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A sense of joy filled Silver as he returned to the future. A clear sky, white clouds, everything was fine.
He dragged the remains of Metal 3.0 behind him. “Maybe we can find a better use for you.” He said to himself, almost forgetting he wouldn’t be alone in this future.
But the feeling of something being wrong struck him almost instantly, like a festering wound in reality, like everything had just died mere moments ago yet still appeared to be alive.
No, he shook his head. It was probably nothing, yet something caught his eye anyway, a small crystal that shined like a diamond.
“Huh,” he reached down to pick it up. “Maybe it’s some kind of power source?”
another ruined future, just another day
a world made of interlocking bricks, pulling himself together
himself, costumed in blue and gold, looking for a missing hedgehog—
No, no, he just had to be seeing things. Everything was fine for once. He could remain in the future, he’d just split with Espio, they’d just beaten Eggman Nega-
The feeling only got stronger, the grass didn’t seem as green, the wind beginning to fade slowly.
He began to float, speeding towards the source of the anomaly. “Please, let it be nothing. Why can’t I just be paranoid?”
Nega. Of course it was Nega, sat in his damaged Eggmobile, half of his face red, glasses damaged yet perfectly fitting on his face.
“You again?” Anger already bubbled in the hedgehogs body. “How many times do I have to stop you, old man?”
“Oh, I’m just leaving you a parting gift before I leave this dimension.” Nega grinned despite his various injuries. “A bomb, one to destroy the very universe you stand in!”
Silver didn’t want to believe it, he’d only just escaped Ifrit, he can’t have built something like that already. “Do it then, I’ll stop you.”
"Do it? What am I, a villain of the week? Do you really think I’d give you any sort of explanation of my final plan if there remained the slightest chance you could change the outcome? It’s already gone off!”
The world came to a near-standstill, time slowing to a painful degree around them, seconds stretching into hours.
Nega laughed, opening a portal to leave. “I suppose, as one might say, it’s no use?”
Nega was already turning to leave, having forgotten one thing: Silver was unstuck from time, an anomaly.
The last thing he forgot was that Silver had Metal 3.0’s body with him.
And why was that the last thing he forgot? Silver grabbed the Eggmobile with his mind, quickly pulverising him with his own creation.
Trying to shrug off the fact he just killed someone, the random dimensional portal and the fact he hadn’t eaten yet, Silver looked around him.
Nobody was moving. Or, to be accurate, they moved so slowly he’d wait weeks for them to move 0.1 kilometres.
Time was rotting, and the rot would progress.
He could fix this. Somehow. Tails would figure something out, wouldn’t he? Chaos Emeralds, Time Stones, there had to be something.
He moved, he moved like it was the end of world and there was a chance to fix everything, a loud noise building in his ears as the light began to run low and the world turned grey.
There wasn’t a portal to go through. No portal opened. His future faded around him, gone in a moment.
No, no, no. He clutched the crystal in his hand until it fused to the ring on his right wrist, bringing Metal 3.0’s head along.
“I’m supposed to protect the future, there has to be a way!”
There was a bright flash, leaving him on an island he didn’t recognise. Way up high, in the sky, moonlight in his eyes, there was Sonic, glowing golden— but he was frozen too, catching a massive blade as he fought a metallic creature over ten times his size.
Tails looked like a hologram, standing at some sort of gate before he was rendered colourless too.
Rotting, no ebb, no flow— it didn’t make sense, doesn’t make sense, won’t make sense, will not make sense—
Sonic and Shadow, running up a rollercoaster as Tails and Rouge were tied up near the front.
He doesn’t get the chance to stick around and help, another flash.
An Eggman base. Cubot and Orbot are panicking— there’s a red smear on the floor, tubes everywhere, one of them smashed open.
Eggman wasn’t supposed to be dead. Somebody else had been here, somebody from outside— maybe if he could move something outside of time?
No, there wouldn’t be time at this rate, the sky was already grey. There had to be a time period it hadn’t reached yet, he had to fix it, he had to know what to do to save everything before it was too late.
Another flash, Tails with robotic parts on his body— as grey as his somewhat older self.
Another flash, various times and locations all lined up, fights that someone else did or a team did altogether playing out different, two Sonics, a Shadow—
Some sort of werehog fighting a robot, the world is distorting beneath his feet, the noise is getting louder.
He sees sideways again. A version of himself in a mask hugs a tenrec, another breaks through a crystalline barrier, another version of him with some sort of ruby in his chest—
Then he’s in space. His future(?) self standing next to a cat he could’ve sworn he knew, talking with Sonic and Tails.
why is space white how is space without colour why is it—
He tried to shrug it off as he landed in Frontier Canyon Zone— the rings he collected earlier are already gone, he must’ve blasted through here already—
Knuckles is on the ground, hurt. Rouge was helping him up. He was here with Espio only an hour ago, Tails and Sonic, Metal and Shadow—
He’s pulled back further. Crystal Mountain, when it was pulled to the past.
Maybe if he found a time period that wasn’t affected yet—
That cat again, Sonic too, fighting against Eggman and Nega. None of them have any colour, no hope, no hope at all.
He refused that.
Soleanna. Pumpkin Hill. Space Colony ARK. Station Square.
Sonic fighting a Gizoid, two separate encounters lining up in his perception. It’s not entirely in order anymore.
Time cries out in pain. It will cry out, it is crying out, it has cried as its fate seems certain and threads are stretched. Cracks open in the sky, eating away at whoever and whatever got near.
The Northstar Islands, a sungazer watches as Robotnik is eaten up by one.
Time screams.
Silver goes further back. The grass is static, dead as there is no light reaching it.
Little Planet, a bad future. A half-existing Metal Sonic collides with him as he’s pulled through time again.
South Island, Sonic bouncing on some sort of spring. He’d fight Knuckles and Fang here, at some point.
South Island, a third time. No animals, Sonic in a minecart, falling into a pit— Robotnik is not there to save him.
South Island again. In another universe, there is only South Island left. Here, it’s similar… in that this was the earliest known part of the timeline he could find Sonic in.
But it’s empty, again. There is nothing. The sky is dead. The island is dead. The world is dead.
The universe falls into darkness around him—the small crystalline fragment shines again.
He’s outside the universe. There is no universe left.
a version of and the tenrec being saved by a patchwork robot and an AI
a version of him, part of a royal guard, that cat and a raccoon
a version of him— no, no more alternates.
Other worlds were out there. Other hims.
Maybe he could still be useful.