were starting to believe it.

Sticks and Stones

It never occurred to any of them that they could bring another person to the void with them.

So imagine their surprise when they arrived at the group meeting to find Eggman fending off a feral badger who was screaming at him for abducting her to his secret brainwashing facility.

At least until she caught sight of the rest of them, then she screeched and brandished a boomerang at them, "IT'S ATTACK OF THE CLONES! You'll never get my DNA! NEVER! There is only one Sticks, and that Sticks is ME!"

"What did you do now, Eggman?" asked Bernie tiredly. There had been a lot more shenanigans since the evil doctor had joined their group.

"Me?" squawked Eggman at the accusation. "I'll have you know, I was just minding my own business, trying to take over the island, as one does, when Amy threw her hammer at my Eggmobile and knocked me out of it. I must have blacked out when I landed."

"You did," hissed Sticks the Badger with a poisonous glare. "When you landed on me!"

"Well, that explains how she got here," said Charles thoughtfully. "It seems the trick to bringing pictures and other objects works on people, too."

"But only if you fall asleep on them and they're knocked out as well, I suppose," said Aleena.

Tom hummed thoughtfully at that idea. "What are the odds you can bring your dog, and I can bring mine, and we can have these double as a doggy playdate?" he asked Jules. "Ozzy'd probably love to meet Muttski."

Jules tilted his head thoughtfully. "It might take some doing, but possible. I don't know if they'd agree to be a pillow that long."

Sticks did not appreciate that they were not as freaked out about this as she was. "WHERE AM I?!" she shrieked. "Some kind of meeting ground for Eggman to get his villainous schemes."

"The opposite, actually," said Maddie. "We've been trying to talk him out of evil for months."

Sticks' eyes widened in horror. "You monsters!" she gasped.

Eggman, glad to have someone on his side for this subject for once, grinned and said, "They're why I didn't attack you or your friends for an entire week that one time."

Sticks looked utterly aghast. "Have you no shame!" she exclaimed. "Don't you know Eggman's villainy is an annoying but integral part of our ecosystem! I was this close, this close, to unleashing an army of wicked Froglodytes upon our unsuspecting village just so we'd have something to fight! And once they're let out of their cave, there's almost no way we'd be able to contain them all again!"

Jules let out a sigh. "We're starting to understand that, and we're sorry for the inconvenience it gave you."

From the look on her face, Sticks did not accept his apology, and she glared at Jules fiercely. "What are you supposed to even be?" she asked. "A Metal Sonic-acorn? WHY WON'T ANYONE TELL ME WHERE I AM?"

"This is the Parents of Sonic Support Group," said Bernie bluntly.

Sticks looked like she understood those words, but not all in the same sentence. "Sonic don't have parents," she said slowly and suspiciously. "And there are too many of you here to just be his mom and dad."

"Perhaps not in your world, but this is a meeting space between worlds for such people to congregate and share their stories," explained Aleena, kindly, understanding this must be very distressing for the badger.

Sticks looked at Aleena, then pointedly looked at her crown, and scoffed. "Like I'd trust anyone from the government. Besides, if that's the case, why is Eggman here?"

"That's what I've been saying for months!" Eggman exclaimed.

"The only way he'd show up here is if your Sonic thinks of him in a parental light, as unbelievable as that might be," Bernie said, already realizing this meeting was already derailed from the start.

Sticks shook her head like that was ridiculous. "There's no way he sees Eggman like a dad. No way! At best, he's a weird u-" Sticks froze as something seemed to occur to her, and she turned to give Eggman a hard stare down.

Eggman shifted uncomfortably under her gaze. "What?" he demanded. "What is it?"

Whatever thought she had, Sticks seemed to decide to keep it to herself as she nodded slowly and said, "... Never mind, that tracks, continue."

That made Eggman do a double-take. "Wait! What?" he shouted. "Sonic really sees me as a father figure?"

"Not a dad," said Sticks again bluntly.

"HE SEES ME AS HIS MOM?!" Eggman shouted even louder.

"No," said Sticks.

"What else is there?" Eggman asked, now utterly confused.

The other parents seemed to catch on to what Sticks was saying and glanced at Charles, who looked irritated to have to share a label with Eggman.

No one explained this to Eggman, leaving him to flounder as the parents introduced themselves to Sticks and gave a brief summary of their worlds.

"You're telling me that in another life, Sonic is royalty?" Sticks asked, disgusted. "And in another one, he's dating royalty?"

"Yes," said Aleena, amused at her bewilderment.

"He and Sally just went on a date," added Jules, happy for his son.

Sticks turned to Tom and Maddie, "Yours is the only Sonic I'd associate with. He sounds properly paranoid and untrusting of government overlords."

The Wachowskis decided to keep quiet on the fact that Tom was a police officer and Maddie's sister and brother-in-law were GUN agents, just in case that made her change her mind.

"Yeah, they suck," Tom said instead.

"Suck out your souls?" asked Sticks. "Nah, they just want your liver to feed their secret army of lizard people."

"Well, we can't have that," said Maddie.

Sticks looked ready to entertain the rest of them with her conspiracy theories for the rest of the meeting before she suddenly faded out of existence.

Eggman blinked. "What just happ- OW!" he yelped and put a hand to his cheek like someone slapped him, and vanished too.

"I suppose they woke up," said Aleena.

"Given Eggman was likely crushing their friend, I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner," said Bernie.

"Well, when you really think of it, at the end of the day, these meetings of ours are still dreams to some degree," said Charles thoughtfully. "And while some meetings can go long, it never feels like the (preferably) eight or so hours of sleep happening in our worlds. So, there's no real way to tell time in this place. It's as long or short as it needs to be."

"So then that interaction we just had with Eggman and Sticks felt like maybe a half hour or so to us, back in their reality, it could have just been, what, five minutes?" asked Jules thoughtfully.

"If even that, remember, Sticks disappeared first, and the whole reason she was here is because Eggman fell asleep on top of her," Maddie pointed out. "I know the first thing I'd do if someone I didn't like much fell asleep on top of one of my friends is try and pull her free, and that would break her connection."

