Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I’ve got you now, Sonic!” Eggman crooned.

Sonic, who’d found himself solidly trapped, hated to admit his archnemesis could be right about that.

His fault for being sloppy. Eggman had been setting up bases left and right and robots had flooded over the continents; often a clear indication the good Doctor was plotting something, and therefore ample reason to pay him a ‘visit’. Thus, Sonic had blasted off and broken into the first base he’d encountered, in a snowy mountain region absolutely stocked with obnoxious searchlights. Eggman either sucked at being subtle or wasn’t trying in the first place, Sonic had smirked to himself amusedly before going right on the attack.

But where tearing through Eggman’s army left and right and descending into the belly of the base had been easy, almost too easy, his final Spindash had made Sonic rush into an odd cylindrical room made solely of metal.

And the exit had fallen shut behind him with an ominous thud.

Sonic was never one to let himself be locked up into rooms of which the exits fell shut with ominous thuds, for that was always a bad sign. He’d whirled around on his heels and tried blasting back the exact same way… but the half-second he’d needed for that had been enough to trap him completely. And to Eggman’s credit, despite Sonic’s various kicks and full-body slams, not even the slightest dents had been made in the walls since.

Also the huge broadcasting screen spanning a significant part of the circumference of the room had been as crisp and clean as one could expect from Eggman technology when it had sprung to life.

It had made it all the easier to see how Eggman’s smirk oozed with danger.

Still, Sonic rolled his eyes by reflex at the cliché words getting flung his way. Nothing he hadn’t heard before. And yet, at the same time… Exits falling shut ominously was one thing, but Eggman appearing on broadcasting screens another. It made the sense of unease that had been gnawing at Sonic’s quills from the moment he got trapped grow only stronger. Why wasn’t the man in this room too? Where was he then, if not here? The scene of the area behind Eggman told Sonic little: endless green screens with dots and colours coated the walls, while beside him Sonic discerned something that looked like a big red lever. Weird.

But like heck Sonic would show any worries or questions, and thus the speedster put a similar dangerous smile on his face and scoldingly wagged a finger. “Not even here to greet me in person, Eggman? How rude of you.”

His archnemesis cackled in turn. “In what world would I put myself in a room with you, ready to be attacked?”

“Hmm. Good point,” Sonic nodded with mock understanding. The fact that Eggman often hung out in his Egg Mobile in the midst of the action was a thought firm in his mind, but also the speedster knew the madman would long have gotten grabbed by the throat should he also have been here in this strange cylindrical chamber. But that just meant Sonic could focus all his attention on getting out, and thus he launched himself into a Spindash once more.

“Trying to escape? Don’t even think of it,” got grinned at him from the screen as Sonic blasted off, this attack aimed right at Eggman’s pixeled face. “With my calculations and genius, even you cannot break through these reinforced walls, dear Sonic!”

Thunking back to the ground with a grunt and the wall remaining rather unmoving and undented did add some oomph to those statements, Sonic had to concede. A leer sent to the spot he’d been trying to hammer through showed it as unharmed as all the others. Sonic himself was slightly less lucky: sturdy as he was when it came to running into robots and objects at high speeds, he had to be careful not to slam headfirst into walls too many times. A slight ache had already begun forming on his scalp.

But Sonic wouldn’t be Sonic if he didn’t face such a situation with a grin on his face and sass galore.

“Aw, rats,” the speedster pouted exaggeratedly, pushing himself to his feet with silly tumbles and mocking spins. “You did get me, Doc. Whatever will I do now? How will I ever escape from your terrifying little empty room? Or are you going to wait until I die of boredom?”

With an exaggerated yawn pushed past Sonic’s lips for accentuation the speedster sent Eggman a mocking smirk, the man’s eyes narrowing behind his glasses. “You will wish you’d have died of boredom here,” got spat out. “Finally you will no longer be a pain in my side! I’ve created the ultimate plan to rid myself of you once and for all!”

“Same thing you always say. And guess what has never worked out?” Sonic winked back. No way he’d show Eggman that slamming head-first into probably dozens-of-inches-thick metallic walls had smarted the slightest bit; the speedster stood tall as ever, one hand casually placed on his side.

Eggman cackled anew.

With another roll of his eyes at the dramatic handswayings and gesturings of his archnemesis that accompanied his laughter Sonic tapped his foot. “I’m waiting for the big reveal, Eggman.”

…Which turned out to be an Emerald, pulled out of the doctor’s pocket with dramatic flair.

Sonic raised an eyebrow. “Wow. Spooky.”

But the speedster could not deny Eggman grinned far too eagerly for a plot that just involved materialising Emeralds and not much else. And the moment Sonic’s eyes laid on the glowing gemstone, those prickles of unease in his quills got a dozenfold worse.

“Let me ask you a question, Sonic,” Eggman began his spiel. “What is your knowledge on dimensions?”

“Length, width, and height,” Sonic hummed, curling himself into a Spindash again. Might as well keep trying to get out while he was getting evilly monologued at.

“Yes, very good. However, are you aware there is a fourth as well?”

Grumbling as he crashed into the wall again and nothing happened again either, Sonic landed back onto the ground. “That’s time,” he humoured Eggman further, rubbing his temples. “Which you are wastin’ now, Eggman. Can we get to the point?”

“When my plan has been enacted, you will find yourself wishing that you’d spent longer listening to me,” the madman smirked at him. “If you find yourself wishing anything at all, that is! A plunge into the timestream as I am planning now has never been done by anyone before. Some would consider themselves lucky to be able to stand at the frontier of such a grand, unexplored-!”

“Hmhm. The timestream?” Sonic interrupted.

A second dirty look got sent his way, Eggman’s arms crossing and one finger tapping the top of the Emerald. “Tsk, tsk. I know this is incomprehensible for a lesser mind like yours, but try to keep up. I shall even shorten it for your impatient self,” the doctor chastised. “No matter what I do, you are always there to stop me. Yet, you have proven impossible to kill. If I were to throw a nuclear bomb on top of my base right now, you would be guaranteed to survive. Somehow.”

While smugly regarding the peeved look forming on his nemesis’ face, Sonic nodded with fake sympathy. “I can tell you why, Eggman. It’s entirely out of spite.”

“Call it spite, call it luck, call it fate; I don’t care,” Eggman growled back. His crossed arms tightened, the Emerald slowly thrown up and down in one hand, and Sonic stopped himself from curling into a ball again. He’d best listen to the big reveal Eggman would no doubt drop now… “All it has shown me is that I need something more. Something bigger. Something inescapable. Something that is not within the realms and possibilities of this world, so I can finally free myself of your presence! Something that is not a different dimension of space, for I know you can travel between those!” the other continued, and with each tumble of the Emerald in his hand, his smirk grew. “Something that has escaped the minds of all… except for me, of course.”

“And that would be the timestream,” Sonic concluded slowly, pursing his lips as he pondered. “Hey, Eggman, that’s great and all, but I’ve time-travelled before.”

“Indeed you have, dear Sonic. But that was with a specific destination in mind, in a place noted for its temporal anomalies. Here, however, I shall be sending you into the timestream, but not to somewhere. Just as how you can get lost between dimensions of space if you are not travelling to a specific other one, you can get lost in time if there is no destination set. And why would I send you somewhere specific?”

Sonic’s mind whirred, his brows furrowing. “…Yeahhhhh. That all sounds pretty unbelievable to me,” he settled on with a scoff. He had no idea if Eggman was right or not, but like heck he’d show any doubt or willingness to listen to what the madman said.

Yet Eggman’s grin only grew larger and larger. “Say goodbye to all you know and love, Sonic!” got crooned out. “Your rotten friends will never be able to find you in the tesseract that is time!”

“I have friends, contrary to some other people here. And they happen to be the smartest people in the world,” Sonic shrugged back callously. “They’ll either find out what to do and rescue me before anything happens, or they won’t but keep fighting all the same. You know none of us will ever give up.”

Eggman merely laughed.

“Farewell forever, Sonic the Hedgehog!” the man cackled, before he threw the Emerald up one more time with a dramatic flair. And then he caught it, and he spun around, and slammed it inside a machine of sorts Sonic couldn’t really make out amidst all those endless green screens, and with another ominous thud things crashed down and jumped up and began moving while lights began flickering and whirs began echoing and…!

Sonic’s head snapped upward as waves of pink burst from the ceiling.

They coated the walls of the room, torrents of a crackling energy jumping from ceiling to floor and back again. Sonic’s quills spiked, the sense of unease surging into one of dread, of get out, now!, and one last time the speedster shot into a ball, rushing at the metal wall…

And crying out as he ricocheted right off against the forcefield the pink energy had formed, pain blasting through his body.

Sonic dazedly shook his head, scowling as Eggman's whoops and cheers of victory filled the air. “You’re done for, Sonic! Finally, I have created the end for you!”

“Never,” the speedster growled back. He would just have to be faster than time itself, than whatever Eggman was planning…! With a deep breath drawn Sonic concentrated, legs kicking into movement underneath him yet body remaining in place. With enough speed thrown at it, maybe he could disrupt whatever that pink energy was somehow-!

But before Sonic could blast off, Eggman leaned forward to grab the big red lever beside and pulled it back in one fell swoop.

And the world shifted.

Sonic was still running. Or was he? Because Eggman roared with laughter as the speedster yelped, and the floor underneath him disappeared, and he got pulled upwards, towards the ceiling, towards the pink, legs uselessly flailing underneath him, his body spinning in helpless tumbles as if he got sucked into a black hole-!

But he was Sonic, and nothing ever fazed him.

“I’ll see you again soon, Doc!” Sonic yelled out over the laughter and the crackles and the whirs and the chaos, shooting his trademark smirk down one final time. But then colours flooded his vision and the room disappeared and he tumbled into…!

Endlessness.

And immovability.

Greys and browns behind him, and greys and blacks and reds ahead. Or was it the other way around? Sonic tried to reach out to it, to anything. But everything slugged, and stilled, and even the grimace he tried to push on his face at the lead-heavy weight of his unmovable arm took what felt like forever to form. Or had it not formed at all? Infinite scenes stretched out ahead of him, and behind him, and around him too; the same, or different, and he could not tell.

Think, the speedster urged himself. He wasn’t stuck; he couldn’t be stuck. The timestream had to be traversable even when not on Little Planet.

But he just floated, thoughts coiling into an endless spill of nonsense and fear jolting in Sonic's chest as he caught them threatening to slip away. Around him, the scene of the room in the base shifted: it flickered between light and dark, but then dark overtook it fully. And it remained dark as Sonic floated past, or through. Endlessly, eternally, nothing different ahead, nothing changing, just a contorted view of that room and nothing else-

Except for a sparkle of cyan. And a tint of grey.

Sonic would have gasped, if his mouth could open. Help!, he wanted to cry out to it. Help me!

Desperately the speedster floundered to move, to reach out somehow, before it would be gone, before it would be lost…! I’m here! Get me out! he wished to yell, but his teeth remained clenched together and he would slip past the cyan and grey and it’d be gone, he’d be stuck here forever-!

But then cyan became more.

Became brighter.

Became everything.

And feeling flooded through Sonic, and he could move.

Sonic’s hand shot out, grabbing at the glow that had overtaken his whole vision. His other joined, a force tugging at him, stronger and stronger as the shifting of the world stilled into a single scene-!

“I got you! Hold on!” a voice cried, before Sonic’s whole body got jolted back into… being.

And Sonic, who had been in a Super Peel Out when Eggman sucked him into the timestream and who thus went from complete immovability to something quite a bit faster than Mach 1, flew.

Into a wall.

Headfirst.

With a cry the speedster smashed against the metal. And where he’d been aching already from his fruitless attempts at breaking out of Eggman’s room at normal Spindash speed, this time…!

A blast of pain reverberated through Sonic’s skull. Crackling and white-hot, it struck him right on his forehead before shooting through his brain, all his senses dulling except for the agony. Pain through his whole body followed next as Sonic ricocheted right off the wall and smacked onto the ground next, quills bending painfully as they bore the brunt of the fall. His heartbeat thudded in his ears, rasping breaths for air got sucked into his lungs, but it hurt, he hurt, and for a second he laid frozen… Each gasp drawn made his chest ache and itch, the hedgehog rasping out a cough and wincing at the pain going through him at the movement…!

His ears twitched feebly at the “What,” that got whispered out, a bit wayward. “You- Sonic?!”

The mention of his name made Sonic jolt. And that, alongside his twitching ears and his pained wheezes, meant he could move again…!

“Ouch,” was the first coherent thing the speedster managed to groan out.

And then he stifled a startled yelp at the noise that assaulted his ears.

“Sonic!” got cried anew, Sonic wincing in on himself at the echoes the yell of his name elicited. Blearily he shifted- before grimacing at footsteps thundering closer, the noise cutting out into merciful silence right beside his head. Trying to focus amidst the stars dancing in front of his vision Sonic swallowed, staring at the splotch of grey hovering over him. If he squinted, he could make out wide golden eyes… right above tan skin, and underneath that a sea of white…

All very familiar.

“Sonic,” Silver breathed anew, and Sonic dazedly realised that he’d never seen the other this spooked. “What are you- Are you okay?!”

“…Heya, Silver! Long time no see,” Sonic smiled back feebly. It had been a long time since he last met the psychic hedgehog in question, now that he thought about it. Which was pretty hard, actually; so hard he remembered only seconds later Silver had asked him a question he’d better answer, because he was getting stared at like he was a ghost. “Yeah… Yeah! I’m just great,” the speedster added, and even he knew it didn’t sound all that convincing.

