Chapter Text
Nine wasn’t sure when the fight had ended. There were only so many times he could scream, point his tails at a beam of light, and summon more robots before it all became a long, endless, terrifying blur. At some point, he was fairly certain he had successfully lured Sonic to the top of the cathedral. There had been yet another argument, but Nine couldn’t remember what anyone had said. Then, after someone declared something about shivering their timbers, Nine took a blow to the head, and everything was over.
With a freshly exacerbated headache, Nine was faintly aware of being shoved into a small, metal cage. Lots of voices were talking, but Sonic’s stood out, begging the others not to hurt him. It was possible that Nine managed to snarl something about how no one else could handle the Paradox Prism, but he wasn’t sure.
And. Well. Cue the betrayal from the Council of Five. No one seemed surprised about it, not even Sonic. Nine was only surprised it took so long.
There was a lot of yelling. A series of explosions. Blurs of movement, and then Nine was yanked away. Only after the Council unceremoniously tossed his tiny cage into some half-formed basement level of the cathedral did Nine finally come to his senses, left alone in the quiet and the dark to let all that anger and fear settle down to a simmer.
Lying on the cramped floor of the cage, he stared up at the ceiling, listening for the occasional boom or angry holler. Separated from the Prism, his mind was finally able to clear, and he grimaced at all his mistakes. Too many robots. Not enough psychological warfare. In all his rage, he’d become predictable. He’d had that edgy little black and red hedgehog trapped in a crevasse for hours before the main fight even started; Nine could have used him as bait the entire time–
He heard the faint shuffle of footsteps, turned his head, and spotted a pair of reddish brown eyes glaring at him from within the shadows. Speak of the devil, indeed.
“What do you want?” he muttered, frowning at his inability to give his voice any real volume.
“Sonic split off from the group,” said Shadow, stepping out into the open space of the room. “I assumed he came down here to rescue you. Guess he’s a bit smarter than I thought.”
Nine expected a sneer to accompany Shadow’s words, but there wasn’t one. It was hard to tell in the dim light (and through Nine’s slowly fading headache), but Shadow merely looked quizzical. Still, Nine forced himself to sit up and make himself at least appear a bit stronger than he felt. He crossed his arms and said, “Disappeared without a warning, huh? Figures. He has a tendency to do that.”
Shadow merely stared at him another moment. Nine waited for the gloating to start, but it never came. One of Shadow’s ears flicked at the sound of a crash upstairs. Apparently finding that more interesting than Nine’s predicament, Shadow turned to leave. Nine huffed, grabbed at the bars of his cage to heave himself up higher, and said, “What’s your deal, anyway? There’s no other Sonic in the Shatterverse, but there’s no other version of you, either. So who are you?”
“I’m the ultimate lifeform,” said Shadow, barely sparing Nine a glance as he kept walking.
Nine rolled his eyes. “Is that what makes you so special to Sonic?”
Judging by the way Shadow froze at the doorway, Nine had struck a nerve. Spinning on the heel of his air shoe and wearing the deepest scowl that Nine had ever seen on anyone, Shadow stomped right back into the room and snarled, “Sonic is an idiot. Whatever I am to him is irrelevant. He is my rival and nothing else.” With his ears pinned back, he stopped in front of the cage. “We are not close. We are not friends.”
“I didn’t say you were,” said Nine with a smirk.
Shadow’s eyes widened a bit, and the scowl immediately disappeared. Nine’s smile grew bigger. Though the others had overpowered him in physical combat through sheer strength in numbers, Nine had yet to meet his match in a battle of wits, and Shadow would be no exception.
“Haven’t you been spending all this time trapped outside the gateways,” asked Nine, tilting his head in mock innocence, “unable to go home or do anything? What’s it like to be that helpless? Sonic might have betrayed me, but I was never that dependent on him. Just how badly do you need that blue dummy, huh?” He let out a chuckle. “Some ‘ultimate lifeform’ you are.”