"So this entire thing probably only lasted a minute for them, but a lot longer for us," said Tom, massaging his head at the headache this was giving him.

"That's my theory, at least," Charles said with a nod.

"Well, in that case, if time is weird here, how much more time in this meeting do you think we all have le-" Tom started to ask, but they all woke up before he could finish.

And when they checked their clocks, they saw they had been sleeping for eight hours on the dot.

"I think that void is laughing at us," Maddie said dryly, as she showed their alarm clock to Tom.

"Well, if it is somehow connected to Sonic, did you really think it'd be predictable?" asked Tom.

Maddie couldn't argue with that.

Meanwhile, back in Eggman's universe, Sonic and his friends were very confused why Eggman immediately jumped to buy Sticks' silence on something the second he was slapped awake after they'd stopped him from flattening Sticks in his sleep.

But whatever dirt Sticks had on Eggman, it had to be good, given the steep price she'd put on her cooperation, but eventually, after many failed attempts at haggling, Eggman begrudgingly accepted her terms and hurried on his way.

"What did you do to him?" Sonic had to ask once Eggman fled in his now-damaged Egg Mobile.

"Can't tell you or I don't get to hold it over his head no more," said Sticks evasively, looking as pleased as a cat with a canary in her jaws.

"Not even a hint?" asked Amy, who, despite feeling guilty that it was her hammer that had caused that whole mess, was really, REALLY curious after that furious debate.

"Yeah, we probably won't get it anyway," said Knuckles good-naturedly.

Sticks thought that over, then shrugged. "Okay, I'll say just one little hint."

She spun around to jab her finger in Sonic's face, "It's all your doing!" she declared.

Sonic went cross-eyed as he stared at her finger, then looked at her face in confusion. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait! What? My doing?" he asked in bewilderment.

"And that's all you're gettin' from me," Sticks said firmly as she turned on her heel and walked away.

Her friends could only stare after her, and despite the hint, they were all still utterly clueless.

"What did you do this time?" Tails had to ask in befuddlement.

Sonic could only give him a helpless shrug. "I have absolutely no idea!"

Infection

It started as a typical meeting… or at least as typical as it got since an Eggman had joined their group, even if he was still in denial about the reason.

But the seven of them were startled from their discussion when someone else suddenly appeared.

It was a Vanilla. One who was in bad shape, if her roughed-up fur and torn dress were any indication. It was also clear from how she huddled in on herself as if in pain.

Ever the vet, Maddie was first on her feet and rushing over to help her, but stopped when Vanilla screamed.

"NO! DON'T TOUCH ME! STAY BACK!" she cried, shrinking away from all of them.

Maddie stopped, and everyone looked on in concern.

The rabbit sighed in relief when they did as she said, though she remained hunched in on herself. "I'm sorry," she said in a tone that made it clear she was barely holding herself together. "But I can't risk it spreading from here to any other worlds. Jules should be safe, but everyone else…"

"It?" asked Eggman in confusion.

Vanilla's eyes snapped to him, and an uncharacteristic look of horrified outrage appeared on her face. "What is he doing here?" she asked.

"His Sonic is actually fond of him," said Bernadette, rolling her eyes like she still couldn't believe it.

"Lies and slander," insisted Eggman.

Vanilla laughed in a bitter sort of way. "If I didn't know it would affect your whole world, I'd give you a taste of your own medicine right now," she said, glaring at the doctor.

"Oh boy," said Dr. Eggman with a put-upon sigh. He was already tired of getting ragged on for what other Eggmen did. "What'd my counterpart do this time?"

Vanilla sent him a poisonous look, and straightened for the first time since she arrived, and everyone could see what looked like a metallic liquid was splattered across her hands and arms.

Maddie shrieked. "You have to get up and wash that off of you!" she insisted. "Even the short-term effects of liquid mercury is-"

"It's not mercury," Vanilla said, holding up her arms and letting them see how, instead of dripping off the strange metallic ooze was slowly creeping up her arms like a fast-growing mold. "It's the Zombot virus. There's no washing it off, I'm already infected."

"Zombot?" asked Tom with a sinking feeling that he knew exactly what that meant. "As in zombie-robot?"

"Yes," said Vanilla. "Dr. Eggman's latest creation that he unleashed on the world. Its victims are already in uncountable numbers. One touch and the infection spreads. A zombot managed to sneak into the safe haven that I was sheltered in. Almost everyone was infected, myself included. I must have been knocked out in the scuffle."

Everyone was horrified to hear this.

"Thank Chaos, our Eggman never thought of that," said Charles. "We would have never survived."

"What about Cream?" asked Aleena, worried for Vanilla's daughter.

"She's safe for now," Vanilla said, looking utterly relieved by that fact. "Amy got her out, and Sonic held back the horde."

"And Sonic?" asked Charles in concern.

"What are you even waiting for? Get Sonic to steal the antidote from your me," snapped Eggman.

Vanilla just sent him a look.

Eggman recoiled at the severity of her expression. "W-What's that face for?" he asked. "There must be an antidote! Or at least a vaccine! What kind of idiot unleashes something like that without a way to keep himself immune?"

"Dr. Eggman, when was the last time you considered the consequences of your own actions?" asked Vanilla. The virus had crept up to reach her shoulders at this point, and spikes were starting to grow out of the infection.

Eggman rubbed his bald head, "Er, a lot more since I've been forced into this stupid group for no reason."

"Good, keep considering them," said Vanilla firmly. "Because my version of you certainly doesn't."

She then turned to address the rest. "As for Sonic… he's already been infected. He's proven to be more resistant to it than most and has so far stayed himself, but I overheard the others say his resistance is failing the longer this goes on. Tails is working on a cure, but things just keep getting worse."

The virus had reached her neck now, and everyone watched in horror as it began covering her face.