Slowly the grey-furred hedgehog sunk onto one knee. “You don’t look like it. How did you even-” followed, almost surprisingly quietly… until Silver’s voice snapped right up into its usual loud self again. “Hey, don’t move! Let me help you.”

With his grimace only growing Sonic shifted anew, trying to sit upright instead of laying on the ground like a wet blanket. “No, no, that’s not needed,” he tried to wave Silver off in the meantime. He would have accentuated his protest with a callous flick of a hand, were it not he was a bit too busy trying to push himself upwards with those. But he had to get up; they were in an Eggman base and that always spelled out danger, even if the man didn’t seem to be around right now. Sonic’s throat and nose did both itch, but that seemed to be more because it was dustier than a desert in here. Which was also strange, but Sonic couldn’t find it in himself to go ponder about that. Right now, he had to get moving.

“Stop that,” Silver repeated, more forcefully. His hand shot forward and his fingers curled over Sonic’s shoulder as Sonic moved and pushed back. But Silver’s grip halted him… But the speedster drew a breath still and reared up in one fell swoop…

Before stars exploded in his vision as a stab of pain rushed through his head at the movement.

The last thing Sonic could notice was Silver gasping in alarm, and his face crashing into something downy and warm and soft and white, before everything turned black.

Chapter Text

A handful of hours earlier in two centuries later, Silver found himself forced to concede that today, by all accounts, was rather off.

It had all started with the wind this morning. Because where usually it just tussled Silver’s quills as the psychic woke up, a gentle breeze of cool caressing his sleep-warm cheeks, now it had knocked him right out of his hammock instead.

Silver hadn’t appreciated waking up through slamming face-first into the grass and dirt. Such he had made very clear to the heavens above, with a lot of yelling and items flying about. But his further morning activities of washing the muck off his general being in Mountain River Zone and taking a few bites of breakfast had then gone by completely uninterrupted again, all things considered, and the wind’s rude actions had been forgiven but not forgotten.

But they had kept disappearing to the back of Silver’s mind more and more the further the day trudged on. Because every time he’d found himself not completely preoccupied with some task, he’d caught himself standing… frozen. Disturbed. With something gnawing at the edge of his thoughts, that he simply could not place. It had started small, as just a speckle of unease that disappeared the moment the psychic took note of it. And yet the further the sun climbed then sunk into the horizon and the more clouds had begun gathering in the heavens, the stronger it had gotten…

“What’s going on today?” Silver had muttered, after finding himself interrupted by incomprehensible concerns for what felt like the hundredth time. The backs of his hands had simmered with unpleasantness too, Silver’s fingers rubbing away on them like mad to make it dissipate. And then he’d had enough of not knowing. The wind had tugged at him again before racing away, and Silver had set off in the direction it indicated. It had made the eerie sensation only stronger.

He should have known both would lead him to an Eggman base.

Warily Silver floated inside through the previously-still-closed door that now hung creaking in what was left of its hinges, eyes flicking about. The corpses of broken-down robots littered the hallways, crackling sparks jumping from torn wires making the psychic’s ears twitch. “Abandoned,” Silver concluded slowly. But still, he grasped some of the robots laying about with his powers to tug them along. He would not be caught off-guard here by any enemy that could be lying in wait.

And the feeling of unease grew only bigger and larger the deeper he descended.

But nothing Silver investigated made it go away. He pushed at robots, opened up paths full of junk, looked over every room and corner and crevice; his hands kept aching and his thoughts kept gnawing. Every failed attempt to calm his worries down led the psychic deeper into the base, his frown only intensifying at all the rubble and broken screens and busted lights flickering about. The further he went, the more broken and ruined everything became. Eventually only the cyan of his powers gave off enough of a glow for Silver to see what destruction had been wrought here.

Endless wreckages, one after the other. And in the furthest reaches of the darkness, a flickering red dot.

Silver froze.

A robot body hurled at it elicited a lot of creaking and slamming, Silver's ammo crumbling apart in full… and the red dot standing strong despite the violence. “…Oh. Just a lightbulb,” the psychic realised, padding a tad closer. A lightbulb specifically at the side of a console with tons of buttons and stuff… and beside it a giant door, that made Silver blink in awe as he studied it. He had to have gone through most of the base already, the hedgehog mused as he laid a hand on the metal, except for this part. And the unease tore up his insides still...

It was as if there was something beyond this door, that called out to him, almost…!

A little grin formed on Silver's face. ‘When in doubt, use psychokinesis’ was a motto that had never, ever failed him before.

“Hah!” the psychic cried out, hand casting out towards the console. A wave of cyan rushed from the mark on his palm and struck it head-on, with Silver’s smirk growing only broader as the flickering red dot went absolutely haywire before turning green. Electronics never liked psychokinesis much, the psychic had long figured out. Considering who Silver’s archnemesis was, that was a huge blessing; considering who that archnemesis’ ancestor who still poisoned the world long after the time he should have died was, even more. And as expected, the door whirred and heaved and creaked open…

The tiniest bit.

“Darn it,” Silver found himself forced to grumble next. Of course: this base had to be almost out of electricity, with only backup generators and stuff keeping it running. But the slit did give Silver room to peer inside, a psychic touch feeling about and finding nothing behind it, and some more prodding and cursing pushing the door open wide enough so a wiry hedgehog could slip through…

Into some strange, cylindrical area. That also had nothing else inside it.

Silver’s ears pressed themselves against his head indignantly.

“Is this your masterpiece, Eggman? Some dumb empty room?!” he yelled out to the ceiling, hands balling into fists and a whip of psychokinesis lashing at nothingness in the air. There was nothing inside: looking around agitatedly only revealed more metal walls and metal flooring and metal ceiling. Was this what his bad feeling wanted him to see? It was still there, gnawing at him! And there was something else too-

Something else.

With widening eyes Silver froze, his powers chiming up in alarm as they rushed through the room. The backs of his hands prickled; his ears swerved around for any sign of life, or just any object or thing or...!

 But the room remained empty as could be. And still, despite that, Silver swallowed as a realisation began to sink in.

There was something- no, someone here.

A conversation mixed with a teasing goodbye mixed with a cry for help, simultaneously.

And it reached out to him.

Silver perked up his ears as far as they could. But nothing got spoken; silence echoed around him still. But what he could hear was something beyond that, somehow…! A plea? A yell? It had to be a voice, or maybe a thought of one, but that meant there was a person…?

“I’ll save you,” Silver whispered.

…But how? Helplessly the hedgehog blinked, before furrowing his brow and raising a hand. Psychokinesis: it was the answer to everything, after all. Silver’s eyes scrunched shut, and with a breath and a gentle push his powers coated the whole room as they searched for where the cry came from. His eyes flicked about, his senses reached out. If he could just grab it, materialise it somehow…!

Not the middle of the room, but a bit off-set towards the wall. Had the someone been moving? It mattered not: the moment Silver’s powers brushed past it, the hedgehog jolted with a gasp. It was there, right there…

His powers focused themselves…!

The sensation of a hand grabbling at his psychokinesis made Silver wince, legs buckling at the force. But with a tightening fist the psychic wrapped his powers deeper, further, more tautly, more strongly. “I got you! Hold on!” he gasped out, before giving a tug-!

The fabric of the world rippled.

Tore.

And out came a blast of sound and speed that sent Silver flying immediately.

With a gasp the psychic got slammed back by the shockwave, body crashing into the wall before he could stop himself with his powers and a cry of pain ripped from his lips. But his noise was entirely unmatched by another’s cry in turn, far louder as a terrifying smack of metal being hit reverberated through the room-!

And across from Silver, a form ricocheted off the wall and crashed right onto the ground.

Silver threw a hand in front of his mouth as dust and dirt got flung up around him. Scrunching his eyes to protect them from the assault he stared at where the something laid… It moved, and drew in a wheezing breath, and then followed a far more pained cough…

It looked and sounded almost like…!

“What,” Silver whispered. “You- Sonic?!”

The more the dust settled down again, the more he could make out blue on the person sprawled beside the wall.

And a groaned-out clamour of pain, very much in Sonic’s voice, was all the proof Silver needed.

“Sonic!” he cried out in turn. The heap of hedgehog winced, but Silver paid it no mind as he scrambled to his feet and rushed closer. He slid to a halt beside the speedster, eyes darting madly over his body. Sonic looked hurt…! And green eyes stared back at him, bleary and unfocused. “Sonic,” Silver breathed anew as their gazes met. “What are you- Are you okay?!”

For a second too long, silence followed… but then a most feeble smile got sent his way. “Heya, Silver! Long time no see,” Sonic responded, voice strained. Another silence fell, in which Silver’s concerns increased a thousandfold, though eventually Sonic jolted. “Yeah… Yeah! I’m just great,” got added, in a creaking waver of pitifulness that didn’t sound very great at all.

Most promptly Silver frowned. Did Sonic not hear himself? Why was he smiling, when he was clearly in pain?! “You don’t look like it,” Silver urged him to consider, sinking down on one knee. Sonic needed help, it was obvious, but where had he come from? And what had been that blast? “How did you even-” the psychic began to inquire next, leaning closer… before his brow furrowed as Sonic shifted, torso moving upwards. “Hey, don’t move!” Silver scolded, hands shooting over to stop him. “Let me help you.”

“No, no, that’s not needed,” Sonic protested, undeterred in his attempts to get up. Silver grimaced as the speedster flinched and swayed, arms trembling from where he pushed himself up with his hands…!

“Stop that,” the psychic commanded. The way Sonic swayed and shook, he looked like he was about to collapse…! But as Silver tried to grasp his shoulder to push him down, stop his moving, Sonic bucked only more, and-!

Silver winced at the deep, agonised groan of pain that slipped out of Sonic’s mouth, whatever pale colour that had formed on his cheeks draining away in a second.

And then his eyes rolled backwards and he went limp.

“Watch out!” Silver gasped. Without thinking his powers rushed from his hands, which jolted forward alongside with the cyan to grasp Sonic and break his fall-!

Though, the hedgehog grunted as Sonic’s body crashed against him, and the speedster’s whole dead weight hit Silver right in the chest. “Sonic!” slipped past Silver’s lips anew as he had to refocus all his attention to keeping himself upright. “Hey, don’t faint on me!”

…No response came.

Instead Sonic laid limply against Silver, eyes shut and breaths raspy. “Sonic?” Silver repeated, giving the other a shake. But also that elicited nothing: no laugh, no winks, no teases about how Silver was very dumb to fall for this. Nor any opening of green eyes, even, or any indication Sonic was alright…!

The whole sight of the speedster, so lifeless and so quiet, made a fright Silver could not place coil deep inside his very being.  

“What in the world?” the psychic permitted himself to mumble, grunting as he tried to realign Sonic so Silver could see his face better. A hand pressing against Sonic’s chest made grey-furred shoulders sink in relief at its rising and falling, a heartbeat hammering away underneath…

Alive.

But very much unconscious.

And they were in an Eggman base, which always spelled out danger.

Silver made up his mind in an instant.

“I’ll help you,” the psychic murmured into drooping blue ears. “I’ll take you to my place, it’s safe there. And we can wait until you’re awake again and then get you back to your own era.”

A spark of hope flickered to life inside him as one of Sonic’s ears twitched. With psychokinesis Silver lifted himself to his feet easily, Sonic rising up as well before getting dropped into Silver’s arms and clutched close. It made a sound rise from the speedster, a noise that Silver hoped was inquiring confusion as he rearranged Sonic’s head so it leaned into his shoulder.

“It’s okay. You’ll be okay!” the psychic did his best to smile in turn. If he squinted, he thought he could make out lines of green and white between the slits of Sonic’s eyelids… A good sign, he hoped. And with that he wasted no more time: Silver wrung himself through the entrance anew, Sonic held protectively in his grasp, and the moment they reached the world outside, he blasted right off.

Dark storm clouds had gathered in the heavens during the hours Silver had scoured through Eggman’s base. Had it already been windy the whole day, now branches of trees got pulled to and fro ominously as the sky rumbled. Caringly the psychic pulled Sonic against him more, head rearing up to shield Sonic’s from the first fine droplets of rain as he wrapped them both in a protective bubble of psychokinesis. Though, a curse slipped past Silver’s lips as first fine droplets turned to a world-drowning downpour in seconds, thundering away at his powers. The rumbles above combined into a bang that made the world shake, lightning flashed on the horizon, and the wind danced around him madly as Silver raced towards Mountain River Zone and darted past its loops and corkscrews until finally he’d made his way home.

All the while Sonic laid in his arms, mercifully occasionally stirring or one eye opening before it fell shut again and he huddled closer into Silver’s hold. “We’re here,” Silver told him, though no reaction followed still as the psychic crouched underneath the bramble hedges that enshrined one side of his hideout. Sharply he listened for any signs of a trap: he wouldn’t put it past any enemies to use the weather to try and get the jump on him. But as usual, he picked up nothing, and his hideout was quiet like every other day as he darted inside. “Let’s get him to bed,” the psychic piped up to the wind… before a worrying thought struck. It had been raining here too: thick droplets of water got swept off the trees’ leaves and struck Silver’s shield in a relentless torrent. Sleeping in a hammock was fine when it was dry out, but now…

But that was nothing Silver was not used to. Easily he lifted Sonic into the air with his psychokinesis, making sure the speedster was kept enshrouded fully in cyan so he wouldn’t get wet. Around him Silver raced through his hideout to gather supplies: with some help from the wind and his powers the psychic tied the black tarp he’d salvaged from the garbage dump over the two trees the hammock hung between to block the rain out. Though Silver’s hideout was plenty sheltered underneath and amidst its flora, he’d woken up soaked one too many times himself to risk Sonic ending up all soggy too. A similar tarp got put over the hammock itself; the fabric had been fully sodden already. And with a towel that Silver retrieved from his watertight bags of supplies put down over the crinkling material, Sonic could sleep comfortably, the psychic hoped.