Shadow had apparently been far less prepared for the earlier jab than he was now; Nine’s insults had no visible effect at all this time. Looking simply bored, Shadow shrugged and said, “I prefer to do things my own way, but I know how to get along with others. I wouldn’t expect you to understand. It’s a skill you obviously never learned, considering where you are now.”
Nine’s smile dropped, and he bared his teeth when he snapped, “Where I am now has nothing to do with any of my skills! Do you have any idea how many people Sonic needed to rope in to take down a single eight year old genius?” He forced his smile back onto his face, and his ears flattened on his head. “Do you not realize how pathetic that is?”
“Hmm.” Shadow’s mouth curved up into its own subtle, sardonic smile. “Yes. Sonic and his army of friends. That really is your biggest problem, isn’t it?” His eyes narrowed. “Do you have any idea why?”
“I was outnumbered, obviously.”
Shadow shook his head. “Your biggest problem is that you never learned how to share.”
Nine blinked at him, and his voice was flat when he said, “What?”
Shadow’s smirk grew just big enough to match Nine’s from earlier. “You don’t have any friends, but Sonic makes friends everywhere he goes, and you hate that.”
“What?” Nine repeated, voice a bit higher. “That’s stupid, I don’t–”
“You sent your robots to focus on Mangey and Sails because you couldn’t stand the thought that Sonic might actually like them, too. You threw me in a hole and kept me down there with a robot army because Sonic having a living remnant of Green Hill pisses you off.” Shadow tapped an index finger to his own head. “Even with all those brains of yours, the fact that Sonic could be friends with you, Mangey, Sails, Tails, and me is something you can’t wrap your head around. The idea that his stupid heart is big enough for everyone in his life is utterly incomprehensible to you.”
Eyes round, Nine could only sputter, “That– No, he– I don’t care about…”
Shadow sighed and rolled his eyes. “That’s the problem with Sonic. He’s sentimental. He gets attached. And once he latches onto someone, he never lets them go.” He turned away to gaze upward at nothing. “That’s why he’s been trying so hard to bring back Green Hill and all his old friends, even though they’re dead and gone.” He brought his gaze back down to cast a disdainful glare at Nine. “It’s why he’s been spending the past two hours trying to convince his new friends to rescue you, even though you’re the reason their universes are falling apart. You abandoned him in Green Hill and left him to die. You tried to kill him here in the Grimm. But he’s still vouching for you because he sees something in you that no one else does.” He wrinkled his nose, leaned a bit closer toward the cage, and repeated, “No one.”
By now, Nine had regathered his bearings enough to flatten his ears again and hiss, “You got a point to make?”
“I do.” Shadow crossed his arms and took a step back. “Your little temper tantrum has not only threatened the existence of the universe, but it’s also about to cost you the only friendship you’ve ever had. You’re angry at Sonic because he doesn't know what you want.” The smirk wasn’t there anymore; he only looked genuinely irritated when he asked, “But how can you blame him when even you don’t know what you want?”
“I do know what I want!” Nine snarled, pulling himself up to stand. With two of his tails puffed up and the other seven raised high, he said, “I’ve spelled it out to Sonic and every other fool across the Shatterverse, including you: I want to be left alone in the Grimm where no one can bother me!” He pointed up at the ceiling. “And once I get out of this primitive cage and stabilize the Prism, I’ll make it happen once and for all.”
Shadow shook his head. “Take it from someone who knows: you’re not the loner type.”
Nine bared his teeth. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“Correction: I don’t care about you.”
“Then why are you here?”
Shadow crossed his arms, and his brows furrowed like he was genuinely considering the question. “You remind Sonic of his friend, Tails.” His gaze flickered around Nine’s scrawny frame, pausing at the pinned ears, the teeth, and the clenched grip on the cage bars. “You remind me of someone else.”
Nine scoffed. “Let me guess: Eggman?”
Shadow blinked, and his head tilted a bit. “Hmm.” For just a moment, his gaze softened into something that Nine absolutely refused to call pity, but then it went cold again, and he said, “I’m wasting my time down here, aren’t I?”