"Listen to me," she said desperately as she ran out of time. "If I never return, then it means our world is doomed! Do not try to save us! Please, please do not let this infection spread any further! I couldn't bear it if-"

But whatever else she was about to say was cut off as the virus covered her completely, and when her eyes opened again, they were glowing red.

With a snarl, she launched herself at them, and Jules jumped in front of everyone else in an attempt to catch her, but she vanished before making contact.

Bernadette reached over to grab Jules in outrage. "What were you thinking?" she said.

"She said I'd be safe," said Jules.

"She said 'should' that's not a guarantee," Bernadette said, cupping her husband's face in her hands. "I can't lose you again."

"She's right," agreed Charles. "It's still a virus, even if you weren't infected the way she was, it could still try to reprogram you."

"Unlikely," said Dr. Eggman. "Given the virus's main goal seems to be spreading through biological matter, having it also affect mechanical systems might be too confusing for-"

The doctor then noticed them all glaring at him and realized he should probably shut up.

"If you have this much insight just from a look, can you fix it? Can you make a cure?" asked Aleena.

Eggman raised his hands in surrender. "Of course not. Not without knowing exactly what my counterpart did and what his plans were. And if his bright idea was to use something like that without developing an antidote first, then I don't even want to know what goes on inside that guy's brain."

The others exchanged a glance. "Well, then, at least we can be assured that it won't happen in your world," said Charles.

Unspoken was the clear worry all of them now had that their own Eggman still might be that crazy.

Tom let out a heavy sigh and slumped in his chair. "Things were strange enough, now we all know there's a legit possibility of a zombie apocalypse on the table."

"Crazy Carl was right again," said Maddie, partially in shock at what they'd witnessed.

Jules, at least, tried to remain optimistic. "Hey, their Tails is still working on a solution. Their Sonic and Amy are still fighting. Things look bad for their world, but not all hope for them is lost. Not yet. And if there's one thing all Sonics have in common, it's the ability to perform a miracle when you need it most."

That did perk the others up somewhat, but the mood of the meeting was still grim.

"Jules," said Bernie, reaching out to take her husband's hand. "Let's wake up. I need to see our son."

Jules squeezed her hand and said, "Yes, dear. I'd like that too."

"Sounds good to me, too," agreed Tom.

"I need to hug our boys right now," said Maddie.

Aleena clenched her fists, knowing that the distance between her and her children meant she couldn't do the same. All she could do was watch them from afar, and that would have to be enough.

Eggman was absolutely not hugging Sonic after this, but sending a spy robot into the village just to make sure nothing was amiss wasn't a bad idea. If nothing else, the paranoia it would give Sticks would be entertaining.

And with that, the blue void faded away, and all group members woke up in their own beds with a jolt.

Vaccine

"You're sure you're cool with us all sleeping over tonight, Vanilla?" asked Sonic after a long night of partying.

Vanilla the Rabbit gave the hedgehog an amused look and said, "Sonic, dear, do you really think you're going anywhere right now?"

Sonic looked down at the cuddle-pile he was in the center of. After literally crashing the victory party for the end of the Metal Virus and kicking Eggman's not-invited butt out of there, none of his friends had let him out of their sight for an instant. Having everyone think you're dead will do that. As it was, he was now being used as a pillow by Tails, Cream, Amy, Cheese, and Chocola in the middle of Vanilla's living room.

"You don't mind?" asked Sonic again, just to be sure. "I can still take Tails and go if it would be a bother."

Vanilla smiled fondly and reached down to pat him on the head. "Not at all," she said. "Sonic, after everything you've been through, please, let me mother you just for one night."

Despite his offers to leave, Sonic's eyes were already drooping. "Alright… if you insist," he said as he fell sound asleep.

Vanilla smiled at the sight before leaving them to turn in for the night herself.

Her offers were all genuine, but she had to admit there was a slight ulterior motive to her insisting Sonic stay the night.

Her head had barely hit her pillow before she opened them again in the blue void, and she hurried towards the meeting table.

When she arrived, she was surprised to see the table covered in plans and schematics, and all the other parents (and Dr. Eggman) talking amongst themselves.

The doctor and Charles were poring over plans and books and arguing possible cures for the Metal Virus, though neither seemed to agree on anything, and often Jules had to play mediator between them to keep Charles from strangling the man.

Tom, Maddie, Bernadette, and Aleena, meanwhile, were making lists of supplies and brainstorming ways to traverse a Zombot-infested area without being infected, and wondering what zombie apocalypse cliches they would have to be prepared for.

Like son, like family. Vanilla really should have known they wouldn't just leave her world to its fate. Still…

"I thought I told you not to do that," she said, laughter in her voice. Her mirth only grew when everyone jumped at the sound of her voice.

"Vanilla!" several of them cried, and Bernadette and Aleena both rushed to her side, but stopped just short of touching her.

"Did they do it?" asked Bernadette.

"Are you alright?" asked Aleena.

Vanilla smiled at them. "I'm fine. Everyone is, they solved it in the nick of time, from what I heard."

Everyone heaved a huge sigh of relief hearing that.

"Typical heroes. Can't save the day until the very last minute," grumbled Dr. Eggman, and Tom elbowed him in the gut.

"Can I check, just to be sure?" asked Maddie.

Vanilla allowed the vet to do a basic health check on her, and everything came up normal.

"So what happened?" asked Jules curiously.

"And what turned out to be the cure, if you don't mind me asking?" asked Charles.

"It seems Dr. Eggman has an avid fan who is just as bad as he is, a Dr. Starline," said Vanilla. "They created the virus together, but had a falling out during the outbreak after one of Starline's attempts to control the zombots only made things worse. No one knows where he's gone now."

"Urgh," said Dr. Eggman. "Note to self, program bodyguard robots to repel obsessive fans. I've had enough of that just dealing with Dave and the Lightning Bolt Society."

"That would be for the best," said Vanilla, giving him a side-eye before continuing. "As for the cure, you need Sonic, the seven Chaos Emeralds, something called a Warp Topaz, and Silver the Hedgehog."