The whole time he was busy, the speedster’s quiet persisted still. “Here we go,” Silver told him as he placed the other on his fortified hammock. Though, Sonic remained unmoving, even as Silver swallowed and hesitated before reaching out and curling his fingers around a peach wrist slowly…

But a strong heartbeat thrummed through; definitely stronger than it had been in the base. “Thank goodness,” Silver hummed to himself, frowning as the wind nudged him. “You think he’ll be okay?

His companion made the branches above twirl, which Silver took as a yes. “It’s getting cold,” he added next, rubbing over his shoulders at the chill the wind’s gales carried. “And I only have one blanket… Oh well.”

From another of his watertight bags Silver dug out the crumpled lap of fabric. The moment it got laid over him Sonic’s face softened… He looked cute like that, Silver figured with a fond snort. Snugly he tucked the other in from shoes to shoulders, which earned him a happy little hum and an inquiring sniffle of the black nose peeking out just above the rim of the cocoon. Also that was endearing, and a noise of relief slipped past Silver’s own lips. “I’ll stay up and keep watch,” he murmured into a blue-furred ear. It gave another twitch, which Silver gladly used to bolster his courage more. Sonic would be okay. Sonic was hardy and strong, everyone always said so. He was really just sleeping.

Turning around and floating towards the trunk of one of the trees, Silver grunted as he flopped onto the ground. He could see Sonic on one side and the brambles that covered his hideout on the other like this, and with a stifled yawn the psychic used his powers to grab a bottle of water and a snack from his supplies next. It’d be a long night, but he could manage! He could even stay dry here, at the very edge of the tarp. “Wake me up if I doze off,” he commanded the wind… that did not jostle his quills like usual this time, and instead hung in the distance as if it heavily disagreed with these choices. He didn’t need sleep, Silver huffed at it. He’d just stay awake by himself then, if the wind refused to help.

Sonic’s little snores filled the air around him as the psychic rested and stared into nothing, though his noiseless sitting went unmatched by the immediate racing of his thoughts. Sonic of all people was not someone he’d ever expect to see, here in the present instead of the past… and yet it had to be him, surely. But how? And why? What had he been doing in that Eggman base?

Silver found no answers to any of his questions. And the more he wracked his mind, the more his head flopped to a shoulder before it jolted up by reflex, and the more he had to stubbornly keep forcing his eyes open despite the soothing pitter-patter of the rain on the tarp. But he would not, could not fall asleep. He could sleep after all his questions had gotten answered in the morning. He’d almost made it, the sky was lightening up more and more…!

The wind only came back to stroke his quills when disjointed thoughts and blackness had long overtaken Silver’s mind, and despite all his fighting, its gentle caress proved enough for Silver to slip into sleep as well.

Chapter Text

Sonic awoke to the sight of something long and black blocking out whatever was above.

Strange, his sleep-addled brain mused as he groaned and stirred. That was absolutely not what he’d fallen asleep to… but what he had fallen asleep to, the speedster could not recall so clearly either. Blurs of colour and a sensation of endless stretching and weightlessness, chaos coiling all about… Sonic’s quills prickled with unease the more the memories took shape. Eggman had really gotten him this time.

But amidst all that there’d most certainly been… gold. Soothing gold, its warmth a stark contrast to the incomprehensibility of the greys and blacks and reds. And downy white: the warmest and snuggest and downiest of white, though Sonic drew a blank on how he knew that so certainly. And besides the gold and white, there had been a far softer and gentler grey than the harsh colours of everything else. And cyan, somewhere in the distance yet everywhere at the same time.

But that white Sonic could recall with the most clarity. He had tried to sit up and everything had turned to black, but in the split second before that he’d been caught by…!

Hmm.

The more Sonic blinked open his eyes, the more a dull thumping ache in his head made its presence known, and the speedster grimaced as his hand shot up to clasp it. “Urgh,” slipped past his lips, fingers rubbing circles into his skull until his vision had sharpened. He laid on a… hammock, it seemed, swinging to and fro in a gentle breeze while tucked under a blanket pulled up all the way to his nose. And above him, the blackness was a sheet of tarp, that laid drawn over some branches of two trees.

“Huh,” the speedster allowed himself to muse. All the while, the memories of gold and white sharpened in his mind, and with them came fragments from a voice that wasn’t exactly familiar. At least, not as familiar as the grey and gold and cyan and white.

Sonic had never heard Silver talk so softly, after all.

Silver. Someone Sonic didn’t know all that well, all things considered. Pensively the speedster let the wind swing him about on the hammock, memories of Silver drifting along with the motion. The two of them had met twice before: once on that island that had appeared out of nowhere in the ocean and had disappeared again together with that enigmatic hedgehog, and once on another where a bunch of Chao had been going missing. And Sonic wouldn’t describe those times as particularly nice to have been talking to Silver…

Because he yelled a lot, and listened quite an opposite amount, and Sonic would be lying if he said it hadn’t annoyed him eventually.

But none of that matched the shock on Silver’s face when Sonic had laid his eyes on him, back in Eggman’s base. Or the way he’d come running when the speedster had laid crumbled onto the ground. Or him reaching out to stop Sonic from falling as his consciousness left him; the last thing the speedster’s mind could recall with any clarity. The more Sonic thought about it, the more the memories came seeping back: Silver’s wide eyes, how he’d crouched beside Sonic, how he’d urged Sonic to take it easy, how he’d offered his help, how he’d gasped and shot over when Sonic had collapsed.

That was it, Sonic realised with a jolt. That white that currently formed the centrepiece of his thoughts had been the white of Silver’s mane.

…And he’d just crashed face-first into said mane while fainting after Eggman sent him on an impromptu trip into the timestream to kill him that Silver had somehow managed to tug him out of.

Sonic snorted at the unexpected silliness of the situation.

But that had to mean Silver was around somewhere, the speedster figured amidst his amusement. With his fingers rubbing away at his aching head Sonic tugged the blanket off and pushed himself into a sitting position. Wat was it that Espio had said about Silver again? He and Sonic had been on the same boat back to the mainland after that whole thing with the Ifrit, and Sonic had gladly grabbed the opportunity to grill Espio about his sudden ring theft. Not that that had resulted in much: some “It was most necessary and I apologise,” was approximately what Sonic had gotten out of him. But in that way, the conversation had shifted to Silver next. Who was that hedgehog, Sonic had asked, and Espio had smiled. “He’s tremendously brave, and kind once you get to know him. He’s got a heart of gold.”

Kind, Sonic pondered. Heart of gold… Well, Silver had somehow found his way into the belly of an Eggman base and gotten Sonic out of a predicament he’d have struggled to escape from otherwise. And clearly he also had given Sonic his own bed and taken the ground to sleep in turn, because as the speedster peeked into the place he’d been taken to, the sight of a bundle of grey laying slumped between the roots of one of the trees caught his attention immediately.

“Heh. Hey, Silver?” Sonic called out in a whisper. Logic dictated this was the psychic’s place of residence… though Sonic had to admit he had no idea where that was located. He’d never come across it before in any of his world-traversing adventures.

But Silver did not stir even as Sonic dangled his legs over the rim of the hammock and dropped himself to the ground, with only one ear shooting right up as Sonic tiptoed closer. A deep frown marred his face, that Sonic had to stifle a snort at. Just how serious were Silver’s dreams if he looked like this while sleeping? “It’s just me,” the speedster soothed, until the ear had relaxed again and merely flicked in the wind. The cool gale picked up the longer Sonic stood studying the other hedgehog, tussling both their furs and quills, and the speedster gave it a curious look. It felt familiar, somehow… but Sonic couldn’t place it otherwise, and thus he returned his attention to the sleeping psychic.

Poor Silver, Sonic mused. Dew and droplets clung to the grass underfoot, that the bright but feeble morning sunlight had not yet made evaporate. Also Silver was looking a bit damp. Nor could it be comfortable to lay crumpled between the roots of the trees like that, with his back all crooked in their embrace and his head awkwardly leaning against his chest and shoulder. As if it had just collapsed down as sleep claimed him. Had Silver been sitting here for long?

Whatever the case, Sonic pondered, waking the psychic up right now would absolutely be a crime. If Silver was still asleep, he needed the rest. Thus Sonic silently padded away to study Silver’s living space more closely, fingers trailing over the massive stones of the walls that marked most of the borders of the hideout. His pal had amassed quite a nice spot, the speedster conceded easily. Flowers and plants coated one side of it, a couple of big bags sat haphazardly stacked in another corner, the remnants of a campfire could be seen in the grass as well… And between the large crumbling brick barriers and overgrown hedgerows that encased this spot, surely nobody would find Silver here unless they knew were to look. Though, a city could not be far away either, considering Sonic’s sharp hearing could pick out distant noises of traffic and people carried over in the wind. Curiously he snuck over to a slight crack in one of the walls, peering through…

Sonic was no stranger to beautiful scenes, but this one made his eyes widen.

White, and green, and grandiose, the city laid stretched out through what Sonic figured was a valley, considering he looked down on it from Silver’s hideout… yet the buildings stretched up to the blue heavens so high their tops blurred into the sky completely. If possible, the city spread even wider still on the ground, with roads and endless skyscrapers sprawling from one side to the other and whisps of mist glittering in the sunbeams. Sonic’s nose could sniff out a whiff of salt on the breeze too, and the speedster hummed curiously as he got struck by the realisation that those weren’t clouds that curled around the city’s edges… It was the ocean, its waves lapping at the city’s outer borders.

“Whoa,” Sonic concluded succinctly. In the light of the sun, everything glowed and shone, and the speedster could only marvel.

…Even if he’d never seen this entire city before.

No, he really had not, Sonic realised with a jolt. But maybe he just didn’t know all the cities the world had to offer… unlikely as that thought was.

So then where had he ended up?

Pensively Sonic turned around to study Silver’s hideout some more. The idea he’d never come across this place made more sense, at least: it looked pretty sheltered on all sides, what with the stone walls and massive bushes. Nor would it be easy to spot from the air, considering the two trees whose blossom-filled branches made the sky into a gorgeous mosaic of blue patches of heaven intermixed with pink-and-white flowers. Cherry blossoms, Sonic figured from the ample gorgeous rosy blooms swaying in the wind. Drawing a deep breath of the spring air and smiling the speedster trailed his eyes around Silver’s little spot once again; it smelled nice!

…Even if his nose itched immediately after, Sonic’s eyes widening as a tickle went right through it.

“Ah... Achoo!” followed. “Ugh.”

With a grumble Sonic rubbed at his face. The culprit – a cluster of daisies – got found easily enough as Sonic’s eyetrailing turned to glaring, the little white flowers speckled throughout the grass-

All the way up to the roots of the tree, where Silver sat catapulted upright with wide eyes.

“…Oops. Mornin’!” Sonic was the first to pipe up. “Sorry for waking you.”

For a second or two, Silver just stared… before wide eyes scrunched themselves shut again and the psychic yawned, sharp fangs gleaming in the sun. Some huffed groaning noise followed as the other flopped himself over on one side next. “‘s Okay,” Sonic could approximately pick out from whatever it was Silver mumbled, the speedster needing to swallow down a laugh.

“Not a morning person?”

That did not get answered, the bundle of grey fur and quills rhythmically rising and falling anew like Silver had too when Sonic had woken up. He’d be best off with not bothering his pal anymore, Sonic figured. He did not know the psychic well, but Silver’s easily-triggered temper was not unfamiliar to anyone who’d talked to him on either island where he’d adventured before.

Thus, Sonic noiselessly turned back to the crack in the wall, settling against it to study the city some more as he basked in the beams of light that the trees scattered about. Gorgeous… With the wind trailing through his fur and the clouds lazily rolling by, Sonic had ample time to look the scene over and mull about where it could be located. Though, his ears perked up at some shuffles and fusses that resounded behind him, after a few minutes. “What are you doing?” a grumpily quiet voice that sounded quite adorable in its sleepiness rose up, Sonic chuckling.

“You’ve got quite the view here! Is that city built on the water?”

“In part,” he could discern amidst a second huge yawn. “It used to be jus’ an island, but they ran outta space. So they built on ‘n underneath the water next.”

“Underneath?” Sonic echoed, face pressed right into the crack to see more. “As in, on the ocean floor?”

“Hmhm. You can walk aroun’ there. Lots of glass tubes ‘n stuff.”

Some rustles followed, and Sonic had to suppress a full huff of laughter at the incredibly-scruffy-looking Silver that stumbled over to stand by Sonic’s side. Another huge yawn followed, as did a bleary shake of Silver’s head. “It’s pretty cool. The sun makes the water shine all prettily,” the psychic explained, rubbing at his eyes. Still half asleep, Sonic easily concluded, but a cyan-coated hand gestured vaguely towards the sight all the same. “‘n You see that building with the rounded roof over there? It’s a library tha’s also a botanical garden.”

Sonic squinted until he found something that fitted that description. “It looks gorgeous. Do you go there often?”

“Yeah. It’s very peaceful,” the speedster believed Silver said amidst a fourth yawn, that seemed to come from the tips of Silver’s toes, extensive as it was. With a chuckle Sonic gave Silver a little nudge with his elbow. He’d never seen this entire city before, but there were more pressing matters to discuss. He could locate himself and find out how to go home later.