Something exploded upstairs, and both broke eye contact to look upward toward the source. By the time Nine glanced back down, Shadow had already turned to leave without another word, apparently deciding that any final insult or parting one-liner was not worth spending on him. Nine let in a long, thin breath through his nose, and as soon as the hedgehog was out of sight, he allowed himself one single childish moment to kick the cage wall, imagining it was Shadow’s stupid little nose.
Releasing the bars, he focused his attention on the cage’s locking mechanism. Eggman tech. Rudimentary, just like he’d predicted. It took barely thirty seconds of tinkering before the cage door clicked open. However, as soon as his seven tails shifted to legs and he skittered out onto the open floor, he paused and blinked at the doorway. Now what?
Prism. Grimm. Solitude. Right. His headache must be worse than he thought.
Nine darted into the hallway and crept his way up the cathedral walls, shifting into the shadows and making his way back toward the lab. He tried not to get too cranky about all the holes and scrapes along the walls from where the two armies had decided to conduct battle and wreck his house; once he had the Paradox Prism, he could repair and rebuild whatever he wanted. He’d have more turrets this time. Maybe some laser cannons.
He passed some fights along the way. Dr. Babble threw into a wall one of the red echidnas, who merely bounced back onto his feet, yelled something about scurvy, and launched back into the scrap. One of the bat ladies glided dangerously close to Nine’s location but was too focused on Dr. Done-it. Nine skittered around them, but then his seven little robot legs scraped to a stop at the unmistakable sight of two foxes dodging bullets and punches from Dr. Deep’s robots. Mangey and Sails had survived the bomb?
Though he stayed out of sight, Nine froze against the wall to confront the odd sensation that rose up within him at the sight of his counterparts. Was it relief? Well. Maybe? Sort of. If his counterparts were good at surviving things, that boded well for him, too. Yeah, that was probably it.
He scrambled around a pillar and crept onto the floor as he reached his laboratory. Inside, yet another fight was taking place. Shadow was outnumbered against five robots, holding his own but making no ground. If he noticed Nine slip into the room, he was too busy to acknowledge it. The Paradox Prism was right where Nine had left it, glowing brighter than before. Nine’s computers were whirring from activity, and up on a platform near the wall was another cage, this one as round as a hamster ball, and inside was–
“Sonic?” Nine jumped out of the shadows. “What are you doing in there?” He raced across the room and skidded to a stop in front of the cage. Sonic was glowing, teeth gritted and eyes squeezed shut. His legs trembled, and Nine’s gaze trailed down to the large cables draped across the floor, connecting the cage to the Paradox Prism. Though the hamster ball was Eggman tech, everything else was his own. He recognized immediately what was happening.
Distantly, he heard Sonic call out, “Nine! Nine, you’re okay! You got out!” Nine’s head swiveled to face him, and all the exertion and pain was gone from Sonic’s features, replaced with relief. Somewhere to their left, Nine heard Shadow angrily yell something, but he didn’t care much; something ugly and heavy was settling into his gut. Sonic sank to his knees, and he said, “I saw the palm trees. Nine, I’m so sorry–”
“How did they catch you?” Nine muttered. He heard a robot slam into a wall somewhere close by, but his gaze stayed on the hedgehog.
“I gave myself up,” said Sonic, and that ugly, heavy feeling turned as hot as melting iron. “They’re taking the energy that they need to heal the Prism, and then they’re letting you and the others go.”
“What?” snapped Nine. “You surrendered to the Chaos Council and not me ?”
To his absolute outrage, Sonic’s gaze actually left him for a moment, distracted by some other nonsense that Shadow and the robots were pulling, and Nine clenched his fists to fight the trembling in his limbs. “All I wanted was a home to myself in the Grimm; they want to rule the Shatterverse! Why am I so much worse, you literally teamed up with them to fight me?”