Many of them took notes as she said that, but she still got curious stares for the list.

"May I ask, who is Silver?" asked Aleena.

"There's another hedgehog hanging around?" asked Tom.

"Urgh," Dr. Eggman groaned again and rubbed his head. "That's just what I need. The three I know are already enough of a headache."

Charles, Jules, and Bernadette all recognized the name and exchanged a glance. "Really?" Bernie asked skeptically. "Him?"

That caused everyone else to look at her, and Vanilla frowned at her tone.

"Silver is a time traveler," the rabbit explained to those who didn't know. "When the future is bleak, he travels back to our time and helps us prevent it from ever happening."

"That is what he attempts to do, anyway," said Charles. "But safe to say his method can be troubling and he doesn't seem to get many results."

Vanilla's frown deepened. "May I ask what you mean?" she said. "The Silver I know is a good boy, very earnest and optimistic. Cream has taken a shine to his garden, so I see him quite often when she visits to help him care for it. From what Amy has told me, he has prevented a good few dreadful futures so far."

"Maybe your Silver is like that," said Jules diplomatically. "But ours hasn't left the best impression."

"Why don't you explain why you have that opinion?" said Aleena.

"Silver has shown up twice so far," explained Bernadette. "He claims that there is a traitor amongst the original Freedom Fighters, and that to save his future, they must be stopped.

"So far, he's accused Sonic and Rotor of being the traitor, and was proven wrong at every turn," added Jules.

"His claims are ridiculous," said Charles. "I've known those kids for years. Not a single one of them would even think of betraying the others. Whatever caused that future of his, he's barking up the wrong tree."

The rest of the support group exchanged a glance. "So, wait, you've got a guy that you know for sure is really from the future, telling you that you're all doomed, and you're not doing anything to find out more to prevent it from happening?" asked Tom incredulously.

Well, when he put it like that…

"None of the Freedom Fighters would betray the others. The lot of them are practically a family," insisted Charles.

Aleena, who had given up her children on the word of a powerful prophet for their best chance of survival, threaded her fingers together and stared them down. "None of them would do so willingly, you mean," she said. "It sounds to me that the only mistake this boy is making is that he believes this Freedom Fighter caused his future by choice."

"Yeeeeeaaaaaah…" said Dr. Eggman uncomfortably. "As someone who has used mind-control devices before, getting someone to do something you think they wouldn't ever do isn't as hard as you think it would be. Heck, even without the mind control, just threaten someone's family and watch them fall all over themselves to do whatever you want them to do. That's how I used to get free groceries, but then the cashier got divorced."

That made the three pay more attention.

Vanilla had another example in mind. "My world's Dr. Eggman attempted to use Sonic as his patient zero for the Metal Virus. If Sonic hadn't had the resistance to it he did, with his speed, any survivors left after he turned would have reported him being the main plague carrier in history, thus making him a 'traitor who ended the world' would it not."

"If nothing else, wouldn't it be better to work with this kid to find out what he knows?" asked Maddie. "History isn't always remembered reliably. Maybe there's just some context he's missing."

Bernadette, Charles, and Jules exchanged a glance at that.

"We'll talk to Sonic," said Jules, seeing their point.

"Good," said Vanilla. "Because his psychokinesis is a large part of what saved my world. He and Sonic went Super, and while Silver used his powers to pull the Metal Virus out of everything, Sonic used the Warp Topaz to make a portal and send it where it could never hurt anyone again."

"So the Warp Topaz opens portals," said Aleena thoughtfully.

"Huh, may not need the gem in that case," said Dr. Eggman. "There's more than one way to make a portal."

"The kids could just use one of their rings," Tom agreed.

"Then if we ever need to stop a 'zombot apocalypse,' we just need Silver," said Maddie.

"Or maybe just a really big magnet," muttered Eggman, not eager for another heroic hedgehog.

"If the future is ever in such dire straits, then he'll show up," Vanilla assured them, ignoring the doctor. "He always does."

The rest of the meeting had Vanilla explaining what happened in her world in more detail, and making plans if such a thing ever happened to them.

The next morning…

"Sonic, you need to make better friends with that Silver kid. Find out everything he knows," Bernadette told her son.

"Wait, what?" asked Sonic in bewilderment at this sudden request.

"Listen to your mother, son," said Jules as he read the morning paper.

Sonic huffed at the sudden request, but resolved to at least try.

Unless the guy showed up accusing one of his friends again, then all bets were off.

Rotten Eggs

At the next meeting, Eggman was oddly pensive.

Knowing he'd probably regret the answer, Jules sighed and asked, "What's on your mind this time, Eggman?"

Eggman didn't answer immediately, just drummed his fingers on the table for a moment, before saying, "Is your version of me really that bad?"

The question took everyone by surprise and caused the entire table to fall silent.

"I mean, really, what that Vanilla lady said has to be an outlier… right? My counterparts are evil, I respect that, but that Metal Virus he infected her with… it had no benefit for him! Maybe if it just infected the people, then it would work, but she said it infected plants, too. That's not sustainable. If all organic life were infected, how was he supposed to eat? Heck, without plants, how was he supposed to breathe? It makes no sense!" Eggman said, the words spilling out of him in a long ramble, making it clear he'd been thinking about this for a while.

The other parents exchanged a look.

This… was a conversation they never really expected to have.

But the truth was…

"While some tend to be worse than others, in most worlds, Eggman typically is that bad," said Bernie.

Eggman wilted a little. "And by 'that bad' you mean…?" he asked slowly.

Maddie let out a tired sigh. "I suppose out of our three versions, ours is the least awful by comparison. He did do the whole heroic sacrifice thing in the end, though from what I hear, it's even odds he'll be back and worse than ever."

