Chapter Text
The sound of panting and footsteps on cobblestone pavement filled the air as two figures raced through the streets of Sunset Heights.
Normally, running was a fun activity that both of them enjoyed.
But not like this.
Hordes of Eggman’s robots, more than even they could fight alone, swarmed overhead after them.
Any other day, they would stop to fight, but they had already tried that. All they’d done at the beginning of this mess was fight, but it had eventually become clear that fighting was a literal losing battle. It was less effort just to keep running away. For every robot they destroyed, twenty more seemed to take their place. Their numbers were endless, and their pursuit was relentless.
Hoping for a moment to think, Sonic the Hedgehog ducked them both out of sight and into the city’s sewer system and bent over to rest his hands on his knees and try and catch his breath.
“So… what are the odds we can get away…. without them noticing,” he asked his companion tiredly.
Next to him, Tails was also gasping to return air to his lungs and pulled out his Miles Electric to look up escape routes. Finding none, he shook his head.
“Incredibly… low…” he said between panting breaths. “And… if we did disappear… the robots… would just start… attacking civilians… looking for us.”
Sonic sighed, afraid he’d say that.
It had started a week ago. All of a sudden, Eggman’s forces began attacking in droves.
This was not unusual.
What was unusual was the target of the attack.
Tails.
Not Sonic, that would be more understandable. Eggman hated him. It wouldn’t be too far-fetched if he finally had enough and decided to send all his forces out to eliminate the spiky blue thorn in his side once and for all.
But no, they weren’t after Sonic. Their target was clearly Tails. Sonic knew this for certain because one of his earlier attempts to lead the robots away from the exhausted fox had led to the machines completely ignoring him and nearly nabbing his brother on the spot. Sonic had barely managed to double back and get him out in time.
Since then, wave after wave of robots, each more deadly than the last, came after them. They’d barely managed to scrounge together enough time to eat or sleep before one would be shaking the other awake to start running again. The two were exhausted and nearing the end of their rope, and they both knew it. They couldn’t keep this up. They’d tried to get back up from their friends, but any time they tried to rendezvous with someone the robots seemed to know, and the sheer amount of them that would appear in response would force them to turn away from the direction of aid just to survive.
“What do we do now, Sonic?” Tails asked, giving his brother a worried look, and appearing as though he was ready to drop.
Sonic took a deep breath to get as much of a second wind as he could. Glancing around for any sort of plan, he spotted something among the trash that made him grin.
“Same thing we always do,” he told his little brother, ruffling his bangs fondly. “We never stop running.”
Tails took a deep breath and looked determined.
Outside the sewers, the robots were quickly growing agitated at not being able to find their prey, and were just about to start tearing down houses, when a blue and yellow streak shot by.
They locked their sensors onto the blue blur to see what looked like Sonic carrying Tails in his arms as he tried to make a break for it out of town.
Immediately, Eggman’s forces shot after him, moving to block every path he could possibly take.
It took some doing. Sonic put everything he had into his escape attempt, slipping through any gap in their forces he could, and drawing out the chase as long as he could. But it couldn’t last forever. Eventually, the entire army of robots was able to corner the hedgehog in the middle of Red Gate Bridge.
Sonic clutched Tails tightly to his chest and backed away as Eggman’s forces closed in, before tossing his brother into the air as high as he could. “Fly away, Tails!” he yelled desperately.
The robots all immediately took their sensors off of Sonic and focused all their attention on this new escape attempt, or at least they did, up until the yellow ball of fuzz faceplanted onto the street rather than lift off into the air.
Finally able to see ‘Tails’ clearly, the robots quickly realized that it wasn’t Tails, but a large yellow Teddy Bear with two mops attached to its rear to look like fox tails.
But even as their processors realized this, a loud beeping came from inside the bear, and the bomb that the real Tails had hidden within it went off.
‘BOOM!’
Sonic, who had managed to slip away and get off the bridge once the attention was off him and onto ‘Tails’ (no one would ever expect him to use ‘Tails’ as a distraction to get away), laughed as he watched the entire army of robots go down with the bridge from the other side.
“Oh, sorry, did you think I had someone else?” he called out to the wreckage.
Thinking he was in the clear, at least for now, Sonic turned and prepared to run to where he and Tails agreed to meet.
