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Chapter Text

Disclaimer: SEGA is the current property owner of Sonic the Hedgehog and the Sonic IDW comic. All characters, gameplay aspects, and scenarios are copyright to SEGA.

The Lost City

"I don't see anyone coming around the corner," Cyan whispered through her mask. Whisper nodded, the wisp's language coming through loud and clear.

She looked around the corner, giving it another glance. It wasn't that she didn't trust Cyan, she absolutely did, but it was always better to double check.

The hard steel bit into her back. She was out with Tangle the Lemur, scouting out another of Eggman's old bases. He'd been quiet the last few years, and it'd made everyone except Sonic antsy and wondering when the next shoe would drop.

Sonic always preferred the 'live fast' style. Whisper preferred it the quiet. Mimic was still out there after all, causing a few problems whenever he came out of the woodwork. And the octopus hated her with a passion, and she returned it just as much.

A gray blur brushed past her roughly. "Tangle, please don't do that," Whisper said. The lemur didn't bother to say anything, letting out a loud 'whoo' as her tail circled around a pipe and shot her off further into the complex. Whisper winced as the sound pierced through her ears.

"You're not going to control her," Blue whispered to her. "No matter how many times you tell her." Whisper sighed. She knew that, but sometimes she needed to hear it.

"I know," she answered back. The wisps were chattering to themselves quietly, and Whisper tried to ignore their conversation. If they wanted to invite her in, she'd listen in then. She allowed them their privacy, just as much as they allowed hers.

"I think I see her up there. Second tower, by the window!" Orange screeched. Whisper's eyes immediately followed, and a moment later lifted up her wispon's scope. Sure enough, barely out of sight, she could see Tangle's tell tale tail going into the place. "Good eye," Whisper complimented. Orange gave a small chirp of happiness.

The path was complicated enough as it was. Eggman had made this complex gigantic, probably for some death machine, as was his way. Dead factories with tall chimneys were everywhere, each of their doors barred and locked, looking almost exactly the same.

The thing that bothered Whisper the most was the lack of wind, or of nature in general. The road was paved a dreary gray, emulated by the walls of everything around her.

"We aren't going to break in, are we?" Blue asked. Whisper shook her head. The cuboid wisp sighed with obvious relief. Pink flew up, his spiked head pointing towards some pipes.

"I say we climb up here. Better vantage, eh?" he asked. Whisper nodded, smirking lightly as she felt the cold pipe underneath her gloved hands. Sturdy, she felt as she gave it a light pull. "I can help you with that!" Pink said.

Whisper shook her head as she darted upwards. Her boots were silent against the pipe, and although she wasn't the best at climbing she was still quite decent at it.

Her wisp friends were at the top, waiting for her. They could fly, or at least hover well. "Oh wow, look at this!" Green said, his voice full of awe. It took Whisper another moment to get fully up, and to take the sight in.

The sun was setting in the far corner, and the complex was massive, its gray steels reflecting a paltry amount of light off. There were no clouds in the sky, just the menagerie of colors from the sun going down. "We should hurry and find Tangle," Whisper commented. Her friends nodded and quickly darted away.

Orange stuck by her, as she always had. Whisper scanned the onset, hoping to find her gi-

She shook her head out. Companion, friend? Best friend? Wisps weren't included. Non-wisp best friend? Sure, she could go with that.

"You're not fooling anyone. We can all tell," Orange chirped softly into her ear. Whisper felt her face heat up, but ignored her. "Fine, fine, ignore me. Third skyway, I think I see her."

Whisper looked up, pulling up her scope. Tangle was there, waving frantically from the path leading from one skyscraper to another. This was an entire city, wasn't it? Smaller than the Egg City, fortunately, but a wildfire is still just as scary as an inferno, regardless of which one's bigger.

She hit a small switch on her wispon, a small call going out that sounded like a chittering insect. Orange rolled her eyes, only stopped from commenting as the others quickly lined up next to her.

"Tangle's up there. Orange found her," Whisper said. Cyan immediately floated over and nuzzled into Orange, ignoring the way that it made Orange blush.

Green looked up. "I don't think I can bring us that far. What's the plan?" he asked. Whisper nodded. That was...a good idea. She didn't have a plan, aside from 'Follow Tangle'. Although following the hyper lemur was always tough.

She was saved from having to plan as Tangle suddenly ducked away from view, into the skyway. She came out a moment later out of another of the skyscrapers, jumping from however high she was to the ground.

"Green? Please save her," Whisper commented lightly. He gave a small huff, but less of an unwilling huff and more of a 'why is she doing this!?' huff.

He puffed himself out, creating a small pillow that Tangle could land on. The lemur obviously saw it, as she gave a grin and let out a loud "Woohoo!"

Whisper made a mental note to give Green a treat, once they got back. She had a feeling he would want one, and he definitely deserved it after that.

Tangle landed softly on Green, the hover wisp slowly lowering himself to the ground. "Whoo! That was fun, we gotta do that again sometime!" Tangle said as she pushed herself off the pillow. Green reshaped back into his hovercraft shape and quickly shook his head.

"I don't think we should," Whisper said. Green gave a loud sigh of relief, making Tangle give him a look of confusion.

"You know, I really don't like that you can understand them and don't tell me what they say," Tangle said. "Found anything yet? I found absolutely nothing!" she cheered with a bright grin.

Was that something to celebrate over? Whisper didn't think so, but Tangle's excitement was rather infectious. "Not yet. I'm thinking we can clear another few areas over there," Whisper said, pointing to the far side.

"I wonder if she realizes that she can just ask Tails for a translator. Did he ever get that working?" Cyan asked.

"No, and don't tell her. I have a bet with Pink that it's going to take another four weeks," Orange spoke up. Pink rolled his eye.

Tangle gave a small glower. "Are they being mean to me? Come on, don't be mean to me! I give you all treats!"

Whisper stopped and stared at her. "When?" she asked quieter than usual. She made sure to spread out those treats as she didn't want to bug Tails to make more of them. Not to mention the wisps generally didn't eat, the tiny electric pellets the fox had made was considered a delicacy.

Tangle had the gall to look innocent. "Oh look another area we should probably go check that bye!" she yelled, running off the side and grabbing onto a pipe.

"...It wasn't my idea," Pink said quickly. "You can't prove a thing."

The pipe broke off halfway through Tangle's jump, and she landed painfully sounding onto the ground. Whisper looked over the side. "I'm okay!" the wolf heard the lemur yell out.

"...Cyan, please go with her and make sure she doesn't get into trouble she can't get out of," Whisper asked. Cyan gave a calm salute, as best as the laser wisp could at least, before she flew off towards the lemur.

"Orange, I think you lost. Cyan's gonna tell her," Blue said softly. Orange glared with one of her eyes towards the blue blockish wisp.

"Green, help?" Whisper asked, pointing to the wispon. The wisp gave a small chitter before imbuing itself into the variabled weapon.

Whisper's wispon was a unique one, made by her old boss with help from all of the wisps from her old group, the Diamond Cutters. It could be imbued with any wisp, so long as the mode for it wasn't damaged. It was a long black rifle at heart, a sniper rifle for Orange. It could shoot lasers with the help of Cyan, turn into a hammer with Blue, shoot spiked grenades with Pink, or turn into an umbrella with Green.

The umbrella sounds like it was the short end of the stick, but as Whisper floated lazily down nearly three stories in about twice as long as it took for her to climb up, it really didn't. "Thanks," she whispered to Green as it bounced out of the wispon. On its own, the weapon wasn't capable of being anything more than an oversized club. With the wisp's help, however, it was a surprisingly effective tool for any situation.

The city was silent, even the wind slowing down to near nothing towards the core of the complex. It was eerie, and gave off a sense of pure wrongness and malice that inundated the air.

It was easy to find the tracks that Tangle left behind though. Broken pipes, broken doors, and unsurprisingly even a wall was left shattered in her wake.

It was the wall that Whisper entered. While the technical term for this area was an 'abandoned complex' it was closer to a city. But here towards the center, where Eggman actually worked, it was a singular building with multiple exits for the various robots that he'd used.

The first room that she came across was a small lab. No computers or anything were on, not even the flickering of emergency lights that she was expecting. Eggman had truly abandoned this place.

The hallway outside was almost the same color as the roadway. Pure gray steel and concrete led in straightaways. Perfect for Sonic to get some speed in. Doorways were left off their hinges, some smashed in by an invisible force. Whisper knew exactly what those meant. Those were the doors that the Resistance and Sonic had taken out when they'd stormed this place.

She hadn't been a part of that excursion, and Jewel had later mentioned that this place was barely worth the effort. There had been no news from Eggman's side that had been found out, and the only thing they'd done was clarify that he hadn't been 'here'.

She peeked into the various labs anyways, if only to make sure Tangle and Cyan hadn't gotten into more trouble. Each one was as empty as the last.

A loud bang roared from down the hall, and Whisper darted out the door followed by each of the wisps. It hadn't been too far, Whisper could tell. Her hearing was excellent, to say nothing of her nose.

It was unfortunate that all the concrete and steel in this place overwrote almost all other scents. Including Tangle's own, although if she concentrated she could probably find it. It wasn't a sense she liked depending on.

There were more loud sounds, like a hammer whaling against a door. Whisper broke through it with barely a glance towards it.

She came across a large room with a series of uncomfortable looking chairs arranged in a row. Tangle sat in the middle, her tail holding a small bag of popcorn with Cyan next to her, watching the projected screen with little regard to anything else.

"Oh hey Whisper! Come on, you gotta see this, it's hilarious! Eggman made his own commercials way back when!" Tangle grinned.

Whisper stared at her, not saying a word. "Come on, you know you love her for this. Take a seat and grab a kernel," Orange whispered to her.

The screen shook again as Tangle lifted her tail up a bit more, some of the yellow popcorn falling into her mouth, her eyes not moving from the screen.

At the back of the room, next to the projector, Whisper could see a small popcorn machine, made for a robot's hands. It was quite likely Cyan had powered it up. That was something she'd do.

The commercials, as that's what they were, were ranging from absolutely awful to 'watching Amy ask Sonic out for a date' awful. There was one good one, and Whisper could tell that it was not Eggman made, but rather Sonic and Tails when they were messing around in Studiopolis several years ago.

Finally when the last one played, Tangle stood up and stretched. "You haven't found anything?" Whisper asked pointedly.

Tangle gave her a sly smile. "Besides popcorn? Nope!" she answered. "But there's a lot more ruined stuff here. We can find something here."

Whisper looked at the other side of the door, having most of it be blown inwards. The hallway there was falling apart, the roof having caved in several times, and most of the doors looked particularly awful. There were burn marks and saw marks along the walls, right around Sonic or Knuckles' height.

There were also a few robot carcasses, most of them trashed apart. Some had broken into multiple pieces, but there were no sparks anymore. They'd long since run out of power, their pilots having been freed.

"I'll be honest, this place creeps me out." Blue said softly. Whisper nodded, and she noticed that both Green and Orange did as well.

"This place is like a lemur's paradise!" Tangle cheered as she ran out. "Seriously, imagine if we can get Belle out here? She'd have a lot of fun!"

"She'd be horrified," Whisper corrected gently. Tangle's eyes widened, before she looked back over the wreckages.

"Okay, yeah, she'd be horrified. But if we can get some of these back, maybe she can make another motobug friend! Can you imagine her riding on one next time we fight on Eggman's turf? Ooh, ooh, what if we bring one back to Lanolin?"

Lanolin the Sheep was essentially their 'boss' as the leader of the New Diamond Cutters, as Whisper had renamed them in her head. Belle was a badnik created by Eggman when he wasn't entirely right in the head, and had also turned 'good' instead of his usual evil. Belle was a gentle soul, and in Whisper's mind was practically a pacifist. She wasn't, but Whisper treated her as if she was. Made it easier to deal with her, that way.

"She'd be like 'argh why do you two do this all the time?' and then we'd be all 'because it's cool and you know it!' and then we'd see her roaming around the base riding on her motobug-" Tangle said, going deeper and deeper into madness.

Whisper ignored her words. The intent behind them though was alright. They were here on a scouting mission, after all. Lanolin herself was taking care of the 'roaming base' at the moment, a small van that carried all of their gear and food. Whisper and Tangle had suggested they take some to last for a few days, as this place was too big for one person with only one day.

"Want me to power one up?" Cyan asked, floating next to Tangle. Whisper shook her head. She knelt down next to one anyways, pulling the two halves apart gently. There was a groan of wires disconnecting, but most of it was just plain metal.

Nothing they couldn't get on their own. "Come on, you're making it harder to bring one back!" Tangle said.

"It's just metal. No computer or electronics," Whisper said. Tangle pouted, her face mirrored by Cyan.

"I wonder then if Tails already came through here. What's the history of this place, anyways?" Tangle asked, throwing her hands behind her head. She gently kicked some of the ceiling out from under her feet as she walked towards another door.

"Abandoned complex from a few years ago. Never one of Eggman's main stations, but Sonic came through here anyways. No sign of Eggman here, but Jewel wanted us to check it out anyways. He usually leaves something behind."

"Right, right," Tangle said. "Think Surge is here?"

"I hope not! I had enough of her to last a lifetime!" Pink spoke up. Whisper shuddered. She, too, had more than enough of the green tenrec.

Tangle seemingly got the gist on her own before Whisper could translate. "I hope not either," Tangle admitted. Her tail raced ahead to open another door.

"I think something's ahead," Cyan said. Before Whisper could hold the lemur back, Tangle ran to the open one.

The room was much the same as all the others. A few tubes ran from floor to ceiling in the corner, filled with a boiling green liquid that Whisper couldn't identify. There were computers here, at least, and screens. On the far side was a table with a small notebook on it, shut closed.

"Can you start it up?" Whisper asked Cyan. The wisp nodded as she imbued herself into the monitors. Tangle went to check out the notebook, seeing as how all of the green tubes were big enough to store someone, but there was nothing in them now.

Orange peered over Whisper's shoulder as they looked at some of the monitors. Cyan's energy was enough to start it up at least, but it wouldn't be enough for the entire complex. Pink and Blue went to peer into the tubes, with Green being closer to the door, ready to dart away or to help them dart away should they need it.

Most of the files were already empty. Whisper wasn't discouraged. It means that Eggman really had no plans to come back here, at least. "Nothing here," she said after a few minutes.

"I got something," Tangle said. "Those tubes were used to clone copies of Sonic and Tails. This was before he gave up and made mechanical versions of them," she said, reading through the notebook. "Apparently cloning took too long."

That sounded accurate, in Whisper's mind. The doctor was never one to wait around when he could just build one instead. "There was a mecha Tails? Why haven't we heard of it?" Pink asked.

"It may not have been used," Whisper answered. Tangle ignored the non-sequitur, quite used to them coming from her.

The screens died as Cyan came back out, visibly tired. "Rest?" she asked. Whisper nodded and pulled out a small canister from her jacket. Cyan did a little happy dance before she darted in.

"Cyan's tired. Anything else we'll need batteries for," Whisper said. Tangle nodded.

"Not that I was thinking differently. What do you say, a few more rooms before we head back?" Tangle asked. Whisper gave a quick nod. They'd been here for a while.

The lemur reached for her belt, grabbing a small radio. "Scout team to rogue base, scout team to rogue base. You asleep Lanolin?" Tangle asked.

The sheep's voice came through a moment later, obviously tired and sounding like she had just woken up. "I'm up, I'm up. Rogue base to scout team. Find anything?"

"Nothing except notes. Eggman has no notes on any of the computer's here that Whisper can find. We think he's not coming back here. But guess this, apparently he wanted to clone Sonic and Tails at some point."

"The worst part is, I can see it. Any sign of them?"

"No, he got impatient. That's when he turned to Metal Sonic and the like. We're scouting a few more rooms than heading back. There's no rush, now."

"I was wondering why you two turned on your radio. Keep in touch," Lanolin's voice sounded.

"Yeah, yeah," Tangle shrugged. "Scout team out!" she shouted as the radio turned off. "Rogue leader has been notified!" she said, saluting towards Whisper.

"We aren't rogue."

"No, but it sounds so much cooler! Seriously, if you add 'rogue' before anything it just means that much better. Try it, 'rogue wisp'. 'Rogue computers'. See?"

Whisper rolled her eyes. The next room they looked at, just down the hall from the one they were at, didn't contain much either. The computers here were broken down, slash marks down the side. Sonic must have gone to town on them.

"Think this was before Tails and Sonic met up?" Tangle asked as they opened another door. "I only see spine marks, not the tail marks that show where Tails attacked things."

"He uses gadgets," Whisper recalled. "But no. Burn marks on the wall," she said, pointing out the places that showed where Tails missed his target. Tangle nodded.

"Ooh look, stuff!" Tangle said as she peered inside the latest room. It was a large one, too, with a few of the green glass tubes on one side of the wall. In the middle of the far side of the wall was a strange device, looking like a clock, its minute hand permanently stuck at the twelve.

There were no computers that were on, and Whisper didn't feel it fair to ask Cyan to try to power them up. Still, seeing as how she had to try, she hit the power button. Nothing happened, not that she was expecting anything to happen.

"What do you think this is?" Tangle asked, looking at the strange device. It had two handles on it, one on each side. Numerous cables led to it, but nothing was on. At its heyday, Whisper could imagine lights of all colors swirling around it. "Think Cyan can power it up?"

"She shouldn't," Whisper said. Orange and Blue nodded their agreement behind her head. Tangle thankfully let that drop, but started inspecting the tubes against the other wall.

There were buttons of all sorts on the console that Whisper was looking at. None of them were marked, or made any sense to her.

A soft hum slowly made its way around the room. Whisper's ears perked, and she glanced towards Tangle who had a look like a kid who got caught with their hand in the cookie jar, a small glowing blue tube in her hands. "Eh heh...oops?" she said.

"What did you do."

"Put in one of our batteries from our supplies. I figure if Cyan can do it, so can I!"

Whisper stared at her. Cyan had imbued herself into the machine directly not...powered up the single room. She glanced outside the door, expecting to see lights. There weren't any. The lights in here were on though.

Was each room separated electrically from the others? That would be very surprising for Eggman to try, but it made sense. That way the Resistance couldn't simply take out the generators or power and knock every one of his experiments out.

The more she thought about it, the more Whisper realized she hated having an enemy that would think, like Eggman or Mimic.

"Look, it's glowing!" Tangle pointed to the device on the wall. Blue lights from all over the place were converging on it, the clock glowing a strange yellow. It was as if someone had taken the sun and put it to only a quarter power.

Now that the lights were on, Whisper could see the various locks in place, keeping the clock in the same place. It wasn't gray either, but an odd dirty brown as if it had been buried for years.

Tangle moved towards the console. "I don't see any notes on here. Let's see what this does!" Tangle grinned as she pressed one of the buttons. Whisper could see that it had 'release' written on it.

The locks disengaged, and Whisper blinked as the wisps curled up around her, the clock thing starting to fall towards her. Instinctively, she reached one hand up to grab it.

She felt her gloves curl up around it, the thing strangely hot, before she found herself cascading throughout hundreds of colors. "Tan-" Whisper started to shout.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See the first chapter.

Pushed to the Brink

Hundreds of colors blurred around Whisper. She was frozen in place, unable to move or barely even think. Her mouth was stuck open, and there was nothing in the air for her to smell or taste.

It wasn't bright or dark, but rather some combination thereof that made it impossible to make out anything. Flashing lights of all kinds, everything blurring together. She was standing still, her hand curled around the clock device.

Her wisp friends were still huddling in her cloak, probably stuck in the same place as she was. The floors underneath her moved and tore open, but still she was frozen, unable to blink, unable to think, and unable to fall.

The clock device was beeping though. She couldn't hear it, there was no sound, but she could feel it through her gloves. It went faster and faster, and hopefully Whisper thought it meant it would lose power soon. Would she be stuck like this until Tangle went to get Tails?

The thought flashed through her mind for only a second before she fell to the ground, the clock losing all power now. Where before she was standing on cold hard flooring and tile, now it was the ground. Still dirt, still had a bunch of tiling around, but right where she was the flooring had been removed. "-gle!" Whisper finished her call.

The console had been right there. It wasn't there anymore. Whisper blinked, slowly forcing herself to stand up. "Any ideas?" Orange asked. Whisper shook her head.

"Nothing's the same. Planet Wisp has moved on though," Green murmured. "Did we move to an alternate universe?"

Whisper hoped not. That would be...rough. Very rough. "Can you contact Planet Wisp?" Whisper asked.

Blue shook her head. "No. We can tell where it is, vaguely, but most of us decided to live here. It's nicer here...most of the time."

"Not to mention that so much more craziness happens!" Pink cheered. "Seriously, I was so bored there. There's more excitement here in a month than there is there in a few hundred years!"

Whisper didn't want to comment on the 'few hundred years' part. She knew the wisps were older than they let on sometimes, and there were times when she thought they were basically immortal.

The console was gone, the tubes were gone...and the sun shone through the hole in the ceiling. Which hadn't been there ten minutes ago. "Green?" she asked. The wisp nodded and carefully buoyed her up the ten feet to it.

It had been night only a few minutes ago, but now it was almost noon. The complex, which had been hurt but still in decent shape, had been run roughshod. More than three quarters of it were demolished, and what was remaining was slowly being taken over by various plants.

But seeing plants growing in Eggman's lot...that wasn't normal. The madman never let plants grow anywhere that he didn't want them to. And all of this change in only a few minutes...Whisper glanced back down to the clock in her hands. It had no writing that she could understand even with the translator in her mask, and it was obviously not of Eggman's design.

Whisper did not want to dwell on the possibility that entered her mind. She reached for the radio in her mask, turning it on to the regular frequencies that she and Tangle used.

Not even static. "Anyone out there?" she whispered into it. Her mask had a special function that made her whispers turn to normal volume. "Anyone?" she asked again.

Silence was her answer.

"I don't think anyone's out there, Whisper," Blue said softly. "Not Tangle, not Lanolin...anyone."

"No. They're here. This is just..." Whisper started. "Enough of this. Someone answer. Lanolin. Tangle?"

There was a slight shuffle from her jacket, and Whisper let Cyan out a moment later. She yawned, as much as the wisp could, before she started talking, "They aren't here, Whisper. Check back at the base? Someone's always there."

Right. She could do that. She turned the frequencies to those commonly used by the Resistance, or Restoration as they were known nowadays. "This is Whisper. Someone answer," she said softly.

Static this time, which was much better than previous. She'd been getting nothing, showing no connections available. Static meant that at least someone was out there.

There was a small click. "I don't know who this is, but that's just plain naughty of ya. We got more important things to do than talk with some kid," Whisper heard Belle's synthetic voice say. It wasn't quite the same as the warm wooden one that she was used to. It was definitely still Belle, but...different.

"Belle, this is Whisper."

"I told you, this ain't funny!" Belle's voice said before the line cut out, the static turning into silence.

Whisper stood for a moment, taking everything in. "I don't want to be the one to say it but..." Pink started quietly.

"Then you probably shouldn't," Orange responded.

"We're all thinking it. We got transported through time."

Whisper was hit by a series of groans from the other wisps. "For mother's sake, we did not." Orange said. "Don't even joke about that," Blue answered. Green, "I think you've been watching too many movies."

"I think he's right," Cyan said softly. The other three and Whisper looked at her. "Think about it. Clock device. We all know Eggman doesn't do plants, but there are plants growing all over the place. And some of these grow really slowly!"

"Can you imbue yourself into the thing and see if you can make heads or tails of it?" Blue asked. Cyan shook her head. "Worth a shot."

Whisper felt herself fall to the ground of the roof. She felt tears peeking in the sides of her eyes.

No.

Whisper steeled her heart. She forced herself up, standing up gently. "Tails, Sonic, this is Whisper," she said aloud, dialing into another frequency.

No static again. "I don't think anyone's there..." Orange started. Whisper snarled as she darted forward onto the roof, jumping straight down into the rough road below. The five wisps were taken aback, but a moment later Whisper found them all around her.

"Alright, this is what I'm talking about! What's the plan!?" Pink cheered.

"Find the Restoration. Find Tangle, get the truth. Get back to our own time, if that's what happened," Whisper said as she landed softly against the dirt. All five wisps nodded, their path set and chosen.

Whisper was not the fastest runner. She was no Sonic, who could effectively go over mach one without too many issues. She was no Tails or Amy, both of whom were fast enough to keep up with Sonic for a little bit. Even Tangle was faster than she was.

But she still felt herself go fast enough. Her wispon was attached to its holster on her back, and she ducked and weaved her way through the ruined wreckage of what was once Eggman's base. She hurled herself over a pipe, sliding underneath a broken fragment of concrete.

"Whoo! This is fun, we should do this more!" Pink said.

"I disagree! Whisper, what if you get hurt!?" Green responded from the back. "We don't have any bandages or anything! Unless we do and I just didn't know..."

"We do," Whisper acknowledged. There was a small medicine pouch on her belt, with a few extras for the wisps. They couldn't be hurt in a traditional method, but she carried around a few re-energizers, a treat made from a rare mallow plant from Planet Wisp that helped them regain their energy should they be on empty. She also had a few special treats that Tails had made, tucked away for a rare occasion.

"Oh, that's forethinking," Orange noted. "Did you have an idea this would happen?"

"I think we've long since realized that 'anything' can happen at anytime with these people," Cyan said. "I mean, I can't be the only one that met Sonic up there."

Wait, Cyan had met Sonic before the Resistance was formed? Huh. That was new. Whisper hadn't known that about her.

"No, no, I met him too," Pink answered. "Ooh, watch out, incoming!" she shouted. Whisper stared straight ahead as what looked like a small purple bug thing popped out of the concrete. It wasn't a badnik, or at least didn't have any obvious mechanical components to it.

Whisper ducked around it, jumping backwards from another piece of concrete in one solid motion. It gave off a spitting hiss before it threw one of its arms, a natural curve forcing Whisper to duck underneath it. She could feel how sharp it would have been to get hit with.

She turned and ran, not expecting anything to just come by and try to hit her. She was alright with taking out badniks, as they just did as they were told and there were others trapped inside, but something like this bug? Not okay.

The bug didn't give chase, and let off another hiss as it went back to the alleyway. Whisper kept up her run, now having her eyes dart to every dark alley she was nearby. She doubted the thing was alone; that just wasn't how things worked.

"I see the clearing ahead! Back where we parked!" Orange said. Whisper nodded, ducking over another small pipe before she found herself in the outskirts of the complex. The hard grays and steels of the base turned rather abruptly to the browns and greens of nature.

Whisper felt her boots contact the hard ground, and she slowed down from her run. While she was always going to be a 'city wolf', she appreciated nature just the same. And to be out here with nature was probably the best place for her.

She changed her radio frequencies again back to the ones used by the New Diamond Cutters. She was going to give it at least a few more tries before giving up, and she'd heard Belle's voice when she tried the Restoration's. Which means that someone, somewhere, was still monitoring them.

Could this be an alternate universe? She remembered hearing about those from Sonic and Tails, way back when, during the time of the Resistance. That was a possibility too, but unlikely.

From what she knew of Eggman's devices, or the works of the ancient ones, they almost all looked like something that would tell kind of what they were for. A clock device, like the one hanging from her belt, was probably more for time than going through alternates.

Maybe she could find Blaze? Wasn't Blaze from an alternate world? Or Silver! Silver was from the future too, wasn't he? He must have some trick to get back to the past. Certainly he did it more than enough.

She knew people who would help her, no matter where she was. And she still had to find Tangle. And Lanolin too, she supposed, but mostly Tangle.

"Found the clearing!" Blue cheered from just up ahead. Whisper heard her voice dwindle before she could find her. That was an ominous sign, Whisper thought. She pulled apart a few branches, not surprised at seeing nothing there. No signs of them, no tracks, it was as if they had just up and vanished. It was definitely the same clearing though, as Tangle had carved the words 'Tangle was here' into one of the trees.

It was hard to read, as if the tree was growing around it, but it was still definitely there. Which meant this was the right clearing.

"...anybody remember the closest village?" Green asked a moment later. "We had to pass by a few to get here, right?"

"We passed by Carn and Rosebud," Whisper clarified. "Carn city and Rosebud village," she finished. Cyan nodded, before she looked off towards one of the trees. "Wrong way," Whisper said, already heading towards the edge of the clearing.

It was already a longshot, but it was one that Whisper felt she should have taken. And even though it didn't pan out, it at least told her that Tangle and Lanolin didn't stick around.

The forest wasn't thick, but it was a large one. Roots and branches kept sticking onto Whisper's mask, and it was all she could do to keep it on. "You know, you can probably take the mask off. Isn't it hot under there?" Blue asked.

"It is. Not off the job yet."

"Whisper, you got sent across time. I think the job's on hiatus," Green said.

"That hasn't been proven."

All five wisps gathered in front of her, and fixed their best deadpan glare. The wolf stopped and stared at them, before she gave off a sigh and slowly undid the mask, pushing it off to the side of her head. "Happier?" she asked, still not any louder than before.

"Much!" Green said.

There was a translator in her mask that allowed her to understand the wisps, however Tails had given her an earpiece that allowed it to do the same thing, taking some of the technology out from the mask. She technically didn't need it, but Tangle kept asking her to try it on 'so she can finally understand her friends!'.

More like so she could get tattled on by all of them. Whisper knew how they worked.

"You know where the Restoration HQ is from here, right?" Blue asked. Whisper nodded. It wasn't too far, as the crow flies. It would take several days of walking, if not a couple of weeks depending on weather.

She'd done this kind of thing before, with her old group. They weren't just a mercenary band, but a general 'helpful' one too. As in, they would come in and help out anyone that needed it while they were around.

She checked her pack, just to make sure that everything was still there. A little bit of food, a bit of money both in cash and in cards, treats for the wisps, and a water purifier. Tangle always looked at her weirdly for including that last one, but Whisper would always tell her it's the first thing she packed. Always.

The forest was thick on the farther side, away from Eggman's compound, and the going was slow, although Whisper wasn't going to complain. Branches reached towards her, snagging on her jacket. More than one overstepped their boundaries and snapped off a moment later.

Her jacket was tough, and wasn't going to break because of anything like branches. Occasionally Cyan and Pink would go on ahead, cutting down some of the longer branches. Whisper's boots crunched down on them hard. It hadn't rained in a while, apparently.

Which was strange because it had been raining on their way there. She remembered that because Lanolin had been driving and was upset that the window wipers weren't working, so had to get Tangle's tail to act as makeshift wipers.

It was better than Green's plans at least, which was 'make a shield of energy to keep the rain off'.

It had only been a few hours when the sky started turning pink above the canopy. The ground was already fairly dark. Whisper lowered her mask to her face again, feeling it's comfortable weight on as she activated the night vision.

She could keep going. "I think you should find a place to stay the night," Orange murmured. "It's pretty late already."

"I can keep going."

"It's not a question of if you can, Whisper, it's whether or not you should!" Blue spoke up. "You need your sleep too."

"I don't need to sleep."

"Everyone needs to sleep. You'll feel better with a meal and some sleep in the morning, guarantee it!" Green said.

"I don't need to sleep!"

"Whisper..." Cyan came hovering back.

"I don't need to sleep! I need to find Tangle!" Whisper yelled.

Silence for a long moment as Whisper realized what she'd done. Guilt flashed over her, and regret instantly. "...I'm sorry," she said quietly, even more so than usual.

The five wisps stared at her. "It's okay. We shouldn't have pushed," Orange answered after a minute.

"...I think you're right. Does it look good here?" she asked. The five wisps glanced around before flying around and making small changes. Cyan and Pink broke sticks up, with Blue and Green picking them up and flinging them off to the side. Orange flew around, acting as spotter for even the smallest of sticks that would pierce her tent.

Within ten minutes she had a small clearing in the middle of the forest, barely big enough for her to set up her tent. It was a collapsible one, designed by Tails when she'd asked for one on these longer trips.

With a small push of a button, the canvas and rods aligned magnetically, setting it up in only a minute. With a few grounded stomps, it was set into the earth and soil to make sure it didn't fly away. It had a curved design with a simple opening, much like what others used when going camping.

But hers was a bit different as well. It had a small opening in the top that could be open or shut, venting for smoke or cooking to get out. It had a small area for the wisps to play around in, or sleep. Best of all, it was sized for two regular islanders.

Tangle always forgot her own tent. Always. No matter how many times Whisper reminded her.

The inside was a pitch black until she hit a small tab, letting in some of the natural light. How Tails had done it, she didn't know, but there were some light tags or something that emitted light when pressurized, but didn't take up any extra room.

There was even a small set of sheets there. Tails had planned for almost every occasion with this thing. Whisper nodded, she hoped so. It was worth being his guinea pig for a month, testing out all kinds of inventions that he really didn't want to test out on himself.

The five wisps congregated in their corner immediately, Pink being pushed out of the way by Blue for the sleep chamber. "Be nice you five," Whisper said solemnly. It got a sarcastic nod from Cyan, before she went and started pushing the others around in some semblance of play.

She sat down on the 'bed', feeling it fill up slightly with air in response to the pressure. She took off her boots and socks, before reaching for the small bag she kept at her side.

She didn't keep much in it. Unlike the medical bag, which was filled to the brim, her usual bag was kept to the bare minimum. Three ration bars and a canteen, with a water purifier. She was set for a few days.

They were as they almost always were; bland, tasteless, and wholly unfulfilling. Tangle would've complained about them endlessly. Then again, so would everyone else, except Belle. Could Belle even eat? That was a question she wasn't sure of.

She laid back, staring into the darkened canvas of the tent. There was a large cold spot next to where she was, a hole that wasn't going to fill itself up.

"Whisper? Why are you still awake? It's almost midnight," Blue said, coming out of the wisp area, fully 'recharged' from his nap. Whisper said nothing, merely turning so her head was facing away from him. "It's okay to say you miss her, Whisper."

She brought up one of the covers to cover her ears.

"It's your choice then, I guess. We'll be here if you want to talk."

She wouldn't. Not for a long time, if ever. She remembered what being too loud did. Too cheerful. And here she was again, alone in the world with only five beings of anomalous energies for company.

The morning came too soon, in Whisper's opinion. She didn't know if she got any sleep or not, but as soon as the sky turned a blood red the tent was packed up and she was out on her way.

The forest was quiet, and her silence was only interrupted by the constant chattering of the wisps. They talked about a lot of things, from what they were thinking she was feeling, which they weren't right, to how the world's changed while they went through time, which also wasn't right, to the color of the canisters in her jacket.

"It's a light green," Green said simply. Blue shook her head.

"No, they're light blues!"

"Green!"

"Blue!"

"You're both wrong, they're cyan," Cyan interrupted with a malicious smirk. Whisper rolled her eyes. Cyan wasn't technically wrong, but the color was a mix of blue and green, so neither of them were...

"I wonder how many of our friends settled down. How long do you think we were gone?" Orange asked Pink above her.

"At least a few years. Plants can grow fast, when they're nice and spiky. I want to know more about that insect thing though. It looked like one of the badniks Sonic used to talk about."

"Oh yeah! The ones from that one Zone in that one place."

"Metropolis Zone, on Westside island," Whisper supplemented. Orange nodded wildly, her eyes shaking up and down in a way that made Whisper's head hurt.

"Hey, Whisper...can we go into the canisters? We want to see if we can tell the color from the inside," Blue asked her. With a simple sigh Whisper opened her jacket, inviting them in. The three arguing, Blue, Cyan, and Green, all dove into different ones.

The quiet snaked around them like a blanket, and Whisper sighed in contentment. She liked them, don't get her wrong, but they really acted like immortal kids sometimes. That was probably because they technically were.

She remembered only a bit of the history they've told her. Eggman had come to their planet at one point, and used a hyperspace chain to connect to his amusement park. He'd taken care to use the energy that composed their bodies for his various antics. Sonic and Tails had come by to stop him.

Then Sonic had, according to some of them, almost outran a black hole that was caused by the, in Tails' terms, 'inversion of Hyper-Go-On energy mixing with fundamentally altered energy.'

Whisper didn't understand it, but apparently the fox did. The wisps were impressed by it, and assisted him back down to the ground. Planet Wisp had since taken back off to its original system, although nearly three quarters of the wisps had stayed on Earth.

Which was why, not long later, they had taken great offense to Eggman acting as he always did, again, and started to help the Resistance by imbuing themselves into the Wispon weapons.

It was that technology that Whisper relied on. She was one of the few with a translator, so most wisps had to get by either in the wisp colony, which according to Orange was about as packed as their original planet had been, or using body language.

"Do you think any of your friends already settled down?" Orange asked.

"Not likely," Whisper answered. Depending on how much time had passed, if that's what had happened. For all she knew, the clock had traversed time and space, and she was just in another alternate dimension. How many of those had Eggman weaponized again?

It was a lot, she knew that much. Tails was only barely second on the multidimensional technology thing, and that was only because the fox had this thing called a 'moral code'.

The trees thinned out a bit, the sticks slowly degrading back into the ferns and leaves of a forest starting to end, before Whisper came out to the plains.

She remembered the last few minutes of their trip to the area, of Lanolin having to grip the wheel and yell out 'Hold on!' as she went off roading. It had been a bumpy and ridiculous ride, and Whisper honestly regretted not being able to copy the wisps and just jump into a canister, which supposedly had no physics.

It wasn't Lanolin's fault that she and Tangle ended up bumping heads more than once or twice, but really...Whisper was going to hold it against her anyways.

However, last time there had been nothing here, no road for them to follow, nothing to mark their path.

As she glanced over to the side, there was a small dirt road carved into the hillside, with a small sign on the edge reading 'Egg Complex Park - Vacancy for campers!'

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Twenty Three

The road was easy to follow, once Whisper actually saw it. It was impossible to see while in the forest because of all the trees in the way, but once they'd stopped, following the trail was easy.

Although she really wanted to know who had the gall to turn one of Eggman's complexes into a camping site? There had been a warning just underneath it to look out for 'mutant giant insects' and to report every incident with them.

Right. Because that was a thing that just 'happened'. What had she missed, if the wisps were right and she'd been transported through time?

The road wasn't paved, and Whisper could tell it was rarely used. She had only a vague idea of which way to go, but all of them involved following the road, for now. It took almost a full six hours of walking before she heard a small sound coming from behind her. The forest was long out of view now, Eggman's complex only vaguely visible as a light gray thing off in the distance, the towers making it only slightly easier.

A large car, going slow on the dirt road, came to a stop not far from her. "Hey...you alright there?" came from the driver. He was a ram of some sort, with a few horns that spiraled around from his head. His wife or girlfriend was next to him, a sheep who looked much fluffier than he was, but with a small pink bow and bell around her neck.

They were driving what looked like a van, although if anything was closer to a minivan. Taller than Whisper, and much longer than even the one the New Diamond Cutters had. Its green paint was chipping off at some points, and it looked old, used, and worn, with several points of rust on the metal bumper.

"I'm fine."

"You uh...need a ride somewhere? We're kind of out in the middle of nowhere, and it's a bit late to head back to the park, but we can head that way if you have a car there."

"I don't."

"Can you speak up a bit? It's rather hard to hear you!" the sheep said loudly from the passenger side. The radio was quiet, but still had some sound coming out of it. Had they turned it down when they came near her? She was lucky that the wisps had gone into their canisters for a nap around three hours ago. She really didn't want the questions she'd be asked if they were out right now.

"No, sorry," Whisper whispered. The ram said something to his wife that was difficult even for her hearing to catch.

"I see...well, uh...we're on the way to Digburg if you want to come with us! We can just drop you off on the way, there's a bus stop not too far from here."

Ideally Whisper wanted to keep walking, but she gave a quick glance up to see the darkening clouds gathering overhead. "And it's probably looking like it's gonna rain soon..." the ram continued.

Stay out in the rain and walk, or get in a strange car with others that she didn't know. That was a tough choice. But also...Digburg? She'd never heard of it. More things that didn't line up, that gave her more thought of 'alternate universe' than anything.

"If it's not a hassle," Whisper finally said after a minute.

"Nah, not a problem, hop on in!" the ram said, reaching behind him for the lock on the door. The door slid open soundlessly, and Whisper expected to see a bunch of kids in the back based on the size of the car, but only saw one seat up with the rest of the space taken up by...random boxes and crates.

"We usually have our son with us, but he decided to stay home this weekend. He prefers to play video games than hang out with us!" the ram explained as Whisper hopped in. She had one hand around her wispon, just in case of anything, but she didn't feel like she had too much to worry about.

She shut the door behind her with a resounding crash, despite trying to not let it slide too quick. Neither the ram or the sheep said anything, so maybe she'd done her part. She quickly found the seat belt and adjusted it so the wispon wouldn't bite into her back, and within another moment felt the movement of the car start.

It was weird to be sitting in an actual car again. Most of the time she just laid in the back with the rest of their equipment, and hoped that Lanolin was a better driver than Tangle was. The one time Tangle had driven, they'd all agreed, exception Tangle, that she was to never get within reach of the wheel again.

The lemur was very surprised, which surprised Whisper plenty. It wasn't as if most people liked being in a van that was jumping off a cliff at nearly a hundred fifty.

Green had gotten plenty of treats that day.

"So where are you from stranger? And what's your name?" The ram asked, his eyes looking at her through the mirror. "You from a convention or something?"

"Paul, be nice," the sheep spoke up. Her voice was much lighter, probably because she wasn't yelling to be heard this time. "We would like to know your name, if nothing else."

"Whisper," she answered back. "I'm heading to the Restoration HQ."

"The Restoration? Been years since we've heard them. Where were they?" The ram asked. "I want to say Mobo...something. Moboville."

"They're out of Emeraldville aren't they? Or was that the city that just sprung out...oh no, give me a moment to check. Been a long time since we've heard that name," the sheep said, pulling out a small handheld device, the size of Whisper's radio, out of her pocket.

A phone of some kind, but one that was a bit more advanced than Whisper had last seen. Note to self, she thought, give Cyan a treat. She had called it.

"I think they were in Central City. Or was that just some of their members? What do you need from them, Whisper? They've been disbanded for years now!"

What.

Whisper stared at him. Disbanded? How have they been disbanded!? That was impossible! They'd literally sworn to be together for as long as Eggman's influence was felt! "I...didn't know they disbanded," she tried.

"Oh yeah, that was years ago. After Eggman died from old age, Sonic and Surge went in to dismantle everything else. That was nearly...ten years ago? Eight?"

"Twelve. It was right after Roil was born. Remember? I don't blame if you don't, we both got blackout drunk when we got the news," the ram said.

Twelve years. Minimum twelve years...Eggman had died? Of old age? Sonic and Surge!? Surge the Tenrec? Last Whisper had heard, the girl was taking some time far away from everyone with Kit to get her head on straight, and would violently maim whoever was sent after her. This went all the way to include both Sonic and Metal Sonic!

"Oh no, I remember that now! Or, no, I remember the day after. The day after was not fun," the sheep answered. "Ah, right, here it is. Restoration HQ was out of Emeraldville. That's quite a ways, young lady."

"I can take a bus," Whisper answered. All she needed was a bit of money, and she had enough to cover most bus fares on her person at least.

"Nah, we're heading to Digburg. It's not far, only a few more hours."

"Paul, if she feels she needs to take a bus, we should let her. Get her facts together. We can drop you off at a bus station though."

She'd greatly prefer a bus. At least then she wouldn't be so out of place, although she was feeling a bit out of time as a whole. Everything was...everything had changed. This wasn't some alternate universe though...or maybe it still was. She had two options at least, for what had happened. Time travel or alternate universe.

"You know though, most of those old fighters are out of Central City! You'd probably be better off heading there than the old headquarters. Last I heard they blew up the entrance to make sure no one else could slip in and steal their tech! Paranoid for sure, but I think it saved a lot of headache," the ram said.

She'd still prefer to head to the HQ. Maybe she'd have some answers, there. Something, at least.

The journey lasted only a few hours, but it was enough to make it look dark by the time that the van pulled up to the new town. It was very earthy, with subtle browns everywhere, built into the mountains and around them. There were a lot of tunnels, with little lights, at least until they pulled to the bus stop.

It was a small squarish thing, built half into the ground and half above it if only to show that it existed. "Here you are, Whisper! Give us a call if you need anything," Paul said as Whisper unbuckled herself. She thanked all five wisps that they had stayed within their canisters. She really didn't want to have to be accused of being a 'wisperer'.

Name courtesy of Tangle, of course.

Or of trafficking wisps. That was another thing that had popped up after the Resistance had, and just about as illegal as chao trafficking.

The sun was starting to set, already more than halfway down. The sky was a burning orange, with more than a few of the sparkling stars above her starting to come out. The building was cool as the ram and sheep drove off. Whisper hadn't even realized she'd never gotten their full names, although it was pretty obvious, at least if they're names were the same style as hers.

The inside of the bus stop was surprisingly roomy. It had a couple of stairwells that went downward, probably for more of the underground folk. Digburg seemed like it was focused towards them, the moles and the gophers, and such. Rabbits, also.

There were rows and rows of chairs, and only one holoscreen that showed real time updates of a variety of buses. There was a row of desks on the closer side, with only a single gopher at a workstation. There was a uniformed mole next to the door that had a small scanner type thing hanging onto his hip.

"Please don't move, I'll need to scan you," the mole said dryly, moving his scanner up and down. Whisper stared. Was this a thing that happened regularly now? She couldn't recall anything like that happening before.

"Scan?" she asked.

"For robot parts. Others like to come here and grab a few parts from the complex close by, claim as 'souvenirs.' You're clean," the mole said. Their eyes were shut, the same as hers. Although she couldn't quite tell if they were blind or not.

Also, that confirmed that the clock thing on her waist was not an actual Eggman created thing. It was handy to know, but it meant that she had a few less roads to travel on.

She went up to the gopher at the workstation. "How can I help you?" the gopher asked kindly. There was a small nametag on her chest, proudly proclaiming her to be part of the 'Dachsund' bus company, and her name to be 'Beverly'.

"Emeraldville," Whisper said quietly. She hoped either her cards would work, or that she had enough cash. The prices were written above them, and they were surprisingly expensive. If she had the amount she had right, she had just enough. Though far too close for comfort.

"Ah. Two fifty. It's a two day bus ride from here, but leaves only in the morning. You're welcome to stay here for the night. Do you have anything to declare?" Beverly asked. Whisper tilted her head. "Anything like a wispon, or any pets? Any chao or wisps?" Beverly asked again.

"Yes. Wispon and wisps."

"You'll have to surrender the wispon to the driver in the morning. Just for safety reasons, you see. And how many, of which variety?"

"That's okay. Five," Whisper started, getting a startled look from the gopher. "Orange, Pink, Blue, Green, and Cyan."

"Five holy-, sorry. Sorry. Just...surprised. Most people can't handle more than one. Do they have their own specialized containers?"

Whisper thought about answering it with 'Depends entirely on if they wish to stay in them', but knew that wouldn't really fly. "They do."

"Good, good, that does make this easier. Please fill this out," she said, handing over a small piece of paper. Whisper tilted her head at it, a small frown on her face, before she started filling it out. Most of it was basic; just name, current address or residence...Whisper wasn't sure what to put for half of it. Restoration HQ? The Diamond Cutters original base, back when they'd had full five members?

She just made up a good chunk of it before she handed it back. That's generally what Jewel had said to do whenever they were asked for important information. Make it up and they'll fix it later if it becomes important.

It took most of Whisper's cash on hand, but a few minutes later found her sitting in one of the uncomfortable seats, a small paper ticket in hand. She'd have to wait most of the night here, which she was glad she was allowed to do as she doubted she had enough for a hotel.

In the corner there was a small ATM, right below a large TV that was on mute, some newscasters talking about some sports team. Whisper had never followed sports much, but the ATM was...a possibility. She looked back at the gopher and the mole, now talking quietly in the corner. Little sign of whether or not they knew anything. She reached up to the radio built into the earpiece, signaling it to go out again to all the important channels.

"This is Whisper, again, to anyone in Restoration HQ," she tried.

She wasn't surprised at all when there was only silence. It was worth a shot at least. She could try her cards next, maybe after they got declined she'd be able to find something. The ATM was the same style that she was used to, although maybe slightly more advanced. She took a deep breath and took out her main debit card, looking just as spotless as it always did. She pushed it in.

The ATM accepted her card easily enough, and her PIN didn't trigger any alarms, although Whisper still stared at the screen. Her account was still active? What on earth? She pushed the 'account summary' button, her eyes widening as she glanced at it.

How did she have that much money!? She hadn't been working for...at least twelve years! And yet, her account was still active. There were dozens of messages and alerts on the sidebar, all from various timestamps about her account being inactive except for deposits and interest.

She felt Cyan knock on her container, and with a quick gesture unleashed all five around her. Whisper barely heard Beverly let out a small gasp as they bundled around her. "I figured you should see," Whisper said, pointing to the summary date furthest back, and the newest one.

"Called it! Mail me that check because I need to cash that in!" Cyan shouted, pumping her...fist, energy arm...one of the things on the side of her body that Whisper appropriated to arms.

"Darn it! I thought for sure it was alternates!" Orange said. "Seriously, Digburg? Who'd ever heard of this town!?"

Whisper had full access to her statements from the ATM, although she couldn't print them out. There was a three coin surcharge because her bank was technically 'out of network'. Whisper didn't doubt that, although she was surprised it was still around. Most banks wouldn't last that long, let alone for nearly twenty three years.

Twenty three years.

That's how long she'd been out of time for. "This doesn't disprove alternate worlds," Whisper reminded.

"I know, but it's so unlikely without having to cross entire rifts that putting it down to 'just time' is so much easier!" Cyan pointed out.

Pink nodded his body, "We would've been able to tell if we crossed a rift. We hadn't. Same world, different time."

"Twenty three years apparently. Means that Planet Wisp has moved...what, half a light year?" Green asked. Blue nodded. "Yeah, that about checks out."

That also meant that Tangle had been without her for nearly twenty three years. How...had she been able to work through it? Had she met someone new?

Oh wait, did that mean everyone settled down with someone!? Restoration disbanded...she'd need to get some news somehow. A three coin surcharge was basically nothing, not when she could withdraw a thousand and not even bat an eye at the balance loss.

Although the machine did. The machine only had around five hundred in it. That was...fine. Hopefully they'd fill it back up by the time others came in the morning.

"Um...Ma'am? Please put your wisps back in their containers," Beverly said, trying to make her presence known behind Whisper.

"You can't contain our awesomeness!" Cyan shouted, making a heroic pose, only thwarted by the fact she was a wisp.

Orange came over and whacked her with one of Orange's...rocket things. Whisper really had to grill them on their physiology some day. "She means nothing!" Orange yelled back.

"I'm afraid I can't understand you. Ma'am, please put them back."

"They're saying they don't want to go back in right now," Whisper translated. "Please? I'll give you all some treats in a bit," she asked.

"Fine, but just because you asked!"

"Alright. I'm not against getting treats for doing nothing."

"Sure thing."

"You don't have to bribe me, but I'll take it!"

"You can...understand them?" the gopher asked. "I didn't think there was anyone that could, asides from Miles Prower."

Who was that? Whisper thought. She'd never heard the name. Did they pop up during her...and she still was having a hard time believing this...twenty three year absence?

She lifted up her jacket, and the five wisps went back into their canisters, exactly as she'd asked. "Sorry. They wanted out. And they made a bet with each other," Whisper said.

"I...see," the gopher said, looking less at awe at Whisper and more than she was wondering if she would need to call a clinic for a pickup. "Yes...please only let out one at a time for future reference, and please give me your wispon. We don't want any accidents."

Whisper tilted her head at her, before she reached behind her and grabbed the variable wispon. "I...am not certain I'm comfortable with giving it to you."

"Do you have a license for it?"

Wait, she needed to have a license for this now? She hadn't before...although that was also twenty three years ago. Also, twenty three!? Twenty three years and a hundred sixty days if she was honest with herself.

Right, license. She did have her Restoration badge...that would probably get her out of most trouble as a whole, assuming that people would believe that she was part of the Restoration. Apparently she'd have needed to be in the group since she was four to be her actual age of sixteen now.

She pulled it out anyways, flashing it lightly. "Is...that a Restoration badge!? Digger, take a look at this!" the gopher shouted to the mole. He was sitting in a chair, reading a newspaper now. Apparently the mole trusted her more than the gopher did. He gave a sigh as he furled up his newspaper, forcing himself up to come over where they were.

"Yeah whaddya lookin...by rights almighty that is. I should know, my pa has one lookin' close to it! It's one of the really old ones, but it looks like it was issued just yesterdays..." The mole said, his eyes widening to show off the green irises.

"Where did you find this? And why didn't this trigger on the scanner?"

Right, Whisper thought, that was why she hadn't told anyone yet. Hopefully they didn't end up calling the police on her. That would just...end up poorly. Twenty three years. Did Jewel ever go back to that gem museum of hers? Maybe she could get in contact with Jewel if necessary...

Did Tangle go back with her? What about Sonic, or Tails? Did Silver end up with Blaze like Whisper had bet on, ages back after Silver ended up leaving the New Diamond Cutters? How much money did she owe Tangle for saying when Sonic would get together with Amy? Or had he!? Belle? Wait, Belle was probably still at HQ. Could she leave?

She had so many questions now.

"It's too old to trigger on the scanner. Whisper...you know, I remember my pa told me about another of the core members of the Restoration who simply disappeared one day around here. He'd only heard it as a rumor. Was that you miss?"

Whisper shrugged.

"Yeah if she disappeared I don't think she'd be right in front of us," Beverly said. "Right...you know, I'm just going to...I'm just going to say you're licensed to use that thing. Don't get in trouble, because otherwise I'm out on my ass in the street."

"Oh Bev, you know old Doug wouldn't just kick you out like that. You have tenure! You've been here for too long already," Digger answered, heading back to his chair. He looked back to glance at Whisper, "Oh, and uh...Whisper, was it? I suspect you're going to be on your own for a few hours tonight. Try and get some sleep."

"Too long my ass, I've only been here three years. And yes, feel free to sleep anywhere. I've been told the chairs aren't the best but you can move the armrests up and they create a nice makeshift cushion," Beverly said.

Twenty three years she'd been gone, Whisper thought. Twenty three years...twelve since Eggman had died. Which means that he'd died nearly...eleven after she disappeared. How many things had she missed? How many times could she have helped?

Although since the world was still mostly standing, that means the Restoration did their duty. But...did that mean everyone got what they wanted? There were so many questions she had...

She was lost in thought for only around an hour before both Beverly and Digger got up to leave, their time being up. They locked the doors, and said that someone would be back in at six, long before the bus was supposed to leave.

The lights stayed on, but Digger pulled a curtain over the window, and Whisper could imagine he'd put a large 'closed' sign in front of it. The doors shut, and she was left alone.

Twenty three years...that was alarming to think about. With another gesture she let out all five wisps, and unthinkingly let her other hand fall towards the wisp treats. They did deserve it; they had actually listened to her, after all.

"So what kind of changes do you think we'll find? Think we'll find future cars, like hovering and such!?" Pink asked.

Green shook his head. "I don't think so. Hovering is harder than it seems, but I think it'd remind everyone of Eggman."

That got a series of nods from the others. "Ooh, I wonder if they've figured out that black hole technology yet, leading to wormholes! Can you imagine if we could see home again?" Orange asked.

"The only one working on that was Tails, and he hadn't perfected it when we fell. I mean, it's possible, but unless Tails really had time to work on it..." Cyan said.

Blue nodded, "I don't think so. Unless another group of wisps randomly bonded and imbued an islander, I think Sonic was one of a kind."

Whisper stared. "Bonded?" she asked. She needed something, anything, to keep her mind off her situation.

"Yeah! It's when a wisp chooses to imbue themselves into another living being. Some can be open to some, it's rare to be open to them all. Although I suppose Yellow or Red never tried to imbue Sonic..." Blue explained.

Cyan shook her head, "No, they did. Or at least Red did. What did he call it...'Burst'? Yeah, Burst. There was also the weird nega-wisps, for Void. I'm glad that those research papers were lost."

"Yeah, Bonded just means that we've imbued a living person. We've tried to imbue you before, but we can't. Sorry Whisper, no bonding from us! But we're still friends, right? We wouldn't be here if we weren't!" Orange explained.

Whisper nodded. She had a sigh of relief; they were still here, but out of choice rather than anything else. Strangely enough, the talk did at least alleviate some of her fears in this new time. But...not as many as she'd like. Twenty three years...

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

News

Despite the television being on, Whisper got little news from it that made actual sense to her. Watching the news was a relatively new thing in the Restoration, seeing as how most news stations were only recently being brought back online, although Whisper was one of the ones 'forced' to do it.

The news nowadays though seemed much more...entertainment based rather than fact-based. At least, that's how Whisper would have put it.

There were some smaller news cases of some bad guys getting caught stealing a jewelry store, but most of them were of the 'X politician did this nasty thing at one point in their lives'.

Most of them weren't even that bad. Whisper couldn't help but roll her eyes at some of the more inane ones. Apparently these news casters had never heard of being kids. One of the politicians was being razed over the coals for tipping a cow when he was eight years old. Not even an islander either, one of the barely sentient ones that were raised for milk!

The wisps were playing around the ATM, empty as it was since Whisper had emptied it earlier. Cyan liked imbuing herself into it and seeing if she could make the screen have funny faces. Harmless fun, for the moment.

She'd warned them from doing anything permanent or online. The ATM couldn't actually connect to anything online truthfully, if they were the same type of machine she was actually used to, but it wouldn't do to not warn them.

The lights above didn't want to dim, and Digger and Beverly hadn't turned them off when they'd left, so Whisper turned and pulled on her mask, forcefully dimming the amount of light entered from its eyes to basically zero.

A sleep mask. She kept her wispon close to her, but she made sure that even if the wisps imbued themselves into it, nothing would happen. Except Blue, but Blue made the thing into the hammer and truthfully Blue was the least likely wisp to do that.

Honestly, the only ones she really needed to worry about were Pink, Cyan, and Orange. And Orange only because she might get the idea that it'd be fun. Pink and Cyan just because they wanted to.

She did ask them to wake her up early in the morning before anyone showed up, but she pulled up a few armrests and laid down comfortably into the seats. They were a type of fabric that was stretchy and bouncy, yet held taut.

She woke up a few minutes later to have Cyan pushing her awake with her...arms. She would definitely have to find a book on wisp physiology at some point. "It's early, boss. You said five, right?" Cyan asked.

Whisper nodded, pushing aside the yawn that threatened to form. "Thanks," she said. She rolled off the chairs a bit, glancing at the news on the holovision.

4:30 in the morning. "We thought we oughta get you up a bit earlier than that!" Cyan's voice was obviously grinning. She looked over at the wisps to find a small pink line over both Blue and Green. "Okay, not them."

Whisper took a moment to sigh. "Free them?" she asked. Pink immediately let go of the line, letting both Blue and Green 'breathe'. They didn't need to, being energy beings, but they often acted like it.

"Sorry Whisper. We tried!" Blue said. Whisper shook her head.

"It's alright. I did need to wake up early," she said, glancing around the bus stop. It was still the same dim light, and she could have sworn that the news reel was the same as last nights. Oh wait, it was playing a soap opera now, and that was just a commercial for the news.

These people had the time for soap operas?

The building was still mostly in one piece, to Whisper's relief. They had obviously messed around with the ATM, but there wasn't anything they could've done more, and there were a few snacks on the ground from the five of them attempting the vending machines. They got no nutritional value from the snacks, but that didn't stop them from eating them.

Breathing a sigh, she went around and gathered up the pieces of evidence from the vending machines. Bags of half eaten chips, some cookies, a few drinks with their caps still mostly on...it ran the gamut.

She pocketed the drinks for herself and make sure to actually pay the money into the vending machine for however much was owed. She wasn't too worried about the cost right now, she already had her ticket.

Speaking, the bus was actually supposed to be here before the place opened. How would it get any passengers?

Whisper wasn't sure if that meant they didn't ever actually make any money. Why would they bother having it be a route then, if it didn't?

Her thoughts were interrupted by a change in the schedule holovision. Whereas before it had read, 'Scheduled' it now read 'On Its Way'. Wait, that meant that it was right outside-

A sound of one of the doors on the far side of the entrance unlocking made her start, and she grabbed her wispon by habit. Each of the five wisps immediately hovered around her protectively. A small duck peeked his head in. "Oh. A passenger this time. Heading to Emeraldville?" he asked.

Whisper nodded, heading closer and making sure to grab her ticket. "Canisters," she commanded simply. All of the wisps nodded and entered into their territories with surprising alacrity.

They must've been really wanting out of this bus stop if they were that quick on it. Maybe she should make them more bored in the future, if that'd help round them up a bit...

"Anything to declare?" the duck asked, his head tilted. "We're gonna be alone for a while. Usually we don't pick up passengers for Emeraldville until around Badgerton. If you wanted to catch a nap or listen to a certain radio station, let me know."

"Nothing. Wisps and a wispon," Whisper said. The duck didn't seem fazed, merely nodding as he checked her ticket.

"Yeah, I'd say you're traveling light. Did you get breakfast already? I can make a few stops if you wanted to stop by a fast food place. There's only a few scheduled, and not until lunch," the duck continued.

"I'll be fine."

"Right. I ain't gonna question ya. That ain't my style," The duck said in a heavy accent, as if he was imitating something that she should know. "You from around here?" he asked as he let her on the bus.

It was about what she expected. A long grey tube, with two seats on each side of the aisle. It didn't go too far back, and each of the windows could be made to open up. She felt as if she should take one of the back seats, if only to let the wisps out, but that might make him inquire more.

Each of the seats had a holovision embedded in them, and she could spot electric sockets on each of the rows. That, at least, hadn't changed.

Instead she sat at one of the front seats, behind the driver. He climbed up after her, turning the bus on and letting it idle for a minute or two. "You seem pretty quiet. You want a specific radio station, or should I just turn on my tunes?" he asked.

She didn't know any of the radio stations nowadays. She shook her head. "Do you mind if I let the wisps out?" she asked after a moment.

"Nah, I don't mind. Long as none of them mess with my driving, and you don't have one of them drill ones. Or the lightning ones, the lightning ones hate me for some reason," the duck answered. He reached down to his side and touched a button from somewhere and immediately loud rock started to flood the bus.

Whisper made a small gesture, and immediately all five wisps came out. Cyan and Pink started headbanging to the loud music, while Orange looked behind them with a look of confusion, before she went back into her canister. Blue and Green traded glances for a bit before they flew to the back of the bus, intent on checking things out.

It wasn't the type of music that Whisper preferred to listen to, but it also wasn't the worst thing she'd heard. That title belonged to Lanolin's preference, a type of orchestral wail that the sheep had said a thousand times over was opera. No, this music was more Tangle's preference, and Whisper had learned to at least tolerate it, and even like a few of the bands.

A moment later she felt the brake disengage as the bus started moving. "Right on time," the duck called out. "Next stop, probably something to eat in around four to five hours. What do you prefer, burgers or tacos?"

Was 'none of the above' an available option? If not, she quietly murmured "Burgers". The duck let out a laugh.

"If it counts as food! You wispies want anything? Salad? Do they eat salad?" the duck asked.

"No, we don't," Cyan glared. "We eat normal food! Although...you know...those chips did not agree with me."

"You're telling me...oh mother I need bathroom! I shouldn't have eaten that sushi!" Pink called out as he flew to the back into the restroom. Whisper stared. They had eaten what?

"They uh...they gonna be okay?" the duck asked as he ran a red light. Whisper tensed up but fortunately there weren't any other vehicles around. Was she distracting him too much? "Shit! Jus' ran a red didn't I...eh, no one's around."

That didn't make her feel better. "They...should be fine. Apparently they ate the sushi," Whisper explained.

"Yeah, it was disgusting. I had one, and knew better than that," Blue said. "Did Orange get any?"

"No, she knew better too," Green answered. "I didn't either. I'm honestly surprised it took Pink this long; usually he doesn't eat anything."

"Except for the chips. We had plenty of those. The sea salt ones were fantastic! When we get back, can we take a bag back and let Tails get more?"

Whisper sighed. "You can understand 'em? I've heard that some people can, but it all sounds like gibberish to me," the duck said, turning the bus slowly onto the freeway.

"Translators," Whisper said, motioning to her ears. The duck nodded, but had a confused look on his face.

"The only ones I knew of that had a translator was the Restoration, and that was...years ago. Wasn't that just the fox guy? Prower?"

"The only one with a translator was Tails," Green said. "And even then, Yacker had to help out a lot. Too bad him and the other White went back to Planet Wisp."

"I don't blame him. I mean, considering what I heard he saw at that park, I'd want to go back too. I was just on the bunch of ships," Blue commented.

"Not sure who that is," Whisper said. "Do you keep much track of the news?" she asked.

"Nah, got better things to do. I mean, I can explain some things. Where are you heading to in Emeraldville, anyways? Got a job interview out there or something?"

"Visiting the Restoration."

"Ooh, that's gonna be a tough one. Last I heard no one can get in. Even if they did, they'd have to deal with Shadow or that wooden puppet. Did you know they have horror movies about trying to get in? It's hilariously awful." Whisper raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, it's pretty bad. It came out a few years ago, my ex-girlfriend and I watched it in the theaters. The girl in it is so painfully stupid! Seriously, she thought she could punt the puppet through a window."

Punt Belle? Wait, why were they making horror movies about trying to visit the Restoration? Jewel wouldn't allow that kind of thing!

"Like I said, it was bad. Still got taken down by the leadership of the Restoration though. Amy, I think? Came straight up to the publishing company once she heard it and you can still see the destruction once she heard their plans for a sequel!"

...Why was there a sequel?

Whisper had said nothing aloud, but the duck continued to talk as if she had. "That one was gonna be about Sonic turning into a true zombie, and then for some reason the Dumbots were going to help everyone else out as he ate everyone."

What.

What is this madness?

"I'm glad that one didn't go through. For one, Sonic himself put a stop to it, and second, everyone could tell it was gonna be awful. Like, not even B-movie material, I'm talking like all the way down to F. Least effort kind of thing."

"That's...really dumb."

"That sounds awesome, what're you talking about? Think about it, it'd just be Sonic zooming around at high speeds, taking bites out of people's throats as he goes by-!" Cyan was shouting from the back.

"Yeah, it was gonna be. They've done a few documentaries too. I think we have one loaded on the bus. Headphones are under the seat!" the duck said, going back to headbanging to his music.

It took Green a few moments to learn how to activate the holovisions, and it took Cyan another minute to figure out how to move the selection. In less than five minutes, Whisper was watching it, keeping an eye on the wisps. Pink was still in the bathroom, and Orange was still in her canister, but the others were all watching various cartoons.

Some were from Whisper's era. She recognized a few of the characters, but it was still weird for her to see. Everything had changed so much in the twenty three years.

She hadn't checked her bank account for a long time, apparently.

"This is the story of a small group of heroes, battling against the darkness of the villainous Dr. Eggman. This is a true story, although the names have been changed to protect their identity, with the exception of Sonic the Hedgehog.

The story of Sonic is well known. First appearing in South Island, this blue hedgehog is known for going at extremely high speeds. When Dr. Eggman made his debut there, capturing the other Islanders and other sentient animals for his badniks, Sonic came to stop him.

And for every time Dr. Eggman arose, Sonic came with him, to bring hope to the darkness. Until one time, Dr. Eggman brought forth another individual. A jackal who had shed his lost name, and in turn, took another. Infinite.

Infinite defeated Sonic, and with it, the hope was lost. However, as Sonic was locked away for six months, his other friends worked together to form what became known simply as 'The Resistance'. Other resistance cells popped up as well. 'Team Dark', 'The Diamond Cutters', and 'The Lone Fox', all took the fight to Dr. Eggman.

With all of their help, the Resistance located Sonic, and broke him out of the Death Egg. Hope was restored, and in short order the Dr. Eggman was defeated once again, Infinite disappearing into the void."

Infinite hadn't disappeared. He had died. Whisper would know, she'd found his body. Or rather, she was the first one to spot the body, the large jewel missing straight from his chest.

That was after the Diamond Cutters had disbanded. For lack of a better term.

"Peace came back to the land...for now. The Resistance was left to pick up the pieces, and whenever Dr. Eggman came back, the newly-named Restoration was there to put him back down, and help the citizens restore the world to what it should have been.

After numerous attacks on a nearly yearly basis, Dr. Eggman simply stopped attacking. Still on their guard, the Restoration sent out various members to all of his known locations. There was plenty of internal drama, however none of the members chose to disclose what it was in interviews.

After a year and a half, he was found in the upper chambers of the Metal City. Not dead, however he was very ill, and unable to even get out of his bed. He launched one final attack from his deathbed, hoping to transform the world into robots once again, similar to the Metal Virus.

He passed shortly afterwards, dying not in a blaze of glory but rather the wheezing coughs of the ill. It was only Sonic the Hedgehog and fellow speedster Power the Tenrec to see his end."

Power the Tenrec? They didn't even bother to change what species Surge was? Wow. Lazy documentary, Whisper thought. But that meant that Surge changed sides, permanently this time. She knew the story of what happened with Surge and Kit; experimented on, turned into cyborgs, erased their memories by Dr...Quackstar? Starstone? Starquack? She didn't remember the name.

Some doctor who absolutely adored Eggman and wanted to copy him. And then whom Eggman killed.

Both Surge and Kit had their memories and identities erased by the quack, leaving them nothing except the urge to kill Sonic. Or in Kit's case, to help Surge.

They had changed sides once before, although Whisper didn't remember too much from then. She was too focused on making sure Mimic wasn't infiltrating the Restoration, which he had been. Not that she knew that for a while.

"After that, peace in general reigned. For the next several years, members of the Restoration bowed out, seeing as how most of their efforts had succeeded. The real death blow to the Restoration as a whole was when Sonic announced his 'retirement' from being in the Restoration, three years after Eggman perished.

The membership fell quickly then. It was only the official closing of the doors when the commander of the Restoration, Gem the Beetle, announced her own retirement, going back to being the curator of a jewel museum.

The building of the Restoration is still well known, however all attempts to enter it have failed. Small branches of the Restoration are still found in various places, but they are all local branches, as there is no single unifier anymore.

Most members of the Restoration have chosen to ignore this program's intent on interviews, instead calmly telling us that what they did is well known.

Some members could not be reached for interviews."

That didn't explain much, Whisper thought. If anything that just left more questions, but it did answer a few other things. The Restoration was, for all accounts and purposes, a thing of the past. Her time.

The world had healed since Eggman's rampages. The Resistance had officially won, and the Restoration had lived up to its name. But after everything was restored, the only thing left was...to live.

Which made her wonder what exactly had happened to everyone. The documentary hadn't covered that at all, so she supposed she'd just have to learn when she gets to Emeraldville.

Twenty three years though...this documentary had been made around five years ago. Eighteen years after she'd left, and seven after Eggman had died.