Sonic’s eyes snapped back to him, and his palms pressed against the walls of the cage. “This isn’t how things were supposed to go! I really thought you and I could talk things out, but you can’t reason with the Council–”
“Then why ?” asked Nine, hating the way his voice cracked. “Why are you giving them what they want after everything?” With his two puffed tails lashing, smacking against the cold seven, he narrowed his eyes and asked, “What did they offer you? What did they have that I didn’t?”
Metallic crunches sounded off elsewhere in the room, but Sonic stared at Nine like he couldn’t quite comprehend the question. Then Shadow came crashing into the platform, bouncing off with a pained grunt. Almost landing on his feet without stumbling, he took his eyes off the robots just long enough to glare at Nine and snap, “What did they have? A hostage , you idiot.” He didn’t wait for a response; he clenched his fists and pounced again on the nearest robot.
Nine blinked at the empty space where Shadow had stumbled, momentarily too stunned to speak. Slowly, he mumbled, “I see.” His gaze lifted back up to Sonic, who looked like he was trying to smile through his pained grimace and sheepish shrug. “They used me to get to you.” Nine’s ears flattened on his head, and he crossed his arms. Refusing to acknowledge the pang that rose in his chest, he masked it with a sneer. “You got attached. That’s your biggest weakness.”
“No,” said Sonic, immediately sitting up straighter and speaking with a vigor that Nine hadn’t predicted. “Water is my greatest weakness. Having friends is a strength.”
Nine’s smile faltered, and he glanced away. On the opposite side of the room, Shadow was wholeheartedly attempting to beat a robot to death with its own severed arm. The other four robots formed a wall between Shadow and the hamster ball; they either hadn’t noticed Nine, or they had calculated that Shadow was the bigger threat. Nine couldn’t decide which answer was the bigger insult.
“This is the only way to fix things,” said Sonic, voice softening. “Everyone’s homes are falling apart, but like you said, repairing the Prism will put them back together, right? And pulling the energy out of me will fix the Prism.”
Nine gripped at his own arms. In his attempt to look at anything other than Sonic, his attention shifted to the cables connecting the hamster ball to his computers. The monitor had silhouettes of both Sonic and the Prism on display, but as Nine read the numbers on the screen, his shoulders stiffened.
Sonic said, “A-and since you broke yourself out, I don’t have to worry about the Council breaking their word–”
“They’re not using the machine correctly,” interrupted Nine, eyes wide and unblinking. Up on the highest platform at the opposite side of the room from Shadow, the Paradox Prism continued to increase in luminosity, and on the monitor, the silhouette of Sonic turned dimmer. Turning his body to face the computer, Nine said, “It’s on too high a frequency. They’re pulling out the Prism energy, but–”
“Ah,” said Sonic, and Nine could almost hear another stupid, sheepish smile. “That explains why my legs feel like jelly.”
Nine didn’t recall moving, but before he could even think about it, he found himself already at his computer and typing at the keyboard. “I’m gonna fix it. Those dolts don’t know what they’re doing.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he knew it wasn’t true. This was probably the only time the Council of Five knew exactly what they were doing.
The stomps of robotic footsteps drowned out the clicks of the keyboard. While the tech-savvy parts of his brain took front and center, his quieter voice of critical thinking– the part that had been beaten and battered during the possession of the Prism– softly pointed out that the robots were obviously here to guard Sonic and the Paradox Prism, and now that Nine was interfering–
He heard the unmistakable whir of a laser gun loading, and then Shadow shouted, “ Move –!” Nine only had time to flick an ear back toward the commotion before the gun fired somewhere behind him. He heard a grunt of pain and the thud of someone hitting the floor.
Sonic called out, “Shadow!” Nine turned in time to watch one of the remaining four robots grab Shadow by the ankle and lift him off the floor. Shadow swung his body upward to grab onto the robot’s fist, practically snarling at its audacity. Meanwhile, Sonic lunged against the wall of his cage in a feeble attempt at a spin dash, but he merely tumbled onto its curved floor. Rolling onto his hands and knees, he yelped, “Nine! Nine, forget about me, you gotta help Shadow!”