Tom leaned back in his chair and began listing off offenses. "Let's see, to start, he was just a high-ranking GUN agent sniffing around when Sonic accidentally caused a blackout. So, he burst into my house with no warrant, trying to find him, trashed the house when he saw Sonic and freaked out, chased the two of us across the country to capture him, and caused a few traffic accidents along the way. Tried to kill me and Maddie. Defaced several important landmarks while chasing Sonic across the planet, trying to kill him so he could experiment on his remains. Tricked Knuckles into going after Sonic and trashing our house again. Hurt Tails with a missile. Tried to kill Knuckles and Sonic to get the Master Emerald. Wrecked our entire town in a giant mech, which then tried to kill Sonic, Maddie, and me by stepping on us. Left Sonic to be sucked into a blackhole. And teamed up with his evil grandpa to steal a planet-destroying super weapon. He only started fighting for the good guys when he found out the planet-destroying bit was not hyperbole."

Eggman nodded along with Tom, not looking too bothered by any of that. It sounded not too far off from what he would do with his Sonic. Though with slightly less murderous intent.

Aleena looked grim. "He conquered my country. Enslaved my people through the use of a Roboticizer. Extorts those who are still themselves for riches, and bleeds my people dry with his taxes. Scammed others into buying fake artifacts or babies that were actually bombs, and desecrated sacred areas for his own greed, and spread his pollution across the land like a plague. He is arrogant, cruel, and vain, easily won over by flattery and will fly off the handle at a perceived insult, but what I find most egregious about him is his henchmen."

Eggman sighed. "What did Orbot and Cubot do now?" he asked, annoyed.

"I long for him to have an Orbot and Cubot. They would be a vast improvement to Sleet and Dingo," said Aleena coldly.

"Who and who?" asked Eggman, confused.

"Honorless bounty hunters Robotnik hired to capture my children, and they are willing to do so by any means necessary," Aleena said. "Sleet the Wolf is cruel, calculating, and ruthless. Nothing is beneath him, and he is as vile as they come. Dingo the Dingo, by comparison, could be considered his better half. He is strong and resilient, but incredibly stupid, and more often than not appears to be taken advantage of by Sleet. I could forgive him for that. What I do not forgive, however, is his apparent obsession with my underage daughter."

It took a second for that to sink in for Eggman, but once it did, his face twisted in disgust. "Oh, EEEEEEWWWWW!"

"Yes, ew," said Aleena dryly at that understatement. "The only saving grace they have is that both are incredibly incompetent, allowing my children to evade them at every turn, but I fear one day they may get lucky." She then leaned back in her seat and glanced over at Bernie, Jules, and Chuck. "However, even as I say that, my Robotnik would only be considered the second worst of our batch."

Eggman gulped when he heard that and glanced over at the remaining three, knowing the worst was yet to come.

"Actually, yours is the third worst, Aleena. Don't forget, we've had two versions of Robotnik to deal with," said Charles bitterly.

"What? Two?" asked Eggman in bewilderment.

Bernie laced her fingers together in front of her face and glowered at Eggman over the top of them. "Yes," she said coldly. "Two. We initially had one version of him who, much like Aleena's, took over our home kingdom when Sonic was small, and turned its citizens into robotic slaves. Though, unlike hers, it was every citizen. No one was spared."

"And he did it because of me," said Jules quietly. "I'm the one who found him and saved his life, despite our war with his people. I helped him, and it's what allowed so many people to suffer. So many lands were flooded with pollution to build his factories. When my brother roboticized me to save my life, he took advantage of that. He used me to roboticize Bernie, too."

"He stole my inventions," Charles said, slamming his fist against the table. "The Roboticizer was my creation. It was supposed to help people who were too injured to live otherwise. He stole it and turned it into a nightmare. There is no one he didn't backstab or manipulate in his list for power. He was a madman, though and through, and all of us celebrated when his nephew's backstabbing led to his death… If only we knew…

Eggman was sweating bullets. "Er… knew what?" he asked, dreading the answer, unnerved to hear a version of him was already dead.

Bernie huffed a bitter laugh. "That one constant of the multiverse was that Sonic the Hedgehog would forever be at odds with Dr. 'Eggman' Robotnik. And because of that, if one Robotnik dies, another will appear to take his place. And in our case, the one who came after was worse than the original."

"Worse how?" Eggman asked slowly.

Jules looked him dead in the eye as he replied. "He did everything the same as the last Robotnik, and then he killed his entire world, including his Sonic."

Eggman winced as his own doomsday device popped into his head and resolved to dismantle it and never tell anyone in the Support Group he'd ever had it.

"He killed his own family, too," added Charles. "His own mother and brother. Tried to kill his sweet niece, too, but she ran away. Likely the only reason he hasn't killed his backstabbing nephew is because he finds his treachery amusing and an effort in futility. Though after his last grab for power, no one has seen Snively since, so maybe that amusement has finally run out."

With that, Charles, Jules, and Bernadette began listing out every single atrocity of their current Eggman. Everything from trying (and in some cases succeeding) to kill the robots he claimed as his children, to the sheer horror that was the Egg Grapes and the destruction they wrought.

When they were done, no one could deny they had the worst Robotnik, and Eggman was left quivering in his chair.

Giving a cough as he tried to drum back up his usual bravado, Eggman said, "I, er, I now understand the hostility when I started up here. I may be a villain, but that guy… he's a monster."

The three shared a wry look, knowing that was a massive understatement.

Taking some pity on him, Aleena said, "Not all Eggmen are so vile. You've heard our sliding scale of experiences, and other versions can be closer to your relationship with your Sonic."

"Yeah," said Tom. "We've met a Vanilla who says her version of Eggman works with the good guys when the world or universe is in actual danger of being destroyed, and occasionally does wacky schemes like challenging Sonic and his friends to a baseball game for a Chaos Emerald or tricking everyone into thinking the moon's rotation is broken so they buy his merchandise. He apparently even talked his Sonic down when he became something called 'Dark Sonic' so he wouldn't do something he'd regret. It's not a parental relationship, but I get the sense those two don't hate each other."

"My relationship is not parental!" Eggman protested, though at this point his bluster was more token than anything, as his continued attendance at the meetings proved otherwise.