That was still a rough thought to have. She'd always thought the madman was near immortal. To have something like old age take him was...humbling, if anything. No one truly escapes death.

Not even the wisps, or chao. They always mentioned that they could die, but she'd never seen it. And truth be told, she'd never really asked. Chao could die, but they could also make themselves reincarnate to a new version of themselves, and after a while...they'd become near fully immortal.

Near, though. They had twice as long a life as the other Islanders had, which was already half again as long as most humans lived. Sonic could be expected to live into his early hundreds, unless his metabolism actually caught up to him, and some chao had been known to live up to two or three hundred years.

The song changed from the bus's speakers, suddenly becoming a loud remix of an old song she knew. The duck driver gave a squawk and reached down to turn it down. Whisper had held her hands over her ears.

"Alright, food time! Did uh...they ever come out of the bathroom?" the duck asked as he jumped downwards to open the door. Whisper stared outside. They'd gone further than she'd thought, or she'd found herself ruminating for much longer than she'd accounted for.

Whisper turned around to the back, trying to see if Cyan and Pink were out. Pink was, staring out the back windows with his one eye wide. Cyan was making a mockery of the internal systems of the bathroom, making the automatic door open and close at a whim. "They're fine," she said a second later.

"Right. Did they want anything?"

Whisper wasn't going to ask. They'd had plenty back at the bus stop. "They're fine," she repeated. The duck shrugged, before he headed off to the small building. It was mostly red and brown, with some soft greens mixed in.

This was a new chain that Whisper had never heard of before. She ordered just the basic meal, before she headed back up to the bus to eat. A small burger, some fries, and a little water.

It wasn't bad, but it was a bit greasier than she was hoping for. For the next time she knew not to. She gave a few of the fries to each of the wisps, Cyan munching down happily before she went straight to the bathroom again. Pink looked down suspiciously at his, before he gobbled it in one bite.

Orange, Green, and Blue were a lot less suspicious, but they also ate much slower. Which was probably why they didn't need to run to the back.

The duck came back with a larger bag, nearly three times the size of Whisper's. "This'll keep me set for a while. Next stop is Grasstown, a couple of hours for now. Supposedly there's a few that actually need to get picked up, but it's pretty unlikely," the duck explained.

Whisper nodded and sat back down, watching patiently as the surroundings slowly changed from a city to back to endless roads and highways. The duck was a decent driver, first impressions notwithstanding.

The wisps continued to watch most of the same show, finishing the entire first season by the time they stopped in Grasstown. It lived up to its name, endless hills of green grass circulating the entire area. Even the pavement was a soft grass green, and had a little give to it as if they were driving on actual grass.

There were two pickups, a local couple that immediately sat themselves down in the back and what looked like a large older badger, sitting curiously up front close to her.

Whisper got a promise from Cyan and Pink not to go annoy the couple in the back. She had to fish out a few wisp treats for it, but it was worthwhile in Whisper's mind. She didn't want to answer any questions about what they might get up to back there.

The badger hadn't said anything, even as the duck sat back down in the driver's seat. "Right, next stop, Emeraldville. After that, Roguetown!" the driver said.

There was a town named Roguetown, now? That must have popped up some time after she'd vanished.

The surroundings and outside changed again back to hills and mountains, most of which was starting to look familiar to Whisper. The Restoration hadn't changed anything out here, and the general layout was still mostly the same.

The bus stop at Emeraldville was practically abandoned as she got off. Each of the wisps were back in their canisters, having finished watching the second season of whatever kid's show they'd been watching.

The bus left after she got off, barely having enough time for just that. This was apparently a rare stop, Whisper could tell. The entire place was looking rather sad, windows busted out and graffiti all over the side. Even the benches were dented in places.

The city itself hadn't changed much in Whisper's mind. It still had the same layout, and even the library was still operating. But there was no one around on the streets, and it seemed an unearthly calm as she walked down the roads.

A small valley off to the right, with a shed built into it. The hidden entrance to the Restoration. Silver's old garden. The plants looked sickly and not taken care of, but even then there was a hint of life still to them.

Whisper hoped that wasn't a metaphor for the Restoration as a whole. The code shouldn't have changed, she hoped, as she moved the tools on the inside to the proper spots.

The back of the shed moved inwards, revealing pitch black. Whisper pulled down her mask, turning on the night vision. Her heart threatened to leap into her throat. Who was here? Belle? Tangle?

The pathway wasn't long, without any spider webs as she was expecting there to be. She heard voices from close by, but she couldn't quite tell what they were saying.

The stairs leading upwards creaked a bit as she stepped foot on them. They led to a steel door, briefly outlined in light. She remembered it opened outwards, and she hoped she wasn't about to get scared by Tangle deciding to attack her the instant the door opened.

Instead her vision was filled by black and red, as a very angry looking Shadow the Hedgehog stepped in front of her.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See the first chapter.

Old Friends

Whisper stared at Shadow's cold eyes. There were no lights on that Whisper could see, but the night vision on her mask was just as good.

She felt herself tense up, the hard look on the hedgehog's face mirroring that of the same that killed her team. They weren't the same, she knew that, but still, staring into it was just like biting at a scab, the feeling so powerful it had to be done.

Shadow's eyes softened a moment later. "Whisper?" he asked. He visibly relaxed, letting the tension leave him. He turned around, walking back in. "Come on in," he said softly.

"You kick 'em what for?" Whisper heard Belle's voice call out. It was hoarse and slightly hollow sounding, a lot more than it had been in Whisper's memory, but still noticeably her. There was a slight ring of a generator far off in the corner. Whisper did as Shadow suggested, taking a good look at the Restoration...or what was left of it.

Most everything had been taken out. Before there had been desks and papers everywhere, small tools being left out. Posters on the wall of various places that they'd helped out, or checked out. It had been a living, breathing place that showed the life within it.

There was none of that, now. The desks had been taken out, either having rotten away or thrown into a fire. The papers were in tall columns, looking as if no one had looked at them in ages, browning softly on the sides. They looked rather preserved asides from that, as if someone was taking care of the place.

But the plants disproved it. The only thing that remained from her time were those, slowly growing green throughout the entire place. Some of them had grown so large they left their pot, the sunlight coming in from the upper windows allowing them to survive.

"It's Whisper," Shadow called back. "What are you doing here?" he asked, turning around. He hadn't aged a day in Whisper's mind, looking exactly the same as he had from when she'd left.

"...I don't know anymore," Whisper answered.

"Fair," Shadow responded. "It's movie night. Belle managed to get a Webflicks account running. I didn't ask how," he finished.

"...Webflicks?"

Shadow raised an eyebrow at her. "Belle, I think we'll have to cancel tonight. Turn on the lights," he said.

"Fine, but you owe me! Wait, did you say Whisper?" Belle's voice called out. Whisper barely had the time to take off the mask into the darkness just as the light turned on. They were a soft glowing orange, but still Whisper winced.

"Yes. Whisper was at the door," Shadow answered. "Couch is over here," he said, luring her further into the forgotten Restoration. The colors were muted now from the brightness from her time, and she saw the cracks in the paint that she couldn't see from the night vision.

The Restoration looked, for a word, simply old. Weathered and forgotten.

Shadow led her to the Commander's Hall, where Whisper half expected to see Jewel behind a tall desk, barely able to keep three sentences together. Instead she saw only a worn couch with an old style projector, the sound of a generator much louder now, with the wooden puppet figure of Belle sitting on the far side. The projector was still on, with a small 'Webflicks!' sign occasionally bouncing around the corner.

Belle looked old and worn, with her joints covered in sawdust. The wood in her face had been weathering away from time, but she still had her usual honking nose, and there was a small cable that led to the wall. Around the corner, Whisper could see the generator that made the noise, and probably powered the entire building.

"By the gears, you are here..." Belle said as she hopped up, her knee joints creaking as she forced weight on them. "We all...we all thought you were dead..." she said.

"Apparently whatever it is Tangle and I found at that outpost of Eggman's, it transported me through time. Twenty three years, according to the bank statements," Whisper answered.

Shadow walked over to a computer system, promptly typing in a few things. It was newer than she was used to, but it still looked old and dusty. "I'm bringing up the report that Lanolin gave. Tangle wanted to stay there and wait," Shadow said. "If I remember that one right."

"Hard to forget. Tangle almost up and quit that day when Lanolin forced her to come back," Belle explained. "But through time...I suppose it's a good thing Eggman didn't get his hand on that when he could have."

Whisper reached down and pulled out the worn clock. "I brought it back. Unpowered, so nothing should happen," Whisper said, handing it over to Belle.

The puppet grabbed it easily. "Hmm...it's hard to tell. This look Babylonian to you?" she asked Shadow. "My translator can't find it, but Tails stopped updating Babylonian once the Rogues left."

Whisper shuddered. While it was bad she couldn't read it, it was good that she wouldn't have to deal with the Rogues. Jet still hadn't forgiven her the one time Cyan had stolen his chimichanga, among other things. Hadn't she also stolen his wallet while he hadn't been looking, or had that been another incident?

"Hand it here," Shadow said, holding out one hand as his other hand kept typing. "Tangle didn't get a good look at it because she, in her words 'decided to be stupid and turn the darned thing on'," Shadow read as the proper file popped up.

"You found it quick," Whisper said, sitting down on the couch. It didn't just look like the same couch from her time, which before had been out in the main lobby, it was the same couch. She could see the small scratches from when Sonic had been forced to sleep on it rather than in Tails' lab, or the small furs from everyone's shedded hair.

"Supposed to. Restoration isn't active anymore, but they still want someone here to work the system," Shadow answered. "And we flagged all files that ended up with a lost member."

"How did that happen?" Whisper asked. "The Restoration, I mean."

Belle gave a quick whistle. "That's a long story. Short of it, people got old. They wanted to settle down. Amy finally got Sonic to slow down. Jewel wanted to go back to her museum. We'd done everything we could after Eggman died, there just wasn't any need for us," she explained.

"Amy finally got Sonic?" Whisper asked. Darn, that was a thing she'd have to owe Tangle. Depending on the date...

"Yeah. They have two kids right now, over in Green Hill. Faker never wanted to explain why he wanted to move back," Shadow said. "And they're looking after Tails' kids too."

"Full house, that," Belle said.

Whisper stared. "Why would they...?" she asked. She almost didn't want the answer. If Tails' was...if Tails' was dead, then she might as well just get used to this new time. But he'd been only...he would've had to die extremely young. But that couldn't be!

"Ah. Sorry. Tails is...missing, at the moment," Shadow explained. "And his wife's...indisposed, last we heard. If you were hoping on using his smarts to get back...he'd probably find a way, but we don't have a way to reach him."

Belle nodded. "Not for lack of trying though. By the starters, we'd try everything. Including smoke signals, that one time."

"That was a desperate attempt, and you said you'd never bring it up."

"Only in polite company. But this is Whisper! Who's she gonna tell, the wisps?" Belle grinned.

"That's a good question. Whisper, do you still...?" Shadow started. Whisper nodded, subtly moving her arm to show off the canisters. "Good. And yes, this is Babylonian. I'll have to run the translators on it, see if we can't decipher it," he answered.

"Cyan can probably imbue it, if you begged her. I told her not to," Whisper said.

"Not a good idea until we know what it is and why it does what it does," Shadow answered. "But that's a good thing to keep in our back pocket."

"Tails is married? What happened to everyone? Tangle? Lanolin?" Whisper said, quickly adding another name.

"Well, let's see...Tangle disappeared shortly before Tails did. We actually think they were on the same assignment. Lanolin retired into a small village, she has a boyfriend I think," Belle started.

She kept going. "Jewel went back to her museum, she's by herself I think, you might want to check with her to see about Tangle, Amy and Sonic finally got together, Shadow is here, I'm here, Knuckles is still by himself. Rouge..." she whispered off.

"Rouge ended up in a heist that went bad, and even she couldn't get out of it," Shadow explained. "It was in one of the final pushes against Eggman. She never made it out. Neither did Omega." Whisper felt her hand at her mouth. "The worst part is I told them not to go," he finished.

"You couldn't expect them not to. If they hadn't succeeded..." Belle reaffirmed.

"I know. Shouldn't think like that," Shadow answered. "Still hurts. Same with Maria. Tails got married, has two kids which are both at the Faker's...Cream's a lawyer now, it's strange to hear it but that's true..."

"Vanilla and Vector got together. They got married a half dozen years ago, moved to a house on the outskirts of Central City," Belle put up. "Espio's taken over the agency. Charmy has a wife and a few kids of his own."

"What...what about Silver?" Whisper asked. Silver was Whisper's alternate plan to get back to the past. If anyone had done it, it would be the other time traveler.

Shadow shrugged. "Hasn't been seen for a long time. I think the last time he went back to the future, that's where he stayed. That was...a few years after Eggman died right?"

"Yes. Right after Dr. Quacker wanted to try his hand at the world domination thing. Sonic shut him real quick," Belle said, nodding. "And then...well," she finished.

"Surge went Surge," Shadow explained. "If she hadn't though I would have," Shadow said.

Whisper stared out. Silver was out, and Tails was out. Two opportunities...and not a single answer. Where...where did she go from here?

Plans formed in her mind and were thrown out just as quick. She was a sniper, and that meant she had a plan. She needed to plan. If Tails was missing, option A was to go look for him. Which meant finding Tangle, which she was definitely in favor of. Then that required meeting Jewel.

Option B was to deliberately cause a life-altering problem for Silver to show up. Considering the time-traveler's power though, Whisper didn't want to be on that side of him. And that was if he even showed up at all. An option, but not a good one.

Option C was to stay here, in this time. But...it wasn't her time. It wasn't her timeline. An option, but not a good one.

Option D was to go out searching her own way, which would probably require these two anyway. Shadow especially; considering he didn't look like he'd aged a day in the twenty three years she was gone.

Option E was to do more research on the clock thing, and the Babylonians. That meant finding their ruins, which would probably require Knuckles help, seeing as how he was a treasure hunter in his off time.

"I forgot how much of a treat it was to watch you think," Belle offered from her side. Whisper turned and stared, tilting her head lightly. "Your eyes move very, very slightly as you think."

That was...odd. Did she do that? That didn't seem like something she'd do. It was even odder to see Belle of all people remark on it. The badnik usually didn't pay that much attention to people.

"What are you thinking?" Shadow asked. "You have a few options-"

"Find Tails, or find the Babylonians. Those are the best I've thought of," Whisper admitted. "Leaning towards trying to find Tangle and Tails."

"You'll have plenty of help here," Shadow said. "Belle, would you be-"

"I'll be fine Shadow. You know that. Worst comes to worst I can just put myself in sleep mode except for repairs," Belle answered, waving a wooden hand.

The black hedgehog nodded, and slowly rose up. "Don't forget the emeralds, though," Belle reminded.

"I hadn't," Shadow said. Whisper said nothing, wondering what this byplay was all about. Shadow must have seen the confusion on her face. "I'm going with you. For one, I'm still recognized as a government agent and a Restoration member. For another, it's quite likely you'll need my power."

Whisper doubted that. Not that she wouldn't need more firepower, but rather that she would need his. She could still remember the stare he'd given her as he'd opened the door, his eyes and face the same as the shadow-bots-

"So while Shadow's going to get those rascally things he has to guard, why don't you let me know what your plan is? I don't actually plan on turning myself off, I got plenty of things to do here. If it comes to it there's always Webflicks," Belle said with a smile.

"What is Webflicks?"

"It's a movie service. Basically you know how the internet was just coming in, and it was basically Tails and a half dozen others? It's gotten better now. Even we have a cable! But I have to fight with the utility companies to not shut us off. It's not as if we don't pay..." Belle grumbled, "but basically it delivers movies through the internet! No real downloading required, it plays as it downloads!"

That was crazy. She knew that some places could do that, but to do that for something like movies? "Oh, and they have TV shows too. Shadow doesn't like them, so maybe now I can catch up on those hospital shows..." Belle finished.

"Please do, I don't want to hear more ominous beeping when I'm trying to work," Shadow said as he walked in, a small black bag on his back. Whisper could see the small glow coming from the open pocket.

"You know you like them. I see you pay more attention than I do!"

"That's because of the ominous beeping! Also the one with the daydream guy is not...the worst."

"Uniforms? Yeah I like that one!" Belle smiled. Whisper just tilted her head, their conversation long having escaped her thoughts. "Whisper? Plan? You were going to tell me before I got distracted."

"Distracted she says-"

"Find Tails. You said that it's thought that Tails and Tangle were working on the same assignment when they disappeared, which means that we would have the best luck finding Jewel," Whisper explained. "First, find Jewel. Belle, work on translating the clock?"

The puppet badnik made a salute. "Can do Whisper! By the way, I am glad to have you back."

Whisper nodded. "Alright," Shadow said. "To Spiral Hill City. Easiest way would be to catch a flight to Green Hills before heading to Spiral Hill."

"Why?" Whisper asked. "Spiral Hill isn't far from here."

"Airplanes. Emeraldville is too small to have a direct connection, and it would take around three days of driving to get there. By plane, probably ten hours."

Ten hours versus three days? She'll take that. Whisper nodded. Shadow went back to the desk, quickly doing a few things that Whisper couldn't see. "Best tickets on short notice are only four hundred."

"That's expensive," Belle whistled. "What if you make a second pit stop? That might lower things a bit."

"It's fine. I'll pay," Whisper said. Shadow blinked in obvious confusion at her before understanding dawned on his face.

"I get it. You were listed as just MIA, missing in action. You were still getting paid, Jewel never took you off the payroll," he said.

Belle turned to her. "What!? You actually got paid!? Darn it, why couldn't I get paid..." she mumbled, withdrawing to herself.

"Because you spent everything on equipment for the Restoration, even when Jewel specifically told you to go to Bob in Accounting," Shadow snarked. "On the other hand, you have Webflicks now and don't have to pay for rent or mortgage."

"Oh yeah!" Belle cheered up instantly. "By gears, you're right!"

Bob in Accounting...that was a name that she hadn't heard in a longtime. He was a bobcat, liked wearing ties around the Restoration. He wasn't the best accountant, but considering his help with everything Jewel wasn't going to just let him go, and he'd proven himself worth the job towards the end. Her end, not the end of the Restoration.

"Layover of a few hours. We can fit in going to Sonic and Amy's if you'd like," Shadow said. Whisper shook her head.

"No. I'd prefer to just head back," Whisper said. Shadow nodded.

"Understandable."

Whisper stared at him, tilting her head. "What happened to you? You used to be much more surly."

"Oh that's just time!" Belle answered for the hedgehog. "See, he got even worse after...well, after Rouge and Omega died. But then Eggman died, and suddenly he had nothing to do. Sonic's constant attempts to needle him eventually wore him down, and now he's like this!"

"You can only ignore the Faker for so long," Shadow answered. "Not to mention I was at their wedding. I tried to get out of it."

"I dragged him back in!" Belle said with a large grin. "Got him in a suit and everything, I'm sure we have pictures somewhere."

"I'm sure we don't. I burned them."

"I'm sure you tried," Belle answered back. "There's always more you don't know about. Besides, if you go to Sonic's, you might be able to talk him into borrowing the Tornado!"

Oh right, Tails' plane. Whisper had honestly forgotten that was a thing that existed. The fox hadn't used it in ages during her time, and was constantly fiddling with other bits and bobs. No wonder she forgot about it.

"I can't fly it," Whisper answered. Cyan could probably imbue it, mixed with Green and Orange, to act as if she could though.

"That's fine. I can," Shadow answered. "Tickets bought. We're due in four hours. We'll head to the Faker's. They may want us to stay for dinner. Try not to."

"Why? Sonic's a great cook!"

"When visitors are over, Amy does."

Belle turned to Whisper. "Right. Try not to stay for dinner," she repeated conspiratorially. Whisper tilted her head. Amy wasn't that bad of a cook in her mind...she wasn't the best, no, but it was kind of hard to beat Lanolin...or Whisper herself.

Tangle though...Tangle was an 'avoid eating at all costs' person.

"How do we get out of here? Same way?" Whisper asked. Shadow shook his head, the small gems clanking together in his bag. With a roll of his eyes, he went and fixed it up, zipping it up with ease.

"No, there's a front door. It's just layered with traps from the outside. If you come out from the inside there's no problems," Belle explained.

"Why...?" Whisper asked.

"Too many people took ding dong ditching us to a new art. So we put a few traps in the way. None of them harmful, until they actually get in. Even then, it's mostly because of these," Shadow said, hoisting up the bag. "We need to keep these safe at all costs."

Whisper nodded. The Chaos Emeralds, most likely. Seven gems of mystical power, capable of granting an immense amount of power and energy to any holder of all seven. Tails had, at one point, made several of his machines that could use even one of them for a battery.

"Is that all seven?" Whisper asked.

Shadow shook his head. "No, it's only four of them. One is with Faker, one with Tails wherever that is, and one is here. It's what Belle uses to charge," he said.

Belle nodded, pointing to the generator. "The only reason we have that hunk of junk is because we can't find Tails' notes on making a chaos converter. And the one we use for me isn't capable of generating regular electricity."

"How...how do we know that Tails is alive?" Whisper asked after a moment. If he did have a chaos emerald with him, it was...she didn't want to think of that-

"His biometrics are still going. After you disappeared, Jewel made sure that all major operatives had a small chip that would transfer back regular biometric data. Heart rate, brain activity, that's it. No location data. No one chose not to take it," Shadow explained.

"Why not location?"

"Invasion of privacy," Belle explained. "I mean, I'm basically stuck here, so I don't mind everyone knowing where I am, but I know Sonic pitched a fit about it."

"He thought Amy would use it to track him," Shadow explained.

"Silly Sonic, Amy didn't need a tracker for that. She already had one," Belle said. "She called it her Sonic tracker too."

Whisper could bet that Sonic definitely appreciated knowing that information later. Although it appears that Amy managed to get him anyways...

"Would the Tornado be faster than another plane?" Whisper asked.

"Much," Shadow answered. "And I suppose there is the Chaos Control, but considering how chaos energy works against wisps, I'd suggest against it."

Whisper nodded. They must have figured out something in the last twenty three years that she didn't. As far as she knew, chaos energy and wisps got along nicely. Shadow's words hinted that they probably didn't. Too much energy for the energy beings, maybe? Whisper wasn't sure.

She didn't want to really wait four hours just to get to Green Hill, but she doubted that another four hours would do much. Tangle had lived for twenty three years, four hours wouldn't do anything.

Shadow led her down to the garage on the basement floor. It was obvious that Belle had taken care of it over the last few years, along with maybe Shadow. There were a half dozen motorcycles along the edge, with a few other dozen pickup trucks and vans on the other side. Each one wasn't new, but free from rust and dust. Most of them were covered with white cloth sheets, but Shadow tore them off of two of the motorcycles.

They looked almost identical to the ones that Whisper knew from before. "Belle and I kept these ones in good condition. Never knew when we might need them. We'll have to re-energize them before we go," he explained, grabbing a long cord out of the wall.

"How long will that take?"

"Not as long as you think," Shadow said, plugging one in. Whisper noted that the lights dimmed a bit, but only for an instant. There was a Chaos Emerald being used for the energy after all, wasn't there? The sudden draw would explain the dimness, but the Chaos Emeralds were basically infinite in power.

In less than five minutes Shadow had plugged in the other one. "That'll give us a two thousand miles charge," he stated simply.

Whisper stopped herself from gawking. Using electricity or chaos energy wasn't new in her time, but that large of a range, however? That was. Most of these cycles in her time would barely be able to break three hundred miles. And even that was considered good!

"We did some upgrading," Shadow smirked as he seemingly read her face. "And any of your wisps can probably imbue them. We kept that feature."

In another five minutes, the garage door was open, and Shadow was riding out with a scowl on his face. A moment later, Whisper followed, trying to readjust to how these ones worked. They were a bit different than the ones she was used to.

Much like everything else in this world, it seemed. They weren't the same, just a bit different. It was nice though...to be with people she knew. People that she recognized, people that hadn't really changed.

Even if one was Shadow the Hedgehog.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Security

Whisper knew she was lucky most of the time. She had friends who liked her company, and she liked theirs. She had the wisps, Tangle...Lanolin, even occasionally Sonic and Tails.

She had never enjoyed Shadow's particular company. Both for Diamond Cutter reasons, and because, if she had to be honest, they were surprisingly similar. Not as similar as Sonic and Shadow, which was far beyond 'similarity' and more 'holy crap clone'.

"Are you sure you're going to be okay with this guy?" Cyan asked again as she hovered near Whisper's ears. "He seems the type to just forget you whenever you pose an issue."

"I can hear you, wisp," Shadow responded from a few feet in front of them. It didn't look like he had a translator to Whisper's eyes, but maybe she was just missing something.

"I'm more concerned about the fact he can understand us. This is still Shadow, right? That weird guy who was constantly shouting about being the perfect death machine?" Green asked.

"Ultimate Life Form!"

"Yeah, that," Green answered. It took a moment for the wisps to realize that Shadow had answered them directly, and before long had started to crowd around him.

"Wait, you understand us now!?"

"Now we can make other friends besides just Whisper! I mean, Whisper's great and all-"

"Quick, say something wise so that way we may worship the ground you walk on!"

"It's not natural, he has a thing in his ear...same thing as Whisper's, just smaller."

"Oh well that's no fun. Here I was about to be impressed he could talk our language fluently."

Shadow gave an alarmed look to Whisper through the mirror. "Are they...always like this?" he asked gently. "I don't remember them like this."

"They're just annoying you on purpose. Stop it," Whisper warned. Immediately the talk of the various wisps stopped, and she could just imagine them grinning at each other. "I hadn't realized the translators had gotten so small. I haven't seen other wisps yet."

"They keep to their own groves now. A lot of people have them as pets though, same with chao. Although really its more chao and wisps have the people as pets," Shadow noted. "You might see a few over at the Faker's place."

"Chao or wisps?"

"Yes," Shadow answered. Whisper nodded. That meant the blue blur probably had a bit of each. Not a surprise there, since it was apparently with his assistance that the many chao gardens started popping up. Something about how the chao helped save the day at Station Square.

Whisper was only...what, twelve when that happened? There was so much that had happened in such a short amount of time, and she had been on basically the other side of the continent...

The light on the highway dimmed as the sun set further from the horizon, until it was only because of the warm glow of the motorcycles and their headlights that Whisper could tell where Shadow was. The wisps hung around for a while, if only to annoy the hedgehog, before they went back into their canisters to 'conserve' energy according to Orange.

"They're talkative," Shadow noted aloud. Whisper said nothing for a while, expecting Shadow to extrapolate. The wisps were quite talkative, especially to each other and to others who could understand wisps.

"They're surprised. It's not often that they come into contact with someone with a translator."

"I suppose not. It's rarer now that Tails went missing. Before all this, he'd had plans to market the translator for both chao and wisps, retire on the money."

"I'm surprised he'd have gotten that much for it."

"He was aiming for a good amount of coins for it. And when you consider that the government was going to practically buy them out at first, it stands to reason he would have made a few million sales. Enough for him to retire with his wife and kids, and maybe help out the Faker and Amy."

"You call her Amy and Tails by his name. But never Sonic."

"He is still, and will always be, the Faker to me. He told you how we met?"

"He's mentioned it when he brought Surge and Kit around. Never the full story."

"Not surprised," Shadow responded. "He doesn't like telling it. He was blamed for my actions at first, my stealing of a Chaos Emerald. Then we met each other again in the forested area of Prison Island. Then again at the ARK. Getting in my way at every turn, just as I got in his."

"And you're friends?"

"That's pushing it. Acquaintances at best," Shadow said. "Turn off here, there's a shortcut through the backstreets to the airport," he said, slowly angling off to the side. Whisper nodded, moving to follow.

The back roads were a mess, and immediately Whisper wondered why this was considered to be a shortcut. Miles and miles of potholes and run-down areas. Graffiti on most of the buildings and houses, and more than once Whisper thought she saw gangs of islanders roaming around. Sometimes with humans, sometimes with not.

However once they saw Shadow, they seemingly scattered to the four winds. "They're afraid of you," Whisper noted absently.

"They know of me. Of the immortal holed up in the old Restoration headquarters. They think I patrol around here, and beat up anyone I see."

"Accurate," Whisper snarked. Shadow shot her a glare, his red eyes piercing into the dark. She stared back, steering just a bit to the side to avoid another pothole. It took a long moment but Shadow seemed to realize that she wasn't going to back down, and that he needed to steer as well.

Within a few minutes the dilapidated portion of town had come and gone, leaving now only the long highways and freeways that dotted the area. Signs kept changing words every few seconds, telling how to get to the airport. Some also had ads on them, showing new drinks or food she'd never heard of, or other products which was all lost time.

Shadow eventually pulled up to stop sign, heading into a parking lot. "Restoration doesn't have much in the way of power anymore. GUN has more. But they allow us to park back here for when we need to," Shadow explained, pointing out the numerous GUN vehicles lining the various spots.

"I thought GUN didn't have much of a big presence."

"They didn't. They were on the backfoot when Eggman attacked originally, but given around ten or fifteen years they came back. And no one wants to say no to government," Shadow spat out the last word as if he'd cursed.

Whisper nodded, checking each of canister to make sure each wisp was where they should be, and that her variable wispon was tied to her back like it needed to have been. Shadow too, she noticed, checked the bag that was on his shoulders to make sure nothing dropped on the drive.

Their motorcycles stood out against the green and dark colors of the other government vehicles. But they only took one spot, so Whisper assumed they'd be fine.

Shadow took off into the parking lot, his air skates hovering him a few inches into the air. Whisper wasn't the fastest runner, but the black hedgehog was going slow enough she could keep up if she was sprinting.

Unfortunately that meant by the time Shadow was waiting in front of one of the trolley stops, Whisper was completely out of breath. "You need to get faster," he said simply.

Whisper wanted to say something back, but her lungs were too busy trying to get some air back in them. She settled for letting Orange out, her eyes glaring at the hedgehog.

The shuttle van came by not long afterwards, a few soldiers getting out, each of them staring at Shadow. They ignored Whisper, barely even giving Orange a glance, their attention solely on the black hedgehog.

The van driver was a squirrel, it looked like, who was looking bored. He ignored Whisper's wispon, stilled tied to her back, and ignored the wisp hovering around her head. "Which gate?" he asked tonelessly.

"B3," Shadow responded instantly. The squirrel gave a quick nod before he shut the door. There were only a few others on the shuttle, each of them staring at Shadow as if he was about to lose it and kill all of them. A few of them were in nice suits and hugged their bags closer to them acting as lifelines.

Shadow ignored them, just as he was wont to do. Whisper placed herself between them and him. Hopefully her existence right there would mean they wouldn't do something stupid.

A mother next to her, a young girl on the other side, leaned in close to her. "What are you doing with him? Don't you know he's trouble!?" she whispered towards Whisper.

Whisper slowly turned her head, her eyes unblinking as she looked at her. The mother backed down a moment later, slowly withdrawing into herself. The daughter on the other hand, probably around five or six, was staring at Shadow with obvious amazement.

The driver was a good one, and they made it to the gates with only a small bit of honking.

The last time Whisper had flown on commercial flights, she'd been...seven or eight. A much younger wolf than she was now. She remembered going around to the glass, staring out at all the planes, wondering how they flew.

The airports had been much smaller then, and it hadn't been trouble for her aunts and uncles and grandparents to see them off at the tarmac. Now, though, it seemed like the airport was nothing but an endless line. Most of them didn't look happy to be there, instead their bags being held close. There was no smiling or running children, instead just kids that were kept as close as the bags were. Guards swept past the floor, their eyes glaring at all newcomers and everyone standing in the lines.

"Why the trouble?" Orange asked, looking around. "It looks like everyone here is waiting on a war or something."

"Shortly after Eggman died, a few other groups came up and tried to do the same thing he did. Few had his flair, but they managed to terrify most of the population," Shadow answered. "Things have changed since you vanished."

"I'd say. Seriously, I think Green went by one of the airports while you were sleeping and even then they didn't have this kind of latent fear to them. If I didn't know better I'd say they were all afraid of flying."

"Hey, wisps aren't allowed to be out of their canisters. And do you have a license for that wispon?" one of the guards, a tall dog with black and brown fur, barked at her. Whisper stared without saying anything.

"Of course we are. I'm right here, you know?" Orange snarked. Whisper smirked. The guard wasn't fazed by Orange's words, instead staring straight into Whisper's eyes.

"I'm still waiting for that license," the dog said. He puffed out his chest a little bit, expecting her to bow before his authority.

"She's with me," Shadow said obliquely from the side. "Her license is on file. She doesn't keep one for obvious reasons," he finished.

The guard blinked, before checking a small pad he had on his hip. "Hold on one moment," he said as he typed in a variety of things. "Her license number?" he asked Shadow.

Right, they had licenses for wispons now. And she most assuredly did not have one. She glanced at Shadow, wondering what it was that he was thinking. It wasn't an act, it seemed, as the black hedgehog was even more terse than usual when he answered. "License number 0018A," he said, almost whispering it.

The guard looked at the profile that it pulled up, before he suddenly paled, the dark fur on his face seemingly reddening up as he found something. "Sorry, ma'am. We just aren't used to wispons of that size or variety. What type is it, if I can ask? An orange?" he asked gently.

His tone had shifted one eighty. She gave a glance to Shadow, tilting her head as she wondered how to answer. The hedgehog gave her no hint, instead scowling at the lines. "Variable. All of them," Whisper finally answered.

"Holy shit it is her..." the guard said as he looked at her profile page. "Sorry again ma'am. We'll uh...we'll get you through," he said. He turned around, subtly pushing a few people aside. "Sorry, we got an emergency," he called out as he led Shadow and Whisper inside.

"What was that?" Whisper asked. Orange hovered around her head, the wisps' eyes taking in every angle. She felt a small piece of fuzziness come from her left side as Pink popped out of his canister, staring around.

"Getting us through. I don't work for GUN anymore, but I still have connections. Also, Jewel made sure to make a license for you the instant they became required. You're the only one with a variable wispon license," Shadow answered. "Ever."

"Others have similar."

"None like yours," Shadow answered. "Tails tried. He came close more than once, but he never once was able to break the three wisp trend."

"That's because the Diamond Cutters were cut of the edge," Pink answered. "They may not have been able to understand us for a while, but once they did we told them everything we knew."

"That explains Tails' failures. He never did like finding out others were beating him at technology," Shadow said. The guard led them through the majority of the airport, even through the screening process.

Dozens of tall machines that stood and scanned everyone for any type of contraband. More than once Whisper saw a few islanders and humans taken off to the side, made to explain their unique circumstances to the uncaring guards. Whisper was led straight though it, not needing to since her leader was one of them himself.

One of them tried though, coming up to her after she'd passed. "Ma'am, I'm going to need to see your wispon license-" she asked cautiously.

The original guard dog came back around. "Charlie, it's fine. She's with me," he answered. "That's the variable wispon too! The only one!" he said excitedly a moment later. Whisper could see his tail wag violently behind him.

Charlie, a rat of some kind, just raised an eyebrow. "If she's with you Duke...don't cause trouble. And don't let him fire that thing, he has worse aim than I do," she said, before manning another of the scanners.

Duke sighed, his shoulders hunched. "I get no respect here..."

"Certainly none from us," Pink joked before he went back into his canister again. Whisper smirked, trying not to let it show on her face.

The actual back of the airport was more of the relaxed atmosphere that Whisper was familiar with. Everyone was sitting down waiting for their flight to arrive, and while everyone was watching their bags like mother hawks it was seemingly less of a necessity and more to make sure they knew where it was.

Whisper even heard a few kids in the corner, laughing over a small comic strip that they were reading. Even as much as everything changed, there were some things that hadn't.

"Here you go. Terminal G6. Please wait here until your flight," Duke said, leading them to a couple of seats. "As a reminder, just tell anyone to talk to me if they try to cause any trouble. And can...can I see your wispon...?" he asked gently.

Whisper stared at him for a long moment. "No," she answered succinctly. Duke's shoulders slouched as he walked away dejected.

"How long for the flight?" Whisper asked after another few moments. Shadow had already sat down on the chair, his spines cutting through the fabric holding them together.

"Looks like an hour and a half," Orange whispered above her ears. "You might want to grab something to go. I don't think Shadow eats much."

And he'd probably forget that she needed to eat, too. Whisper nodded. She had her funds still, and got up after a moment to look for a nearby cafeteria. There were a few coffee shops, which she felt almost magnetically attracted to. Tangle would want her to try some of everything, and then take whatever it was she didn't finish.

There was a bookstore as well, along with a few bars and other specialty foreign restaurants. Most seemed like fast food, with a large amount of grease and salt. It smelled good, but Whisper knew it was anything but.

Finally she decided on a small coffee shop, not too far from Shadow but far enough. It wasn't just for the coffee though, but rather that this one advertised it had wisp energy drinks as well. They couldn't live off rations for their entire lives.

The line wasn't long, either, and within minutes Whisper was at the teller. "One normal coffee, no milk or sugar, and six wisp drinks," she stated calmly.

The teller gave her a look. "Uh...huh. Sure. Let me get those for you," she said, reaching down into a fridge built into the counter. She pulled out six tall cans of something. Each one had a picture of a white wisp on it.

"Ooh, it's Yacker! Seems he's doing good for himself," Orange noted absently. "Ooh, I can feel these from here. Wonder where they got the recipe?"

"These aren't all for him, are they?" the teller asked.

Whisper shook her head, opening her cloak a bit to show the other wisps' canisters. He gave a quiet nod. "Yeah, warning, it's bad news for a wisp to drink more than two of these things back to back. My mom had an orange just like yours, but after four of these he rocketed straight into the stratosphere."

"That sounds like something we'd do," Orange stated softly. "But only if we were really unhappy or really, really hyper."

"Coffee shop," Whisper reminded softly. The teller blinked, tilting their head.

"Oh, right, right. Just really, really, REALLY hyper then."

Whisper rolled her eyes, paying an exorbitant amount of the wisp' drinks and only slightly more than her usual amount on the coffee. She was kind of relieved; the price of coffee had not gone up too much in the time she was gone. Although the wisp drinks were expensive. Not that she couldn't afford it, but...

The airport terminal was just as empty as it was before. Shadow was still sitting there, a dark scowl on his face as he stared off into space. Whisper said nothing as she sat next to him, moving a small table nearby as she popped five of the tabs of the wisp' drinks.

Her own coffee was slightly sweeter than normal, but she realized that they must have put some sweetener in. Most islanders didn't like their coffee as dark as she did. Most humans didn't like their coffee as dark as she did, if she had to be honest.

She let the wisps out, handing them small straws as they took to drinking their drinks with extreme gusto. Cyan, joker that she was, decided she'd rather blow into the straw, causing large bubbles to pop out of the can.

Green, after his first sip, took to hiding from the others and floating nearly five feet up. Pink generated small energy spikes to make sure that the others couldn't get his, and he hissed a bit every time one of them came an inch closer to him. Blue was the calmest, instead just making an energy cube around the darn drink and making sure that no one could reach it even if they'd wanted to. And Orange...Whisper looked up. Orange was on the ceiling.

"I think that stuff is like drugs to them."

"If this is drugs, can we do more?" Cyan asked impatiently. Whisper could see small lightning bolts come out from her main energy area.

"Yeah. More drugs for us please."

"Drugs are good!" Blue said softly. Whisper felt her hand on her face.

"Mommy...why are those wisps acting funny?" Whisper heard a small girl ask around the corner. "Because dear, that's what happens when you give them too much of those energy drinks."

"After you finish, burn off the extra energy and try to get some sleep," Whisper commanded. Blue solidified for a moment, which the wolf knew took a lot of energy. Usually most of Blue's cubes were hollow on the inside for conservation. Orange rocketed from the ceiling to other parts of the ceiling, before coming back down in a calm pattern.

Cyan zipped around, actually imbuing herself into Shadow of all people for only a second, before she came out and straight back into the canister. Pink and Green didn't bother with any theatrics, instead just going straight in.

Shadow looked around, his red eyes wild with energy for a moment. "What was that?" he asked.

"Cyan's imbuing. Sonic can do it. It takes a lot of energy in most beings that can't do it natively. Hence, Cyan working off her energy," Whisper explained.

Shadow scowled, once again reminded that Sonic could do something that he couldn't. Whisper wasn't going to tell him why. She didn't really know. They had mentioned earlier that wisp energy and chaos energy didn't get along too well, so maybe it was because Shadow's body was just too lathered in chaos?

She knew why she couldn't be imbued; too much death and darkness in her past. Maybe that was also why Shadow couldn't be imbued. She had figured out a way around that limitation, with Orange and Cyan's help that was. But she herself couldn't be directly imbued either. It was quite a common problem, it seemed.

Green had tried to explain it to her, one day. When a wisp imbues a person directly, they share everything; thoughts, dreams, personalities, everything intermixes. In some wisps, like Cyan, it takes a lot of energy to filter out what was the person, and what was the wisp.

It's what made Sonic easy to imbue, or so they said. Whisper didn't know about nowadays, but he used to have no worries except the present, which made differentiating them from the wisp simple as a snap.

Her concentration was broken as Shadow tapped on her leg. He pointed to a large sign that said 'now boarding'. "We're up," he said simply.

Whisper nodded and pushed herself up. Had she really been lost in thought that long? It hadn't seemed that long. Orange gave an earnest glance towards the way that she'd come from, all the way back in Eggman's base, before she disappeared within the canisters as well.

The flight attendants quickly brought them to first class seats, and brought a small hole ridden pillow for Shadow's spines. They hadn't blinked an eye at the unique wispon on her back, or the wisp canisters in her jacket.

The seat was surprisingly comfortable. There was a selection of movies on the screen in front of her, and Whisper took a moment to look through them. Most of them she didn't recognize, but a few she recognized as sequels to some of her favorites. When she got back to her time, she was going to have to keep an eye out for some of them.

No one else in the airplane seemed to bat an eye at the strange wolf or Shadow, who was peering out the window with a bored scowl. He hadn't buckled up, Whisper noticed. It was the first thing she had done.

She had, after all, ridden in the Tornado when Tails had had to track down Tangle at one point. She had made the mistake of not buckling up.

She wasn't doing that again, ever.

It took far longer than comfortable, but Whisper finally felt herself relax as the plane taxied out of its area onto the runway, and started its acceleration into the air. To Green Hill, and from there to Spiral Hill and Jewel, to where she'd find Tangle and Tails, and then back to her time.

Roundabout, but it'd get her goal done just the same.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Changes

The plane flight was surprisingly rough. Every few minutes there would be a ding as the 'please buckle up' sign turned on, although Whisper had never unbuckled.

Shadow had never buckled, although most of the flight attendants all ignored him. If Whisper had seen him with an extra few bruises from the turbulence, she wasn't about to say why.

It wasn't until they got off of the airplane that Shadow's ears twitched. He held up his hand and walked off to a booth, leaving Whisper alone in the airport terminal.

It was quiet, and with an air of wariness and concern heavy over everything. She heard a few people whisper along as they went, "I'm surprised we managed to get in this time. The storm seems never ending." "Think we can make it?" "We'll have to."

Whisper wasn't sure what was going on, exactly. There was a storm outside, which explained the turbulence on the airplane, but it seemed like all the other planes were grounded.

She gave a glance to the to the arrival and departure board, taking a deep breath as she saw that all of the departures had been labeled, "Delayed".

Something was off, here. Whisper was split on what she would do. On one hand she wanted to help, because it was in her nature to investigate and figure what was going on out. The other hand though...she wanted back to her home time. She wanted out.

Shadow came back out of the corner. "Bad news. No one's allowed to leave Green Hill at the moment. Local government issued a martial law order around ten minutes ago."

Whisper sighed. There went her choices. "What's the issue?" she asked instantly.

"No one's sure. Belle's been looking into it. Neither the Faker nor Amy have reached out to us for help, so it's something they can handle. However, if we ride the Tornado out they'll probably shoot us down."

"They can't activate martial law just because they want to."

"There's conflicting reports. Some say Chaos was seen on the southern quarters. Some are saying the mafia is attempting a coup of the mayorship. And there's a riot on the western side. Faker's on the east side."

"Perhaps it'd be best if we went to go to Sonic. We can see what he's thinking of what's going on," Green said as he popped out of his canister. Cyan and Orange followed a moment later.

"A good idea," Whisper said. She looked over at Shadow, who was scowling back, but seemed to understand what she wanted as he started to walk off to the exits. She'd wanted to avoid Sonic and everyone else she knew, but part of her was also curious. Sonic and Amy had kids now. That was an oddball. She wondered what they were like as parents.

The Green Hill airport was much smaller than the other one. It was barely two stories, and most of that was because it was built on a hill. The air was full of the salt air, Whisper noticed, the instant she walked out into it. Despite the rain above, it was quite clear they were close to the beach.

Shadow took off into the darkness the instant that he could, the only thing showing where he was going was the small flames from his hover skates. Whisper didn't even attempt to keep up, instead calling for a cab.

"Where you goin'?" the cabbie asked instantly as she hopped in. He was a reptile of some kind, gecko if she had to be honest. She wasn't sure. She was glad he didn't ask questions about the three wisps hovering around her head, or the wispon that she placed on the seat next to her.

"Do you know where Sonic the Hedgehog lives?" Whisper asked hesitantly. Her first plan would be to ask them to follow Shadow, but he was already far out of visible distance. Maybe in the day it'd be better.

"Everyone in Green Hill knows that. Speedy guy makes no attempt at living it down. But there ain't no party planned, I can tell you that much."

"He'd want to see me."

"Lass, everyone says that. With those kids of his, I think he and his wife get along great. They don't need you messin' up their lives."

"Follow the black hedgehog then?" Whisper asked, pointing ahead. The driver turned, his eyes narrowing as he attempted to see Shadow.

"Hold on, I think I have an idea!" Orange said, before imbuing herself into the taxi. Whisper immediately buckled in, and started to tell her no, before the driver realized that something was going on and grabbed onto the wheel. Green and Cyan, sensing trouble, dove back into their canisters.

A wisp, when they imbue an item, generally gives it properties similar to the wisp. Orange had essentially 'rocket' powers. For her wispon, that made it a sniper rifle, an extremely powerful single shot weapon that held itself together at long trajectories and high speeds.

A car, such as a taxi, meant that only one of those properties would carry over. Both the driver and Whisper shot back into their seats as Orange's power took over, rushing them faster than Whisper was sure the car had ever gone before.

About a minute later found Whisper on the side of the road, angrily glaring at Orange whom looked rather ashamed of the entire thing. The driver, at least, was amused enough to let Whisper off for only half of his usual price, if only because he found it rather fun, and a challenge to his skills.

Shadow came up from behind, his eyes staring at the rapidly driving off taxi cab. "That...was you, right?" he asked gently. "In the rocket powered taxi?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't you ask him to take you to Sonic's?"

"I did. He refused."

"And so the rocket was...?"

"Orange had ideas," Whisper explained instantly.

"I said I'm sorry!"

"It's fine. We're close anyways," Shadow said. He took off skating away, this time at much more reasonable pace. Whisper still attempted to keep up, Orange floating overhead, her eyes showing her shame.

Even in the rain, the suburbs of Green Hill were colorful. Though the sky and air were grey and dark, the houses had all kinds of various colors, from bright blues to dull greens and more than a few dirty yellows.

"He lives here," Shadow said, pointing at one of the larger houses on the block. It had a few trees in the front, with what looked like a tire swing in one of them. A kite hung barely on the branches of another. The house itself was a dark blue, almost Sonic's color exactly, with more than few wings off of it. A small sign hung off the roof, dripping with water now. It read, "Amy Rose + Sonic the Hedgehog". A smaller sign attached to it, as if put up much more recently, read, " + Velocity Rose and Thunder Rose".

"Velocity and Thunder are their kids names. Velocity is around ten, Thunder eight. Violet and Mata are twelve and ten."

"Violet and Mata?"

"Tails' kids. They stay here. Have been for a while," Shadow explained. He walked up to the door, Whisper just barely behind.

"Perhaps it's best...?" Whisper whispered to Orange. The wisp blinked at her, before she did a full face nod and went back into her canister.

Shadow knocked hard against the door, not even bothering to use the doorbell next to it. Whisper wasn't sure of the time, but it probably wasn't too late. Or if it was, she'd make it up to Sonic some other way, once she got out of the rain.

Whisper heard Amy's voice come through the door, "I told you before, stop trying to-" she called out just as she opened the door.

It was still obviously Amy. She was taller now, about as tall as Whisper was. Her spines had grown downwards, almost down to her neck. She had a weathered look about her face, as if she spent most of the time stressed and worried. "Oh, Shadow. I wasn't expecting...is that...?" Amy said, looking behind him straight at Whisper.

"She came back. But now she needs help," Shadow started before Amy pushed him aside, and grabbing and hugging onto Whisper tight.

"It's Whisper! Whisper! Sonic, Sonic, come look!" Amy called out. Whisper froze the instant the hedgehog made contact. Physical contact, of any kind, made her freeze up. Except from Tangle. Maybe. It seemed to take Amy a second to remember that.

"Oh, sorry. Forgot...it's been so long Whisper...where have you been? You haven't aged a day..." Amy said. "Oh, but I've forgotten my manners. Please, come in, come in!" She helped Shadow back up, who didn't even bother with some sarcastic remark, before she led them back inside.

The house was surprisingly open, with an obvious living room off to the side and only a step down. A few couches sat around the center, on which a large TV was set up. Toys were scattered on the floor, from kids of all various ages. Off from there was the kitchen, separated from everything only by a counter at waist height, various bar stools and chairs set up around it. Behind the counter were the dozen or so appliances, only most of which Whisper recognized.

A dining table, long and covered in pieces of mail, sat practically unused except by mail. There was a long hallway off the side of that, probably leading to the rooms.

Behind the counter was a much older Sonic. Taller than before, his spines also got a much darker blue. Not quite black, but getting there. Some were greying, as well. His face was old and aged, small wrinkles already starting. But the most disturbing of which was when he looked up and got excited, and immediately reached for a single crutch.

"Well, never thought I'd see you around here, Faker!" Sonic said jovially as he maneuvered around the counter expertly. He glanced towards the wolf, a large smile on his face. "And Whisper...we all thought you'd died," he said, going quiet.

"I gathered that," Whisper said.

Amy nodded. "We'll have to hear about it. Sonic, I think we still have some punch in the fridge, right? Would either of you like some drinks? I'm afraid it's passed the time for dinner. If we'd known you were coming-"

"It was a last minute thing," Shadow clarified. "And I'm assuming Sonic still drinks that Blue Lagoon Lager of his?"

"I've had to cut most of it out," Sonic grinned, "but we still have a few. And you, Whisper?" he asked.

Honestly, seeing Sonic walk around being forced to use crutches was such an anathema to Whisper that she was still processing it. "I'm...I don't need anything," she managed to get out.

"Come on, sit down," Sonic said, gesturing to the living room. "Ignore the toys, we would have had them clean up. Seems a weekly chore is only a weekly thing if they want it to be," he chuckled. It took him a moment to navigate down. One of his legs was badly mangled and burned, and that's the one that Sonic didn't dare put any weight on.

"We need to use the Tornado," Shadow said instantly. "We'll be out of your hair by morning."

Sonic shook his head as he sat down. "Can't. Hasn't had maintenance done in a long time, and Green Hill is down on martial law at the moment. No one in or out. You must've come in on the last plane. Sorry Shads."

Somehow, Whisper knew this was coming. There was no way any of her plans would have come to fruition without something going wrong. And sure enough, here it was. "Dammit. I guess you were right; we should've just gone straight to Spiral Hill," Shadow admitted. Whisper stared at him, before shrugging.

"Spiral Hill? Tangle's old place? Why?" Sonic asked.

"Trying to find Tails to help Whisper back...you know, it'd be easier if you explained it," Shadow said. "Everything."

Whisper sighed. More talking, her favorite thing to do. Amy came in with a small bottle of something right as she started, handing it to Shadow while trying to listen in.

Whisper explained as much as she knew she could. The mission at Eggman's remote base, finding the clock thing, having Cyan accidentally imbue it with energy, combined with the power cell, and finding her in a place with only a vague idea of what happened.

It reminded her a lot of giving a debrief to both Amy or Jewel, depending on who was leading the Restoration at the time, and she fell back into those patterns. She noticed that Amy did too, the pink hedgehog's eyes only occasionally drifting towards Shadow or Sonic.

The old Sonic would have been bored out of his mind, starting to fidget around. This Sonic was...controlled, for lack of a better term. He still fidgeted a bit in his seat, shredding the back of the chair of whatever fabric was there, but it was much less than what his old version would have done.

After she was done, Amy had a solemn look on her aged face. "Sorry Whisper, not much that we can do. As Sonic said, Tails hasn't been around to do much of the upkeep on the Tornado, and even then, Green Hill's on lockdown."

"Oh, oh I can help!" a younger, much younger, voice called out from the side. Whisper turned, seeing a small purple, almost lavender but maybe a bit darker, fox standing there in a far too big for her shirt. She was waiting on the sides, obviously having listened in while trying to remain inconspicuous.

"Vio...how long were you listening in?" Sonic asked, forcing himself up. Whisper noticed that he grabbed the crutch out of habit. His injury had happened a long time ago.

"Long enough! Come on, Mr. Sonic! You know I can help, I've been studying the Tornado's schematics in my spare time!"

One of Tails' kids, then? Whisper turned an eye to him. She looked a lot like Tails had, back in her time. Surprisingly tall for her age, but with a flatter muzzle. She still had the sky blue eyes, the same shade that Tails had. Her eyes glanced towards her backside for the obvious telltale sign, but she only saw one fluffy tail swishing about behind her. Only one tail? What had Shadow said? She was twelve right now?

"She has been doing a lot," Amy admitted from the side.

"Not as much as her father did at her age," Sonic said harshly.

"That's not fair! You never let me try, I bet I can keep up with you just fine!" Violet shouted from the hallway.

"Vio," Amy started as she walked over to the girl, "Whisper and Shadow are doing something very dangerous, but they know the risks their taking. You've heard the stories, but you don't know the risks."

"I know enough!"

"Violet, why were you even listening in? Bedtime was an hour ago," Sonic asked as he sat back down. He had an apologetic look in his eyes as he gave a glance towards Shadow and Whisper. Shadow shrugged. Whisper could tell that he had a feeling this would happen.

"Mata's cheating on some homework again. Uncle Chuck keeps giving in even after you asked her to let him rest," Pia muttered. "And Velocity keeps complaining through the wall that he's bored."

"Mata..." Amy sighed. "I'll handle Mata. Vio..." Amy said, giving the fox a look before she knelt down and whispered a few words to the girl. The hedgehog gave a knowing smirk back towards Sonic before she darted into the hallway, a door shutting loudly behind her.

"Mata's continuing to break the natural order again?" Shadow asked without hesitation. Sonic sighed.

"Sounds like it," he admitted. "I mean, she's ten, but darn it Uncle Chuck was supposed to be resting."

Whisper didn't see what was wrong with it. How was asking a grand-uncle or a grandparent cheating, or breaking the natural order? Her confusion must've shown on her face, as Shadow answered her unasked question.

"Mata's capable of conversing with, and bringing back, the dead. Charles Hedgehog, Sonic's uncle, died nearly...what, thirty years ago?" he asked, looking at Sonic. Whisper stared at him, her mind having froze up.

What.

"Yeah, about that," Sonic said. "And it's not so much bringing back as allowing their spirit to come back. It...opened our eyes a lot when Mata was three and we first adopted her."

Mata could bring back the dead?

Orange popped out of her canister. "Whisper's broken, sorry. The idea of someone bringing back the dead...well, you know."

Cyan, Green, and Pink all popped out a moment later, nodding laughably quickly. Blue popped his head out for a moment to agree, before heading back down.

Sonic blinked. "Uh...sorry, don't have my translator on me. Shadow?" he asked, looking towards the black hedgehog.

"And how do you know I have mine on me, faker?"

"They said that 'Whisper's Broken', whatever that means," Violet stated quietly from the hallway. Sonic and Shadow looked surprised before she flicked one of her ears, showing the small metal thing on top of it. "Come on Mr. Sonic, you know I made my own translator. If Dad could do it, so could I."

"Your Dad also once translated Yacker's words as 'Sometimes all we need is headsalad.', so I don't think you should take that seriously." Cyan said. "Yacker told me that one, cracked me up for days."

"Wasn't there also something about underwear in there, too?" Orange asked. "I'm not sure. Whisper, you back with us yet?"

Whisper sighed. The idea that someone could just...bring back the dead. That was...absolutely terrifying. "Yes, I am," she uttered quietly. The talk of someone, anyone, bringing back the Diamond Cutters...it must hurt the wisps more than it would have hurt her. She only knew them for as long as she was on the team, the wisps knew them far longer than that.

"Headsalad, underwear?" Violet asked, hesitating.

Sonic burst into laughter, "Oh man that brought me back. Your dad's first attempt at the translation for the wisp language. It was bad...he showed me it later, translated out of binary, and ooh boy was it a giant mess," Sonic explained.

"That's all well and good, but if you can't help us, Faker, then Whisper and I will head out tomorrow morning. There has to be some way to get out of here," Shadow said.

"Well, even the roads would be watched. I'm expecting another protest hosted outside my door again," Sonic answered. "The quickest thing to do would be to get the mayor's help, but good luck with that. He hated the Resistance back then, and he can't stand the Restoration now, either."

"Why?" Whisper asked before she could stop herself. Why would anyone not want to help the Resistance? She could understand the Restoration, as they couldn't help everyone so maybe they had missed a town or two, as much as they didn't want to.

Sonic shrugged. "He had a deal with Eggman during the fight. Green Hill would be his and Eggman wouldn't kill everyone here, but in return all the people had to sign up to fight for Eggman. Even now there's a standing militia about it. His grandfather was mayor when Eggman attacked the first time."

"So our only hope is to fly out of here. But the one plane we need is trashed because you can't do maintenance," Shadow accused.

Sonic grinned. "Sounds about right. You try having time with four kids around. If it wasn't for Amy and Vio over there, I'd be run ragged! More than I am already, that is," he answered.

"Mata's old enough to take care of herself, and that's without the spirits," Violet responded. "And I'm as old as Dad was when he went on his adventures with you. And I know the schematics, I can at least make the plane flyable!"

"And you have no idea how much I regret having him there with me," Sonic answered, all sign of happiness and jolliness gone in an instant. "You're actually older than he was, Vio, but Eggman attacked Westside Island directly, and that wasn't even counting Cocoa Island."

"You should at least let her work on it. She couldn't hurt anything," Shadow said.

"Yeah, I'll keep watch too! Trust me, if anyone can make a plane fly, it's me!" Cyan said.

Orange glared at her. "That's bullshit and you know it! I'm the one who can make anything with rocket thrusters fly!"

Green's eye closed, and with it Whisper's patience. "Come on, you know that I'm the one with hover powers. If anyone understands flight, it's me."

"Please stop," Whisper said. Violet was watching the wisps with a hopeful look on her face, and an amused look on Sonic's despite the fact he couldn't understand them.

"I think I'm the only one who can! Put spikes on it, that'll solve all your problems!" Pink proudly prodded.

Green, Orange, and Cyan all looked at him, before shouting at the same time, "That won't solve anything!"

"I heard shouting, is everything...oh hi there wisps!" Amy said from the hallway. Behind her was another girl, a yellow cat with two long tails flowing from behind her. She was clutching a small stuffed cat with an emerald sign right in the middle of its stomach.

Behind even her was a white...thing. It had some semblance of shape, but Whisper could only barely tell that much. It was bipedal, but still...floating. Whisper's head started hurting, and the more she focused on the shape, the more her head started to pound. Once she looked away, her head started to relieve itself.

"Oh hey Uncle Chuck! Mata, you're going to let him go back soon, right? He needs his rest!" Sonic grinned.

The cat shook her head. "No, not yet. He's almost gone. It was harder to reach him this time. I think this is the last time. You should say goodbye," she said, her voice high pitched and kid-like, yet with a serious tone to it.

Sonic nodded. "Alright then. You shouldn't try to reach out to him again then. You feeling alright there?" he asked the white spirit thing. Whisper didn't dare look at it.

"Yes, I'm okay for now," it spoke. It was a masculine voice, old and weary, and it drilled into Whisper's head like a yellow wisp on steroids. "But I'm afraid Mata's right. It's almost my turn. I don't think I'd see you much longer, but I'm grateful for the time I had," it continued.

"Alright," Sonic agreed. "Hey...thanks for doing your best for me, old man. I'm sure Amy appreciated it-" he said, ducking a hammer that appeared out of nowhere.

Whisper started, throwing herself back to the top of the stairs. Amy was in a throwing position, her hammer appearing in her hands again before it could damage a wall. "Be serious, Sonic!" she reprimanded.

The spirit laughed despite it all. "I'm glad you're respectful to the end, Maurice!" the spirit shouted with a look towards Mata, who grinned back. She immediately closed her eyes for a moment, letting the spirit dissipate. Whisper felt her head start to return to normal a bit, the feel of a headache, the wrongness of the world, start to realign to what she knew as reality.

"Grah, you know I hate that name!" Sonic shouted. "And darn, right in front of Shadow too. Now I'm never gonna live it down."

"Would I ever do that to you, Maurice?" Shadow asked, more of an evil grin than a smirk now. Sonic groaned.

Violet walked up to her sister, giving her a hug. "Hey, I didn't know it was the last time you were gonna get him. I wouldn't have said anything if I'd known," she said.

"It's kay. Mom explained it," the cat said, looking at Amy. Violet nodded, smiling towards the hedgehog's way. "And...hi Mr. Shadow! I don't know you," Mata said, looking towards Whisper. "But, wisps! Wisps!" she let out a loud cheer, before running towards the floating energy beings.

"Kid incoming, kid incoming! Run, run!" Cyan shouted as she darted back to her canister. Orange and Green seemingly had the same idea as they quickly followed the light blue one in. Pink rolled into a ball, small spikes emanating from his floating personage.

"Mata...it's also your past your bedtime. Was Velos keeping you up, too?" Sonic asked. "I'm gonna have to ask to have him keep it down."

"No, I had homework due tomorrow but I hadn't done it yet because Thunder wanted to play Plumber Kart," Mata explained. "So I wanted to get Uncle Chuck to help me, because he explains math so much better than Vio does-"

"I can't help it, I just understand it!"

"And then she went out here to tattle on me and now we're here," Mata said. She stopped in front of Pink, and cautiously poked at him with a tiny finger. "Hi there wispy. I'm Mata," she said. Her eyes turned down once she made contact with his body. "And you have not had an easy life on earth, have you...?"

"How...?" Whisper asked. One of Mata's ears stood up tall, as if listening, although the cat didn't say anything.

"Mata's...well, Blaze warned us before she went into the emerald chamber. Cats with two tails are rare, and they usually have more magical powers than even she knew," Sonic said.

Whisper digested that information, before she realized that meant Tails and Blaze were together. That was something she hadn't seen coming.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Morning

"Yeah! That's why my dad named me 'Mata'. Short for Nekomata!" Mata said, her two tails dancing around her legs. They weren't true two tails, the way her dad's were. Instead it was one tail, split halfway down the middle creating a type of forked tail. Each one was basically prehensile, Whisper noticed.

Sonic let out a small huff. "That was before Blaze told her it meant 'Cat monster'."

"No it doesn't! Bakeneko is 'cat monster'," Violet spoke up. "I remember that."

"How, you were two?" Shadow asked. "I remember everything when I was two, but that was because I'm the ultimate life form."

"Ultimate life form, created being, your pick," Sonic grinned. "Anycase, Vio, Mata, this is Whisper. She's an old Restoration member who...I guess got shunted forward in time. Not that that hasn't happened before, thank you Little Planet, but rather odd that it was only twenty three years."

"Twenty three is plenty long enough," Whisper responded. "It's nice to meet you," she said, turning to the two girls.

"Why do you whisper? Is it because its your name and you feel you have to?" Mata asked, getting up far too close to Whisper for her personal liking.

"Mata, Whisper doesn't like having people so close. Give her some space. She's also meeting you for the first time, so please don't jump in. Her friends, the wisps, are also quite jumpy," Sonic warned.

"Oh. Sorry," Mata said, not looking sorry at all as she took five giant steps back, more than the entire living room. Violet shook her head.

"No. I whisper as that's...just who I am, now," Whisper answered.

Shadow turned to Violet. "You said you've been studying the schematics of the Tornado. Would you be able to work on it, but not fly it?" he asked.

Violet nodded. "Absolutely! I even know the code to get into the hangar!"

"Admittedly, one nine nine two is not the hardest of codes to crack," Sonic cringed. "But...fine. Tomorrow. You both still need to get some sleep in. We'll talk about you working on it, tomorrow," Sonic said, his voice brooking no argument.

Violet grinned wide. "Okay, Mr. Sonic!" she said, speeding out of the room in a way vaguely reminiscent of the fastest thing alive.

"You gave in way too easily. What's your take," Shadow said, glaring at Sonic. Sonic grinned.

"She was just going to do it anyways. She's hitting that age where we're starting to have to use reverse psychology. By allowing her to do this, and just work on it, she's unlikely to want to take it and run with it."

"Vio wouldn't do that!" Mata said, stomping her foot. "She'd listen to what you say. You're her mom and dad, just like Mom and Dad are!"

Amy knelt down next to her. "We know we are, and she knows that too, but she's also old enough to easily remember both your mom and dad, and us. It's not easy for her. And you need your rest too, I know how channeling Uncle Chuck's spirit is hard on you," she said softly.

"I'm not tired though!" Mata retorted, yawning wide a second later. "That wasn't a yawn, you're seeing things!"

"I'm sure it wasn't," Amy agreed, gently pushing Mata back to her room. "Sonic, guest room isn't ready," she murmured as one of their adopted daughters walked back to her room.

"Oh...yeah, you're right. Um, hmm-" Sonic started.

"We'll sleep out here. I'll take a chair, Whisper the couch. This alright?" Shadow asked, turning to Whisper.

Her first instinct was to say that she'd take the more uncomfortable chair, but she'd realized that the couch actually doesn't have all the holes the chair did, which means that it mostly was Amy and the kids that sat there. She nodded a moment later. She could place the wisp's canisters on the other chair too, in case they wanted to come out.

Sonic yawned. "Alright, I'll get some blankets and pillows. How are you going to try to get the mayor to open up Green Hill though? They'd shoot down the Tornado if you left now."

"We'll handle that one, Sonic. Don't ask if you don't want to know," Shadow commanded. Sonic rolled his eyes in a huff, before he grabbed his crutch and hobbled off to another door, filled to the brim with blankets, pillows, toys, and various other things.

Now that things had quieted down, Whisper had the best opportunity she'd had in a long time to really sit down and think. She was like that; she needed time before she could formulate responses. Shadow was being more helpful than he'd ever been before.

Sonic was injured, Amy was a mother, Tails was missing, Blaze was missing, Jewel was back at her museum, and most importantly, Tangle was missing.

Belle was stuck at the Restoration base. What about the others? There had to be others that she hadn't thought about. Lanolin, Silver?

The couch was surprisingly comfortable, Whisper noticed, or it could have been that her back was thanking her for finally letting the variable wispon off of it onto the other chair, with the wisps next to it.

The rain pattered down on the roof, giving a soft soothing sound that Whisper knew from her home. It reminded her of the times that she'd stay up just to watch the rain, a hobby that she still occasionally stuck to, even when camping out in the middle of nowhere with the other New Diamond Cutters. Lanolin thought she was weird for staring at it, and Tangle often bored herself trying to find what it was that Whisper was looking at.

The morning came too soon as Whisper was woken abruptly by a tiny pink hedgehog in her face. She looked like a small Amy, reversed around ten years from when Whisper had known her as the commander. She even had on a similar green dress!

"Hi! Hi hi hi! Mom says its time to wake up because the sun is up and when the sun is up that means its time for food and since today is the start of a weekend that means we get pancakes and waffles and Saturday morning cartoons and which cartoons do you like I like them all but I especially like the ones without those weird morals in them like 'don't do drugs kids' and 'you should never hurt anyone' because you should only hurt someone if they're really bad people like my dad did to Eggman he was a bad man-"

Was she saying something? Whisper stared at the mouth, continuing to move in mysterious ways as the words hadn't yet caught up to how fast the young hedgehog was talking. "Thunder! Leave her to sleep, I told you that! If you need to watch your cartoons, watch on the floor!" Amy's voice cut through it.

Whisper blinked, before she pushed herself up. "Oh. Sorry," she said quietly. Her back was protesting every movement, and her arms weren't entirely listening to her yet, but still she forced herself to stand and start picking up the blankets.

"Whisper!" Amy said from the kitchen, "You don't need to get up yet. Thunder's just being obnoxious because she doesn't know you yet. Thunder, this is Whisper, one of our friends from the Restoration!"

"Hi!" Thunder said, her voice thundering into Whisper's ears. "You were on my couch and I can't bug Uncle Shadow because he's always grumpy whenever I do that."

"Or whenever you speak to me, or whenever you look at me, or want to play games with me-" Shadow said from the table, a small mug of steaming something in his hands. He was smirking lightly, but only so Whisper could tell the sarcasm.

"Exactly! You're so grumpy Uncle Shadow. Ooh Teenage Ninja Turtles is on!" Thunder said, parking herself on the couch as soon as Whisper moved the pillow.

The wolf grabbed her wisps, noticing with a sigh that all of them were vacant. The wisps were probably out running amok. She grabbed her wispon and hoisted it onto her back. She moved soundlessly to the kitchen counter, watching as Amy moved with a large apron, whipping up eggs and pancakes faster than Whisper had ever seen her move.

"Well, since you're up anyways...do you want any coffee? Storm is supposed to be letting up for another day or two. Might get some minor flooding in the lowlands," Amy asked, pointing to the coffee maker.

"Where's Sonic?" Whisper asked after a long moment. "And coffee...sounds good," she finished. Amy gave her a smile before a large cup was in Whisper's hands a minute later.

"Sonic's with Velocity. He had a bad dream last night, apparently, Velocity did," Amy explained. "They'll probably be out shortly, and then you'll have met the entire family!"

"Yes. All of them. Where are your wisps?" Shadow asked with a smirk.

Whisper took a sip of the coffee, feeling sudden wakefulness hit her a bit harder than usual. "Oh no," she whispered.

"They went with Violet to check out the Tornado. I don't know what they were saying, but they were chattering like mad before they opened the door. Also, did you know that Cyan can open doors?"

"Yes, and she shouldn't," Whisper said. She checked her cloak just to make sure all six canisters were in there before she headed towards where she thought the hangar was. The house wasn't actually that large. It just seemed bigger than it was, given such an open floor plan.