Nine’s teeth ground together beneath his closed-mouthed scowl. “Oh yeah?” He closed his free hand into a fist when he glared at Sonic. “No duplicates of Mr. Ultimate Lifeform, huh? Guess he won’t be as easy to replace as the ‘real’ Tails, will he?”
Sonic’s eyes went round, and Nine mashed the enter key. As his draining machinery shut down, he spun to face the Paradox Prism, and he let out a small gasp. The cracks of the Prism were gone; the gem had healed completely.
“Nine!” said Sonic. “Nine, wait–” Distantly, Nine heard the robot slam Shadow into the floor, and then Sonic collided against the cage wall with another failed spin dash. “Shadow, hold on!”
With the key to everything he wanted glowing faintly on the pedestal above, Nine briefly tore his gaze away to the other side of the room, where the other three robots had gathered around the victorious fourth, who still had Shadow dangling in the air. To his credit, Shadow showed no trace of fear; underneath the slipping mask of stoicism, he looked utterly baffled to be in his current predicament. The robots, who seemed to have finally concluded that hedgehogs were not bulletproof, raised their laser guns to point at Shadow from four angles.
Nine owed him nothing. He raised his seven tails to point back at the Prism, and just as he summoned his green lasers to make contact, he heard Sonic yell, “Shadow! No! NO, PLEASE–”
The Prism’s power seeped into his flesh, and Nine felt a chill hit his bones. He’d done his own pleading years ago. He couldn’t remember the bullies’ names or even their faces, but he remembered how small he’d felt. He remembered how he’d been outnumbered, the way he’d begged for help, the way his voice had broken, just like Sonic’s did now.
Nine’s thin body filled with energy, clean and sharp and limitless. Shadow glared into the glowing barrel of the closest gun with his teeth bared. Nine pulled his metallic tails away from the Prism, locked on to the four robots, and fired.
Four beams of green blasted across the room. Nine winced at the blinding light and shrieks of obliterated metal. The four robots collapsed onto the floor in shredded pieces, dropping Shadow with them, but he barely hit the ground before he scrambled back onto his feet. The surprise had caused his stoic mask to slip again; his eyes were wild and maybe just a teeny bit frightened when he glanced around at his fallen enemies, but then his head snapped up to face Nine.
Squinting in suspicion, he asked, “Why did you save me?”
Nine blinked, and his shoulders sagged before he muttered, “I don’t know.” His gaze dropped onto a scalded flesh wound on Shadow’s abdomen, one from a bullet that had hit him from the side, the only bullet that hadn’t been meant for Shadow at all. Nine’s eyes shifted back up, and he asked, “Why did you save me ?”
Shadow’s ears perked up. “I don’t know.” He stared quizzically at Nine, who wondered how closely their facial expressions were matching, but then a soft thump from the hamster ball caused them both to turn.
For one bitter, nasty moment, Nine thought that Sonic had finally learned how to shut his mouth when people were focused on something other than him. In truth, Sonic had collapsed in the cage, trembling and struggling to breathe. Nine gasped and ran to the platform, clambering up to the cage to prod at it with his metal tails. The locking mechanism was barely trickier than the last, and the cage fell apart within seconds. Sonic slipped off the edge of the platform, but Shadow was already there to catch him.
“Nine.” Sonic sluggishly slid his feet under his body in a feeble attempt to stand on his own. “Nine, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to– I shouldn’t have called him the ‘real’ Tails.” Opening his bleary eyes as wide as they would go, he locked contact with Nine. “You’re real too, I know that, I swear!”
Nine mumbled, “You don’t need to do this.”
“We have bigger problems right now,” said Shadow, pulling Sonic’s arm around his own shoulders.