"There used to be a man named Dr. Kintobor here who was clearly a good version of Robotnik, though he claimed his Sonic was brown and not nearly as fast as ours," Jules added, deciding to throw Eggman a bone. "He stopped coming after talking about an experiment on some treadmill trapping all the negativity in his universe, unfortunately."

"If he's just trapping it, and not destroying it, then it will inevitably backfire, and that was probably his villain origin story," Eggman grumbled.

Chuck sighed like that confirmed something he hadn't wanted to believe. "I warned him much the same."

Eggman hesitated for a long moment before he finally asked, "You guys… don't think I'm that bad… right?"

The others exchanged a glance.

The truth was… no. They didn't. He may resemble their hated enemy, but compared to the versions in their world, this Eggman was fairly tame, even comical. His initial appearance in the group had unnerved him, but by this point, they'd come to accept his membership, even if he was still in denial about the reason for it.

"Let me put it this way," said Maddie slowly. "Raise your hand if you'd tell your version of Robotnik about his potential with Agent Stone."

No one raised their hand.

Eggman just looked at Maddie in confusion. "But you told me about him. Heck, you've pretty much been trying to set me up on a blind date with him from across the multiverse! We don't even know if he exists in my world."

"Yeah, because he might be a good influence on you, and for a endlessly-loyal villain's lackey, everything I know about Stone from what my kids have told me and what I remember of him when he ran a coffee shop in town, he's a decent, well-adjusted person who just has terrible taste in men," said Maddie bluntly. "The versions of him in other worlds deserve better than to be bound to a heartless tyrant when he may be able to go his whole life avoiding it."

It took a moment for the meaning of her words to sink in to Eggman, but when it did, he perked up just a little.

Those other Eggmen couldn't be trusted to know of that possibility, but he did.

Still, no matter what they did, the mood was subdued for the rest of the meeting.

And the moment Eggman woke up, he deconstructed his Doomsday device down to the smallest screw and recycled all of it into other machines, several of which he sent out to specifically be destroyed by Sonic and his friends so no one could gather the pieces and reconstruct it.

Orbot and Cubot were confused by his actions, but by this point knew better than to ask.

It's All in the Glasses

Everyone was surprised when an extra pair of hedgehogs showed up at the meeting that none of them had seen before.

"So, new members?" asked Tom as the two stared at their surroundings in confusion.

"Ano, new members of what, if you don't mind my asking?" asked the new yellow female hedgehog with bangs like Bernie's and round red earrings.

"Welcome to the Parents of Sonic Support Group," said Aleena with a welcoming smile.

"An interdimensional meeting ground for different versions of Sonic's parents from across the multiverse," Charles added.

The couple exchanged a confused glance at that.

"Well then, there must be some mistake," said a large blue hedgehog with an aviator's jacket stubble on his chin. "Sonic the Hedgehog is a good hero, and my wife and I both admire his courage, but we're not his parents."

Getting a sense of what might be happening, Jules said, "The parameters of being in the group aren't as cut and dry as being related to him. You just need to be someone he sees in a parental light, even temporarily."

"And even then, it's not always the most accurate," Eggman grumbled more to himself than anyone else.

The new couple looked honored at Jules' words.

"Oh my, do you think?" asked the wife.

"Can't be anything else," said the husband, before turning to the rest, "Then it's nice to meet you all. My name is Paulie, and this is my wife, Brenda."

"Our family was kidnapped by the evil Dr. Eggman recently, and Sonic saved us," said Brenda brightly. "Though when he did, he scraped his knee, the poor thing, so I used my handkerchief to bandage it up, and make sure he was alright."

"And I might have gotten a bit sentimental in telling him how much our whole family admires him, and are proud to be among the people he goes out of his way to save. That we appreciate all that he does," said Paulie, scratching the back of his head sheepishly.

"Would that be enough for us to be here on a temporary basis?" asked Brenda.

"Sure is," said Bernie. "Happens to the Vanillas of the multiverse all the time. Unless you left quite the impression, you'll probably only be here this one time unless you get the chance to care for him again."

"Good to know," said Paulie. "So, who might you all be? The only one here I recognize is Officer Dogman."

He got several looks of confusion at that statement.

"Er, who's Dogman?" asked Maddie.

"Is it me?" asked Tom, as the only officer among them, and now wondering if he would be a dog if he'd been born on the same planet as his kids.

"No, him," said Paulie, also confused as he gestured towards Eggman.

Eggman blinked and pointed at himself as if to say 'Who, me?' to which the couple nodded.

Given the couple would likely only be here for the one meeting, and not wanting to risk getting punched again, Eggman coughed and said, "Hah, you got me. Officer Dogman, that's me. I just go by my first name, Ivo, in these meetings, so that never came up" he lied through his teeth and hoped the others would go along with it. "Quick unrelated note, what is your opinion of your world's Dr. Eggman?"

Paulie and Brenda looked at him, confused. "He's a real nuisance," said Paulie. "Always trying to take over the world with his machines and capture Sonic to force him to help. He's kidnapped everyone in our family and our son's girlfriend plenty of times, trying to lure Sonic out."

"Although it's not totally his fault," said Brenda sympathetically. "It's his mustache that's the problem. It's a wicked thing that makes him act evil. If it's shaved off, he's actually quite nice."

Eggman let out an "Eep!" and clapped his hands over his own mustache as the others eyed it thoughtfully.

Seeing this, Brenda quickly said, "That's just because his mustache is evil. Yours looks very nice."

Eggman immediately preened and stroked his signature facial hair. "Thanks, I grew it myself."

"Good on you," said Paulie.

One by one, the other parents introduced themselves and gave a brief explanation of their relationship to their Sonics, and even showed some pictures of their sons.

Once they were done, Paulie reached up to scratch his head under his hat. "Well, we may not be our Sonics parents, but we are parents. I'm sure there's still plenty of common ground to cover."

"Oh yes," agreed Brenda. "Let's make the most of this meeting, even if it's just one night."