The first door Whisper tried led to the laundry room, and the second led to the pantry. Amy was watching her with an amused look on her face as Whisper returned, red-faced. "Where is it?" the wolf asked quietly.

"Outside. Go through that door, there's a shed with a code on it. Door should already be open. You might want to..." Amy said before Whisper was already headed to the door. She didn't catch what it was as she took her first steps outside into the cold rain.

She figured out what Amy was going to say the instant she put a foot down on the rock steps. 'Get some shoes on first'.

The shed wasn't far from the house, and there was a series of rocks that led to it similar to a trail. Grass was on the sides and around it, a small field that had a tiny goalpost sitting on top of it. The door to the shed was open, and Whisper could see the small figure of Violet staring at the red fuselage of the Tornado.

It was already too late to go back inside, in Whisper's mind. And besides, five unruly wisps could do a lot of damage if they wanted to in only minutes. They were much stronger than they let on, even to Whisper. She knew that much, but she never knew just how much they were holding back.

The rain felt weird on her bare feet and head, but she didn't stop to put her hood up or anything. Small patches of water were starting to build up in the grass, and more than once Whisper felt herself almost slip.

The shed had a concrete base, and it was freezing cold when Whisper stepped onto it. The Tornado was in its base form, the red biplane with a small jet installed underneath its wheels. Its main fuselage was open as Violet was underneath it, small wrench trying to loosen up some of the bolts.

Cyan and Green were hovering over her, giving her advice. Blue and Orange were looking at some of the other gadgets on the wall, and Pink was checking out the inside of the Tornado's seats.

"Oh, oil change! I remember how to do this one, first you unscrew the oil cap, let it all drain out, run it a bit before you put it back!" Cyan was saying.

"No! That's a good way to get it hurt. First you unscrew it, then you run it to let it drain out, then you put new stuff in!"

"I know how to change the oil," Violet said, not having noticed Whisper. "And you're both wrong."

"Drain the oil, put it back, run it," Whisper commented. Violet let out a small shriek and jammed her head into the Tornado's fuselage, holding her hand to her head as she took a step back.

"Oh yeah, that's what it was!" Both Cyan and Green said at the same time.

"Don't...don't do that to me," Violet murmured. She had on a large set of overalls with Tails' old logo stamped on it, her purple tail hanging out easy. "You scared me there."

"Sorry. Looking for them. Making sure they didn't get into trouble."

"Would we do that?" Cyan asked.

Orange, Green, Blue, and Pink all nodded their heads. "Yes, yes we would."

"Yes, yes you would. All of you would," Whisper commented. "Would you prefer to work in peace?" she asked Violet after a long moment.

"Uh...no, they can stay here. You might want shoes next time you come out here though, there's sharp bits and bobs," Violet said, pointing to the saw blades on the wall. "This is where Mr. Sonic keeps his lawnmower for me and Velocity."

"Why do you keep calling him Mr. Sonic? Seems strange. Mata called him Dad," Pink asked. "I'm sure he wouldn't mind. Sonic doesn't seem the type."

"He's not. And...it's complicated. I know who my dad is. He may not have been able to raise me much, but I knew him. Mata...Mata only knew Mr. Sonic and Aunt Amy."

"And why the Mr? You use Aunt for Amy's name."

"That's because a salesman used it once and he couldn't stop laughing for a half an hour because it sounded so weird, so I kept calling him it to get him used to it."

"Did that work?"

"No."

Whisper chuckled, sending Violet another foot in the air. "If you're fine out here then," she said before she stepped back to head back to the main house.

The rain had only gotten harder in the last few minutes. The stones were far more slippery now than they were before, and Whisper walked on the grass instead.

The main house was much louder now, as it appeared that Mata, Thunder, and Velocity were all up and about in the few minutes Whisper was talking with Violet. Amy was still doing breakfast, more and more plates slowly piling up with various food. Shadow was at the table, unconcerned by the growing chaos around him.

Sonic was in the living room, attempting to keep order with all three of the kids there wanting to watch different shows. If anything, that to Whisper showed that Thunder had it right; get out there early so she could watch what she wanted to.

"Find your wisps alright?" Amy asked. Her apron was a bit messier now as she almost reflexively wiped her hands on it. "Breakfast should be ready soon."

"I did. Is it always like this?" Whisper hesitated to ask. She took a long deep breath, "and what can I do to help?"

"You're a guest, you don't need to help at all!" Amy answered. "And on the weekends it is. Sonic's actually doing a better job than he usually does, if only because Vio's not adding to the chaos."

They were stopped by yelling over in the living room, followed by screaming and shouting and then a bit of taunting before crying.

Whisper didn't know who was doing what.

"Oi! Quiet down over there!" Amy roared from the kitchen. "Sonic, you want to swap?" she asked.

Sonic let out a quiet groan before he grabbed his crutch and came to the kitchen for the necessary rescue. "Sure, I'll take over. Looks like you did all the hard things anyways," he noticed.

A light blue, not quite violet, hedgehog came up to Whisper. "You're the other guest that isn't Uncle Shadow. I'm Velocity," he said, holding out his hand.

"Whisper," she answered.

"Ok...but why?" Velocity asked, whispering. Whisper had to withhold her giggle as she heard Sonic's facepalm. "No, I'm being serious, why?" he kept asking.

"No, that's her name," Sonic clarified. Velocity went 'ohh' before he heard the sounds of Thunder and Mata turning on a game console.

"Oh no you don't, not my games!" he shouted as he bolted over.

Whisper leaned against the counter as she watched the three kids get into more arguments. Amy was watching over them like a mother hawk, but wasn't actually stopping them. "Reminds me of Silver a bit, you know?" Sonic stated as he watched over the three of them.

"They're all so different, but so close to the same. Vio's just like Tails, Velocity and Silver, Thunder and Amy...Mata and Knuckles," Sonic noted.

"Knuckles?" Whisper asked.

"Once you got him to open up he's quite goofy. Takes a while though," Sonic said as he flipped another pancake onto a plate. "And that should be good. Alright, breakfast time!" he shouted, putting them up onto the counter. "Just watch," he winked at Whisper.

Almost as if he'd known, three blurs of various colors snatched up the plates and in an instant they were gone, replaced by not full ones. Violet came by a moment later, her own plate taking a few seconds longer, but replaced just the same.

Whisper counted. Around thirty seconds, maximum, and an entire breakfast that took nearly an hour and a half or so to cook was gone.

"Yeah, they're fast eaters," Sonic grinned. He gave a noticeable look to the floor. "And Vio didn't even get water inside!" he noted. He also looked at the other water splashes next to Whisper. "If you need to towel off, use a towel from the pantry. We keep those ones high up so that way the kids don't get those ones dirty and we always have a few clean ones," Sonic said.

Grimacing, Whisper carefully tried to not get any more water on their floor as she reached into the pantry to grab a clean towel. It took a few moments, but in that time Sonic had dished up the rest of the food for those that wouldn't act as a vacuum.

It took much more time than the kids took, if only because Sonic and Amy took turns being able to actually take their bites.

As Sonic wolfed down the last of his pancakes, Amy turned to Shadow and Whisper, long since done with theirs. "How are you two going to talk to the mayor? You're not going to cause any international incidents this time, are you Shadow?"

What did she mean by this time? Whisper raised an eyebrow as she glanced at Shadow, who was surprisingly red-faced before he looked away. "No. That's not in the cards. It wasn't then, and it isn't now."

"Alright then. I'm assuming you have a plan?"

Whisper's plan had honestly been to 'ask him nicely' and if that didn't work she'd find another way out. It's not as if she hadn't done that before, either.

"Plan A is to ask him," Shadow said. "Whisper'll take care of that part. Plan B, and the one I'm doing, is to actually take out the cause of it at its root."

"Shadow, you can't just...go in and blow everything up. You're an agent, shouldn't you know this?"

"I was part of GUN a long time ago, Amy. I don't plan to go in and 'blow everything up'. I plan to go in and act as a scalpel, not a bomb."

"...You know it's just going to end up as an international incident anyways, right?"

Shadow was glaring at her. "No, it won't, because I say it won't. Faker..."

Sonic shrugged, not bothering to hide his grin, "What? I'm not going to go against her. Sides, you know better than to go in and Chaos Blast everything you see."

Whisper was starting to see why Shadow was considered too dangerous to put on some of the easier Restoration tasks back in her home time. Even the ones that were good public relations, and the ones that Sonic and the others did all the time.

She pushed herself up, not saying a word as the other kept talking. Velocity, Mata, and Thunder were all down in the living room, the television on but on low sound, their eyes paying more attention to the discussion than the show.

Whisper pulled on her boots, and did her usual check to make sure everything was on. "Sounds like Uncle Shadow's going to cause trouble again," Velocity muttered.

"Oh no, not again. Last time he did that there were protestors outside our house for weeks," Thunder said, her ears being brought down low.

Mata rubbed her adopted sister's back lightly. "Hey, we'll get through it. We did last time, and we will last time. And this time he has Whisper along. You won't let anything get out of hand, will you?" she asked the wolf.

"That's the plan," Whisper agreed. Shadow was still talking, about how he would handle the situation. She was an unknown, where as he was easily recognizable.

It was easier to cause havoc if no one recognized the person about to cause it.

She doubted that any one of them, except maybe the kids, even realized that she was out the door. Their door was fairly quiet, and Whisper was even quieter than that. She gave off the whistle to call the wisps, not surprised when only Orange answered her. "The others were more interested in Vio. But if you gave off a second, they'd probably come running," Orange answered.

Whisper shook her head. "No, we should be good," she said. The rain poured around them, and Whisper saw Orange imbue herself into the variable wispon. Not just to protect herself from the rain, but to give Whisper a weapon should she need it.

She did pull her cloak and hook up this time, blending into the darkened city easy.

It took her only half an hour walking and running speed to get her into the city proper. Green Hill wasn't the biggest of cities, no matter how anyone would look at it. The downtown area was dull and grey, with only small sides of greenery from the trees and bushes. The hills that gave it its name however were easy to find, looping around everything. The city was set in a valley, it seemed.

There was a host of protestors outside the city hall, screaming at someone who was underneath a cover. The protestors had umbrellas, but no unified cover from the pouring rain. "We want our city back! It's our city, not yours! Our city! Not yours! Our city! Not yours!" someone was screaming into a megaphone, a chant followed.

The person underneath the cover, a sheep who looked nothing like Lanolin, was letting the words bounce off of him. "Yes, I'm aware that you think that, but you don't! The Baragrafo Bullies are back in town, and they will not stop until Mayor Ziepard is dead and buried! We will not stoop to letting assassin's get what they want!" the sheep shouted back.

Whisper had to give off a sigh. She could do this the easy way or the long way. "What do you think Orange? Easy way, or long way?" she asked after a moment.

"I'll leave it to you to decide. I say long way, if it's the safer way. Nothing worthwhile is ever easy."

That was something the original Diamond Cutters had put into her head a lot too, wasn't it? The easy way to charge in and deal with the mayor directly, in Whisper's mind. Was she capable of it? Probably. Would she feel good about it? Probably not.

She gave her hood another pull to make sure that the rain wouldn't make it worse for her, as she walked past the protesters, past the poor guy who had to defend the mayor, and past the news who were watching everything like hawks, waiting for the big story to break out.

Her boots hit against the concrete solidly, splashing against the small pools that congregated from the rain, as she focused on her next task; to deal with these 'Baragrafo Bullies'. If that's what they were called.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Warning: This chapter has lots of cursing. I don't usually warn for that but this chapter is almost excessive.

Wary

Despite the general fear in the air, so thick it was almost possible to actually feel it, Whisper saw more than just a few people walking around without a care in the world. "What's your plan for this?" Orange asked next to her ear. Whisper saw someone else with a green wisp next to their head, babbling incessantly about food and why they wanted more of it.

Even in the rain, people were walking around like they didn't care about the lock down, and that nothing was wrong. More than a few had umbrellas, a few of the more aquatic people didn't even have coats on. "I don't know yet. Ask around?" Whisper suggested. She had to stop herself from rolling her eyes at it; of course no one would just answer her if she asked about anything. Maybe if she had an actual location, but it wasn't like anyone could just get that, either.

Orange watched as another orange gave her the side-eye, before Whisper caught a whispered, "Help me!" from them, a small leash tied to one of their legs leading to a small child, skipping happily along.

Whisper's and Orange's eyes met, and the wisp immediately imbued herself into the variable wispon. Whisper darted to another alcove, crawling up the wall surprisingly quickly. The fire escape went all the way down to the street, which was unusual even here. She needed a vantage point, and it wasn't as if the orange wispon was actually loud. She reached the roof and hid under the ledges, trying to find the perfect spot. She found it easy enough.

No, the weapon was silent. What was loud was the sound of the trigger. And when the kid was halfway down the street, and no one else was going to see where it came from, Whisper pulled the trigger.

The leash suddenly went slack in the kid's hands as the material was cut near perfectly. The orange wisp immediately shouted a "Whee!" as it used its power to hover straight into the air. The kid stared at the broken leash, and the hovering wisp, before they started to stand still and cry.

Whisper ducked underneath the building's ledges. "That's what we should do," Whisper suggested.

Orange dis-imbued herself from the wispon. "You've lost me. Do what?"

"Find a vantage point. Find the weak connection, and weaken it further."

"Just like with the wisp?"

"Just like the wisp," Whisper agreed.

She popped her head off of the building's side, realizing she'd climbed nearly two stories without thinking about it. The rain pattered against her hood, and against the concrete all around her.

Her ear twitched as her radio clicked on. "Whisper, this is Amy," Amy's voice patched through. "I'm hoping you still have the old one, I could barely remember the frequencies-"

"I hear you Amy," Whisper said as she pulled down her mask.

"Oh good! I did remember the right one. Took me a few tries...anyways, you're...safe? You kind of walked out on us this morning."

"Taking care of the problem."

"That's Shadow's problem, not yours. Yours is to get used to what happened to you, and to rest."

"And I'm going to get rest at your place?" Whisper said, making sure her voice didn't have an accusatory tone to it. She wanted it to, though. With four kids, five if Sonic was included, their house was never going to be quiet.

"...Ouch. We could put you up somewhere else, you know...Just make sure you don't do anything that would be seeing you in jail, okay?"

"The laws haven't changed," Whisper answered. "The specifics may have, but they haven't. I wasn't gone that long."

"You know what I mean, Whisper. I'll be staying on here, so if you need anything...Mata! Thunder! Stop fighting this instant! Velocity, give the girls their chance-" Amy's voice trailed off. Whisper clicked it off with a sigh.

"If you need anything, good luck getting it," Orange said amused. "With four kids, I'm surprised she has time to even run around."

"I'm sure Sonic helps," Whisper said, defending her friend even though he wasn't there. Orange stared at her for a moment, and Whisper felt her eyes look decisively unimpressed. "Most of the time," she amended.

"Wait, what's that? Down there, third complex on the left," Orange pointed out. Whisper pulled up her scope.

"Just an old storage unit," Whisper said. Orange's eyes were pulled elsewhere, but the wolf stared at it a bit longer. There were various gang signs in there, and only some of the locks had been broken in. There was no code lock to get in, and the gate had long since been ripped off. "Good eyes, Orange," she complimented. Gang signs, the ones out for the Mayor's head were probably a powerful gang. Some other gangs in the area would probably have an idea of who they were.

"For what? Oh, I see!" Orange said. "How you going to get down? We don't have Green here for a hover?"

"Same way we got up. Just in reverse," Whisper said, resting the wispon on her back as she pulled herself over the side, finding the familiar handholds and footholds as she dropped to the ground.

"I think there was a lot less falling upwards when we went up. You ran up stairs, last time," Orange mollified herself. Whisper ignored her.

Whisper had figured her clothing would get her a few looks, or the least that her mask would. Instead, most of the people on the side streets here didn't bother looking at her. Some were drugged out of their mind, and some looked down on their luck, but most of them were fairly 'normal'.

The storage complex was nearly three blocks away, but it took only a few minutes before Whisper was at the fence. Her radio clicked on again. "Whisper. This is Shadow. Name your position," the dark hedgehog's baritone blared its way through her ears.

There was no sign anywhere, let alone any identifiers that she could see. "Corner next to Mary's Supply Chain," she rattled off as she looked at a nearby corner store.

There were a bunch of fences surrounding the storage area, some of it having ripped up barbed wire at the top. Most of it had come down since it had been put up, and Whisper could tell it would be mostly painless to climb through.

She heard voices through the radio as she jumped onto the chain, pulling herself up and over with ease. "The Faker knows where it is. Stay there, and don't do anything," Shadow's voice said.

"Understood," she responded instantly.

"You know they're going to take that as an acknowledgement. And then they're going to be mad that you didn't do as they said," Orange noted from around her head.

"I know. Let them be mad. I'm already in dangerous territory," Whisper answered. The warehouses seemed abandoned, and she could see more than one lock that had been busted open. Some of the doors were open, their contents spilled out onto the pavement.

There weren't any voices around, which tipped Whisper off that maybe this wasn't the actual hideout. Her eyes narrowed as she passed a corner, seeing a normal storage unit on the other side. What made it stand out was the brand new looking code lock. It didn't have the same amount of dust that most of the others did. "Found something," she warned Orange. She felt the wisp's acknowledgement more than she heard it.

It was a coded padlock, Whisper realized as she stepped up to it. The rain beat down on her hood as she knelt over it. "Think we can guess it?" Orange asked.

"No need," Whisper said, pulling out the wispon and putting it on the lightest amount of power. "Just keep focusing," she continued, aiming it with ease.

"Won't this get you into trouble if they find it?"

"They won't find it."

"That doesn't spark me with a lot of optimism, Whisper."

The lock broke as the orange sniper laser cut through it. It didn't fall, but rather spun in place a bit. Whisper caught it before it fell onto the ground. She hissed as it burnt onto her gloves. But the door was open, now.

"You sure this was the right door? I'd hate to break into someone's random storage unit."

"I know. Should be. Was the only one with a decent lock. I doubt anyone with the right mind uses this place. Did you see the gang signs on the main entrance?"

"Yes?"

"Each of those was another gang. And all of them were faded, some of them newer than others. This may be contested territory for all of them."

"This is going to be a lot of trouble, isn't it?"

Whisper unlatched the door, trying to open it as quietly as she could. In another moment, she was underneath it, the inside darker than anything outside. Rather than turning on a light, she just turned on the night vision in her mask, pulling it down to completely cover her face again.

Three islanders, sleeping in the corner. Each of them had what looked like a bag of drugs, dozens of line on the table between them. Two lizards and one dog, it seemed. They weren't awake, even with Whisper breaking her way in. The lizards were covered with tattoos, and the dog had plenty of fur paint to mimic them.

"Yes, it is," Whisper said, quieter than usual. They were surrounded by dozens of briefcases, some filled with various white powders that even she recognized as some form of drug, and loads of cash strapped together with rubber bands. There was a door on the far side, wide open. Whisper made for it, her boots silently hitting the ground as she ran. She was glad that she'd had some amount of stealth training, both from the old Diamond Cutters and the Neo Diamond Cutters. She wasn't exactly the best at it, but it was paramount when it was needed.

The inside of the door wasn't much better. It looked like an old kitchen, but it had been gutted except for the basics. Small pieces of crystal lie all over the place, and silently Whisper activated the gas mask feature of her mask. It had a small storage of air, only around half an hour, but it would enough she'd hope. She had a feeling she knew what this was.

Two people, humans this time, came in. They weren't wearing lab clothes, but base aprons and plain cloth shirts and pants. They weren't tattooed up like the others had been. Whisper dove behind a table, hoping that her silence was maintained. "Dammit, those islander fuckers outside left the door open again. You get it?" one of them asked.

The other answered in a much higher pitch. Female? Whisper couldn't tell just from body shape. "Those 'islander fuckers' are also better fucks than you lot," they answered. The door shut loudly, making Whisper jump a bit. "How much bleach shit do we need to add?"

"Four parts for each cup. Then we add some of the good stuff." They were mixing some form of liquids with another form, being very careful to measure everything out. Every word they said pounded into Whisper's head that these were probably very dangerous people.

"Fifty parts per million, really? Seems a bit high doesn't it?"

"It's what the boss wants. This is for sellin', not for our group. Be careful of all that, one blast and this whole thing goes kablooie." They pulled down an oven of some kind, slotting in the liquid. Or they'd mixed it with a solid, Whisper wasn't sure. She wasn't about to try to figure it out, either.

"Yeah yeah, I know what I'm doing," the higher pitched one said. "Alright. Getting baked. Five minutes before next check."

"Long enough for a game?"

"Probably not. Then again, with your luck...maybe."

Whisper stopped listening, glancing around the empty kitchen. There was another door, but this one was carefully shut, and it had rusted hinges. It wasn't going to be quiet to open up at all. But slightly above them was a small window, barely a crack open, leading to another room. She wasn't sure why there was a window leading to another room, but she'd have to do this quietly if she wanted to get out of this.

She made a mental note that next time she did something like this, listen to Orange and don't do it. She'd figured that the other gangs would know the truth about these 'Baragrafo Bullies', but unless she found someone particularly high up...She had to focus on getting out of here first. She could think about her plan later.

To get to it, she'd have to jump off the counter, bounce off a cabinet, and grab onto it without anyone seeing her. They were in a bright kitchen-esque area, so the likelihood of someone seeing her was pretty high.

"Hey, I still got some of the last batch. You want some?" the man's voice filtered into her ears again.

"Move! He's coming right for you!"

Orange's warning heeded, Whisper ducked underneath the table, glad that she was a lot shorter than most humans. She'd only met a few of them, long ago. Most of what she knew were the islanders, like Sonic and Tangle.

"Hells yes. Sign me up. Probably not a good idea to cook while coked out, but whatever. I'm game."

Oh gods they were going to be drugged out while handling explosive materials. She needed out of here, and fast. She didn't quite have what she had come for yet, but it was a start. The police could do something with the drugs. There was a sound of searching through a drawer, before one of them pulled out a couple of things that Whisper couldn't see. She heard the sound of a lighter flicking up, and the following puffs of smoke. She was never so grateful for her gas mask as she was now.

She waited another fifteen minutes before she felt that both were suitably distracted. They had finished whatever it was they were 'cooking', and was now sitting back and letting it cool and crystallize. They had what looked like a pipe in their hands, gently smoking something.

They looked drugged out and not paying attention. Perfect. Fortunately.

Whisper slid out from under the table, bouncing on top of the counter and off the cabinet. There were words being yelled, but they came out more as "Fucker fuck fuck fucker! Shit!"

If anyone could get anything from that, Whisper didn't know what it was.

She was definitely seen, but the two humans had just sat there shouting at her as she grabbed the window and wrenched it open in a single motion. The window led to another large warehouse, around six or eight of the storage units with the walls removed. It was obviously haphazard as they left most of the struts around. Whisper grabbed onto one, letting it sway before she hopped to the next one. Her idea of the door not being quiet was proved, as the door leading to the kitchen slammed open, the rust squeaking loudly. "Adaddaada!" the man screamed.

There were three people standing there, one of them sitting down. Maybe a gang boss or a warlord or however it was that gang's modeled themselves after. Maybe he knew something.

"Fuck, he's coked out and seeing shit that ain't there. Robinson, the fuck are you talking about? You sampling the product again?" the one sitting down asked. "You know we need that shit."

Whisper leapt from strut to strut, lighting cable to lighting cable. More than once she had to hold on or otherwise she would have fallen. She was forever grateful for the people who tore down a bunch of storage units and didn't bother making sure they were up to actual code. If they had, she'd have been a goner.

"Adkuck shads tor from!"

"Tory, visit Kelse and see that she's not coked out either. If they both are, take 'em downstairs till they sober up," the boss waved to the guy next to him. He immediately nodded, and grabbed the man, Robinson, on the arm hard as he went. The girl, Kelse or something, was marched out a moment later.

Whisper stopped on top of a small heater. She was light enough that it didn't move or fall, but it was still difficult keeping her balance.

"Think they managed to finish it up?" the boss was asked by the other tall man next to him.

"That a volunteer Ron? You volunteering?"

"I can cook boss, you know that. Not as well as those two, but I can do it."

"Yeah, go in there and finish it up. Don't try to sample the product. We'll let the big boss know what's going on, and she ain't gonna be happy if we don't have no updates or product. We need all this for the Bullies, else they'll come after us." Whisper's ears perked up. Well, that was easy. Her eyes narrowed a bit. Too easy.

Ron went to the kitchen, grumbling about the unfairness of putting all this shit on him. The boss didn't seem to care, but after the door was shut he sighed and pulled out the phone.

"Hey Hilda, this is Johnny. The two cooks got coked out so I'm having Ron finish up. Shouldn't be much of a delay, maybe only an hour if Ron has to re-do it."

Whisper nodded. That was it. A gang leader, or at least a higher up like this one, would probably only speak to another higher up. Find the chain, and cut it at the bottom. If she'd had Cyan with her, she would have imbued herself into the phone, finding the other side of the connection. Instead Whisper had to do this the older way.

"Yeah, I know I don't like it either. Just don't shoot me, yeah? I gave you more product than usual last time, don't that goodwill get carried over?"

Whisper pulled out her wispon. "Orange, think you can listen in without being seen?" she asked, quieter than even usual. She didn't get a response, but she saw Orange disimbue herself from the wispon, silently hovering behind the boss.

"Fine, fine, the usual spot, an hour later. Usual guarantees of product, yeah yeah," he said to the phone.

The door slammed open a moment later. "Boss! We got a problem!" one of the lizards that had been asleep yelled out. He was able to quite clearly see Orange behind the boss, and stood there with an open mouth.

"Well? Don't just stand there, say something!" the boss shouted.

"Wisp! Behind you!"

Orange took that moment to use her ability, rocketing up to the ceiling and imbue herself into the wispon. Unfortunately that left an orange trail of smoke showing quite visibly where Whisper was.

The boss turned, and his eyes followed the smoke trail.

Whisper shot down from the ladder, her cloak fanning out behind her as she landed on the desk, her weapon out and ready to fire. The solid wood thudded under her boots. "Usual place. Tell me where it is," she threatened.

The boss fell back to his chair and threatened to have it fall apart under him. "I...I...holy shit..." Whisper tried to channel everything she remembered about her 'Guardian Angel' days. Those had been long ago, even before this adventure, but the boss seemed terrified enough that she seemed to be doing a good job.

"Tell me!" Whisper once again said. There was very little chance of this working asides from the intimidation factor, but the fact she was using a wispon said she was, in general, a good person.

Of course, assuming that these people knew the myths behind wispon and wisps.

"Fine, fine! Holy shit. On the corner of Fairfield and Denmoor, the corner store. We break into the alley in the back!" the boss volunteered.

"Thank you," Whisper said, firing her wispon at the door next to the lizard behind both of them. The door exploded with a loud crash, and the lizard flailed to the ground. The smoke covering up her escape, she grabbed a rock and chucked it through one of the upper windows, using the smokescreen to exit out a way they wouldn't expect. Hopefully it'd give them the impression that she was more vigilante than mercenary. She crashed through another window, and started running far away from her exit point.

"So...that was cool. How much of that did you make up on the fly?" Orange asked her as she ran. She hadn't seemed to notice that Whisper was trying to run as fast as she possibly could. There was a crowd around the door lock that she'd broken, slowly muttering about what could do that kind of damage. Most of them were running back into the building with weapons armed.

"Almost all of it," Whisper admitted. "I took a few cues from Tangle."

"I could tell. By the way, that door shot-"

"Wait for it..." Whisper said, booking it away from the storage unit. Breath tore at her throat, but she knew she had made that shot. The door sparks probably wouldn't have hit anything, but there was some very sensitive equipment in that kitchen.

Not even a moment later the windows turned red as she felt and heard the explosion tear across the storage units. "Yeah. That. Did you know that would happen?"

"I wanted it to," Whisper said. "Tell me they didn't deserve it and I won't argue."

"Oh no, they deserved it. I'm doubting any of them were actually getting hurt by it though. Though he is just going to call that Hilda person and tell them you're coming."

"I expect him to."

"Alright, but that math ain't mathing. You got a plan?"

"No."

"...I'm not going to like this, am I? This is a Cyan plan. This sounds like a Cyan plan. Or a Pink plan. Is this a Pink plan?"

"This is a Shadow plan," Whisper admitted as she darted over the broken fence. She headed over to where she had told Shadow she was going to be.

Instead she just found Sonic, standing there with a worried look as he glanced over to the burning and broken storage unit. "Whisper! You're alright!" he shouted as he noticed her coming.

"I wasn't close to it," Whisper said.

"Yeah she was. Well, when it started. You didn't get any charcoal or anything, and you're lucky nothing else exploded," Orange muttered.

"Shadow went to check it out. Explosions on this side of town are...never a good sign," Sonic admitted. "We should head back to the car. Vio has the Tornado mostly fixed, she says," he finished, grabbing his crutch and trying to shuffle back to a small blue minivan.

"There's still one place left to check out. Do you know of a small alleyway on Denmoor and..."

"Fairfield."

"Fairfield," Whisper finished.

Sonic's eyes looked up. "I know the place you're talking about. Drug Alley, they call it. I've never figured out why the police don't do something. Where all the major sales go down."

"There's a buyer there tonight. Hilda."

"I'm not going to like how you know this information, am I?"

"Come on Sonic, where's your Restoration spirit! Although truthfully it's more Resistance spirit..."

"No, you aren't."

The hedgehog sighed, before he reached down for a small radio. "Shadow, this is Sonic. Whisper's here, she's okay. I don't see any sign of the explosion on her, but she wants to check out Drug Alley. Says that someone's going to be there tonight."

"Fine. Tell her I'm heading there too, she's not going alone."

"Shadow, she has me too. What, you think just because I'm crippled I'm not me?" Sonic asked, acting offended. Whisper could tell he wasn't, just trying to lighten up everything.

"It's because she has you that I'm worried. Go, then, but don't do anything stupid," Shadow warned.

Sonic rolled his eyes. "Honestly. I have kids now, I'm not going to do anything to risk that," he said aloud. The minivan started up easy, and Whisper was pleased to note that he was A) a much better driver than she thought he'd be, extremely safe and surprisingly slow, and B) a lot better than Lanolin was, to say nothing of Tangle.

Better than her, too, but she wasn't going to tell him that part.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Bad Ideas

The first thing that was important to any sniper, or really anyone who was thinking of some kind of dirty work, was to scope out the area that they'd be hunting in.

Sonic pulled up the van to a small curb a fair distance away. It wasn't a white van, nor a black van, but rather a dark blue, almost the color of Sonic's fur. It'd be perfect for blending in, especially in this region of Green Hill.

Whisper got out, whispering a quiet 'thanks' as she looked into the alleyway. It was mostly grey, wet thanks to all the rain, with a few dumpsters closest to the road. There were metal stairwells leading up to the second and third floors on both sides. It wasn't wide, only around ten feet. Enough for the garbage folks, and that's about it. What most people would expect from an alleyway called 'Drug Alley'.

What Whisper noticed though was that it was clean. There weren't any spare needles somewhere, like she'd seen sometimes. Even the alleys in Digburg had a few sketchy areas, but this one seemed as if everyone regularly cleaned it out. She folded down the mask again, letting it sit on her nose and face, before she took to the stairs. Sonic was staying with the car, and was trying to get some shuteye in the back of it. Shadow had already been alerted as to where she was.

The fire escape was never the easiest of places to get to, nor was it ever intended to be. "Sure would be easier with Green..." she said quietly..

"Yeah it would. I don't know how you'd do it though. What's your plan here?" Orange asked. Whisper wasn't sure either, as she looked around the alleyway. Could she do it? Hmm...

"I have an idea. I'll need your help," she asked Orange. The wisp stared at her with her one eye, before she nodded, and imbued herself into the wispon. Rocket, the Orange wisp's power, generally made the wispon into a sniper. However...like most things, bullets had mass to them. "Turn down the bullet velocity and up the mass, please," she said patiently. She could almost feel the confusion from the wisp.

The alleyway wasn't big, but it was much too big for a single jump. She turned and jumped onto a dumpster, trying to get as much height as she could before she turned, aiming the wispon very carefully and firing off a shot.

The shot bounced, exactly like she thought it would. She raised her foot hoping to catch the bottom of it, only to get hit right in the thigh rather than her foot.

She crashed onto the ground with a solid thump, and she took a moment to breathe deep. A wisp's imbued weapon actually wasn't deadly, unless they wanted it to be. It did, however, generally hurt.

A few minutes later she tried again, this time just flat out missing and crashing onto the ground. A third try had her getting a bit higher, and thus missing the bullet entirely. "I think you're going to have to try something different," Orange said.

"No, one more shot," Whisper said, forcing herself up and climbing up onto the dumpster one more time, wall running up as high as she could and turning to fire.

She crashed onto the ground again. "One more," she said. She could feel Orange's sigh of 'here we go again' from here.

This time she managed to get the bullet exactly where she wanted it, right on the ball of her foot. With excessive force she forced it down, using its force to jump up to the fire escape's metal.

Her boots landed on the steel rungs, and she gave a quiet "thank you" to Orange, who disimbued herself from the wispon. The fire escape was easy to climb up and down, it was just hard to get to. By the end of ten minutes or so, she'd found herself on her favorite of sniper's perches, the rooftop looking down. "Wow. You actually did it. That's impressive," Orange said. Whisper shrugged, keeping an eye out for anyone coming there. The rain and wind buffered her, but still she sat there.

She felt, rather than heard or saw, Shadow land next to her. "Anything yet? And you mind telling me what you were thinking?" he asked, his gruff voice showing his obvious disapproval.

"Nothing," Whisper reported. "To get back, we have to find Tangle and Tails. Both of which require us to leave. Mayor won't let up without first being proven he has nothing to fear. Hence, taking out the head."

"You do realize I'm not going to kill anyone, right?" Orange suggested. "And to think that I...oh I see what you mean. By firing the shot, it causes noise."

"Noise that attracts the police, allowing them to do their actual jobs," Shadow finished. He tapped on the side of his ear. "I can understand you just as well, wisp."

"I have a name. Granted, Whisper just calls me Orange, so call me that."

"Orange isn't your name?" Shadow asked.

Whisper shook her head. "It's not. I can't pronounce it, it requires sounds my throat can't produce at all," she said.

"Yeah, it's just -" Orange said, and Whisper felt it. The sudden uplifiting of emotions, the rage and buried fear of heights and the ever growing need to go higher and higher. "Now you try!" she asked.

Shadow blinked in surprise. "I'll be fair. I don't think I could say that either. Especially when those aren't sounds, those are feelings. Emotions."

"Oh I know. But to wisps, they're represented as sounds," Orange said. Whisper could hear the teasing tone in her voice. "How long do you think?" she asked.

"Probably not long now," Whisper said. She kept her eye on the sniper's scope, ready to see the...she'd never figured out what Helen was.

"I'll scout out. Keep your radio on," Shadow commanded, skating off through the rain like a shadow in the night. Whisper reached up and turned off her radio.

"That was mean."

"Then he shouldn't be like that," Whisper answered. The minutes clocked by, and the hours ticked. Whisper felt herself settling into her own unique rhythm. She had thoughts and dreams, fantasies that she could use to overlay with the boring, allowing her mind to stay awake and watch.

She thought of Tangle, coming over for the first time, as well as the lemur's embarrassing attempts at trying to say the wisp's names. And her even more embarrassing version of spaghetti. Whisper had gotten take out that night, because as she found out, of the Neo Diamond Cutters, she was the best cook. Even Lanolin, the sheep that was essentially her boss and the one that organized them, was...rough.

Or as Sonic put it when he'd tried the sheep's cooking, "This makes Blaze's attempts look like a five star meal!"

Needless to say, Sonic was banned from eating anymore of Lanolin's food. In Whisper's mind, this meant he was getting out of the danger of trying to imbibe Lanolin's food.

Tangle was better. Not by much, certainly not on Blaze's level of complete failure, but...not by much. Whisper though...she considered herself half decent. She could make most foods without too much of an issue. She was no Amy, or Cream. Those two could create masterpieces without blinking an eye. She could almost envision a cooking tournament, with all of them in it.

It was hard to think she'd been shifted so far into the future. What was Tangle like now? Was she still just as bad of a cook? What about Blaze? And when had Blaze and Tails even met each other!? That was an unlikely duo that she'd ever think of.

Sonic and Amy though...Amy seemed happy, but Whisper had seen it. The small stress lined on her face, the fact she had to handle a handicapped Sonic and not just her own kids, but Tails' kids as well. Sonic on the other hand...she'd seen it there, too. Trying to keep it together for the kids sake, trying to not break down and be unable to so much as run. The hedgehog, the fastest thing alive, unable to run...the thought pained her.

If she knew what was in store for him, she'd keep him out of the Neo Diamond Cutters, if only to let him run freely more. That was who he was. "The Knight of the Wind" he called himself. And Tails just up and disappearing on his kids, Blaze too? That wasn't normal. Something had happened there, but Whisper had no idea what. It was obvious Violet didn't either. Mata was probably too young to know.

Shadow, too, seemed...almost restless. The world was broken and shattered here, and he had just been...watching movies. He was still just as fast as he'd been in her time, but now...he was more methodical.

What had happened? She'd missed so much...but she was going to get that time back. She was going to rescue Tangle, even if she didn't need it, find and rescue Tails, especially even if he didn't need it, and she was going to get back to her own time, and prevent all of this stuff! Every bit of it!

Movement out of the corner of her eye drew her attention. She discarded the fantasies of thought she'd been developing, instead focusing on the here and now. Her eyes drew to the clock in the corner. Three hours later. This 'Helen' had been late. Whisper wished that she had made sure she was actually part of the Bullies, but there hadn't been time, and she'd been forced to act like she already knew.

A small white sedan, practically nameless in a city of this size, looking like every other sedan. The driver got out, a raccoon with a nice suit on him, showing he either came from money or had the suit bought for him by someone with money.

He practically ran over to the other side and quickly pulled open the passenger door. A badger with mostly white fur came out, standing tall despite the rain. In an instant the raccoon came out with an umbrella, making sure that the white badger wasn't getting wet.

Didn't like being wet. Whisper could work with that.

"Small mass, large velocity. We're going to pop the tires," Whisper asked. Orange nodded, imbuing herself into the wispon. Standard sniper play, she thought. She wanted this soundless.

Another vehicle stopped her just as she had the tires in her sights. The one was a large grey van, much like the one Sonic had driven. Through the windshield, Whisper could see a few humans, most of which weren't...all there. She could see one with their head on their shoulder, their tongue hanging out.

She didn't even need to try to extend her hearing. They were being loud already. "Boss! Boss! It's a trap, they already know you're here," the human in the van shouted, getting out of the car. Whisper recoiled in her mind. She didn't need to see anyone's mostly naked body. They still had some underwear on, but everything up top was...well, she'd never been attracted to humans in the first place. Males the same.

Male humans? No thanks.

"I'm aware, John. Back in the car with you. Alex failed to send the proper delivery message," the badger said. Whisper's eyes widened as she spotted down to the tires.

The doors behind her, the ones leading down into the building, suddenly slammed open. The ones on the other building nearby all did too. Did they own everything on this entire block!?

"Get down!" a raccoon shouted. Different than the butler, Whisper barely caught what he was wearing. He took out a gun from his waist belt, barely taking a moment to aim.

"Aim for hurt," Whisper said, leveling the sniper wispon instantly. The raccoon smirked as he fired two shots. Whisper shot back, the wisps power deflecting both bullets, and the third straight into the raccoon's hand.

"I found her!" he shouted as he cradled his hand. Across the way, she could see a lizard deciding to try to jump the way. Even farther, another wolf was deciding much the same.

"Whisper, I think we made a stupid call," Orange said.

Yes, yes she had. "I have an idea," she said, leveling the wispon at the lizard just starting his jump. He seemed to realize with widened eyes that it was a bad idea, as she fired a single shot onto his arm. His momentum half canceled, he spun down onto the wall and fire escapes, crashing down with a loud thud.

She turned and jumped off the building, ignoring the way it was nearly fifty feet up. She leveled her wispon downward, aiming for the van that had pulled up.

One shot. Two shot. They both punctured directly into the van's carapace, setting off the vehicle's alarm. The badger and raccoon turned back, scrambling to get back into their own sedan. But it wasn't wanton destruction that Whisper wanted, although it felt good. She used the momentum from her first shot to slow her fall by just a bit, with the second slowing down further. If it was water, she'd be good for landing.

But it wasn't landing on water. "All mass!" Whisper shouted. The third and final shot collapsed most of the back of the van, but in turn shot Whisper up a few feet.

She landed noiselessly in the front of the Drug Alley, her mask glowing and her chest heaving from having fallen fifty feet. "Little mass," she said, taking the tires into her view. One shot. Two.

The sedan stopped instantly, the driver not wanting to have to drive on broken tires. "What do you want!?" The human shouted at her. "Just leave us alone!"

The badger stuck out her head and opened up her own door. She had hard red eyes, scowling as she walked past the burning wreckage that was the van. "Boss, boss, wait, we can handle-" the man said.

"Your boys couldn't handle her at all either. We don't stand a chance either...do we, Whisper of the Resistance?" she asked slowly, turning to the wolf.

How had the badger known her? She wasn't nearly as well known this time. Yes, she'd been infamous as the 'Guardian Angel' back during the era of the Resistance, but ever since it'd become the Restoration...and not to mention her quest to eliminate Mimic.

Twenty three years later, very few people should have even heard of her, let alone know who she was by face.

Unless she'd just screwed up her quest to end Mimic's influence. That was always a possibility. She had been missing for twenty three years...did that mean that Mimic had been able to have influence for the full twenty three years!?

"Who hired you?" the badger asked. "I am Helen O'Chao," she introduced herself. "I am wondering what it took to hire someone like you out to this pitiful town. And if I could top them," she said. That was the most mercenary talk that Whisper had heard, and this lady didn't know her very well. Knew her well enough to know the name and face, but not her type? Weird.

"I'm honestly wondering why you came out here in the first place if you knew it was a trap," Shadow's calm voice said from the bottom of the fire escape. He was sitting down, as if unbothered by the twenty foot fall in front of him.

"Few people have the gumption to raid one of my warehouses and then interrogate one of my warehouse bosses. You'd be surprised, Shadow the Hedgehog," Helen said, looking up at him.

"Don't look at me. This isn't my show. It's hers," Shadow said, pointing to Whisper.

"Why," Whisper asked quietly. "Why threaten the mayor for anything?" she asked.

Helen blinked, before she threw her back and laughed. "Oh honey, if you only knew. Still as much of a 'guardian angel' as you were back then. But if you knew, you'd be firing that wispon of yours at him, not at me."

"Lady Helen's the greatest effort to restore the peace in Green Hill since Sonic!" the man beside her said. The raccoon slowly got out of the sedan, realizing that maybe there was a way to get out of this diplomatically.

If there was, then Whisper didn't quite see it yet. "Then tell me," Whisper said. Helen tilted her head, before she sat down on the wreckage of the van.

"Perhaps it is the best time for story time. The rain, the storm, the police sirens as they come to collect their money...perhaps it is best."

Wait. What?

"Collect their money?" Shadow asked, his eyes narrowing. Whisper could see the reds showing out now, ominous glows in the darkened twilight of the evening.

"Oh yes, haven't you heard? The Mayor was in charge of it all. See, it all started around shortly before Eggman attacked here to start. The police were already starting to fall into their pockets."

"Whose?"

Helen shrugged. "Lots of people. The nobility. The rich. The influential. Those of the shadowed darkness, looming overhead above everybody's lives and lies. Those of the mafia, the mob, every shadow organization in the islands. Soon, even before Eggman attacked, it was never 'is justice served'. It was 'how rich are you? Who do you know? What are your connections?'. And it all started."

Whisper narrowed her eyes. How did that lead to drugs and acting as a shadow agent?

"Then Eggman attacked. Suddenly, the police force were outmanned, outgunned, by robots. Sonic came, and he broke all the rules. There was no nobility with him. No rich. No poor. All were equal. And Green Hill started to balance again. But all peace times are not meant to be. Given enough time, those who buried themselves in the woodwork came out, and started buying them up again. They bought the positions they filled, ensuring that only those they knew could benefit from it. Everyone else started to sink. And now you can see around it.

"Look around, Shadow the Hedgehog. Look around, Whisper the Guardian Angel. Notice how this alley is clean, when most of the others are dirty? The building next to us, here, is where the Mayor's second mistress lives. She complained once, about the uncleanliness in an alleyway of all things! Now this place is spotless. Meanwhile, three blocks down is the slums and those who can't afford the higher rents. Look through their alleys, through their dumpsters."

"And yet you sell to them," Whisper's voice cut through Helen's words like a needle to a balloon. "Yet you force them to be retainers to you. I don't see anything that says you're better," she said.

"Oof, I felt that one from here!" Orange snuck in.

Helen chuckled. "Oh, I admit, I'm no saint myself. We all have our vices, Angel, and mine happens to be greed," she said, jumping off of the broken van. "Greed and Pride. And a little Wrath, if I had to be honest," she said, bending down a bit.

Whisper saw her hands take from her coat a small thing of powder, and in an instant she had breathed it in, and Whisper could tell her eyes widened and reddened. She was using her own stuff?

Her danger sense went off as she jumped backwards, just in time as Helen's hands, now claws with nails that threatened to rend her limb from limb, slammed down onto the concrete. "I thought you were the big bad wolf for a moment!" Helen shouted, her voice hoarse and low, as if she'd aged twenty years in a day. Her face was crazed, small foam coming from her mouth and nose and eyes.

"Okay, this got freaky! Where's the police!?" Orange shouted. That was a good idea. Where were they? They should have heard Whisper's shots...

Whisper darted back to the street, her boots clacking against the hard concrete just as Helen jumped and landed where she'd been a moment later. Her hands weren't hands anymore, eldritch style tentacles like those books that Tangle liked to read and then stare up in the middle of the night with her eyes wide open.

Helen's shoes had been eradicated, small puffs of mist coming off her legs instead. Was she floating?

Whisper heard sirens start heading her way, and sighed in relief. She dodged to the side, rolling as she went trying to make sure she wasn't hit. She leveled the wispon, glad that Orange had yet to disimbue herself, and took a shot.

It was an armshot, not that whatever it was that Helen transformed into cared. It took the shot easy, and gave a menacing giggle as it stalked towards her. "Fire at the wolf!" she heard a shout, ending in a small scream of pain. Her eyes looked up to the top of the rooftops, seeing dozens of people, islanders and more, level their own guns at her. This was not going to be easy.

Shadow lived up to his name as an engine of destruction. The thing that Helen had become was now chasing him, and his hoverskates lit up in the rainy night as it chased him. Whisper was hearing sirens closer and closer, and she bolted back for the safety of the kill zone called Drug Alley as shots rained down close to her.

She hid in the remnants of the broken down van. "Okay, Whisper, I know what you're thinking, but I don't think we can take all of them." Orange said as she disimbued herself from the wispon. Bullets showered the van in a hail of sparks as the people on the rooftops, islanders or human, took their shots at the broken van.

"No, no we can't," Whisper agreed. When the amount of bullets seemed to slow down, Whisper rushed out, heading for the sedan in the corner. The driver's seat was empty, and was filled a moment later.

"Do you even know how to drive this thing?" Orange asked. Whisper shook her head, but it wasn't the time for that. The bullets came down again, focused on the sedan. Darn, they'd seen her go from one to the other. She was hoping they hadn't.

The keys were still here. From the alleyway, around the broken van, she could see the lights of Shadow's shoes as he fled from Helen. She turned it over, hoping against hope that it would work. She could freely admit that this was ill-planned, but honestly, who plans for something to go this wrong?

Surprisingly the car started. Immediately she put it out of park, flooring the accelerator. It had a lot of power behind it she could feel, and it battered aside the broken van as if it was nothing. The lights from Shadow's shoes sparked in front of her, and she slammed on the brakes just as Helen, or the thing that Helen had transformed into, slammed into the front of the car.

"Accelerate, accelerate!" Orange cried.

She wasn't looking at the monster. She was looking at the sirens coming right at them, and Whisper turned, opening the door to get out of the sedan as fast as she could.

Two seconds later the sedan and the monster Helen had both been hit by the police car going as fast as it could, slamming both of them into a nearby building.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Nadir

"Grab the wolf!" Whisper heard the shouts. There was too much sound, too much sound everywhere. The cop car had crashed, a giant hammer against the monster of Helen and the sedan that she'd tried to get out of there with. Her side was flaring with pain. It felt like something had been jammed into her.

"Whisper! Seriously, get up! The police are gunning after you now too!" Orange was screaming into her ear. She couldn't tell, couldn't feel. The explosions had sent her flying back, and now she only heard the echo and whispers of a thousand steel crunches.

Her instincts were telling her to get away, but there was nothing left. Police were starting to surround them, and the gangs and them were all training their guns on her. Shadow was...where was Shadow? Why couldn't she focus?

"Put your weapon on the ground!" she was shouted at. "Someone kill the wisp!" she heard.

That forced her mind to focus. Wisp. Orange. Her friend. The longest friend she'd had. "Why!? What did I do to you!? I haven't done anything!" she was shouting. Whisper grabbed her as the first electro bullet went through her space, and immediately where she was had been filled with the sounds of a dozen bullets going through.

Shadow appeared next to her. "Grab on!" he shouted, holding onto her arm before he sped out of the way out of the bullets. She felt her arm joint protest the movement, but she got her feet under her quickly enough. Her side wasn't nearly as quiet, but she didn't have time to process it.

"Orange! Here!" she shouted, pulling out one of the wisp canisters.

"Oh right! Good thinking!" Orange said as she imbued herself into the canister. Whisper ignored the cries of the police around her, Shadow doing an excellent job of dodging the shots and keeping her alive. A bullet scraped against her knee, but she stifled the urge to cry out.

"Damn it Faker, I need the Chaos Emerald right about now," Shadow was whispering, trying to maneuver in between the police cars. Behind them were even more vehicles, some of them with islanders hanging out and taking potshots at them. Shadow skated in between them, trying to dodge everything that came his way. But the line of cars was too long, and he couldn't build up enough speed trying to dodge everything. Another bullet hit her arm, and she let out an agonized hiss. "Shit!" Shadow said as he glanced back. A loud crash came around as Helen jumped onto one of the cars, her claws digging into the roof.

There was another roar, a louder one, a deep bass that threatened to rend her from ear to ear. But it was one that she recognized, vaguely. Somewhere, deep down, far behind her.

Her wispon was imbued with cyan energy. "Fire at will!" Cyan shouted into her ear. Whisper grimaced, pulling it off of her back and firing randomly towards the police vehicles. There was a loud roar as Helen was hit by the laser, and several vehicles were thrown about by the monster she'd become, starting to chase them.

"Keep firing, keep firing!" Shadow was saying. "You can get into shock later!" he said. Whisper wasn't sure what he was talking about. Shock? She wasn't going into shock. She'd been hit twice, sure, but that wasn't as bad as she could have been. He was doing a reasonably good job avoiding everything, actually.

The low bass turned louder, and even through the night rain, Whisper could make out the shape of the Tornado, a familiar orange fox head at the pilot's seat. For a moment, she was back in time, where they'd finished whatever assignment they had, and Tails would wave at them before landing.

The Tornado fired some three dozen missiles into where Helen was, lighting up dozens of cars and islanders. They exploded violently, sending shards of metal everywhere, and Whisper winced. Hopefully that didn't actually kill anyone-

Shadow jumped up, bringing her along for the ride as the Tornado passed under them. It wasn't Tails, but had a similar fox shaped head. Right, Violet! His...daughter. That was still weird to her...

Her thigh got hit again, and she sprawled out onto the Tornado's wings. "I got this!" Blue yelled before he imbued the Tornado itself. A large blue block suddenly came out from underneath it, blocking most of the bullets and the scratches of the monster Helen. How could she jump even this high!? Better yet, how was Blue blocking them!?

It was only thirty feet, but that was still twenty feet higher than what Whisper could do! Shadow could do it, he'd just done it, but he'd also had a long head start-

"Getting us out of here!" Violet shouted, reaching down for a small lever. "Hold on and don't let go!" she said, pulling it back. Whisper felt acceleration overtake her body, and if it wasn't for Violet's warning she would have been flung off. Whisper looked down to see her shoes had pink spikes coming from them, making sure that she stayed on. Pink?

There were a few more dozen shots thrown at them, but they all plinked off the blue cubic barrier that Blue had put up. A moment later he disimbued himself from the Tornado, floating idly by despite the wind and acceleration. "Where are we heading!?" Violet shouted.

"Back to Sonic's to regroup!" Shadow commanded. He turned to Whisper. "You didn't stir up the hornets nest, you just focused it on us. This was going to happen sooner or later," he said.

Why was he talking like she was about to pass out. She wasn't going to fall asleep anytime soon. She blinked, making sure that all of the wisps were accounted for. Pink, Blue Cyan...Green was above them. Or was he imbuing the Tornado, making sure they didn't fall? It was hard to think, but he was there. Orange was in the capsule...it was too hard to think...

She found herself in a bed two seconds later with Amy fussing over her. "She's awake! Grab some of the painkillers!" Amy was shouting. Whisper stared at her. She didn't need painkillers, what was going on? The pink hedgehog turned back to her, "You're hurt bad, Whisper. One of the mirrors lodged itself into your stomach. You may not have even noticed." That sounded like something that she'd notice.

Whisper stared at her in disbelief, before she looked down. There was no mirror in her anymore, but she could see the white bandage surrounding where her stomach was. It was still bleeding through.

Oh, that's why he said not to go into shock.

She didn't see any of the wisps around, and while that was both unusual and more than slightly alarming, it was also hard for her to think about the repercussions of that. Her mask was off, she knew that much, so even if they were around she probably couldn't understand them like she normally could. Her head was fuzzy, like it was stuffed full of cotton.

Whisper tossed her head back just as Shadow walked in, his hands full of some kind of medicine box. Amy glanced at it, "You didn't need the entire thing Shadow. I just asked for the painkillers, because the ones Whisper's on are probably going to end here soon." Were they? She felt a flash flood through her abdomen suddenly, like a sword edge that had been dulled down a bit, but still there.

"I couldn't find anything just labeled 'painkillers' so I took the box," Shadow explained. Amy gave him an unimpressed glare, as if not sure he was joking or not. She rolled her eyes as she grabbed it.

Amy opened the box, turning it around to show him. "They're labeled, Shadow. We have kids here, and I needed to teach them what not to use," Amy explained, grabbing a few boxes of some kind of pills. Whisper couldn't see, but she pushed her head up anyways. Orange came up from behind the pillow, snarking at her angrily.

Oops. She'd gone and laid her head on Orange instead of the pillow. She'd have to come up with some way to apologize.

"Right. Whisper, take this and this," Amy said, handing over a small pill and a glass of water. "You should be fine in about a week or two," she smiled as she walked out.

Whisper waited until she was out. "Two weeks for this?" she asked, pointing at the wound. "I can't wait for two weeks. And give me my translator, the wisps are going to get irritated."

Shadow narrowed his eyes. "They already are," he muttered, handing her an earpiece. With a sigh she used one hand to clip it on.

"...And of course that's when you decided to lay your head down, seriously! Next time give a wisp some warning!" Orange was shouting. "Seriously, the others are going to be very upset! Mostly at me, but a bit at you! Actually all at me, considering what they're up to right now...". Whisper felt it hard to think, but somehow the alarm was raised in her head. What had they done...?

"I'm fine," Whisper said, forcing herself up. "Violet's fixed the Tornado, right? We can get out of here." Her throat was dry and parched, and Amy grabbed a small glass and poured it gently down her throat. Whisper gave her a glare, before grabbing it and drinking what she could. She wasn't some baby. Amy gave a hearty chuckle.

Shadow shook his head. "We can't. There was already an angry hornets nest stirred up, but you're the kid with the stick who made it angry. And the wisps...well, they didn't help."

There was no sound of rain coming from outside. Had the storm ended while she was asleep? It must have, if she couldn't hear it. "How bad is it looking?" she asked.

"Honestly, this would have been a full Restoration gathering," Shadow admitted. "Green Hill's under full lockdown, everyone knows the police, the judicial system, and the gangs are working together now."

"How do they know the police and the system are working with them?"

"How do you think? Helen Drally was a suspect in a few murder cases, with near perfect evidence against her. Even if she didn't, they had hundreds of other crimes against her. The district attorney didn't bother trying to go to conviction, just let her walk away free a moment later."

"How do they know she did it?"

"Oh, that's an easy one. They saw her do it, and she was caught on live television. Sonic showed us the video last night, after the kids went to sleep," Orange said.

Whisper stared at Orange. "Seriously? And they did nothing?"

"Less than nothing," Shadow said. "Instead they blamed it on 'other derogatory elements'."

Whisper threw her head back, making sure and taking care to avoid Orange in case she wanted to land on the pillow again. "So we can't get out and now we're stuck," she summarized.

Shadow nodded. "Not...exactly. There's...the wisps to consider, too. Tails was working on a few things, but they're over at his main lab in the Mystic Ruins. About two hours away from Central City."

"Oh yeah, like that wormhole I mentioned! Did he ever finish it?" Orange asked.

"No, he didn't," Shadow shook his head. "Certainly tried, though."

"I was looking through his notes and I don't even know where to begin," another voice sounded out from the door. Shadow turned, allowing Whisper to see the small one tailed cat in the doorway. Last Whisper had seen her, she was doing some daredevil stunts in the Tornado. Violet.

"Give it time. He also had more training than you had."

"No he didn't! He was just that much smarter than I am," Violet said. "Sorry I didn't get there earlier, Whisper. I was trying to rush through it, but there are some things that just can't be rushed."

Whisper shrugged, hiding the wince as pain got sent up her right side. "You couldn't have known," Whisper said.

"Have you taken your pills yet?" Orange asked as she hovered over the small things. "You really should, Amy's reckoning those painkillers are wearing off. Especially if you're awake."

"I'll be fine, Gre-Orange," Whisper answered, correcting herself. It was hard to think, but there was...were they deliberately trying to keep what the wisps had done from her? "I can't think of a way out of this mess."

"Neither can the rest of us. We'll figure it out. We fought against Eggman at the height of his power. Something as simple as a corrupt government shouldn't be that big of an issue," Shadow answered. "I have some contacts out with GUN about the situation. Sooner or later we'll be getting something from them. Much sooner."

That was something, at least.

"What terrifies me," Whisper said, "is that all of you are avoiding the wisps. What happened?" she tried to sound more sure of herself, but considering that they didn't react she must have been more hurt than she thought. Violet tilted her head. Shadow looked at them with widened, panicked eyes.

"So...you want to know how bad it is? Or should I just try to be tactful?" Orange asked. Whisper was starting to feel sweat dropping from her face. She knew what the wisps could do if they were feeling...bored. There was a reason she made sure that Cyan limited the damage she could do. Cyan and Pink, together? That was just asking for trouble. She tried to turn to face the wisp, only to not be able to hide her wince as her right side protested every movement.

Those painkillers were wearing off, and Whisper wanted to know where Amy had gotten them because they were effective as anything. Especially with how her side was now throbbing painfully with every heart beat, and every breath felt like she was being stabbed in the lungs.

She reached blindly for the pill on the side, feeling it within her grasp. It was a tiny sphere, a kind of pill she'd never seen before but that didn't mean much.

She tossed it back, taking it dry instantly. She had to hide the wince as her throat worked to swallow it. She opened her eyes to see both Violet and Shadow staring at her. "What?" she asked.

"Uh...mostly I was waiting to see what you were going to do to try to stop the wisps...they've..." Violet started.

"Yeah, they're gone already," Orange announced. Whisper tilted her head. She knew that. "No, you didn't fall asleep. There's...a lot of havoc going on right now."

"Please don't tell me."

"Alright. I won't tell you that Cyan messed with every electronic item connected to the internet, and has already essentially created an economic crisis just within Green Hill. Nor will I mention that Pink went and shredded almost every vehicle's tires within range of Green Hill, including the police and the gang's. He's also annoying...well, just about everyone. It's hard to do anything when everything you touch suddenly has spikes. Blue is...well, he's blocking doors. That's it. The problem is that those doors are the doors out of here to keep us all in here."

Whisper whimpered.

"And Green is currently going around floating anyone and everything that looks at him funny to leave him off rooftops. This includes things like buildings, random passerby, and the occasional hill. Green Hill's getting a free renovation, wisp-style!"

"I'm glad that you don't have a red or yellow wisp, Whisper. Otherwise...we'd have more problems," Shadow said.

"I wasn't out that long," Whisper protested.

"No, but they work fast," Shadow said. "They started this when you were knocked out two days ago. They haven't really stopped since."

"Uh...Is Blue gonna let me out?" Violet asked. Shadow looked out the window, before he shook his head. "Darn. I need to go work on the Tornado, else we might get...problems," she muttered before she left.

She was asleep for nearly two days? That...was probably going to be a major problem. She knew the wisps were the type who didn't take being bored well, and with her out for two days, she couldn't curb their more exuberant responses...

Shadow blinked for a long moment as a sound came from his...leg? Whisper wasn't sure, but the hedgehog reached down and pulled out a small phone. "Think you could tell Cyan to calm down a bit?" he asked sarcastically.

"At this point? No."

"Darn. Because right now Cyan and Pink are...well, suffice to say, causing some ruckus. They've called in the National Guard, most of GUN's training exercises, and I think a chao garden."

"Oh yeah, operation chao! I remember coming up with that one, but we never could figure out a good time to use it." Orange supplied.

Whisper gave the wisp a hard stare. The pain was starting to flitter out now, a still constant in the back of her mind. "Operation chao. Basically, special order in a huge amount of cute chao because everyone loves cute chao. Essentially, all the fighting would stop because everyone would be too adoring of the cute chao!"

Shadow sighed. "Get some rest. We'll...try to handle...whatever this is," Shadow said, waving his hand outside before he took a walk out the door, closing it gently.

Which room was she in, anyways? She didn't think they had a guest room. There was a small bed on the other wall, with a small blank white sheet hanging in the middle of it to act as a divider.

The side she was in had a desk filled with various pens and pencils, small equipment used for drafting. There was a large chest at the floor, and she could see a few stuffed animals pushed hurriedly off to the side. A large backpack lay next to the door with a few of them. Sticking out of it was Tails' Miles Electric.

She'd never worked with the device, honestly. Most of the time it was because Tangle was forbidden from it, as Tails rightfully was afraid that the lemur would do something like throw it in water to see how it floated. Of course, the fact it was on its third or fourth iteration was an ignored fact. As much as Tails liked to complain about it, he always liked rebuilding it from whatever havoc had happened to it.

This must be Violet's room, with Mata on the other side. There was a tiny backpack next to the desk, filled with books and filled out pages of homework. It looked very plain, asides from a poster on the wall featuring some attractive male fox.

"How bad is it, honestly? If they keep it up?" Whisper asked Orange suddenly.

"It's...well, so back on Planet Wisp we had these massive parties whenever we got enough of the mallow together. Massive tribal gatherings of every type of wisp. No violet's, for obvious reasons. Well, about three, maybe four hundred Earth years ago, something around there, we had this massive, massive one, bigger than any we've done before."

"Oh no."

"Ha! You can't even imagine it. Let's just say that half of the canyons on the planet were because of that party. It got so bad we got talked at by our planetary neighbors for messing with their radio communications!" Orange laughed. Whisper stared. "Oh, right, we had neighbors. Not anymore, our planet got captured but we set it free. I hope there's a crimson piloting it..."

"So it's bad?"

"It's about three quarters of that, yes. Maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less, but yeah they're making a mess. No one harms our Whisper and gets away with it."

She wasn't sure if she should be relieved or even more terrified. "I don't think they're getting away with it..." she said.

Orange looked out the window. "No, not anymore. Ooh, Pink found that Helen person."

Pink against Helen? Pink needed to get out of there right now, because she could do some serious damage-

"...And Pink won. Yeah they're not taking prisoners. Ooh boy."

"...How?"

"Oh, Pink tricked Helen to go up a building before suddenly sending dozens of spikes throughout the entire side of the wall, forcing her to jump off to land on a floor layered with them. Then Pink thought that wasn't enough, forcibly imbued Helen, and tossed her off the side."

...How terrifying were these wisps!? She knew the Resistance made a pact with them for protection but she hadn't realized that meant that protection from the wisps as well!

"I feel like I should apologize to everyone."

"You should. You ran off on your own. In most cities, what you did would be enough to get the ball rolling, which is what you wanted I think. But...Green Hill was more rotten than we were thinking."

"And now the others are...partying."

Orange laughed, a high pitched emotional sound that filtered into Whisper's mind. "That's one way to put it!" The wisp settled down a bit, taking her place behind Whisper's cover. "Now come on, rest. You need it. I've studied a bit of Black's bombs to know when someone needs rest."

Orange had done what?

"Fine. Magenta then."

There was a magenta!?

A slight beat pulsed from where Orange was, and Whisper's ears slowly turned to it, as much as she tried to tune it out.

Her eyes opened up to see that the lights were off now, and there was sun coming in from the window. How long had she been asleep? How had Orange known to even do that!? That wasn't a normal power she had.

Whisper's throat was dry, and she looked down to see the bandage had been changed, and most of all wasn't bleeding now. She felt more energized than she had before, and slowly pushed herself up.

The sun was actually shining through the window. It cast an impressive light on the sheet, and through it Whisper could see a few things on the other side. Mostly small notebooks, but a large circle had been prepared in the center with a star like design.

Her bare feet hit the carpet, and she shuddered as she felt pressure for the first time in ages. Her boots were...somewhere. In the corner, she thought. Orange was no where around, and neither were the other wisps.

Honestly that fact scared her most of all.

Her shorts were still on, as was her bra. Her jacket, with all of the wisps containers, sat in the corner on top of her boots. Parts of it had been shredded during the fight, but it looks like someone had gone through and tried to fix it.

She shrugged it on, taking care to not aggravate her right side. She felt a million times better, as if she was fully healed, but knew that while she healed fast she was no Sonic. Just an islander. Her jacket on, and her dignity restored as much as possible, she opened the door to the outside world for the first time in...days. The air was chilly, compared to Mata and Violet's room.

Sonic was watching the TV in the main room, with Amy making what looked like sandwiches. Whisper could hear the kids playing outside. Shadow was nowhere to be seen. The wisps...still gone.

Amy looked up first. "Whisper! You're up! Oh that's a relief," she said, running up to her. "Sonic! She's up!" she yelled. Whisper winced.

The blue hedgehog was much less quick, having to grab his crutch before he hobbled up the stair to her. "Good to see you up and about! Come on, enjoy the day outside!"

"What's going on?"

"I'll let the kids each lunch," Amy said, smiling nervously as she hid behind the counter, her arms moving like pink blurs. Sonic stared at her.

"Coward," he said without an ounce of menacing. "It's...I'll admit, it's pretty bad, but once your wisps ran out of energy the town is...well, it's been in worse shape."

"Has it?"

"I've seen it after Eggman attacked," Sonic answered, "It's been in much worse shape."

Oh right, Green Hill had been where he'd struck first, wasn't it? "How much damage did they do?" Whisper asked lightly.

"Well, it looks bad, but Green Hill's pretty good at coming back from things like this. It was mostly just annoying everyone until it was realized that they had hacked the mayor's phoneline to call in GUN and the Guard. And used his credit card for the chao garden."

"Orange wasn't kidding?"

"Ha! No. Ordered a full on chao garden. Nearly four hundred chao, all volunteers, from the Mystic Ruins garden. They promptly took over one of the warehouses, incidentally the same one you ran through, and it's the newest chao garden," Sonic explained.

"So...we can leave?"

"Not yet," Sonic said. "GUN's doing a few things first. Oh, Amy!" Sonic called out. "Can you call GUN, tell them that Whisper's awake?" he asked. He turned back to her. "They wanted to talk to you about what you know and figured out. And as the leading member of the Restoration on site, because you were the only one out there, they get to default to you."

"That's not normal."

"Nah, most of the time Jewel, Amy, or Lanolin took care of it. A few times I had to, trust me they are not fun, but it's not like they can arrest you. Fixing a mistake you saw, that's kind of what the Restoration does."

"Does the name even have any pull, anymore?" Whisper asked, heading to sit down.

"It does to those that mean it," Sonic answered, following her down. "There are some that hid behind it, using it as a shield or like this, a crutch," he said, pointing to the stick in his hand, "And there are others that knew what it meant. To fix the wrongs we found, no matter who caused them, to be the leading cause of hope in the world."

Was she, though? How could she be the leading cause of hope when she herself had none?

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Damages

Whisper sat down, waiting impatiently for the GUN agent nonsense to come. A magenta-hued hedgehog, a mix of blue and pink, sat down next to her quietly. "So. Whisper. The wisps want to know if they're not going to be in trouble because they don't want to be in trouble and they're my friends and I don't have a lot of them so I think they shouldn't be in trouble for anything that according to Pink they may or may not have done because really no one was really hurt by it and they're really tired so if you could just let them be normal that would be fantastic and then maybe they can stop hanging about my room and constantly talking over the cutscenes in my game-" he said quickly, all in one breath.

Whisper stared at him. She had gotten maybe...one word out of every five of that. "Not sure if I can forgive them that quickly. But I'm willing to listen," she answered. The boy, Velocity, gave a quiet grin and whistled sharply. Immediately all five wisps gathered around and floated around Whisper, each of them having the best possible begging looks on them. They were seriously trying to guilt trip her into not being mad at them? "I'm not that angry," she started, "but I want you all there with GUN, in case they list out the charges. We can see the damage you all did," she said softly. The wisps narrowed their eyes, before they nodded and dove into the five canisters.

"Sweet! Game time for me!" Velocity shouted as he sped off from the couch. It was quite reminiscent of Sonic at his prime, actually, if only a bit slower because he was only around...what, ten?

"Hey, no speeding Velos," Amy shouted as she came back in from outside. She still had a plate of sandwiches in her hand, and glanced over at Whisper. "I know you're probably not too hungry, but I made some lunch for us all. Gary said he should be here in around ten or fifteen minutes."

Gary? Whisper wondered who that was. "Heh, I wonder if we can con him to staying for dinner again," Sonic joked. He turned to Whisper, "Gary's been our GUN liaison for a few years. We tricked him once into staying for Amy's meatloaf."

"Sonic!" Amy retorted instantly, "I worked hard on that. So what if I accidentally let it burn? For three hours," Amy said harshly, her grin saying all that was needing to be said. Sonic rolled his eyes.

The minutes went by quickly in silence as Whisper ate one of the sandwiches. It wasn't bad, a simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich, so probably one of the kids chose not to have one. Whisper would take it without a problem. A knock on the door interrupted her thoughts.

"Just come on in!" Sonic called out, winking to Whisper. She was half expecting Shadow, but instead a relatively short human male in an official uniform stood there with his hat off and held under his arm.