“You’re looking like you got put through the wringer there, pal. Did you sleep badly?”

“Not looking as bad as you,” the contrarian response got huffed back…

Before Silver froze, eyes widening, and Sonic got regarded as if it was the first time he was actually seen by the psychic.

Considering the huge bags under Silver’s eyes, that probably was the case.

“Wait a second,” Silver added a whole lot more suspiciously.

“Heya,” Sonic grinned, raising a thumb. He’d probably not made much sense last evening himself, after all. “Long time no see, Silver!”

Golden eyes blinked at that greeting, and blinked again…

Before they narrowed, burning a hole right through Sonic in an instant. “What are you doing?!” the psychic heatedly spat out, cyan whirling to life all around him. “You shouldn’t be up! You’re injured!”

Sonic couldn’t hide a jolt at the heated tone of voice getting sent his way so suddenly. “Hey- I’m fine!” he protested as Silver scowled at him. “My head’s already hurting a lot less than when I-”

“Your head’s hurting?! Then you need to take it easy even more!” the psychic interrupted, turning around and marching over to those bags stacked in a corner of the hideout. They got rummaged through with what Sonic could best describe as frenzied worrying intermixed with disdained anger, before Silver turned around with a rag and a bottle. Some water from the latter got haphazardly flung on the former, and Sonic squinted his eyes as the rag plapped him right in the face next.

“Silver, really. I’m fine,” he sighed out, tugging it up so it laid better on the aching spot on his skull.

A harrumph followed as Silver leaned closer as well, and a cool touch of psychokinesis straightened the fabric out some more… altogether gently, actually. “You got flung two centuries forward in time before smashing face-first into a wall,” the psychic continued in his peeved protest. “If there’s anyone who really needs to take it easy and who is really not fine, it’s you.”

Sonic blinked, slowly.

“Uh. Come again?” he inquired.

“The wall,” Silver repeated impatiently. “You just said your head’s hurting.”

“No, before that.”

Because surely Sonic had misheard that. Or just misunderstood what Silver meant, because that wasn’t impossible either with the psychic’s yell-filled forms of communicating.

But Silver raised an eyebrow. “The two centuries forward in time?”

“Yeah… Yeah.” Cogs turned in Sonic’s head as the sentence registered… but the longer he stood thinking, the more the realisation took shape. Eggman had been talking about trapping Sonic in the dimension of time… And a whole city that looked so massive but that Sonic had never seen before…!

“I’m in the future?” the speedster breathed.

Silver’s head tipped to the side. “Yeah? Obviously, since I didn’t travel to the past.”

Sonic’s eyes shot right back to the other. “You’re from the future?!”

He almost had to laugh at the look of confusion that formed on Silver’s face. It definitely made for a far cuter appearance than his endless glowering. “Obviously,” the psychic repeated. “I thought you knew that?”

Sonic blinked again, slowly. Then once more but quickly, because a snort slipped past his lips before he could help it, followed by a full laugh. “Silver, I can’t know any of that if you don’t tell me!” he explained to the incredulously-frowning psychic. “I had no idea!”

Had Silver’s eyes narrowed into an infinitely more peeved leer the moment Sonic started laughing, they did clear up with the explanation that followed. “…Hm. I guess I haven’t ever told you, have I?” Silver hummed back, rubbing his chin. “I just… figured you knew. Since Onyx Island came from the future too and all.”

“Is that why it disappeared again? It’s back in this era?”

“Yep. Safe and sound.”

Deciding against telling Silver he’d also not known Onyx Island had come from the future Sonic shook his head fondly, clutching the rag so it didn’t fall off. “What a way to find out,” he settled on, shooting Silver a grin as he suavely leant against the wall. It got met with… a blank stare, before Silver shrugged and turned back to his collection of bags. A metal mug got tugged out of one also, floating in the air for a second… altogether shakily, and Sonic frowned in concern as Silver sighed and grabbed it. Perhaps the psychic should be worried about himself more, the speedster figured, but he also figured he had best not say that.

“How did you even get here? You seemed to be in a lotta trouble in that base,” the psychic inquired in the meantime, the metal mug filled with water from the bottle before it got handed over to Sonic. His mouth did feel ickily dry, the speedster realised, and thus he gladly grabbed it with a word of thanks. Time travel made you thirsty, apparently-

Time travel.

The mug jolted to a halt halfway to Sonic’s mouth. “Drat.”

Silver froze. “Something wrong? You look worried.”

“I am. Because Eggman’s plan worked, and that’s always a bad sign.”

“Eggman did this?” Silver repeated, fur spiking right up. “What happened?”

Inbetween sips of water Sonic told him: how he’d been infiltrating a base because of Eggman’s increased activities, how suspiciously smoothly it had gone, how he’d been trapped in that metal room. How Eggman had gloated, how Sonic had burst into a Super Peel Out, how he had stilled where the world had moved endlessly… “You know, if it hadn’t been for you, I’m not so sure how I’d have gotten out,” he concluded his story, a smile forming onto his face. Even if Silver was his usual grumpy self still, he had bailed Sonic out of a boatload of trouble, and clearly was trying his hardest to be a good caretaker on top. The least Sonic could do was express his gratitude. “So thanks, Silver. Really.”

Golden eyes stared. “That- You don’t need to thank me,” the protest came, after a few seconds of stunned silence. “Anyone would have helped you, surely!”

“But you’re the one who did. And I’m grateful for that,” Sonic remarked back.

Some mumble was the response he got, Silver turning around. Sonic couldn’t tear his eyes away from the other hedgehog; he never thought the loud-mouthed psychic would be shy about getting praised for something. Pressing a hand onto the rag so it wouldn’t fall off Sonic pushed himself away from the wall and followed. Silver settled against another in the beams of the morning sun, and Sonic gladly sunk down beside him. Its stones had gotten heated up already, their warmth seeping into Sonic’s back and making him sigh in relaxation. Although… “You look a bit damp,” he brought up, scrutinising Silver.

The psychic shrugged back. “It rained last night. But I put the tarp up, so you shouldn’t have gotten wet yourself.”

“Nope! Dry as a desert. Thanks for that too,” Sonic agreed, with something akin to a ‘You’re welcome,’ getting mumbled back. Leaning his head against the stones the speedster drew a breath of the fresh air, letting it all sink in. The future…

And Silver, who sat in the sunbeams with that familiar look of deathly seriousness on his face. If he wasn’t so liable to flinging people into the stratosphere should they displease him, Sonic would have snorted at the discrepancy.

A silence unfolded between them, filled with the chirps of birds and the rustles of the trees’ branches in the wind. “We need to get you back,” Silver was the first to break it, studying Sonic from the corner of his eyes. “The past is gonna be in disarray if you’re not there. Especially if Eggman’s up to something.”

“I don’t think it’ll be that bad,” Sonic soothed him. “I’ve disappeared before to places, sometimes for weeks on end. I’m not even sure if Tails knew I was going to Eggman’s base in the first place. And there’s many more people who fight Eggman than just me. It’ll be fine, Silver.”

“It’s not fine. What if Eggman is planning something right now, with you out of the way? Your friends aren’t you. Everything could be in danger there, and then the future is in danger as well!”

“Take it easy,” the speedster responded at the spine-spiking that accompanied every word spoken, until Silver looked as big as a dandelion full of seeds. In a way cute, in a way likely to make Sonic end up with either getting yelled at or just flung against a wall, and neither would do when Sonic’s head had just been put through all that. “I see what you mean,” the speedster thus moved the conversation to instead, “but how do you suggest I get home?”

Silver’s ears shot up, his face becoming even more serious.

“Don’t worry,” followed, the other leaning closer as Sonic listened sharply as well. “I know exactly how to get you back.”

Chapter Text

Besides the grandiose city and Silver’s cosy hideout, the rest of the area he lived in was pretty neat as well.

Sonic whistled as he padded over a dirt path underneath sparsed-out trees, breathing the fresh air of the mountains that formed the – apparently aptly-named – Mountain River Zone. Luckily Silver had been open to the idea to go walk for a bit, Sonic not wanting to stay trapped in his little hideaway and subject himself to endless fussing. Plus, a place like the future simply had to be explored! Sonic’s legs were itching to blast off and see what it had to offer. With the sounds of water running in the distance, birds chirping their morning greetings, and the sun dappling through the tree branches with their spring blooms, there were worse times to have ended up temporarily stranded in the future, Sonic smiled as he pondered over what Silver had been telling him throughout their exploring.  

“The Emeralds,” he repeated, rubbing his chin. “Heh… Of course.”

“With two of them and two people, you can activate Chaos Control and time-travel to wherever you want,” Silver nodded. “And in my experience, it’s nothing like what happened to you. But don’t ask me how that works.”

“Eggman said something about not having a destination set, or whatever.” More dourly Sonic pursed his lips: the fact Eggman managed to even achieve this in the first place made a blow to his pride. But on the other hand, it had led Sonic to a friend, and he always embraced that too. Pausing by a large blueberry bush Sonic plucked one off the branches, popping it into his mouth with a hum and beaming at the friend in question. “Hmm, tasty!”

“Sonic, focus,” said friend in question immediately scolded, a second blueberry that Sonic held out to Silver getting scorched in a look of unamusement. “The good news is, it works. I’ve Chaos Controlled to the past with no negative effects, and back again.” And then Silver’s face fell into a deep frown, as Sonic had entirely expected. It could never just be easy, though Sonic would have despised it if it was. “The bad news is, I don’t know where the Emeralds are,” got added, while Sonic bit into the rejected piece of fruit. “When I went to the past with the whole Ifrit debacle, they’d already been gathered, and they’ve been sent on their way again afterwards. And since there hasn’t been anything going wrong here that warrants me going to the past again, I haven’t been looking for any.”

“That makes sense. I don’t really collect the Emeralds either if there’s no need for them,” Sonic soothed. Silver’s face had contorted in a way it made him look like he felt guilty for not having any Emeralds… though no apology slipped past his lips. Still, Sonic shot him an encouraging wink. “And of course it’s not gonna be simple, but that’s part of the fun! And we can hang out more! It’s gonna be a great time together, I’m sure.”

As Sonic spoke, Silver…

Froze.

And then something darkened on his face.

Stiffly the hedgehog turned away from the blueberry bush, Sonic staring at his retreating form. Had he said something wrong? “Everything okay?” he inquired, rushing after his pal. The psychic halted at the edge of the forest, ears perked and eyes flicking about, before his shoulders slouched and he stepped into a sunlight-filled meadow.

Some mutters Sonic could not make out followed, though Silver rubbed at his eyes most insistently too. “No… It’s fine. Whatever.”

Sonic knew better than to prod, and thus he just nodded. Perhaps Silver was simply tired, considering how rumpled he looked. Hopefully some fresh air would help with that. “It’s shaping up to be a beautiful day,” Sonic settled on commenting, gesturing to the sky above. “Look how bright it is up there!”

“It’s a lovely blue,” Silver agreed, pacing further into the meadow. Hundreds of flowers and grasses spread out through the field, all the way up to a large river that curled through a valley far in the distance. Sonic whistled anew, head raised up high as he stepped after Silver into the field.

Amidst dodging flowers and grasses lurking with the evil presence of hay fever-activating pollen Sonic found himself a mite preoccupied; a long silence stretched out between the two hedgehogs. It gave Sonic ample time to muse and ponder. Maybe Silver had hoped it would be simple so Sonic could return home quickly, but… why? With how concerned the psychic had been for Sonic’s health, Sonic wouldn’t say Silver wanted him gone.

But Sonic really didn’t know Silver well enough either to be able to tell, that he had to concede readily after.

“Hey,” he piped up, skedaddling ahead to catch up with his pal. “Thanks for looking after me. I appreciate it.”

Golden eyes regarded him strangely. “I told you, you don’t need to thank me.”

“I want to, though. And you’re showing me around all these gorgeous places. That city you live close to is absolutely stunning as well,” Sonic rambled out before Silver could protest more. At least that last bit made the psychic nod, though with that same deathly seriousness still.

“It is. I always found it pretty special that it’s partially built on the ocean floor. The past has nothing like that?”

“Perhaps in some places, but none that I know. And I’ve seen many cities.” And Sonic could compare how they’d all grown and changed over two centuries, now! “Hey, you should come visit the past too, after we’re done sightseeing in the future!” the speedster added, shooting Silver a smile. “Then you can see how everything used to be.”

…That strange look crossed Silver’s face anew.

“I don’t follow,” got hummed back slowly.

“Well, you’ve only been in the past twice, right? If you visit again, you can see what everything grew from. And here in the future, I can see what everything has become! Isn’t that amazing?”

But Silver frowned only more. “I guess, but… Don’t you need to go back to the past? Right now?”

Huh, Sonic mused. Right now… Sure, he’d been thinking soon, or at least sometime, but ‘right now’ was quite quick indeed. “I’d actually been planning on, you know, exploring around and seeing just how beautiful everything is,” he responded honestly. “Right now isn’t going to work anyway, since we don’t have any Emeralds. I figured we would go and travel all over the place and snatch any Emeralds we come across, and then when we’ve seen enough, I go back home.”

“…And when will you have had enough?”

“No idea! That’s the beauty and the fun of exploring,” Sonic responded with a chuckle.

Said chuckle echoed into nothingness as Silver remained staring at him altogether frostily. 

“So you don’t want to go home…?” eventually followed, half hesitantly and half disbelievingly. “Won’t your friends be worried about you?”