“No, listen! This is important!” With his legs trembling, Sonic finally gave up his attempt to stand and instead leaned fully against Shadow, but he kept his focus on the young fox. “I’m sorry I kept assuming so much about you and what you wanted. You’re so much like Tails, you really are! You’re both smart and brave and super cool– You’re who he could have been! He’s who you could have been… if things were different.” Panting, his gaze dropped to the floor. “He’s my wingman. My best friend. That’s why I wanted to be your friend, too… because you’re the same… in every way that counts.”
Nine’s two fluffy tails drooped to the floor. He couldn’t remember a time where anyone had apologized to him, but this was probably the part where he was supposed to not be angry anymore. Before he could choke some vague statements of forgiveness out of his body, he heard rumbling from outside the room.
He looked up just as three bat ladies came flying inside from a large open hole in the cathedral ceiling, and more of Sonic’s friends started pouring in from the doorway. Nine felt several sets of eyes land on him and hated how his first instinct was to shrink back against the wall. He forced himself to remain still, but all nine of his tails bristled at the sudden cacophony.
“Sonic!” said one of the pink hedgehogs. “There you are!”
“What happened?” asked one of the bats, drifting down to land among her peers.
“You!” One of the echidnas stomped toward Nine. “Get away from the Prism!”
More members of the army flanked the echidna and followed him. Two of Nine’s tails poofed up, and the other seven curled like scorpion tails to defend himself. Sonic made some pathetic lurch toward Nine, but Shadow held fast to his arm. Sonic waved his free hand frantically and shouted, “Guys, guys, stop! Nine saved me! He saved Shadow, too!”
At least two of the pink hedgehogs gasped in surprise. Mangey and Sails side-eyed each other. The three bats had identically raised eyebrows. Nine tried to meet the scrutiny of every Shatterverse resident with squared shoulders, but a twinkling from above caught his attention.
The pirate echidna shook his head and said, “Methinks it’s just a ploy to get to the Treasure–”
Tilting his head up, Nine pointed toward the hole in the ceiling and said, “Guys, look!”
“Aha, you see!” said the echidna. “He thinks we’ll fall for the ‘Look over there’ trick–”
Despite the crowd’s skepticism, a few members actually did turn and look, and then there were more shocked gasps. Up above, four sets of glowing gateways were materializing in the sky. While everyone else in the room whispered and gushed in excitement, a heavy lead weight dropped in Nine’s gut. He’d heard Sonic warning him about the Shatterverse falling apart, but Nine hadn’t realized the extent of the damage until now, watching it all be undone. He’d never looked up. He’d never cared.
Wondering if harnessing the nearby Paradox Prism would give him the power to sink into the floor and hide, Nine almost didn’t hear Sonic ask, “Wait a minute, where’s the Chaos Council?”
“Arr!” The pink pirate turned to him and grinned. “You shoulda seen it, laddie! The Chaos Council had us all on the ropes, ya see,” She reached over and grabbed Sails by the shoulder, “but then Sails went and asked ‘em, ‘Which one o’ ya’s gonna be in charge when you have the Treasure for yourselves?’”
The wild-looking red echidna punched at the air. “They turned on each other like a pack of starving hyenas!” He glanced aside at his own fox companion. “Then our Mangey here got his grubby little paws on one of their, uh, teleporting thingies…”
“Long story short,” said Rebel Rouge, someone whose name Nine actually knew, “they’re all floating around in space, probably still bickering over who’s the leader in the bunch.”
“That’s our clever lad!” said the echidna pirate, giving Sails a hearty slap on his other shoulder. The wild echidna gave Mangey an enthusiastic head scratch. Renegade Knucks made brief eye contact with Nine, wrinkled his nose, and loudly huffed.
As the four gateways completed their self-repairs, they started glowing, and Nine heard a pained grunt. He and most of the others turned to Sonic, who was… no longer solid. As translucent as the ghosts Nine briefly saw in Green Hill, Sonic leaned against Shadow, who was trying– and failing– to appear utterly unconcerned about this development.
“What’s happening?” yelped one of the pink hedgehogs. “Why is he fading?”
