Chapter Text
Thunder, rain and lightning poured from the sky, and a massive object was hurling through the sky. Angel Island was falling into the ocean!
"MWAHAHAHA!" cried a metallic voice, "Now, Sonic, my loathsome copy! Bow before your Master Overlord!" The evil Neo Metal Sonic had transformed with the power of the Master Emerald, and he had Sonic, Shadow, and Knuckles in his clutches!
Just then, the Resistance showed up! Amy, Vector, Espio, Charmy, Shadow, Rouge, Blaze, Silver, and Tangle and Whisper charged through the sky to take on the metal menace.
They were doing good progress, until the beast flung them off of him into the air, right into a freefall!
"BEGONE, PARASITES!"
"No!", shouted Silver, "I can't let them down, I CAN'T!"
The hedgehog then proceeded to grab everyone with his psychokinesis. He struggled just to focus on them all.
Then suddenly, Master Overlord's booming voice rang in Silver's ears: "UNWORTHY CHILD!" The monster then whacked Silver with his tail, sending him flying towards the... ground?
Silver looked up and saw that he had landed on a battle-scorched field. The whole place had been burned, and in the distance, he could see a city on fire.
"What-?" he began to ask, when he suddenly heard a familiar, spine-chilling sound and turned around to see... INFINITE?
The jackal cackled with a laugh that could shake the earth,
"All of this, all of this destruction, is the fault of you, because you couldn't stop ME."
"No!" Silver cried, "You're lying! You're the monster who did this!" He prepared to attack, only for the Jackal to laugh once more.
"You couldn't stop me then, so what makes you think you can defeat me now?"
Silver then lunged at Infinite, only to be blocked by his Phantom Ruby powers, and was then overrun by Phantom Copies.
Silver struggled, trying desperately to get to Infinite, who only kept laughing his awful cackle, as he then sent Silver flying into a dark, eerie room. Silver could still hear Infinite's laugh, but it quickly turned into a different voice, one that made Silver pale. He turned around, and there he was, the monster who had hurt his friends, standing on a ledge above him: MIMIC!
"This... this can't be," said Silver, "You're DEAD!"
"Am I?" asked Mimic, "Or are they?"
Mimic then motioned to a bunch of monitors that appeared throughout the room. They all turned on to reveal all of Silvers friends, Blaze, the Diamond Cutters, everyone, and they were all being swarmed by Badniks and monsters.
"NOOOOO!" Silver yelled in fury, he then charged at the octopus in full force yelling "TRAITOR!", but when he struck the blow, the whole room shattered like glass!
Silver found himself in the middle of a city street - Central City, to be exact. He looked around, and the place had clearly been torn up. He looked down the street and gasped in horror: Surge was fighting Whisper!
"I... I can stop this, I have to stop this!" he exclaimed as he started to fly towards the battle, but the further and faster he went, the farther away the battle seemed to be.
Then, the whole city set ablaze! Silver looked on in horror as he saw each of his friends, one by one, be devoured by the flames. All he could do was watch as suddenly, the Ifrit appeared and sent a plume of fire towards Silver, engulfing him in flames!
"NOOOOOOO!" Silver screamed in agony as he got up from his bed, covered in sweat and tears. He was in his bedroom in Restoration HQ, and he has just had another nightmare.
The white hedgehog then pulled himself from his bed and slowly trudged towards the DC living room, and sat on the couch. He felt a deep sense of unease, and most importantly, he was scared.
"Silver?" a voice suddenly said behind him. Silver got up in surprise to see Whisper standing there in her nightgown.
"Oh, sorry, you startled me." said Silver.
"No need to apologize." said Whisper. She had a look of deep concern. Then she said, "Was it the nightmare again?"
Silver paused, and then solemnly nodded and sat down. Whisper proceeded to sit next to him.
The hedgehog then finally spoke: "This time... you-know-who showed up too. He... he said you were all dead."
Whisper seemed a bit shocked, but then kindly put a hand on his shoulder. "I've had nightmares like that too."
"It's just," Silver began, "I feel like... like everything depends on me, and if I mess up, I'll... I'll lose everything, and so will everyone else. Do... do you know what it's like? To constantly be afraid of what the future might hold?"
"You know that I do." said Whisper.
Silver then sighed and, after looking at the pictures on the wall, said "I... came to this time to stop Eggman from taking over the world and to stop the war, but it started, and he took it over anyway. I failed to stop him, and so many people suffered, so many people died, and I couldn't do anything. If I had been better, if I had stopped him-"
"Don't go down that route." said Whisper.
"Don't you get it, Whisper?" Silver suddenly said, "If I had just managed to stop Eggman and Infinite in the first place, then the war would have never started, and... and all of those people that died would still be alive! Including your old teammates! But I failed them! I failed them all! They're gone, you suffered, and it's MY FAULT! It's all my fault!" Silver then buried his head in his hands and began sobbing.
Whisper was taken aback, and then held Silver's face so that they saw eye-to-eye, "Don't you dare blame yourself for what happened! You are not to blame, and I don't blame you! Sure, you couldn't stop the war, but you didn't know what would happen! But you helped to end the war, and you even stopped the Metal Virus! And you wanna know how? Because you were doing your best, which is all you can do."
Silver then stopped, and said "But what if the best isn't good enough? What if someone dies, what if...?"
"You wanna know something I learned?" said Whisper, "It's that you can't live your life in fear, you have to be willing to live and take risks, because otherwise, that's not living. And... if your best isn't good enough, just know that it's good enough for me, and Tangle, and Lanolin, and everyone else."
Silver then succumbed and fell into the wolfs arms. In the past, Whisper would have never gotten this close to him, let alone hugged him. But time had changed her.
After several minutes, Silver sat up and wiped his face.
"Better?" asked Whisper.
"Yeah, a bit, thanks" Silver replied.
But suddenly, a weird noise came from behind the two. They turned around and saw a strange-looking portal in the room, and out of it came Badniks!
Silver immediately used his psychokinesis to make quick work of the Badniks, but instead of falling to pieces like a normal Badnik, it glitched like a video game and disappeared in a flash of light, along with the portal!
Whisper was in shock. "What... was that?" She asked waringly.
"I don't know," said Silver, who then turned to the wolf with a serious look on his face, "assemble the team."
To be continued...