“Ah.” Maybe that was the problem, Sonic figured. Silver knew how close he was with Tails, at least, and probably a lot of other people as well. “Don’t get me wrong, I do want to go home! And I will, as soon as I can. But my friends will be fine, Silver. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve disappeared on them ‘cause I got sucked into an adventure,” he did his best to assure, with fond memories of other worlds taking shape in his mind and a deep breath of the wind dancing around just barely revealing the scents of old books and ink and stardust and oceans. “But how many people will ever get the chance to see what the future is going to look like? I’d love to take it.”

More quietly Silver rubbed his chin. “Not many, I guess… That is true.”

“And everything here looks so gorgeous, and I’ve only seen one city and one Zone so far. I’d love to see more of it!”

“Oh. I suppose things are very pretty here,” Silver nodded. Eagerly Sonic grinned back, the psychic’s lips pursing together. Blue-furred ears waited for more confirmation, for an offer to go together, for Silver to show him around to visit all the best places and the people of the future.

None of that came.

Instead Silver shrugged, and the other turned around. “Well, you gotta do what makes you happy,” got huffed out over a grey-furred shoulder. “If that’s exploring, and having fun, I won’t stop you.”

An awkward silence followed. Sonic found himself a bit at a loss for words, and Silver’s gaze was fixed on the distance. “Would you… like to come along?” the speedster broke it first. With a warm smile blossoming on his face he held out his hand, golden eyes peeking over at it. It didn’t seem like Silver’s hideout got occupied by many people other than the psychic himself, considering how tiny it was… Maybe he’d like having a companion around? And then Sonic could get to know him better too. “You can show me all the places you like, and we can meet the people you know!” Sonic added, bouncing lightly on his feet. “It will be fun!”

That indescribable look on Silver’s face rushed right back.

“No thanks,” the curt response came.

“…No?” Sonic repeated, which got answered by a firm shake of Silver’s head.

“I’m good.”

Something in the tone of his voice gave Sonic pause. Silver’s shoulders hunched in on themselves entirely, glumness on his face and body stiff…

Really not the pose of someone eager to join. Or even that of someone who wanted to, but didn’t know how to ask.

Instead Silver looked as annoyed as could be.

And Sonic had no idea why exactly.

“Well… Alright then. Your choice, of course. But let me know if you change your mind,” Sonic told his pal, scrutinising him closely as he pondered.

There was more going on here than Silver not just wanting to go on an adventure.

But the grey hedgehog merely nodded, hissing as the winds picked up and jostled his quills, and Sonic knew better than to prod. Prodding Silver for details so far had always had explosive results, and he wasn’t about to get teleported right into the river or something. Ending up in a carnival on Onyx Island had been disorienting enough already. As it stood Sonic’s final look of inquiry got met with a shrug and a scowl, and that was that.

The rest of their trek around got spent in complete silence.

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

“See you around,” Sonic had said, and: “I’ll come back here when I’ve found the first Emerald. I hope that’ll be before night falls.”

Silver had nodded and told Sonic what regions were safe and where he had to be careful, and he’d almost say he’d been listened to. But with Sonic, you never knew, the psychic grumbled to himself.

Fun.

Silver’s mood tanked whenever that word crossed his mind again.

Sonic had long blasted off into the direction Silver had pointed out, and the psychic had turned around to make his way back to his hideout, pushing his way through the small hole in the massive bramble thicket that enshrined one side of his hideaway. Returning home had been nice, grey-furred ears not detecting any danger as he’d halted underneath the thorns and listened sharply. Even if he’d never been attacked in his hideout, it never hurt to check either, but it had been quiet as always as Silver had trudged over to his hammock with the thought he could get some more shuteye.

Of course, tiredness had neglected to come to him completely.

Pensively Silver swung on the coarse fabric, eyes on the sky that dappled through the leaves on the trees. The sun had been making her journey from east to west unbothered as always, and the clouds stretched themselves out in feather-like whisps, as if they’d been stapled to the blue canvas.

Blue.

Quite like Sonic.

“Do you think he’s gonna be okay?” Silver asked it, and the trees and the wind and nobody in particular all the same. “I don’t think things are so different here than his own era, but still… Sonic’s a troublemaker.”

Above him, the branches rustled. “So who knows what he’s getting himself into now? Other than having fun, of course,” the psychic mulled further, and with every second spent thinking he scowled only more.

How dared Sonic?

How dared he refuse to take things seriously like that? How dared he not honour his responsibility to keep the world safe? How dared the idea of having fun while racing like an idiot through Zones in the future weigh so much more heavily for him than trying to go back to the past? “He got flung into the timestream, hurt himself, is not looking after anyone in his era like he should because he’s stuck here, and all he can think of is having fun,” Silver succinctly summarised the conversation he and Sonic had had to the wind. “He wants to go explore and see all around and he says it’s gonna be fun. Instead of, you know, making sure he can get home. He needs those Emeralds, and you don’t get Emeralds through being silly.”

But had Silver wanted to lace his words with scorn, he couldn’t stop a deep frown from forming on his face also. Sonic had seemed plenty confident about his abilities to manage himself, and he’d promised Silver to come for another visit when having gathered the first Emerald, and yet…

Eggman Nega’s robots did plague the lands. Not to mention the unwanted relics Eggman’s various exploits had left behind: death traps galore littered the world still, no matter how many Silver had been cleaning up over the months. Evil geniuses aside, general technology used by citizens was a lot more advanced too than all the primitive little gadgets the past contained. And even if Sonic was plenty brave, surely it would be unsettling to be thrown into a whole new world and not even have the person responsible for it there to chase down? Onyx Island at least had been familiar enough terrain, and the second time Silver had found Espio to help him out. But Sonic was entirely on his own in this era.

The more he mulled, the more Silver’s ears flattened against his head. Sonic had made his way through both islands as well, the second time with that fox cub but the first time alone… though Silver had no idea how Sonic had even managed that. If he’d been just as goofy there as he had acted today, Silver honestly would have expected him to still be in Forest Falls Zone, frolicking in a waterfall or something. In that regard, the stories of his heroism didn’t really fit all that the psychic had seen of Sonic so far.

It could only make him wonder more…

“And what if something were to happen to him? I don’t want that,” the thought crossed Silver’s mind before he could stop it, and thus getting extensively pondered over next as Silver’s unease grew and grew. “He could get hurt again. He could die!”

The wind fluttered around him as if it were shaking with laughter.

With a grumble Silver stabilised his hammock. “Don’t you dare knock me off again,” he growled back, swatting at his fleet-footed assailant as he pushed himself into sitting on the hammock’s edge with a sinking heart. Because even if he was worried, what was the use of pondering this all over? “But obviously Sonic’s not gonna want me to come along,” the psychic added, eyes narrowing and fur raising as the memories of multiple conversations, or rather arguments, he and Sonic had had stirred themselves again. The speedster had been most clear all the times they had met before…

The wind rustled as Silver growled lowly. “I mean, he doesn’t even like me. We’re not friends.”

Annoyance sparked up in Silver all over again as his mind ambled past the multiple memories that proved those words to be true. He got on Sonic’s nerves, the speedster had said so point-blank. Not that the feeling hadn’t been mutual, but still. And Sonic had said he never changed, too… “Sorry for trying to make sure the world doesn’t end while you’re just goofing around,” Silver grumbled, arms crossing and an irked kick of his feet into the air underneath his hammock making it jolt.

…But a more wary frown formed on Silver’s face, too.

Because Sonic not liking him… didn’t at all fit the hand held out to him so kindly, or the offer for a joint adventure.

Silver’s ears hadn’t deceived him. Sonic had offered that, no way around it. And he had smiled with such warmth, too. Like he’d really wanted Silver to come along, for whatever reason. The more Silver thought it over, the less sense it made. Weren’t he and Sonic on poor terms with each other? Or at least their acquaintanceship wasn’t friendly to the point they’d just go hang out together like that? Maybe? But then why would Sonic offer Silver to come join him?

None of it checked out.

“I don’t get it,” Silver concluded to the wind, who nuzzled over his quills soothingly. “And it doesn’t matter anyway. I’ve got things to do myself. I need to keep this place safe. I gotta keep making sure that Eggman Nega’s not come back. Or that his robots are not causing mayhem still, or Eggman’s. There’s so many bases and junk left of him that I need to dispose of so nobody gets hurt. And I need to be in the city too, to help with the mail and stuff. And right here at home to care for my plants. And go to the Chao to hang out with them. And just… keep protecting everyone and everything. None of that is the fun Sonic wants to have, surely.”

The wind made a jump as if it shrugged, and Silver copied the movement as his grumbles grew only more. “Fun. He’s stranded here in his future and all he can think about is having fun? Running around like mad and platforming and what-have-you? Adventures aren’t supposed to be fun.”

The branches of the trees drooped as the wind tugged at them, Silver rolling his eyes. “Don’t be so dramatic. Save that for when Sonic has died because he was too busy having fun to pay attention to what he’s doing.”

But as he said that… cold dread washed over him. And even as he spiked up his quills to catch more of the sunlight, it refused to dissipate. “And still… I don’t want anything to happen to him. He’s already been hurt- he looked so small,” the psychic sighed, lips pressing together at the memory of how limp and lifeless Sonic had been when Silver had bailed them out of that Eggman base. At least he seemed as full of life as usual again, but Silver hadn’t forgotten how Sonic had said he probably wouldn’t have escaped otherwise.

If the speedster got into such a situation again…!

“I don’t want him to get hurt even more. He’s in my era, so it’s my responsibility to take care of him too. Isn’t it?” Silver inquired quietly-

Before an indignant yelp slipped past his lips as the wind struck him right in his back.

“What?!” Silver yelled at it, barely able to activate his powers in time to stop himself from eating grass again in just over twenty-four hours. “What, should I just go after him and tell him that I don’t want him to die?!”

The trees rustled in a tender breeze and the sun shone with her glowing beams and Silver’s hammock swayed in the shade as lithe pink petals fluttered down, just like every other day.

His home, that he’d sworn to protect no matter what sacrifices he had to make.

And Sonic wasn’t home, and surely he’d be really homesick.

…Maybe he was just trying to have fun to not focus on that homesickness?

The mere thought of that possibility made sadness sink into Silver’s stomach like a rock. Being stranded in another era could be maddening if one wasn’t there for a good reason, but because an archnemesis won against them. At least, Silver figured that made sense. Sonic hadn’t seemed sad, but maybe he’d just been trying to hide it to not make Silver sad?

The more Silver thought it over, the more his resolve grew. “I’ll help him,” he decreed, hands gripping the edge of his hammock. “And I’ll keep him company, so he doesn’t have to be sad. And I’ll get him back to the past so he’ll be okay. It’s my duty to keep everyone safe, and that includes Sonic!”

In one fell swoop Silver jumped to the ground, tiredness forgotten in full as he scrambled past the brambles and rushed off into Mountain River Zone with the wind guiding his way. He’d help as best he could, and he would get Sonic safely back to his own era, no matter what it took.

But he wouldn’t let it be fun.

Adventures simply weren’t fun, and that was that.

Chapter Text

‘Neat area’ hardly covered the sheer beauty of the future, Sonic had long conceded with a cry of delight.

The city made a good benchmark, always kept to Sonic’s left as he rushed about. So far he’d encountered a huge tunnel carved through a mountain range, with multiple roads sprawling out of it and towards the ocean: the closer they got, the deeper they sunk under the water’s surface until they were visible no more. Sonic had traversed further and found his way in the next stretch of forest, with ample springs and rails and other setpieces for him to collect rings at lighting speed. To Sonic’s right, the mountains hugged the sky with their jagged, stony peaks; snow glittered on their very tops. The world thrilled with life, with wonder, so similar to what Sonic knew and yet a bit different, and every breath he drew carried the promise of adventure…!

With a laugh Sonic scrambled up a pine tree, the tallest he could find. Precariously swaying in the wind as he held onto its tip and rested his feet against the tree’s trunk the speedster whooped only more, the side of a hand pressed against his forehead to block out the sun so he could see. The world stretched out around him, glowing in the light of the late morning… It was indeed the area where he’d travelled to in the past to find Eggman’s base. Sonic would recognise those rocky mountains and grassy hills curling around an ocean inlet anywhere, even if the city in the past had been far smaller. “Amazing,” Sonic settled on, drawing a breath of the fresh air. Corkscrews and loop-de-loops filled the heavens, and keen green eyes easily spotted ample more places where they hung. Those meant rings to collect!

Though, despite the fact the world was so gorgeous, there was one little thing that made matters a mite less pleasant. Sonic had been having less luck with the big ring portal that would lead him to a Special Stage.

That was to say, he had yet to encounter even just one of those in his searching.

Between plants and trees, on platforms and on top of loop-de-loops, in the sky and on the ground: not a single portal had popped up despite Sonic’s adequate ring count. It made Emerald-hunting difficult… The chances of finding an Emerald in a Special Stage were far higher than stumbling across one just laying about. But Sonic could only shrug uncaringly at it all: the world was too peaceful for stressing about whether he would find one soon. The wind made his quills rustle, the sun shone so soothingly warmly, and clouds rolled by lazily, as downy and fluffy as the-

Sonic narrowly avoided falling right out of the tree as a particularly strong gale caught him completely by surprise, because his thoughts had been somewhere else completely.

As downy and fluffy as the mane of a particular friend, they had wanted to flow towards.

Slowly the speedster blinked, letting go of the pine so he could leap to the ground without undignifiedly falling. That was… not exactly what he’d been expecting his mind would conjure up. “Weird,” Sonic allowed himself to concede, padding onwards through the forest at an ambling pace now. He’d have to slow down anyway: it wouldn’t do if he ran by a ring portal that’d lead him to a Special Stage because he was going too fast to notice.