"Is there a Ms...Whisper, here?" he asked quietly. It was a breath of fresh air after dealing with the chaos that was Sonic's household.

He seemed nice and relatively friendly. He had several laugh lines on his face, and his mouth was permanently in some kind of smile. She sighed, and picked herself up. "I am," she whispered.

"Ah, hold on," he said, smiling gently as he tapped something on his ear. "There we go. Had to up my hearing aid. You're Whisper?" he asked again. She nodded that time, not wanting to confuse him by saying anything else. "Excellent."

"Gary, are you going to stay for dinner this time?" Sonic asked from the chair. He had on that mischievous smile that Whisper knew all too well. "I know Amy wants to make some solid lasagna next time you're around."

Gary, the human apparently, flushed. "I am...I'm honored, Sonic, but please I couldn't do so. I don't want to be an inconvenience for you or for your wife!" he said.

"Couldn't beat her meatloaf, huh?" Sonic grinned. Gary's face dropped. "No, Gary, we'll never stop holding that against you," Sonic laughed. "Go on, make sure she gets there in one piece and they don't eat her alive, alright? Or you know, that she doesn't eat them alive."

"Oh, I don't doubt that Whisper will be more than a handful for them," Gary answered as he walked out the door. His face fell as soon as the door shut. "Sorry about that. Sonic..."

"I understand," Whisper answered.

"He likes to tease things and when they get out of hand, his first instinct is to tease some more. I'm the first agent contact with them for the last five years. The ones before either went fangirl, a quick way to make Amy rise up, or left because it became too uncomfortable," Gary explained.

Whisper resisted the urge to groan. She just wanted this madness over with so she could get out of here. Hearing that the wisps had...she looked around a bit.

Done a bit more than she had been led to believe.

She had thought they had just caused some craziness.

What they had done is essentially change the entire topography of Green Hill. Where once flat streets were, small mountains and hills rose up. Where hills rose up, flat ground was raised. Buildings weren't broken, but now some of them were tilted. There was a large stream of water from a nearby water main, creating a simple river that went through the entirety of the main drag.

And she hadn't even entered downtown yet.

Parked outside was a black van, and Gary held the back door open for her. She was glad she had at least her wispon, and the wisps were in their canisters, eager to try to prove themselves. There had been some shifty looks back there, as if they'd been talking about more than just what was going on in front of them. Orange, especially, looked a little more freaked out than the others.

Shadow was sitting on the other side of the car, looking bored and not buckled in. "Finally," he said as Whisper got in.

"You're coming with?"

"I'm your handler. Act as if I'm your lawyer, essentially. All messages come through me, and you'll get through without an issue," Shadow answered.

"You know you're scaring the girl," Gary said as he hopped into the driver's seat. "She doesn't need that, let alone from you."

"And yet you're the driver, and I'm the handler," Shadow answered. "Whisper has seen much worse than anything that GUN can throw at her," he said. He gave her a look. "Those wisps of yours...where are they?" he asked after a long moment. Whisper showed him one of the filled canisters, a Cyan who was far too tired to try anything. "Good. Good. Can you let me handle the talking?"

"Fine."

Shadow nodded, going back to staring out the window. The town and city of Green Hill had changed a bit over the last few days. She had last seen it in the rain at night, but now that it was relatively sunny and in the middle of the day, she could see much more. Although it didn't look much better really.

Paint was peeling off the walls of most of the buildings and shops, and several of the cars and vans had been overturned. Windows were broken, and she saw more than a few people on the street camping out underneath the awnings. As they moved into downtown, it wasn't getting better. Areas of the pavement had cracked, and there were scorch marks on dozens of the stairs, as if someone had taken a flamethrower to every stairwell individually. How much damage did the wisps do!?

The city hall had taken the most obvious damage. It's entrance had been caved in by a truck driving into it, and was surrounded by massive caution signs. The windows had been blown out, and several of the pillars had been damaged, some of them even in half. "How many people were hurt?" Whisper asked as she stared into the wreckage.

"Well, from what we could tell...no one," Gary answered. "We looked hard, but really the only ones hurt were those doing illegal things, and even then it was mostly just embarrassment. Except that Helen woman, apparently one of the wisps thought it would be funny to drop her off four floors."

"How hurt?"

Shadow shrugged. "Best we could tell, it broke her legs and that's it. No one else was physically hurt, although several people had their accounts drained in the matter of seconds."

"Wouldn't the banks do something about that?"

"They would if they could have. Cyan is...rather thorough when she wants to be," Shadow shrugged. Whisper knew that better than most. Cyan was also the one responsible for stealing Jet's chimichanga because she had been hungry while Whisper was on a stakeout, and the ramifications of that she'd been sorting through up until this whole mess. She hadn't just stolen the chimichanga, but also Jet's keys, half of the art aboard the Babylon Rogues ship had been turned a few degrees, and according to Cyan, they had yet to actually take care of the worm that she'd installed on their main computer.

Thorough. That was a good word for it.

They kept going for a few more blocks, until they finally stopped at a nondescript greying building. It had no identifying marks, except for a single black box on the outside next to the door. It had a small red light on the top, and she got out of the car at the same time Shadow and Gary did. The human leaned down and flashed a badge, letting the red light turn green. Whisper heard the door open. "We're lucky that Cyan didn't get into our systems. I doubt there was much we could have done."

She knew that Cyan was a strong wisp, one of the stronger cyan wisps, but skilled enough to act as more than just a power generator? She'd have to have a big long talk with the wisps after this. Maybe she'd even have it here while they're all tired and on her bad side. More likely to be accurate that way.

And less chance of them running away back into their canisters.

The inside was just as nondescript as the outside. There was a short hallway, all gray as Whisper was starting to learn was GUN's favorite color, again with another electronic lock. The inside of this was much more normal, in Whisper's mind. It was carpeted for one, with a few desks laying around in no seeming order. Chairs were scattered around, and on the far side was a blank slate of wall.

"Through here," Shadow said, pointing to another doorway. No electronic lock on this one, Whisper noticed. There were also no computers around, which was strange to her; a government facility should be nothing but computers.

This next room was a single table, with comfortable chairs all around it, like a giant meeting room that she'd seen in movies. "Take a seat," Gary said, "and I'll go get the General."

The chairs were fortunately islander-sized, whether that was because they knew she was coming or if they had a lot of employees like Shadow. It was surprisingly comfortable, and she sank down an inch or two on the cushion. "I thought you said you weren't a part of GUN."

"I'm not. Anymore. But I wouldn't leave you with the General alone, so I got reactivated while you were out. They fast tracked me in," Shadow explained.

"How bad is it?" Whisper hesitated to ask, but she knew she had to. Just the damage on the way in was a way to stamp into her mind just how dangerous the wisps could be.

Perhaps she was their guardian as much as they were hers.

Speaking of guardians, what happened to Knuckles?

"Could be worse. Green Hill is mostly islander based, and with Eggman's attacks in particular got used to the instant reshuffling. Already maps are being redrawn, and most people are happy about the changes."

Wait, really?

"Apparently Green Hill's been in a bit of a slump, because the unique checkerboard pattern of dirt hasn't been visible in years. Humans kind of paved over most of it. This...kind of resets the status quo," Shadow continued, oblivious to her thoughts.

"I didn't think islanders were so...trapped in the past."

"Green Hill is. It's where Sonic is. His prime days are behind him, much as he hates to hear it. And much like him, the city, too, is following."

"Which is why it's a damn good thing we brought you here," a loud booming voice said from the doorway. A tall thin man in a full suit, tailored to his exact proportions, stood there with graying hair. "Whisper, I presume?" he asked, staring at the wolf.

Whisper nodded, glancing into his eyes. He had a thin face, and it made her think the opposite of Eggman. Whereas he could yell and shout and stomp, and it'd be humorous to all, this man would stomp once and gain everyone's attention at the same time. This was not a man to cross easily.

"Pinton. I'm surprised you get so far in the ranks," Shadow claimed from the side. "Last I saw, you were still just a soldier."

"Shadow," he said, looking as if he'd just stepped on a slug. "I see that you feel the need to justify your existence again. Going to do something worthwhile this time?"

And Shadow just crossed him in around a minute, and the General just crossed Shadow in around the same time frame. This was going to be one of those 'she was stuck in the middle when she's technically the victim here' situations, isn't it? Whisper sighed. "Calm down. What is this all about?" she asked the man. He stood up a bit straighter, although how she had no idea, and walked around to the other side of the table where he sat down.

"It's about, Whisper, the fact you let your wisps run all amok around the entirety of the city and are entirely expected to to get off scot-free!" the man said tonelessly. There was an excitement to it from him though, one that put Whisper on edge. She felt the canisters shake on the inside of her jacket. The wisps agreed.

"She didn't 'let them'. She was unconscious! No one can control anything when they're unconscious!" Shadow argued. "They did that on their own behalf!"

The man pulled out a small cell phone like device, putting it on the table as holographic pages suddenly popped up not far above Whisper's head. "When the wisps started popping up, there were more than a few disagreements about what to label them as. Were they their own beings, or were they similar to pets? The courts eventually agreed to put them together with the chao under a special consideration, which is 'sapient pets'."

"And?"

"Sapient pets are wholly under the care of a single individual, or individuals in the case of families, and thus any damage that they may cause are solely the responsibility of their owners," the man said, sitting up straight again. It was obvious he thought he'd won.

"However, look at section 3c," Shadow pointed out, "in which it says that while sapient pets are wholly under a single person's responsibility, there are limitations, such as when that person is no longer suited for the responsibility of caring. Being unconscious at the time of the wisps rampage counts as being suited."

"Then she needs to give up the wisps, all five of them, until such point that someone more responsible can grab them. After all, this could happen again otherwise."

"Being attacked by the police and the gangs could happen again? I hadn't realized you were so forthcoming about your failures," Shadow snarked.

"I hadn't realized you were either. Wasn't it your fault that Helen decided to take that experimental drug of hers, which still has not worn off by the way and in fact may be permanent. Which is yet another box in your list of failures to tick off."

Shadow growled. Whisper held up one hand, "You said it's my responsibility for what they did. How much is the damage total?" she asked.

"Unknown yet. Estimates are at nearly thirty million," the man grumbled.

Pink popped out of his canister. "Only thirty million!? Seriously, we got like fifteen times that in cash for you. Just say you'll pay it," he advised, turning to Whisper.

"...We need to have a talk," Whisper answered instead. Pink's one eye opened wide, and she could see the faint signs of embarrassment coming from the wisp before he dove back into the canister.

"Can you not control your beasts!?" the man rampaged across the table. "Letting them out at any time is a fine-"

"She's allowed! She has special dispensation from her time in the Restoration and Resistance-"

"I'll pay," Whisper tried to interject.

"Special dispensation means only within their territories! When was the last time the Restoration had any such territory-"

"Their territory is the world!"

"The world can't be a territory, otherwise countries laws are overridden and we cannot risk angering all neighboring states just because you want-"

"She is a hero, and just as special dispensation was given for Sonic and Tails, she too also needs it-"

"Sonic and Tails were heroes, but look at them now! One's a cripple and the other disappeared off the face of the planet for years!"

"I said I'll pay."

"That doesn't mean it's gone away! I notice that Sonic's not in here despite him very obviously being at the scene of the attack! I notice that Violet's not in here, despite her flying the plane! Instead you're after the one person who really can't defend herself!" Whisper wasn't sure if she should be offended by that remark or not...

"And yet you're here to justify it! She doesn't need to defend herself because we have the rabid hedgehog doing it for her!"

Whisper sighed. She touched each of the cartridges, silently asking if they wanted to come out. Pink did, still slightly embarrassed, and Cyan. Orange came out to see what the fuss was all about. Blue and Green decided to stay in, although Whisper knew they were probably listening in.

Shadow and Pinton kept up their argument, going further and further into technical details about the scenarios. They hadn't even realized she'd taken the wisps out yet. "Cyan, can you go into the hologram projector and make it make a klaxon sound?" Whisper asked. Cyan grinned and immediately dove into the device. She covered her ears.

Both human and hedgehog immediately covered their ears as Cyan screeched through the projector. It was a mix of klaxon and megaphone, tied up with the sound of nails on chalkboard, as irritating as she could get.

It certainly shut them up at least. Whisper eventually relented, giving a signal for Cyan to tone it down. It took a moment, and after a quick second in which she turned it up a bit more on accident, it turned off. "Thanks, Cyan. Now, may I talk?" she asked. Cyan gave a salute of obvious taunting before she went behind Whisper's back with Orange and Pink.

"Fine, yes," Pinton asked. His face was flushed, and he was breathing hard.

"I asked how much the damages were because I want to pay them," she said. Pinton stared at her a bit, before he looked over some other documents on a different device.

"Nothing we have says that you should have anywhere near that amount of money."

"I know the Restoration didn't give that much to you. Even back-pay for twenty three years isn't that much," Shadow answered. Whisper gave them an unimpressed stare as Cyan did a little wave behind her. "Oh. How much was stolen?" he asked.

"Depends on stolen. See, we didn't steal a cent from anyone. But if someone were, to, say have a hoard of cash around in some mostly drugged out places, we might have, what's the word?" Pink asked.

"Procured for ourselves?" Orange volunteered.

"Taken with no mercy because honestly, druggies," Cyan answered.

"Procured. We procured it for ourselves. And because we are, as Pinkton over there as obviously said, nothing more than 'sapient pets'," Pink said, glaring at Pinton despite massacring his name, "naturally we had to give it to our owner. Who is, without a doubt, Whisper."

"Hence, nearly...what, five hundred million? Some absurd number. We're just pets, what do we know of math?" Cyan asked, shrugging. Whisper shot him a look. "Please, just because we're energy beings and I regularly imbue computers and thus have to be ridiculously good at math doesn't mean that I know anything of math."

Shadow chuckled.

"I assume you can understand them?" Pinton asked the black hedgehog. "My superiors weren't notified that she would be so forward as to let the wisps out of their containers."

"Pink said they took the drug money. And Cyan was saying that they don't know the whole number, because what do they know of math?" Whisper translated.

Pinton blinked. "I...that's illegal! You can't just take-"

"They can," Shadow interrupted. He was scrolling through a few documents on the projector. "Right here, criminal laws in South Island territories. The right of cash seizure. Anyone who is attempting to stop crimes of a fiscal nature is authorized fundage of twenty percent of what they take."

"Drugs aren't fiscally related-"

"No, but trafficking in them? Making them? Under the South Island laws, they are," Shadow answered. "Twenty percent. Of...how much?" he asked.

Whisper looked at Cyan. She grinned. "Five hundred fifteen million, seven hundred twenty six thousand, nine hundred and thirty seven dollars, twenty six cents. Twenty percent of that is; one hundred three million, one hundred forty five thousand, three hundred and eighty seven dollars. And forty five cents, but there's a point zero zero two there, so I rounded down."

Pinton stared as Shadow rehashed the number. "Holy shit," he said quietly. "I hadn't realized it'd gotten that bad."

"Neither had I. Sonic hadn't warned us," Shadow agreed. "But as far as the wisp thing goes..."

"I mean, we'll send her an invoice once the estimations are done," Pinton said. He was still taken aback it seemed, both by the absurdly large numbers and that Cyan could do that off the top of her head. "How...did they even have that much lying around?"

"Oh, that's easy. We had Orange to spot, Pink to go in and grab it all, Blue to ensure no one stopped us, me to hack in and open the doors, and Green to hover it to the bank," Cyan answered.

"And there were like fifteen or sixteen warehouses full of the stuff And that's just the money. Seriously, the amount of drugs for sale in this city was simply astonishing. We took care of that for you. Honestly I think we curbed the entire industry in the entire South Island region," Orange said.

"Yeah. It was fun, too. Can we do it again? It was fun cutting loose like that." Pink asked.

Whisper shook her head, "No. No, you will not 'cut loose' like that," she said harshly. Pink's eye widened, and the flush of embarrassment came back. "If that's done and over with?" she asked the man.

"Y...Yes. Certainly. We'll...just charge your bank. Or something. And the police will definitely need to take the majority of the-"

"I think we've already proven the police will do no good here," Shadow offered. "Why not a third party who has no stake in this to hold onto it?"

"Who would you suggest?"

"The Restoration," Shadow answered.

Pinton glared. "...Fine. Fine, we'll let the Restoration hold onto the money for now. But someone will need to get their cut."

"Of course. Let me walk you out," Shadow said, a snarl on his face as he motioned towards the door. Pinton glared, his eyes narrowed as he walked towards the door.

Whisper was alone in the room now. She tapped both Blue and Green's canisters with more than a handful of anger. "Oh crap, we're doing this now!?" Pink asked. Oh good, Whisper thought, he seemed to get it.

"We're doing this now."

"Shoot! Quick, Cyan, hide me!" Pink yelled, hiding behind the much smaller cyan wisp.

"Hey, get out of there, I did much worse things than you did!"

Whisper said nothing as Cyan dug her own grave. She gave a quick glance to Green and Blue, their eyes downward and looking like they honestly didn't want to be there. "How much was the damage you two? I recognized most of it," she asked.

"A good maybe...half of the structural?" Blue offered. "I made sure not to hurt anyone. And even the pavement is cracked but it's not actually broken. I mostly just wanted things to be...well, different," Blue finished.

"Yeah, what Blue said. I was mostly the land rising. It was fun, I'd never actually tried to just let everything out before. Most of the time it's just small things."

One ear was focused on Cyan who was arguing with Pink and Orange over who 'did the worse amount of stuff', but the other was focused entirely on Blue and Green. "How are you all so powerful? Wisps aren't that strong, at least from what we know."

"The older we are, the stronger. For me, it's more stuff I can lift. When we imbue the wispon, or something like Sonic, we can't use our full strength, that would break them. But a partial? Absolutely. For this? We went all out."

"We are old, Whisper," Blue said, "I know we don't seem like it, and we don't act like it," he coughed a small 'cyan' in there, "but we're old. Hundreds of wisp years old. Millenia, for Earth."

"You have no natural lifespan."

"We're energy," Orange offered from the side. When had she stopped trying to argue with Cyan and Pink? "And moreover, we're sapient energy. Eggman labeled it 'Hyper Go-On'. We never named it. But it is us. Our bodies are composed of it."

"We generate it naturally. We don't waste any, and we hardly use the stuff we have," Blue said. "And that's...why I think we need to Vow."

"Vow? Really Blue? Really-" Cyan said, followed by an emotional flux of stability and pride, reservation and honesty. "A Vow's no laughing matter for anyone."

"Only the Mother Wisp took a Vow in recent history," Orange said. "We are nowhere near her level. And you want us to do it? Why?"

Whisper sat down, letting the wisps talk about it without her input. This was something that was up to them, not up to her. She was only council, someone to be asked advice. Right now, this was solely the wisps. She had a feeling this was something that no one other than wisps were ever parlay to.

"You saw what we did out there. How much could we do? This is just us! We're old, and we're not much younger than the other elders, but this is just us! Just us five!"

"Imagine if Red had been here. Or worse, Black," Pink said. "I agree with Blue. We should take the Vow."

Cyan looked down with her one eye. "That's true. If Black were here, there'd be no Green Hill left. If Red...it'd be nothing but a burning wreckage. And we opened that door."

"So now we should close it," Orange said. "I agree with Blue and Pink. We should take it."

Green hovered around, "I don't think we should," he said, "we were good for how long? And suddenly, now it's a problem? We don't do much damage in the best of times anyways. The one person who got hurt was a transformed monster, and the most we did was break her legs. We shouldn't take a Vow just on the other side of this. We should take our time. It may come time when we need to do this again."

"Four to one, Green," Cyan said. "But a makeshift council like this, I think we need to be unanimous. I'm all for taking a personal geas though, and we'll see how it goes."

"I can see that. Geas it is for me then," Blue said. Pink and Orange both nodded, and Green took a sigh and nodded his own agreement. "Wording's like this then; I-" he started, following with that same emotional rollercoaster that was Blue's name. There was more to it than that, Whisper got. A sense of responsibility, of uniqueness, of self-restraint.

Each one came up, and repeated the same thing. By the end of the fifth one, Whisper was trying to breathe deep. This was the wisps emotions, not her own. It was hard to separate it though, as it seemed they spoke through her own emotional wavelengths.

"Agreed then. We'll see how this goes, and whether or not we should Vow," Orange said. The other four wisps nodded, and that left only more questions in Whisper's mind.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Hope-bringer

Whisper was still reeling from the emotions of the wisps around her as they took...their oaths? Promises? When the door opened.

It was hard to describe anything when her entire mind was aflame with emotions that weren't hers.

Shadow stood there, with another human behind him. One that Whisper hadn't met yet. He was an older man, his short bear was neatly kept but mottled with a few greys, and his eyes were a light blue that kept reflecting the harsh light of the bulbs above. "Whisper, this is..." Shadow started, before he looked back at him.

"Agent Nelson would be a good start, I find," Nelson answered with a soft smile. Whisper glanced at Shadow; the black hedgehog was nervous for the first time that she'd seen since coming to this time. Which meant that this 'Agent Nelson' was quite likely no real agent at all. Probably someone extremely high up.

"And you must be Whisper, with all the wisps," he smiled at the small menagerie of colors she had around her. "You are all clever and strong wisps, aren't you?" he asked.

"Smarter than you think!" Cyan declared. Orange went and smacked her on the back of her head.

"I wouldn't call us clever though. Smart, sure. Clever though?" Blue asked. Whisper shook her head. The wisps were clever, whether they saw it or not. "But we aren't as strong now. Thanks to the geas."

That was another thing she'd have to ask. She'd never heard the word 'geas' before.

"May I sit down? It's been a long travel for me and my legs aren't quite working well yet. Comes with old age," he asked smiling gently. Whisper raised an eyebrow and nodded. "Many thanks," he commented.

He wasn't sitting straight, but yet he was demanding her attention. Shadow had yet to move, as if waiting for permission. For someone to have that kind of that control over Shadow, of all people...Agent Nelson was no normal agent.

"You may be wondering why you're still here, now that the main issue is resolved. The finance teams are still working on the exact amounts, but they will be for quite some time. Shadow was insistent that the Restoration hold onto the funds for now, which, albeit an odd choice, was one that I readily agreed with. I know Belle quite well, and if told that it was hands off until a certain timeframe, I wouldn't need to worry about it," Nelson said quietly.

He continued, "Which does bring up my next point. Green Hill is...destabilized, at the moment. The current mayor now has around three warrants for his arrest, all pertaining to various crimes, a good majority of his administration were found knowingly complicit. Many of those will only get a minor fine, depending on which crimes they knew of."

"For mother's sake, please get to the point," Cyan murmured. Orange and Pink nodded with her.

Agent Nelson continued as if he couldn't understand them. "But that does leave a bit of a vacuum in Green Hill. The next election won't take place for another few years. As such, GUN is staging an effective intervention. Placing our own men here to act as a deterrent, until an emergency election can be made."

Whisper nodded. That did make sense, as much as she didn't want it to. But that also meant that GUN could lift the travel blackout, and they'd be able to travel on to Spiral Hill.

"We also believe that there are certain...citizens...that require us to not have that intervention. We've received intelligence that many of them plan to attack the moment that they can, not understanding how security works."

"Anyone else getting the bad feeling from before?" Orange asked. Whisper flicked her ear, a sign to her that Whisper had got it too. The others murmured their agreement.

"As such, with your skill as a sniper, we believe that we will need your assistance in order to make the intervention work. Shadow can give you the details if you so choose, but afterwards we will lift the travel ban and allow you and any compatriots you have free reign to leave."

"While you clean up the mess," Whisper stated flatly.

"Essentially. It's not my favorite job, but it's one I've gotten good at," Nelson smiled easily.

Blue hovered next to her ear, "I think he has us on the ropes. Not much we can do."

Cyan leaned down, "We can always just say no. You heard him best, Whisper, he just wants as insurance. Personally, I say we go for it. What's the worst that could happen?"

"A lot, truthfully. I agree with Cyan though. Let's do it!" Pink said, his one eye opening wide. "It'll be fun! Just think of how you can stop 'em!"

"I'd say that we don't...? They have plenty of security already, they don't need us. And this just sounds like an excuse for Cyan and Pink to do things they really ought not to do," Green muttered.

Two for, and two against. Not that Whisper didn't see that coming. She turned to Orange, the last one to have her opinion heard, and saw that all three eyes were shut, probably hard in thought. "I'm going to say...we do it. But ask them that we don't actually need to shoot anyone, just...get in their way."

Whisper nodded. "As long as we don't actually need to shoot anyone. Just make sure they can't make it to harm anyone," Whisper clarified. Orange's eyes lit up, nodding happily along.

Agent Nelson nodded. "We can certainly do that. Your mask has a radio, correct? Just change it to this line on the day of, and you'll be able to hear all of our radio chatter. If you see anything, just let the security team now which direction," he smiled again, pushing himself up with a grunt. "Shadow can probably walk you through any further details. Thank you again, Whisper," he said, walking quietly but quickly out the door.

The wisps watched him walk away. "Anybody else get the feeling they're not going to like that?" Cyan asked. Whisper nodded.

"I wish we didn't have to, but if it's just blocking people...I can do that. And Green, you don't even need to hover far. Just a few feet, get their feet off the ground," Blue responded. Green nodded, a small happy chitter coming from him.

"You just answered to one of the highest ranking commanders in GUN," Shadow responded quietly. "He calls himself lower than he is. That was Admiral Nelson Towers."

"Oh. How high is that?"

"Think Jewel if the Restoration was global and with millions."

Oh. That was high. That was quite high. "What was he doing here?"

"Honestly? Probably checking on the wisps. We've heard of wisps being powerful before, but the ones that you use are on a different level. I can't imagine GUN wouldn't want to use it."

"So it's a mistake."

"No. If you hadn't clarified that you were observer only, I'd agree," Shadow said. He rubbed the back of his neck gently. "Of course, that means that now my official job is keeping track of you. So no more wandering a warehouse."

"You were just arguing with Sonic and Amy."

"I was arguing with them on how best to get out of here," Shadow argued. "And if you had just waited, we would likely not be in this mess and be on the way out!"

"No, I think we would," Orange answered. "The previous mayor didn't seem to give a crap about anyone except himself, and that got proven when Helen did her thing. And by ensuring that people couldn't travel out-"

"He was ensuring that there was a constant demand for the drugs, making sure that he was richer! He probably already had a back way to ensure that things could be dropped off to him but no one else!" Cyan answered. "That's both brilliant and really stupid!"

"No, that's just stupid..." Whisper answered. Shadow nodded.

"It does explain much though, if that was the case. Grocery stores wouldn't be able to get food to people, so they'd rely on other ways to get it. It would basically start and stop with him," Shadow said. "I still think it was a stupid idea to go after them on your own."

"Now that, I agree with," Green said. Whisper halfheartedly glare at him. "Oh come on, you know the rest of us would've right there with you if you had asked us 'Hey, I'm going to do something stupid! Who wants to come with!?'"

"The worst part is, Green's right," Cyan said. "That is almost exactly what you should've said to get us to come with. If you'd had all of us there, I have no doubt that we wouldn't have been needed for...the...what was it they were calling it?"

"Massive existential rampage?" Whisper supplied.

"Yeah, that!"

Shadow gave a quiet sigh. "The inauguration will take place tomorrow, as they're still waiting on a few things. They haven't yet lifted the martial order, but that's mostly because they're waiting on a few more people to get here."

"So...we can go do stuff?" Blue asked. Shadow sighed again, but he nodded. "Sweet. Hey, who's up for some ice cream? I saw a place!" he said. Whisper blinked in surprise. Ice cream? It wasn't exactly warm out...but could wisps even have ice cream? Who was she kidding, she wanted to find out too. The other four were in agreement anyways. They flashed back into their canisters, leaving Whisper and Shadow alone for a few moments.

"Thank you," Whisper whispered as she left the room. Her boots were silent on the carpet, and none of the agents that were around in the room over seemed intent on hurting her. Most of them wore the seemingly usual black suits, but some were wearing normal day clothes as well.

The doors opened easily outward, and soon enough Whisper found herself in the blinding light of the midday sun in Green Hill. The area she was in still looked old, worn, and weathered. There was even still a small stream from the last storm hovering down the storm drain.

She wasn't sure which way to go, and Blue hadn't told her anything more, so she followed her ears, hearing the sound of begging children. They weren't loud, but it also wasn't that far away. How Blue saw it but Orange didn't, Whisper didn't know.

It was an old style ice cream truck. It had been parked close to the school, Whisper noticed, almost just in time for lunch. The aardvark was still setting up when she walked up, giving a glance over the prices. They seemed far more expensive than they were in her time, but most of the flavors were still there, although some had never seen before.

"Oh hey! You're a bit early, but give me five minutes," The aardvark said, giving a wave out the window. "Normal rush won't happen for an hour or so."

Which meant she had time. She knocked on each of the wisp's canisters, letting them all out. They each looked at the various flavors, pushing in their energy faces to see what looked the best. She'd already decided on her own. Vanilla. Something unadventurous, normal of a time for her own.

"Ooh, ooh, chocolate raisin for me!" Cyan asked. Chocolate raisin? Whisper raised an eyebrow.

"That's not raisin! That's double chocolate! Eek. Math wiz, learn to read," Pink answered. "As for me...hmm...triple chocolate sundae supreme!"

Wasn't those the specialty things from Apotos that Sonic had mentioned once, or was she imagining that conversation?

"Hmm...I'll just have rocky road," Green answered. Whisper nodded; that sounded about right.

Orange and Blue weren't sure, conversing amongst themselves. "I wanted the rocky road, but if Green's getting it then maybe I'll get a lick," Blue muttered. "Strawberry for me then."

Right, she had a vanilla cone, double chocolate for Cyan, the Apotos special for Pink, rocky road for Green, and strawberry for Blue. Which left only Orange left. She glanced at the wisp, seeing if she had made up her mind yet.

"I think...I'll get that one," Orange said, pointing to the highest part. It was just a normal chocolate covered vanilla cone. She could remember that easily enough.

"Alright are you...oh hi wisps. Wasn't expecting them too. What can I get for ya?" the aardvark said, finally done setting up.

Whisper held up her hand and slowly recited the order that she'd compiled in her head. The aardvark stared at her for a moment. "Was that...all for you or was some of that for them? Because if so, I gotta warn you canines and chocolate-"

"I'm aware," Whisper said. "And it's for them. The vanilla alone is for me," she answered. The aardvark nodded, and soon enough Whisper's hands were covered in the various ice creams. There was a small bench not far from the truck, probably another reason that he'd set up where he had.

It was strange, even with the massive destruction all around them, life went on. Despite the new hills that had popped up overnight, none of the citizens on the street really seemed to care. The school, too, was mostly untouched except for a large block of dirt making a hill right in the center.

And when the kids came out for lunch, most of them darted through it and up it rather than around it. It was just another plaything that Green had made for them. They hadn't cared about the small cracks in the pavement, or the large cracks in the school buildings.

Even the cars and vehicles hadn't really seemed to care, continuing on despite the small bumps that came from the new displaced pavement. "Strange, isn't it?" a voice said from behind her.

Whisper turned, her cone long since finished, to find that Agent Nelson had somehow snuck up on her. Even Orange seemed to be taken aback by how quickly he'd shown up. "Agent Nelson. Or Admiral Nelson?" Whisper asked.

"Agent is fine for now. As much as the Admiral title makes me seem more powerful than I am, I do like the Agent line a lot better. It reminds me of the older times, when hearing 'Agent' simply meant that you were one of the best," he smiled. "Would you mind if I sat down?" he asked.

Whisper nodded, motioning him to do so. She scooted over a bit. Any person that could sneak up on her was on her watchlist. "It's been only a day or so since the rampage, and yet...Green Hill is moving on, as if it was always the same," he said, looking around.

The fences were moved and mottled, some of them torn from their foundations. "The gates are gone, and yet everyone knows that they're still there. The stores are still running, and the vendors still selling, and others still buying. It makes me wonder, just how...resilient are all of you?" he asked. Whisper tilted her head.

"I mean, it's all life in the end," he said. He wasn't looking at her, instead staring out at the sea of kids lining up for the ice cream. The aardvark was doing his best to keep up with everything, a large smile on his face. "But I know that if a human city were to be attacked like this, everything would be shut down for days. And yet...here we are."

"I want to blame Eggman."

"Eggman's as good a target as anyone to blame. He was always a madman, going on about taking over the world. He managed it at least once. I don't doubt that there were closer calls. And he always did attack the islanders first, regardless of where he started. As brilliant as he was, he made mistakes. Many of them, thankfully."

"And there was Sonic."

"And Sonic, of course. I'm thinking more the Restoration as a whole. You know, after Eggman took over, and almost won...GUN was on its last legs. I didn't want to join GUN at first, you know? A government entity with the name of a weapon? That just screams abuse of power to me. But when I found my way to the Resistance, you know what I found?"

"Islanders?"

"Many. I try to hold nothing against them, as I was just human, but it hurt, being told that they didn't have capacity for me."

"I think they had to turn away a lot more than just you."

"I know. The Diamond Cutters, too, had to turn away their fair amount. But it wasn't until I got in with GUN, my last choice, that I realized I was wrong. They didn't abuse their power, because they didn't really have any. The Resistance did all the work during those wars. And the Restoration afterwards..."

"And GUN is still here."

"It's odd. I always thought that GUN would have been dismantled, and the Restoration would continue on after Eggman died. Instead, the Restoration stopped, and GUN continued."

Whisper tilted her head. Where was he going with this?

"I miss the Restoration sometimes," he kept going. "I was a low agent back then, when they were around. Shadow, Rouge, Omega...those three names kept popping up as names to be on the lookout for. And then Eggman died...and Rouge, and Omega."

"And Shadow..."

"Shadow collapsed. Withdrew entirely. He hadn't been seen in any official capacity in nearly twenty years, Whisper. You managed to bring him back out. It may have been to fulfill a debt, or to make right an obvious wrong, but the fact remains, Whisper, that you brought him back."

"Sonic said that's what the Restoration does. It brings hope to those that have none."

"And what does GUN bring? Demands, ego, power trips...money. No, the Restoration has always done better than GUN has. I've tried to make it run similar to them. To try to impress upon people that we aren't just a shady organization, but rather the second coming of a namesake we aren't allowed to use yet."

"And how has that been working out for you?" Pink asked from behind Whisper. The wolfess turned, gently chiding him for speaking.

"Not as well as I'd like. People care about money, right now. Hope died with the Restoration, and the rest of us...we can only hope to hold on until it comes back."

"Sonic's still around."

"But he's not truly Sonic anymore, is he? He has bigger responsibilities. Taking care of his own children. He doesn't have the ability to lead us anymore, if he ever did. Shadow...Shadow doesn't have the heart for it."

Was he going to be stepping down?

"But I look around here, knowing what I'd see in the human city, and you know what I see? Happiness. Bringers of hope, I've heard the Restoration call. And the first act of the remade Restoration, to restore Green Hill Zone to what it once was."

"They didn't do this on purpose."

"But that doesn't matter, does it? The only thing that matters is that they did. Green Hill Zone was dead. Or dying, rather. It was losing itself to drugs and corruption, allowing itself to be spoiled by the name that it had once earned. But the citizens themselves...I think they hated it. I checked up on this man's business license a few hours ago," Agent Nelson said, pointing to the ice cream stand. "He'd literally started just today. He picked out his spot a while ago, but day after day, couldn't place it. And then...the apocalypse. And now he's here."

"Sounds like he planned it for a while."

"He most likely did. But each day was similar to the last, until yesterday. So why now? Of all times, why now, when the world was still rebuilding? I credit you for that one, Whisper."

"I did nothing."

"On the other hand, you galvanized them," he said. Each of the wisps floating around nodded happily. "It was because of you that they did what they did. Whether that was because of a decision you made, or because of something that happened. I don't know, and I doubt they'd tell me."

"On the contrary, we'd be quite likely to," Orange said quietly. "When a friend is in danger, no matter who it is...that's when we let loose."

"Yep. Just like Yacker and the others. When Sonic was in danger, almost all of us used everything in our power to get him out of the black hole," Cyan responded. "It was quite unsurprisingly, very heroic."

Pink came around and smacked Cyan gently on the back of her head. "Unsurprisingly heroic!? Do you not remember that terror you felt as the violet wisps imploded on themselves!? That's not unsurprisingly heroic!"

Wait. What had happened? Whisper and Nelson exchanged glances for a short moment before their attention went back to the arguing wisps. A small glare on Nelson's ear alerted to how he could understand them to; a small translator, similar to what the Restoration used.

"Terror!? Pink, there was no terror or horror there. It was just...what was it called again?"

"Final Color Blaster?" Blue answered. "Something like that. Sonic even said later that if it wasn't for the White he probably wouldn't have made it. Yes, even with your power Cyan."

"Well he didn't use me directly, I was just stuck in the...Tropical Resort? Yeah, that one."

"Ooh, lucky. I was stuck back on Planet Wisp. You think everywhere else was boring, try being stuck in a capsule while you could feel the Asteroid Coaster nearby, while back in your own home planet. At least you got to see something different!"

"Oh, don't mention the Asteroid Coaster. Please," Blue murmured. He gave a minor shudder, and Whisper rubbed her hand behind the block of his head. He gave a minor chitter.

"Right, no more talk of that, then," Green said. "Probably for the best, honestly. That's not a time I want to think about either."

They had felt their compatriots being turned into the Violet wisps? She'd never asked Sonic much about that, and where the wisps truly came from. She knew they each came from Planet Wisp, but anything more than that? It was a complete mystery to her.

Now that she had a bit of time though, maybe it was time to fix that?

Agent Nelson let out a minor groan as he got up, his knees giving a worrying popping sound. "Well, I best get back. Thank you for the chat, Whisper," he said, heading back down the street. He was moving silently, despite his short and energetic stride.

"He's still weird," Cyan said instantly. Whisper nodded, as did the other wisps. "Also, can I get another ice cream? We have time, and I know for a fact we have the money! I'm the treasurer now! The Treasurer of Whisper, that's me!"

"Oh no, now the power's gone to her head," Pink murmured as he looked back worryingly at the aardvark...who was breathing a sigh of relief as the bell hit for the kids to come back to class. Whisper knew he probably wouldn't have had much left after a rush like that. Especially after what the wisps did to it...

On a side note, she learned that wisps liked ice cream.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Portal

Whisper pulled down the mask, letting its familiar weight assure her of what she was doing. What was she doing though? She had lost her mind at some point, probably several times. More than that, most assuredly. The rooftop was familiar to her, seeing as how it was close by to the mayor's building, in which GUN was starting to set up the inauguration of a temporary mayor until they get the next election going.

She'd been next to the building just a few days ago, but it was only now that she managed to climb to the top of the six floors. Off in the distance through the scope she could see Shadow on top of the mayor's building, trying to find a decent place to hide. "So we aren't actually killing anyone, right?" Blue asked from next to her.

Whisper shook her head. "Not if we can help it. All we're doing is spotting. It's up to everyone else to keep them from success," she answered. Blue gave an audible sigh of relief. She didn't blame him. She wasn't fond of the idea either. Even when confronted with an evil being unlike any other, she'd hesitated long enough that a six year old was able to talk her down.

She just realized, that with the twenty three year gap Cream was now older than her. Cream didn't already have kids did she? That was so strange to even think about... "How should we be doing this, exactly? Some of us don't have three eyes," Cyan asked from the side. She was laying down low, looking bored. Orange was above, her eyes going and looking every which way.

"Just keep an eye out. You see someone that looks like they're trouble, tell the rest," Whisper answered. "We're not doing more than that." Cyan nodded, her body twisting as she did a few rolls in midair. Pink went over to help stabilize her, only to get headbutted by Green. "If you three are bored, go talk to Violet about helping with the Tornado," she said after a moment.

"Last time we did that, you got hurt. We're not leaving again," Pink answered instantly. Cyan and Green both agreed, their bodies doing most of the work rather than just their heads. "Even if we get bored doing it."

That was fine. Whisper knew they probably wouldn't do anything terrible even if they were bored if she was nearby. She raised the scope on her wispon again, looking down the main street on one direction, checking every person for every sign of a weapon. There were only a few suspicious ones that she could see, ones with their hoods up and walking along shakily. She put most of those out of her mind, instead focusing on the 'normal' people. Anyone truly suspicious wouldn't act suspicious, but instead try too hard to seem normal.

She blamed her experience with Mimic as to why she knew that.

There weren't any in one direction. "Anything?" she asked Orange. She trusted Orange more than the others when it came to spotting. The wisp knew exactly what she was looking for and why. Back in the Diamond Cutters, Orange had been the wisp assigned to her directly, with the others coming after...everything.

"Not yet. Nothing unusual at least," Orange said softly. "Hey, can you three calm it down? It's distracting!" she called out to Green, Cyan, and Pink. The three were now wrestling on the floor of the rooftop, stabbing at each other with their spikes, energy arms, or whatever it was that Green called the weird bulbs he had at the bottom of his body. Green was losing, for obvious reasons.

"Yeah, yeah. Calm your eyes Orange," Cyan answered. "Ooh, I see something over there!" she pointed out. Whisper was on it instantly, her wispon pointing up to where it was the wisp had pointed out. "Next to the church steeple!"

Whisper saw it. "I don't know," she said after a moment. It looked like a big black mass of...something. Bulbous things that acted more like water. "Shadow," she said, changing her radio frequencies to only the black hedgehog's. "There's...something weird. Four hundred feet from you, next to the church."

The black hedgehog turned. "Where?" he asked, his voice sharp. He didn't see it? Then again, neither had she until Cyan had pointed it out. "There's nothing there."

"Yes there is! It's getting closer, step by step! Three hundred feet now, it's getting past the...Whisper, did it just jump across the street in one motion?" Cyan asked. Whisper nodded, watching as it didn't even bother stopping to try to jump. It just...floated across. There was no stopping, there was no stalling, it just floated across as if there was a wind current.

"Whisper, there's nothing there," Shadow clarified. "I don't see it at all. Fire Orange at it?" he asked.

Whisper shook her head as Orange gave a massive sigh of relief. "I don't think she wants to, and I don't want her too. Cyan instead," Whisper said, her voice light. Cyan gave a mock salute as she imbued the wispon. While Orange was quieter and much more accurate, Cyan also didn't have to physically go where she was firing. One of the reasons why Orange was so accurate, she could error-correct in midair. Pink, too, was one that didn't have to physically go. "Firing," she announced, pressing the trigger just slightly.

There was no recoil. Cyan's imbuement didn't give any, unlike Orange or many of the others. Blue's imbuement was entirely based upon the recoil if she had to be honest. The cyan laser streaked across the grey sky above, leaving a long trail in its wake.

Whisper held her ears as the laser hit the black monster thing, and it let out an ear shattering, soul scattering howl of pain. Each of the wisps reacted to, most of them immediately going back into their canisters except for Cyan, who Whisper could barely hear scream out, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

It barreled over the rest of the church and city hall, gathering up speed the more it went in a straight line. "Whisper, why did you fire?" a voice shouted in her ear. It wasn't Shadow, probably one of the GUN agents. The thing came closer, faster, and Whisper felt it in the back of her mind that this thing was out for her blood if anything.

"I don't see anything, Whisper," Shadow said through the radio. "Whisper said she saw something. I told her to fire to show me where. Still don't see it."

The black thing was literally covering the black hedgehog, making it impossible to see him. An undulating mass of darkness covering him completely, and yet Shadow's voice came over the radio. "Whisper, where is it now?"

Fear gripped Whisper's heart, and she knew it wasn't just hers alone. Cyan was screaming her native language, singing a song of fear and horror. "It's...on top of you..." Whisper muttered. She was taking steps back, but the thing had noticed her, and Cyan wasn't helping.

"On top of Shadow? Agent Conway, you see anything?"

"Nothing, Admiral Nelson."

"I don't feel any different either. Whisper...you haven't taken anything have you?" Shadow accused.

"Green!" Whisper called out as she flat out bolted away from the black mass. It glided over the empty space above everyone, twisting and turning in infinite darkness. It had no head, it had no body, it had no hands, no legs, nothing more than a mass of black and dark. The wisp heard her, and imbued himself into the wispon immediately, letting her glide down as she jumped off the rooftop.

"Whisper!?" Shadow's voice and Agent Nelson's voice called over the radio. She glanced behind her; the mass was right there, undulating towards her, covering everything as it passed by. No one else noticed, except her, like a nightmare made flesh and incorporeality-

She stumbled into a car, sending her back a foot. "Sorry!" she said quickly. The mass was right on top of her, it was going to get her what was this thing-

The car honked, or the car alarm went off, Whisper didn't know. The mass let out another howl, recoiling from the sound. The sound shot through Whisper's mind too, far more effective and loud than it should be. "Got an idea!" Cyan said as she popped out. Whisper flicked an ear towards her as she ran some more, pushing every bit of energy she had into her legs. "First, find a rooftop! It'll be less noticeable up there!"

She could do that. The mass was still chasing her, but now it had slowed down a bit, unsure by the sounds affecting it. There weren't that many rooftops down this far, but she could find a way to get onto a fire escape, much as she did back at Drug Alley.

"Here, use me to slam into the ground!" Blue screamed into her ear as he imbued himself into the wispon. That was an idea. There was a dumpster close by too, four stories up and two stories to the fire escape. Only one block away. She ran for it.

The undulating and crawling mass of black was still chasing her, but now it was closer to the ground and seemed to be more unsure of things. It followed her anyway, chasing her. She slammed Blue onto the dumpster, letting the recoil push her up into a high jump. "Got it!" Orange said as she imbued herself, pressing the trigger down herself. Usually Orange's imbuement only gave a sniper's shot, but the variable wispon could also control mass and velocity. A lot of both of them meant a lot of recoil, sending her skyward another ten feet.

"My turn!" Green shouted, letting the umbrella open up and letting her fall gracefully onto the fire escape metal. Whisper gratefully whispered her thanks to the three wisps, squirreling up the ladder towards the rooftop.

Now that she'd gained some height, so too did the black mass, and it seemed much more at home in the sky. It was moving quicker, floating and falling at the same time. "What was your idea, Cyan?" Whisper asked as she leapt over the railing onto the roof. There weren't any GUN agents up here, and city hall was four blocks away.

"Right. Use me and Pink at the same time! Pink can use energy blasts, we might be able to at least beat this thing back!" Cyan admitted. It was a plan, at least.

"Aww yeah, now it's my time to shine! Bring it on!" Pink shouted as he imbued the wispon. Small spikes came out of the blue spherical shell, and needle like spikes were shot out of the front with every press of the trigger. Pink was staying with her, another wisp that didn't have to physically travel.

The spikes didn't seem to hurt it overly much, but it recoiled just the same. Whisper mostly took pot shots at it, her wispon firing as rapidly as it could but she made sure to absolutely not miss.

Whenever Pink needed a recharge, Whisper switched over to Cyan, and the laser didn't have much of any effect either. But the mass was slowing, at least, the wisp energy seemingly eating away at the thing. It gave another loud soul shattering roar as it she managed to push it back another few feet.

"Whisper, are you back in your mind at least?" Shadow asked over the radio. She blinked, completely forgetting basic radio communication. That was going to be a black mark on her.

"Fighting. It's recoiling, so we're doing something at least," Whisper answered. Each strike of the pink or cyan energy pushed it just a few more inches.

"We can't see anything of what your fighting. Take your mask off?" Shadow suggested. It would only take her a second or two, she could handle at least that. She reached up for the mask, moving it up and staring at the black mass.

It was still there, almost seemingly more real than anything else around it. She pushed her mask back on, and it took on that same black 'less' real feel that it had far earlier.

"Still there," Whisper answered.

"Huh. I'm going to throw a chaos spear," Shadow's voice called out. The hurling mass of chaos energy speared overhead, landing directly into the black mass. It gave another howl, it's body becoming even darker somehow, before a purple portal of some kind opened up, and it flew through a moment later.

"That got rid of it. It flew off through a portal," Whisper said. Her heart was beating furiously fast, and she was breathing just as hard. The wisps popped out of their canisters, staring hard at where the thing vanished. "You know what that thing was?" she asked.

"Not a clue." "Nope." "Got less than an idea than you do, I think." "Sure, if it's opposite day." "Yeah, I got an idea," Orange muttered. All four of the other wisps and Whisper turned to look at her. "Remember the one time that we...well, ended back up at Planet Wisp with no memory of how we got there? And it was all blank and white for a while?" she asked.

The others shook their head. "Right, you may not have been there for that. I was. I saw that purple portal thing before. Ask Sonic, he'd know more I think."

Whisper nodded, and gently opened the cloak again. The wisps nodded to each other, going into each of their canisters once more. "I'm fine now," she answered into the radio.

"That's good. What happened?" Agent Nelson asked, his voice brooking no arguments. He wanted nothing but the facts and details. It was easy to hear how he'd become Admiral now.

"Black shaped undulating mass," Whisper described. "It could fly, and only wisp energy seemed to hurt it. It covered Shadow but didn't seem to do much," Whisper said. "Cyan hit it, and it roared back and started to chase. I fled, heading down to ground level to keep it away from everyone else. She had another idea, and I went back to a nearby rooftop to hit it with Pink and Cyan. It did nothing for the most part, until Shadow's chaos spear hit it."

"Did it? It just kind of flew out into the air. There wasn't anything there, Whisper."

"The wisps all saw it too. Orange thinks that Sonic might know more."

"I see. Go and look into it. The inauguration is mostly finished, and it looks like your firing display actually helped anyways. A few characters saw the lights and fled," Agent Nelson said. "And Whisper, try to contain yourself."

Whisper nodded. "Understood," she whispered back, much quieter than normal. She hated being chided by higher ups, regardless of whether or not she was part of the team at all.

Shadow came by a moment later, running up the side of the building. He landed silently in front of her. "It covered me, you said?" he asked. His radio was off.

Whisper turned hers off too. She had officially been 'dismissed', which meant that soon enough she could leave to Spiral Hill, find Jewel, who can lead her to Tangle and Tails. Maybe. Hopefully.

This was going to be a long trip, wasn't it?

She nodded. "Completely. I couldn't see you."

"Interesting. If the chaos spear had as much effect as it did, you'd think it was based on chaos energy," Shadow muttered. "But that couldn't be...there was that one time though..."

"What one time?" Whisper asked. She asked Green to help her down, and Shadow jumped down as she floated down. The black hedgehog was silent again as he started skating, slowly, towards the suburbs where Sonic lived.

She had to run full out in order to try to keep up. The speed difference between them was still astonishing. She knew that she wasn't faster than Sonic or Shadow, or Blaze, or even Tails and Amy, but she'd hoped that by now she'd have some way to keep up!

"There was...an odd time, many years ago. I don't remember it much. It was just another day for me, until the White Void showed up. I fought Sonic again for the Chaos Emeralds, but it was afterwards, during the fight..." Shadow murmured. Whisper's ears twitched; he was speaking far quieter. Was he actually talking to her, or simply muttering to himself?

Whisper had to stop several times over the course the half hour trip, if only because Shadow was ridiculously fast and she didn't have the stamina to sprint for thirty minutes continuously. Instead she alternated between running, sprinting, and walking when she needed to. By the time she'd made it, she was covered in sweat.

Shadow, meanwhile, looked as if he hadn't just ran nearly ten miles in thirty minutes, or it was just a minor jog. "You need to get faster," he said as soon as she stopped near him. She was leaning over, trying to get as much breath into her body as possible.

"I'm not you or Sonic."

"You're also carrying around much more gear than Sonic or myself. Ten miles is still a considerable distance," Shadow said. "It's something to work up towards."

Amy opened the door before Shadow could even knock. She was dressed to the nines, a long red dress that flowed around every curve she had. "Oh, Shadow! Whisper! Back already?" she asked. "Don't mind me, just stepping out for a few hours," she smiled and nodded, stepping out of their way.

Sonic was still on his chair, his head back and his eyes shut. His chest was rising and falling rhythmically, and there was a small plate of chili dogs next to him with a small note from Amy. Whisper couldn't see where any of the kids were. She suspected Violet was out back working on the Tornado, but the other three kids...were somewhere. It wasn't that late in the afternoon either, probably just after lunch. Were they at school? Did they go to school?

"Oh great, the Faker's asleep," Shadow said, stomping over to him. He kicked the old blue hedgehog lightly in the shoe. "Wake up. We have questions."

"Don't go Amy...don't just leave me here..." Sonic whispered, rolling over onto his side, his eyes still shut. His bad leg was somehow even looking worse, with the way the rest of the hedgehog moved, and yet his leg didn't.

"Well, he's asleep and won't wake up," Shadow said loudly. "Go find the kids," he told Whisper. "I'm going to keep to keep trying to wake up the lazy one."

"I don't think he's lazy..." Whisper said quietly as she took off her boots to walk throughout the house. She looked in Violet and Mata's room first, not expecting to see anyone. Violet wasn't in, certainly, but there was a dark shape near where Mata's desk was. "Mata?" she asked quietly as she walked through the sheet.

The two tailed cat was asleep on her desk, small pieces of paper in front of her scattered. Whisper picked one of them up, seeing a bit of math homework on it. It had two different signs of writing, one much cleaner than the other.

There was a nine pointed circle on the floor, painted very carefully using white paint. It was an odd shape, and not one that Whisper had ever seen before. "Mata?" she asked again.

The cat was whispering something, small amounts of sweat coming down from her forehead. "No, take me, not him, not him..." she whispered. Her eyes were still shut. Whisper reached out, touching the cat gently on the shoulder.

A feeling of dread, a feeling of hope and hopelessness, power and powerlessness. It dragged her in, the emotions creating a perfect storm.

She'd been at the center of one not long ago, almost exactly like this. But that power hadn't been associated with Mata, but rather the wisps. She could break out of it, she wasn't hopeless, she was Whisper! "Mata!" she said much louder. Immediately the feelings stopped and Mata fell off of her chair, shaking her head as if she was just woken up.

"Gah!" she screamed as she fell. "I must have fallen asleep. Sorry Ms. Whisper!" she said, standing up instantly.

"It's alright. You looked like you were having a bad dream," Whisper noted. Mata nodded.

"Dreams are...bad. Dreams are bad. I was talking with Tails, I think. Or for him. And Mom was there..." Mata said, falling down onto her bed. "I think something's wrong with a lot of things."

"It's alright. Trust in Sonic and Amy. They'll take care of you," Whisper nodded. Orange came out and nodded her agreement.

"Oh, a wispy! Hi wispy..." Mata said quietly. "Why were you looking for me?" she asked Whisper.

"Sonic's asleep, and Amy just left. We figured we should take a look around and make sure the rest of you are fine."

"Oh, yes! Violet's still working on the Tornado I think, but she promised Dad that she wouldn't do anything dangerous. Apparently that trial run a few days ago knocked it back a few pegs. Thunder and Velocity are probably asleep. I'm guessing Mom ran out?" Mata asked.

Whisper nodded. Mata continued, "She does that from time to time. Was she dressed nicely or going to the store?" she asked. Whisper tilted her head. "If she was dressed nice she was going clothes shopping. If she was going to the grocery store, she'd have brought a bag."

That was worrisome. But...Whisper shook out her head. She didn't need to know that. What Amy and Sonic did were up to Amy and Sonic. But having the kids know about it...Whisper sighed, trying to restrain herself.

"It's more comfortable to nap on a bed," Whisper noted as she sat down next to the two tailed cat. It was strange seeing her from so close, now. There was definitely the hint of Blaze in her, the eyes a deep gold but the fur Tails' own orange and yellow. Her muzzle shape was short, like Blaze's, but had the nose shape of a canine.

"I know. But I needed to get my math done, and with Uncle Chuck passing onto the River, I needed a new tutor. Most people I get just want to go back to resting, and I don't mind, but every once in a while I find a good one. I found a flicky this last time! She could even talk too, and knew all kinds of math because she was a robot once!"

Whisper nodded, despite not understanding any of this. Did Mata's ability to literally resurrect the dead come from somewhere? Were there limits to it? Obviously there were, but the very idea haunted the sides of Whisper's mind.

"She was nice. She's up there now," Mata pointed to the ceiling. On one of the rungs was a small blue flicky, a bit larger than the normal ones that Whisper knew about, its head buried in its wing. Flickies were small birds that generally weren't considered sapient, with the exception of a small few. Whisper couldn't tell the difference between them. Unlike with Uncle Chuck, this one didn't grate as much at Whisper's existence, instead a small keening wail that something was still off.

Mata yawned again. "It was nice. I like having friends to talk to. Are you my friend too, Ms. Whisper?" she asked. Whisper gave her a smile and nodded. "And you, wispy?" she looked to Orange.

Orange gave a small glow, and Whisper felt her mood increase, a sense of friendship and positivity. The emotional language of the wisps, and one that Whisper had no translator for. But some things needed no translator.

Mata leaned back and rested her head on her pillow. "Do you think, Ms. Whisper, that we're going to be okay?" she asked gently. "When you go back and undo everything?" she kept going. The word undo struck her mind, battered it around, there was obviously something to it but it generated a storm within Whisper's mind.

"That's not how time travel works. Or maybe it is. Alternative futures are a thing. I really wish I paid more attention to White whenever he went on one of his formulative rants," Orange said. Mata giggled.

Her eyes shut, and Whisper waited until her breathing evened out and she fell back asleep. Mata was an odd one, that was for sure. But what was with that word, 'undo'?

The first of the words.

Until Next Time.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter

Anger

Whisper was still partly out of it as she walked out of Mata and Violet's room. The word was bouncing around her head. Undo. Undo.

She knew what the word meant, from a dictionary point of view. It meant to make just...not happen. If she was playing chess, undoing a move would be reverting the board back to the way it was before the move happened.

But Orange had said that time travel didn't work like that. So was this future...in concrete? Was it possible to undo it? Would she want to?

Based on what she was seeing, she'd want to at least do something. If Amy and Sonic were supposed to end up together, they would anyways. If Belle was supposed to end up alone in the Restoration HQ...she'd find some way to make sure that didn't happen.

She heard voices out in the main room, and came out to Sonic and Shadow on the chair and couch, both watching the television, quietly talking to each other. "Managed to wake him up?" Whisper asked as she sat down.

"Yes. Turns out the Faker naps at the same time every day," Shadow answered with a slight smirk.

"Oh ha ha, once you get to my age Shadow you'll know what it's like to get some sleep. Especially if you have kids," Sonic responded. "Especially if you have kids. Actually that's a good question, could you have kids?"

Shadow shrugged. "Honestly, I have no idea. Gerald said it was a feasible thing, but I'm also ageless, so I don't care to test those kinds of things."

Sonic nodded, and turned to Whisper. "So, Shads-" "Don't call me that." "-was telling me that you saw something a bit weird. The news is running a major story about it, and a lot of people caught sight of your flight down. Most of 'em are impressed. What did you see?" Sonic asked.

"Black mass, moving and writhing as if real. It couldn't hurt Shadow, even though it was covering him. Angered by wisp energy, harmed by chaos energy."

"Black mass huh? Hmm...anything else?" Sonic asked. He looked as if he was wracking his head for something, anything.

Orange popped out of her canister. "Yeah. Moved through purple portals, could fly, and had no real face to it."

Sonic tilted his head. "Translation? I don't have a translator on me, sorry Orange."

The wisp shrugged, but looked determinedly towards Whisper. "She said it moved through purple portals, could fly, and had no face," Whisper translated.

"Purple portals? Like...black with purple fire on the outside? Hold on..." Sonic said as Orange nodded. He pushed himself off the chair, grabbing his crutch as he hobbled, surprisingly fast for how injured Whisper had seen him, to a small bookshelf. "After The End came down on us in Starfall, I started looking up more of the monsters that Eggman was sending after us," he explained, pulling out a small key.

Inside the bookshelf was a series of leather bound, musty smelling books. "I found most of the ones that he used, but the one you're referring to makes me think of it as something naturally occurring. Which means it's probably up there with Gaia, both light and dark. Not Chaos, not Metal Sonic, and definitely not the Nega wisps."

His hands perused the spines until he found a small one, its side coming undone. He pulled it out gently, making sure to lock the bookshelf up afterwards. "We keep these locked up because otherwise Mata might get ideas. That necromancy of hers..."

"She summoned another one, by the way. A flicky. Smarter variety, said it used to be in a robot?" Whisper asked.

"I'll ask Amy," Sonic waved it off. "Wouldn't be the first time Mata's done something like that. Honestly, we banned her from summoning Eggman at least, and I know he would come out here just to taunt me before he disappeared, so she at least hasn't done that one."

"How come you aren't nervous about that? She brings souls back," Shadow asked. "That seems like the kind of thing you'd be against."

"Have kids, Shadow. You'll learn the importance of leaving them to do stupid things once in a while. And Mata says she isn't hurting them, and as Uncle Chuck proved, they do move on after a while. It just...takes some time. And I'll be honest, it is kinda creepy but it helps them and us move on, I think."

Sonic opened the book, looking through some of the dusty pages. It was a sight that Whisper had never seen before, but he looked just at home here as he was running around. For a few moments, Whisper saw him shift, his old self that was just as old as she was.

"Found it! Okay," Sonic said, opening up the full page. "Yeah, that tracks with what I remember. So what you faced was a Time Eater."

"Time Eater? Like that one you fought?" Shadow asked. Whisper turned to him. They had fought one of those things before?

"Not quite. That one had been heavily modified by Eggman, and we were fighting it on our turf, not its. See, the Time Eaters aren't so much a race as they are just a particular body of power.," Sonic said, reading through the paragraphs. "Let's see, Time Eaters are a known danger to the Time Stones, and essentially 'eat' time energy. When a Time Eater is around, it generally means that a time traveler is around as well."

"It can track Whisper, then?" Shadow asked.

"It can track them all," Sonic confirmed. Orange nodded.

"I knew I saw something back at the valley. I knew it! I just didn't know what it was!" she said. Green and Cyan came out of their canisters, followed by the other two.

"How come you didn't say anything!? That's kind of the thing you should speak up about!" Green hovered.

"Because I didn't know for certain! And Cyan was too busy upchucking bus stop sushi-"

"To be fair, it wasn't bad. Also to be fair, that wasn't me, that was Pink," Cyan interjected.

Pink nodded. "Actually wasn't half bad either, although I could do without the latter half-"

"Please be quiet," Whisper whispered. Immediately all five wisps fell silent. "Thank you. How do we beat it?" she asked.

Sonic shrugged. "As far as I know, you don't. Chaos energy exists beyond time, which is why the chaos spear was, to quote Mata and Thunder's Pokemon games, super effective. Wisp energy though, usually doesn't, but it could be that because your wisps are out of time too..."

"So effectively only the things its hunting and chaos energy can actually hurt it. How did you win last time, exactly, again?" Shadow asked with narrowed eyes. "Because if I remember, the rest of them were too busy getting in the way and screaming at you for me to see anything."

"Joined up with my younger self and went Super Sonic on it. Two Super Sonics? Even one would be enough...eventually," Sonic answered.

"I can't go Super," Whisper said. The wisps looked at each other, subtly shaking their heads. Did they know something that she didn't?

"Yeah, it's a rare skill apparently. Tails and Knuckles actually grew out of it, but I'd done it so many times I still have the ability. Shads-" "Don't call me that..." "-may still have it too. But that also takes all seven chaos emeralds."

"Which Tails has one."

"Yep! So...no going Super on this one. Which is a good thing because it's probably wild, which means they're a lot tougher. See, Time Eaters only go for prey they know they can beat. We beat the other one because it was controlled by Eggman. If It hadn't been, there's no way we would have won."

"It's tougher without the augmentations?"

"Much tougher. Even two Eggman...Eggmen? Even with two of him, the augments actually pulled the Time Eater apart so it wasn't capable of most of its actual powers."

"And you know what these are?" Whisper asked.

"Probably the only one who has any idea," Sonic shrugged. "What I figured out with Tails' help, Time Eater's don't actually have mass. That's why they can fly. They can coagulate, but it's only when they have full physical form that they're truly dangerous. If you had let it hit you, the most you would have felt is a little nibble."

"So I overreacted?"

"Nah, because those 'little nibbles' would add up quick. And it'd probably reform around you, so you'd be trapped...not a good way to try to fight it from the inside. Not to mention we'd have no way of knowing what happened."

"What do you mean? She'd be right there," Shadow said. "We'd hear her over the radio. As much as we wouldn't want to."

"Time Eaters literally eat time. It's in the name. Which means something that's out of time? It eats them. And then erases them, so no one would even remember they exist."

"And that's what Eggman was trying to do to you?" Shadow asked Sonic. Whisper felt her face pale; she had been that close to just being...erased?

No. To being undone. Was this what Mata was talking about? The feeling of being so close to the end...of having defied death and fate by just the hair?

"Eh, he didn't know it at the time. He thought the Time Eaters literally ate time, versus eating time energy and eating anything that was out of time. if he hadn't augmented it so it listened to him, it would have eaten him too."

"That...would have been bad."

"Could have been worse. If it ate us but not him he would've succeeded at taking over the world. Multiple times! Try resolving that paradox...you okay there Whisper?" Sonic asked.

The wisps came down and slowly bumped her on the shoulders. "I'm all right," Whisper answered. She wasn't, of course, but she could at least make them think she was telling the truth. Sonic gave her a raised eyebrow, but shrugged.

Sonic looked back down at the book, before he snapped it shut. "And that's about all the information I got. Tails may know more, if he has them on his lab computers but that's at the Mystic Ruins or Central City."

"What happens if the Time Eater had caught Shadow, while he was using chaos energy?" Whisper asked, dreading the answer.

The blue hedgehog shrugged. "Not sure. Probably nothing, maybe it would've gotten him eaten too."

"You know, Faker, if there's a chance of me being eaten, that's probably something I should know."

"Eh, you would've been fine. You have Chaos Control. Whether or not you would've thought of that or not, that's up to you."

"You know anything more about Time Eaters, Orange? Actually that would've been a White thing, huh?" Pink asked.

"That sounds like a White. Maybe Crimson, if one of them were here. Hey Whisper, you gonna get any other wisps while you're here?"

"I think that would be a bad idea."

"Nah, see, Crimson's are kind of out of time all the time already, it's how they lock on to people because they're actually partially blind," Cyan explained. "So a Time Eater probably couldn't hit a Crimson, or they're natural enemies and we didn't even know."

"I doubt it," Shadow said. "Sonic, did you see any Time Eaters in the Lost Hex?"

Sonic blinked, wondering where this change of subject came from. "Uh...no? I wouldn't have either way, because I technically wasn't out of time, I was in the proper time just out of the proper time frame. It's a...weird kind of thing."

"Is that what happened on Little Planet?" Shadow asked.

Sonic looked away. "What's Little Planet?" Whisper asked.

"A small planetoid above Never Lake. It's where Sonic met Amy," Shadow answered. "Amy has mentioned about the time travel that occurred there."

Sonic rolled his eyes. "Not quite like that. So the time travel on Little Planet was facilitated by what's called the Time Stones, like the chaos emeralds but attuned to time energy. What that also means is that normally they'd be like the Time Eater grill on steroids. But they also project a barrier that prevents any Time Eaters from getting there, protecting its inhabitants who are used to all sorts of random time travel shenanigans."

"Could they bring me to the past?" Whisper asked. This was potentially another route they could use, if finding Tails didn't work out. Although how and why it wouldn't, Whisper didn't really want to know.

The word pounded in her head, again and again. Undo. Undo.

She was going to undo everything, wasn't she? She wondered if this is how Sonic felt the numerous times he went up against Eggman and victory seemed so hopeless and so far off.

Sonic shrugged. "Don't know. Probably. Little Planet's constantly going back and forth through time because of the time stone effects. Only comes to the present once each year, above Never Lake actually. If you need a place to run to, I'd suggest there. Little Planet's not supposed to be there for another four or five months though. You have time."

Time. Right...when there was what was essentially a boogeyman coming up from any which angle that could sneak up on her and eat her existence, she had time. There was supposedly a barrier though...but could she trust that?

Also it would eat the wisps existence too, and she couldn't have that. "Hey...we're gonna get out of this, okay Whisper? Why don't you talk to Violet, outside?" Orange suggested.

"How likely is the Time Eater to attack?" Shadow asked. "She's been in this time period for a while, and she managed to get all the way from one of Eggman's bases to the Restoration without seeing it."

"I wouldn't know. That's something Tails would though, I have no doubt he pulled a lot of research on Time Eaters as a whole. Including hunting patterns. It's likely this one barely even knew that Whisper was here until now."

"I'm going to get some air," Whisper said, pushing herself up. The wisps surrounded her like a protective halo of color as she opened the glass door. Immediately she could hear the sounds of someone working on the Tornado, small flashes of fire from a blowtorch.

She followed the rocks, ignoring the way she saw the small goalpost having been moved another twenty feet away, and stood outside the hangar's open door.

The purple fox was there, underneath the main fuselage. She was on some kind of skateboard thing that Whisper had only seen in Tails' workshops, on her back as she stared up at the opened up circuitry and boards. "Everything alright?" Whisper asked quietly.

Violet didn't seem to have heard her, as she didn't respond and probably hadn't looked up. It was hard to tell because of the welder's mask she had on, a long with the lead colored apron she wore. It was probably lead based, if she had to be honest. "Here, I know!" Cyan said.

Whisper tried to say something, anything, before Cyan went and imbued the blowtorch in Violet's hands. The flame extended to nearly four feet, a deeply colored cyan, and it probably heated it up by a lot considering that Violet started cursing anything and everything as she dropped it, making sure that it was nowhere near anything flammable.

The tirade went on for a surprisingly long time, and Whisper felt her ears cool as Violet took off the welder's mask. "Oh, hi Whisper," she said, her face almost Knuckles red rather than her usual violet. "I was uh...you heard all that?" she asked.

"I like her. I like her a lot. Can we keep her?" Pink asked. "Seriously, I think I learned new words from her."

"I think that's just another idea to keep her far away from you honestly..." Blue muttered under his breath.

"Yes. It was...I assume your parents don't know?" Whisper asked as she walked in. Cyan finally disimbued the blowtorch, immediately settling herself in the pilot's seat of the Tornado, starting to make plane sounds as she probably imagined herself an ace pilot.

"Who, Tails and Blaze, or Sonic and Amy?" Violet muttered. "Because the first two don't care, and the second two have more problems than the primary!" she answered. She bit out a growl before she grabbed the blowtorch again, this time making sure that it wouldn't burn her hands, and got back down on the skateboard. "And no, they don't."

"She's angry at them," Orange translated. Whisper nodded. She'd gotten that part at least.

"Not angry. Just...disappointed. Mata knows what's going on as well. How Thunder and Velocity don't, I don't know."

"What do you mean?" Whisper felt herself asking. This wasn't her fight, she was going to undo all of this, but...there was something more going on, something going on with all of them.