"In fact," said Paulie thoughtfully, as he took off his hat and began rummaging around in it. "You said things we sleep on appear here, and if that's the case, then… AH!" he pulled a photo out of the hat and set it on the table for them all to see. "Here's a picture I always have of my kids. Our daughter, Tania, and our son, Nicky."

The second he placed the picture down, the usual Support Group members (aside from Eggman, who didn't seem to really care) could only stare at it for a long moment before slowly exchanging some very pointed glances.

In the picture were two young hedgehogs. One, a young girl about Tails' age who was bright yellow and looked a great deal like her mother.

The other was clearly Sonic in glasses with a fringe.

"So I'm assuming the girl is Tania, and the boy is… Nicky?" Maddie said slowly.

"That's right," Paulie said proudly.

"And you're definitely not your Sonic's parents. Not even secretly?" asked Charles.

"You can tell us, if so," Aleena assured them.

"No, of course not, why do you ask?" asked Brenda in confusion, wondering why it was brought back up again.

"Well… Nicky does look a great deal like Sonic, doesn't he?" said Bernie, saying what all of them were thinking.

Paulie and Brenda blinked, then looked down at the picture, and did a double-take like they'd never seen it before.

Unfortunately, then Eggman chose to butt in, and snatched the picture up to squint at it.

"Yeah, I don't see it?" he said dismissively, tossing the picture back onto the table. "And I know that annoying hedgehog anywhere."

The other regulars kept silent on the fact that they all highly doubted that.

Brenda let out a little laugh, "Ah, that's right. There's no way Nicky and Sonic could be the same. Their personalities are completely different."

"And Nick would never go anywhere without his glasses," Paulie added, sounding more like he was trying to assure himself.

Slowly, conversation shifted elsewhere, and as Aleena got into a conversation with Brenda about their children and music (apparently Nicky played the violin), and Paulie started talking airplane mechanics with Charles and Eggman, two of the other parents had more pressing questions.

Tom leaned over and whispered to Jules, "So, am I wrong, or is their son totally just Sonic in Clark Kent glasses?"

"Clark Kent?" asked Jules back softly.

"Comic book hero, normally he's mild-mannered Clark Kent, but when there's trouble, he takes off his glasses and puts on a cape and suddenly he's Superman, and no one can tell they're the same person," Tom explained.

Jules nodded thoughtfully. "In that case, I would say yes, but… if that were the case, they'd be here for every meeting. Because he would see them as his parents, no matter what 'super hero' name he takes on. But still… that is definitely Sonic in their picture, just with glasses and his fur fluffed up into bangs. I don't understand how that could be possible if they're not regular Support Group members."

Tom hummed thoughtfully as he mulled over that conundrum. "... Maybe it's less Superman and more Yu-Gi-Oh."

"Yugi-what?" asked Jules.

"Old anime my kids got into recently," Tom said. "The main character has two personalities, or he's possessed, or something like that. One side is the normal kid personality, and then he has a tougher persona that comes out when he's in danger from weirdos who attack people with card games. Basically, two separate people, but in the same body."

Jules nodded, though he looked like he was wondering just what Tom was letting his kids watch. "That… sounds like it might fit. If the two personalities are so separate that the Sonic side does not see Nicky's family as his own outside this recent encounter, then that would explain why they aren't here more often."

Tom glanced over at Brenda and Paulie and shrugged. "Well, the seeds have been planted. Who knows, maybe they'll start putting the pieces together too. Or maybe we're totally wrong. We'll just have to wait and see.

The next morning, Brenda and Paulie woke up to realize they'd shared the same dream.

It was a big honor for both of them to realize that if that dream was real, they'd left enough of an impression on their hero that he thought of them so fondly, they went to such a place in their sleep.

But the day wouldn't wait for them to reminisce about their nighttime adventure, so the two parents got up to start the day.

"Kids, breakfast!" Brenda called as she got their food ready for them to go to school.

Tania bounded to the table, already full of energy even that early in the morning.

Her brother, on the other hand, trudged in at a much slower pace.

Paulie frowned from over his morning paper as he realized something about his eldest. "You're limping, Nicky," he said in concern

Nicky blinked sleepily at that remark, then glanced down at his legs. "Oh, yeah, I must have bumped it on something yesterday (I don't remember, to be honest), and then I think I slept on it weird. It's fine, I'll feel better once I wake up and move around."

Both parents cast their gaze down to the young hedgehog's legs and froze.

Around Nicky's knee as a makeshift bandage was Brenda's handkerchief, wrapped in the exact same spot, in the exact same way as she'd patched up Sonic.

Nicky squirmed uncomfortably under their suddenly very intense gaze. "I'm sorry about your handkerchief, Mom," he said, mistaking the reason for their scrutiny. "I don't know how I got it. But Amy and I can go shopping for a new one for you after school."

Tania immediately perked up hearing that. "Oh, can I come?" she said in a way that made it clear she wasn't actually asking.

"Oh, well, uh, I guess you can come," Nicky said hesitantly, startled by her exuberance.

"Awesome!" cheered Tania with enough enthusiasm that she nearly fell out of her chair.

As the two kids began chatting about their plans, their parents could only stare at the handkerchief bandage before slowly shifting their gaze to each other, both clearly thinking of what some of the other parents in that support group had said.

Nicky and Sonic sure did look a lot alike.

But… that was ridiculous! There was no way they could be the same person…

… Right?

To Be Continued

Eventually, their meetings fell into a routine. Eggman's contributions to the group usually aired on the side of complaining about his Sonic more than talking to them about caring for their shared son, but they could tell he was at least paying attention, and on occasion, he'd even throw in a nugget of wisdom they hadn't considered.

"What do you MEAN you've never heard of a hedgehog harness? Does safety mean anything to you?"

"Don't let him join the circus. The ring master is evil and traps him in a giant hamster ball. And on top of that, he's not even entertaining. Plus, Knuckles gets concussions from getting shot out of a cannon, and Amy makes a very poor sad clown."