With a hum Sonic pressed a hand against his chest. The thrum of the energy of the dozens of tinier rings he’d been collecting made him smile, a few more spotted from where they floated over a platform. Sonic landed on it gracefully to snatch them, drawing a deep breath. Pink and white blossoms coated the trees, amidst splotches of green. “Spring’s in full swing,” Sonic joked out loud, chuckling at the petals fluttering down in the wind. They did make his nose itch, but the speedster fought that urge down. He’d blow away the ones right in front of his face if he had to sneeze, and that wouldn’t do; holding out his hand allowed for some to land on his palm. A couple of white ones, not unlike-

Sonic jolted anew.

Not unlike Silver’s fluffy chest, in its pristine white colour.

“Geez, Sonic. What is going on with you, buddy?” the speedster playfully chastised himself. A nearby puddle provided a reflection to look at, Sonic wriggling his eyebrows and pulling a silly face at it. “A guy saves your life once and carries you back home in his arms, and all you can think of since then is his chest fur?”

His reflection did nothing but copy the movements, before falling into the more pondering frown Sonic pulled. Because it was strange. Heck, Shadow also had a tuft of fur, yet Sonic could not recall a single time he’d paid it any mind. Silver’s tuft meanwhile quite refused to leave it… Perhaps because it had been the last thing Sonic had seen before losing his unconsciousness. Or because it was, in a way, endearingly goofy that such a grumpy, serious guy like Silver was endowed with such a soft scarf around his neck.

But still. Even if Silver’s mane was very soft and luscious, it’d been a mere accident it had broken Sonic’s fall. That aside, telling Silver his opinion on it would likely result in Sonic getting flung into the stratosphere. Obsessing over it felt a bit extreme.

Around Sonic, the winds picked up, and the speedster breathed a little sigh of calm into their gales as his quills got tussled. Because at the same time, what did it matter? This whole situation was strange to begin with. And Silver had shown himself to be a kind soul, just like Espio had stated, if one ignored his temper and volatileness. Who cared that Sonic found himself endlessly thinking about him?

…Okay, endlessly was perhaps a bit much, the speedster conceded with a snort. He could spent a little time thinking about Silver – not his mane but the whole hedgehog – and a lot more about where to find the Emeralds. “Let’s go. You’re not gonna find your way to an Emerald anytime soon like this,” Sonic bolstered his resolve through his reflection, bouncing on his feet before turning around and kicking into a brisk jog to blast off-

And crashing right into someone.

Specifically someone with something downy and soft and white, and flickers of cyan.

“Oof-!” Sonic yelped. In one fell swoop he found himself with a mouthful of fur, before the force of the crash made him stagger back. A grunting noise meanwhile resounded from the something… In a voice that he recognised-!

Sonic’s head whipped up. “Silver?”

The psychic floated a bit above the ground, face morphed into eagle-eyed concentration. It made for a bit of a silly contrast with the fact his mane right now had a Sonic’s-face-shaped imprint on it. “Hey,” the psychic spoke. “I’m going to help you because I don’t want you to die.”

Sonic stared. Silver did too, or at least his eyes were trained on Sonic with that crystal-sharpness they always contained. “Er,” Sonic found himself filling the silence first. “That is, uh… Sure! Sounds great. How did you find me?”

“The wind brought me to you.”

“Cool, cool. What was this about dying?”

“You’re not dying because I’m gonna make sure you won’t,” Silver huffed, arms crossing.

Sonic couldn’t quite shake the feeling the wind was having the time of its life here, considering how it rolled and jumped. Slowly he let Silver’s words sink in: first they made him blink, then raise an incredulous eyebrow. Silver was gonna make sure he wouldn’t die…?

“I’m not dying anyway,” the speedster piped up, amusement sparking up in him the more he processed Silver’s strange statement. Him, dying? From what: an adventure in the future? Almost falling out of a pine tree? Silver didn’t know him very well if he was so convinced Sonic’s demise was right around the corner. Thus, Sonic grinned, shaking his head. “Don’t you think it’s a bit dramatic to presume I will?”

“You’re good at getting in trouble, so no,” Silver shrugged back.

Keeping as straight a face as he could Sonic nodded. “Good point.”

“And, well…”

Silver averted his gaze upwards, the other chewing on his lip. A long silence followed, in which Silver’s eyes remained trained on the horizon and Sonic’s eyes remained trained on him. There was something the psychic wanted to say… “I figured that you’d be… homesick, and stuff,” that turned out to be.

Which wasn’t at all what Sonic had expected to hear. “Homesick?”

An awkward raising and dropping of grey-furred shoulders followed. “Yeah. Since you’re not home, and you can’t go home yet. I figured you’d be… you know, sad! Or scared!” Silver explained, his head turning back towards Sonic. Genuine concern twisted his features, the speedster realised with a jolt, and he could have sworn he heard it in Silver’s voice as well. “I thought that… maybe having someone you know around you will help. That is… We don’t know each other well, but… I don’t want you to be sad, or scared. And you would be sad or scared if you were just out here on your own the whole day, so…”

“…Awww, Silver,” Sonic responded as the psychic trailed off, a bright smile blossoming on his face. “That’s really nice of you!”

And most unexpected, actually. And also…

Sonic had whooped, and hollered, and ran his heart out, and been extensively marvelling at just how gorgeous the future was, just like the past. And where the past had been on his mind, mostly the question how to get back to there with Special Stage portals eluding him…

Well, homesick was a big word.

Gesturing for Silver to follow him Sonic set off, padding further underneath the trees. “But I’m okay,” he explained, as Silver’s head tipped to the side with that guarded look immediately racing back onto his features again. “I was looking at this place from the sky just now, actually. It’s really mostly the same as the past, so…”

A long silence followed. “You’re… not homesick?” Silver eventually settled on, brow raised incredulously as Sonic nodded.

“The world is my home.”

“Which means…?”

“Wherever I go, I feel safe. And the world of this era is the same as mine, isn’t it? So I’m not sad or scared,” Sonic smiled… even if it did sink away into a frown soon after. “Though, I do worry about my pals back in the past. Eggman made me all but disappear, so…”

Immediately Silver tensed. “What if they think you’re dead?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” the speedster winked. “I know Tails and Amy are keeping their chins up. They’re well aware nothing Eggman says can be trusted, and nobody saw what happened anyway. If Eggman says I’m dead, they won’t believe it because they didn’t see it with their own eyes. I’m sure Tails is already figuring out the possibilities that I got sent into another dimension or something, which must means that I’m very much still alive.”

“Hmm… If Tails thinks of such a scenario, it’s not even so far from the truth,” Silver nodded as well, if slowly. Still, Sonic counted it as a victory.

“But that does mean I’m not around to keep an eye on things should Eggman plan an attack, which is what concerns me most,” he continued. “They’re all good fighters, but I’d rather not anything happened to them because I wasn’t around to stop Eggman.”

Silver opened his mouth anew, pulling that difficult face yet again, and thus Sonic cut right through whatever he wanted to say with a wink. “So your help is greatly appreciated, Silver!”

“But that means you-! Er. Uh… Anytime,” became Silver’s statement, followed by a: “How is… the Emerald-hunting going?”

“Poorly,” the speedster honestly responded, ears twitching. “I collected a whole bunch of rings in the hopes that a big one would show up somewhere and take me to a Special Stage, but no such luck so far.”

An even deeper frown marred Silver’s face; not unlike how he slept, Sonic figured with a snort firmly kept to himself. “I don’t know where you can find Emeralds, really. People just often have them already, and then they get stolen or they just disappear,” the psychic pondered, as the two of them slowed to a halt. The forest rustled around them as Silver bopped in the air, and Sonic peeked around all over yet saw nothing akin to a ring portal appear anywhere. All the while Silver tensed only more, and Sonic shot him an encouraging smile.

“That’s just what the Emeralds are like. They can be fickle.” Just like Silver’s temper, though Sonic knew better than to say that out loud and risk making the other angry at him. “But we’ll find them no problem, you and I!”

Wary golden eyes scrutinised him all over. “What makes you think that?”

“I’ve got faith in us both.”

“We don’t even know each other.”

“That’s not true! We’ve adventured before together.” Which… even Sonic and his ability to see the sun in the most cloudy of weather could not spin into an adventure that had been fun for either of them, to be most honest. Poor Tails still bristled indignantly at any mention of having been called a half-pint. And Sonic also had not yet forgotten Silver’s foul mood and hot temper whenever they crossed paths.

But none of that matched the sheer worry on Silver’s face when he’d rescued Sonic, or how he’d fretted about Sonic’s injury. Or even now, with his genuine concern about Sonic’s alleged homesickness. Would the speedster have laughed about it if said by any other person, somehow Silver’s concerns could only make him smile fondly instead. No, there was so much more to Silver than what Sonic and friends had seen on those two islands, Sonic could just feel it. He had to learn more still.

“Why didn’t you go along immediately?” the speedster spoke up first, breaking the silence that had been stretching out between them.

Golden eyes narrowed, and most promptly any form of worry and concern evaporated from Silver’s face like snow on a sunny morning. Instead the other hedgehog bared his teeth. “I get on your nerves, remember?” got huffed back… and Sonic blinked.

“…Oh. Yes, I did say that.” Because even Sonic couldn’t deal so well with someone who came at him yelling and hollering and constantly demanding him to leave, even though he was busy saving his friends. Perhaps his wording hadn’t been so nice, but Silver’s hadn’t been very nice either.

And yet Sonic had clearly – and slightly ironically – struck a nerve with it, since Silver remembered too.

Sonic shot a look at the other. Silver glared back in kind, quills bristling indignantly. And that would not do, the speedster conceded. If they wanted to make this team-up work without both getting mad, they would have to talk things out for sure. “But, you know… I am really good at getting on Tails’ nerves. Or Knuckles’. Even Amy’s! We’ve known each other for ages, so we know all the buttons we can press to get the other peeved,” he added, before a smile blossomed on his face. “And yet despite that, we still love each other.”

Silver’s face however remained most unsmiley. “I don’t follow.”

“You can annoy someone without them losing any love for you,” Sonic explained further. “None of us are perfect or flawless, Silver. It happens sometimes that you do something that others find hurtful, even if you didn’t mean it. Best you can do is apologise and keep it in mind for the future. Those that cherish you won’t love you any less for making mistakes, or tackling something in a way you shouldn’t have. So, I’m sorry for saying something hurtful.”

Pensively Silver rubbed his chin, before an incredulous shake of his head followed. “You don’t need to apologise for that. It’s how you felt. And telling you to get out of my way wasn’t a mistake, because you were.”

“There’s also value to be found in considering others’ perspectives,” Sonic chuckled, nudging his pal with an elbow. That, unfortunately, did little to make Silver do just that: the psychic promptly got a lot more spikey and also promptly floated a good handful of inches out of Sonic’s reach. Baby steps, the speedster encouraged himself. At least they were talking now. “But I’m not mad at what happened, not at all,” he added warmly. “It’s nice to get to know you better now!”

Silver’s lips pursed, for just a moment…

But under Sonic’s curious gaze, his face slowly, ever so slowly, did lose some of its frowniness. “I guess… it is nice, yeah,” got added almost hesitantly. “I never have guests over. Except for the wind, but he doesn’t talk. I don’t mind that it’s quiet, but it’s nice to have someone to talk to, I guess. If that makes sense.”

“It does. We’ll make it fun for us both! And we can go on that fun adventure,” Sonic urged him along.

Immediately Silver stiffened again.

That dour look, that had crossed his face before earlier this morning, formed right on it anew. “Adventures. Aren’t. Fun!” got hissed back with as much scorn as an acid burning right through a sheet of metal.

Whatever statement Sonic had expected, it certainly hadn’t been that. Adventures, not fun? “Er. What do you mean?” Sonic inquired back slowly.

Agitatedly Silver gestured to the trees and the loops and corkscrews beyond. “Don’t you see how fragile this all is? How it must be protected and looked after?! You don’t do that while you have fun!” he spat out, an irked breath sucked through his nose next. It did little to calm that agitation down. “Adventures are important. They’re to protect people; to protect the whole world. There’s nothing fun about that.”

“But we’re not saving the world right now-”

“We gotta get you home, and that’s also important! What if your friends are really worried about you? What if Eggman’s causing trouble now that you’re not there to stop him? How many people are going to suffer then?! It’s your responsibility to be there and protect-!”

“Silver,” Sonic interrupted, “you’re way overthinking this.”

Silver’s glare, if possible, became only more lethal. “I’m not.”

“Come on, bud, you’re a little bit.” Gently Sonic smiled. “I see what you mean, I really do! I’d say it’s important to know when it’s time to be serious, or when it’s time to not be. And I know that distinction very well.”

“You don’t seem like it,” the very blunt, very honest retort cut through Sonic like a knife. Luckily Sonic was entirely immune to knife-cut statements like these, and thus he couldn’t help but chuckle. Which… only made Silver leer more, but hey, Sonic was also immune to angry looks of any kind.

“I’ll show you when we’re in real trouble,” the speedster settled on with a wink, though he did force himself to become more serious. Clearly this was important to Silver, for whatever reason. Perhaps that responsibility that he mentioned came into play here… “And it’s not my responsibility to protect the world,” Sonic thus continued with dissecting Silver’s words. “Besides, it’s not even the first time a thing like this has happened, and everything was okay every single time I’ve disappeared to some other place. And it will be now too!”