"Eh, don't suppose you'd tell them..." Violet sighed as she skated back out, making sure the blowtorch was out. "Mom, Amy, thinks we don't know about her shopping journeys out of the house. Mr. Sonic doesn't like it, so they fight about money a lot. And then there's the messages that they don't want me to see. Dad...Tails...had gotten a message from somewhere. I remember that much, and so he left us with Mom...my actual mom, Blaze. But then she had gotten a call to go to the Emerald Chamber, a special room in the house that Dad had built for her when they got together, to help with some emerald or another. Don't think it was the chaos though."

Whisper remembered seeing those emeralds that Blaze had. Seven colors, much like the chaos emeralds, but differently shaped. She remembered seeing Blaze charge herself with them, becoming a one woman army and taking down an entire armada of ships by herself. She nodded for Violet to continue.

"She drops us off with Sonic and Amy, telling us that she probably won't be gone too long. But then...the Emerald Chamber never opens up. It's locked from both sides, and the lock won't disengage from the outside until the lock from the inside is also disengaged. We know she's still alive from Mata constantly searching for her in the River, but...I don't know. Why hasn't she come back out yet?"

"Maybe she can't. Maybe something on her side is keeping her there and there really isn't much anyone can do about it?" Green suggested.

"See, I'd thought that. So uh...I hope you don't mind, but before you go to Spiral Hill can we stop by Central City?" Violet asked Whisper.

The wolf gave a quiet sigh. By all rights there was nothing wrong with it, but honestly she was already missing Tangle. But this was personal to the girl, which meant that she'd probably go even if they didn't want to. "That depends. Are you piloting us? I heard that Shadow was going to," Orange said quietly.

"Shad...? I hadn't heard that, but I'm not staying here," Violet answered vehemently. "No, I'm not just going to wait around! I'm going to be coming with you, I want to save Dad! Just as much as you want to get back to your time, I want to make sure Dad's safe, and then maybe we can figure out a way to save Mom too," she said, looking away quietly.

That was a good point. It was unlikely that Sonic and Amy would let Violet go with them. Whisper didn't blame them; the girl was young, and while she'd proven an able pilot already that didn't mean that she should come with them. "Please, Whisper!? You have to let me come. I'm the same age as Dad was when Sonic and him were going on their adventures."

"Oh, she has adventure in her blood alright," Pink murmured. "Seriously. Cyan, care to have an input?" he asked the cyan wisp, still in the pilot's chair.

Cyan made a 'whrrr' sound effect and pulled the imaginary stick upright. 'Mrrow, Mrrow, Mrrow,' she repeated.

"That'd be a no. She's rather involved," Blue mentioned. "Hey, Green, want to help me out here?" he went over and spoke into his...ear? Ear.

"I don't have any control over that. That's something for Sonic and Amy to talk about," Whisper answered. "I'm just a guest in their house."

Violet sat back down, a disgusted sneer on her face. "Yeah, and that's as likely as them talking for all of a few seconds," she cursed.

Whisper was telling herself that she shouldn't get involved, that this wasn't her time, but by the time she managed to convince herself this wasn't her problem she was already sitting down next to the girl. "And this is where you tell me to tell you all my problems and then magically nothing happens." Violet snarled out.

"Quite likely," Whisper agreed. "Which is why I wasn't going to. But I'll be here to listen, if you happen to gripe. Besides, Cyan's having fun," she pointed out to the cyan wisp, now acting even more in control of the Tornado. Green and Blue were creating fake blocks and small wind tunnels, actually hover tunnels, and reacted to what Cyan was doing. Pink was grinning and making some of the blocks spiky, adding an additional level of difficulty to it.

"I don't understand how they do it. They're so smart, and yet...they spend all day doing things like this. When I was fixing the Tornado up last time, they were just...chatting. And playing. And that's all they do," Violet complained. "How?"

"Childlike innocence, really, the same kind that was ripped away from your dad," Orange answered. "It's...hard to describe. We're energy beings. We're not like you or Whisper. We never have been. No one except Mother truly knows where we came from, although most of us have ideas."

"You have to be old. How can you be so old, been through so much...everything and still do this?" Violet said. "I'm just so tired of it. Tired of the faking. Tired of Sonic and Amy acting like they care when they don't. Tired of Mata and her endless optimism. Tired of Thunder and Velocity, acting like they're our cousins when they aren't."

Whisper nodded, but said nothing. This was a tired Violet, one who didn't know what their end path would be. She'd once cornered Tails who had done the exact same thing. It was kind of astonishing how similar they were.

Violet's fur color was different, obviously, and her snout shape was much more cat like than foxlike, but the eyes...those were all Tails. The intelligence behind them, that was all him. Not that Blaze wasn't smart, from what Whisper remembered of her she was, but not the way Tails was. A one in a million genius, and even luckier to be able to actually do something with it.

"You don't care, do you?" Violet asked. "That's why you're here. Because you don't care."

"I was taking into memory just how similar you and Tails were," Whisper answered. "You act a lot like him, even if you don't realize it. He was the optimistic one, but even he got tired at times," she continued.

"...Tell me the story?" Violet asked, her voice light and wistful. "I...only know the good things about Dad. I never heard any of the bad."

"I wouldn't call it bad. But...have you been told about the Metal Virus?" Whisper asked. Violet looked at her and slowly shook her head. "It was terrifying. The most terrible thing I've seen. Eggman unleashed a virus that could turn anyone into robots. These same robots could do the same to everyone they touched. An endless spreader, consuming the world."

"I...he beat that?"

"No. He didn't," Whisper shook her head. "I wasn't in the best of places either. Tangle hadn't made it out either. The only one who could beat the virus, who was infected by it, was Sonic. Tails though...he was this close," Whisper said, showing an inch between her thumb and forefinger. "This close to securing a cure."

"And...?"

"He failed."

"I...this doesn't sound like a happy story."

"It wasn't. He was kicking himself for days afterwards. Months. We holed up on Angel Island while we scouted out the chaos emeralds, letting Sonic and Silver go Super to handle it. But Tails...he never stopped kicking himself for it. If he had just been that much smarter, that much faster, he'd have been able to finish..."

"..."

"There was a time, some months later, that he and I talked, right outside the Restoration. He said the same things as you. 'How do they handle it? They got taken by Surge, used against you, and still they play!?' he railed. 'I'm just tired, Whisper, of it all. Tired of Surge, tired of Kit, tired of Metal...tired of Eggman. Tired of Sonic, even, sometimes.'"

"That...didn't sound like him."

"It doesn't," Whisper agreed, "But everyone has those times, Violet. Everyone," Whisper said as she hopped off the stool. She gave a small whistle, and immediately the wisps stopped playing, giving a small salute in the best way they could before going back into their canisters, except Orange.

She turned to the Tornado. "Can you outfit the Tornado with enough supplies to last a crash landing for ten days? I have a bad feeling," Whisper admitted. "We'll need fuel, too."

"Fuel's no problem for the Tornado. Just tell me when you want to go, and I'll make sure the Tornado is in ship-shop shape!" Violet said. There was a depressed look in her eye, that no matter how much she tried to fake it Whisper could see right through it. "Wait, how many people? For the supplies?"

Whisper glanced at her. She made a show of winking at her. "Two...better make it three. Just in case."

Violet grinned.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Airfare

"Any idea on where Vio is? I'm surprised she's not here," Sonic asked, raising his voice. It was hard to hear over the Tornado's propeller, having started up a while ago. According to Violet, a plane like the Tornado had to warm up for a long time before it could fly.

Unless piloted by an eight year old two tailed fox who decided to strap a jet engine to it, although where Violet had gotten that particular metaphor from, Whisper didn't know. Last she heard, the Tornado was actually Sonic's plane.

Although the blue hedgehog had long since let his pilot's license relapse, due to not having as much time in the cockpit as the laws require. Came with having two kids and having to care for four of them.

"No, I think she's sulking in her room," Amy responded, her voice also higher. "Shadow, Whisper, you two have everything you need?" Amy asked.

Shadow said nothing, instead simply nodding. He was familiarizing himself with the Tornado's controls, which were a lot different than the usual planes he flew. Although when Shadow had gotten his pilot's license, Whisper didn't know.

And she had Green on standby, just in case that the rumors of his ability to fly were in fact just rumors. Green's Hover ability would imbue the Tornado with the ability to glide long enough to get onto the ground, no matter where they were.

"Whisper, you know where you're heading is?" Sonic asked. "You're essentially acting as navigator, and trust me it's harder than it looks!"

Whisper nodded. She dared not try to raise her voice over the propeller. Behind Sonic and Amy stood the three kids that Whisper knew about; Thunder, Mata, and Velocity. They stayed out of the way, occasionally waving. They also had large earmuffs on intended to make sure they didn't hurt their ears next to the loud engine's roar.

In front of her seat lay a compass, and a small GPS screen. Shadow had the same thing in front of him. She also had the same controls that Shadow had, however where his were lit up and active, hers weren't. Hers would only activate if the plane sensed that Shadow, as the primary pilot, couldn't fly for some reason.

Tails had remodeled this thing to last. Some of the controls were foreign to her completely, and she suspected those were the mech controls, because of course Tails would have built a mech into a plane.

Violet was nowhere to be seen, not that Whisper blamed her. There had been loud shouting match between Sonic and Violet, and then the fox had disappeared into her room. Mata was saying nothing about where her sister was.

"Right, Vio already got the fuel for it, so you should be good. If you need more, stop by Central City, near Tails' house, or the Mystic Ruins. Tails has another lab out there. Both have enough fuel to last for years even at the rate Tails generally used it," Sonic advised. "We didn't have much here."

Whisper didn't particularly enjoy the thought of having to go to Central City to refuel, but in this case she kept quiet. She had a very strong feeling as to where exactly Violet was, and it wasn't in her room as she should be, but Whisper wasn't going to say anything.

Shadow nodded, giving a small thumbs up, and handed back to Whisper a headset, complete with radio. The wisps were in their canisters for the most part, settled properly at her feet but ready to connect to her cloak the instant they needed to be. Except Green, he was hovering around, not caring about the noise.

She pushed on her mask, followed by the headset. "Checking contact," Shadow's voice echoed. She couldn't hear him regularly without shouting, and it was probably for the best to have a radio.

"Checking," Whisper responded. He nodded. Despite her usual quiet, Shadow or Violet had modified it so she could be heard. She looked over to Sonic, who had now dressed with an orange and yellow jacket for easy visibility. He was standing out in the field, complete with crutch anyways, holding up a few of the flares that other airplanes used.

"What is that faker doing?" Shadow asked. "If he wants to treat this as a farce, he can," he barked out. Whisper didn't blame either of them. Sonic was acting silly, and thus getting a laugh out of the three kids, and Shadow was being annoyed at it, thus sharpening his intuition to make sure that Whisper really didn't have to trust Green. Not that she didn't, because she absolutely did, but him wanting to imbue himself into the Tornado was...a tricky subject, to her.

Especially when she'd realized just how destructive the wisps could be. That fine from the city of Green Hill and GUN hadn't come through yet, although Belle had been informed about the extraordinarily large sum of money that had been transferred into the Restoration account. The old badnik had...not taken it kindly, to put it into words.

The Tornado started moving slowly, taxiing out to the small runway. "Is this going to be enough room?" Green asked, staring over the short paved area. It was only around twenty feet. Nowhere near enough to actually gain height and not crash into the local houses, such as the three story house right where they were facing.

"Should be," Shadow said. "Ready?" he asked. He ignored anything Whisper could have even started to say as the engine revved and the propeller started to get even louder. "Takeoff in...now," he said, not even counting down.

Whisper held onto the wisps canisters as she was pushed back into her seat. The plane moved slowly at first, but within two seconds had already reached maximum ground velocity. Another two seconds later and Whisper felt like something else had changed, because now the bottom wheels of the biplane barely skimmed over the house next door.

If the small satellite dish on the ground was any occasion, they'd missed it by only a few feet.

The acceleration was pushing her down, and it was hard for her to focus. They were still gaining speed, despite the takeoff in literally suburbia. "How!? Alright, how!?" Green shouted.

"Jet engines and magnetism," Shadow answered back. "The faker told me how it worked. The magnets pushed us up, and the jets gave us lift. A line of magnets means we get lift quickly, and slow down just as quick."

"Alright, that's cool. But who builds a plane that's magnetic? Isn't that a bad thing? Cyan would know."

"Wouldn't that be Blue or Orange?" Whisper asked. Her head was pounding still from the sudden acceleration, but as they climbed higher into the sky, it was starting to wear off. Her ears popped instantly, not that she was worried about that.

"Nah, Orange knows things but random physics? That requires math, and as we all know by now, Cyan's a master. Blue would know why it was built like though."

"And now we see why we couldn't just get out of here earlier," Shadow muttered. Whisper looked over the edge. A large array of air defense turrets lined the edges of where Green Hill was. Some of them were pointed at them anyways, and she hoped that they got the memo that the Tornado wasn't locked down.

"Green Hill Central to Tornado Two, Green Hill Central to Tornado Two, repeat heading," both Whisper and Shadow's headsets crackled.

Shadow kept his eyes on the gauges and on the path in front of him. "That's on you, Whisper."

Wonderful. The amount of sarcasm in the world could not contain the amount of excitement she had for such a thing. "Tornado Two to Green Hill Central. Heading is for Central City. Repeat, Central City."

"Heading for Central City. Path is clear and logged. Been a long time since we've seen that plane flying, Tornado Two. Good luck with whatever it is you need," the Green Hill towers said before disconnecting.

"What does he mean it's been a while since this plane was flying?" Green asked.

Whisper shrugged. "I presume it's because it's Sonic and Tails' plane. And with Tails missing, Sonic hurt, and Amy's not going to be flying it..." she said.

Shadow nodded from the front. "Most likely. Could also be that the plane represents hope. Things were bad here, Whisper, but the rest of the world hasn't gotten much better."

"That's so sad. Even after the mad doctor's gone, the world isn't in any better place. Why is that?" Green asked.

"Many reasons," Shadow answered, "And not one of them is easy. People are greedy, and they always want more. Want more food, want more money...want more safety. And when you get those kinds of people, in an environment that allows them to...well, the world doesn't like it. Others, don't like it."

"But Eggman's gone! He's dead, and gone! They don't need safety anymore!"

"He may be gone but Metal Sonic is still around," Shadow interjected. "There are others, too. Mercenary groups are on the rise as a whole. There's several cities on the far eastern side of the continent that have entire PMC's dedicated to their safety. They're not much safer than Green Hill."

"PMC's?" Whisper asked. "Private..."

"Private Military Contractor's. Similar to what the Diamond Cutters were, I would think, but they were far more noble. And there was a common enemy to unite against back then. Nowadays it's...pretty much just each other."

"Wasn't there a 'Dr. Quacker'?"

"Oh, him. I remember him, vaguely. Thought he'd be the next Eggman. Unfortunately his skill with robots sucked, so instead he enforced his will via enhanced cybernetics, similar to how Starline did it."

"That's why Surge took offense?"

"Heh, more than that. She was, as Kit put it later on 'in a complete bend' about it. Tails found the base, Sonic got rid of most of the enhanced and Surge...well, she got rid of the rest of him. And his data. And his base. And everyone who had a copy of his data."

"She didn't go farther than that?"

"I'm speeding up the process. She did. Everyone even remotely connected to Quacker was taken out. At one point Sonic even tried to save one of them. That's one of the stories of how he got injured."

"By Surge?"

Shadow nodded. "Connected right kick straight to the kneecap. Shattered it, and shattered Sonic's nerves at the same time with her electricity. We can bring back the kneecap, but without massive cybernetics of his own, Sonic couldn't restore the nerves. And that's not who Sonic is. At least, according to the story."

"Did he save whoever he was supposed to be saving though?"

"I don't know. I think so. Little boy, not much older than Violet or Velocity. Obviously couldn't have been connected to Quacker except through the least of obvious methods. Still not sure how Surge found him so quick."

"Is...she still around?"

"Surge? She's still around. Living off in the mountains by herself and Kit. At this point she just wants to be left alone. Kit...doesn't know what he wants."

"You know, I'd have felt bad for her if she wasn't so...well, her. You know how she grabbed us wisps with that weird power thing she had going?"

Whisper nodded. "It's painful to remember," she answered. It was a time of hopelessness, and not one that she cared to try to think about. Although now that she thought about it, if she'd told the wisps to really just let go, it wouldn't have been a problem. But she felt she had to maintain their power, their friendship.

"Yeah, Cyan got a few clues as to what was going on. She had so much cybernetics installed in her that she was more cyborg than islander. Starline literally programmed her to keep going and being evil. She didn't have a chance."

"And you...feel sorry for her?"

"I did. Orange did too, although she hated being used for that purpose. Cyan and Pink though...they hated her. They didn't care about what she'd gone through, every choice is another chance to right the world."

"Not everyone can be that strong, Green," Shadow answered. "It takes a strength of heart most of us don't have."

"You did," Whisper pointed out. "Even when the world was against you."

"As I recall it, I know my history better than you do, Whisper," Shadow admonished. Whisper flinched back a bit. His ears drooped after a second. "Sorry. Sore point. I...wasn't quite myself back then. It's taken me this long to get to the point I can even begin to talk about fake memories."

"Is that why the Shadow robots never spoke?" Whisper asked quietly, even for her.

"Eggman could never get my personality right, so he never tried. I suppose I should be grateful, I've seen what happened to Orbot and Cubot."

"Ha! Can you imagine a shadow robot with Cubot's personality? 'Hi, I am Shadow Mark Five, version 2.1 with exactly 4 horsepower to my main engines, and I am the real Shadow!"

Shadow chuckled. "That sounds more like something Metal Sonic would say."

"He's still around, you said?"

"He is. Ever since Surge knocked Sonic out of the fight though, he's been wandering. Belle keeps tabs on him every once in a while. He doesn't know what to do in his life."

"Any other Eggman robots?"

"Sage. She's guarding Starfall, with a copy of Eggman there for company. Gemerl is still with Cream, acting as a laywer's bodyguard. I suppose when Cream has kids he'd act as their nanny."

The plane twisted and turned for a sharp moment. "Hold on, turbulence," Shadow said calmly as the plane started to turn. Whisper could hear the wind blow at the propeller and the wings. The wings were vibrating hard, to the point she thought they'd end up getting destroyed because the wind was blowing too much.

She felt the plane start to go lower, in an uncontrolled dive. "Shadow, what are you doing!?" Whisper shouted.

"I can't control it! It's like the power doesn't work anymore!" Shadow yelled back. He was wrestling with the control stick. "It's like we're locked into something!"

"Green, hover us!" Whisper suggested. The wisp nodded and imbued himself into the Tornado, and she could feel them leveling out. They were nearly an hour out of where Green Hill was, which meant a long trek back only to say they broke the plane.

The wind blew harder, and even Green was starting to have a hard time keeping them steady. "Shadow..." Whisper said. Should she unleash the wisps? Cyan could probably power up the propeller to unsafe standards, allowing them to get past whatever this was. Blue would allow them to land for a short time, cold as it would be, Pink would allow them to stick to Blue's blocks-

"Controls aren't responding!" Shadow said. "We need to land!"

"For crying out loud," Violet's voice sounded over the radios, "drop the power to gauge two, stop your whining, and grip the control stick to area six. Then power up jet engines to four. This isn't rocket science!"

"Violet!?" Shadow roared, but he ignored the fact that hearing Violet's voice meant she was somewhere on the Tornado as he pressed the right buttons. Whisper wanted to comment that this was, in fact, rocket science, but that might just make Shadow a bit worse.

The main engine stopped, but the propeller was still spinning wildly, Green taking care to make sure that they weren't going to end in a massive dive. Just as soon as Shadow grabbed the stick, he dis-imbued himself and hovered next to Whisper, an untired grin on his face. He was enjoying that.

The jet engines caught a moment later, and Whisper felt the acceleration hit her again. The turbulence ended almost as soon as it had arrived, leaving them to fly peacefully in the air. "Violet. Where are you," Shadow asked, his voice harsh and uncaring. "You're supposed to be at home with Sonic and the others, not nearly two thousand feet in the air with us."

"There's your problem! Biplane, Shadow. We're supposed to be at four thousand. The air's thin enough up there and with the jets we can definitely get to Central City easily within the next three to four hours."

"That's not my question."

"Fine, I tagged along. I'm in the trunk with the rocket fuel," Violet said, annoyance obvious in her voice. "It's too late to turn around now, the Tornado doesn't have the kind of power to outrun that turbulence from the front without the rocket engine."

"...That was back turbulence?" Shadow asked, his face pale.

"Did...did you not know that?" Violet asked. "Whisper, you knew that right?"

"No."

"Well. Shit. Okay. Uh...you can thank me once we land?" Violet asked.

"How bad was a back turbulence?" Whisper asked.

"Bad enough that if Shadow had kept trying to wrench control from Green you all would've crashed badly into the mountainside and probably would have died," Violet answered. "Maybe you should leave the piloting to me."

"No. You're going home. We'll get to Central City, refuel, and head back to Green Hill," Shadow said.

"I don't see what's wrong with having her fly. She's a better pilot than Shadow is, and she's already proved that she knows what to do in even the most random of encounters. And if she stays with the ship, she'll be safe!" Green offered.

"See, Green gets it! Whisper, what do the other wisps think?"

"They are in their canisters, not causing problems."

"...You don't want to risk that, do you?" Shadow asked.

"Not particularly, no," Whisper said. She looked down below, seeing only the blue grass of whatever zone they were over now. The ocean was in front of them, and soon enough they were flying over it too.

"...Can I come out now? It's rather warm in here," Violet's voice said. "I can just stick to Whisper's seat, there's always extra room in there because Knuckles."

"There's not much room in here now," Whisper said, glancing down to the five wisp canisters. Green was hovering out the side, an enjoying look on his face as if he was a dog with it's tongue sticking out.

"It'll be fine!" Violet answered.

"I'm not so certain. I think you should stay back there, because obviously you were intending to be," Shadow answered.

Whisper felt a small knock on her back, and looked back to see a small latch open. Violet's head poked out, her violet ears and fur the first part out. "Dad always had the weirdest reasons for including doors on the Tornado, and I never knew why until now," she announced over the radio, pulling herself out.

She was in mechanic overalls, and Whisper could see a small black and white shirt and pants underneath it. The seat was bigger than Whisper had given it credit for, able to seat both her and Violet, rather uncomfortably all things considered, but them both and the wisps.

"...Why exactly did Tails have that built?" Shadow asked as he looked to see Violet, before he sighed. "That seems like a structural weakness."

"That's what I thought, but that's just another thing we'll have to ask him. Besides, Da-Mr. Sonic didn't give you the code for the Central City lab."

"Of course there's a code, and of course Faker forgot. What is it?"

"I'll type it in for you. It's an eight digit code that only us Prowers know! And Mr. Sonic, I guess. Amy probably knows it too."

"You do realize that as soon as we land, I will be calling them and telling on you?" Shadow asked.

Violet waved her hand around. "Yeah, I know. But I mean, you guys are going after Dad. I can't just...not go. He was younger than I was doing more dangerous things. Or do you not know about the nuke Eggman once threatened Station Square with?"

No, Whisper hadn't actually heard that story. And was beginning to wonder exactly how many times they'd come close to certain death because Eggman was trying something. Seriously, a nuke onto Station Square? Was that before or after the giant water dragon had destroyed half of it!?

"...I don't think I know that story, no."

"Or the time he flew a space shuttle to help with the ARK? Or Metal Overlord? Or Gaia? The End!? How many places did you help with, versus how many did he? He was younger than me!"

"For some of those," Shadow said. "But he was also raised in an era that wasn't safe. You on the other hand...have been. Can you even fight?"

"Whoa whoa, I don't think she needs to," Green piped up. "Seriously, she's a gear head. I have no doubt she had a few wrenches and screwdrivers in those overalls of hers. In other words, she can patch up the Tornado and make sure everything's working, being in no danger at all!"

Whisper stayed silent for a moment, waiting for Violet or Shadow to come up with the obvious argument. Realizing that she'd have to, she sighed. "You forget who we are. How many times have we been in 'no danger at all', only to get into danger?"

"How many times have you wanted to ask Tangle out and then refused for really bad reasons before just blushing and pushing aside and ignoring us for like two hours straight?" Green teased.

Whisper stared at him. "...You're not getting treats tonight," she said, her face feeling a bit flush. Shadow and Violet fortunately realized that Green was saying something that he really shouldn't have.

"...well that's not fair," Green complained. "But, I see your point."

"Cyan would be terrified of you agreeing with me, that we get into too much danger."

"She'd be right to be terrified."

"Umm...how many times as Whisper done all that?" Violet asked. Green let out a small noise of pleasure and adulation, and Whisper felt her face flush behind her mask. "Because I'm going to guess that number is really high?"

"Very," Shadow said from the front. "Belle was keeping track at one point, put the total somewhere near 'ten, with a plus or minus of fifteen.'"

Whisper really felt her face grow warm now, a lot more than even the mask could give her. "You can stop now."

"Yeah, we shouldn't tease her while we're up in the air like this. She's a really good shot, and Orange would agree with her. You can't really dodge it this close," Green advised. Violet blinked her eyes before nodding, slowly trying to make herself smaller in the seat.

"She's not going to shoot at us, Violet," Shadow said.

"You don't see the blank stare her mask is giving at me."

Whisper was staring at her, but her actual eyes were focused more downward than anything. But her mask's eyes were staring directly at Violet, weren't they? That was better for intimidation than Whisper thought. She'd have to keep that in mind.

Despite Violet's jarring appearance in the back of the plane, and against Shadow's better opinion, they kept flying towards the Central City. Whisper could barely see the various skyscrapers out this far, but knew they were there. She'd been to the city only a few times in her life, mostly preferring the small outskirts such as Emeraldville.

Or Spiral Hill, if she had to be honest, but not many were going to ask her about things like that.

"Violet, I'm assuming you know where Tails usually lands?" Shadow asked.

"Yep. Right in the middle of the street. You can't miss the house, it's shaped like his head. I asked Mom why he did that and apparently it was because Mr. Sonic kept forgetting which house was his."

"Sounds like Faker," Shadow said. Whisper looked down at the various instruments, highlighting which street it was on, and hoping that Violet was right, just as Shadow started to take them down.

Until Next Time!

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Central City

The Central City suburbs were surprisingly sparse, despite being from the big city. Whisper could look down on one side and see the beach, filled with beachgoers who waved up at them as they flew past.

Far off in the distance, she could also see the mountains, and various other hills that dominated the local landscape. Central City was based in a valley, with a beach on one side and mountains and valleys on the other, allowing expansion to only the sides. It created a single unique city that was long rather than large.

Downtown though was more than enough to show where they were. Skyscrapers battled against the clouds for territory, their gray spires touching the sky.

Shadow brought them down slowly as Violet took over the navigation, her hands far more practiced at it than hers were. Green was hovering around, wondering if he needed to do his job before touchdown.

The streets had almost no one on them. Whisper could see various islanders walking the streets, but none of them were taking vehicles. Cars couldn't be that rare today. As they got further inwards, and she really felt the plane starting to slow down, she saw more cars parked on the side of the road, but even fewer of them active.

No wonder Tails' instructions essentially said to 'land in the street'. No one was driving around. Compare that even to Spiral Hill, Tangle's home area or worse, Emeraldville, and it was kind of astonishing.

The plane flew lower and lower before finally they hit the pavement, small squeaks coming from the tires as they landed. Whisper felt her body push into the cushion and jump almost out of it, and she could feel the other wisps start to jump around. "Finally! Freedom!" Cyan screamed as she bolted from the canister.

"Cyan, wait!" Orange cried out. "She's going to be such a pain..." she said, hovering close to Whisper's shoulder.

The wolf was struggling to catch her own breath. Shadow's landing job was...painful, on her tail. "Ow. Hedgehog, you need to learn to land," Violet muttered.

"I don't see you landing. This thing is a relic."

"Of course it's a relic, it's been a relic since long before I was born..." Violet retorted. Whisper had to agree with her. A biplane model was ancient even when Sonic had been a kid. Tails mostly kept it around because he had rebuilt it so much it would be shameful to not be flying it.

Whisper forced her legs to get back to normal under her, before she struggled to get Violet off her lap. Once that was done, she hopped the three or four feet down to the ground, her boots landing solidly on the concrete. There were a few islanders around, mostly giving curious glances towards Shadow.

"Whoo! Done with that, that was exciting! Hey Whisper, think we can modify the canisters so next time we have a long flight like that I can totally own Cyan at chess?" Pink asked as he came out a second later. "Seriously, we were bored. Like, bored bored."

"I caught that."

"Bored! So bored!"

"I think she knows Pink," Blue said as he came out, still hovering slightly from side to side. "Also, I'm going back in because I'm going to...air travel does not agree with me..." he muttered, darting back in. Whisper sighed a moment before she grabbed all six of the containers.

Violet, once Whisper had gotten out of the way, hopped over the side. Her shoes hit the concrete far louder than Whisper's had. Shadow's was silent. "Where do we put this thing?" he asked.

"Garage. Uh, hold on," Violet said, hopping to the pilot's seat and pressing a small code in.

Two houses down the road a small red house's garage opened up silently. "There, there it is," Violet pointed out. She moved a small lever to the side, and Whisper could see the entire plane was...lifted? No, not lifted. Able to be rolled around, that's what it was.

Tails' house was one of the larger ones in the block. A slanted roof that made it look common, but right out in front was a large yellow building shaped to look like Tails' head. "Ooh, I bet that's the lab!" Cyan claimed. Before she could go over and check, Green grabbed onto Cyan, holding her back. "Boo! Let me check!"

"That's the lab alright," Violet said. She paraded the Tornado around as if it was a horse, slowly leading it to the garage where suddenly the Tornado's wheels started to move on their own. Violet didn't seem too surprised as it maneuvered itself into the garage, parking itself in only a minute. "And there we go!" she said with a smile.

"And here's your stop," Shadow answered. "I'll call your parents," he said, using the opened garage door to enter the actual house. Whisper followed him, and the wisps close behind her.

"Wait, no, I can help!" Violet said, pushing a small button on the side so the garage door went down before she followed the others. "Mr. Shadow, wait!" she said.

It was closed door floor plan, surprisingly. Whisper had always thought Tails would prefer it to be opened up. Instead there were hallways everywhere, with dozens of pictures of a fox kit...no longer a kit.

He'd grown up, a lot. He was much, much older than she was now, too, wasn't he? His head had gotten boxier, but it didn't detract from it. Next to him were pictures of Blaze, the cat also having gotten older and wiser. Dozens of pictures had them walking around with a much smaller Violet, and sometimes even with a baby Mata.

They had looked...happy.

The main family room was easy to find. A few small blinking lights lit up the room a bit, and a noxious smell hit Whisper instantly. Shadow turned on the lights and winced at the sudden light. The counter was covered with various dishes, mostly half eaten. "Mom never had time to clean up..." Violet explained as she came up. "It was so sudden that she just left..."

Shadow said nothing, but went to grab the phone hanging on the wall. He dialed a number instantly, his hand almost teleporting around. "Come on, Mr. Shadow. I can pilot better than anyone, you have to let me come with! If you could save someone you loved, and you weren't allowed to because of something like age, you'd fight for it wouldn't you!? If you're going to save Mom and Dad, I want to be there!"

"Sonic, this is Shadow," the black hedgehog said, ignoring Violet's impassioned pleas. "We found Violet. She stowed away aboard the Tornado."

"Fine. If I have to go back there anyways then I at least want to see the Chamber..." Violet muttered. Whisper kept glancing around. The floor was dusty with age and disuse, the carpet old and falling apart. Moths had eaten the curtains in many parts, and the sunlight bleached the areas it commonly reached.

"Ooh, I got dishes! Come on, let's speedrun this!" Cyan yelled. Green and Blue and Pink all screamed in agreement as they darted for the old dishes that Whisper couldn't even get close to due to the smell. Life was here, but it wasn't the kind of life she wanted to have around.

Violet led her to another steel door, off yet another hallway. This one was painted orange, and had a small electronic lock on it. There was a panel next to it, saying in large black letters, "IN USE". Violet ran her hand down the middle. "Hi Mom. It took me longer than you thought it'd be, but I finally made it back. Where are you? Mata and I need you..." she said, not caring that Whisper was behind her.

This was what Mata wanted her to undo.

There was no answer from the steel door, as if whoever was behind it couldn't hear her. Shadow walked up behind them. "Sonic says that he kind of figured you'd tagged along. He'll be over in a few minutes, and we'll take things out, now that he knows how serious you are," Shadow answered.

"How can Sonic go that fast? He's disabled," Violet muttered under her breath. Whisper had to agree. It was kind of unrealistic, it had taken them a good chunk of the day to even just get here into Central City.

"He still has a Chaos Emerald."

"What would that do?"

Shadow rolled his eyes. "Your stepfather has tricks up his sleeve, even ones that you don't know. Ones that I, too, have. They don't work with wisp energy, which is why we're taking the long way."

Whisper felt it first, a small feeling chilling up her spine. The fur on the back her neck lifted up a bit, and she unsheathed the wispon, poking Orange's canister to wake her up. Instantly the wisp imbued the weapon, and the orange glow slowly lit up the darkened hallway. The lights in the kitchen had helped, but there were so many rooms and hallways that what light it did give off was hindered.

From the family area a few lightning sparks gathered on the ground. They lifted into the area, small shockwaves of electricity bouncing off each other. In another moment Sonic was there, right where the lightning had gathered. Whisper stared down the sights of the wispon, slowly lowering it. "Sonic?" she asked. Was that...Shadow had mentioned the Chaos Control. She'd only ever seen Shadow use it, but could Sonic use it too?

"I forgot how much the Chaos Control took that out of me," Sonic muttered under his breath. Whisper was sure they weren't supposed to hear it, but they all had surprisingly sharp hearing. So it had been the Chaos Control.

"You need to practice more, Faker," Shadow said, his voice acting haughty as he stared at his once rival on the ground breathing hard.

Violet was staring at him. "You could've taken me here at any time!?" she screamed.

"What? No," Sonic answered instantly. "The Chaos Control is one person only, unless your name is Shadow. I've never gotten the hang of bringing multiple people with me. And considering how out of it I am right now, how do you think it'd work with even just one other? I mean, I'd do it, but Amy'd be cleaning up afterwards when I pass out." he commented.

He did look out of it. He was barely standing now, his blue spines hanging low. His eyes glanced over the family room, before he hobbled over to the kitchen, making sure to look over the dozens of pictures on the wall. There was a hint of longing to his eyes that Whisper wasn't sure she was supposed to catch. "It looks better than it did before, at least. Dishes are done this time," he said, looking over to the counter when he'd finally made it. His hand was resting against the wall in place of the usual crutch.

The four wisps popped up. "Yeah, it's great! We don't have noses and we're made out of energy, so we don't care about things that make you meatbags all get angry and moody!" Pink brought up.

"They're not meatbags! It's islanders, Pink!" Blue commented.

"That's what the show I was watching said they were! And think about it, we're energy bags, they're meatbags-"

"Pretty sure that wasn't a compliment for them," Green answered. Pink stared at him with his one eye.

"It...it wasn't? Well. Poo."

Whisper sighed. Whatever show Pink had watched, she was going to have to vet for him. She hoped it wasn't one of those gory violent shows, Pink absolutely loved those and Whisper hated them.

"Blaze still locked in there?" Sonic asked as he hobbled over to the metal door. It wasn't far, just seeming that way. Violet nodded, her hand running down the middle of the door again. "Shadow told me a bit of what you were saying," he explained. His hands flicked on a light switch that Whisper wasn't sure had been there, but yet he'd known it was without barely looking.

"I want to save Mom and Dad. I'm older than Dad was when he was traveling with you, against Eggman and with the Resistance. I can do it!" Violet shouted.

Sonic held up his hand, "Never said you couldn't, Vio. It's just...when it was Tails and I, we were on our own. That's all we could trust, for a long time. It seemed the entire world was against us, a lot. Ask your father, when you see him, what it was like on Westside Island, or even dare I say it the Starfall islands. But...we never wanted that for you kids. Tails and I, we agreed, when you were first born, that we'd do things differently."

"But I don't want to be different!"

"I know, Vio. You were raised on stories of heroes, but heroism...it gets people hurt," Sonic said, pointing to his knee. "We wanted you to be different, to be better than we were. If it was just Shadow here, I'd say forget it, you're coming back. Even if it puts me out for a week."

Shadow's eyes narrowed. "What does that mean, Faker?" he asked accusingly.

Cyan's eyes lit up, "Oh, oh, I know! He was saying that he doesn't trust you at all with anyone, let alone Violet! I don't know why. Is it because she's a girl or because she's Tails' daughter?" she asked.

"Or it could be both of those! Think about it! The impossible romance-" Blue started, only to get smacked by Pink. "Ow. Okay, yeah that's kinda creepy in hindsight."

Whisper rolled her eyes. It was more than just 'kind of creepy'. Really, she should take better care of what shows the wisps watched if this was their idea of entertainment. Romance was something that should be natural, not wisp driven.

"But with Whisper here, now...you have a better goal," Sonic continued saying. Violet and Shadow's ears were twitching towards the wisp conversation, and Whisper got the sudden idea that it was probably for the best that the wisps just...stop talking for a bit.

Violet startled a bit. "Wait, you're letting me go because Whisper's here?" she asked.

Whisper startled. "You're letting her go because I'm here?"

Shadow glared. "Faker, what exactly does that mean?"

Sonic chuckled. "Yeah, I'm letting you go. Shadow...Shadow has demons that are still plaguing him, and have been for a long time. That kind of darkness isn't one to leave anyone. Whisper though...Whisper's been through a lot, and she has the resiliency to not let it affect her."

The wolf in question stared at the blue hedgehog. Had he forgotten that her entire team died? That she was still working off that trauma, and sometimes she had to remember that the Shadow she was working with was the real one, and not one of the Shadow robots? Where on Earth was he getting this nonsense!?

"Also because she has five wisps to help take care of me," Violet deadpanned, staring over the arguing wisps that had been doing the dishes. The dishes were clean now, at least, and none of them had broken. Honestly, the only thing missing was them starting to clean the carpets and flooring.

Sonic nodded. "And because she has five wisps to help take care of you, whereas otherwise I'd have to trust Shadow to do it and we all can't have that," he said. Shadow growled under his breath.

Whisper finally understood. It wasn't necessarily because of who she was and what she'd been through, but rather what she brought to the table. Utilitarian of Sonic, really, but it was similar in the Diamond Cutters. Not so much the New Diamond Cutters, thanks Tangle, but the original set. Some people were selected for certain missions because they were more useful there than sitting waiting for another mission. Rare was it when all of them would go out at once.

"You know, I've tried to get into this system, but Tails somehow made it so I can't even get in," Cyan whispered to Whisper. "I've never seen a system so well defended. Orange, do you see any ways to get in?" she asked.

Orange popped out a moment later. Her eyes scanned the door up and down, trying to take in every angle. "Not a one. It's perfectly shielded. I didn't even think that was possible."

"Yeah. You can go, Violet. We wanted better, but sometimes we don't always get what we want. But Whisper, Shadow? Take care of her, yeah? If you need any help, any at all, we're just a radio or a call away," Sonic nodded. Whisper nodded, half of her ears pointed to Orange and Cyan, continuing to whisper between themselves about the door that had been perfectly sealed against even wisp entry.

"Yes, thank you!" Violet shouted, running and grabbing onto Sonic, hugging him hard. He gave a solid 'ooph' as he was glomped. "You won't regret it, I won't be hurt and I'll bring Mom and Dad back, no worries!" she was saying. Sonic gave a disheartened look and a soft smile towards Shadow and Whisper, slowly closing his arms on the girl.

"Look at this, it's a carbonate style door. The amount of damage this thing can take is astonishing," Orange muttered. Cyan flew over to the wall next to it. Whisper could have guessed what she was thinking; if the door was unbreakable, then the wall definitely wasn't.

"The wall is too. The entire thing is kept circuit free. It's as if Blaze or Tails knew that we were coming, and deliberately kept us out," Cyan said.

"The wall's unbreakable?" Whisper asked quietly.

Sonic hugged Violet tight. "Yeah, Tails did his research when he did it. Blaze asked for a room that only she could access that could be kept separate from everywhere else. There's even a vacuum between the two parts of the walls. It's a massive sphere on its own," Sonic said. "We were never sure why, but Tails knew."

"Fox boy never told us," Shadow shrugged.

"Mom never said anything either," Violet said. "I know that Mom wanted this thing far away from everything else. Separate but connected," she continued.

"We can see that part. No separate circuit, a sphere hanging out on its own...I think this might be a spacial-temporal sphere!" Orange said.

"Or to remind Orange that the rest of us don't speak wisp, it's an orb that transports whatever is inside to another world," Cyan summarized.

"That's what I said."

"That's what I said too," Cyan teased. Orange rolled her eyes.

"Makes sense. Blaze wasn't originally from this world," Sonic said. Whisper turned to him. "She was originally from the Sol Dimension, from what I know. That's probably where she is now."

Violet shook her head, "No. The Emerald Chamber was built to help her meditate on the Sol Emeralds. It can't actually teleport her anywhere," she said. "I looked at the plans when Dad wasn't looking way back when."

"You can remember something as miniscule as plans from back then?" Shadow asked. Violet nodded.

"I've always had a really good memory. It's how I helped Mata make sure she was summoning only the good spirits, because I remembered the pattern she used for particular spirits," Violet explained.

Sonic glanced at her. "That's not going to be an issue now, is it?"

"Shouldn't be. Mata's been writing down each spirit and combination that she gets, so she knows how to get the good ones she wants. I haven't had to help her for half a year."

"You've been planning this for that long?" Sonic asked. "Shows how much attention we've been able to pay..." he said, self-deriding.

"Not your fault," Green hovered nearby, now done with the argument of the dishes. Pink and Blue also flew nearby. "You had three other kids to watch, and you're own issues to work through."

"Is my fault though," Sonic said, "Supposed to watch over all of them. Let them make mistakes, and pick them up when they fall down."

"I...think you did as good a job as you could," Violet said. "Mata and me were just...dropped on your doorstep one day. You took us in, treated us like we were your own, even if I...even with me there."

"Vio, you're almost a teenager. Both Ames and myself remember ourselves as teenagers. We weren't going to hold that against you."

"I was never a teenager," Shadow bragged.

Whisper glanced at him. "That's not as much of a brag as he thinks that is. I mean...he at least had a family for a bit," Green muttered under his breath.

She wondered when the rest of them would realize that aside from Violet she was the youngest of them, in the middle of her teenage years. In other words, the very same type of age that they were referring to as uncontrollable at that exact moment.

"I just feel that...I don't know. You weren't Dad but...you were a good dad," Violet said, gripping him tight in another hug. Whisper noticed that Sonic moved his spines just a bit out of the way so Violet's hands wouldn't get hurt.

"Thanks, Vio. Means a lot to me. Shadow, Whisper, wisps...keep her safe, yeah? I don't want to hear of anything happening, to any one of you."

Cyan came up and gave the best salute that Whisper could tell she'd ever done. "You can count on us! We won't let anything happen!"

"I mean, if we can," Orange said from the back. "We won't let anything happen, if we can."

"You shouldn't clarify things that don't need clarifying! He already knows that we can't do everything, not without a white or a crimson or a black or..."

"No!" Blue decreed immediately, "We are not getting a crimson or a black! No, on no circumstances! We all remember why we banned them the first time, and if Eggy hadn't gone into that cave what would've happened!"

...Had the other wisps tossed the black ones into a single cave? That was...that was horrible!

"Yeah, he would've blown himself up because we stored all the bombs there. It's okay Whisper, we just had a note on all the black wisps that whenever they create bombs, they needed to go to a certain cave. Eggman blew it up, that's kind of what created the original valley that he built out of," Orange explained.

"That fills me with dread," Shadow muttered, his ears twitching. "We're done here then, right?" he asked, crossing his arms with a scowl.

Violet shook her head. "No, we need to refuel the Tornado. Then Spiral Hill," she said. The violet fox turned to Whisper, "the wisps can't actually break through the box then? To open the door?" she asked.

Whisper shook her head. "No. It's beyond them. Both Orange and Cyan looked over it."

"Darn. I was hoping for Mom...I'll go refill the Tornado," Violet said, heading off towards the garage.

"You should get some sleep first. All of you," Sonic said. "It's almost night, and I know Tails has some spare beds around here. I doubt Blaze managed to pull that out of him," he said.

Shadow glared at the blue hedgehog. "I don't need to sleep, Faker."

"No, but Whisper does, and Violet does," Sonic pointed out. "And the wisps...sometimes do?" he asked quietly. Green nodded, while Pink was next to him and shook his head violently. "Wait, which is it? Do you sleep or not?" he asked.

Pink shook his head, Green nodded, Orange shook her head, Cyan nodded her head, and Blue was off sleeping in the corner. Whisper sighed.

"They sleep," she answered for them. She wasn't tired yet, but it would probably be a good idea anyways. They could always pull out food from the Tornado to not go through Tails' stores, which probably had already been hit hard by the many years empty.

Violet came back in with a large yawn on her face, her maw stretched wide. "Tornado will be ready in the morning."

"Fine. I can tell we shouldn't go anywhere yet. We'll reconvene then," Shadow said heartlessly, as he glanced over to a small couch in the living room.

Sonic gave them all a quick wink, before pulling out a blue Chaos Emerald. Small flashes of lightning emanated from it before a bright flash made Whisper wince. When she turned back, Sonic was gone.

"...Are you sure you can't just teleport in there?" Violet asked Shadow suddenly. "It's...it's right there. Right there," she said, pointing to the closed door.

"Sorry kid. I need to have been there before to teleport to it. That door is as sealed off to me as it is to all of you," Shadow explained. He walked off towards the couch, quickly laying down on it.

"Oh. We're...staying here for the night?" Violet asked. Whisper nodded. It was probably for the best, she knew. "Alright. I...guess I'll show you my old room!" she brightened up, leading Whisper and the wisps down the hall, away from the steel closed door.

I wrote this while trying to listen to more somber music than usual, and I think it shows.

Until Next Time!

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Blaze

Violet's childhood room was...well, if Whisper had to guess it was like that of a child. It'd been far too long for Whisper to remember what it was like.

Small crayon drawings were on parts of the wall, and others were complicated schematics that also looked hand drawn, but using specialized tools. The carpet was a dark purple, and the walls were a sky blue with gray clouds swirled in. There was a single bed in the far corner, looking neat as if it hadn't been slept in recently, and there was also a large desk on the other side.

There was a small nightlight of some kind of pony. Whisper thought she recognized it as a dis-morphed form of a character from some children's show that had been on during her time.

"Um...yeah. This was my room," Violet said softly. "Mata's was across the hall," she said. She looked over the long forgotten room, frozen in time. "I miss it, sometimes."

"I think you're allowed to," Orange said softly, hovering over Whisper's shoulder. "It's never easy to lose a parent. To lose both..."

Whisper nodded. Her own family was a screwed up mess as well, and there was a reason she was on the other side of the planet. "I know. It's just...am I though? My parents are both still alive, just...not here."

"Doesn't matter," Whisper answered. "The fact remains that you miss them. That alone is enough," she said.

"I guess so," Violet answered. She looked around a bit, going from an old bookcase in the corner filled with children's stories to an old box that had a bunch of sports equipment. All of it was much too small for her now, but for a child...the perfect size.

"What were they like?" Whisper asked suddenly. "When they were here?"

Violet nodded. "It's...hard to say? Dad was always one step ahead of me, whenever I came to him with a question he'd let me ask it, and then ask me questions to let me come to the answer myself. Unless he was in the middle of a project, then he'd just flat out say the answer before I could ask. He was...attentive, I guess. Mom was...a bit more. She was always making sure I wasn't hungry, making sure that I was playing outside..."

"Sounds about right for both of them," Whisper smiled. Blaze was an unknown to her, almost never actually having met the 'princess of Sol'. Would that make Violet and Mata princesses as well? Or had she forsaken that title when she married Tails? Or had they even married? There were no wedding pictures, Whisper realized, throughout the house.

"Aunt Amy and Mr. Sonic were much...less. But they also had to deal with Velocity and Thunder, and those two are a handful," Violet said.

"Amy said that you were a major help with dealing with both of them," Orange supplied. Violet nodded.

"I just emulated my mom. Made sure that they were playing safely, not getting into trouble..." Violet said. She sat down on the bed, pulling her shoes and socks off.

"Have a good night, Violet," Whisper said. Violet smiled at her, waiting for Whisper to leave.

"There's a guest room, another one, just down the hall. Or I suppose you could take Mom and Dad's room..." Violet said. She laid down on the bed, and realized with a frown that it was kind of small for her. Her feet would hang off of the edge.

Whisper nodded and slowly shut the door. Without Violet and her constant talking, there was almost an impossible darkness that seemed to invade every corner of the house. Green popped out of the canister, letting a bit of light come out from his hover rings to help guide her. It almost felt trespassing to turn the lights on now, with Violet in her room and Shadow in the family room.

The small green light was enough to lighten it up, but not enough to make it seem that it was any more approachable. The house was silent, dreadfully so, and the light actually made the pictures seem worse than they were in the full light, full of harsh angles and narrowed eyes.

She was a trespasser, here. Both in time and in place. This was not where she belonged.

There was a door, right where Violet had told her, that led to a much more...normal, room. She flicked on the light, and after a moment of being blinded let her eyes adjust to it.

One bed in the center, with two dressers. A large closet on one side, and another room that was probably the bathroom. There was no door there, although Whisper thought she saw singed marks where one would be. The bed was a neat maroon, with hardly any mess to it. It'd been made neatly, and if she looked at the corners she could see burn marks.

One of the dressers was neat and tidy, every picture or thing on it was orderly and well thought out. Sonic and Tails, mostly, with a few of Tails and the others. A map of Angel Island, complete with a small mark in a sudden scrawl 'Don't tell him you have this' in words that didn't look like Tails'. There was a picture of Tails and Blaze, smiling together, with a small violet fox running between their legs.

The other dresser was much less orderly. Some pictures were tossed down face down, and Whisper could see some of Blaze and Silver, and Blaze and Tails. One of the pictures was of a younger Violet holding Mata carefully, the two-tailed cat's tails tickling the fox's ears. Small pieces of mail sat down, old bills that had small singe marks on them. A neat mark on one corner, 'You know it's much easier to burn these fully than it is to let me recycle them?' That seemed much more like Tails'.

That said volumes about what type of relationship the two had. "Ooh, look at this! Full suite!" Green said as he hovered to the bathroom. "This is massive!"

Pink and Cyan came out a moment later, checking out the bathroom as well. Whisper rolled her eyes, but checked it out as well. It really was large, with a shower that was almost as big as a hot tub, and a full counter with two sinks in it. The tile was freezing cold, Whisper could tell even through her boots.

"We're heading out early, so try to get some rest," Whisper said. The wisps nodded, not trying to fight back. Whisper doubted that they wouldn't stay up late, they had practically a full sauna to work with.

It would feel weird to sleep in the same bed as Tails and Blaze had, so Whisper compromised and simply fell on top of it. Her cloak would act as a blanket if she got cold, but with the wisps around she doubted that she would. Cyan, especially, would start to trigger the heat if she got really cold. She made sure the pillows stayed far away from her head, and she curled up into a small ball. Orange turned off the light, keeping the bathroom light on as the wisps played in it.

Even with the wisps causing noise in the other room, she was exhausted, and she wasn't sure how long it took before she fell asleep, but it couldn't have been long. An inky darkness seemed to ease its way into her mind. She was alone now, but she wasn't worried for some reason. She barely even recognized where she was.

"Whisper..." a voice called. Her head turned, and despite the impossible darkness she could see quite easily. The doors were open, and there was no light. Even the nightlight in Violet's room was missing.

She forced herself up, looking at the time. The clock was a mishmash of numbers that made sense to her, constantly changing. Odd, but not the weirdest thing she'd seen. "Whisper." the voice said again.

The floor was freezing cold, but warmed as soon as her feet hit it. The area was not creepy anymore, but rather inviting. The dark was still there, slight noises echoing into her ears. Whisper nodded, pushing the mask up her face a bit as she started to walk down the hall. She didn't need to see now, for some reason.

It had been dark and dreary earlier, but now it seemed...not bright and cheerful, but the dark was much less oppressive. The shadows had no edges to them, rounded and soft. "Whisper. Really."

The voice was seemingly getting annoyed at her actually looking around. She didn't know why. She was at a friend's house. Actually, what was she doing?

And why was she now in front of what used to be the steel door? Which, like almost all the other doors, was wide open.

The inside of it was a pure white, an endless expanse that made Whisper wonder about how much of Sonic's story of the "End of Time" was real, and how much of it was right here.

Blaze was standing in the middle. She was much taller than she had been, the last time Whisper had seen her. The jewel on her forehead was still as bright and red as ever; a sign that lacked on both Mata and Violet. Her face was older, her fur a bit darker, and she was clad in some kind of yellow toga. "Whisper. Really?" she asked, her voice echoing throughout. She had a look of disbelief on her face, as if her calling out to Whisper was something that should be 'hurried'.

Whisper tilted her head as the dream started to crash down on her, walking in through the door. The instant she was through, the door slammed shut behind her, and Blaze gave an honest sigh. "I was hoping that wouldn't happen."

"I'm not trapped in here am I?" Whisper asked. Her own voice echoed throughout, which appeared to be just a thing that happened in dreams. That also explained the numbers randomly changing to everything she could think of. Hadn't she read at one point that letters changed around during dreams, making it impossible to read?

Blaze shook her head. "I doubt it. Shadow's been here before, although he may not remember it. His mind is strong, but it fights the Sol Emeralds with every breath."

"Are you here actual, or is this a dream?"

"And why could it not possibly be both?" Blaze asked. "Just because it may be a dream does not mean that I'm not actually here."

"Then I should tell you off for abandoning Violet and Mata."

Blaze winced as if she had been struck across the head. "...I didn't want to. I especially didn't want to. It was supposed to be for a day. For me to contact Miles like this, and then...the door locked. And unfortunately the Emerald Chamber's override code is only in Miles' hands. We...never thought that it would happen when he wasn't here."

"That doesn't excuse you."

Blaze gave another wince. "Nor should it, I suppose."

"How can we free you, then?" Whisper asked. There were sounds of roaring around them, as if something was trying to get in.

"There are two ways. One is to fix all trans-temporal issues. That should let the Emerald Chamber let me out, because Miles made it far more sensitive than I had initially requested. The other is to grab the override, but it's more than just a code. It's a physical key, a code, and a soul. Miles, Vio, or Neko should be able to handle that part. It doesn't hurt, and it doesn't affect anything, but those three are the only ones who can."

"Why them?"

Blaze blinked at her, tilting her head. "Because who else would I entrust the Sol Emeralds to?" she asked. The Emerald Chamber contained the Sol Emeralds? In hindsight, Whisper thought, that made perfect sense. Also why Cyan and Orange couldn't get in when they tried. Needing a soul lock though...that was the type of thing she had no information on.

"...Also, Neko?"

Blaze gave a soft smile. "It means cat. Mata. Everyone refers to Tails by the nickname, so instead my name for him is his real one. Violet and Vio is obvious, but Mata...well, cat. Neko."

"She was told it stood for nekomata."

"Cat monster? Really? No...if anything, I am truly the only monster here," Blaze said. "Please...keep an eye out on Vio for me, since I cannot."

"Mata told me I must undo-" Whisper said, before the white of the dream Emerald Chamber started to shake and crash. "That didn't sound good," she stated, before realizing her voice was no long echoing. Was she starting to wake up, just by uttering the word?

"Oh yes, that's quite bad," Blaze answered still just as serenely as before. Her voice wasn't echoing either. "That word though...I suggest you not say it again, and I certainly won't. The fact that it has power though...that worries me."

"Why?"

"You said that Mata has told you. You understand the meaning of the word better than most, and the spirit world seems to agree," Blaze said, motioning all around them. "Please. I don't have much time. Promise me you'll take care of them."

"If I don't," Whisper started, before she mouthed the word she shouldn't. Blaze nodded. "I will. Don't worry. Where is Tails?"

"Miles was trailing an old kingdom. Apparently, the King and Queen disappeared for years and months on end, before suddenly reappearing many years later. They found followers of their old comrades, and took over the city they were in by themselves."

"That doesn't sound like the Restoration. Especially Tails."

"They claimed to use magic. Specifically magic to bring people from out of time to now," Blaze said, looking ominously at Whisper. "I think you can put the pieces together."

He'd gone to them...to try and bring her back. "And Tangle went with him," she summarized. Blaze nodded.

That explained a lot. Tangle probably found out first, and then like the pseudo-Sonic she was dragged Tails along with it, and then something happened and forced Blaze to go into the Emerald Chamber, and now Mata and Violet were stuck without their parents, Sonic was horribly permanently injured, Belle was...locked away in the Restoration HQ with only a movie account to keep her company, and who knows what the others are going through.

"Where is this...kingdom?" Whisper asked. "If you managed to contact Tails you must know."

Blaze shook her head. "They got caught halfway. There were no road signs, and Miles was asleep when they were caught. Blindfolded the rest of the way. I'm afraid I can't contact him except through physical messages, and those are barred from me for obvious reasons."

"Where were they headed to then? And where from?"

"From Fern Valley, heading to King's River," Blaze said. Fern Valley, she knew that place. Hard to get to, she'd went there with the rest of the Diamond Cutters at one point. The original squad. Forested, easy to get lost in. Small streams and bridges, well traveled.

King's River was...nearly two, three hundred miles away from there. The road was windy at the best of times, and had hundreds of various small roads that led off to the bushes from what she knew. That meant the area she had to search was somewhere between there and there. She had a solid starting point. Now she had to convince the others to take her there.

"Follow your path, Whisper. Time isn't a loop. It is not yet set in stone," Blaze said softly.

Whisper nodded. "I know. I'll undo it all," she said, the word causing the world to crack and shake. Blaze smiled softly, even as she disappeared from view. The Emerald Chamber was next, collapsing into an abyss. The darkness overloaded her vision.

And Whisper woke up, lying on top of Tails and Blaze's bed, which was still just weird to think about. Shadow was at the door, his eyes shut. Whisper rolled over, quickly putting her boots back on.

"Oh good. You're awake already. I was trying to figure out how to wake you up," Shadow said from the door. "Violet's in her room?" he asked.

Whisper nodded. "Easiest way to wake me is to ask Cyan or Orange. They'll scream at me if they need to," she said. Shadow rolled his eyes, but he gave a shrug and headed over to Violet's room.

"Alright, so we caught some weird stuff a while ago. Everything alright?" Orange asked from the bathroom. She had a small crown of bubbles on her head. Pink was next to her, a large scarf made of the same. Had they been having a bubble bath in here?

She looked inside, at the two sinks. Sure enough, one had been filled to the brim with bubbles, and between Cyan and Green were slowly carving them to make various shapes. "Oh yeah, she's awake! Alright, what's going on?" Cyan asked as she excitedly came up.

"Tails and Tangle were going from Fern Valley to King's River. Caught halfway, after a kingdom specializing in magic, supposedly had time magic," Whisper summarized.

The five wisps stared at her, blinking in unison. It was kind of creepy, if the wolf had to be honest.

"Time magic," Cyan answered.

"Really? Why on Earth would anyone mess with Time of all things?" Green asked.

"Maybe they just specialize in temporal distortions. That's what white wisps do, anyways." Orange brought up.

"There's also the rhythm guys. They do weird things like that too," Pink suggested.

"Time magic. Can others actually do anything with it?" Blue asked the other wisps. Whisper rested her back against the door. Sometimes part of gathering information was just...letting the wisps talk it out.

"Some can, but it's rare. Sonic can use that Sonic Wind thing, and Shadow has the Chaos Spear, and they both can do Chaos Control," Orange said.

"Chaos Control and magic are two very different forces though," Cyan said. "Magic is literally 'there is no explanation for this' whereas the Chaos Control is contorting the global chaos field into collapsing into a single point, bringing that point-"

"We get it, you know how to Chaos Control," Green said. Cyan answered by sticking out her tongue.

"It wouldn't be the first time for this kind of thing. Remember, certain electrical outputs can do the same thing," Pink said. "That's why Sonic can do the ascension thing, and our own energy is akin to magic at times."

"Yes, but we can explain our energies," Orange answered. "You're suggesting we try to find...please tell me you aren't telling us to."

"It does make narrative sense," Blue piped up.

The other four wisps let out a low groan. "We're not in a random story found on the internet," Orange said patiently. Blue rolled his eyes. Had they been having this discussion before, when she wasn't there? When would that have even been?

"No," Whisper said, bringing their attention back. "We go to Fern Valley, and from there we take the same road they took. We'll fight them off if need be."

The five wisps nodded and flew into their canisters on her cloak. Shadow entered the doorway not a moment later. "Still here? Violet's up. She's refueling the Tornado, has been for a while. She says it should be packed and ready to go whenever you are," Shadow said. Whisper nodded, grabbing the variable wispon and making sure it was secure on her back.

Whisper followed him back through the house. The Emerald Chamber was still sealed shut, and she could imagine Cyan drooling over it if she revealed to her exactly how the door worked.

"Sleep well?" Shadow asked. Whisper glanced at him, surprised at the small talk. Sounds from the garage were getting louder, and Whisper could hear the sounds of a fuel tank slowly filling up.

"For the most part. Dreamed of Blaze."

Shadow nodded. "I've never gotten a restful sleep here, even before Tails and Blaze disappeared."

"Blaze says hi, by the way. To free her, we need Tails and the override code, the key for it, and one of the girls or Tails directly."

Shadow stopped, staring at her harshly. "And...you know this how?" he asked.

"Blaze told me."

"It was a dream, Whisper."

"That's what I thought too. But...she also said Tails and Tangle were checking out on an old kingdom. Rumors of magic-" Whisper started.

"Of course they checked out the Acacia Kingdom. Certainly has nothing to do with rumors of people disappearing for years at a time."

"The only other lead is the clock. Any update?"

"Belle's translated it," Shadow admitted. "But...it wasn't good news, so we weren't going to let you know."

"Let me hear it anyways."

"Fine," Shadow shrugged. "It was only for your benefit anyways. We who watch Time's End push into the time is needed. All can be undone, all will be undone, and The End Time has come."

That word. Whisper memorized the statement, and she glanced at the mask to make sure it had recorded it as well. She was to undo it all.

"We don't know of any of this 'Time's End'," Shadow said. "We put it down to gibberish, recorded it anyways, and now the thing is lying within one of the Restoration's vaults."

Whisper nodded. "It fits, from what I know. Keep it there."

"That's what we were going to do anyways," Shadow said as he opened the garage door. The Tornado sat there, it's fuel tank shut. The violet fox was slowly putting in small boxes and crates into the back and underneath where they had sat.

"Oh good, you're both up. Who decided to pack the Tornado the way you did? That was some of the sloppiest packing I've seen," Violet asked, pushing another box out of the way, more towards the front. "You want the weight to be distributed, not all in the back."

"You do if you have Omega with you," Shadow defended himself instantly.

"We didn't have a two ton robot," Violet answered instantly. "Besides, Omega...he's gone, right?"

"There have been attempts to bring him back, but yes his memory core collapsed," Shadow said.

Whisper winced. Another two people whose lives would be better was she had undone it all. Omega and Rouge. "How...?" she asked gently.

"Not in front of the kid. It's not a friendly story," Shadow answered.

"I can handle it. I'm older than Sonic was when he first started."

"And how much death did Sonic have to worry about? The only death I remember is that of Metal Sonic, which quickly went away because he was remade."

Violet seemed to wrack her brain a bit. "In the stories I know the only one I remember is that of you. And obviously, you're not dead."

"I'd like to think not. I feel rather alive actually."

"But you know I have a sister who raises the dead," Violet deadpanned, "so I think I have a bit more experience with death than you do."

Whisper winced. She was trying to convey that saying that to someone like Shadow was just asking for it. Instead of exploding like she thought he'd do, instead he simply closed his eyes and gave a sigh. "I wish you did," he said simply. "You don't. But I wouldn't want to wish my knowledge and memories onto anyone."

Violet stared at him. "Right," she said after a moment. "Sorry. I didn't mean to bring it up. Tornado's ready to go. Spiral Hill next."

"Fern Valley," Whisper interrupted just as Shadow nodded and jumped onto the Tornado's wing.

"Fern Valley? Why are we going there? There's nothing there now. The entire thing got destroyed like five years ago," Violet asked.

Whisper stared at her. That...hadn't been accounted for. "To Spiral Hill, to get maps. Whisper thinks that Tails and Tangle went out to the Acacia Kingdom."

Violet nodded, before she turned to Whisper in amazement. "Wait, we're going to the Acacia Kingdom!? That's awesome! No one's ever been there that's made it out, aside from that one guy who said it was the nicest place he'd ever been to!"

"Scenery. He said it had the nicest scenery," Shadow said. "The people, he said, were enslaved, beaten, downtrodden, and much like the people of Green Hill were."

"That's okay, we have the wisps! The saviors of Green Hill Zone!" Violet smiled. Whisper felt the back of her head start sweating.

"Please don't call them that. They don't need more pride," Whisper admitted. Violet shot her a glare, before she hopped up onto the Tornado, starting it up with a few simple button clicks.

Whisper climbed up into the other seat easy enough. "Shadow, are you going to ride on the wing?" she asked.

The black hedgehog nodded. "Faker does that all the time, and that was before he knew to magnetize his shoes. Or before he knew how. I'll be fine."

Whisper didn't want to admit it, but a part of her was rather eager to get the Tornado flying, if only to see the black hedgehog fly off the wing. Violet hit another button, and they watched as the main garage door opened up.

The Tornado slowly started to taxi out of the house. "Got everything you both need?" Violet asked through the radio. "Because this thing is a pain to turn around," she said.

Whisper nodded. "Yes. We're fine. To Spiral Hill," Shadow said.

"...I thought it was Fern Valley. Come on, we going west or north here?" Violet asked. "Whisper, come on, you're the navigator. Tell me, Fern Valley or Spiral Hill?" she asked.

Whisper looked at Shadow, who shook his head. "Spiral Hill. But we'll check out Fern Valley afterwards," she admitted.

"Got it! Course plotted...and here we go," she said, making sure there were no vehicles on the road before she pulled out. The small fox turned it, aligning the plane to the road, before she gunned the engines.

Whisper took a deep breath as soon as they were in the air. Sure enough, the black hedgehog had fallen off instantly. Cyan mimicked taking a picture.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Travelogue

Shadow glared at Violet from on top of the wings, the fox girl giving a wide grin. "You did that on purpose," he accused. Her grin got wider, and his eyes got narrower.

Whisper was unfortunately not paying much attention to the byplay. She was thinking too much on Blaze's words, and how the pyrokinetic cat had essentially infiltrated her dream. Or even if she had, or her mind had just made it up.

The Tornado had another navigation screen, and while Violet and Shadow were arguing over things, Whisper checked to make sure that they would still be on course even if she were to look through the map.

She pressed a button, and watched it zoom out. She moved it around a little bit, and tried to feel for the plane turning on its own. The stick kept straight, a sure sign that they weren't turning. As long as she didn't do much else, she'd be alright then.

"When were these maps last updated?" Whisper asked. Shadow and Violet, in the middle of arguing with each other about whether or not Violet had turned off Shadow's magnet shoes, turned to look at her.

"I update the maps with a GPS every time we land," Violet said. "Mr. Sonic said that Dad always did that whenever he brought the Tornado somewhere, so they're...I'm not going to say super up to date, because GPS satellites are kinda rare, but they're fairly up to date. The ones on Green Hill probably wouldn't be, but give that one another week or two. Why?"

"I want to check something. Fern Valley and King's River."

"More like you want to check out to make sure that Blaze's words are somewhat factual," Green said from the side. Whisper nodded. Neither Violet nor Shadow made any movement to show they'd heard the wisp.

"Oh, right! Yeah, those maps should be...well, only a week old at most. But we haven't heard of any earthquakes or any ground shattering nonsense coming up over there, so we should be good to go," Violet said.

"Spiral Hill first," Shadow warned.

"No, Fern Valley first!"

"Spiral Hill!"

"Fern Valley!"

"King's River or Planet Wisp!" Green piped up. The two arguing ones kept going, ignoring him completely. His body drooped in what would have been a shoulder slump if he'd been an islander. "You listen to me, right Whisper?" he asked.

"Of course. You want to go home?"

"No, I just want to be heard," Green answered. Whisper nodded. It was...hard sometimes, when the only one who could hear were ones who weren't listening in the first place.

Whisper looked down at the maps, trying to find 'Fern Valley' on it. It seemed that it was a long stretch of trees and valleys and canyons, all highly forested over. There wasn't much in terms of a pathway, although there was a small note that said there was one. A long snow-covered mountain range covered the north and west of it. Shadow had said it had been 'destroyed'. Were the plants just taking over it?

Now for the hard one. Keeping an eye on Fern Valley, she zoomed out the map until she found what looked like a large stretch of white. White didn't exist on maps unless she saw snow, and based on the elevation map snow should have been impossible there.

The white patch stretched for nearly two hundred miles at its widest point, before it suddenly popped into color again on the far side. A large blue chunk was rendered, coming out of the white patch. King's River.

So that white patch must be where the magic kingdom was.

Two hundred miles. That's how much area she had to search, in nearly a white square. "Why is there a white patch here?" she asked Violet.

The fox turned downwards towards her own screen. It must've duplicated what Whisper was seeing. "Oh. Uh...I don't know. I'll ping a satellite and see if we can't get eyes on that."

Shadow turned to look over her shoulder. "Can't. GUN's been trying for a while. There's some form of EMP that's almost pulsing out of that area. It distorts all pictures to the point of unsuitability. That's why the render of King's River, on the far side, is so badly damaged. They can only see one side of it. Same with Fern Valley."

"Think it's a Chaos Emerald?" Violet asked. There was something her voice that was almost hyped up to be trying to hunt a Chaos Emerald. Whisper wanted to roll her eyes, but didn't. Just because her dad did it, doesn't mean that she had to.

"No, most of the Chaos Emerald's are accounted for. Even then, GUN can make sure that none of the chaos radiation affects satellites, and they do. Frequently. No, whatever it was that's affecting them, it's not a Chaos Emerald," Shadow said.

"So what could affect a satellite like that?" Violet asked. "If it's not a Chaos Emerald."

"GUN doesn't know, and I don't either. Could be any number of things. Eggman tech, too, could cause that. The Restoration still has some old GPS maps from during the war. The amount of white space on those is...significant."

"Maybe they just stole some Eggman tech?"

"Unlikely. Unless they found Metal Sonic or Surge, but we know where Surge and Kit are, and they've been keeping to themselves."