“Impressive,” said a deep, menacing voice behind him.
Startled, Sonic wheeled around to look at who had spoken.
Hovering in front of him was a black figure with long and wild white hair in a menacing one-eyed silver mask, and a large jewel of swirling colors set into his chest.
Everything about him screamed ‘bad guy’, and Sonic was too tired not to judge a book by its cover.
“Thanks. Later,” Sonic said, and took off.
The masked guy could only hover there, stunned. Clearly, he was expecting Sonic to indulge in some of his trademark banter rather than run away immediately. But the blue hedgehog had places to be, and little brothers to check up on.
Unfortunately, Sonic wasn’t able to get far before the masked creep came after him.
“Look, I’m flattered, but I’m not in the mood right now!” Sonic called back to him. “Can we schedule this for another time?”
“Why wait, when you’ve clearly accepted my invitation?” the masked creep said.
“Invitation?” asked Sonic in surprise. Then it clicked. “You’re the reason those robots have been after us constantly!”
“That was the doctor’s doing, but every army needs a general,” said the masked creep, sounding smug.
Well, that ruled out going back to Tails right away. No way was he bringing this guy anywhere near his little brother.
Sonic skidded to a stop and turned to glare at his pursuer. “Alright then, if that was an invitation, then what are we celebrating?” he asked.
“Your imminent demise,” the creepy guy said, holding a hand out in his direction menacingly.
“Fun,” said Sonic sarcastically. “Sounds like a party, but I left my dancing shoes at Amy’s house, so I guess I’ll have to turn you down. We can tango another time.”
“I insist,” said the creepy masked guy, beginning to sound irritated.
“Oh, but how could I?” said Sonic, glad to see he was getting under the creep’s skin. “I don’t even know your name, and it’d be a real shame to be taken out by a nobody.”
That really seemed to irk the masked creep, as he floated higher into the air and glowered down at Sonic. “You may call me 'Infinite' in the brief moments that remain of you.”
Sonic didn’t show it outwardly, but the second he heard that name, he remembered a warning given by a future version of Silver on his birthday. “All I can say is there are an infinite amount of problems still to solve…”
Those words finally made sense now. ‘An infinite amount of problems’
Infinite was a problem.
And one Sonic was eager to solve.
“Nice name,” Sonic said, nodding in the direction of the destroyed bridge. “But I don’t see how much demise I’m going to be doing right now, ya know, since I just sent your whole army to the bay.”
“Not necessarily,” said Infinite.
Sonic barely had time to dodge as a blue streak suddenly shot towards him, and Metal Sonic appeared to take point next to Infinite.
“Metal, should have known you’d show up eventually,” said Sonic, not all that surprised to see him.
However, a second attack right after that one did leave him wrong-footed as he ducked out of the way, especially when he saw who it was that attacked him.
“What? Chaos?!” Sonic said when he saw the watery deity moving to stand at Infinite's side as well.
How could Chaos be here? Sure, he’d barely been able to contact his friends in the last week on account of him and Tails being on the run, but he was sure that if the god had re-emerged from the Master Emerald, Knuckles would have made more of an effort to warn him.
Something was not right here, but Sonic didn’t have time to think about it. That last effort to take out Eggman’s robots had taken up all the reserves he had left, and he was currently running on fumes. He needed to finish this quickly and get back to Tails.
“Do you begin to see the hopelessness of your plight?” asked Infinite smugly. “Where is the fox? Give him up, and I may spare your miserable life.”
Yeah, this guy was going down.
“The only thing hopeless here is your villain speech,” Sonic sassed back. “I mean, really, can you be any more of a cliche?”
Before Infinite could respond, Sonic dashed forward to kick Chaos’ waterlogged brain. The god could be appeased later, but for now, he was going down.
Unfortunately, exhaustion made him sloppy, and the attack left him open for Metal Sonic to try and claw his face off.
But before the robot could touch him, a black blur suddenly came out of left field and spindashed him away, and Infinite fled higher above them to avoid the same fate.
Sonic beamed in recognition. “Shadow! Perfect timing!” he said, a wave of relief crashing over him at the sight of the other hedgehog.
Shadow didn’t say a word and just turned to glare blankly in his direction.