All three of the echidnas and a few others whipped their heads around to glare at Nine, who fought every self-preservation instinct in his body, turned away from them, and looked at the monitor screen across the room. “The Prism, it’s–” Nine frowned. “It’s stable, but… The Shatterverse isn’t.”
“Why not?” asked one of the bats.
Nine turned his gaze back up to the stars, where it landed on the brightest, most distant gateway. “Green Hill is the origin of the Shatterverse, and it’s still missing something.” His eyes dropped back down to land on Sonic. “You.”
There was some muttering among the crowd, and Sonic perked his ears up. Nine took a couple steps backwards, closer to his computer and further from Sonic and his friends. “If my understanding of the Paradox Prism is accurate, and, uh, it probably is, considering…” He gestured vaguely at himself, “everything…” He cleared his throat. “If you get back to Green Hill, your body will stabilize, and Green Hill will go back to the way it was. You’ll get your friends back, and… you’ll be where you belong.”
Shadow nodded tersely. “We need to go home.”
In a single, swift movement, he swung Sonic around to face the doorway. Sonic feebly kicked in protest and said, “W-wait, what’s gonna happen to Nine? And Knucks, and Thorn, and… Are their homes gonna come back? Are they still gonna exist if Green Hill gets fixed?”
“Dunno,” said Shadow.
“Nine?” Sonic squirmed in Shadow's grip until he could face the fox again. “What– what’s gonna happen, Nine?”
Nine bristled, completely unprepared for Sonic to look to him for a straight answer, eyes wide with an unwavering trust that Nine had certainly not earned. Must be projecting his affection for Tails again.
He considered the truth: if repairing the Prism hadn’t been enough to stabilize the Shatterverse, then the remaining instability was due to an anomaly. Nine didn’t have to think hard to figure out the missing pieces: they were both standing right in front of him, but one was fading fast. Sonic had no counterparts in the Shatterspaces, and that meant even if Sonic returned home, the Shatterverse would always be out of balance. For Green Hill and the Shatterverse to coexist, stable and whole, Sonic would have to disappear. If that didn’t happen…
Well. Everyone else would simply have to figure it out the hard way.
Judging by the naked faith on Sonic’s face, Tails was the type to give an honest answer. But Nine wasn’t the trustworthy sidekick of this story, much less the hero. He was the villain. So like any other villain, he lied. “We’ll be fine. I entered in some, uh, algorithms, with the Prism. Everything will heal up as soon as you get to Green Hill.”
Raw hope lit Sonic’s fading features. “Promise?”
Nine felt the eyes of every single resident of the Shatterspaces on him, but he kept his gaze on the one person in the room who mattered. “I promise.”
There were words of encouragement from the others. A few bland statements about friendship and loyalty. Up in the distant sky, the gleaming white gateway to Green Hill had opened. There was a pause in the chatter just long enough for Nine to crack and latch onto Sonic with a hug that was, in hindsight, probably very awkward; it wasn’t like Nine had experience. Sonic hugged him back anyway, but then he was yanked away and placed onto that giant pink bird, and then he was soaring away, blending into the dark blue and instantly disappearing from sight.
Nine wasn’t sure when the rest of the Shatterverse residents took off, some fleeing for their own gateways, others following Sonic. He wasn’t paying attention, so it was possible (but unlikely) that at least one of the others had offered him a ride back to New Yoke. Either way, he hadn’t responded, which is how he found himself left behind on the Grimm with the Paradox Prism, alone, just like he’d always wanted.
Behind him, his computers made some ominous beeping sounds. Unpredicted readings, perhaps. He didn’t turn to analyze them; whatever they had to say, none of it would matter in a few seconds. He knew the instant that Sonic made contact with Green Hill because the bead of white suddenly flickered. There was a fraction of an instant where the light splintered into three colors, matching the gateways to New Yoke, No Place, and Boscage, but Nine barely had time to comprehend it before blinding white drowned the rest of the universe.