"And Metal Sonic?"

"...We don't know."

Whisper blinked. Metal Sonic was a major assassin robot, and they didn't know where he was at all times? "How? How do you not know?" Violet asked for her. "Isn't that kind of a big deal? Mrs. Amy still shudders whenever the name is brought up."

"He moves around. Ever since Eggman died, he and Sage are off...doing who knows what. Sage we know is stationed, on her own decisions, on the Starfall Islands. Metal Sonic, they tracked him to the tundras in the north, but that's where the trail ends. And he was heading south, from there. That was nearly three months ago."

Whisper looked up the map, seeing the same places Shadow was talking about. The cold circle, is what her mother had called it, way back when. She could find it easily enough, and she imagined the blue robot slowly trudging through the snow with a brown cloak on. Why brown? She didn't know.

"Ooh, I bet that we're going to meet them at some point. Why else would they be brought up by now?" Blue muttered, floating next to Whisper's head and looking over the maps.

Whisper rolled her eyes. Blue, for some reason, was now thinking in terms of stories, as if everything was just one big...coincidence, written up by someone else.

Orange popped out of her canister, and for a moment Whisper relived the moment where Orange had decided to imbue a taxi and take off at two hundred miles an hour. "Or, it could just be that one is a very dangerous AI and one is a very dangerous robot and it's only for the sanity of everyone that we keep an eye on them!"

"Well, yeah, but what fun is that? Seriously Orange, think of the stories! What else could be better than a lost love between a robot and a girl lost in time-"

Both Orange and Whisper exchanged looks. "No more romance novels for you, Blue," Whisper proclaimed. Blue's eyes got wide, and started to look awfully sad before he grinned. "You wonder why no one listens to you..." she murmured.

"Hey, just because I have crazy conspiracy theories doesn't mean I shouldn't be listened to."

Orange shook her head, "No, Blue, that's exactly why you shouldn't be listened to. Now when you have a good point, such as pointing out that King's River is technically between us and Spiral Hill, well..."

Shadow and Violet's ears twitched. Whisper felt a small pang of satisfaction. They were listening, and not just arguing for the sake of killing time while on board an airplane. Piloted by a twelve year old. She looked at Green, hovering above them with a look of longing as the wind rushed by his face, once again satisfied that she'd be safe because if anything she trusted the wisp more than she trusted the other two.

"Is it really?" Violet asked, looking at her own map. "I mean, it's off by a few hundred miles, but I didn't think King's River was that long..."

"That's why it's called 'King's River'. Longest river that we know of," Shadow said. "It's still quicker to go to Spiral Hill than it is to go to Fern Valley. And we will need to refuel."

"No we won't?" Violet asked. "There's more than enough fuel to get us to Fern Valley and Spiral Hill without refueling at all."

"I think there's another reason Shadow wants to go Spiral Hill, and I don't think my crazy romance theory is correct..." Green murmured.

Shadow sighed. "There is, actually. Because I've been reinstated as a GUN agent, one of the things they wanted me to do was to go around to all the old higher ups of the Restoration and Resistance."

"And Jewel's at Spiral Hill," Whisper realized. And it was nearly impossible to go much higher than Jewel. She was the leader for the entire time that Whisper was part of the organization, after Amy had stepped down. The beetle was well organized, and didn't mind running ridiculously long hours to make sure everything was up to snuff. That is what made it so easy for Surge and Kit to infiltrate the first time around, but...well, Whisper and Silver knew that something was up.

And if she'd had Cyan track them throughout the Restoration base without anyone realizing it because honestly who could ever track a laser wisp throughout an electronic camera system, well...that was just her knowledge.

Although Tails had found a way to track her, and had promptly locked her out. Right before everything went kaput, actually.

"Yes. Amy is already accounted for. Angel Island is...well, they think they know," Shadow said.

"Angel Island? You mean Uncle Knuckles' place?" Violet asked. Whisper had to stop herself from facepalming. Of course Violet and the other kids would know who Knuckles was. Just because the last echidna was actually the last echidna didn't mean he didn't like visitors. That she knew.

And that he wasn't afraid to punch in the face.

Although Whisper hadn't actually known him all that well. She'd met him a few times, and while he seemed like a good person, certainly dedicated to the Master Emerald as he should be, there was an inherent air of loneliness about him at times.

Whisper could relate, but only in the times when the wisps weren't around. Most of the time they kept her company enough for several people.

"Yes. You know where it is?"

"...Yes? Is that a trick question? Island floating in the sky. Kind of hard to miss," Violet answered.

"Not a trick question. The Master Emerald gives off similar radiation that blocks most electronics. GUN has yet to figure out how to deal with the Master Emerald."

"You say that as if you know a way, and you and GUN are separate," Violet pointed out.

"I do. It's called ignoring it because Knuckles is a capable guardian."

"I don't think they know how to. A gem of extreme power that they don't control? Pretty sure that's anathema to them," Orange joked.

"You joke, but that's effectively correct."

Whisper nodded. She almost wanted to stop by to see him, to make sure that he didn't have any information to get Tangle and Tails back. And yet...she wanted to leave him alone. He was, at most, Shadow's friend. Her own friends were the wisps, and Tangle. And that one was why she was out here to begin with.

"Any sign of the Time Eater?" Whisper asked quietly, even for her own standards, to Orange. The orange wisp looked up, and looked around. "You saw it first last time."

"Yeah I did. I don't see it now. Green?" Orange asked.

The green hover wisp shook his head and body. "Nope. Not around. Ooh, is that Never Lake?" Green asked, looking downwards.

Whisper made sure she was strapped down, before she stood up and looked over the side. It gave only a slight tilt, and one that Violet corrected for barely blinking an eye on it. Didn't the Tornado have an autopilot system?

Sure enough, far down below them was a large glassy lake. It was mostly surrounded by forest, except for one mountain that looked as if it had been a victim of both erosion and a volcanic eruption. The Little Planet was nowhere near, it seemed.

"Definitely some temporal distortions," Orange muttered. Cyan and Pink popped out of their canisters a moment later.

"Ooh, temporal distortions! Time's just acting weird, that's all." Cyan clarified.

"It's all spiky here. Feels nice," Pink answered. "Seriously, it's a giant jagged curve. I don't know of anything else that does this."

"I do. Remember how Eggman caught Planet Wisp originally?" Blue said. Whisper was now almost pushed to the side of the Tornado's co-pilot seat by all the wisps. Despite the fact they had no mass, they could still effectively 'push' her out of the way.

"I don't...you'll have to remind me?" Green said. Whisper noticed that both Shadow and Violet and turned silent, one of their ears both pointed towards the wisps.

"Right. He chained them up. Guess what he did down there, you can see the remains. And given the temporal distortions..." Blue answered.

Cyan nodded, her head nodding fast. "He moved the chain through time and space! Meaning he must have come back here after Sonic and Amy had already left!"

Blue turned to her. "Wait, Amy was here too?"

Green nodded. "It's how they met. A real meet-cute kind of situation, saving her from Metal Sonic right before the Metallic Madness."

"...How do you know that's the name?" Pink asked suddenly. "I don't remember ever seeing it anywhere, and Sonic didn't say it."

Green, if it was possible, blushed. Parts of his face turned red, and seemingly just hovered in front of him. Small little red elliptical things. "Oh...uh...on the bus. Bus ride to the Restoration, that is. They uh...made a game out of it. Called Sonic And Little Planet. Played it. Beat it. Thought it was meh."

"Faker has games on his adventures?" Shadow asked no one, yet his voice was proudly shouted from the radios.

Violet nodded. "Oh yeah, bunches of people play them. It's actually one of the reasons Mr. Sonic's never really had to worry about work. He got some licensing fees, and because it's a nickname he's allowed to trademark his name. Doesn't make a lot, but as he says 'its enough to pay the bills'."

Shadow snickered. "Heh, Maurice..."

That hadn't happened yet in Whisper's time. She'd have to remember to tell him that, if only so he could get on it. Unless she already did, and this was taken into account everything..."Green...time travel tropes," she asked quietly.

"Uh...what kind?"

"Any and all kinds!" Pink answered for her. "Wait, I know this one. Don't worry Whis, I know all of these too! Just because Green's the only avid reader...you're worried about paradoxes, aren't you!"

"Pink that's not what she asked-"

"To get rid of a paradox, you just have to point at it and shout at it really loudly, and that'll make it go away! You have to shout out, 'I don't believe in paradoxes!' and poof it goes."

"Pink that is absolutely not-"

"Alternatively, just avert your eyes! Nothing can happen if you don't actually SEE the paradox happen. So if you suddenly were to appear in space or turn into a bowl of petunias-"

"Pink, those are two different books-"

"Then you just shout out really loud and everything goes flying and you can jump like ten thousand feet in the air. What were we talking about?" Pink asked.

Blue, Cyan, and Orange were openly laughing at this point. "Pink, those are games. Or other books."

"Well yeah, wasn't that she was asking? Come on, every one of those games or books has some kind of time travel nonsense."

The air around the Tornado was silent for a moment as Whisper thought about it. Half of those references didn't make sense, but she knew better than to underestimate any of the wisps. Particularly Pink. He had a way of finding a lot of things out that by all rights he should have no way of knowing.

"...You're not wrong..." Green was forced to say quietly.

"Wait, I recognized one of those! Was that the Elder Emeralds Five? When did you manage to play that one, it only came out like ten years ago!" Violet asked from the pilot's seat. The vixen's ears were definitely pointed back now, focused on hearing everything she could from them.

"Well, part of that was Emeralds Three, Yesterzephyr," Cyan clarified. "But in general, yeah, how did you manage to play that one?"

What Whisper really wanted to know was when the wisp's managed to have time to play games at all while with the Restoration. She certainly didn't have time, and even she wasn't working twenty four seven. Admittedly hunting down Mimic didn't exactly help with her timing problems...

"Oh, same reason that Green was able to play Sonic and Little Planet. The bus had a bunch of random games on there. Whisper was passed out half the time."

She was? She remembered that entire trip, and not once did she remember taking any naps or having a bunch of time suddenly pass her by. She thought the wisps had been too busy watching that one children's show...

Or maybe that was just Orange and Cyan. Wait, Pink had been at the back of the bus. Whisper shook out her head. They had been on there for a little over a day, there was plenty of time for all of that. She thought.

"I was a bit busy making sure the Time Eater wasn't catching us," Orange bragged. The others froze, turning slowly to stare at her. "What? I knew it was following us since we left Eggman's base!"

What followed was a bunch of wisp words that Whisper had never known about, and in fact her translator was faltering. She gave a glance at both Shadow and Violet, to find them both staring in shock at the other four wisps who were quite loudly chewing Orange out for something like neglecting to inform them of said eldritch abomination.

After around five or ten minutes, Whisper wasn't sure which because she was currently cramped against the side of the plane, the other four finally calmed down, heading back into their canisters. Green stayed out, but he stayed silent, glaring at Orange the entire time.

"You know, I could have sworn that I heard somewhere that wisps have two languages, and they only use one when they want to be heard," Shadow said from the front. "But...I'm pretty sure we weren't supposed to hear that one."

"I'm going to look up all of those words the instant we land somewhere. See if there's an online translation that my translator couldn't get," Violet answered.

"I just didn't want to worry anyone..." Orange muttered under her breath. "How much longer until Spiral Hill? I'm...I'm tired."

Whisper opened her jacket, inviting the wisp to take a rest in her canister if she so chose, or alternatively to just let her rest.

"About...three to four hours. We'll get there by the sundown," Violet clarified. "Doesn't help that we'll be jet-lagged."

"Eh, sleep is for those who need it," Shadow said from the front.

"So...you," Violet shot him down instantly. "I saw you sleeping on the couch last night Mr. Shadow."

"I'm not mad," Green said softly. Whisper felt her emotions pitch and rise as Green said something else. A sense of knowledge, of unearned wisdom, recollection, and duty. She gave a glance towards both Shadow and Violet, who seemed to have much less of a reaction towards the wisp tongue than she did.

"I know," Orange said, giving him a small head bump before heading back into the canister. Whisper stared at Green for a moment, before her eyes went over towards the edge.

Endless fields lay underneath them, the forest well behind them. It wasn't fields of wheat, but rather of plain tall grass, reaching for the skies and heavens above them. Rarely, small trees could be seen, towering over the grass. Non islander animals could be seen grazing upon it. Deer and various elk were in separate groups, keeping an eye on each other. Whisper had no doubt that rabbits were there too, along with every other non islander animal.

Violet gave a giant yawn as she looked over the records again. "Alright. We'll be coming up to Spiral Hill shortly. Shadow-"

"Magnet boots already on."

"Good, you've learned," Violet teased, even as Shadow's eyes narrowed. It gave a haunted feeling to Whisper, who knew that those eyes narrowed were one of the last things the other Diamond Cutters saw. She doubted the black hedgehog ever knew why she disliked him at times.

Or if he had even cared.

"Sky Fox to Spiral Command, I repeat, Sky Fox to Spiral Command," Violet said loudly into a microphone on her dash. "Come in, Spiral Command."

The response was instantaneous. "Yeah? The hell do you want."

"Uh...landing confirmation."

"Shit. You're gonna make me do my damn job aren't you...Alright Sky Fox, license number and model plane."

"License number is 857654-A453," Violet rattled off, although she gave worrying glances to both Shadow and Whisper. She noticeably turned off the microphone. "We might have a problem."

"I hope that's not a fake license number," Shadow said, standing up tall. "I am a licensed government agent now."

"No, no, it's not fake, I actually am a certified pilot," Violet said. "But...that seems weird. Every where else I've ever seen were all professionals at the radio tower."

"Something does seem off," Green said. "Didn't they also ask for the model of the plane?"

"He did, but I can't give him that. Usually they just use the plane model numbers as simple identification, but the Tornado is a custom craft. It doesn't have a standardized model number."

"Model number too Sky Fox. I'm gonna need that shit too," the voice repeated through the radio.

"This is a custom craft, it doesn't have one," Violet said.

Whisper could almost hear the grin pop up on the other side's face. "Well I guess you can't park here then. Go to some other airport."

Spiral Hill even had an airport now? Wait, of course it did, Belle and Shadow had talked about getting tickets back when Whisper had first shown up.

"We don't have enough fuel for that! We need to land!"

"Can't land here. No space open. Also you're a 'custom craft'. That also usually means better fuel mileage. Hey, Antispiral Hill airport has an opening!"

Green stared at the radio. Whisper could tell he was starting to get a bit angry, and she reached up with one hand to gently calm him down. "Sky Fox to Spiral Command, I am demanding emergency landing protocols!" Violet shouted into the radio. Whisper glanced at Shadow, who also had narrowed eyes towards the radio.

"Under whose fucking authority!?"

"Under mine, you righteous-!" Violet shouted into the microphone, cutting herself off. Whisper could see the small droplets of water that threatened at her eyes, and the back of her head. She calmed down instantly, turning the radio off. "I'm...sorry," she muttered under her breath.

"No, keep up that energy," Shadow argued.. "I appreciate it, as a note. However, it may be best to keep that temper down. Next time, just use my authority," he continued.

Whisper looked down to see the...now city of Spiral Hill, rather than the village that she'd known it as, coming into view. There weren't any skyscrapers, with the tallest building only being maybe four, five floors at most. It was no Green Hill, and definitely no Central City. But it seemed quiet...almost too quiet.

The runways had been cleared, but in a manner that was close to 'just barely good enough'. Planes were strewn about everywhere, bags were left where they were...if Whisper didn't know better, she'd say they had wandered in to a zombie movie set. They claimed they 'had no room', except that was an obvious lie.

Violet gently landed the plane with a bare bump on an empty runway, much better than Shadow's initial take off had been, and she looked around. "This...doesn't seem right to me," she said. Whisper nodded. Potholes were left on the runways, as if they hadn't been serviced for a long time.

"I'm...going to find Jewel. Violet, Whisper, stay here and refuel the Tornado. Got it ready for an emergency takeoff if we need it," Shadow said. Whisper looked at him, wondering why she was supposed to stay. Wasn't he the government agent? "I know where Jewel moved her museum to. Unless you know it?" he asked.

Whisper stared at him for a while. Tangle was from here; of course she knew Spiral Hill like the back of her hand. And she'd gotten a good look at the general map when flying over it, she could find Jewel's place easy. He gave a sigh as the wolfess stared at him. "Fine. Fine, you go. I'll stay here and help Violet," Shadow shrugged.

Whisper nodded, and asked Green to go back into his canister. She wasn't going to make the same mistake she'd made at Green Hill, and only take Orange. No, she was going with them all.

Even in the city of silence.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

City of Silence

She had called it the city of silence in her head, but as Whisper walked through the broken streets and empty walkways of Spiral Hill, she wasn't actually all that far off.

The city looked as if no one had done any maintenance for years. Potholes abound everywhere, and it looked nothing like the city she knew from her dreams.

The Spiral Hill she knew was small, tight-knit and communal. This one seemed more spread out, which it had been twenty three years, so she was okay with that. But where it seemed to have spread out, it lost that sense of community. Now endless grey buildings and apartment complexes arose over every corner. The paints were chipping off the small murals she'd seen that Tangle had painted when she was younger. They usually were kept up by the various citizens, each year the mural slowly changing as more people added to it.

Those were gone. And in their place was more endless grey and silver. Even the sky, once a lovely shade of blue was now nothing more than a black expanse. Granted, it was close to sundown, but there was still something soulless about it.

She knocked gently on Orange's canister. "Time Eater's not around?" she asked quickly. The orange wisp gave a few looks around, her eyes scanning over the horizon with a precision akin to a sniper scope, before she shook her head. Whisper nodded. The streets were still in their ever present spiral, hence the name of the village. Or city, as it was now.

Jewel's museum wasn't much farther. She knew where it was from this turn. "This place is...not looking good," Orange commented as she floated over to a light pole, flickering ominously.

"No, it's not," Whisper agreed. Something was going on here. Even if it was 'late'ish, as in right after sundown, the lights should be constant and there should still be people around. There was no one around. At all. In fact, Whisper could tell that no one had been walking around for...ages. It looked as if the entire city had been turned into a ghost town.

It reminded her of those old zombie movies that Tangle had loved until the Metal Virus. Not that Whisper blamed her; she'd used to like those movies too until that incident.

Cyan popped out. "Wow this place is a mess," she said instantly. "Mind if I take a look around the electric grid?" she asked. Whisper shook her head. Honestly, there was little damage the wisp could do that hadn't already been done by time and zero maintenance.

She gave the approximation of a grin as she dove into another flickering light post. "Is that wise? That seems...worrying."

"There's not much more damage she can do in there," Whisper said. Orange blinked before she shrugged. She jumped over another broken down pothole in the road. There were some cars on the side, most of them looking rusted. The windows weren't broken in though, they were just...rusted. One was in the middle of the road, obviously in the way if anyone tried to go anywhere.

Whisper took the edge of the wispon and shattered one of its windows, the echo of it crashing down upon them. "Whisper, why!?" Orange asked immediately.

"No alarm," Whisper answered. The car looked as if it had been parked there at the end of a day and then just...left to rot. There were no blinking lights, nothing that said it had any power at all. "It's not right."

"No, no it's not. The grid is messed up, Whisper," Cyan announced as she floated back down. "It barely has enough power to support the lights it does have. Something's different. This is still Spiral Hill, right? Tangle's hometown?"

Whisper nodded.

Green and Pink both came out of their canisters, and as if not wanting to be left alone, so did Blue. "Nothing has power, it seems," Pink noted as he looked into the other cars. "Jewel's place can't be far."

"It's not. Two blocks." Whisper answered.

"I don't like the silence of this place. Spiral Hill, the other times we came here, was always loud. There's no sound." Green said softly. "It gives me the creeps."

There were no lights on in the various apartment complexes, even if Whisper could swear she saw people around. They were just shadows in the windows, impossible to get a good idea on where they were.

Jewel's museum was as colorful as it had been in Whisper's time, a small jewel hanging from the top. But much like everything else, the paint was peeling and breaking down, and there was an uncomfortable darkness around it like a thick blanket.

"Time Eater isn't around is it? This seems like a Time Eater thing," Blue murmured. Orange shook her head.

"Whisper already asked," Orange explained.

The doors didn't open automatically as they should have, and Whisper gave a glance inwards. No lights, no power. "Blue? Hammer," Whisper asked. Blue nodded, imbuing himself into the wispon. Whisper dropped the fox mask over her face, letting it scan through the doorway to find the best place to hit it and bring it down.

Blue gave the wispon a hammer type head, which on its own was akin to a sledgehammer. However, like most wisps, he also could control his own velocity. In other words, when Whisper had him imbue himself into the wispon, it was closer to a jackhammer sledgehammer.

She swung the wispon straight into the door's hinges, letting it collapse without the glass breaking. "Thanks," Whisper said quietly. Blue dis-imbued himself, giving a quiet chirp that raised her spirits a bit.

The inside of the jewel museum was...rough. A door had been shoved to the back, where it'd collapsed onto the far wall. The glass hadn't broken, if only because Jewel was used to having Tangle around. Glass containers that contained beautiful jewels were scattered around, small placards that said what they were. Whisper was half expecting them to not have anything in them.

Instead they were untouched. Literally, untouched. Some of them had started to tarnish, particularly the silver, and some of the gems had a thick layer of dust. The containers were so dusted up it was near impossible to tell what gem was inside it. This was unlike Jewel in every way...

"Alright, I wasn't scared before, but I'm terrified now," Pink murmured. "Whatever happened, it got Jewel too. There is no way she'd let this place go like this if she could do anything about it."

"Thanks Pink. That makes the rest of us feel so much better," Cyan responded.

"I'm glad. It should, because that means the rest of you are justified to feel whatever it is you want!"

Whisper rolled her eyes as the wisps started arguing again. It felt nice, actually, and she had a feeling that was why they did it. They were loud, obnoxious, colorful, and everything that Spiral Hill used to be and no longer was. It was a surprising bright spot.

There were a few doors that led to the back, where Jewel kept her personal collection before the doors that connected to her house. "Jewel?" Whisper asked as she opened the next one slowly. The hinges squeaked, and didn't want to open. Rusted? Whisper glanced at the side; the door was rusted.

Rust was common, but on an inside door? How would it have been opened directly to water? That's what usually causes rust, air and water. Some amount of rust was okay, even normal. But enough that she was having to put her entire weight to the door to open it?

No one answered her, and the voices of the wisps slowly disappeared behind her. Back here, there was even more dust than there was up front. There was a large hole in the roof, looking like it was caused by lack of maintenance and just general wear and tear. There was a puddle in the middle of the room, covering nearly the entire floor. "Explains the rust..." Whisper muttered.

The door to Jewel's house was dirty and seemingly unused. The lock wasn't engaged, and that thought made Whisper narrow her eyes. Jewel had never, ever, forgotten to lock up. She hadn't even tried the front door because of it, just assuming the door was locked.

The hallway to the back was empty, and the carpet old and moldy. It squished down as Whisper stepped on it. "Jewel?" she asked aloud again. "Are you in here? Is anyone in here?" she asked.

There were pictures and paintings on the wall, although Whisper could barely make out what they were of. Her memory of Jewel's place was so far so good, and if she was right at the end of the hallway was the living room, with a couch and a small TV that she used to play movies on.

She half expected to see Jewel on the couch, with a bucket of popcorn. The beetle was notorious for it, having dozens of popcorn buckets around her house. None around the Restoration offices, because she was a professional, but in her home?

Instead the couch was untouched. A blanket lay disheveled on the side, as if she hadn't bothered to fold it. There were buckets everywhere at least, but most of them looked like they'd collapsed into themselves. It'd been a long time since anyone had cleaned up.

A low groan flew around the place, and immediately Whisper tensed. There was someone, or something here after all. "Who's there!?" she shouted.

Another low groan, barely sapient at all. Coming from the...bedroom. Right, the living room connected to both the kitchen, and another hallway that led to the bathroom and bedroom. It was a small house, and didn't leave much room for working on things, particularly bulky variable wispons, but it was comfortable enough for the beetle.

Whisper walked near silently to the bedroom, cautiously opening the door. The carpet sunk as she stepped onto it, and immediately the air filters in the mask kicked in.

Jewel was there. Still alive, in the bed. She was lying awake, her eyes barely open, staring up at the ceiling. Her eyes were sunk in, as if she didn't get any sleep recently, and her face was gaunt and pale. "Jewel?" Whisper asked.

The low groan came from the beetle's throat as she turned to look at her. Her lips weren't moving. The room was...well, putrid was putting it lightly. Whisper gave a quiet whistle, and immediately all five wisps lined up in front of her.

"Holy Mother! What happened to her!?" Cyan asked, her eyes wide. "She's not...she's not dead, is she? We saw death earlier, but..."

"No, she's not dead. Just...wow. Hey, Green, Blue, care to help Pink take care of all this...I don't want to call it trash," Orange advised.

"No, it's trash," Whisper affirmed.

"Oh, I didn't want to call it that because it'd offend them!" Orange said, glancing over at the three other wisps. They were looking over some of the trash with curious eyes, and Whisper was glad they couldn't smell it.

"Cyan, can you give a charge to this area?" Whisper asked. Cyan gave a mock salute before ducking into a light switch. Immediately fans started, and Jewel gave an appreciative groan. The lights came on, and Whisper had to wait for her eyes to adjust.

"Oh this is disgusting. We are so getting treats for this," Pink complained as he rolled a bunch of the 'trash' into one place. Green hovered it over to the overflowing trash can, before he realized there was no room in there. Hovering the entire thing, using Blue's cubes to take their time whenever he needed to rest, they slowly pulled it out of the room.

Whisper ignored the squelch of the carpet, and pulled open the shades and windows. "Jewel," she said again.

That got another groan. "Does she need some water or something?" Orange asked. Whisper finally took off the mask, before the scent made her retch, and she hurriedly pulled it back down. "Oh, that didn't look good."

"It wasn't pleasant. Something is definitely wrong," Whisper said. It was as if a skunk's stink organ had been run over, left to bake in the sun, mixed with rafflesia, or the corpse flower, and then pushed into a sewer.

She pulled out some water from her emergency stash in her cloak, and gently let some go into Jewel's mouth. The beetle blinked for a bit, the water wetting her throat easily, and Whisper was relieved to see her throat swallow it down. "Whisper...?" she asked after a long moment. Her voice was hoarse, as if unused for a long time.

There were dozens of glasses of water around Jewel's bedside, and even more small pill bottles around. Had she gotten addicted to some kind of drugs? That didn't seem right, the Jewel she knew would never let that happen. No, something else was here.

"Am I seeing things?" Jewel whispered again. "I guess this is the end if you're here."

Whisper stared at her. "It was only time..." Jewel said softly. "But I'm still so tired..." she muttered, rolling over in the bed.

"Green?" Whisper asked aloud a moment later. The wisp answered by hovering the bed sheets up, and Whisper had the urge to curse. Jewel was absolutely covered in various sores. She was clothed, but that didn't seem to help much.

The beetle barely murmured despite the fact she had to be freezing now. There was no curling up into a ball. There was almost no reaction.

"Uh...yeah that ain't normal," Pink said. "Should I go turn on the faucet?" he asked. Whisper tilted her head, before she nodded. The pink wisp flew off into the bathroom, already knowing where it was.

"Not water...not water..." Jewel murmured. Whisper glanced at her again, ignoring the way the sheets rose up around her. She'd been lying in bed for way too long, and it was probably only luck that Whisper had gotten here when she did.

"Come on," Whisper said, ignoring the way that Jewel's body was far too warm on hers as she hoisted the beetle up. She heard the water start.

"Oh...uh, Whisper? We got another problem," Pink said. Whisper sighed and moved out to the couch, where Jewel lay still right away. Curious, and dreading to find out what had gone wrong now.

The problem was instantaneously found. The water was purple. "That's not good, is it?" Pink asked, his spikes juggling the handle.

"No, no it is not," Whisper agreed. Purple water. She was no professional tester, but something like purple water...she hit the side of her mask, trying to use the radio. "Shadow, Violet, this is Whisper."

"Whisper! We can hear you loud and clear! A lot better than we normally can at least. You do whisper a lot," Violet's voice called through the radio. It, too, was quite clear despite the distance between them. It was probably using the Tornado as a secondary receiver and signal booster.

The fact that Tails could create an airplane that does that, twenty three years or more ago, really said just how much of a genius he was.

"Found Jewel. She's in bad shape."

"How bad?" Shadow's voice came through. There was considerable more static through his headset. He must have been away from the Tornado and Violet. "Town's practically dead. Something's wrong here."

"Yes, there is," Whisper agreed. "Bedsores, looking like weeks old. No energy, at all. Barely talks. We're trying to give her a bath but ran into an issue. Purple water."

"The water's purple?" Shadow's voice said instantly. "Thick and sludgy, or thin? Water or milk?"

The lights went out, and with it so did the sound of water in the bathroom. Cyan came out of a nearby electric socket, looking a bit tired and panting softly. Whisper reached down to her emergency pack, glad that she'd restocked on the energy pellets when she could. The bathroom glowed with a purple light, the same color as the water itself.

What was it, nuclear?

"Water. Purple, and glows in the dark."

"Can you confirm that last part?"

Whisper moved the mask up her face, ignoring the way the scent of the bedroom was making its way over to her, and she could still see clearly, even if everything was bathed in purple. "Yes."

"Hmm..."

"What are you thinking, Uncle Shadow?" Violet asked. Her voice was clear, but there was a slight tinge of fear in it. Whisper didn't blame her. Right off the bat, basically into a zombie town.

"I was thinking Eggman made another play that wouldn't go off until after he died. But now I'm not so sure. Faker mentioned a 'mega-mack' back on Westside Island once. I'll get in touch with him. For now, Whisper, don't touch it."

"Of course," Whisper said. She looked to the bathroom again to see Pink and Cyan playing in the purple water, occasionally splashing each other. Orange was sighing as she was on overwatch, and Green and Blue were touching it curiously. She sighed.

"I don't think that's a good idea," Whisper said.

"Of course it is! What's going to happen oh I don't feel so good," Cyan said, answering her own question instantly after asking it. "It's like I have no energy anymore," Cyan kept going, slowly sinking into the water.

Green picked her up instantly, and Pink escaped from the water himself a moment later, then he, too, started to feel off, sinking down the sides of the bathroom even with his spikes on and out. "Yeah, this is weird...it's like the world's all...greyed." He said.

"Gray?" Whisper asked.

"Yeah," Cyan answered back softly and quietly. It was a complete turnaround from her usual 'yippee!' attitude. "Like it's just too much energy. Even with the pellet, I just...can't move. And don't want to move. Don't make me move."

That sounded like a bigger problem. It either drained energy, or it made people feel like it was draining their energy. She grabbed her own water supply, opening it and taking a sniff. It was normal water for her. And she'd recently filled it too. She was thankful for that.

She went to the kitchen, turning on her mask's night vision again. The cups in Jewel's place were always in the same place, the second cupboard from the sink. Sure enough, they were still here. A few were in disarray, as if Jewel didn't have the energy to clean up after grabbing a bunch for the bedroom.

The sink water was purple. Whisper filled up a cup anyways, and then put in one of the water purification tablets she'd stored away in her survival kit.

The tablet foamed and fizzed, disappearing deep into it, but slowly restoring the water to normal. Instead of glowing, it became dull. Instead of purple, it became clear.

And that was an entire tablet. Those things were supposed to be heavy duty ones, meant for gallons of water at a time, not a single cup. Whatever this stuff was, it could be purified, but it would take a lot to do it. They couldn't just stuff the pipes full of the tablets and call it a day.

Not to mention she only had four tablets on her. Two days worth of water, or eight gallons worth. Two each. She went back out to the living room, seeing Jewel sitting exactly where Whisper had put her down. "Water...bad..." Jewel murmured.

"This is clear," Whisper said, pouring it softly down the beetle's throat. Not a lot, just enough. The beetle panicked for a moment, before she stopped and eagerly drank the rest.

"Thank you...ghost of Whisper..." she murmured as she fell asleep again. Whisper stared at her, wondering how things had gotten this bad without anyone in the Restoration noticing.

Right, the biometrics only reported life signs, not actual quality of life. Jewel had a phone somewhere around here, Whisper knew. Why didn't she call for help when she first realized? The radio would have worked too.

The phone was...on the wall. By the TV. Whisper knew that one because Tangle liked to watch it loud, even when Whisper was trying to do something like order pizza. Right, it was right there.

She picked it up, an old landline model that had barely seen use except for when Whisper and Tangle were here. There was no dial tone, as it it had been out of service. She hit the zero button, trying to connect to an operator, but got only silence.

"How bad is it?" Orange asked as she hovered out of the bathroom. "Pink and Cyan are doing better. I don't know if it's because we're wisps or what, but whatever it is they didn't get the full effect."

That was good. It had been...completely normal for them to try something like playing in glowing purple water. Actually, what was the water in planet wisp? Was it that glowing purple too, or was that just around where Eggman was? And more importantly, why wouldn't they remember that!?

"Could be worse. She wants water. Phone line is dead. Shadow is checking. Violet's scared," Whisper recalled. Orange sighed again.

"What about food? The refrigerator?"

"Honestly if the state of the bedroom is any indication, I'm glad I have an air filter," Whisper said as walked back into the kitchen. The pantry was...there. And was empty. No food at all, not even the small scraps of bread that even ants wouldn't go after. Everything was gone.

The refrigerator was...Whisper took a deep breath before she opened it up. Jewel was a healthy eater most of the time, with only popcorn being her real snack food of choice.

There were hundreds of snacks of what used to be called chocolate. None of them were any good anymore, but it was there. Whisper was glad she had gloves on for this as she looked through, seeing the giant pile of mold that had been there.

"Chocolate? That's unusual. I didn't know Jewel liked chocolate."

She didn't, Whisper knew. Tangle did, but she'd stopped entirely when she realized that Whisper couldn't have any. "She doesn't," Whisper said softly. "Something was here."

"Whisper?" Shadow's voice crackled over the radio. "I'm at the museum. Someone did a lot of damage breaking in."

"That was me," Whisper admitted instantly, not feeling bad for a second. "I didn't check if the door was locked."

"It wasn't," Shadow clarified. She could hear him now as walked through the broken down museum. His red eyes glowed in the darkness, and she heard his radio and his real voice say at the same time, "At least you showed some restraint."

Whisper rolled her eyes. "Jewel always locked up," she answered. Shadow gave her a smirk as he walked into the room, before he gave a raised eyebrow to Jewel's body.

"What have you got so far? Anything new?" he asked as he bent down, examining some of the bed sores. "Help me get her on the couch," he said.

He didn't have to move, as Green promptly came over and hovered her up, over, and gently laid her down. "Thanks, Green," Whisper said. Shadow gave an agreeing grunt as he looked her over.

"No, nothing new yet. My water purification tablets work on the water, but it's a lot for only a little," Whisper explained.

"They work on it? So it's chemical in nature? How do those tablets work again?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Oh, I know this one!" Green said as he flew closer. "They break down the biochemical and energetic barriers of all life, oxygenate every molecule inside it which causes all bacteria to collapse as oxygen attacks them, and boils them all at the same time! That's what the fizz is."

"...How do you know that?" Shadow asked. "I thought Orange was the smart one."

"They're all smart," Whisper fought. "Just in different things. But that is usually Orange's specialty."

"I got interested in those one time when you and Tangle were out in the woods-"

"Stopping you there," Whisper said. Green gave an excited chirp that raised her spirits a bit, and got a moan out of Jewel.

She remembered that trip quite well. Out in the forest, Tangle had forgotten to grab some canteen water, and Whisper had drank all of hers because she'd assumed Tangle had brought some. She hadn't, but Whisper had brought a few tablets with her.

Much more innocuous than Blue was making it out to be.

"Also, chocolate in the fridge. It's definitely past its expiration, but its there," Orange said from the kitchen.

"Chocolate?" Whisper heard Pink's voice as the spike wisp made his way across the floor, puncturing the carpet with every movement until he got to the kitchen. Whisper took a deep breath as she heard the, "It is! Chocolate!"

"Is he going to be alright?" Shadow asked as he watched the pink wisp devour the age old chocolate cakes and pies.

"No. No he won't. But he'll learn," Whisper answered softly. "Eventually."

Jewel gave another half-hearted moan of despair.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Silence

Whisper did find out the limit of the water purifying tablets on the strange purple...water. She was fairly certain it was water, at least. It acted like it, even if the properties that it held were obviously of not just water.

One gallon. One tablet was supposed to be good for two to four gallons. Any more than one gallon, and the tablet would quite literally do nothing. It would fizz and pop and foam, but the purple liquid at the end would still be purple and glowing.

The one gallon jug that Jewel had though, was crystal clear. As was all the water that Violet and the Tornado had on them. And she only had a few tablets left.

"I'm going to take this to Central City, or the Restoration. See if we can't determine what this is," Shadow said, grabbing one of the small glasses filled with the glowing purple stuff. He lidded it, turning it over to make sure it wouldn't flow over. Whisper nodded, and the wisps braced themselves as they felt the wash of chaos energy before he disappeared.

Jewel was a bit more alive now, even just as much as an hour after getting some actual water. Her cheeks were still gaunt and she looked hollowed out, but her eyes were open and taking in information again with the reminder that she had been the leader of the Restoration at one point.

Whisper tapped the radio on her mask again. "Violet, can you bring the Tornado around? Just taxi it through the city," Whisper asked.

"Sure. I think I have your location...are the streets clear or they pretty scuffled?"

"They're..." Whisper thought back to it, about the hundreds of potholes and sinkholes she had to jump over, the parked cars she simply walked around but the Tornado had no choice but to go through, "available."

"...You know what, I don't like that hesitancy, I'm going to try to do a low flight. Dad would've been able to without a problem..." Violet muttered as Whisper heard the startup of the Tornado.

"Who...who was that...? Tails is here...?" Jewel's voice barely managed to get out. Pink was in the bathroom, his 'back' being rubbed by Green and Blue. Cyan was laughing at him and Orange stuck around with Whisper.

"No, not Tails," Whisper clarified. Jewel gave an uncomfortable sigh. "His daughter."

"Tails...has a kid...?"

"Jewel has a translator, right? Because if not, can you ask her what that's supposed to mean!? Tails has had kids for twelve years. She couldn't have been out of it for over twelve years!"

"No, she doesn't. She commissioned Tails for the project, but he never pulled it off before...this," Whisper said. "Tails has two. Violet and Mata. You don't remember...?" Whisper asked.

"No...communication. Been cut for years. Air travel's only way in or out..." Jewel muttered. "We have...had nothing..."

That couldn't be right. Belle...someone should have noticed something! Whisper tapped the radio on her mask, changing it to the main Restoration radio frequency. "Belle?" she asked.

Nothing. Not even static. It was just...dead air. Whisper reached up and changed it to the Tornado's again. "Violet?" she asked.

"Yeah? Sorry, low flying's hard at the best of times," Violet shouted. Whisper winced as her voice exploded into her ears. "Be there in five! Ten...minutes. Maybe less. Maybe more. Not sure."

Whisper changed the frequency again, this time to Shadow's personal. "Shadow," she said again, trying to get something through. Sure enough, it was just pure nothing again. As if it didn't exist.

"And no one noticed?" Whisper asked. Jewel shook her head, and the wolf was hard to not notice that the beetle winced as she did.

"None. And then...everyone just...stopped. Stopped caring. They'd go to work, and then just stand there for a few hours. A few people that could muster up the energy to go shopping did what they could. But then the trucks stopped coming one day to refill the grocery stores. The cars...were just parked. And then left."

"It sounds like the start of a zombie movie. Did the people die and then come back to life? Hold on, Green's better at this than I am," Orange whispered. Whisper shot her a look, and Orange had the forethought to appear sheepish.

"Every day, things just got worse. And then...people stopped leaving their houses. The healthy ones went first, disappearing for days at a time. The ones who drank a lot of soda and such were normal...until they ran out. Then they, too, vanished inside," Jewel said softly. "I tried to leave more than once. But all the roads out of here were blocked by downed trees, and whenever someone tried to get out through other methods, like bikes or walking, they were pushed back by fences or by 'private property'."

"I have the feeling I'm not going to like this. I'm going to go help Pink get that stuff out of him..." Orange muttered, rocketing over to the bathroom. Whisper caught the feel of a sick Pink on the edge of her eyesight, and rolled her eyes. Hopefully he'd learn, but she kind of doubted it.

"Trapped," Whisper summarized.

"Trapped," Jewel repeated. "With no way out. No escape."

There was a loud roaring sound that steadily became louder until it was right outside before it quieted down to nothing. Whisper heard Violet's voice on the outside. "What happened to this place...?" she asked.

"Violet," Whisper called out. It was about as loud as a normal person talking. "In here," she finished. She hated to yell, especially in this place when it was so quiet already. Fortunately, the fox's ears were sharp enough to pinpoint it, and within a minute walked behind everything to see the older Jewel on the couch.

"You uh...you don't look so good," Violet said softly. Whisper felt a hand smack her forehead, realizing it was her own. Jewel gave a light giggle before she gave a sad cough.

"I know. It looks worse than it is thanks to Whisper."

"And um...no offense, but you..." Violet stated softly, taking a few steps back. Whisper blinked before she realized it. Jewel...hadn't been able to take a bath yet. Or a shower. And with only one gallon of purified water, it definitely wasn't enough to give her a good cleaning.

"Hygiene's been...low priority," Jewel answered softly. "I am Jewel, the former director of the Restoration," she introduced herself.

"Violet Prower, daughter of Tails and Blaze," Violet answered with a grin. Jewel blinked at her, before she turned entirely to Whisper, confusing more than eminent on her face.

"It surprised me too," Whisper answered. Jewel gave a nod, before she turned back to Violet, and then back to Whisper.

"Why's it so dark in here? I can make out shapes but that's it," Violet complained a moment later.

"Electricity's been out for a while," Jewel answered. She gave a soft cough afterwards, and Whisper calmly put more of the purified water in a cup for her.

"Where are the wisps?"

"Pink did something stupid," Whisper answered honestly. "He's in the bathroom now. How much food did you bring in the Tornado?"

"Food? Uh...I think something like five day's worth. When you mentioned possibly going to Fern Valley or the King's River I packed a few extra day's worth. Only a bit of water, but I packed a bunch of those water tablets that Mr. Sonic had lying around."

"I remember those," Jewel said softly. "After you...disappeared," she said, turning to Whisper, "I made everyone carry at least a few of them."

"Yeah, Mom and Mr. Sonic took a bunch with them. I remembered to take a few, just in case," Violet said. Whisper nodded. That was good, they could probably use a few to help out a bit more, but they definitely wouldn't have enough for everyone in Spiral Hill. No, what they needed to do was to track the source.

But how to do that? The Tornado might have had the schematics and blueprints for how Spiral Hill was laid out. It wasn't a large major city, so it probably only had one or two sources of water. Considering this, it was likely just one. It seemed to be sourced in the water, maybe there was something added there?

To do that, she'd have to look upstream. She supposed she could just find the nearest river and then keep going until it wasn't purple anymore, but that may take a while.

The second option was to find anything nearby that could possibly be dumping something. It wasn't unheard of for other corporations, in her time it was all Eggman all the time, to dump random things in the rivers to carry it out to the ocean. She'd had to stop smugglers using the rivers more than once as part of the Diamond Cutters.

The third option she had was to wait for Shadow. He was faster than her, as much as he was an ass about it, and could look a bit faster than her. Not to mention he had the authority as a newly reinstated government agent. But most companies and things like that were either used to underhanded methods, or used to more...overt methods.

Third was out, as Shadow had no way of knowing what they're situation was like. She had no way of contacting him, probably even with the Tornado's booster. She'd try it anyways.

Second was a possibility, as was first. Especially if it was a natural source. But Whisper doubted it was a natural source, unless something somewhere had gone horribly, terribly, wrong. And for the natural source, too, she had to figure out what it was that causing it.

That one led more credence to the third, waiting for Shadow. But it may take days to get the tests back, even if he found a particularly good lab. And most governments took weeks even when they did find something.

"Jewel, what's the closest water supply?" Whisper asked suddenly. Violet and Jewel had been talking to each other quietly, before both of their ears or antennae jumped to attention. She hadn't been thinking that long, had she?

"Um...closest? Probably Mill Creek. It's a small river that runs by the old mills, hence its name. All of that is considered that 'private property' though," Jewel said, coughing gently.

"Where does Spiral Hill get its water?"

"Aquifer," Violet answered. "I can see where you're going with that. The creek feeds into the aquifer, but it's generally right beneath Spiral Hill. Follow it up and find the source."

Right, Violet was just as smart as Tails was. Whisper would have to remember that.

"...Yes," Whisper said. Violet gave a small fist pump.

"We tried that," Jewel muttered. "It didn't seem to go anywhere. The creek is property of Old Man Henderson, up on the hill. He's...crazy, but not crazy enough to let people, especially me, walk around without a gun to their back."

A single person? Whisper could handle that. She was a sniper, after all. She could see a single person coming faster than most. "I'll check it out anyways," Whisper answered. She gave a short two note whistle, and immediately all five wisps lined up in front of her. Cyan even gave a small salute, and Pink was looking much...well, much more pink. Rather than a mix of pink and green that he'd been showing before. "Get it all out of your system?" she asked.

"For the most part. What's the plan boss!" Pink said, trying to copy Cyan but not quite having the same appendages to be able to. Cyan held up a small note card with an seven on it. Whisper would have to ask what that was all about at some point...

"Follow the river."

"That's it? Come on, that can't be it. Seriously, that can't be it at all!" Cyan complained.

"No, no, there's something more. Notice her right foot, it's twitching a bit. There's another part to it," Orange said.

"I'm going to guess we're going to go up there and have to fight or take out some young man whose causing all of this suffering by...hold on, I don't know the trope name," Blue muttered.

"Probably just an old man who's cranky and lives up there and doesn't like anyone. Blue, not everything has to be related to a story," Green answered.

"No, but it's much more fun that way," Blue said, an obvious grin in his tone.

Whisper rolled her eyes. "Green has it," she said softly. Immediately the wisps gave a small cheer and either high fived Green, or considering he didn't have arms, smacked the tentacles or appendages floating underneath him. Wisp anatomy was weird.

"I still don't think you should," Violet said. "Come on, stick around, eat a bit. We have time," she said.

"No. Go, feed Jewel and get her strength up. We'll need records of the Restoration to try to restore power and stability to Spiral Hill," Whisper said. "Wait for Shadow here."

"But-"

Jewel held out her hand. "If Whisper wants to go, it's easier to just let her go. I learned that ages ago, and it's nice to see that even now some things haven't changed."

"It's only been a few weeks for me."

"And what a crazy few weeks those are..." Jewel said with a small smile. "Go. I'll help Ms. Prower," she finished. The wisps finished their cheering section, and dove into the five canisters she had on her jacket.

Whisper nodded, and walked out of the museum. It was near night time now, the perfect time to be stalking near impossible to find glowing purple liquid. The stars were out, but the moon was not, and it gave everything a dark glow. The Tornado was parked off to the side of the museum, locked up fairly tight. Whisper gave it a quick knock just to make sure.

She envisioned that she would look right behind her, and see an army of zombies slowly shambling towards her, and she shook out her head. She'd fought worse.

The Metal Virus, after all, was still in her memory. She wanted a zombie movie? She'd lived that one. If it hadn't been for Sonic and Silver, that one would've taken over everything. And according to Silver, it had in one timeline.

"Orange, any sign of the Time Eater," Whisper spoke forcefully once they were outside, back in the Silent City. The wisp came out, and gave everything a good look in every direction, shaking her head.

She hopped into the co-pilot's seat, turning on the mapping system. She was right there, she knew, and she blew up the map a bit so it was easier to find. Mill Creek was easy enough to find, the only small blue line that led to Spiral Hill and then didn't go anywhere, disappearing down into the aquifer as Violet had suggested.

North west. That was where the creek disappeared probably into the ground. That was where she'd have to go. She turned off the map, landing silently on the paved road outside Jewel's museum, and started to head towards the north west.

She was lucky that her mask had its own power source, which wasn't likely to go away anytime soon. It wasn't a single battery cell, but rather several of them hooked up together. Cyan could imbue herself into the mask if she so chose, but it was rare, and each cell was powered by the various wisp energy they let off just...hovering there.

Whisper had never been too sure of the engineering that had gone into it, but Tails had looked at it and said whoever had done it was a practical genius. He could take it apart and fix it, definitely, but making it from scratch? That would take an effort, even for him.

The silent city echoed with her footsteps, even as silent as she was trying to be. Her boots hit the concrete roughly, and harsh. The streets had gone even darker, the streetlights having faded even more. There were only a few on for every ten, as compared to Central City's ten for ten. And even those that were on were flickering, faded in their ability. The fact there was even power to some places at all...

The north west most point that she could find, according to her mental map, was just above a grocery store. The store was obvious, although it's red and blue paints were fading with time and weather. There were no lights on, but none of the windows were broken either. "Go in and look or keep going?" she asked the air.

The wisps hovered out. "I say we keep going. Best to keep on task, and all that," Orange offered.

"Heck no, we check it out! Come on, it'd be fun!" Pink and Cyan said at the same time. They turned to stare at each other, before they went to check it out anyways. Whisper turned to the other three.

"I mean, that kind of settled it right there. Cyan and Pink will just go off and do whatever they want...best to have them keep some form of backup," Blue muttered. Whisper agreed privately.

The doors were sealed shut, but a quick moment from Cyan made them open a second later just as Whisper and the other wisps got in. The aisles were near empty, small stale open bags of chips lay strewn around. A few boxes of some pastry that she knew from her own time were lying around, the pastry inside looking as if a day hadn't passed. She should probably look into the preservatives on that thing...

Most of the expired food had truly expired. The breads were long gone, piles of mold long having taken their place. The bottles of water were mostly turned over, and her boots hit the small puddles that had mostly already drained out. Colorful advertisements having faded from zero maintenance. And Jewel had lived in this kind of city!?

She made it to the back, into the refrigerated areas, and was grateful her mask had decided to kick in. There were a few gallons of what once was milk, long having gone bad. If it had more cream, it might've turned to cheese already. The whipping cream was simply butter, when she bothered to check that.

Most of the aisles were empty of everything, a few bags of flour and sugar left over. The flour was...well, rotten, in such a way that it had dozens of bugs in it. The sugar was much better, although it looked like ants had halfway gotten to one of the bags and then promptly just...left it alone. That was odd. "Anything?" Orange asked from the next aisle over. "I'm in the chip aisle and this place...ooh boy, even the bugs left this place alone."

"Rotten flour and some sugar. That's all."

"Ooh, look at this! Toys!" Green said, small toys still in their plastic hovered in midair. Most of them were basic non-islander dog toys, a few of them small kid toys such as metal cars. They weren't rusted, speaking to their making, but they were squeaking when Blue tried to play with them a bit.

Whisper looked over for Cyan and Pink, seeing Pink hovering near the bathrooms, barging his way into one. He knew they had handles, right? It couldn't be that hard for spikes to be able to do that...Whisper walked over anyways, giving him a small hand. The door was locked, and alarm bells pushed into Whisper's head. "Pink, get Blue," she murmured.

"Oi, Blue! We gots work to do!"

Blue hovered into the air, his eyes wide as he immediately imbued the wispon again. "I'm coming in," Whisper tried to announce. No one said anything that she heard, and so she slammed the hammer wispon into the door, knocking it straight into the back. "Ooh, good hit Blue," Pink said as he wandered in. "Oh...Oh no...Whisper!" Pink yelled.

Blue disimbued himself, probably hearing the panic in the pink wisp's voice, and ran towards the front where he'd left the toys. Whisper didn't blame him; if Pink was panicked, that usually meant a few bad things. She stalked in, her mask's night vision proving reliable and more than necessary.

There was a mouse islander on the sink, her hands barely raised. She looked gaunt and her skin tight. Whisper recognized the scent of death immediately. She'd just recently died after starving. She wasn't sure how long she'd have been gone though. "That's not good, right? She's not actually...dead, is she?" Pink asked. Whisper shook her head, lying blatantly.

"No. Go out front, I'll handle it," Whisper said. Pink nodded, flying out front and immediately yelling to the others about the 'not dead body in the back'. Orange would have to tell him, Whisper didn't really want to. She was worried that had some point she was going to have to come across something like this.

There was blood across the mirror, and Whisper could barely make it out. 'Water. Water'. She was hoping for water until the end. Yes, something was definitely wrong, if she didn't already know that. The mouse's eyes were open, and Whisper dragged her gloves down her eyelids, making it more apparent that she was simply resting, despite not breathing.

That was at least one death that occurred to all this. But how had this mouse survived all this long? For that matter, how long did Jewel? How had Jewel survived all this? She hadn't known that Violet was alive, so minimum twelve years.

"Alright, we need to get going. This is going to get worse, I fear," Whisper said as she walked out to the front. The wisps were on the ground, playing the various metal car toys. She'd have to buy a few when she got back to her time.

"They weren't...actually dead, were they?" Orange asked, whispering into Whisper's ears. The wolf shook her head, looking away, and the wisp realized what that meant. She floated down a bit. "I'm scared. Whisper...I don't like this future."

"I know. I plan to undo it."

"But how can we? We're just...normal. We aren't like Sonic, fanatics and adepts of Chaos. You can't go Super, you can't contact outside, or the future. We're just...wisps."

"I don't know either," Whisper admitted. The other four wisps were staring at her carefully. "But I plan to do everything I can to make sure of it."

"I'm with Orange. Who else is absolutely terrified," Blue said, surprisingly calm. That got a bunch of agreements from the others. "We're still with you all the way Whisper, but when you have an idea, let us know so that way we can either go 'oh right she's a genius' or 'we're going to die'."

"Hey, no dying on Whisper's plans. Mine, sure, hers, no!" Cyan yelled out. Whisper chuckled mirthlessly as she smashed one of the windows open rather than let Cyan drain herself. The wisps had kept arguing amongst themselves, telling each other about the faults of their own plans but none of the faults of hers.

She was being honest with them though. She really had no idea what she was doing. Just...step by step, she'd figure it out when she got Tangle back. Right now, she had to focus on that goal, more than anything. She could figure out how to undo everything after she could calm down and think.

Her boots almost splashed against the glowing purple creek, barely three feet wide, as it flowed into an underground storm drain. She'd found Mill Creek, then. She looked up as it flowed down a hill from a single house, built on top of it.

The wisps had followed her, keeping up their arguing. If anything, Whisper was agreeable to the sound. It was far too quiet otherwise, and even the sound of the running water did little to appease her.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

The House On the Hill

The hill was unfortunately surprisingly tough to climb up. The stream made it look easy, casually flowing in broken waterfalls. Where the water actually came from, Whisper wasn't sure.

Fences were all over the place, mostly electric which powered up Cyan some more, although she really didn't need it. Rocks in troublesome places that Blue had to make cubes to let her climb up. And with each step, she had to avoid the water to make sure none of it splashed on her. She wasn't sure how much was needed to cause the effects seen in Spiral Hill, but she doubted it was much.

Green always made sure to stick around, just in case she fell. It was a good thing too, Whisper reasoned, as her boot slipped from some grass that she was mostly sure hadn't existed two seconds prior, and almost fell fifteen feet. Green caught her, making sure that she floated down safely, before she had to jump onto another of Blue's cubes.

The entire hill was a giant puzzle, that she needed to solve step by step. Cyan to de-power the fences, Orange to see if anything was coming and to keep general observation, Blue for his cubes to help her get up to the more dangerous areas, Green to make sure she didn't fall, and Pink, to help make her stick to the wall.

The hill was surprisingly rough, closer to a cliff face more than anything. The purple water came down in several small waterfalls, leaving most of the rocks bare. A few tough weeds and flowers dotted the sides, but Whisper knew that it wouldn't be long before she reached the top.

Almost as if she was psychic, the top of the hill reached out to her. "Alright, you made it," Orange whispered. Why she was whispering, Whisper didn't know. The only ones that had translators were old Restoration members. Although hadn't someone mentioned to her that they were getting more common?

"Why are we whispering?" Cyan asked, hovering close by Orange's...head. The orange wisp spun around, small rocket jets coming from her arms.

"Quiet," Whisper chided softly. Orange followed up with a constant line of 'shush!' every time Cyan thought about talking.

The top was almost a plateau, if she had to be honest. Spiral Hill wasn't surrounded by mountains, but it had a few off in the distance. Major rivers probably came from there, but a small creek the size of Mill Creek...these must be the mills, Whisper knew.

A large fence towered over her, with 'Private Property, No Trespassing!' signs hung up every feet. By Cyan's interest in it, it was probably electrified. Beyond the fence was an old building, an old mill of some type with ancient saw blades that were probably turned off even in her time. The metal wasn't creaking, but that was mostly because it was gone.

But then if these were abandoned, why was the fence still electrified? Whisper wasn't sure, and she gave a small nod to Cyan who dove in with glee, taking in the energy she could. "Sometimes I worry about her..." Blue muttered.

"I don't! That must be fun! Think of the kinds of things we could do!" Pink exclaimed happily. Whisper made sure to keep an eye on him if only so that way he didn't dive into an electrified fence and get himself hurt.

"That's kind of my point..."

She tested the fence gently with a stick, making sure it wasn't in her hands when the stick touched the metal. It bounced off anti-climatically, so it was probably safe. The top had barbed wire covering most of it, focusing outwards. They really wanted to keep people out, didn't they? Signs, fences, the only thing missing were guard dogs.

Blue, and bash her way through, or Green, and hover her way over? Blue was probably safest, and would open up an easy way out if she needed one. "Blue?" she asked kindly. The blue wisp gave a little chirp before he went into the fence and created a Whisper sized cube.

Normally Blue's cubes were only mostly solid, or a few inches on the surface at best. He could only create one true geometric shape, but if he had a lot of energy he could do all kinds of crazy things.

Such as creating a cube in a fence and essentially forcing the fence out of shape through the cube. "I was planning on using the hammer," Whisper admitted as Blue let the cube go with a sigh of relief, the fence having now a giant Whisper-sized hole in it. It used a lot more energy to create a solid shape like what he just did. She still had to bend down a bit, but that was because she didn't want to get poked.

The mill had water, but there was no one around, nor had anyone been around for years it seemed like. The starlight gave everything an ominous glow, especially without the moon. "Violet?" Whisper asked as she touched her radio. Best to test this now.

"I," static cut through. "you. Wh-" more static, "-per?" Even in the parts that she could understand, Violet's voice was static and hard to hear. "-You?"

Whisper assumed that was "Where are you", and decided to say. "Mills. I repeat, the mills. Heading to the further areas and following the creek."

"-That. Rad-" static. "-rking."

Copy that, radio not working. "Understood. Radio silence," Whisper said. There was one method that she could use to burst a message through, but it would drain Cyan of her power.

"Wow look at some of these things..." Pink murmured as he flew next to one of the rust-ridden saw blades. He touched one with one of his spikes, his eyes widening as he imbued it.

"Making a mockery of the hedgehogs, Pink?" Orange asked with only a small sense of sarcasm, the pink wisp now moving across the fields on the imbued saw blade. It bit into the dirt, creating a rise behind it as it went. He was actually going kind of fast, truthfully.

The pink-ified saw blade came back around, running into the unmaintained wooden parts of the mills, sawing through them as if it were a hot knife through butter. "Always! Seriously, this is awesome! Can I keep a saw blade with me, Whisper!? Think of how awesome I'd be!"

That was a plan that would only lead to disaster, and a plan that she would have to shut down instantly. "Maybe," she acquiesced. Pink let out a loud whoop as a plank of wood fell on top of him, dis-imbueing him out of the saw blade.

There were no old piles of wood here that had been cut, although the waterwheel was still turning. Most of it must have been taken away long ago, as Whisper couldn't find indents of where it would have been. But if these were long abandoned, where did the power come from?

"Cyan...question. Could you follow the fence to its battery?" Whisper asked as she jumped over a few broken saw blades. They'd been left in a bunch of rows, the blades pointed up. Horrible way to just leave them be.

"Uh...probably? I didn't really try though, I was more focused on just draining energy from it. By the way, I'm a laser!" Cyan said energetically, talking fast enough that even Whisper's translator could barely keep up.

That was fair. The mill property went for a distance, around a mile if Whisper had her distances right. Beyond that, she could see the Mill Creek and it's odd purple glowing bit as it rounded the turn, leading to a large house on top of the hill.

"That's where we're going, right?" Orange asked, hovering next to Whisper. "Because, I'll be honest, that place is terrifying."

"Ooh, that'll be neat!" Cyan.

"This isn't the movies. It looks like one though, I want to say they used in 'Night of the Living'. You remember that one, right Whisper?" Green asked.

Yes, yes she did. "At least they didn't make a Metal Virus one," she murmured. The five wisps shuddered at the same time. That one had probably been off the table instantly if it was brought up. But it had been twenty three, almost twenty four years. The fact they hadn't was kind of surprising, more than anything.

There was another large fence in the way, although this one had no electricity, and Whisper could actually see a gate that led to the road to the house. Was the owner there an owner of the mill, as well? Cautious, she undid the latch and walked on through, ignoring the way that the metal didn't screech.

Which meant it had been maintained. There was no rust on its hinges, and the fence was, now that she took a better look, had also been maintained or at least recently changed out

She kept to the side of the road, making sure that she would be able to hear if there was anyone coming or if anyone was looking out the window. It was still early in the evening though, but there were no lights on.

She followed the creek as it went up, turning through the house's water wheel. On the other side of the house the creek flowed from the mountains, clear as day.

The house was a mansion rather than just a house. Two large wings spread out the middle, the entire thing placed by the creek. There was a large iron tower on the south side, where the waterwheel was, and Whisper almost felt like something was...strange, about it.

The fact that the wisps had gone silent, staring at it with furrowed brows spoke volumes. She was right to not ignore her instincts in this case. "Keep quiet. Stick to the shadows," Whisper commanded. The wisps decided to ignore her commands by instead going in their canisters, letting her do the hiding for them. "Or, that works, I guess."

There were no lights on, nor were there any vehicles in the driveway. Whisper wasn't sure about any floodlights or cameras, just because she didn't see them didn't mean they weren't there. There was no fence line either, except for the one at the mill. Did the road go around the mills, leading to and from Spiral Hill? She was quite a few miles away now from the village proper. This was, if anything, the outskirts.

The purple water ended in the large waterwheel, constantly turning. On the other side, Whisper saw it turned clear completely. The wheel wasn't adding anything, Whisper could tell, as it was more of a gradual change than anything. Something in the soil here polluted the water as it went by this place? But the change was also quicker than that.

No...it was when it went by the iron tower. The water looked hazy as it started to go by it, but it only started glowing with the purple light as it came closer, turning into the stuff that was in Spiral Hill only after it had left.

So something in the tower was causing it. But there was no obvious way in, Whisper could tell. There was no doorway, except for the path connected to the house. So she'd have to break in to an empty mansion to find the right area.

"Hope they don't have alarms..." she murmured as she broke a window on the first floor. There were no lights on, and Whisper doubted that anyone was here. The entire place was silent, and despite the mansion-like appearance it was also more...industrial.

Maybe a factory of some kind? It did something with the mill down the road, hence both places connected to it? It would explain why this place was empty at this time of night.

An alarm blared loudly, the first sign of light and sound that Whisper had heard since they dropped into Spiral Hill. "Of course," she said aloud as she ducked into the shadow of a...couch.

This was a living room, or at least some kind of study or meeting area. A foyer? Had to be, no other place would have this nice stuff on it.

And the room was nice. Chairs by the dozen, all of them seeming as if the cushioning on them would just let anyone sink into them. Nicely carved wood, rather than the industrial looking outside, sat around. She was standing on carpet, with a small hearth by the side.

Dozens of heads of Islanders were stuff on the wall, hanging lightly. They shone red in the alarm light, giving them an accusatory glare towards her, as if daring her to make excuses for not saving them.

Her ears perked as she heard footsteps outside the door. Light, yet heavy. Carrying something, leaning forward. Whisper dove behind the couch, the variable wispon already out and lined up with the door.

The door burst open as a human kicked it in, a crazed glare in his eyes made worse by the alarm. "Oi don't you all fellas get knickknacked by the pattywhacka!" he yelled and screamed, holding the shotgun level.

Whisper had talked to Marine, at one point when Blaze was around. The accent was similar to that, as was the understandability. Whatever it was he'd said, she couldn't understand him.

The human glared around, before smashing his fist onto the alarm to get it to stop. He turned on the light a moment later, and Whisper withdrew behind the couch more. She turned off the night-vision on the mask, allowing color back into her world. He was a tall man, with an obvious hanging tooth from the roof of his mouth. He had half a mustache that curled around his head, almost like half a beard except it didn't go below his chin. He was stringlike, puppetlike, except nothing like Belle.

"You sink youse can hides from me!? Me wee pattywhacka gon whacka whacka you!" he shouted suddenly, turning his shotgun to a chair. He fired once, and Whisper ignored the sense to cover her ears. That was loud!

And the chair was no more, having been almost vaporized in the blast. If he turned that towards the couch, no amount of hiding behind it would be enough.

"Youse not behinds me chairs...Yes...but I'll finds youse. I gon whacka you..." he stumbled over his words as he slowly stepped into the room. "Youse gets one more chances before me pattywhacka gon play..."

Wonderful. Was he talking to her, or trying to talk to the gun? She'd never talked to the variable wispon before...although that didn't stop people from thinking she did. It was a tool, not alive. If he moved beyond the couch, she'd strike.

The room wasn't that big, in hindsight. There weren't 'dozens' of chairs, but rather four in a circle, with a couch on the side.

He'd left the door open, too, Whisper realized. She reached behind her, hoping to find something hard that she could use to create noise. "Come on out, I juss wants to play...I likes pattywhacka. And me pattywhacka likes whacka whacking yous," he stumbled over the words again, his bare feet close by the couch now.

If he turned, he'd see her, right there. He stepped out behind the couch, looking well over where she was.

She stepped up, tripping him easily with the variable wispon. In the same movement she grabbed the shotgun by its two barrels, no wonder it was so loud, and brought it up far away from her face and body.

"Fucks!?" he yelled as he dropped to the floor, his fingers automatically hitting the trigger. It blew a hole up in the ceiling, and Whisper brought her boot down on his hands, forcing him to let go. The shotgun was a decent one, but she greatly preferred her wispon.

She leveled it at him, turning on the safety instantly. She doubted he kept extra ammunition in it. "Whose whoase hey now there, keep calm puppy..." he stuttered, backing up against the chair close to him. He was nude. Whisper kept the thoughts to herself, and glad the wisps weren't saying anything. "You don'ts needs to whacka whacka me..." he stuttered off.

He wasn't young, middle aged if anything, and he had a gaunt look around his face too. But unlike from starvation or depression as it was down in Spiral Hill, he just seemed to be hooked on some kind of drug. His hair had fallen out, leaving him bald except for a few brown hairs scattered around. It almost looked as if he'd tried to shave it all off at one point, but had stopped halfway.

"Who are you?" Whisper asked.

"Me? Littles olds mes? I'm just...the pattywhacka champion!" he yelled out, suddenly diving at her to get the shotgun back. Whisper flashed the butt of the gun at his head, throwing him to the ground faster than he could blink.

His back hit the coffee table, and his feet scratched at the carpet. "Who are you?" Whisper repeated. "Do you have anything with Spiral Hill?"

"No! I wouldn't wants anything to do with a place like that! They scare me, downs there. They comes up here, begging for foods, for waters, but all I wanna do is stay here with mah pattywhacka and play..."

Whisper glanced around at the various islander heads laced around the room. "Blue. Crush it," Whisper commanded. Instantly Blue was in the room, taking in the sight of the scared man and the human made shotgun in Whisper's hands. He saw the heads on the wall, and in an instant his mind was made up.

There was a loud crunch, and where before there had been a shotgun lay only pieces. "No! No!" the man said, crawling forward to cradle the pieces of his gun. "That was...she was so beautiful..." he muttered.

Whisper leveled the variable wispon at him. "I won't ask again. Who are you?"

"Your best nightmare."

"Whisper, run!" Orange yelled suddenly from the canister. Blue made a cube to instantly put some distance between him and Whisper.

An odd purple glow arose around him, his eyes the same deep purple glow as the water in Spiral Hill. "There's no running from me," he said, his voice echoing as he charged into the cube, making it disappear instantly. His hands had once been normal human hands, but now instead just held claws.

Whisper fired two shots towards the remains of the man, only to be ignored with a minor chuckle as he started to charge her. She hooked the wispon onto her back and started running through the mansion.

The alarms were blaring again, giving a small amount of red light for Whisper to see through. A large room with a staircase on both sides, she bolted up one as the man kept chasing her. "Green!" she shouted as she got to the top, jumping on top of the railings.

Red light, loud sounds, and Green managed to still hear her as he imbued himself into the wispon. She didn't need him for long, just long enough to float to the ground, hopefully taking longer than the man would.

He tossed himself through the railings, not caring about the ten or fifteen foot fall. He smashed into the ground, a broad grin that was almost alien apparent on his face. "You can't hide from me. You can't run. I am the immortal frenzy."

"Cyan, Orange!" Whisper tried. Orange wasn't much use in such close quarters, but she could knock him down with Cyan's laser, follow it up with an Orange sniper shot. If she did it right through his head, she'd win instantly.

Cyan imbued herself instantly, and Whisper could feel the energy coursing through her. She'd taken a lot more than just one battery from all the fences. "Pink, buy some time!" she tried to say.

The alarms blared louder, and the order was lost as the man started to charge at her.

She ducked into a kneel, and leveled the wispon one more time. She fired, hearing Cyan's shout of "Go away!"

Cyan's laser hit him dead on in the chest, and knocked him back...but only a moment as he got to his feet a second later again. "Youse gonna pays for hurting mee pattywahcka!"

"Great, now he's angry and frenzied!" Orange muttered. Frenzy...hadn't there been something wisps had mentioned about that? Or was that Sonic, either way she didn't have time to think about it as she ducked out the front door.

She half expected to see dozens of cops and police vehicles right outside, and a repeat of the Green Hill situation. Instead the place was filled with light from the dozens of floodlights, but was as empty as it was when she'd first seen it. There was a fountain in the middle, as rich people were sometimes wont to do.

Or rather, as she slammed a Blue imbued wispon into the ground to send herself flying, there had been a fountain in the grounds, as the man charged into it, raking into it with claws and jaws.

He was almost inhuman at this point. Before he'd had a simple purple aura, but now it was almost covering his entire body. "Death to all who betray me and my kind!"

"No one's betrayed you! You tried to kill us!" Blue shouted from the wispon. Whisper doubted that he was paying attention or listening as the purple water washed over him.