Sonic chuckled, “I know, I know. I can do better than that. But not all of us are inexhaustible Ultimate Lifeforms.”
Still no response, just the same piercing glare.
Ouch. What had Sonic done to tick him off this time? He thought they’d finally started getting along better. By no means were they close, but he could occasionally coax Shadow into a race and bribe him with coffee beans (thanks for the tip, Rouge) to stay and chat a bit once it was over. And whenever there was trouble, Sonic wouldn’t hesitate to trust Shadow to watch his back.
“Look, whatever I did, I’m sorry,” Sonic said as he saw Chaos and Metal regrouping with Infinite for round two. He quickly turned to face them, trusting Shadow to have his six as he laid out the plan, “I’ll fight Chaos before he can flood the city. You can take Metal Sonic, just pretend he’s me and vent any frustrations you have on him, and then we can team up to take on Infinite together, sound good to-GAAAAHHH”
Sonic was cut off when a sudden blow to his head left stars dancing in his eyes, and he collapsed to the ground.
“Wh-Wha-” he started to say, dazed, winded, exhausted, and wondering what had hit him.
But the answer to that became very clear as Shadow stepped into his line of sight and drew back his fist to hit him again, his expression still set in that blank, piercing glare.
Above them, Infinite cackled. “Fool!” he said. “You thought yourself so clever to destroy my army, but you have fallen for the same trick!”
This didn’t make any sense. No way Shadow would ever give a stereotypical creep like him the time of day, much less listen to his orders.
Not willingly, at least.
“What did you do to my fr-” Sonic started to shout, but before he could finish, Shadow’s fist plowed into his temple, and his world went black.
Infinite floated above him, smug in his victory.
Then it occurred to him they had knocked Sonic out before they could pry the location of their real target from him.
No matter, they would get the information they needed once he woke up. All this did was delay the inevitable.
“Bring him,” Infinite ordered his minions. “He has information we need, and we will get it. One way or another.”
Shadow’s face remained as unnervingly blank as ever as he grabbed Sonic by the wrist and dragged him along.
And then in a flash of red, all of them vanished.
On the other side of the city, Tails parked the police car he’d hotwired to get away unnoticed and peered out the windows at the bridge.
He saw when the explosion went off and sent the whole bridge falling into the bay. He was sorry to see it go, but if those robots weren’t stopped, the bridge probably would have been destroyed anyway. Either way, he resolved to sign himself and Sonic up to help repair it once this mess was over with.
Still, so far, everything was going according to plan. All he had to do now was wait for Sonic to get here, and they could get away scot-free.
It should only take Sonic a minute to take the long way around the bay and meet him, but… that minute came and went, and no blue hedgehog appeared.
Well… maybe he took the even longer way around, just to shake off any possible tails.
But several more minutes passed, and Sonic never arrived.
Terrified something had happened to him, Tails jumped back into the police car and drove it around the bay to the other side of the bridge.
When he got there, he was relieved to see the clear indent of Sonic’s footprints in the dirt alongside the road, showing he had indeed managed to get across the bridge before it collapsed.
He followed the footsteps as far as he could, trying to make sense of what happened. It looked like Sonic had gotten into a fight, but strangely, it was only his footprints that Tails could see in the area. Whoever fought him could either fly or somehow didn’t leave any footprints behind.
But one thing was clear, whoever he was fighting, Sonic lost, as evidenced by the blue quills left in marks of someone being dragged away.
Tails searched the area frantically for some other clue where they could have gone, but found nothing.
Sonic was just… gone!
Tails trembled as that knowledge sank in for him. But before he could stew in it for long, he caught sight of an Egg Carrier on the horizon, no doubt bringing more robots to resume the search for him now that his big brother wasn’t there to protect him.
The fox watched it as it drew closer, and softly repeated the last words Sonic had given him. “Never stop running.”
Tails couldn’t be here when it arrived. If he got captured, then everything he and Sonic did would be for nothing. Not to mention, his continued presence only put Sunset Heights in more danger.
So with a sniffle, Tails wiped his eyes and ran back to his stolen police car and put the pedal to the metal to drive it anywhere else.
Sonic told him to never stop running, and until it was safe, he wouldn’t.