Golden eyes regarded him most suspiciously. “Where did you disappear to, then?”

“Another dimension… Into books… I hung out in space for like a week once…” The last of which his friends hadn’t been thrilled about, actually, but Sonic decided to keep that detail for himself. “Point is, my pals know that these things just happen sometimes. And there’s no way Eggman’s gonna take over the world anytime soon.”

In one miffed movement Silver crossed his arms tautly. “Well, I think that we need to get a move on, and not waste time on having fun.”

Sonic regarded him up and down. Silver floated still, the definition of ‘guarded’ and ‘closed-off’ and ‘certainly not having any fun indeed’. And that would not do either, the determination struck Sonic like a second wind. He didn’t want Silver to always be so glum and irked, and especially not if it was because underneath his surface he was endlessly ruminating about all potential things that could be going wrong. That was no way to live.

Surely if he just went along with Sonic, and they traversed this beautiful world together, and Sonic could show him how to have fun…

“Silver,” he piped up, the psychic jolting. “Can I promise you something?”

A grey eyebrow raised. “Sure? Whatever you want.”

“I promise you that by the end of this adventure, I’ll have proven to you how much fun one can be. Without us having wasted time.” Lifting up his hand Sonic held out his pinkie finger. “Promise.”

His finger… got regarded rather warily. “What are you doing?”

“Heh. Have you never done a pinkie promise before?”

“Nah. The children in the city do it with each other all the time, but not me. No idea what the point of one is.”

“It signifies that you’re making an unbreakable promise. And my promise to you is that we will have fun, the both of us,” Sonic smiled, holding his hand with extended finger up to the other.

Silver remained silent for long. But Sonic waited patiently, the wind poking and prodding at his companion as his hand got studied… “I don’t see how you can be so confident about that,” the psychic eventually settled on.

But he did lower himself onto the ground.

And he did slowly, carefully, ball his hand into a fist before extending his pinkie as well, standing stiffly as Sonic made them both interlink. “Promise,” the speedster repeated anew, winking and smiling as Silver’s finger lightly curled around his. The other hedgehog shrugged back awkwardly, and so they stood, with the wind dancing around them in delight until Sonic carefully pulled away anew.

And with that gale guiding him he blasted off, but this time, Silver rushed right at his side.

Chapter Text

Silver’s pinkie felt weird.

Absentmindedly the psychic rubbed at his finger, like he’d been doing over and over since Sonic had intertwined it with his own. A promise… It didn’t make much sense to the psychic. But Sonic had seemed like he knew what he was talking about, so Silver had decided to just not focus on it anymore. No way Sonic would be able to show him adventures were fun.

Speaking of, the speedster was certainly managing to entertain himself aplenty. Somewhere in the distance Silver could discern a blue streak, rushing madly past the plentiful loop-de-loops and corkscrews that littered Mountain River Zone. Looking for the entrance to a Special Stage, he’d said; but as the streak came racing right at Silver before skidding into a halt, Sonic shook his head.

“Nothing. No big ring for it anywhere.”

“Darn it,” Silver grumbled under his breath. “I’ve got no idea how to make one appear.”

“Emeralds and Special Stages are plenty finicky. Sometimes the big rings appear out of nowhere, sometimes you need a whole bunch of smaller ones before one might spawn,” Sonic explained, dropping onto the ground on his butt. “But that does leave us in a bit of a pickle.”

With a huff Silver took to the air instead, bobbing up and down as he rubbed his chin. “Any other idea where we can find an Emerald, other than a Special Stage?”

“Not yet, but I’ve been thinking. You said others sometimes collect them, right?

“They do, yes. But I don’t know from where.”

“It would be most convenient if someone had them already,” Sonic nodded back. “Is Shadow still around?”

Promptly Silver tensed. “Hm,” he shrugged back to win himself time, eyes scrunching up as he thought the question over deeply. Because the answer to that was yes: Silver could attest to multiple days of hunting the black hedgehog down with no respite until he’d found him, alongside some giant robot who seemed to consist of about eighty percent ammo and bullets. But could he say that to Sonic? Shadow seemed pretty reclusive, considering how hard it had been to find him to begin with. And more importantly, who knew what such an answer could do to the timestream? “I shouldn’t tell you that,” Silver thus settled on.

Green eyes twinkled mischievously as Silver sent them a dry look back. But Sonic’s smile was warm still, his hands digging into the grass as he leaned backwards. “Then I won’t pry. What about GUN?”

Had Silver been tense already, now he tensed only more… because a deep-seated sourness took him in its hold, and he scowled at the speedster. “They are. They’re on the news sometimes, with a lot of propaganda about how they’re keeping us safe and stuff.” And promptly Silver’s arms crossed so tight it made his ribs hurt. “They’re doing a really bad job at it, though. A collection of incompetents, the whole lot of them. It’s awful.”

That… earned Silver a laugh. A full laugh, Sonic’s head tipping backwards and his eyes shutting. It proved quite interrupting to Silver’s sulking, because he couldn’t tear his gaze away from it: people didn’t laugh at what he said, usually, or at least not in a way that looked like they thought it was…

Funny?

But not bad funny.

“That sounds just like GUN from the past,” Sonic winked at him.

“Yeah, well… I guess. They’re… working on it, but not very well. They’ve never managed to capture my nemesis in full.” Which promptly made Silver grouse only more, his eyes narrowing. How idiotic could GUN be, letting Eggman Nega escape even after Silver handed them the card that evil scientist was trapped in? They’d asked for it with the promise Eggman Nega would be facing justice and going straight to jail the moment they got him out of the card, and yet days later he’d already broken out of it himself with not a single lick of justice served. At the very least the army had helped Silver go to the past again to chase after the madman anew. It was little to repent for their stupidity, but they also could not have helped, and the world would have been overrun by the Ifrit then.

Which did make him wonder… “GUN used to have two Emeralds, actually. But they don’t anymore,” the psychic mused.

An inquiring look got sent his way at that. “How do you know?”

“It’s because of those two Emeralds that I travelled to the past the second time. The first time I was on Onyx Island already. But the second time, Eggman Nega was already gone and things were a lot in disarray, so GUN found two Emeralds and used them with me for Chaos Control.”

“Yes, but why did they lose them?”

“Oh,” Silver hummed, “I asked them what they were going to do with the Emeralds after sending me to the past, and they said they’d send them on their way too. Swore it, even.”

Sonic’s lips twitched again. “And did they do that?”

“Yes, of course! They promised it. Not with a pinkie, but they swore they would.”

“Because I don’t think any promise made by the army can be counted on to be followed.”

“But they said they were going to do it,” Silver insisted.

Sonic, however, shook his head. “Did you see them do it?”

“No. I had already jumped in the portal.”

“And did they reach out to you afterwards about it?”

“…No. But-!”

“GUN is not a group that’ll follow their word if that is less convenient for them, Silver,” Sonic said gently. “I’ll betcha those Emeralds are both safely tucked away in a GUN base, for them to use again whenever they see fit.”

With a grumble Silver dropped to the ground, his mood souring far too quickly to keep up flying for fun. “I hope not for their sake,” he spat back, “because you don’t want to know the things I’ll do to them when I find out they lied.”

“You know,” Sonic grinned, “I think I’ll be seeing that with my own eyes really soon.”

His hand got extended to Silver.

With a more curious flick of his ears Silver regarded it. “In what way?”

“Because I suggest we change our Emerald-hunting plans a bit. This sounds like a way better lead to look into. Are you in?” got winked at him, Sonic’s fingers splaying as he stretched them out more. A suggestion for Silver to shake it, for whatever reason. With a frown Silver studied his own hand, mind whirring… But yes, he did have to agree with Sonic that the people he’d been talking to had been rather disingenuous about the fate of the Emeralds. And considering everything that had happened with Eggman Nega, Sonic raised quite a good point about GUN being untrustworthy.

In one fell swoop, their hands clasped, and Silver’s brow furrowed into the most focused of frowns as he shot Sonic a nod.

“Let’s go.”

------

GUN, which didn’t surprise Sonic in the slightest, had not kept their Emeralds in the location Silver had last seen them.

“But this is where we opened the portal!” the psychic protested, fur bristling indignantly amidst his mad pacing through the base. An empty base, more specifically: Sonic had to stifle extensive sneezes at the dust getting flicked around by Silver’s steps. It didn’t help that they had made their way through the entire place in their search, psychokinesis raising open endless heavy metal doors that slammed shut again the moment they’d entered through… And yet every room had been empty, cleaned up in full and with no traces left that there even had been anyone in the first place. Ominous, and the way Silver’s voice echoed against the walls intensified that feeling only more. “Why aren’t they here anymore?!” got added in a full yell of rage, Sonic stifling a wince at the sound assaulting his eardrums.

“GUN works with secrecy a lot,” he informed his companion, a bit muffled from where he stood squeezing his nose shut like mad. “That comes with the territory of being the army. And besides, this base is nothing impressive. Far too tiny. I don’t think they’d keep their Emeralds safe here.” Perhaps they’d even wanted to keep them away from Silver, though Sonic couldn’t think of any reason why, other than the fact the psychic seemed like someone quite liable to turn on GUN the moment he sniffed out he’d been deceived. And like someone who stood a decent chance of overpowering them, even with two centuries of technological advances at the army’s side. No doubt GUN had not missed that either.

But whatever the truth, one thing the speedster was sure of: GUN had to have lied.

Some grouses and grumbles followed as both hedgehogs pondered and thought this conundrum over, one on the brink of exploding and the other also, if only because of allergies. But eventually Sonic snapped his finger and grinned at Silver. “I got it! How about their main headquarters?” he beamed…

Before realising he removed the fingers previously clamped over his nose.

Which meant his words immediately got followed by him beginning to sneeze in earnest.

Some mad gestures and gasped-out fragments of sentences were needed to show Silver, who stood staring at Sonic’s hacking and wheezing with a mixture of worry and incredulousness, that Sonic had to get out of here right now and thus could Silver raise up the door that kept them stuck in this specific room pronto, please. But as Sonic turned around to go blast off to the lands around the ocean inlet the moment Silver would do that…

He instead yelped, because cyan enshrouded him, pulled him backwards most unceremoniously, and dropped him right into grey-furred arms. “Hold on,” Silver hummed, gingerly clutching Sonic close. Sonic merely gasped something back, because he’d been put right by that mane and the whisps of fur tickled his nose only more-!

But then Silver raised up and the world shifted and turned in cyan three, four times in rapid succession. Rushes of speed and motion intersected the cyan, and in mere seconds dank stale air had turned crisp and Sonic got put down on a rocky slope at the edge of the ocean. The speedster didn’t find it in himself to figure this was the same shifting as when Silver teleported him away to Sky Park Zone on Onyx Island, though. He was a bit too busy sucking in the fresh air seconds before the massive sneezing fit holding him in its grasp would be his last.

“Thanks,” Sonic rasped once he’d finally caught his breath a few minutes later, wiping his nose on his glove. “Whew! That base has been abandoned since the last time you went there, that’s for sure.”

Silver had been hovering around Sonic a mite awkwardly, eventually having settled on half-rubbing, half-smacking Sonic’s back while the speedster had been hacking his lungs out. But as Sonic spoke, his face darkened, and some words that Sonic figured were curses got spat out next. Madly the psychic took to pacing, hands balled and the occasional poor seashell or rock getting psychokinetically picked up to be flung at the ocean with enough force to make water spat up a full three meters. “What will we do?! I don’t know where their main headquarters are!” got snarled out inbetween.

“It’ll be okay,” Sonic smiled back with what he hoped Silver would see was gentle assurance. “We’ll figure out something, you and I.”

“I’m going to kill all of them,” was the approximate response Sonic got over another plunk! of a rock returning to the waves. With a shake of his head Sonic decided to give Silver some space, green eyes studying their surroundings. The city glittered across the waves in the distance, shining in the light of the noon sun… Sonic had yet to go there in all of his exploring.

And cities, as a undeniable fact of life, often had many people in them who could be talked to and who had information on all sorts of goings-on in the surroundings.

Maybe they just had to go into the city, Sonic mused, and a plan begun forming in his mind at lightning speed.

A while later, once Silver had calmed down enough to not fling a whole beach-worth of stones and shells in the ocean, Sonic padded beside him through one of the underwater pipes he’d seen in his previous exploring. On the mainland, a road with a hiking and cycling trail had led towards the ocean’s edge, where a glass canopy had started and formed a half-pipe the deeper the road dropped underneath the water’s surface. They were truly walking right on the ocean floor, like Silver had said. Sonic found himself quite preoccupied with marvelling at the underwater world beyond the glass, though Silver marched on with zero pausing. “I’m not sure this will work,” the psychic muttered. “Surely GUN won’t just… put the location of their secret headquarter base somewhere in the city? Or would they? Or are their headquarters in the city?”

Sonic, amidst his staring, caught Silver’s words barely in time. “Ah… I doubt that. The one in the past isn’t, at least. And GUN might not put its location for anyone to stumble across, but there’s more people out there than just them. There’s always conspiracies, or those in the know, or even just people who accidentally put something in the newspaper that they shouldn’t,” he informed his pal. “Other people are our best shot here, and there’s surely tons of them in your city.”

“Millions, yep. That’s why they had to expand into the ocean.”

“It looks amazing,” Sonic smiled. With Silver at his side he ambled through the walkway, studying the ocean outside the half-pipe with no small amount of curiosity. Tons more smaller pipes were connected to the one he and Silver were in, leading to all sorts of buildings visible through the glass… Sonic whistled in awe. “These are the buildings we see above the water too?”