The frenzied aura grew stronger, replacing his entire body. Now he was nothing more than a purple mass, and a pair of large jaws intent on ripping her apart. Green hovered her gently over the snapping jaws of the purple beast. "Any ideas? Cyan didn't do anything to him!"

That wasn't true, technically. It did do something to him...it turned him a bit more human. He had started the stumbling talk again right afterwards.

"One," Whisper said. "Keep on guard everyone," she murmured as she switched to Orange, firing downwards at the beast and pushing herself up a bit higher. She fired once again towards the fountain this time, pushing her through the glass on the second floor.

Her back ached as the glass shattered around her, and she knew she probably had a few scratches because of that. She was in a long hallway, probably close to the main lobby that she'd been in earlier. Priceless vases and art that didn't make sense to her were lined the walls, all with alarms that blared red light and loud klaxons wailing.

There was no one single entrance here straight to the main area next to her and below her. But she didn't know the layout of this place, and there were multiple doors on either side.

The frenzied shouting stopped as the man, or whatever remained of him, started running towards where she was. She had only a minute or two to prepare, based on which entrance he'd go through. She felt the walls, trying to feel how solid and thick they were.

The place was industrialized, made out of a sturdy heavy iron. No blasting her way out of this one, unlike the warehouses from earlier.

"Blue, when you get a clear shot, try to buy some time. Cube him. Pink, set up spike strips both ways, we don't know which way he's coming. Orange, keep an eye and ear out. The more traps we can focus on him, the more likely we are to get past him," Whisper advised. Immediately the wisps went to work, not bothering with saying anything.

The sounds of the claws and jaws came closer, and around. It slammed into the wall next to her, and Whisper desperately hoped that she didn't have to make a third plan. But...there was always the other plan.

It got quieter a bit as the thing stopped slamming into the wall, instead heading towards the door on the closest side. "That one!" Orange pointed out.

"Cyan, Green, hover everything here and clear the path. Use them," Whisper finished.

The door was slammed open as the purple frenzied man screamed running straight down the hall.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Darkness

The wisps took only a second for their mark. The frenzied man was running towards her, and suddenly there was almost everything she could envision in the way. Blocks to keep him coming in a straight line, lasers and random objects shoved in his way, spikes to ensure that he couldn't move that quickly, and her own lasers from Orange in the wispon.

Each attack slowly but surely rocketed off a little of the purple aura surrounding him. Whisper growled a bit as she realized that if this kept going on, they were going to end up killing him. Was that really that much of a loss, though? He'd taken Islanders like her and hung up their taxidermied heads in his foyer, or lobby, or whatever that room was.

The wisp attacks never let up, and finally the man stopped, the aura barely cloaking him now. "I'ma gonna paddywhacka yous hards now!" he roared, dropping onto all fours.

Whisper never stopped firing, but it was almost as if the aura had come back to life again. It coated him fluidly like a second body, and the wisp attacks didn't seem to be bothering to do anything now, despite that Whisper could tell their power had not eased up in the slightest.

"Out the window!" Whisper commanded, jumping out a moment later just as the man slowed down, running into more of Pink's spikes. The four wisps outside the wispon came with her, and Green traded places with Orange, letting her fall confidently onto the concrete down below.

As soon as she landed, she bolted for the torn down front door. Alarms were flashing, but that didn't matter to her. There was a loud crash above her as the man jumped out the same window, but he'd overshot his jump a bit, landing straight into the fountain.

She wheeled around, firing some more of Orange's shots at him. "I don't think there's anything we can do, except tire him out!" Green said.

Tire him out? "Blue, make a maze of the cubes, minimal power. Cyan, light them up and blind him. Green, Orange," Whisper said instantly. A plan was forming in her head.

"Oh yeah, a real Whisper plan!" Orange cheered as she disimbued herself from the wispon. Whisper was glad that someone had faith in her, because as it was right now she had only the semblance of an idea what she was going to do.

She was a sniper, not a close range. She was no Tangle, no Slinger the ocelot, she wasn't meant for this kind of fighting.

But running and hiding? That, that she could do. The frenzied man let out another roar, running towards as if the fury had overridden everything he'd ever had and thought. Blue's eyes glowed as more cubes were generated, barely anything more than shells.

Whisper fired towards the ground, pushing herself up and then falling into Green's hover, pushing her above the entire field. The man was howling now, actual purple claws extending from his hands. It wasn't just the pure jaws.

The cubes broke apart into thousand of polygons, and right there that was when Cyan took into action, lighting them up into a blue light that flared next to him. Pink was laying down dozens of spike traps, some on the cubes and some on the floor, impossible to really walk his way out of.

She landed on the second floor, watching as he howled about doing...something...to her. He was impossible to understand now, his howling and raging having effectively neutered his ability to talk, but he could still reason. Especially as he suddenly turned to the stairs, rushing his way up them, ignoring all of Pink's spikes.

She kept firing at him, each one hitting close to or on him directly, but nothing seemed to cut through that frenzied aura of his. He'd just reached the top when Whisper jumped down to the floor with barely a light glance.

"Pink, spike him inwards," she said lightly. She wasn't sure if he heard her, but he must have, because as soon as the man got towards where she'd jumped off, his aura and jaws breaking through the railing, dozens of pink spikes emanated from it, doing their best to actually impale him rather than just hurt him.

"This isn't working!" Pink yelled out. "Nothing we can do is hurting him anymore, he was surprised at the second floor, but now it's doing nothing!"

The aura started to fail again as the man jumped off the second floor, landing in front of Whisper. His teeth were yellowed and pitiful, but now she could actually see him underneath the aura.

He was a giant mess. Each of Orange's shots had been successful, and he had dozens of bullet holes through his shoulders and chest. Even a few through his neck, with large blood spatters flowing down his bare chest. His feet were essentially gone from stomping all over Pink's spike traps, and there was a large piece of wood from Green's chosen array of 'everything' lodged in his left arm. It didn't seem to bug him any.

He growled with a grin, impossible to understand. "Cyan," Whisper said simply. The laser wisp tackled the man, using everything in her power to push him off to the side. There was a large hole in his chest where the spikes had sat.

"We're still hurting him, underneath all that. He just can't feel it," Whisper claimed softly. The man's purple aura was starting to waver now. "And he's dying."

"If he gets a third wind, we're goners," Orange said in a hurry. "So how do we do this?"

Surprise had been the most effective thing on him so far. Once he steeled himself there was no wavering in his willpower, and the purple aura responded to that. Which meant that she needed to find a way to surprise him, and end it through the aura all in one shot.

He gave another howl and Whisper took off running towards the foyer or lobby room, whatever it was, where the shotgun had lay tossed to the side. Still in pieces from Blue's assault.

"What's the plan? Is there a plan?" Cyan asked as she hovered nearby.

"Buy me time. A minute, if you can," Whisper asked. They all nodded, and went to find various ways to mess with the frenzied man to keep him from the course of coming into the room. Blue filled the space with cubes, dozens of them all of various sizes and strengths. Orange hovered nearby, unsure of what to do with herself. "Orange, you too. Spot for them," she said.

"But...oh alright. Fine! Don't hurt yourself though," she said, rocketing up towards the ceiling to keep an eye on the man.

She spread out the parts in front of her. Blue had done a good job wrecking it, which was what she had wanted at the time. But now...Smithy was the best at this, but he had taught her a few tricks. She was no Tails, nor any kind of weaponsmith or gunsmith...

The barrel was the worst part off, and she tossed it off to the side a bit. She'd get to that in a bit. The part that she really wanted was the base, the stock and the hammer. If those were in good condition, then she was good to go. The stock was decent, a bit battered, and the hammer was still in one piece.

When Smithy had first invited her to be part of the Diamond Cutters, he'd made sure that she could service her wispon with any kind of speed, seeing as how they were supposed to be a rapid response team to all of Eggman's misdeeds.

Smithy would have had no trouble putting this back together, but it was like a puzzle to her, the pieces partially broken or the edges cut off from each other. Hammer went here, stock went here, barrel pieces would go here, trigger here...

"Hurry! He's getting through Blue's cubes!" Orange warned from the top. Sweat poured down her neck as her ears twitched, but her focus didn't switch. She was almost done, she just needed...the barrel.

"Cyan, here!" Whisper called out. It'd been less time than she hoped, but it was the best that she could do. The rest...well, she hoped that sleight of hand would work. There was one shot left in one of the barrels. He must have reloaded at some point.

The wisp came down and quickly imbued herself in the variable wispon. Instantly she fired the laser at the barrel, shortening it by nearly half. The top at the part was wrecked beyond belief, but the first part, the part closest to the gun, would be salvageable. "Ooh, I think I know this plan!" Cyan grinned as she disimbued herself.

"He's here! I can't hold him back anymore!" Pink yelled out as he turned more of the cubes into spikes, trying to buffer up their defensive capabilities, but the frenzied man was effective at getting through them, not caring about the pain he was in, or the damage he was doing to himself.

Blue and Green surfaced back, both of them hovering and swaying in position. Whisper could tell they were tired, and to be honest she was too. She was operating almost entirely on adrenaline at this point.

She pointed the remade shotgun towards the man as he broke through the last bits of Blue and Pink's defense. The pink wisp was off to the side, his eyes wide with fear from the frenzy.

The aura disappeared instantly. "Mah...mah paddywhacka..." he murmured out.

Whisper's shot rang out in the now silent house, or she'd made all sound disappear from her thoughts. A bullet hole popped up in the man's head, cutting through the aura entirely. His eyes turned a bit more blank, and the aura didn't come back.

He fell down to his knees, and a moment later he fell onto his chest, his eyes open. Whisper took a moment to take a deep breath. "I really didn't like you having to do that..." Orange muttered.

"I didn't either," Cyan said, "But I understand why."

"He wasn't going to stop. The frenzy had taken him over completely," Green muttered. "Please...Whisper, don't make this a habit."

"I was never going to," Whisper said softly. She dropped the shotgun, kicking it off to the side. "And I never like to," she kept going.

The wisps nodded sorrowfully, and Whisper could hear them talk in their native tongue, her emotions bouncing up and down from it, mostly down. She walked up to the man, and reached down, ensuring that she closed his eyelids. "I wish I didn't have to," Whisper said softly.

"I think...I think he knew. He wasn't going to get out of that frenzy alive. I'm surprised it only took one shot though," Blue said quietly. "How did you know that would work?"

Whisper nodded. "I wasn't sure. The aura dipped whenever he was surprised, or feeling an emotion other than anger. Seeing his old gun, modified, brought out...many other emotions."

"All of which deadened the aura," Pink nodded. "Hence, shooting him then."

She nodded. The rest of the house was supremely quiet, and it appeared that the alarm had actually stopped. "No alarm?" she asked as she went to the ruined main room. There were hundreds of pieces of wood scattered around, ceramic of various broken vases everywhere she could look.

"No, it was starting to get annoying, so I went and turned it off," Cyan said, almost proudly. Almost, because Whisper knew that she wasn't. "Did you want it back on?" she asked, her eyes narrowing towards the wolf.

Whisper gave her a look, before shaking her head. Her boots crunched down on the wreckage, as she flipped down the mask again, turning on its night vision. "You know I can just turn on the light?" Green asked. "You don't need to shelter yourself now."

"No. Leave it off," Whisper commanded. Green and Cyan gave her a questioning glance, before they nodded. Pink was playing with one of the paintings that had survived the wrath, his spikes lifting it up carefully to hang it against the wall again. Blue and Orange were conversing quietly far above them all.

At the back of the main room was a small steel door, and Whisper didn't really want to go back to frisk that man for a key. She could probably search the rest of the mansion, but this was what had her attention. She tried the doorknob, surprised when it opened without a problem.

The five wisps gathered around her, curious as to where the door went. Whisper went on through first. It was a simple long stone hallway, compared to the wood that made up the rest of the mansion. At the end was another steel door, this one also unlocked.

A stone tower, with stairs going far deep down into the earth. "Alright, am I the only one getting zombie vibes from this?" Green asked. Whisper took the stairs two at a time, slowly heading downwards.

They spiraled, and Whisper kept one hand on the wall to make sure she wouldn't fall and slip. Her boots were sturdy, but the stairs were slippery and falling apart, despite being made of stone.

There were small streams of water from the top, falling down the spiral stairs. Further and further downwards Whisper went, and she started to feel the small chill of cold as it bit at her. "Okay, so I'm not the only one?" Green asked.

"No, no you're not," Orange offered. "Who had the bet that we'd come across something like Mr. Frenzy Man up there?"

"...Blue?" Pink asked. "I think it was Blue."

"No, I bet that we'd come across some special prophecy or anything following some urban scientist."

Why were the wisps taking bets on what kind of stuff she'd come across? And why were they doing it now, of all times?

The stairs finally ended at the bottom, with a small grate to let the water out. Whisper was grateful for that small design decision, as otherwise she had no doubt the entire thing would've been flooded beyond belief.

The floor was still soaked though, and there was yet another steel door here. The hinges had been rusted shut, and when Whisper tried this one the door was unlocked, but just stubborn enough to not open.

"Oh good, our adventure ends here," Orange said, her relief palpable in her voice.

"What!? No, we can't end it here! I want to see what's behind the door. Come on Whisper, open it, open it!" Pink cried out.

"Trying," Whisper commented. The door would open outwards, she could tell by the hinges, but it was stubbornly shut. Just in case, she tried pushing it, to receive the exact same thing. Not a push door then, just as she thought but it was better to try it and look like a fool than to not try it and realize it.

She put one boot against the wall next to it, and tried pulling with all of her strength. The hinges squeaked something awful, and all of the wisps covered their...ears? Places of anatomy of which they can hear sounds with? She'd really have to look that up one of these days...

"It's times like this we need a Red with us. They can just use burst on the door, and boom! Open!" Green mentioned.

"Ooh, or Black! Just bomb the door...Whisper why are you glaring at us?" Blue murmured as he noticed that Whisper's eyes were narrowed towards them.

"Orange or Cyan, I have an idea. Blue, keep yourself occupied I'll need you in a moment," Whisper said. Both Cyan and Orange promptly tried to imbue themselves into the wispon, and unfortunately got themselves stuck.

Most wispon's were capable of exactly one wisp imbuing them at any one time. Red wisps were for flamethrowers, or Yellow drill wisps. The variable wispon was unique in that any amount of wisps can imbue it and have it be shaped appropriately. It was why the variable wispon was so uniquely shaped.

Unfortunately it could still only imbue one wisp at a time, and whenever Cyan tried to imbue it, Orange was already there and would kick Orange out, who would then try to imbue it again and kick Cyan out.

Whisper watched this show for a long moment with a few sighs. "Orange then, we'll try Cyan afterwards," she commanded. Orange gave a cry of glee and imbued the wispon again, kicking Cyan out and having her give Whisper a small glare.

She aimed at the hinges, and Cyan gave an 'ahh'. "Oh I see what you're trying. Would that work?" Cyan asked. High power but low actual velocity would make it come out closer to a beam. The same thing that she did on the lock back in Green Hills, actually.

"One way to find out," Whisper admitted as she fired at the hinges. Orange was capable of extremely high power, but the wispon itself probably wasn't. She was capable of shooting her and another person she imbued high into the air after all.

The hinges slowly warped and peeled under the high heat, but it was slow. Very slow, and Whisper knew that by the time she ended up on the third and final hinge that the first one was starting to cool off. "Blue, hurry!" Whisper said.

Orange dis-imbued herself with a quiet sigh, and Whisper made a mental note to give her a treat for that. Not many wisps could do what Orange had just done for a consistent amount of time, let alone the ten or fifteen minutes that it had taken her.

The hammer wispon in hand, Whisper swung and crashed into the door. The first hit dented it back, jamming the hinges outwards, and the second hit knocked the door flat out with the hinges melting out of the wall.

"Whoa. Remind me not to get on Orange's bad side," Cyan muttered.

"Much too late for that," Orange commented snidely. Whisper ignored them as she cautiously stepped over the door. The passageway on this one was much more...Eggman-like.

A white hallway, filled with tiles. Lights automatically turned on as she walked past, the long fluorescent tubes hanging from the ceiling. She paused as her eyes adjusted to it, and she flicked her mask back up. "Alright, who voted for 'mad scientist'?" Pink asked. "Cause it wasn't me."

"Blue called it," Green and Cyan said at the same time. Blue came up above them and gave a small bow, best as the wisp could, as he started to give a makeshift speech for how he could so easily identify what Whisper was going to go through.

Mad scientist though was a viable explanation. The hallway opened at the end to a large room, still underground. Tubes of various things were filled all over it, with a large computer on one end, still operable. On one side was the creek from above, either transported or teleported down here.

In the middle of the creek lay a small purple wisp, shaking violently in place. It had only a jaw and the small appendages, no eyes to speak of, but it seemed to know where Whisper and the others were at all times as it immediately faced the intruders.

It was trapped in another canister, much like the same ones she had on her person at all times.

The wisps immediately started barraging her with information in their native tongue, eager to get the purple wisp out or at least to respond. Whisper felt her emotions go out of whack, up and down, sideways, up a loop and through a few dozen springs before she could try to force herself into awareness.

The purple wisp did nothing to the bombardment. Behind them was the word WILL, written in all capitals. There was the frenzied aura from the man above surrounding it, and Whisper couldn't look away. The aura disappeared, but the word was still engraved in her head, much like the word undo.

Whisper raised a hand to her head, massaging off the incoming headache. The wisp's words finally cut through to her head, Orange's especially, "Whisper, hurry! We have to give her some more energy, she's going to die if she doesn't!"

The...the purple wisp? Purple wisps could die? Actually, she knew that wisps themselves could, but weren't the purple ones the ones perverted by Eggman's research? Blue and Green continued their shouting at her, the words barely heading through her head.

She reached into her bag for one of the energy treats that Tails had made, holding it out gently as she opened up the purple wisp canister.

As soon as she did, the other wisps, her usual wisps, surrounded her and stayed quiet. Whisper was thankful, as the headache from the will written on the wall was still prying into her.

The purple wisp cautiously looked up, and Whisper half expected them to be like a feral animal, but instead sat back down like a depressed dog.

She blinked; that was exactly what had happened. The creek underneath the wisp was turning a dark, dark purple right underneath her, and then teleported or pumped back up to the creek above.

Right here. This wisp was what was being used to poison Spiral Hill. The purple wisp looked up, one large eye opening up on her head. She sniffed the treat, a small energy bar, before licking it lightly.

"Good, yeah? Don't worry, she won't hurt you. She knows how to treat us right," Orange commented.

"She does. Trust us, if not her," Cyan added.

"We wouldn't be here if we didn't trust her," Blue said softly.

"And we would never hurt others of us," Pink continued the train.

"We took a geas of that, if you remember," Green exclaimed. The purple wisp's eyes widened, as she nodded excitedly. The treat went down in a quick second.

Whisper hadn't even realized how angry she had been getting recently since she had come here, or how tired. The purple wisp's powers had been drained enough that it had changed from anger and frenzy to a cold depression. The purple wisp gave a startling howl.

Which was joined in a moment later by all of her own wisps. Whisper wasn't sure what was causing it, but she knew that they might not have explained anything. Half of their culture she still didn't know, and she was probably one of the most knowledgeable on the planet.

"You...You angered him, and sundered him. Dr. Henderson," The purple wisp's voice was soft and careful, as if she hadn't spoken in days, or years. It was cautiously feminine, similar to Orange, compared to the high energy of Cyan.

"Dr. Henderson?" Whisper asked.

Purple blinked in confusion for a moment. "Oh right, and she has a translator. Should have mentioned that," Cyan commented. Orange gave a full body sigh, and Pink used Blue's body to act as a facepalm.

"The man who trapped me in there. He was...hurtful."

She motioned towards the computer, and Whisper could see that it was just now finishing turning on. It had turned on automatically when she'd entered the room, but between the word on the wall and the wisp, she had barely even noticed.

"Ooh, I got this!" Cyan grinned before diving into the computer. The computer's fans suddenly went crazy for a moment before it suddenly exploded, and Cyan came out looking far angrier than Whisper had ever seen her.

She might've looked that way in Green Hill, but Whisper had also not 'seen' her then. "Long story short, the guy thought that he could break what Eggman did by forcibly transferring the 'aura' of a Nega-Wisp to himself."

Pink sucked in air. "That's...that's awful! And purple wisps aren't...oh my mother I am so sorry," Pink said as he quickly went to comfort Purple. Green and Blue joined in a moment later, and even Orange, tired as she was, peeked in her head.

Whisper tilted her head towards Cyan. "Purple wisps are created, not born. Drain a wisp of energy long enough, and think negative thoughts, and it...transforms them. Generally White to...well, this. Purple. I'd use Violet but we already know a fox by that name," Cyan answered.

Whisper glanced at the broken wisp, still floating there despondent as the others comforted her. Somehow...Whisper thought...that she knew exactly what that feeling was like.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Dawn

Whisper glanced over at the computer screen. The purple frenzied aura over the word will had disappeared, leaving it permanently engraved and carved into her mind. It was carved into the wall as well, leaving a small imprint.

But while the water flowing through was no longer turning purple ever since she had freed the purple wisp, it would probably take days, or even weeks before Spiral Hill returned to a sense of normalcy. That still didn't answer the question though of what it was that Dr. Henderson was trying to do. This was his lab, she knew, based on the white tiles and various other scientific instruments that only Tails would truly be interested in.

The wisps were mainly off talking to Purple, trying to get her to open up. It was going to be slow going, Whisper knew, after anyone with the amount of trauma that she thought was inflicted on the wisp.

The files on the computer were set by date, starting nearly twenty years ago. Had this wisp been captive for that long!? She knew the wisps were old, but...wow. She opened the first file that she could find.

It didn't open. Corrupted, the operating system reported. Whisper growled as she went to the second one. Fortunately, this one opened.

'5th day of Project Frenzy; I have acquired a white wisp that many say assisted Sonic during his time on Planet Wisp and when Dr. Eggman's theme park was open. She seemed...normal.

I have attached her attributes and test results here. While I don't have any of the translators that the Resistance or Restoration have, she and I have come to an agreement. A nod for yes, a shake for no. She seems intent on figuring out what caused the existence of the purple wisps. The 'Nega-Wisps' according to Dr. Eggman's notes.

I have told her that I will use her to figure out what caused them, and from there figure out the methodology to return them to normal.'

So far it seemed okay and clear. There was a picture attached of a white wisp and a young man, much younger than the man upstairs that she'd killed, around in the lab. It seemed...not happy, but not berserk.

The third and fourth files also drew up blanks. The fifth opened.

'90th day of Project Frenzy. I have eliminated most other variables, and believe that it is pure unadulterated chaos and anger that transforms a white wisp into the Nega-Wisp. It is more than just draining, although Sierra seems to be okay with it.

That also means that I must transform myself. Sierra and I can not use the 'wisp bond', so it means I must use alternate means. Sierra is aware that this will likely cause her indescribable pain, let alone the weight on my own willpower.

I have taken to inscribing the word on the wall behind her, as a reminder to herself and myself why we do what we do.'

Whisper felt her heart pound. This wasn't just a journal of what happened, this was closer to an apocalyptic log more than anything.

The sixth and seventh also didn't open, which Whisper wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing yet. The eighth did, and with horrified eyes she read on.

'400th day of Project Frenzy. It took me a very long time, but I managed to force the transformation of a white wisp into a Nega-Wisp. Most of that time was me searching various ways to inflict mental pain on myself, hoping to reflect it back onto Sierra. Physical pain worked best, I realized.

I wish I could stay clinical, but already Sierra's aura is starting to affect me. Will. I must have the Willpower to do what must be done. Now that Sierra is transformed, I must have more subjects. I must remain sane, in order to now turn her back.

Spiral Hill is just down the mountain. I'm sure I could hire a few subjects from there.'

Whisper took a deep breath. Good, he hadn't gone into detail. She swallowed briefly, before clicking on the next few logs. Most of them didn't open, and the ones that did were from further and further out. Their date of creation didn't match the days that were in the logs.

Some were from day eight hundred. Others, twelve hundred, although created only two days apart. He was being driven mad by working so closely with Sierra, the purple wisp.

'Day 2114 of Project Frenzy; Spiral Hill ain't sendin' no more subjects. So I guess I just gotta go down there and take over the rest. Come on, I just wan' Sierra back.'

'Day 5345 of Project Frenzy; A'ight. Spiral Hill ain't no more no mo. Thas' fine, but the subject's still be needin' testing. So I hooked Sierra up to this whittle machine. See, it drains her aura, means I think more like me ol'self. And puts it in the water. They be gettin' angry, and I be gettin' me results! Best. Plans. Ever.'

'Day 6829; Who am I, now? Who was Sierra? Aight. I'll be honest; I dun care. See, the wispies all tired out now, all the time. That tiredness goin' to the water. We be fixin' them in time. Course, the copper's came 'round a few weeks ago, and they got me just so...mad.

They didn't last long. I took one of their guns, a nice little shotput with 'Patrick' written on the side. Patrick, stupid name for a shotgun. Nah, it's mah Paddywhacka now. See, Paddies? Cops? Ha, I'm hilarious. Machine's still on tickin', and wispie's still bein' drained.'

Years. Years and years of being drained, endlessly, tirelessly. "It's not something we want to know, is it?" Blue asked, hovering next to her ear. Whisper startled for a moment, before she realized that most of the wisps were hovering over her shoulder. Purple wasn't, instead looking over the floors with a despondent curiosity.

"No. It's not," Whisper agreed.

"Is it something that-" Pink started, before the other wisps turned on him with a shouted 'No!' Whisper wasn't feeling in the laughing mood, but she still forced a small chuckle. They were trying, at least.

It was just sad she didn't have much to laugh about, these days. "What will you do?" Whisper quietly went over to the Purple wisp, sitting down on the ground next to her.

"I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I want to do stuff, but I can't. I can't. I just can't...I can't give anymore."

"It's going to be okay. I have a spare, if you want to come with. The others like you, at least," Whisper said, holding up her jacket to show the empty canister she had.

"I don't know."

"That's alright. Do you remember your name, Sierra?" Whisper tried.

"That...was my name once. Ages ago. Years ago. Before the pain. Before the pain. Before the loneliness. Before the pain. I'm not her, anymore."

"What would you prefer to be called? Violet?" Whisper asked. It would be confusing having two Violet's around but it wouldn't be the first time she'd had to differentiate between two people with the same name.

Purple shook her head. "I don't know. Not Violet. Not Sierra. I'm none of them, now. I can't come with, not anymore. Too alone, too much, too much..." she muttered.

"How about we take you down to the city. It's not far from here. You don't need to do anything. Between Blue and Green you can just ride down," Whisper nodded.

"That...sounds nice. I'm tired. So tired. I don't know. Too much, too much pain, so tired..."

"What if we use the canister you were already in? It's already yours," Green asked as he knocked it carelessly to the ground, off the machine. "Whisper only has six, but five of them are ours. Oh, I know! You can come by and visit!"

Did the canisters actually work like that? Whisper wasn't sure. Again, the more she worked with the wisps the more she realized that she actually had no idea what they were doing half the time. And the more she worked with them the more she realized that they didn't have any ideas either.

"Visit? I'd like visit. Pain! Too much pain..." Purple said, huddling into herself. Blue hovered down, and gently pushed Purple forward into Whisper's chest.

"Open your jacket. Any canister except the empty one. I have an idea," Blue suggested. Whisper blinked, but nodded as she opened her jacket to show all six canisters. Purple's eyes widened as she was pushed by Blue into Green's canister. Immediately Green dove in with her.

Followed by Blue, and then by Cyan. "How many of you can fit in one of these?" Whisper eventually asked, her eyes in disbelief. She'd always thought it was one to one. One wisp, one canister, and that was it. That was all. But no, they go ahead and pull something like this.

"Most of us, actually. Benefits of being a mostly pure energy being," Pink answered with a shit-eating grin. "Don't worry though, we'll stay out here. You should head back to Jewel and Violet."

Whisper glanced at the now clean water, making its way back to the city. She had no doubt that it was already starting to move back up, based on how quick Jewel came back up. "Yes. We should," she muttered.

She bent down to grab the empty canister, just in case she wanted a spare of a spare. She slid it into her jacket, narrowing her eyes as she realized she'd have to find another magnetic button that held the canisters in place.

The pathway back was just as harrowing as it was down, even though it was obviously much brighter. Without Purple radiating the aura, things looked much...better. There was less anger, Whisper felt, and much less tiredness and depression. She didn't know much about nega-wisps, as Dr. Henderson had called them, but she knew who she could ask.

Sonic, mostly. He was the only one with actual experience with wisps that she could contact. Otherwise the other experts on wisps were herself or Tails. Or Amy, she supposed, seeing as how Amy was the one that negotiated with them to create the wispons in the first place.

The mansion was still dark and dreary as she walked out of the back door, her mask down on her face. The sun was staring to peek off of the horizon. It must have been hours since she was last seen down there.

She idly reached up for the radio, breathing a small sigh as only silence answered her. Right, there was something about Spiral Hill that was still keeping communications locked in. She hadn't solved that part yet.

By the time Whisper reached the mills, the sun was less than a quarter of the way up, but definitely getting there. She tried the radio again, this time hearing some amount of static. "This is Whisper," she muttered.

"Whisper?" Violet's voice came through clear. Orange and Pink hovered very close by. "Awesome, yeah Jewel that fixed it!" she shouted off to the beetle.

Had she done something to fix the communications? That was good timing, all things considered. "You fixed things?" she asked.

"Yeah, between Jewel and myself we managed to jury rig at least something. She thinks a lot of the maintenance hasn't been done recently so everything's falling apart."

"I have news on that front."

"So does Shadow. Apparently the tests could only determine some kind of energy imbued within the water, rather than a chemical. The fact the tablets could cure it was only because they were made with the same energies the wisps give off."

They were? Whisper had no idea. Judging on how both Orange and Pink were looking at each other and shrugging, they had no idea either. "Yes. A Purple wisp was held captive at Henderson's mansion."

"Say what!? Hold on, Jewel, Jewel! Apparently a Purple wisp was behind it!"

Whisper could barely hear Jewel's voice in the background. "What? But Purple wisps aren't here! The last of them went back to Planet Wisp like twenty years ago!"

"I'll tell more when I get back," Whisper said, going through the same fence that she'd already made a hole in. "Just the hill now." She glanced down over the hillside, the sun starting to appear over the mountains. Spiral Hill was starting to wake up already, she could tell. People were walking out of their houses or buildings, some of them blinking the sun out of their eyes. Most were in some state of starvation, some were in better condition than others.

Whisper jumped down one hill, and cautiously fell down to the one below it. Going down was much, much easier than going up. "Pink?" she asked. The pink wisp grinned as he imbued her gloves, small spikes making sure that she wouldn't lose her grip. "Thanks," she muttered.

With Pink's assistance, and Orange to make sure that no one was randomly sneaking up on her, she fell slowly to the ground down the cliff. Despite the fact the villagers had called it a hill, it was much more of a cliff.

Small places jutted out of the cliff, the same ones that she'd used to jump up there in the first place, and she was thankful that they were there even more than before. Climbing up was easy, climbing down was much, much harder.

By the time the sun had reached over the horizon, probably around eight if she had to guess, she had reached the bottom. Why her mask had everything except a clock, she didn't know. The original Diamond Cutters had watches that they synced before each mission, but she hadn't worn hers in...well, ages.

She certainly hadn't been wearing it back at the beginning of all this.

Whisper took a moment to reorient herself with her mental maps, following the creek back to the town proper. It was a startling shade of blue, nearly crystal clear too. The last figments of the nega-wisps energy had seemingly faded.

Spiral Hill was still the non-maintained mess that it had been earlier. There were still dozens of potholes and sinkholes all over the place, and cars just parked haphazardly. But where before it looked like a zombie movie had rolled through the city, now it was...still like a zombie movie, but at the end of one.

Some Islanders were walking about, blinking the sleep out of their eyes. Most of them were looking like it had been a long, rough nap rather than whatever it had been. They didn't know. They were sluggish, slow. And yet, there was a subtle 'waking up' to them that made Whisper realize that Spiral Hill wasn't going to take months or years to recover. Islanders were strong-willed, and it showed.

The fact that it had been 'cured' so fast made Whisper wonder if that was just luck, or if Spiral Hill had so many more people nowadays. Back when she and Tangle visited here there was a small hodgepodge, but already there were twice as many people just walking the streets.

She passed the store that she'd broken into, the one that held the dead mouse. Pink disimbued himself from her gloves, shuddering into Whisper's arms as they passed. He had been the one to find her, after all.

Out front there was another person, a hedgehog, casually sweeping the glass up. He looked like he'd seen far too much, and was too gaunt to have spent much time upright. And yet he was trying, struggling, to whistle a happy tune as he worked.

The more that things break, Whisper knew, the more that they tried to fix things.

Jewel's museum was still in one piece, thankfully, although the door had been fixed. This time there was a small piece of paper on the front, saying 'It's unlocked! Just knock!'

"You'd think that she wouldn't tell us to knock. When we knock, we use hammers!" Pink exclaimed with a smirk. "Or spikes! Or spiked hammers! Actually, why can't we imbue the wispon with multiple of us? Did Smithy ever explain it?"

"No. He didn't. I don't," Whisper admitted. She didn't bother knocking, instead just opening the door cautiously. It was still dark and damp, with her boots knocking some water out of the carpets.

Small crystals glowed now as she passed them, where before they didn't glow at all. Had the nega-wisp's energy actually affected the rocks and gems in the museum? It had been energy based, and some were notorious for their sensitivity.

The entrance way to the back was exactly the same, but now Whisper could hear words being exchanged. "She's late already. I'm going out to search for her," Shadow's voice said.

"No, give her some more time. She said she was at the hill," Violet's voice called out.

"It does take a while for most people to climb down that hill, especially from Dr. Henderson's old place. Give her another twenty or thirty minutes," Jewel acquiesced.

Shadow let out a growl. "And what if she's hurt? You think she's going to tell us that?"

"I mean, you wouldn't, but we'd tell on you for you," Orange commented. Whisper rolled her eyes. "Come on, you know that we would. It'd be for your own good!"

"No, it wouldn't," Whisper told them instantly. Orange pouted, and Pink let out a nodding hum, as if she'd said something that he already knew and was agreeing with.

"I'm back," Whisper said as loud as she felt she could in the oppressive silence. Immediately she saw Shadow turn his head towards her. He'd just been hovering around the entrance to the living room, it seemed.

Jewel was still on the couch, looking much better already. It had taken Whisper only a few hours to...find the nega-wisp, but those few hours seem to have done her a world of good. Honestly, Whisper was kind of surprised the water system hadn't gone bad. Her body was still shallow and still showed the symptoms of possible starvation, but her eyes were alert, looking much more the commander that Whisper remembered.

Violet was...missing. But Whisper could hear sounds coming from the kitchen, and Pink and Orange went off to make sure that the vixen wasn't hurting herself on accident. Or at least, Whisper thought that's why they went. Maybe Pink went to cheer her on.

"Whisper!" Jewel said excited. Her wings starting fluttering, and she hid the wince pretty well before she sat back down on the couch. "Good to have you back."

"What all did you find?" Shadow asked instantly. "You said you'd tell us once you got back."

Whisper nodded. "It was...strange," she admitted slowly. "First, there was an old grocery store on the outskirts. The name had been washed off-"

"Probably Grocery Mart. It's a small chain, I think with only a few stores to its name. There was one near out there," Jewel murmured. Whisper nodded.

"The wisps and I went to check it out. We found a dead mouse trapped in the bathroom, looking as if she wasn't that old. The door had been locked. After final rites-"

Shadow raised an eyebrow. Jewel held up her hand. "It's a courtesy thing, Shadow. Suffice to say I know what it is, but I doubt that has anything with Henderson," Jewel commented. "Please continue, Whisper," she finished. There was the old commander voice. Somewhere, deep down, Whisper knew it was still there. Twenty three years was not enough for the beetle to lose it.

"Afterwards, we jumped the cliff, following the mill creek. Went through the mills property. The fences were still electrified."

"What does that matter?" Shadow asked, his eyes narrowed. "Unless...they were still maintained."

Whisper nodded. "Exactly. Then we got to the mansion. There were no lights on, nor any sign of anything living there."

"Henderson was a notorious recluse. I'm not surprised he had no vehicles or any sign at all. If he'd been hit by the same thing we had-"

"He hadn't," Whisper interrupted. "He was the one causing it. I followed the creek to his house, seeing that on the other side the water was pure and unaltered. Seeing that it happened after the water passed underneath an old stone bridge connected from the main house, I broke in."

Jewel winced. "I get the feeling I know where this is going..."

"Yes," Whisper said quietly. "There was no instant alarm, but there was one. Someone, I think it was him but he was so haggard I couldn't tell, then came into the room holding a shotgun. Calling it his 'paddywhacka'. The room was filled to the brim with trophy heads. Of Islanders."

Jewel gasped. Shadow gave the barest hint of a 'hm'. It didn't sound like it had surprised him at all. Then again, Shadow was smart enough to figure out what mostly had happened. "We crushed the gun, forcing him into a rage. He refused to tell me who he was, so I don't know if he was Henderson or not. I think it was, based on other information later on. A purple aura started to gather on him, making him immune to most of the wisp attacks."

"Purple? Frenzy?" Shadow asked. Violet gave a gasp as she walked into the room, holding a pan of surprisingly good looking muffins. How she'd made muffins in that kitchen, Whisper didn't know.

"Whisper. Whisper," Pink said, hovering next to the wolf's ears. The surprise must have been obvious on her face. At least to Pink. "We are going to hire her for cooking. From now on. All the time. I watched her do it and I still have no idea."

Whisper's ear flicked him on one of his spikes. "In a moment. Debriefing," she muttered. He gave a slight 'sorry!' as he went hiding into his canister. "Frenzy," Whisper nodded towards Shadow. "We figured out that being surprised or some other emotion than anger would temporarily take the aura out of him."

"So the wisps bought me time to fix up his gun while they led him on. He seemed rather attached to it. I made it up enough that it looked like the real thing, and when the aura disappeared for the moment, I fired. The wispon, without wisp energy."

Jewel gave a sorrowed nod. "I figured that's where it was heading."

"Wait, I don't understand, what does that mean?" Violet asked, one of the warm muffins in her hands. Her mouth was full, but yet she could speak rather clearly. How she did that, Whisper didn't know, but she probably had plenty of practice at Sonic's house.

"It means she shot him. Head or heart?" Shadow asked, his head tilted, his gaze cold and calculating.

"Head," Whisper said. Shadow nodded.

"Sometimes it's the only thing that works," Shadow said ominously.

"Wait, Whisper killed someone!?"

"She didn't have much choice-" Jewel said.

"When you're pushed to the wall, Violet-" Shadow suggested.

"Yeah, she did," Orange commented bluntly. The wisp's voice carried through the heavy atmosphere. "And to be fair, I would've made that shot too if I had the chance. The guy was a psycho. And that's to say nothing of the nega-wisp's generation. He may have been a good man once, but not anymore," Orange finished.

"...Oh," Violet said, her face turning red. "I...I'm sorry for interrupting," she answered quietly.

"It's not something we like doing," Whisper said, her voice cutting through everyone else's words. "However, in the Resistance, there was no holding back. The Restoration there was, but we were fighting mostly robots. We didn't always fight only robots."

"Da- Mr. Sonic told me about Surge and Kit. And Starline."

Shadow nodded. "Three of many. The most dangerous ones were never the robots, but the ones made of flesh and blood. Even Metal Sonic, in his prime, wasn't the troublemaker that those three were."

"Whisper, continue?" Jewel asked. She munched on one of the muffins as well. She looked down at it with bright eyes. "How did you make these!?" she asked Violet with understandable surprise. Whisper had seen the kitchen.

She grabbed one of them too. Surprisingly warm and flaky, and one of the only ways she knew to stave off the inevitable self-loathing that a kill would bring to her. "Afterwards, we followed that path to the back of the house to the stone bridge. A long spiral staircase went straight down, where Henderson had set up a laboratory."

"There, we found a purple nega-wisp, her energy being drained to fuel the...odd purple energy that affected the water."

"But I don't get it. Purple was Frenzy, or so the Faker claims. How does Frenzy lead to...what, depression?" Shadow asked, turning to Jewel.

"It felt like a bad case, yes," she admitted. "Like I had no energy at all."

"When a nega-wisp has no energy, but energy is still being drained...what's left after a frenzy?" Whisper asked.

"All that's left is tiredness and pain..." Shadow came to the same conclusion a moment later. "And that energy was infecting the water," he muttered.

"Yes. I pulled up a few logs out of the computer. Most were corrupt. She was apparently a white wisp. And then over time, he inflicted pain and torment on her, at her will, to figure out how to turn nega-wisp's back into normal ones. At the same time, he was inflicting pain on himself too."

"That doesn't seem like that would work...What did you do with her? You didn't kill her too, did you?" the accusatory tone of Violet pierced into Whisper's heart.

She shook her head. "No, she and the other wisps are in the canisters," she said, gently knocking on one of them.

Immediately the air became colorful as the wisps filled the air, exception of Pink. He stayed in his own, although Whisper did notice that he came out to grab a muffin to go back in, like a child that was scolded. Cyan immediately leapt to the muffins, devouring them with an intensity that surprised everyone that wasn't Whisper or a wisp.

Blue and Green hovered nearby, with Purple...who wasn't purple anymore. No, the deep violet that she had been had changed to a much lighter shade.

"Lavender," Whisper said quietly as she identified the shade. The nega-wisp looked around, before using of her arms to point to herself with a questioning tilt. Whisper nodded. A broad grin appeared on her face as she appeared to take it in stride.

Until Next Time!

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Spiral

The newly renamed Lavender hovered down in front of Violet. The one tailed fox tilted her head a bit. "Hi...there?" she asked lightly.

"Hi. I'm...White originally, then Purple, and now...I guess Lavender?" the nega-wisp asked, glancing at Whisper for some amount of reassurance. Whisper nodded. "Nice to meet all of you..." she muttered before she dove back into the Cyan's old canister.

"That could have gone better. Still, we know that it's working! Somewhat," Blue said. Green nodded, and he hovered himself over to Whisper before heading into the same canister that Lavender had.

"I didn't think wisps could change colors like that," Shadow said quietly. "You said she was a dark purple originally. Seems much lighter now," he said.

"Yeah, she was a white originally. Sierra, I think Whisper said her name had been? She hadn't gone by that in so long that she'd almost forgotten it. Any case, she was treated pretty bad, so Cyan came up with the idea that if we all treat her nicely she'd change back!" Blue explained.

"I don't think it'd be quite that simple," Jewel muttered. "Usually there's some other change necessary."

"Mindsets, from what I know. The guy around her was mean all the time, so she turned mean to protect herself from that mindset. We aren't mean, so maybe she'll turn back! You know, same way Chao turn into a hero Chao or a dark Chao."

Whisper blinked. Those weren't just stories? She turned to Shadow and Jewel, who both shook their heads.

Violet nodded though. "I get it. By influencing her with positive energy the same way we do a Chao, you're hoping she'd go back to being a white wisp rather than the nega-wisps." Blue nodded.

"Isn't that...just exactly what I said?"

"It is but it's helpful to have it restated," Violet answered. Blue rolled his eyes before he dove into the same canister as the others. "And did he just go into othe same canister as the other two? I didn't think they could do that."

"There's more to them than meets the eye," Whisper deadpanned. "I'm starting to learn that just as much as all of you," she finished.

Jewel let out a small snicker. It was a rare sound during the times of the Restoration, and Whisper didn't think that she was going to hear it now here, either. "No one knows all about the wisps except the wisps themselves. Honestly you know more about them than all the others do, despite Tails' breakthrough on a translator."

She stood up tall, a statement which didn't mean much when she was barely over two feet normally. But it did mean to Whisper that she was feeling better, "We'll take it from here. Where are you three off to? And why come to Spiral Hill in the first place?"

Shadow nodded. "A few reasons. One is that due to circumstances beyond our control, I've been reinstated as a government agent, and my goal is to find all the high playing powers of the Restoration and Resistance."

Jewel nodded. "My reason was to find out where Tangle went," Whisper interjected. "Because Tails probably went with her, and he could probably build a time machine to send me back to the right time."

The beetle nodded slowly. "I get it. You're here asking for information on where Tangle's mission is, because you heard that Tails went with her. Did anyone tell you why Tangle went?"

"Something about the missing king having access to time magic?"

"That's pretty close, actually. She heard that the entire kingdom had been displaced through the time, sending it hundreds of years into the future. To right now, actually. She went there to figure out why, and if they knew about what it was that did it. Tails found out, through Blaze, that they had access to some kind of time magic, and was sending people back and forth. He went there to try to get them to bring you back," Jewel explained.

"I'm just here for the adventure," Violet admitted. Jewel gave her a reassuring smile.

"Sometimes not all reasons have to have a deep background. Sometimes, that's enough," she said. "I don't think I've seen you since you were two," Jewel admitted, giving a much better look towards the violet fox.

Whisper could tell she was feeling much better than before. She was flying now, even if she didn't realize it. "You knew me as a kit?" Violet asked.

"Most of us did. Knuckles absolutely adored you, you know? I don't know how often Tails and Blaze took you up to Angel Island. If you have time, I suggest you go up there again. He'd be glad to have you around for a bit."

"Mom or Dad never mentioned it."

Jewel looked away. "I think they wanted to keep you out of the worst of our fighting. We were fighters at heart, raised to be since kids. With Eggman's fear looming over us all, how could we not be?"

"You fought with them? Arguments, right?"

Shadow snorted. "More than that. I had to peel Blaze off of the trees that weren't on fire on Angel Island more times than I care to count. She and Knuckles, both guardians, fought physically and vocally. A lot. And Tails was never on Knuckles' side," he said.

"Huh. I never knew that..." Violet said softly.

"They tried to keep you out of the worst of it. Sonic's easy going enough that the worst of their traits brushed off, but Knuckles not so much. And the less said about Silver and the Chaotix, the better."

"They fought with them too?"

"Not with the Chaotix," Shadow answered. "Tails fought Silver a lot, mostly philosophically. Silver was of the opinion that the future was never set in stone, as he actually came from it and could see the butterfly effects. Tails was of the opinion that each person had their role to play, but their own effect on the timeline was minimal. The 'butterfly effect' didn't exist."

"I...don't think I've ever met Silver," Violet admitted. "Mr. Sonic told me a lot about him, but he never came around."

"He wouldn't, nor should he. If he did, we had bigger problems. Much bigger," Shadow said. "Timeline altering problems."

"And a civilization arising out of nothing isn't a timeline altering problem?" Whisper interjected.

"Not to Silver, apparently. We haven't seen hide nor hair from him for years. Twenty three years, actually," Shadow said, his eyes widening as he glanced at Whisper.

"Oh, I've been meaning to ask!" Jewel said suddenly before the black hedgehog could say anything else. "What actually happened, from your perspective, on that mission?" she asked.

Which one 'that mission' was, Whisper had no questions. There was only one that could be said as 'that' mission. "Tangle and I found an old device in the ruins. I told her not to turn it on, and we couldn't use Cyan as she had just overpowered herself."

"Tangle went and turned it on."

"She went and turned it on. It fell and by instinct I grabbed it."

"What did that feel like?" Shadow asked. "Did it feel like it was pulling you somewhere?"

"Why would that matter?" Violet asked, her head tilted. Jewel gave a quiet giggle as she glanced at the vixen.

Whisper shook her head. "No, it was as if I was falling. Frozen, everything around me running in fast forward, before I landed here, in this time."

"Nothing was pulling you?"

"No."

"Why would it pull her?" Violet asked. "Unless it was behaving erratically in the fourth, Whisper would just see things as strangely colored snakes while her brain tried to figure out what was going on," she said.

Jewel giggled. "Yep, definitely her mother and father's brains."

"Because if it had, it would mean that this is a potential target point. In other words, Silver was here before, at some point in his personal timeline. That would explain why she landed here, rather than some other point."

"I don't think time works like that," Violet said. "Time isn't a river where you're either in the 'past' or 'future'. Time is a series of streams, with everyone's personal line being a stream. Sometimes they mix, and sometimes they don't, but landing in a set point is impossible."

"It's magic."

"There's no such thing," Violet said instantly. "Just technology we haven't figured out yet."

That sounded like a line right out of Tails' playbook. Shadow stared at her, in which she didn't back down one bit. "Fine. I'll admit I don't know everything about time or chaos energy."

"So where are you heading to now? Who else is on your list?" Jewel asked the black hedgehog. "Me, obviously, I'm guessing Amy and Sonic, probably Knuckles?"

"Knuckles. Tails. Tangle. Whisper. Silver. Espio. Vector. Charmy. Cream," Shadow answered instantly.

"Really, they have you checking up on a guy who isn't even in the same timeframe?" Jewel asked. "That just seems kind of mean of them," she said. "You might be waiting around for a while."

"They're aware. They're not expecting a report on him. Knuckles too, Angel Island's long out to sea-"

"No it's not?" Jewel interjected. "It's hovering over the Doomsday Deserts," she said. "Or at least, last I checked it was."

"Doomsday Desert?" Whisper asked. She'd never heard of that one. Where in the continents was that?

Shadow sighed. "Doomsday Deserts. Plural. Faker knows more, but it's the region of deserts that most of Eggman's mechs fell down on after the appearance of the, as he puts it 'Doomsday Zone'."

"Close by, all things considered," Jewel said. "No one ever checks out there, so Knuckles was pretty much allowed to just be in peace. The island's invisible, or so he said last I checked with him. Which was, admittedly, a long time ago."

"He's been alone on an island for how long?" Violet asked. "How is he still sane!?"

"Willpower, mostly," Shadow said. "Some Islanders are known for it, and echidnas are some of the hardiest."

He turned to Whisper. "It's also only around three days journey from here, on the same way as Fern Valley and the Snow Cap mountains," he said. Whisper nodded.

She'd just be dropped off, and Shadow would head on his way to Knuckles, and then they'd go investigate the civilization as soon as he was done.

"Fern Valley? That's where you're headed next?" Jewel asked. Whisper nodded. "Okay. Here, I have a map somewhere..." she muttered, flying over to some cupboards and rummaging through them.

The sound of running water stopped them, as they glanced at the bathroom. "Got the shower working!" Orange offered as she held what looked like a wrench in one 'hand'.

"Dibs!" Violet shouted as she ran for it. Whisper glanced over at Shadow, who shrugged.

"I hadn't realized the water wasn't working. Because why would Pink...what did he do," Whisper stated softly. The pink wisp slowly hovered out of the kitchen, more of Violet's muffins in his appendages.

"I didn't do nuffink!" He protested.

"Asides from eating all of the food in the house," Shadow said. He turned to Whisper to explain, "I brought some back with me when they realized how useful Chaos Control was, and just how badly Spiral Hill was off. I brought enough for a few days, just enough for the trucks to start bringing in more."

Jewel came flying back out, her hands heavy with old foldable maps, the kind that Whisper remembered all too well. GPS was nice, but sometimes a physical map was better. Especially because a physical map didn't update automatically.

"Found them! Okay, so Fern Valley and King's River, or the Snow Cap mountain range," Jewel said, placing all three maps on the table. "King's River goes all the way from here through the Frog Forest, before ending out somewhere close to Station Square and Central City," she said. "You won't need to explore the forest, I hope-"

"We won't. I've been there before," Shadow answered.

"Oh good, that makes this easier. Fern Valley is this map, and it covers the entire protected area and most areas outside of it. And if you get really lost, here's the map of the Snow Cap mountains...where's Violet?" she asked.

"Shower," Orange volunteered. "For some reason she really wanted one. I don't know, I just fixed it. And made sure to run it so it didn't have any of the nega-wisp gunk," Orange said.

"Least you remembered something about that, wisp," Shadow said, his eyes narrowed.

"Hey, I'm not Pink, I remember the basic stuff," Orange retorted. Whisper rolled her eyes, making sure that both Shadow and Orange saw her. She leaned over at the maps, making sure that she remembered at least the basic outlines.

The Fern Valley map was an elaborate set of lines that designated height. She could see in her mind's eye which spot would be best for a sniper like her to be at. A long and winding path designated the canyons that would be the most likely path for her to take. Mountains on each side, going all the way up to the Snow Cap mountains.

Tangle had always gotten the Snow Cap mountains versus the Ice Cap mountains, until Sonic calmly set her straight at one point. The Ice Cap mountains were on Angel Island, floating high in the sky. The Snow Cap mountains is entirely different geology, and much less likely to collapse or have loops that collapse when he runs through them at two hundred miles an hour.

Which is mostly how Whisper remembered the difference. One is collapsible, one is not. Other than that, they were extremely close in temperature range, with the Snow Cap mountains being slightly warmer. Of course, 'slightly warmer' only meant by one or two degrees.

Not enough for the snow to melt, certainly.

Violet came out of the shower a few minutes later, her body wrapped in a massive towel that Whisper knew was one of Jewel's favorite ways to bundle up. There was also a heater in the bathroom to fluff it up, not that it appears Violet used it. "Is...there a reason this towel is so big? I just found it in the closet..." Violet asked shyly.

"Oh, yeah! Turn on the heater and let it fluff, it feels like a cloud," Jewel said, grabbing the girl by the tail and pulling her back into the bathroom. Despite the dilapidation, it seemed everything was still working.

Shadow noticed her looking around a bit. "Amazing how much having some more energy fixes things up," he commented. "I'll pack the Tornado," he said, heading off towards the front. Whisper nodded.

They would need at least a little bit of food and water. How long though...the Tornado generally flew at around a hundred and twenty miles an hour, unless the rocket booster was firing. Why Tails had added a rocket booster, she'd never asked.

It would take most of a day to get from Spiral Hill to Fern Valley. Whisper sighed, she'd been sitting on that information the entire time, and even when she'd told everyone they'd had to come here anyways.

Although, it wasn't all bad. Seeing Jewel was nice, saving Jewel was even better. And she supposed she shouldn't be so...uptight. "What are you thinking about?" Orange asked, hovering close to her and looking over the maps.

"...This isn't our time."

"No. It's not. I know you want to go save Tangle right away, but this is one of those things that we can take our time with."

"Is it? We have the Time Eater right behind us, and I'm surprised that it hasn't attacked us here."

"The Time Eaters are aware of other energies, like Chaos. And Shadow gives off enough chaos energy he's like a beacon of the stuff, and it's not likely to want to tangle with him again. No pun intended."

"That was fully intentional," Whisper accused with narrowed eyes. "And when it does?"

"You think it's going to come after us anyways?"

"We've been with Shadow since before Green Hill. Yes, I do. His presence didn't seem to slow it down."

"We've also been on the move for a while. It didn't come out instantly right behind us, it took a while to catch up. It's like smell; it can smell the trail we leave, but it takes a long time to catch up. Even if it catches up again. And we have no guarantee of that."

"We also have no guarantee that it won't," Whisper admonished. "And remember the Diamond Cutter rule."

"Whatever can happen, will happen, especially if it's bad or if it happens to Smithy."

"...I don't remember that last one," Whisper smiled gently. She heard Violet's shriek of delight as the heater started up, despite it probably blowing large amounts of dust bunnies around everywhere, and of Jewel's 'ooh!' as it came on for the first time in...probably forever.

"Next time someone tells me that they have muffins, don't let me take any," Pink murmured as he floated in, landing right on the maps. "Oh this is a comfortable nest..."

"Don't put holes in those," Whisper warned, "Jewel probably doesn't have spare copies."

"Give it to Green or Orange, they'll probably have enough memory space for it," Pink said quietly, his eye closing as he curled up. Whisper grabbed the maps and gently pried him off of them, if only so that way she could study it more.

"Memory space? We aren't a computer, Pink," Orange commented. "Green would probably appreciate the compliment though."

"We aren't? But, I could've sworn...wait, maybe Blue told me that. That we're nothing more than characters in some sci-fi novel."

"That sounds like a Blue thing, and also sounds wrong," Orange stated simply. Whisper nodded, her head bobbing to the wisps talking. She was only vaguely listening, something about Blue having tricked Pink into thinking something wrong.

The top of the Snow Cap Mountains was only three miles into the air. High, certainly, but Angel Island was usually much higher than that at its peaks. Not even tall enough to require oxygen masks, although it wasn't as if her mask didn't have one.

"Whisper, help?" Shadow asked as he carried out another box towards the Tornado. She folded the maps over one another, making sure that the squares would hold as she put them into a pocket in her cloak.

The kitchen was an absolute mess of everything. It was obvious what Shadow was carrying now was the water. There were small MRE's in the corner, set into the bricks of a box. They were bricks, literal, and about as heavy as that. They only needed water, hot or cold, in order to be edible, which made them perfect for things like traveling.

The box weighed nearly thirty pounds, and she tried to make sure she didn't give out just how heavy it was as she brought it out. Orange and Pink were still talking. "Oh so that's when I said, Lavender please, you're looking chilled, that's all!" Pink slurred.

"Why are you acting like that? You're not drunk, you've never talked with her, and you've certainly never seen her cold!" Orange rebutted. Whisper tried not to giggle as she walked out, following the black hedgehog's footsteps.

The museum seemed much brighter now, although the lights still weren't on. It was as if the darkness around Spiral Hill had lifted in its entirety.

Even outside the museum, people were starting to talk and bump into each other. They almost all of them looked starved or gaunt, as if they hadn't eaten or drank anything in several days, but they were out and about none the less.

The Tornado was given a wide berth, though. Whisper wasn't sure if that was because they recognized it, or because they didn't. More than one person had gasped when they saw it, before they gave a sigh of relief and turned around. They had most definitely recognized it.

"I'm beginning to think it was a mistake leaving the Tornado out here," Shadow murmured as he hefted around a few boxes in the back of the Tornado's undercarriage. Whisper dropped the box she was carrying near him, and he gave a slight start.

"Why? They recognize it. It's a symbol of hope."

"It is, but it's going to make getting out of here much harder than it needed to be. Now that the airport is waking up, we're going to need clearance to leave," Shadow said.

Whisper looked down the empty road ahead, seeing mostly paved clear runway rather than a road. Cars had been moved mostly onto the side rather than leaving them in the middle as they had been.

She looked behind them, seeing much the same way in that direction too. "We don't need clearance. We can just go."

"That's not legal, Whisper."

When had Shadow become such a legal nut? Wasn't he the one who was usually gung ho about just going in and getting it done? Wait, that was Sonic. No, that was Shadow too. Truth be told, that was most of the Restoration.

"Was that the last box in there?" Shadow asked as he moved some more of the boxes around. Whisper gave a glance inside, seeing dozens of boxes fitting each and every corner like a puzzle. She could also clear see the indent of where Violet had waited it out on the way to Central City.

Whisper nodded. "It was. We're good to go, except for sleep."

"We can sleep plenty on the way. Stay here, get ready, we'll leave in fifteen," Shadow commanded, heading back inside.

Orange and Pink hovered outside a moment later. "What's up with him? He didn't seem this bad earlier," Orange asked. Pink gave a sigh and went back into his canister, as if wondering how anyone could find anything wrong with Shadow, of all people.

It wasn't as if a cactus had more of an attachment problem than he had, after all. Maybe her own memories were starting to go, but she agreed with Orange. He was seemingly worse than he'd been twenty three years ago now, although he was in general much nicer. It only made the difference that much more obvious.

"I think he wants to go," Whisper admitted. She climbed up into the Tornado's back seat, taking a moment to make sure she was buckled in before letting the other wisps out.

"Oh, it's time to go!" Blue said congenitally. He looked towards Lavender, who was admiring the Tornado with a discerning eye. "You'll like it if you want to stay out. It'll be fun!"

"Shadow says fifteen minutes," Whisper said. Cyan nodded, doing a small flip in the air before she rocketed around to the back of the airplane.

"Yeah, it'll be great! Come on, I'll show you the ropes. So this thing is awesome," she said, pointing to the small rocket booster still attached to the bottom, "This thing can output so much energy! I think it's something like several thousands newtons of force for each second it's on!"

"That's not the right measurement, Cyan," Orange said from the pilot's seat. "It gives acceleration, which is...wait a second no that's right how did you know that!?"

Lavender giggled. Cyan grinned at the orange wisp. "Come on I remember some things! Come on let's go let's go let's go!" she said, imbuing the Tornado instantly and starting it up. Whisper made sure the brakes were on and they weren't about to randomly take off with no one in the pilot seat.

"Cyan! Don't do that..." Whisper warned. The Tornado stayed on even as Cyan disimbued it, the propeller starting to stay strong.

Violet and Shadow came out a moment later, both of them seemingly in a hurry. "Whisper! What's going on, why are you starting it up!?" Violet asked as she hurried to the pilot's seat. "I can't even take a shower anymore!?"

"You weren't! You were just taking up time sitting in front of the heater!" Shadow argued back as he hopped onto the top wing. Whisper noticed that this time he turned on the magnetic parts to his shoes to make sure he didn't have to Chaos Control back on.

Like he'd had to last time.

"Blame Cyan!" Whisper said. Neither Violet nor Shadow seemed to have heard her over the roar of the propeller, and she rolled her eyes. She turned to Lavender and the other wisps. "Final warning, staying out or canisters?" she asked.

The others nodded before they went back into the canisters, leaving only the young nega-wisp out, who settled down between Whisper's legs, an adventurous grin on her face.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Frenzy

The adventurous grin on Lavender's face quickly disappeared once the Tornado got up to speed. The wind was blowing past Whisper's face, and it was only because her ears were tilted backwards to prevent the wind from blowing into them.

"Is this all this is? Cyan was going on and on about how it was the best feeling ever," Lavender said.

Whisper chuckled under her breath. Shadow gave them a quick look. "Yes, this is all it is," he said, his voice echoing across the radio.

Fern Valley wasn't far, according to the global maps that Whisper had access to. And seeing as how we were generally going in the same direction, and Shadow could pilot the Tornado, Violet and Whisper would take off into the Valley and Shadow would catch up after he'd met up with Knuckles, who was on Angel Island.

Which was probably floating over the desert next door to it. Or somewhere close by, apparently the island could be invisible if Knuckles wanted it to be.

"Oh. Can I go back in then?" Lavender asked. Whisper nodded, opening up her coat just enough that the nega-wisp could see the other canisters. She once again stayed away from the one that had been marked as hers, and instead went into Blue's. Whisper knocked on Green's just gently, telling him that the Tornado was without wisp alerts.

He didn't come out, so Whisper figured that he was busy with...something. What it was the wisps actually did in their canisters, she didn't know. She'd thought it was one wisp to one canister, but they'd quickly disproven that particular theory when they went and had a party in one.

She glanced over the maps in the co-pilot's seat again, just making sure that she was where they thought they were. Tails, too, had apparently vanished after he'd gone to Fern Valley, using that as a jumping off point to get into the desert.

Belle's records told them at least that much. The Babylonian on the clock thing that had brought her here had been difficult to translate, apparently. Shadow had given her the rundown on it, but it was a rare dialect that only had one previous known occurrence. And that had been after she'd run through every other language.

Including that one cybernetic language Sonic, Amy, and Tails had found on the Starfall islands. And a few in the ancient echidna, which apparently were the easiest to translate because Knuckles had, at some point between her original time and now, given the Restoration complete access to all of his files on the translations.

Which meant that she was still stuck here, trying to find a way back rather than using the same method that got her here to go back.

Violet nudged the control stick a bit, and Whisper felt the plane turn gently to avoid a strong gust of wind. She was a better pilot that Whisper had given her credit for. Then again, so had Tails been, and he'd been even younger when Sonic had given him the plane.

"Clear skies and gusts of wind, that sounds about right," Violet said over the radio. She hit the control stick again, this time turning to the other side. "Anyone know any good sea shanties?"

"We're not at sea," Shadow answered, glowering at her.

"No, but rhythm's the same. And rhythm can do a lot to keep up spirits and focus! I mean, how does Whisper do it when she has to sit around for a while?"

"You mean when she tries to be a sniper?" Shadow snarked.

Whisper sent him a glare. 'Try' to be a sniper implied that she wasn't one. Just because she hasn't done it for some time didn't mean that she didn't consider herself one. "I think she's pretty good! I mean, she managed to go up against that Helen person right?"

"By up against, you mean ran away from?" Shadow asked. "Though that is really the only thing to do against a force like that."

Whisper felt the back of her neck start to tingle, and the fur there started to rise. Something was wrong, she knew it, but she wasn't sure what. "Something's wrong," she announced.

That shut both Violet and Shadow up, and they both immediately started scanning the skies for something. "I can't see anything," Shadow said.

"Nothing's coming up on radar. Or lidar. Or anything else, not even on that chaos emerald tracker."

"There's a chaos emerald tracker in there?" Shadow asked.

Violet tilted her head. "Yes? There's no instructions to it, but Dad was always good at making sure that anyone could handle his equipment."

That was a lie, and Whisper knew it. Tails had to explain himself to Tangle and Sonic all the time. No, Violet was just smart.

Whisper tapped on Orange's canister harder than a bit usual, telling her it was urgent. She came out, her eyes looking around sleepily. "Yeah? What?" she asked.

"Something's wrong. Not sure what."

Orange's eyes looked around, and she hovered a few feet up above the Tornado. Her eyes widened a moment later. "Yeah, you have a problem. Evasive actions Violet!" Orange sputtered.

Whisper unclipped her seatbelt to look behind her, seeing the large mass of black undulating around. "Time Eater!" she shouted as loud as she could.

"Where!?" Shadow asked. Violet pushed a button and immediately a glass canopy came over her and Whisper, deadening the sound of the wind. "Why did you not do that before!?"

"Because I like the wind?" Violet answered. She grabbed the stick and tossed it downwards. Shadow reached into a pocket, grabbing one of the chaos emeralds. His other hand had a large orange or yellow light glowing, a chaos spear being formed.

"Whisper, tell me where it is from here! I can't see it!" Shadow shouted. The wolfess kept her eyes on it. It was following them, darting after them with surprising alacrity.

"Eleven, above," Whisper said. She knocked on Cyan's canister and each of the wisps came out instead, rather than only Cyan.

"You have reached Cyan the wisp message, please leave a note after the Time Eater!?" Cyan cried out, her eyes widening instantly. "Pink, Pink, I'm sorry I'll have to do it later!"

"I'm not holding that one against you Cyan!" Pink screamed as soon as he came out.

"Cyan, imbue, Shadow needs a tracker!" Whisper explained. The wisp immediately nodded and ducked into the wispon. There was almost no room with the canopy on with all the wisps in there.

Lavender looked over the Time Eater, somehow able to see it. "Huh. That thing looks weird. Why are you all freaked out?"

"It's called the Time Eater," Whisper explained.

"It basically eats time and time travelers and eats their existence," Orange admitted a moment later.

"Oh. That sounds...bad."

That was one way to put it. "Violet, open the canopy, I need to aim for Shadow," Whisper said. The fox gave her a quick look before nodding and opened the canopy again.

Immediately the wind started to blow through, and Whisper held her ground. It was threatening to blow her away, but right now she needed the room more than anything. "Follow," she said, aiming the wispon towards the still incoming Time Eater. The worst part was that despite the small dive that Violet was putting them in, it was still getting closer. Which meant it was faster than the Tornado.

It ignored the Cyan laser, which was surprising because it hadn't done that last time. "It's not doing anything?" Cyan asked. Whisper shook her head, keeping the wispon still. She was using it for another marker, to assist Shadow.

He hurled the chaos spear towards the marker, right along the line where the Cyan laser was going. "Get out of here!" he shouted, as if yelling would have done anything. Maybe if it was a dog, or an animal. Not some...she wasn't sure what it was actually. Eldritch thing?

The spear went straight through the Time Eater, not even bothering to displace it. "That didn't do anything..." Whisper murmured. But it had affected it so much worse last time that it had happened. "Orange, Green, Blue, any ideas?"

"Not asking me huh? I see how it is," Pink responded by tossing his head up. He tapped the wispon a moment later, switching over from Cyan, and Whisper felt the small pink spike projectiles being shot out towards it.

Less accurate than the laser, but it would give Cyan a chance to recharge, not that Whisper thought she needed it, and it would still show the general path. But much like the laser and the spear, the individual spikes didn't seem to be doing anything.

"Nothing against you Pink," Whisper claimed. "But most ideas you have are crazy."

"She's not wrong..." Cyan whispered towards them.

The other three wisps were talking amongst themselves. "We got nothing. Everything we do just isn't working," Orange said. Shadow was still on the wings, throwing chaos spear after chaos spear.

"I have one," Violet said. "I have no idea what's going on, and I can't see it, but it's obviously got you two freaked out. So...hold on tight!" She pulled at another switch, and a small panel opened up with a lever. She grabbed it and pulled it all the way back.

Whisper felt the Tornado subtly shift underneath them, and the wind started to batter at her. Shadow stopped throwing chaos spears for now, instead focused on staying solely on the Tornado's wings. There was a hum of energy being put out...underneath them?

Tails had installed a rocket booster at one point, hadn't he?

Whisper stopped firing, putting the wispon onto her back as the Tornado accelerated, far beyond anything that she thought it could do. It wasn't just fast now, it was as fast as the wind it got its name from. The Time Eater was left in the dust, the black massless...thing behind them.

It was massless though. That was the problem. Sonic had said that it could effectively turn itself massless or not, and it needed to have mass in order to affect anything. In other words, they had been firing too early. Of course she had to remember that now.

"Whoo! This is what a rocket's all about!" Orange shouted, her face in the wind as she kept pace with the Tornado.

"Ha, nothing can catch us now!" Violet shouted, glee more than evident on her face as she reveled in the speed of her dad's creation. "I doubt even Sonic could keep up with us!"

"He could," Shadow answered instantly. "I can. We only doubled our speed," he said. Despite the chilling tone, there wasn't any heat behind it, and it did nothing to dull Violet's enjoyment. Or Orange's, for that matter.

Whisper turned her head at the perfect second. Out of the corner of her eye, a portal had popped up, rushing to them...perpendicular. "Violet, dodge!" Whisper warned as she stood up.

"Can't! Any harsh turns is going to make the Tornado shatter!" Violet answered as she hurriedly looked towards where Whisper was looking towards.

It took only a fraction of a second. The Time Eater slammed itself with full force and full mass into the Tornado, and there was a large snapping and crunching sound. The plane flipped over instantly, throwing Whisper out. Shadow was still magnetized on, and he threw out his hand as if to catch her, despite already being ten feet away.

"Green!" Whisper said. The Time Eater crunched onto the Tornado, something that she didn't think was possible, as the hover wisp quickly imbued himself into the wispon. It created a makeshift parachute, allowing Whisper to slowly glide down the airways. She felt her shoulder get yanked as she decelerated too quickly. She'd be sore for a day or two.