"No, do not let them bring the Doo-Bot to their hideout! Your Eggman is clearly going for a spy-bot plot! You'd think your kids would have learned after the exploding robot baby!"

"While the people on my island are dumb as posts, keep in mind the opinion of the public is a fickle thing. Hero or not, the villagers Sonic saves can turn on him in a heartbeat if it's convenient for them. I would know, I've taken advantage of it several times."

The last one was ringing especially true for Bernie, Charles, and Jules more recently. Apparently, there was a political shake-up in their world, ousting their current, good king for one of their Sonic's enemies, Naugus, who claimed to have power enough to protect them from everything Sonic couldn't, and ostracizing him and his friends more and more by the day.

"The creep even had the nerve to come to our house," Bernie huffed, still irate from the encounter.

"Why?" asked Maddie, confused. "It's not like being king allows him to command you to ground Sonic or something."

Eggman scratched his chin, but had to nod in agreement. "If he's trying to portray himself as a benevolent ruler, that does cut down on the evil schemes he might be trying to enact by going after his hated enemy's parents."

"He said he was there to make an offer. That his magic was strong enough to reverse my robotization without killing me in the process," said Jules.

It was clear Charles hadn't heard that part before, because he suddenly whipped his head around with a look of longing, before reality caught up with him, and his face fell.

"That is something all of us wish for, but given the one offering it, I fear there must be a catch," said Aleena, whose world was full of roboticized victims. Sadly, the way Bernie and Charles had been de-roboticized in their world would not translate to hers unless an alien race called the Bem happened to stop by.

"Oh, there's a catch all right," said Bernie, still looking peeved. "He said the only way that he could do it was if Jules entered a 'magical contract' with him first."

Tom grimaced, "Yeah, that's a Faustian bargain if I ever heard one. That doesn't sound underhanded at all," he said sarcastically. "No way he isn't trying to screw you over."

"Exactly!" Jules exclaimed. "And we know it's nonsense, because he was able to reverse Bunnie's robotization without even trying. And certainly without any kind of magical contract. He wanted something from me, and thought his 'miracle' offer of being organic would be enough to make us fall for it."

"Unfortunately for him, we're not stupid," said Bernie. Then she gave a bit of a smirk. "Although I must say it was very satisfying to rip into him with all the reasons we have not to trust him, and then telling him exactly where to shove his offer."

Jules nodded. "It wasn't as satisfying as punching an Eggman, but it was a close second."

"Hey! That hurt, you know!" squawked Eggman, rubbing the spot Jules had punched him when he'd first arrived.

Aleena, meanwhile, was more concerned about Bernie and Jules. "You don't fear any retaliation from him?" she asked. "Despots like him rarely take no for an answer."

Jules sighed. "With his fear-mongering he's been using since the Iron Dominion made everyone afraid of technology again, I fully expect us to be at the center of rumors going forward, painting our denial in the worst light. Because why else would I turn down the opportunity to be flesh and blood again if I'm not some Eggman spy or something ridiculous like that."

Eggman shrugged. "Hey, if he spins it as you being reprogrammed, or swapped out with a fake, he could probably do it quite easily."

Jules grimaced and shared a glance with his brother and wife. "I was afraid of that. Guess we'll have to start looking into bolt-holes if things go sour. They've already chased Nichole from the city. If they can remove someone as integral as her, then what hope do we have?"

Charles shifted uncomfortably at his words, like he knew something they didn't, but all he said was, "If it comes down to it, I know some people who would help us if it comes to that. And I'm certainly going to be studying Naugus' power more thoroughly. If there's a way to recreate the magic without having to deal with the man. Especially with the state Princess Sally is in."

It had come as a shock to all of them when the three had reported the fate of their Sonic's girlfriend. The brave princess sacrificed herself to be roboticized to save the world, and was now being used as a weapon against the people she loved most.

Jules gave his brother an appreciative, but worried glance. "Just be careful," he told him. "If you want to become a wizard, that's fine, but don't hurt yourself in the process. If it keeps the rest of you safe, I'm fine as I am, and Princess Sally wouldn't want that either."

"It's worth a look," said Charles, not promising anything, something that was not lost on anyone else (well, Eggman might have missed it), and they all silently resolved to keep an eye on him.

Charles didn't miss that, but ignored it. "Sonic and Team Fighters checked in not too long ago. They couldn't speak for long, just said that they had a lead on Sally up north. We can only hope they can return with her in tow, so we can focus on at least returning her mind to her, if not her body," he said stubbornly.

And then, he winked out of existence, likely waking up in the real world in order to not argue anymore, because how dare they be concerned for his health.

Jules sighed as he stared at his brother's now vacated seat. "I'll talk to him about it," he said. "As much as we do need a new de-robotization method, I'm not letting him kill himself or make any deals with the devil to do it."

"Keep us posted on that," said Tom. All of them wanted to help however they could, even if that help only came in the form of support in these meetings.

"We will," Bernie assured them.

With that discussion finished, the meeting came to a close, and one by one the members faded away as they woke up in their own realities.

First Aleena, then Eggman, then Tom and Maddie at the same time.

Then, the only ones left were Bernie and Jules, and they braced themselves, expecting to awaken any second, especially since Charles had already gone.

But… they didn't…

It was impossible to tell time in the void, but as the gap between when everyone else left grew, so did the sense that something was off.

Bernadette pinched her arms.

Nothing.

She then reached up to slap herself, but Jules stopped her.

"Just wait," he insisted. "Chuck will realize something has happened and wake us up. Just give him time."

But as the time stretched on, neither of them felt a poke or prod to indicate Charles was trying to wake them.

Unless something had happened that he couldn't.

This time, Jules didn't stop Bernie from slapping herself, and instead poked around at the wires inside his torso to try to turn off his sleep mode or shock himself awake.

But nothing worked. They weren't waking up.

The couple exchanged glances of growing dread as the reality of their situation began to set in.

They were trapped in the void. Surrounded by a long table and several chairs that would remain empty until the others returned for the next meeting.

Something was very, very wrong.