“They are,” Silver nodded back. “You can enter them and go up and down with elevators. Above the water there’s tons of pipes and bridges and stuff as well to walk between them, but the buildings were built right on the ocean floor.”

“That’s really neat.” With his hand trailing past the glass of the half-pipe they were in Sonic peeked all over, the ocean’s blue-and-white flickering outside of their walkway making him marvel only more.

Beside him Silver knocked a knuckle against it. “The pipes are very sturdy, too. People didn’t want a disaster with having them break all the time.”

“Can they break?”

“Anything can,” Silver shrugged. “But they’ve got whole systems in place for that. You see how the pipe is made out of segments? Each can be closed off with a trap door of sorts, that can fall shut and close off a broken part of the pipe, once everyone is out. It’ll keep the water contained, and the pipe can be repaired from the outside and drained.”

Following the finger pointing upwards, where the glass indeed was intercepted by a thick line of grey, Sonic nodded. “You know it well.”

“Of course! What if one of them breaks and I don’t know what to do about it?! I read it all in the library.”

Sonic’s ears gave a flick. Silver had mentioned that before… “That is also a botanical garden, you said?” he prodded, regarding his pal closely. He could have sworn a little glimmer of joy had formed in those oh-so-serious golden eyes, matched by the firm nod of Silver’s head…

“It is! It’s incredibly neat,” Silver agreed. And then he opened his mouth anew, and…

Sonic could only stare in surprise at the utter tsunami of words that spilled out.

“So the problem with books is that they’re all paper, right? And you don’t want paper to get humid. Or computers, for that matter. Except plants transpire and water evaporates from their stomata so the air can get quite moist if you’ve got a lot, and the library has thousands of plants. So what they did is that they very carefully looked at all the species of plants that could work in libraries, and they selected a whole bunch of them that are good for air purification and that help keep the temperature down and that won’t ruin the books with excessive moisture. There’s a lot of cacti and they’ve also got succulents and ferns that are all placed in pots and stuff, and there’s also plants placed against the bricks so it makes a green wall. The roof is a dome made of glass and there’s a huge open space in the middle of the library so all the light can go down! And the parts of the roof that aren’t glass are terraces that you can go onto, and they’re all full of plants too to help keep the temperature in the library down, and they also attract a lot of insects with the flowers. And every floor of the library also has a reading nook with plants that hang from the ceiling, so it’s really nice to be there,” Silver produced in what Sonic swore was a single breath, somehow.

It was both the most he’d ever heard Silver talk in one go, and absolutely the most eager.

“Whoa, really? That’s so cool!” Sonic made sure to urge the other along in his talking, lips twitching up into a warm smile. Silver looked cute in his eagerness like that, with haphazard hand movements that made his entire body flow along in his chatter. Dozens of plant names came by next, accompanied by their function and why they did well in this specific library, in a gushing chatter that made Sonic wonder how Silver wasn’t running out of oxygen…

And all the while, he just couldn’t tear his eyes away from Silver’s face.

Because he could have sworn a smile was visible on tan lips while all the furrows and creases of his face had evened out entirely, and in a way, Silver looked sunnier than every summer day Sonic had lived through so far.

How very odd, the speedster mused. Maybe it just caught his attention because it was about the first time he’d ever seen Silver genuinely happy. But as it stood Sonic was given little time to think it over: the half-pipe angled upwards, the world lightened around them, and Sonic threw a hand in front of his eyes at the sunlight hitting his face as he and Silver stepped onto cobblestones. “And that is why they use ivy to coat the banisters and the stairs,” Silver concluded his spiel. “And welcome in the city. We’re right in the city centre here.”

Sonic couldn’t stop himself from bouncing in excitement. “Whoa… It’s gorgeous! It looks so old!”

“Apparently this city centre hasn’t changed much in the past centuries. This place is well over a millennium old,” Silver nodded. Sonic could believe it: the facades of the houses were most charming and old-fashioned, little cafes tucked away in corners of the streets and plentiful canals stretching out as far as the eye could see between them. The only thing that did tip him off about being in the future were all the high-tech screens and fancy hoverboards and robotic creations Sonic couldn’t even guess the function of, that gave everything a soft neon glow. Though, his marvelling got interrupted by Silver, who pressed his fists into his hips. “What now? How will we find info about GUN?”

“Shhh. Keep your voice down,” Sonic told him, winking to show Silver he wasn’t mad. GUN had more ears around than he liked in the past; surely the future would not be much different. Slowly the speedster set off onto the street, past houses and shops while keeping his eyes peeled.

A huff followed behind him. “Do you even know what you’re doing?”

“Quite so.” And Sonic’s amble slowed to a prompt halt as his gaze darted past what he’d been looking for. Over the years the speedster had found himself rather familiar with all the signs someone needed some help: worried faces, wringing hands, pacing and muttering to others…

Precisely what a guy in a fancy green uniform with a big hat was doing at the very corner of the street, the man alternating between frenzied walking and leaning close to mumble in the ear of a lady dressed so inconspicuously normal all Sonic’s senses of suspicion got triggered immediately.

“I wonder what they’re talking about,” Silver hummed, looking over into the direction of the duo as well. “That guy… His name is Ermanno, I believe. This city has a whole guard that’s keeping it safe… well, allegedly. And that lady I don’t know. But she’s a GUN agent.”

That Sonic had not expected, and the speedster shot his pal a curious look. “How do you know?”

“They all stand like that. All stiffly, see?” That the lady did, Sonic suppressing a pained grimace at the ramrod-straight way her back was held. That had to hurt. “And when they’re not in uniform they wear those clothes too. It looks casual, but like… way too much. Plus, they’ve all got a super-tight bun or short hair. And do you see her glasses?” Silver continued, Sonic’s eyes trailing upward to the woman’s face. Indeed, it was adorned with a pair of them, Sonic studying their square appearance. “All GUN people have them. They’re fancy vizors with heat vision and stuff, one guy told me once. He said they could shoot lasers too and freeze people on the spot in ice and send out electric shocks with as much volts as the power grid, but I’ve never seen any of that myself,” the psychic concluded, ears twitching.

Even for a technologically-advanced future, that reeked of nonsense, and thus Sonic snorted. It seemed more likely that the guy in question had been having some fun with lying to the world’s most honest psychic. Sonic wasn’t going to point that out now and risk Silver gutting the nearest GUN agent he could take his ire out on, however, and thus the speedster nodded inconspicuously towards the duo. “Let’s go ask them, shall we? Not about the lasers or the ice or electricity, but if they need help.”

Silver stiffened. “…What’s the point of asking if they need help?” got growled out with so much venom Sonic swore it made the cobblestones tremble and shake. “We gotta find the GUN base. I don’t want to help the army again, they suck at being the army!”

Stifling a snort at that very succinct summary of GUN’s track record, Sonic shook his head. “They might have the info we need. And people are more talkative if you’re nice to them, no?”

“…Huh. I mean, I do suppose,” Silver responded slowly, rubbing his chin in pondering. Sonic had to hide a smile at that, remembering very well how he’d met Silver. The psychic had ran up to him, both times… and both times that had been accompanied by snarling, yelling, flared quills, glaring eyes, bared teeth, and generally a lot of unpleasantness from Silver’s side that had not at all been nice.

But that was in the past, and things were going far smoother between them. Thus Sonic opened his mouth to discuss how to best do this-

Before jolting as Silver kicked into motion, right towards the two humans. “Wait!” Sonic realised, reaching out to snatch Silver’s arm and pull him back. If the psychic introduced himself the way he had to Sonic, they could forget getting any info out of these people-!

The moment his fingers curled around Silver’s arm, though, the psychic jumped. Most promptly Sonic got scorched in a deathly glare, some of those signs of un-nice-ness showing anew as Silver snarled. The cobblestones quivered only more from the deep reverberations. “I’ll handle the talking,” the speedster promptly decreed over the growl sent his way. “How about you pay attention to how that lady’s acting, and see if she reacts suspiciously?”

“Let go!” Silver snapped, arm yanked right out of Sonic’s grasp. “That… Sure.”

“Sorry,” Sonic hummed back placatingly, taking a little step backwards. He got glared at still, but at least Silver’s growls quieted down while the psychic madly rubbed the fur of his arm. “Let’s do this,” the speedster added before prancing over, Silver’s eyes burning a hole in him still as he followed a good distance behind.

Both humans had been talking to each other throughout that all, Ermanno frantically and the woman with one-word responses. As a silence fell into the conversation Sonic stepped forward a bit louder, both humans flinching and whirling around towards the two hedgehogs. “Hello,” Sonic nodded towards them both. “You guys look like there’s trouble abound.”

“Oh-! Uh, greetings, pal. And hi, Silver,” Ermanno responded. “No, all is well… for now.”

The woman shot him an irked look, though Sonic’s ears perked up immediately. “For now?”

“It is of no concern to you, civilian,” the icily stiff response came from her side. “I can assure you all is well.”

Sonic’s ears twitched slowly. Tough crowd indeed. But this was the exact situation he and Silver needed… In a split second the speedster weighed his options, before grinning. Being bold had always brought him far enough. “Sir, are you a guard of the city?” he inquired, gesturing to the fancy sword attached to Ermanno’s belt.

“Er… Yes, indeed.”

“I do quite feel like things are not so well if a guard and a GUN agent are talking together so secretly.”

Ermanno grimaced deeply, and the lady stiffened. “Apologies? A GUN agent?” she retorted, possibly even more cold than before. “I can assure you that a mere civilian like you has no idea whether they are talking to someone of the army.”

Sonic opened his mouth to retort… before his head snapped to the side at the scoff coming from there. “You are of the army. You’ve got their glasses, and their clothes and their hair bun,” Silver huffed back, crossing his arms. “So what’s going on?”

Ermanno opened his mouth as if he wanted to intervene, but nothing came out. Instead the lady crossed her arms just as tautly as Silver’s were. “I reiterate: this does not concern two children. Leave now, before you both get in trouble.”

“Actually,” Sonic spoke up, “this is Silver, and he’s a hero and very brave and strong. If anyone can solve your issue, it’ll be him.”

Golden eyes snapped over to him, genuine surprise coating Silver’s features. But what caused it Sonic did not know, nor could he ask. “Well… Yeah! I am,” the psychic hummed anyway, before turning his glare right back to the GUN lady. “And this is Sonic, and he’s a brave hero as well.”

Sonic’s interest got piqued immediately at the way the lady had raised an eyebrow behind her glasses throughout these introductions. First she studied the speedster, before shaking her head minutely. But then she looked at Silver… “Silver, hmm,” followed. In a mere second her stance shifted ever so slightly, the woman’s head angling down to the psychic as if he suddenly had become the most interesting person in the whole world. Perhaps those vizors could do more than detect heat and probably not shooting lasers, ice and electricity, Sonic figured. “Weren’t you the boy GUN asked to go back in time to chase down Dr. Robotnik?” got added slowly.

“The boy?” Silver repeated with such a level of indignance Sonic had never had to fight so hard to keep a straight face.

“And he succeeded,” he made sure to intercept before Silver would roundhouse-kick a GUN agent, “and that man is now…”

“Trapped in a burning hell dimension and hopefully getting long having gotten eaten alive by the Ifrit.”

“Exactly, so if there’s a single person who’d be able to protect your city, it’ll be Silver. We’ll show you.”

“We can use all the help we can get,” Ermanno piped up meekly, hands wringing as he shot the GUN lady a pleading stare. “Silver’s always here in the city to help out the guard… If you’ve got good experiences with um, him, as a hero and such, maybe it’s, er, okay if he and his friend… lend a hand?”

“We’d be happy to. The people who live here deserve to be safe. That’s why GUN exists, right?” Sonic pushed a bit further. And slowly but surely, the lady’s lips pursed only more…

“Hm. I suppose the situation as it is now will be a cinch to solve for someone with your feats, Silver. And this Sonic…”

“Has a lot of feats too,” Silver dryly added. “Tell us, now.”

Sonic’s glare of warning came just a second too late… but mercifully Ermanno opened his mouth before the GUN agent could stop him in turn. “At the warehouses on the industry terrain,” came stuttering out; first hesitantly, then more and more frantically till the guard was altogether rambling. “There’s noises, skitters… People are terrified! They’re walking out of their jobs because they’re feeling watched by something! Everyone swears that there is a… a creature or a being or a what-have-you hiding there, but nobody has seen anything! And the shipments-! We’ve been trading for centuries, but all the competition is doing so much better these days all of a sudden! It’s almost like there is something surveilling the warehouses, spying on everything and everyone, and-!”

“And we can fight whatever it is and destroy it!” Silver interrupted with the subtlety of a fully packed freight train. “Sounds great! We’ll go and see right now.”

With a muffled chuckle at the ease with which his pal jumped to this plight Sonic nodded. “We’ll have this figured out in no time,” he agreed, cheekily saluting the GUN lady and Ermanno. And then he lightly curled his fingers around Silver’s hand and tugged him away from the corner, giving it a squeeze as another hiss followed. “Before that ice queen can change her mind,” he muttered over his shoulder, which did make Silver blink ponderingly before nodding with his angry noises dying down.

“Warehouses are this way. Follow me,” the psychic said instead, hand wrenched out of Sonic’s grasp with slightly less hostility than he had his arm, and the two hedgehogs blasted off deeper into the city. Eagerly the speedster followed in Silver’s steps, the streets quieting as they made their way towards the ocean, and all the while Sonic’s enthusiasm grew all the more.

Solving this problem would be a cinch indeed.