Her eyes were more focused on the Tornado though. The Tornado was going down fast, heading for the top of the mountains nearby. The Time Eater was on top of it, somehow its jaws working on the fuselage. "Orange, Blue!" Whisper called out instantly. Hopefully they could understand her plan, because she barely even had a plan let alone be able to articulate it-

The Time Eater was pushed off by another chaos spear from Shadow, just as a blue block appeared underneath the chassis. Orange imbued himself into the rocket booster, increasing its speed from simply ridiculously fast to ludicrous. But with one wing gone, it went into a death spiral...and stayed level.

It bounced off of Blue's blocks, constantly hitting and cracking on each one as it went, Orange's power boost keeping it relatively stable. Hopefully long enough for Violet to regain some kind of control, and she was just...hovering...

She looked down. Thirty feet. It'd hurt, but the Tornado needed it more. "Green, go back to the Tornado, keep them upwards. I'll be fine," Whisper commanded. The green wispon gave a small chitter of concern before heading out to the breaking down plane.

The Time Eater had been pushed off by the chaos spear, but was now rapidly closing in on her as fast as she was the ground and snow.

She prepped herself for landing just as the Time Eater's claws would have got her, and she slammed into the snow, going surprisingly deep. She let out a groan as her legs hit upon impact; hopefully she didn't break those too, otherwise this was going to be a short trip-

"Laser!" Cyan's voice called out as she shot herself at the Time Eater. The snow seemed to block the thing from chasing after her, and instead got a Cyan wisp to its body, pushing it off to the side.

"Pink, help me up," Whisper asked as her hands slid off the smooth snow hill she'd created. She needed to get to the surface, fast. The pink wisp gave a mock salute, before imbuing her gloves. It was good that he'd gone for the gloves, because her legs weren't going to be working for a while but it was mild, probably just a major bruise.

Honestly falling from thirty feet into snow was the best case scenario. The snow peak left her vision as she pulled herself up the final bit. Cyan was doing her best to keep the Time Eater off, and Lavender wasn't really...wasn't really capable of doing much. The Tornado was out of her view now, hopefully having been able to level off.

As soon as the Time Eater saw her it moved away from the annoying wisp and hurtled itself towards her. "Pink, wispon!" Whisper said as she tried to aim. She pulled up her wispon.

Then her heart filled with joy, ecstasy, and complete agony over and over. The tortures of betrayal, of revenge, of having everything she worked for ripped away from her time and again. Her mind went to Mimic, and how close she'd been to outing him with Silver. How close she'd been to killing Eggman years earlier, and yet been talked out of by a six year old girl.

Admittedly that girl was Cream, and Whisper had no need to push the violence of killing onto a six year old, even second hand. She was already broken, no need to break another soul.

But that broken soul was still broken, still fractured, and as much as it pissed her off she buried it under years of work and professionalism. Until now.

All she saw was death, betrayal, and the constant agony of existence. The Time Eater was attempting to eat her? She'd show it. She was Whisper, the last remainder of the old Diamond Cutters, the one that tied the Neo Diamond Cutters together, and she was not about to let some overgrown purple monstrosity get the better of her!

Her gloves came off, and the claws came out. Its claws tried to feast on her, but to do so it required to have mass, and mass she could use to utterly break everything it had.

Her jaws were used, her wispon long forgotten, her claws and feet were every weapon she had ever needed. It didn't bleed, but that didn't mean she couldn't kill it.

Even as it tried to puncture her own purple aura, it could barely even touch her, let alone hurt her. So what if her arms were bleeding, so what if her stomach wound was bleeding again? So what if the scars she got from Old Man Henderson reopened? All that mattered was that the Time Eater was dead.

"...isper!" a voice called out. She didn't know whose. She didn't care who's. She was going to kill them all, she was going to hurt them as much as she was hurting, she would show them the pain of true agony, inflicted over hundreds of years!

Her target was flying away now, and she let out a mirthless howl. How dare it. How dare it chase after her, and then not even finish the damn job.

"...per! Please!"

She turned around to the voice, the purple aura clouding her eyes and mind. She saw only things. An orange light, unfocused and impossible. It hovered there, as if mocking her inability to fly after her target. A green light next to her.

"Whisper, keep hold! Lavender, stop empowering her!"

"I don't know how!"

She reached up with one of her claws, noticing it was nearly as long as her arm. Her body was a weapon, wasn't it? Even impossible lights were no match for her. She wanted to smack it down, to bring it down to her level-

A green lightning burst from somewhere blasted into her side, straight through the aura. Her muscles seized, and the aura stopped, seeping back into her body. She couldn't move now. She fell into the snow, face first.

Although...that wasn't entirely a bad thing, that she couldn't move. Memories flooded her, Whisper, of who she was and what she'd been. Lavender had...imbued her. She'd never been imbued by a nega-wisp before, heck, most of the other wisps couldn't imbue her even if she wanted it. Too much of her life had been painful, and the wisps had to share memories and emotions, and even then only a small percentage of Islanders could be imbued safely.

The fact that Sonic was one and she wasn't pained her sometimes. "You back in your right mind yet or I gotta blast ya again? Trust me, I'm thinking of doing it anyways," a cold hard voice said. She felt a boot push her over, and her eyes narrowed.

A green islander, not much taller than her, with black splotches on her head and arms. She had spikes, similar to Sonic, but with a mean streak a mile wide. She had a small scarf wrapped around her neck, and despite the time difference looked...almost identical. A few more lines, a few more gray hairs at best.

Surge. She'd been in these mountains, and Whisper had the most unfortunate luck to run into her. "You can't talk yet, can you? Your wisp buddies ran the instant I showed up. Not that I blame 'em. All 'cept little Brave here," Surge said, scowling and pointing towards Lavender. "She's new."

Whisper couldn't move or growl. And she wanted nothing more than to show that Lavender's frenzy was only a chained part, but that she could unleash it at anytime. Although that feeling...she had felt unbeatable. Impossibly powerful. Now wonder Henderson had gone insane, knowing he felt like that at any time.

"Come on," Surge said, reaching down with one hand and pulling her up. She rested Whisper on her shoulder, with one hand towards the wispon as she dragged it towards her, somehow. "These mountains are dangerous at the best of times. Heh, I bet Kit has the fire going already, the softy."

"...Why...?" Whisper formed out. She had so many questions. Why was Surge helping her, why was Surge out here, why did she look like nothing had happened, where was Violet and Shadow, and the Tornado? Orange and Green had come back, but they'd only do that if people were safe, or so she'd hoped.

She had tried to instill the love of all life in all of them, which seemed to have succeeded based on the lack of deaths in Green Hill. "Why am I saving you, why do I care, why am I here?" Surge asked. Whisper felt a hand on her jaw, and Surge moved it as if she was a puppet. "Oh hi Ms. Surge, thank you so much for saving me, but I was overtaken with anger thanks to living my entire life."

"You're welcome Ms. Whisper, now before I throw you down a cliff why don't you explain to me-" Surge asked before she sighed for a long moment. "Kit would kill me if I didn't bring you in first. Darn kid's always getting in the way. Fine. Fine, that's why I saved you. Because Kit would be mad if I didn't," Surge explained. She gave a sigh and hefted Whisper over her shoulder, uncaring that it sent a net of pain through the wolfess.

Whisper couldn't feel much, but she felt the chill and the cold slowly embitter themselves to her. Surge was a surprisingly good climber, or maybe she was so used to snow that she wasn't fazed by it. Within minutes they'd gone over the hill that Whisper had seen earlier, and the peaks of the mountains were close by, a small trail of white showing where the wind took the snow and ran with it.

The snowpeaks weren't too far, and Whisper saw a small cabin built on top of the highest one with a small smokestack coming from the top.

To Whisper's relief, she saw the wreckage of the Tornado right outside it, which means that either Violet and Shadow were safe or that at least Shadow was, and Whisper knew he wouldn't let harm come to the vixen if he could help it. It looked bad, one entire wing gone and a good chunk of the fuselage, but at least it was here.

Whisper felt herself be dragged to the door, a small simple door that barely looked as if it had a lock. Surge didn't bother knocking, instead opening it easily with Whisper's wispon. "Kit. Brought back fresh meat~" Surge sang aloud.

The inside of the cabin was tiny, just a few beds in the corner, a table in the center, and a ladder that led down somewhere. "Seriously kid?" Surge asked when she looked around to see no one there. "You at least got the fire started," she said, looking at the small hearth across from them. It was much, much warmer inside than outside, and Whisper hadn't even realized how cold it had been.

"Surge! Down here in the kitchen!" Another voice, much younger and male, called out. The hydrokinetic fennec, Kit. Surge's partner, or Tails to her Sonic.

That was what Whisper had been told about them, at least. The last time she'd seen them, Surge and Kit had just been run out from the Restoration for infiltration and trying to bring it down from the inside.

"Of course you are," Surge said. Don't worry Wolfy, this won't hurt," she said, sliding down the ladder with ease. She still had Whisper on her shoulder, and it was obvious this wasn't her first time doing this.

The underground was much more lived in. Small papers were scattered around, and there was a large couch in front of a television. Behind it looked like a large screen, similar to a lot of Tails' labs.

Three chairs were already taken up, one by Shadow who didn't seem to be all that bothered by anything, nor did he look injured. Another was by Violet, who seemed unused to being in unusual areas. It also looked like her leg was in a small cast, and bandages on her chest and torso. The last chair held the blue fennec that she only vaguely recalled in her nightmares.

Kit.

His ears had grown even larger, almost all the way down to his waist now, but beyond that he looked almost identical to how he always had. She could see the small backpack of water that had been fused onto his back for his...hydrokinesis. At least, that's what he had claimed it was.

Right next door was a small kitchen, complete with smells that were surprisingly homely. "Oh, Whisper! Shadow mentioned you were out there, but I didn't expect Surge to take so long to find you," Kit said as he jumped off his chair.

"Take so long? I took like ten minutes. Fifteen, tops," Surge answered, throwing Whisper onto the couch. "Wolfy over there's still paralyzed. It'll hurt when her muscles unfreeze. I'm gonna go take a shower," she said, throwing her hands behind her head and walking out.

Shadow sipped some coffee, or something out of the mug in his hands. "I see that she hasn't changed much."

Violet gave him a look with wide eyes, as if wondering how he actually knew these people. Whisper didn't blame her. She certainly didn't want to know these people, and she actually did know them!

Kit laughed. "No, we can't really change much out here. It's why we're out here. To be invisible to everyone else," he said quietly with a sad smile.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter

Surge

"I'm fairly certain most people don't remember anything about you two. You can very well go back to Central City without any problems," Shadow said quietly.

Kit shook his head. "No, it hasn't been long enough yet for Surge. She likes the freedom of running around, as much as she hates to admit it," he said, before looking over at Whisper. "Hold on, I have some antiparalysis around here somewhere..." he said, tentacles of water shooting down onto the ground and holding him aloft. Like some giant spider made of water, he did it without thinking, heading to one of the shelves around his lab.

If it was a lab. Whisper wasn't sure what it was. It was something that she didn't want to be anywhere near.

"Here it is," he said, pulling out a small box. "Catch, Violet," he said, gently tossing down a small box. The vixen looked up and caught it easily, a plain white box with a post it note on top saying 'antilyze' in someone's difficult to read handwriting. He pulled himself down until he reached her level, grabbing it without much fuss.

"So what are you both doing all the way out here? So no one can find you?" Violet asked as Kit pulled open the box, pulling out a small needle. She flinched away as she glanced at it.

"Kind of this and kind of that. Surge wants to stay out here until her memories come back, but I don't see that happening. I think she just likes the silence and doesn't want to admit it," Kit said. "Don't be surprised if she's on wires for a while around you all," he said. He turned to Whisper. "This may give a bit of a sting, but it won't be right away," he said, carefully jabbing her in the arm with the needle before taking it away.

Her muscles, once having been seized up, melted into the couch. Instantly warmth and cold flooded her body, and she could instantly feel how banged up she was from Lavender's power. Her shoulder, too, was killing her. Speaking of, the wisp was still floating around her, having followed her in. The nega-wisp gave a small wave to Violet, and sat down on the vixen's lap.

Most of the other wisps had hidden in their canisters the instant Surge had shown up, and Whisper didn't blame them. She had, after all, almost drained them dry at one point. If it hadn't been for Sonic and Tails, she had no doubt that all five of her wisps would have long since died. They'd gotten only a bit stronger since then, and Tails had explained that most of their energy had gone into starting the thing up, whatever it was.

Needless to say, the wisps didn't like her, and the feeling was probably mutual.

Kit tossed the needle to the lab, promptly closing the box back up and tossing it somewhere else on the floor, where it landed with a thud amongst other boxes. "I'll find that later. Dinner's almost ready, if any of you are hungry," he said. Violet and Shadow nodded, and Whisper was still falling into the confines of the couch. While her muscles had been relaxed, there was still a tenseness about her that she put up to being around the two imposters.

"Alright. Surge! Dinner!" Kit shouted suddenly. Whisper rolled into a ball, her hands on her ears. "Oh, sorry Whisper," he said, not sounding sorry at all. "But someone had to tell Surge, and she'll eventually realize she's hungry."

"She doesn't seem to...treat people nicely," Violet commented from the side. Shadow tried not to snort, but a bit was just a bit noticeable.

"No, she's fine. She just doesn't like people, but she especially hates Sonic. And Shadow over there resembles Sonic pretty closely...if she's blind, partially deaf, and has her chaos energy feeling turned off," Kit explained. "Otherwise, she's fine."

"...All three or just one?"

"Just one," Kit admitted. "Oh right, hold on!" he said, bolting to the kitchen. Whisper tried to ignore the small waves of water that came from it, hopefully he wasn't poisoning it or something else that Kit would do to please Surge.

"You two seem to have history...? With these two?" Violet asked. "I think you've mentioned them a couple of times but I haven't heard much else."

"Surge was the one that crippled Sonic," Shadow said calmly. "I wasn't there, it was right after Eggman's last base had gone down, Sonic never explained how it happened and as far as I know Surge hasn't either. Since then she's been AWOL. Apparently up here."

"I'd prefer not to talk about it," Whisper said.

"Surge stole the wisps and almost killed them," Shadow commented for her. Whisper glared at him, and he simply gave her a staring and scathing look back.

Violet looked taken aback. "But...she did all that? Why isn't she in jail then!? And how does someone almost kill wisps? They're basically pure energy!"

"She's not in jail because she helped take down Eggman. The world's governments gave everyone that had ever helped against Eggman, past or present, a complete pardon. This included Surge and Kit, despite Jewel and Belle's protests. Belle especially, because she would have gone to jail to ensure these two would have," Shadow said.

"That old bucket of wood's still kicking?" Surge asked as she came in, her hair down and with a tank top on. Whisper could see the small scars that ran down her arms and back. "I'm surprised she hasn't been petrified yet."

"She's still around, yes. Stuck in the old Restoration headquarters," Shadow said, calmly sipping on his...actually Whisper could smell it now. He was sipping on tea? Next to a hydrokineticist!? Was he thinking straight!?

"Ha! I'll have to give her a visit, tell her how thankful I am here and she's not," Surge said, grabbing Kit's chair and spinning around on it, sitting on it backwards and leaning forward. "Talkin' about me behind my back?"

"It's kind of hard if you're not right in front."

"Tch. Yeah, whatever."

"Why...did you hurt Da-Mr. Sonic?" Violet said, catching herself halfway through. Whisper's ears perked up. The fact that the vixen was blushing bright red said that the wolfess' hearing wasn't screwing around.

"Eh? You're Sonic's kid? Thought that Speedy guy or whatever was a dude. Easy enough, just blasted him full of electricity and shattered the metal leg before it took for good. Again. Stupid bastard," Surge said, uncaring in the slightest that she was talking about crippling a man for life.

Shadow put his teacup down. "Metal leg?"

"Spiky didn't bother telling? Oh boo hoo, he didn't tell you," Surge said, mimicking crying. "Well then, I guess if he didn't want to it was cause it was so 'embarrassing' for him. Which means I'll tell it instead."

Whisper could just hear the fact that Surge hated Sonic with a passion that only rivaled her own hatred of the tenrec. She had a reason though to hate Surge, and Surge had very little reason to hate Sonic.

Not no reason, because anyone who's been around Sonic for longer than two seconds has at least 'a' reason.

"So it was just me an' him, heading up to old Eggy's base. I was ready to kill him for good, goody boy was all 'this is just a check up call, we ain't killin' him'. Fine, fine, whatever I don't care, just let me choke the bastard then. So we get in, and Eggy set up this giant vat of the metal virus shit again. 'Parently he was trying to turn himself into a robot, except, get this, those stupid other machines he made of himself, the egg robos or whatchamacallit's, didn't like that.

"So they spilled the entirety of the metal onto us. Sonic knew what it was, I'd never seen the shit before despite I'm made with it," Surge said uncaring. There was a bit of a flinch to it though, as if she was unsure about the stability of it. "He jumped to the top of the damn generators, but it turns out they, too, were made of the stuff. Eggy laughed and laughed, even as those egg robos turned all of his actual robots against him."

Surge continued, ignoring the slight calls for help from the kitchen in Kit's voice. "Sage and Metal Sonic showed up and ooh boy did they not take kindly to that stuff. So Metal Sonic reamed them through while Sonic was off running around to keep the virus from killing him, and I was just going around blasting everything with lightning. Fun fact, it's turned off by electricity," Surge shrugged. "It turns back on a second later, but you shock it bad enough it goes inert for a few seconds."

Violet was on the edge of her seat despite the uncaring tone that Surge had for the adventure. This probably was the first time she had heard this particular one. Whisper wasn't surprised; Sonic would most definitely not like reliving this one.

"Ol' Eggy gets helped by Sage back into his room, coughing maniacally, and then seals the damn door. Spiky boy...hold on-" Surge said, before turning the kitchen. "Kit! What do you want!? I'm tellin' a story here!"

"It's all good, I got it!" Kit's voice called out. "Just had trouble with the oven door, that's all."

"You should just smack the damn thing until it does what you want it to do. That's what I do, and it always works for me!"

"You've also broken it six times out of six that we've been up here!"

Surge's tone was mocking, "Wah wah, I'm Kit and I can't break an oven door because we don't have a stove and Surge can't cook worth shit because she wasn't programmed for it. Wah wah."

"You shouldn't talk to him like that!" Violet countered. "He's just trying his best!"

Surge turned to her, "Kid, he knows what I'm about. We've lived up here for nearly twenty years. You really think he's not immune to my shit yet?" she asked.

A potato, mashed and golden brown, was flung from the kitchen and landed straight on Surge's lap. She looked down on it, before realizing how hot it was and, Whisper was glad she came up with the pun immediately, surged upwards while yowling.

"Kit!" Surge yelled as she landed back down, the potato landing harmlessly on the floor. "Don't fling hot potatoes around!"

"I thought you said I was 'immune to your shit'," Kit snarked as he walked back in with a tray full of various foods. Baked potatoes, baked beans, and some oven baked chicken graces Whisper's nose. The fennec was surprisingly a good cook, if the smell was anything to go by. "Also because the potato slipped out of my hands."

"That was thrown," Surge deadpanned.

"It slipped. And my hand was happening to be throwing it at the time."

"...My gods, it's beautiful. He's learned sarcasm," Surge said, mocking him as she let out a fake tear and pretended to wipe it away. "They grow up so fast. Only took twenty years!"

He rolled his eyes and put the plates down, small tendrils of water lowering the main courses. "Feel free to dig in. Be careful of the beans, they contain a special spice that Surge likes."

"You mean you managed to find some!? Why didn't you tell me!?"

"Because I wanted to surprise you?" Kit asked, his tone wondering. They had just been at each other's throats and now they were sucking up to each other? How dysfunctional were these two?

Whisper ignored the thought that Tangle and her had been just as dysfunctional.

"Sweet! More for me," Surge said, grabbing a plate and gleefully piling on beans and chicken. She very carefully took a baked potato off the hotplate, pushing it as far as she could away from everything else, before she lathered on more beans.

She turned the chair back around and sat down. "Where was I? Right, Sonic was infected with the damn virus again, Eggy was away with Sage, and Metal Sonic and Sonic were arguing or fighting, I don't know I don't really care. I was going around to each of the generators because I came up with this awesome amazing plan to just blow it all sky high," Surge said, her mouth full of various foods.

"You can talk afterwards..." Shadow said, the disgust on his face plain to see. Whisper took no food, instead glaring at it as if it was on fire. Violet took only a little bit, more entranced with the story than anything.

"Nah I'm gonna forget if I stop. So Metal takes one of the generator cloaks or blankets or what have you, punches Sonic in the chest and they rockets out of there. We found out that's when Eggy died. Sonic was still, well, in bad shape. So I used the whole electric surging thing around and forced it all onto him."

She took a moment to breath. Whisper thought that was unfortunate, if Surge happened to choke then Whisper wasn't sure what she'd do.

"The virus turned off, and that's when I saw most of his leg had already been metalified. Metallicized. Metaled. Whatever the word was. So I ran in and I took no pleasure in this-"

Whisper snorted at the obvious lie, a move made only more certain by Shadow who simply shook his head.

"Basically went and pulverized his leg. Broke the femur a couple of times, his shin, made sure to get the kneecap, and I might have gotten rid of his tendons too? Maybe just the heel one. I don't know. Any case it got the metal off of him, and since it was inert at the time it didn't come back. And you know he was whining and crying the entire time so I had to carry him to Eggman's lair where Sage basically said he'd died, she was going to Starfall, screw you all, she wasn't gonna help. Then we checked the bed and sho'nough he ain't breathing."

Violet's fork dropped onto the plate.

"And that's how Sonic ended up crippled. And not a robot," Surge nodded. "Thanks to me. I'll take those thanks anytime."

"We're not thanking you," Shadow said instantly.

"You should be. Without me spiky boy would be nothing more than a wittle robot," Surge said with a smirk. "And uh...You...wouldn't be here," she said towards Violet.

"You don't know my name, do you?"

"Should I!?"

"I'm Violet Prower. Daughter of Tails-"

"Ha! I knew it! I knew Sonic and Tails were more than what they said! Ha! Kit, you owe me like fifty, no, eighty!" Surge shouted out. She made a fist pump. "Boom! Surge always wins!"

Kit rolled his eyes, despite the fact that Surge was now dancing right in front of him. "She's the daughter of Tails and...?" he motioned for her to keep going.

"Blaze," Violet finished.

Surge stopped in the middle. She turned to Violet slowly, "...What?" she asked. Whisper almost wanted to take a picture, the image of confusion on the tenrec's face was hilarious and she had no doubt the wisp's would want to see it later. Lavender seemed to be having a fun time with it.

"I'm the daughter of Tails and Blaze," Violet finalized.

"...No, no, I caught that. I mean more along the lines of how the heck did foxboy get it on with the pyro princess?" Surge asked. "Seriously, like...how does that even work? Wolfy, did they have like any time together at all!?" Surge asked Whisper incredulously. Whisper glared, but eventually shook her head. "Look Wolfy, I know you hate me but you have to admit something about that doesn't track. Seriously. Pyro princess and the foxboy. Huh. Never woulda thought."

"No, instead you were busy thinking Sonic and Tails," Shadow snarked.

"Hey, can you blame me!? Seriously, foxboy was always around the blue menace. Since he was like...what, four? Six? You can't tell me that doesn't mean something."

Shadow rolled his eyes, returning back to the food on his plate. When he got some, Whisper couldn't tell.

Kit grabbed some food of his own. "It's probably along the lines that Sonic raised him like a brother. And we've been out of communication with them for ages, so of course they wouldn't tell us. Not to mention, it's, well, us."

Surge threw her hand around, "Yeah I get that. But...wait, seriously, how old are you? Are you even old enough to be being dragged around by the old man and Wolfy, who by the way has aged surprisingly gracefully."

"She hasn't aged," Shadow added in. "She was pushed through time nearly twenty three years."

"...Is that why she didn't try to kill me twelve years ago when I pissed off Tangle? Or is that why the lemur went after my throat?"

"Yes on both."

"...Oh..." Surge said softly. "Ha! You're stuck in our timeline now! Sucks to be you, Wolfy!" she shouted suddenly.

"We were heading to follow Tails' path specifically to try to find him," Violet said. "And I'm twelve, by the way."

"...That means that pyro princess and the foxboy got it on long before Eggman died. The shit. Kit, wasn't he the one that was all 'you can't bring a life into this world the way it is because it's really nasty and full of badness and blah blah blah, wah woe is the world?" Surge asked.

"...Not quite in those words. He meant more that it was irresponsible without a plan in place. I suspect he had a plan in place, if not multiple."

"Oh. That's what I said, innit?" Surge said. "That's the desert stuff that's going on right? Something something kingdom reappearing, something something sending raiders down to the lower villages, something something lightning."

Kit rolled his eyes. "Surge, go...go to bed. You're getting loopy again," he said. The green tenrec glared at him before she stomped off, her hands thrown behind her head.

"Go to bed he says, Surge, go to bed you have too much power already, Surge, wah wah..." Surge mocked him as she went.

Kit sighed. "Sorry about her. She gets...like this sometimes if something spooks her bad enough. I think hearing about Wolfy-...sorry, Whisper's, journey through time is enough. But then hearing Violet's origins-"

"Why would that spook her?" Violet asked, settling back down. "I didn't think who my parents were mattered."

"It doesn't, not really. It's the timing, see. After we came up here, we were here for years before Sonic and Tails found us. Tails especially wanted to check to make sure that we were alright. We were fine, obviously, but we got into a topic of our creation," Kit explained.

He went on, "And we got to talking about how it's irresponsible to bring a life into this world with Eggman around, without a plan. I don't know if you know this about your dad, but he was always the planner."

"I know. I can't understand most of them though."

"Most of us couldn't either. Star-" Kit stumbled on the name, powering through for some reason that Whisper didn't know, "Starline did what he could to increase my own intelligence to Tails' level, but...well...Tails was a one in a million genius. No amount of chemicals or classes are going to replicate that."

"Is that your lab then?" Shadow asked, putting down the cup, finally, and heading up to the lab. "It looks remarkably like Tails'." Violet put down her plate and followed him, and after a moment Whisper pulled herself up off the couch, and fell hard onto the floor. Green popped out of his canister, and slowly helped her up and over.

"I modeled it after his. I figured if I'm supposed to be his copy-"

"Wait, what?" Violet asked. "How are you his copy, you look nothing like him. And I know Eggman had cloning down."

Kit winced. "He...did. But Starline...didn't. Don't tell Surge I said this, it sets her off something bad, but Starline...he took us. He didn't clone us, we have actual parents...somewhere. We did, rather. But when we asked, Starline had just...deleted the records. The only existence we have is of Surge and Kit," he explained. "And that was after the brainwashing, the experiments and surgeries... there's a reason we stay up here, out of the way of everyone."

"Is this a prosthetic?" Shadow asked, glancing down at the lab's table. "It...looks unfinished," he commented, staring down at the lump of metal on it. It vaguely resembled a leg, if Whisper didn't know what a leg was supposed to look like.

Kit looked up. "Yeah, I don't know how. It's supposed to link up to the nervous system directly but I'm not smart enough to make it work," he shrugged.

Lavender hovered over. "That's a hard one. You're trying to tie into the hip system while at the same time conforming to the spinal column at an odd angle," she explained. Whisper pushed herself up.

Kit blinked at her. "She said that it's hard enough as it is, and it's...harder now?" Shadow asked, getting Lavender to nod, "because you're trying to attach the spinal column at an odd angle."

"I have to. This one's supposed to go to a specific person who's been...well, their leg is basically useless. And has been for a long time. They've gotten used to it."

"You can't just conform to the angle that they're at now, you have to confirm it to the angle that it should be. But you have to get more slack than that, because it has to be able to move. If you can't get it to move, it's useless."

"How do you know that?" Shadow asked. Kit turned to him, looking extremely confused.

"I used to be a white wisp, and a doctor's associate. Specifically a 'medical' doctor's associate. Who specialized in emergency procedures such as that one."

Shadow repeated Lavender's original statement. "But I can't get any more slack than I already have, the system has to be tight. The specimen I'm designing it for is small, and he can get even smaller," Kit answered, understanding that he was talking to the wisp and not to Shadow.

"He?" Shadow asked instantly. Kit winced. Apparently he wasn't supposed to say that.

On the table there was a small prosthetic leg, only around two feet tall, at most. And it was a near replica of something, but it was jogging her memory but she couldn't quite place it. Green was holding her up, but she vaguely realized a moment later that he'd stopped that a few moments ago. Her back was still hurting, but with a good night's rest she'd probably good as new.

The lump of metal was a long leg, with a knee, and as many parts as an actual knee had. Or at least, she supposed. It ended in a small foot, with a metal shoe next to it. Violet was looking over it, putting her plate that was now empty of food on one of the random boxes Kit had strewn around. "Is this...?" she asked, before leaning over it.

"Don't touch anything, I'm still working on it. This is version five or six," Kit warned.

"Don't worry, I won't," Violet said. Her attention was focused solely on the prosthetic. "This part's supposed to be the part that actually connects, right? Sits in a joint at the hip, connecting to the nerves close to the spinal cord close to the tail bone, right?" She pointed to the top. "Because you're missing the actual ball joint. That'll give you a bit of extra room."

"The hip is fine, it's not supposed to be in a ball."

"But the joint itself would have to be removed anyways," Violet said, "and there's no connection from the hip directly to the knee. No cord for impulses, and there's triple the amount of cord needed for the foot here, relieve the pressure here and they'll probably be able to even run."

Kit glanced at her. "That's...I never...what?"

"I'm curious too. How do you know that?" Shadow asked.

"Mata needed help with biology when she was doing her summoning once, and the only other person we knew was Eggman, and he was on the 'definite hard pass'. So we found a doctor to help explain stuff."

Kit stared at her. "You have a sister? Not a half sister?" It was obvious he was trying to choose which question to ask first, because the multitude that went through his face was hilarious to Whisper. Then again, she'd had a while to get used to it.

"Yeah, one. Cat named Mata with two tails."

Kit blinked. "Two tailed...cat...hold on, hold on," he said, racing for the side console. "I know I have the message here, I never delete anything because you never know when it can come back up..."

Violet glanced at him, before looking back down at the prosthetic. She was mumbling to herself as she looked over it, finding new places to converge wires or separate them.

"Here it is, from Metal Sonic, dictated nearly fourteen years ago. 'Find the two tailed cat and come back to me. Sage says the cat is important.'" Kit read aloud.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Confusion

Fourteen years ago? That was long before Mata was even born. That was long before she was even conceived! So how did Metal Sonic and Sage know who she was, or rather who she was going to be?

"That's not possible. Two tailed cats can't be that rare," Violet said instantly. Whisper agreed but at the same time knew that it was wrong. Just as there had only been one two tailed fox that she'd ever known, except in myths and legends where they had up to nine, there was only one two tailed cat that she knew of.

Kit shrugged. "No idea. This is the first I've heard about it though. Surge and I keep track of Metal Sonic's movements though, and he's in one of the nearby villages. We can just head out in the morning and ask him directly."

"Metal Sonic can't talk," Shadow pointed out. Whisper wanted to point out that not only could the robot not talk, but he was one of Eggman's robots. Were they seriously considering that part?

"Not easily, but Surge and he came to...an understanding at one point. Basically he sends email, and I have a connection here that can be read almost anywhere. As long as we go together we can communicate with him just fine."

"Also there's, you know, us," Cyan whispered from right next to Whisper. When the wisp had come out from her canister, Whisper didn't know. She was also hiding from Kit, it looked like. Lavender though was still having a ball being held by Violet, and their shared fur color was kind of off-putting to Whisper a bit. It made it hard to see the nega-wisp.

Should she volunteer that information? Should she not? In the end she kept it in her corner, not speaking up. She would trust that Cyan understood, and by the way the wisp didn't immediately speak up and say the exact same thing but louder showed she probably agreed with the wolf.

"I do need some time to fix the Tornado..." Violet said, "But at the same time I want to see this 'Metal Sonic' that Mr. Sonic was always going on about. I want to come with!"

Kit nodded. "Okay," he said, looking over another screen. This one had a few maps up, and Whisper could vaguely tell that it was a map of the surrounding area. It looked like a more advanced version of the maps that Jewel had given them, and probably far more accurate. It also had four dots on it. One red and large, a small blue one, and a medium green dot that was split in two. "Shoot, it's getting two readings from him. Satellites don't want to work again."

Violet's attention was finally taken from the fake prosthetic leg and was moved to the computer. "Are those trackers? Why would you need that?" she asked.

Kit looked at her. "For precisely this reason? Red is Surge, I'm blue, and green is Metal Sonic. But we're so far removed from most places that we don't get accurate readings sometimes. Like this, incidentally."

"So we split in two parties! There's five of us, it can't be that hard."

"Violet I don't think that having you alone with Kit or Surge is a good idea," Shadow spoke up instantly. Violet looked to Kit, as if the fennec would be offended by it. Whisper knew better; that was, if anything, a compliment to the duo.

"Then have me and you with one of them, and Whisper can take the other!"

Whisper's mind was inundated with the amount of ways that the duo could end up next to her, and the thought that all the wisps agreed with her presumed that it was probably a bad idea. But she'd had those before. Besides, she had will.

"That's probably a bad idea," Whisper commented idly. "Surge and I..."

Kit whistled. "Yeah, that's a bad idea. I don't want to know who'd win. But I know I'd lose," Kit answered. "Alright, Shadow and myself then? Violet and Whisper with Surge?"

"You four are still up?" Surge's voice called out as she walked back in, her hair flowing around her head rather than the usual style she had it in. "I realize geek's gotta geek, but that seems a bit much."

"Remember Metal Sonic's message about the two tailed cat?"

"No. I threw it out because it was nonsense," Surge answered instantly, her arms behind her head. "Cats have one tail. That's final."

"Apparently her sister is a two tailed cat," Kit said, pointing to Violet. The vixen gave a small wave, complete with teasing smirk.

"Wait, hold up. You mean you have a sister!?" Surge asked, taken aback. "You mean foxboy not only got laid once, but twice!?"

Why was Surge so focused on that? Whisper didn't want to think about that. At all.

"Is that such a shock to you!? Sonic and Amy have two kids too!"

"Of course those two would, Pinky was basically a hanger-on for years. She'd do anything to jump into his pants. But the cat? I only met her the once, and I don't care to again," Surge said, rubbing one of her elbows gently. Whisper smirked; if she had met Blaze, it'd explain the small burn marks in her fur.

"Yes, I have a sister. But she's younger than when Metal Sonic sent that message, so Kit tracked him to one of the nearby towns."

"And so you just want to go ask him those things and see if that's the one he meant, right? I know you goody goods do things. And let me guess, Kit's tracker stuff is failing to do its job and now says he's in five different places at once."

"Two, actually," Kit supplied.

"...Better than I'm giving you credit for," Surge answered instantly. "Let me guess, you want to go with the fox, pick at her brain and see what makes her tick?"

"I'm going with Kit. You're with Whisper and Violet," Shadow retorted. Surge started at him, before she stared at Whisper, meeting the wolf's gaze head on.

"That's not a good idea..." she started.

Whisper and in her mind every wisp in the world echoed at once, "We know."

"Well, fine! I can go with foxboy's kid and the punk. But uh...which towns we going to?"

Kit looked over the maps again. "He usually stays in one place for a while, so I'm thinking Snowdrift or Mt. Mary's."

"I call Snowdrift," Surge said instantly. "I can't stand Mt. Mary's, it's like a school of circus animals all dancing for their monkeys." She met Shadow and Violet's gaze. "That can't be new to you two, I've been saying stuff like that all night."

"We'll head out in the morning after breakfast. I don't think there's that much of a hurry."

"Except for the Time Eater thing," Violet brought up. Surge and Kit shared a glance, before they turned unanimously to Shadow. "Aw come on!" the vixen protested.

"Whisper's being followed by a Time Eater, a natural djinn that eats time travelers and the energy around them," Shadow said.

Surge blinked at him, before she turned to Whisper. "How do you get in these messes? Seriously, I thought Max Overload was bad. Was that lemur involved in all this? What was her name, bad hair day?"

"Tangle," Whisper growled out.

"Yeah, that was it. Tangle. This seems like something that was her fault and you're reaping the benefits for it," Surge smirked. Whisper stared, before she headed back to the couch, and very cautiously put down the wispon and the wisp canisters, making sure that they could freely get out if they so chose. She wasn't going to answer the tenrec. At all.

"Just ignoring me, huh? Yeah, silence is an answer too. Good to know I'm right on the money," Surge crowed. "So when we leaving?"

"In the morning," Kit answered. "Metal Sonic likes to stay around the villages for a few days before he moves on, unless something needs his attention elsewhere."

Whisper closed her eyes, trying to drown out the four of the other voices. She'd wake up early. Her ears tilted back, and slightly folded onto themselves in a way to ensure she couldn't hear things any better.

She wasn't sure what time she woke up again. There was a fading sound of dying dream, a lost voice on the wind calling her name. It was repeating the two words she knew. Will. Undo. Was it a sentence? As soon as she thought it, the words and thoughts fluttered out of her mind, forcibly made out of reach.

No one else was up yet, it looked like. She was on the couch, Violet was curled up on the chair with a few blankets covering her. Shadow was resting his eyes, leaning against Kit's computer system. Surge and Kit were nowhere to be found. Her back wasn't in as much pain but it was still there, still present.

She knocked on the wisp canisters. "Status update?" Orange asked as she hovered nearby. Lavender was still sleeping on top of Violet's fur, just underneath the blankets, but it was obvious she was listening in as she flew out of them. Green caught the blankets that flew off and gently put them back on the fox.

"Yes. We're looking after Metal Sonic. I just want to hurry to Fern Valley, but I'm not leaving my back open to those two," Whisper said. The wisps nodded. They had no qualms with that, considering what they knew of what Surge had done last time.

Max Overload, she'd called it. When she'd forcibly drained Cyan of all of her power, almost killing her. The other wisps, too, had been caught and drained during that time, using a special cage designed by Eggman. Sonic and Tails managed to beat her, or at least knock the device off of Surge long enough for Cyan to imbue Sonic, allowing him to drive her off for a good while.

They had meaningfully recovered from the event, but it was still scarring to all of them. It was another reason that Whisper made sure that her friends stayed safe. And if that meant she had to wait longer to see Tangle...well, she would wait.

She was a sniper, after all.

"Why do they want to check Metal Sonic? Isn't he a bad guy?" Pink asked as he checked out the various parts of the room. "Also they've improved a lot. Surge only talks bad, she's not actively trying to hurt us this time."

"You should have heard her talking about how she hurt that Sonic person. She was absolutely loving it. And the pain and fear on Violet...no, Surge is not a good person," Lavender brought up. Whisper nodded.

"Fourteen years ago, Metal Sonic and Sage let Surge and Kit know to be on the lookout for a two tailed cat."

"Mata's only ten, isn't she?" Cyan asked. "Well, ten and a half. Or Violet's two and a half years older. One of those two."

"Violet's two and a half years older. And yes, Mata's only ten."

"So then how did Metal Sonic and Sage know of her existence before? Something about this doesn't seem right," Blue asked. "I think...are we in a -" Blue said...something. Whisper wasn't sure, but it was full of confusion, and righteous anger, mixed in with a little frustration. She had to find a way to translate what they said in their native tongue, or find a way to get used to it. Having her emotions toyed with was something she wasn't a fan of.

"That could be. But a-" Orange started, using the same word, " is a lot...less than this. We're talking about an entire world here, Blue. Not one portion, not one region. The world. And we know it affected Planet Wisp too. I don't think anything has that power, let alone the ancient Babylonians. Wasn't that who the clock thing came from?" she asked.

Whisper nodded. "I've been meaning to ask Shadow if they've been able to translate the meaning of it yet." They had the translation, but actually making it make sense? That was another question entirely.

"We haven't," the black hedgehog stated simply. Whisper wasn't surprised he was awake, although the wisps were being quiet. Pink went over to him and gently patted him on the head, which he knocked Pink's hands...arms...things...away from his head. "I've been awake."

"The ultimate life form does not need sleep," Green said, his 'voice' changing as much as the wisp could to imitate Shadow's deep growl. The black hedgehog was not amused, although Whisper had to hide the smirk. Green was good.

"Okay. So it's probably not that. But I do think something fishy is going on. But I also want to bring up the Time Eater," Cyan said. "When we fought it this last time, we couldn't hurt it...at all."

"It needed to turn physical. Once it did, we took it out," Whisper explained.

"See, that's what I don't get. When we hurt it the first time, back at Green Hill, we hurt it when it wasn't physical. Unless it managed to find a way to make sure that we couldn't hurt it or drive it off unless it got closer," Blue said. "But, that just makes new holes."

"Like what?"

"Like why change to physical form at all? Why go after the Tornado, especially if you were already hovering down? The Tornado couldn't hurt it. I doubt Violet knows how to use the weapon systems-" Blue supplied.

"She does," Shadow said. "She's actually quite good at it. Not quite as smart as Tails, but she's getting there."

"That's another thing I don't get. Violet isn't just a discount Tails. So why is everyone comparing her to him? She's her own person. Let her live out of his shadow for a bit," Blue said.

"Because most of them don't know of her. Sonic and Amy did, obviously. But everyone else...they only know of Tails. So naturally they'd compare everything she did to him," Orange countered. Blue shot him a look, before he nodded.

Kit walked out of the other room, and immediately all six of the wisps got quiet, hovering in place as the fennec fox yawned and almost robotically headed towards the kitchen. Their eyes watched him go, and they didn't start moving again until after he'd already left.

Whisper could smell the coffee starting. How old was he? And actually, why was Kit going with Shadow? Shouldn't Surge go with Shadow? "Shadow, shouldn't you-"

"I'm not going with Surge," Shadow vetoed instantly. "I was wondering if you were going to bring that up. I refuse."

Honestly, that was probably a good idea. But Whisper also had...issues with the girl. Woman, now. But it was weird to think that Surge was as old as Sonic was, maybe a year or two different, and yet looked no older than she had as a teenager.

Surge walked out too a moment later, the tenrec wearing a loose tank top and some underwear that showed off the scars on the woman's legs. Her eyes were shut, and she was moving oddly, as if she wasn't awake yet. "Kit...coffee...please..." she murmured as she headed to the kitchen.

"It's coming, Surge. I started it only a few minutes ago."

"Coff...ee..." Surge droned on. The wisps froze as she came back out, sitting on the same chair that Violet was sleeping on, earning a small howl from the vixen. The tenrec jumped at least ten feet in the air and let out some of the worst curses that Whisper had ever heard. The wisps took that moment, exception Lavender, to head back into their canisters.

"At least let me wake up, you don't need to sit on me!" Violet was shouting, the blankets falling off the girl.

"Sorry, sheesh, I was partially asleep!" Surge shouted back, her eyes wide and her hands wide. "Kit! We have guests!"

"Surge," Kit said calmly as he handed her a small mug. Whisper could smell the caffeine from where she was, nearly twenty feet away. That was some strong coffee. The tenrec blinked, before she took a sip.

There was an electrical feeling in the air. She blinked at Violet again, as if seeing her for the first time. "Oh yeah, the guests! Foxboy's kid, Shadow the Edgehog, and the one who'd kill me if she had the chance!" Surge smirked towards Whisper.

Well, she wasn't lying, Whisper had to admit.

Kit walked out with another few cups of 'coffee'. Whisper had to put it in quotes in her head, because normal coffee did not smell like straight caffeine. He was sipping one in his other hand, the water tendrils holding the other's. "Yeah, Surge acts weird if she hasn't had her coffee. Anyone else want some? I made a full pot," Kit explained.

"You made more, just for me!? Knew I kept you around for a reason!" Surge said, bolting to the kitchen.

"Is that where her electric powers come from? Coffee addiction?" Shadow snarked. "Violet, are you alright?"

"Yeah, just surprised. Wasn't expecting to be sat down on by a rogue...whatever she is."

"A tenrec," Kit explained. "Just like how you're a red fox and I'm a fennec."

"Technically I'm violet colored...same color as Mom was," Violet protested. "Although what color is a fennec?"

"Generally, yellow, brown, or white. See, humans long ago found a bunch of the Islanders had similar genetics to the non-sapient animals. That's where the species designation comes from."

"Oh. That's weird."

"Yeah, I've never agreed with it, but Starline did so that's why we use it," Kit shrugged. "Surge, Shadow and I are heading out to Mt. Mary's!" he called out.

"I can't use Chaos Control to get there. I've never been there."

"Well, you will now," Kit said, picking up the black hedgehog in a small platform of water, and using the water tendrils to literally climb up the ladder, even though it was obvious he didn't need to.

Surge walked back out of the kitchen, her eyes looked far more awake than she had going in. "Right. Give me three. No. Five minutes," Surge said, bolting, literally, into the bedroom.

"This is going to be a normal thing, isn't it? Maybe we can ask her how to get to Fern Valley," Lavender brought up. Whisper nodded, although she hadn't planned on asking that. Not of Surge of all people. Kit...she was on the fence about. Surge though...

"That's a good idea. I mean, we are on the Snow Cap Mountains, right?" Violet brought up. "I do need to go to the Tornado for just a second. I want to change into something clean," she said, pointing to the small shirt and pants she was currently wearing. "I bet she knows how to get to that lost desert area."

"Sorry kid, I don't," Surge said as she walked back out, looking much the same as she did from Whisper's memories. "Don't really care though. Wolf, you gonna be alright or are you planning to survive through sheer bouts of anger?" Surge asked.

She could hear Cyan and Pink in her head immediately. Not literally, but she knew what they'd say, "Anger! Anger, anger, anger all the time!"

"Yeah, okay, wolfy's gonna be fine," Surge decided after she couldn't take the heat of Whisper's glare. Or at least, that's what Whisper was hoping for.

"What do you mean? Of course she's going to be fine," Violet brought up. Surge gave her a look before ascending up the ladder, followed promptly by the violet vixen. Whisper followed them up, admittedly half-heartedly.

"Kid, it's cold out there. Like middle of winter, cold biting at your every inch of skin cold. Middle of a blizzard in the antarctic circle with ice cubes everywhere cold. It is-"

"Thanks, I got it."

"Just making sure, kid," Surge smirked as she opened up the door, grabbing herself a jacket. Violet took a step back, her arms suddenly moving to her waist to try to conserve heat. "I did say it was cold."

Whisper had felt worse, and promptly walked through the open door with Lavender following her. The nega-wisp seemingly enjoyed the cold, diving into the snow and playing with it, small bits flowing into the large maw that was her mouth.

"Huh. Wasn't expecting that," Surge said as she came out too. She'd changed into a large snow jacket with baggy pants, made for keeping the heat in. Violet, just in her shirt and simple pants, wasn't going to be warm.

"On second thought, I'll just...stay here," Violet said. Lavender protested furiously, mostly by then hovering behind the girl and slowly pushing her out into the snow. "Hey, Lavender!" she shouted as the door closed as soon as she crossed the threshold.

Surge grinned. "Welp, guess you're out here with us. Not to mention you're supposed to keep Wolfy over there from murdering me, just as you're supposed to keep me from trying to kill her," she explained.

Whisper didn't think it was that bad. Although at least Surge had said she would only 'try' to kill Whisper, while giving the wolf the benefit of the doubt of murdering her, no 'try' about it.

"F-F-Fine. Hold on though, I need more c-clothes," Violet shuddered, heading towards the totaled carcass of the Tornado.

Whisper had seen it the previous day, but admittedly not by much. The Time Eater had done a job on it, with the wings torn in two and the fuselage having large streaks of broken metal. It didn't look like anything was majorly hurt, just pure damage, but more than enough to bring her out of the sky. It wasn't leaking any fluids at least, but Whisper could easily see the steel container that was its fuel tank…torn in half.

Violet ducked into the storage area, bringing out a small cloth bag that Whisper recognized as one of Tails' bail bags. It was a small unit that was similar to her own tent that he'd given her, with a lot of vitally important material all on the inside. Cold weather gear, the water tablets, anything needed to survive out in the wilds for about a week. After that, it couldn't give much help.

She fished out the cold weather gear, a large puffy jacket that was a dark purple in color, contrasting easily against the snow. The pants, too, were black and puffy. They zipped all the way down, where they could be cinched to ensure that heat didn't escape easily. The vixen looked around. "I...uh...need to change."

Surge made a show of looking around. "I don't see anyone else here but us. Come on, we're all women here."

"Surge," Whisper growled out, and the tenrec rolled her eyes as she went behind the small cabin. Whisper followed her a moment later, making sure to call Lavender over. If nothing else, she could probably mediate the both of them long enough for Violet to get there, but really, if Surge pissed her off enough Whisper doubted even Violet could stop her.

"You're going way too easy on the kid," Surge said instantly. "She needs to learn to grow up. She's, what, fourteen?"

"Twelve."

Surge looked at her. "Right, I knew that," she said. "Either way, she's part of your little gang now. And unlike the Retro Diamond Cutters-"

"Neo."

"Yeah, them. Between your girlfriend and the sheep, and that...you know, where is Silver? I'd have thought the kid would have had a field day talking to another time traveler."

"Haven't seen him."

"Huh. More you learn, you done back there...woah," Surge said as Violet turned the corner. The puffy jacket and snow pants were there, but they fit her near perfectly. Whisper could also tell they were form-fitting on the inside, so she'd be plenty warm. There was even a small layer of haze near her shoes. Had Tails perfected some kind of shoe-warmer?

Wait, his best friend was Sonic, so most likely.

Surge made a show of shaking her head out. "Right we're heading for Snowdrift. Follow me. Or don't. I don't care," Surge said, her arms behind her head, before she realized that doing so made the back of her head cold.

Whisper glanced back at Lavender. This was going to be an annoying trip. And based on the wreckage that was the Tornado...a long one, too.

Wonderful.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer; See last chapter.

Trek

Whisper was absolutely certain that this trip was going to destroy any image she'd had in her head of Surge. Then again, her current image was essentially 'mean islander who specialized in hurting people with electric powers and the means to use them'.

As of right now, she was being proven both right, and wrong.

For one, Surge got cold. Very quickly, actually, based on the way she started shivering less than fifteen minutes away from her home base. She kept up the same motions though, her hands to the sides and obviously not caring about anyone else who was following.

Violet and Lavender had picked up the rear, both of them chatting about random things. Violet was still treating this whole thing as one of her dad's adventures, and Whisper couldn't really blame her. This was new to her in every way. Whereas to Whisper...this was the third time this trip that she'd done something like this. She was trying not to get tired of it…but failing.

The snow crunched underfoot, and the visage was that of a snowy mountain. Far off, in another valley or some other hilltop, Whisper could see the small smokestack that represented some actual civilization.

Whisper idly thought what kind of trouble she'd have to go through once she was there, and she realized just how cynical she was about this entire time travel thing. Everyone needed help all the time, so why would twenty three years change anything? Of course, it's not like she was in the best of ways to change it.

"Yo, Wolfy. You done staring out into space?" Surge asked suddenly. "Seriously, that's some impressive disassociation. Last time I saw that was you, back in the Resistance. Restoration. Some other 'ation'."

Whisper didn't blink herself out of it. "What?" she asked, even her usual whispering voice much quieter than normal. Surge's ears had to basically bend backward to catch it.

"I'm just gonna say, what happened to the lemur? What was her name?"

Tangle. Her name was Tangle! Whisper almost growled the name out, mostly on account of who she was talking to than the name she was whispering.

"Right, her."

"She's with Tails."

"...He's poly with multiple girlfriends? What the shit, Kit. Supposed to be his damn copy and he has more than one..." Surge muttered under her breath. Whisper rolled her eyes, making sure that the tenrec saw.

"No, as in trapped with him."

"...Oh, see that makes more sense. I always figured the lemur for playing the other team."

Was Surge deliberately trying to piss her off, and was that just Surge in general? The wisps had basically gone into hiding, not that Whisper blamed them, and so she'd have to figure this out herself.

Surge's eyes widened after a moment. "Oh that's why you need to get there so badly. I was wondering about that. Made no sense to me. You could probably kick both Violet and Shadow's butts. Force them to take you there next time you get the plane running."

"Could. Won't."

"I don't get that about you goody two shoes. Seriously, they have something you want and are keeping you away from, so why not just take it? That's why you're strong, right? To take what you want."

"I'm strong to protect."

"Protect? Good job with that one Wolfy! It's been years since the crash of the Restoration. And newsflash, shit still spreads uphill! You haven't. Helped. Anyone."

"She helped me," Violet spoke up from the back. "And she helped Green Hill Zone, and Spiral Hill."

"Oh boy, two podunk towns in the middle of nowhere. Kid, stay out of this talk," Surge advised. "So as I was saying-"

"Stop," Whisper said suddenly. The group stopped instantly, and the wolfess held out her hand. There was a sound out there, the sound of crunching snow that wasn't them. Surge blinked, tilting her head, an action oddly mimicked by Violet behind them.

A little brown rabbit, non-sentient, jumped out of the corner. It stood up on its back legs a bit, sniffing the air, before it saw them and quickly dove back into the snow and brush. "Aww it's so cute!"

"Oh no, it's the dreaded bunny rabbit of Ikakathon!" Surge came up with instantly. "Watch out, for it will fly through the air and chew your limbs off! We'll have to use some super power and get all seven chaos...where are those emeralds?" Surge asked suddenly.

"What?" Violet asked. Lavender mimicked her the same.

"Those emeralds you people always used. Can't they do like...everything?"

"Shadow has a few. Sonic has another. As does Tails and Knuckles," Whisper remembered. She had asked the same question not long ago...only a few weeks. To Belle, in fact. She'd come a long way in only a few weeks, hadn't she?

"Oh. Damn that sucks," Surge grinned. "Can't even use your super powered friend to just break through it all, huh?"

Had Surge even met Super Sonic or Super Shadow? Whisper didn't know; by the time that Super Sonic came onto the scene the only thing left was one of Eggman's really big mechs or some other giant problem. Surge was...as much of a threat as she was, she wasn't big enough to require the chaos emeralds.

"Have you even met Sonic when he went super?" Violet asked, her head tilted. "Because I've wanted to for ages but he's never transformed since I've been with him."

Surge surged around. "Wait, you've seen him transform!? Quick, what was the method, how did he do it, did his spikes actually turn up like that!?" Whisper rolled her eyes. Surge must have misheard Violet.

Violet bounded backwards, landing in some snow before she tripped and fell onto her back. Her tail fell back down onto the snow with a sullen plop. Lavender came down and assisted her up gently. "I wouldn't know any of that! I just said I've never seen him transform!"

The green tenrec's eyes turned dead. "Oh. And here I thought you were actually useful to me. Well. Never mind then."

"Why would you need to know any of that? And what exactly is a chaos emerald?" Lavender asked.

"I have no idea what you just said wispy, which means I don't care," Surge said, turning back around and marching forward.

"A chaos emerald is an artifact of power," Whisper explained, echoed by Violet a moment later. Surge paused, her ears perked back. Of course she was listening in now. The wolf glanced back, and nodded at Violet to continue.

"They're basically power gems in chaotic physical form, noticeably that of an emerald," Violet continued. "Dad did a bunch of research on them and the Sol Emeralds. They're physical representations of chaotic power. The Sol Emeralds are the same, but they use fire rather than chaos energy," she kept going.

"Sol Emeralds?" Surge asked. Her eyes narrowed, "I don't recall Starline ever mentioning those."

Violet shook her head. Whisper hadn't heard much either, except they were what Blaze used over in the Sol Dimension, as Sonic and Tails had nicknamed it at one point. "He wouldn't. The Sol Emeralds are from where Mom came from. She was their guardian-"

"And she left the job to have two kids. Wow, what a mother."

"She took them with her," Violet retorted. Whisper stopped. Blaze had done...what? How did Violet even know that? "But she couldn't...they're connected inherently with the Sol Dimension, so they have to go over there every once in a while to charge. It's what she uses to hop dimensions."

"...So wait, your mom can just decide 'oh by the way, I set up a picnic over here in this other world.'?"

Violet nodded. Surge's arms dropped in shock. Lavender started excitedly hovering around her. "Oh, crossing the Master Barrier! Using an alternate energy source is fantastic! No wonder none of us ever got that!"

Whisper wasn't sure what to think of this information dump. Blaze had brought the Sol Emeralds to this world...why? To keep guarding them? She hadn't seen any sign of them in the house in Central City.

"Master Barrier huh? Apt name," Violet muttered as she glanced down. "But yeah, the Sol Emeralds are just physical representations of fire given form. Just as the Chaos Emeralds are the same, but for chaos."

"And what is chaos? You're gonna define that for the class too?" Surge glared.

Violet shrugged. "Sure. Dad gave it as 'endless possibilities of undefeatable magnitude'. I call it more 'the ability to open your heart to live and learn."

Surge stamped her feet. "That explains literally nothing."

Whisper sighed. She thought that she got it, but at the same time she agreed with Surge. And wasn't that a scary thought, agreeing with the humorless green tenrec? "Choice. Chaos...is all about choice," Whisper tried.

"Exactly!" Violet grinned. "Chaos is the opposite of everything! Every action that we do has an opposite, somewhere. Those actions generate energy, in that they didn't happen. That energy has to go somewhere."

"So...what? All the good choices I could've made are in the fantastical emeralds that don't exist?"

"Yeah!"

Surge stared at her, before she flung her arms up. "I don't get this talking thing. Let's hurry to Snowdrift so I can abandon all of you to the mountain," Surge complained as she started walking again.

"I don't get what her issue is. I think that your discoveries on chaos energy is amazing!" Lavender chittered.

"Thanks. But that's mostly my dad talking. I figured it out a while ago, but it wasn't quite the same as what Dad did. Mr. Sonic wasn't too sure, but he agreed with both of us when I brought it up one time."

"You came to this conclusion yourself?" Whisper asked after a moment.

"Yes. Dad left me all of his notes on the Tornado and a copy of everything on his computer. Mom couldn't make heads or tails of most of it, but after I cracked the password I had all of his experiments."

Whisper blinked. "You...cracked your dad's password?"

"Yeah, it was easy too. Mr. Sonic wasn't too sure what it was, exactly, but it only took me about a day to figure it out. Of course, it also helps that Dad re-made it after I was born. He made the password my birthday."

Oh. Whisper stared out into the blank expanse of the snowy canvas. That made sense. It also made sense as to why she would crack it so easily. But at the same time...she had thoughts about how Tails and Blaze ended up, but she was still struck by despite the circumstances, how much Violet was simply...missed.

Will. Undo.

Right, she had to remember that she was going to undo it all. But...would that get rid of Violet? Would that undo Sonic's injury? Would that set Surge and Kit onto the same track they were on, where they were at least hermits rather than actively antagonizing everyone?

She wasn't sure. She knew she had to do it, but it just seemed like a waste. Violet had come so far, and yet...all of it would just...go away once she went back in time. "It's so pretty out here," Violet murmured as she glanced around.

"It's the same color, but in thousands of shades!"

Surge wasn't too far ahead, but it was obvious she had stopped paying attention. She didn't get what Violet had mentioned earlier, so she just...didn't care. Whisper had to give props for that, but that didn't excuse her for anything.

"Honestly the mountains are nice. I think Mom and Dad only took me skiing or snowboarding once. Mom-Amy- and Mr. Sonic took me to the mountains a few times, but they were cautious about it."

"And how many times did you choose to go down a more dangerous slope than you should have?"

Violet grinned. "A bit too many times. I was grounded after the last one, when I jumped almost twenty feet off a ramp, disconnected the board and spun it to slow down before landing on it perfectly."

"I wonder why. That sounds awesome!"

"It was! Velocity was so pissed, he wanted a turn but was restricted to just the medium slopes. He went on the jump the next day anyway, but he bailed halfway through and landed in a snow drift."

"And Mata and Thunder didn't try?"

"Mata had summoned up some guy who'd died in an avalanche a few years before. She didn't want to go on the jump after his story. Thunder was kept to the bunny slopes."

"You know, why do they call it that? Those are the hardest ones, right?"

Violet shook her head. "Nope, the easy ones. Just a simple downhill. I think Mata doesn't like trying new things."

Whisper didn't blame her. 'Trying new things' was what led to this exact scenario. The snow underneath them crunched ominously before Whisper dived to the side. A small rock that she'd barely touched was starting to roll down the hill.

"Surge!" Violet warned as the snow started to drop quickly. The tenrec turned, obviously pissed, before she saw the large amount of snow aiming just for her.

Whisper wanted to tell her to try to stop it, because the town was just on the other side, probably going to be taken out by the accidental avalanche.

Instead Surge stopped in place, and Whisper could see the electricity lance out from her as she slammed it into the snow around her. The heat from the makeshift bolts melted the snow around her, letting the small snowdrift instead flow into the cracks leftover, freezing up over the warmed water.

In an instant, the snowdrift avalanche was deterred. "Watch your step. Don't want more of those, I only got two more in me," Surge smirked, rubbing her nose exactly how Sonic used to do.

She had just saved the town. And wasn't expecting thanks. Wasn't even trying to yell at them about it. Whisper stared at her; what had happened to do over the last twenty three years that she'd changed that much?

The last time Whisper had seen that kind of behavior, was back during that grand prix thing that she'd had to referee. Surge and Kit had saved a bunch of people, but then acted like they were key Restoration members who'd taken down Eggman with ease all the time. Rather than usually on his side.

The rest of the trip was much quicker, seeing as Whisper now followed in Surge's footsteps directly, and the snow drifts were starting to thin out. Before long it was obvious they'd reached the city proper.

Small wooden buildings, mostly houses, strayed at the farther edges. Most of them had obvious wood chimneys, large piles right outside the house under a covered area. The pathway was originally impossible to see, but as they went further inwards it slowly changed from pure snow to a more rocky hidden snowy path.

Until they got into the city proper. The rocks that had been the main path changed to a cobblestone, and then to a pavement. The air around had lifted from extremely cold to simply very cold. Grocery stores were more obvious, small signs lit up to prove exactly what it was they sold.

There weren't many people around, most of them Islanders with thick woolen jackets or the more form fitting ones similar to the one Violet used. Surge was looking around with a large scowl on her face, obviously uncomfortable around the few people that were around.

Whisper, too, was uncomfortable with it but for different reasons. The last time she'd been around so many people was Green Hill, and considering what happened when she'd left...well, she doubted that Snowdrift could handle a single wisp gone wild, let alone her own.

Violet though was seemingly fine with it. She would wave to some of them that were staring at Surge and Whisper, and Lavender too was getting into some of the fun by pretending to be a nega-wisp styled balloon before coughing and rolling over in midair.

Surge eventually held out her hand. "Alright. Stop. Stop. Obviously he's not here," she said with a tone of finality. "That means that Kit and Shadow have it. We'll head back to the cabin," she murmured.

Whisper looked at the fading sun. The trip had taken them most of the morning and early afternoon, and now the sun wasn't quite at the tip yet of the mountains. They'd be walking back in the dark. "It's too late to start now."

"Yeah, let's just find a hotel or something. And some food, I'm hungry," Violet agreed. Lavender nodded, as if the nega-wisp got hungry.

Surge growled as she looked at the nearby clock. "Argh. Fine. Fine, we'll do it your way. Let's find a hotel. Cheap. I didn't bring money," she deadpanned.

"That's fine! Cyan said that Whisper has more than enough!" Lavender brought up.

Whisper stared at her, before remembering that was true. Twenty three years of backpay and the drug bust from Green Hill. She was practically loaded now. And that was an odd thought.

A sudden explosion made them all look towards it. Towards a giant sign clock that had the name of a bank on it. Whisper and Violet ran towards it, only outwardly cursed by Surge.

As they ran, they overheard maniacal laughing that reminded Whisper far too much of Dr. Eggman. "Oh ho ho ho! This is the greatest that Snowdrift can come up with!?" the voice shouted. Whisper felt herself relax. It was nowhere close to Eggman's own deeper voice, and seemed to be an actual islander.

Sure enough, a rabbit islander hopped out of the wreckage caused by the small explosion. Next to him were two small badniks, obviously repurposed based on the strange paint job, a mix of green and black. The rabbit himself was mostly black with a hint of blue and red on him. "And now you'll have the pleasure to be known as the bank robbed by the great Doctor Hopps!"

Whisper wasn't sure who would break first. Violet or Surge. They were both very close to laughing, and Whisper silently tried to urge Lavender to poke Violet in the back. They could get Surge to break first, they could.

But no, Violet broke first. "Doctor Hopps!?" she shouted, a large grin on her face. The rabbit turned to her, his goggles stuck on his head. He had the look of a villain, long flowing red cape with a black bodysuit and the wide eyes of someone who thinks they are far more intelligent than they really are.

"Ah ha! Someone who dares call the name of Dr. Hopps! Don't you worry Snowdrift, for you will...you're just a bunch of kids," he said, staring at Violet in particular.

That's when Surge broke. She'd been struggling to hold it in for a while, and Whisper was almost debating about getting her to crack instead. "You dare laugh at Dr. Hopps!? I am the second coming of Dr. Eggman himself!"

By now most of the other civilians had already left, running away. Whisper didn't hold it against them; anyone who was calling themselves the 'next coming of Dr. Eggman' deserved to be treated without the kids gloves. "Surge," Whisper suggested.

The tenrec was smirking. "You go after the big guy. I'll go after the hitters," she said, lightning crackling around her. Dr. Hopps laughed, commanding the two badniks next to him, a repainted motobug and buzz bomber, to start attacking.

"Blue, Orange," Whisper said, knocking on a few of the canisters. Surge took off, bolting into the parking lot of the bank. They came out for just a second to make sure that Surge wasn't there, before the wisps nodded and floated around Whisper. The wolf turned to Violet and Lavender, "Get behind some cover," she suggested.

The vixen nodded, ducking behind one of the small cars. Most Islanders didn't have them, but they must have been much more common in the future, as roads were seemingly more prevalent. Lavender huddled up to her.

Dr. Hopps laughed as Surge essentially danced around the badniks. "Ha! You may think you are as fast as Sonic the Hedgehog himself, but even he was no match for Dr. Hopps!"

He was silenced as Orange singed off a piece of his ears. "No! My beautiful ears! How dare you interlopers get in the way!" Dr. Hopps yelled, before he pressed a button on his arm. The badniks, most of which were being torn to shreds by Surge, came together around him, rebuilding themselves around him. "Now witness the genius of Dr. Hopps!"

"This guy needs to stop talking. Was Eggman like this too?" Violet asked. Whisper nodded.

"He was worse, depending on his mood. Sometimes he'd spill his entire plan in a heartbeat, and other times he'd play it so close to his chest that no one saw the betrayal coming," Blue answered. "The worst was after Sonic had been captured, and we almost lost the world."

That event had seen the formation of the Diamond Cutters, and the Resistance. No matter how bad the world had ended up, it had been so close to being taken over...and Eggman had done it in literal months.

Whisper had never seen Infinite, but even she knew who he was.

The badniks rebuilt themselves around Dr. Hopps, forming a type of energy armor around him. "Now witness my genius!" he yelled and shouted as he stomped around, attempting to hit Surge. The tenrec was almost having fun at this point.

"Almost hit me there," she shouted back as he stomped down on where she was, only for her to reappear not far off. "Careful, or you might actually hit me! Unless that's what you're trying, in which case you'll just keep missing."

Whisper brought up the wispon, before her radio crackled ominously. A series of beeps brought her attention to whatever it was. Violet didn't appear to have heard it.

Code. Where had she heard that? She knocked on Cyan's canister, motioning for her to imbue into the radio to trace the signal. Cyan glanced towards Surge, but nodded and disappeared from view.

The beeps didn't stop, but slowly started to form words that Whisper could understand thanks to Cyan translating. "I am thirty out."

Who? Who was thirty out? Thirty minutes? Thirty seconds? She brought up the wispon, and glanced around in the scope. "Hey Wolfy! I don't care if I get all the glory but seriously, are you just standing around? We don't have time for that!" Surge yelled.

"You are correct! You won't have time to stand around!" Dr. Hopps yelled as he blasted Surge's position with a few energy blasts. The badniks were pulling their weight, the money long since having been dropped.

The bank's customers had long since locked themselves down, and there was no one in the parking lot. So no one except Whisper and Violet saw the blue streak as it sped by, rolling into a ball and slamming into the middle of Dr. Hopps badnik ball.

He was pushed back onto another car. "What!? Who dares interfere with Dr. Ho-" he started. Surge landed on top of him.

"Just...just shut up," she murmured, punching his lights out with one strike. "So Wolfy, care to tell me why you didn't tell me he was on his way?" she shouted.

The blue streak unfurled from the ball, and Whisper felt her hackles rise instinctively. Her hands rose on the wispon, and she felt the wisps start getting ready to arm themselves.

The blue head, the red shoes, and the large intake fan on the chest. The glowing red eyes, and the...white scarf? That was new.

But it was, without a doubt, Metal Sonic. He had a few more scratches on his head, and some of the paint had come off some of the actual painted areas, but it was him.

"Who is that...?" Violet murmured. She'd probably never seen the robot before. Whisper tried to remember that they weren't technically against her anymore, but it was hard seeing him without shooting at him.

Her radio crackled, and the mute robot simply stared at her. "Salutations. I am Metal Sonic," it said through her radio.

Add another returning character here. We're just going down the list, aren't we?

Until Next Time!

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Paths

Violet stood up from around the car. Dr. Hopps was in the corner, still out cold. "Mr. Sonic told me a lot about him, but I never thought I'd actually see him..." she muttered as she tried to get a better look.

The robot looked remarkably similar to the last time Whisper had seen him. Minus a few dents here or there, and the small scratches of paint that flecked off, and the large white scarf it had wrapped around its neck. It looked towards Surge, who merely shrugged.

"He was not a threat," Metal Sonic said over Whisper's earpiece. Could Surge actually pick it up? The only reason Whisper could understand it was because Cyan was a natural technopath, able to understand computers and everything that went with them, and was able to translate the small signals that it used to talk.

"No idea what you said, and I. Don't. Care," Surge said with a smile as she leaned against one of the badniks. It struggled to try to attack her, even after Dr. Hopps had been disabled. She glanced down with a frown and shocked it into submission.

"Surge. Where is Kit?" Metal Sonic asked. The tenrec made no motion of trying to understand the robot, and it...he...made an obvious sigh of displeasure. "Where is Kit?" he asked again.

"Not here," Whisper spoke up. "He went to another of the villages nearby," she said. Violet and Surge both stared at her. Lavender was making a snow-wisp in a nearby snow drift.

"You...can understand?" Metal Sonic's metallic voice said over the radio earpiece. His face was unblinking, staring straight at her, emotionless. "I am...hesitant to believe that."

"Nope, that's because of me! Hi!" Cyan said, disimbuing herself from the earpiece just long enough to give a wave to Metal Sonic, before doing a raspberry at Surge and diving back in.

"Aww, Wispy doesn't like me. Well that's just too bad," Surge said, doing a raspberry of her own towards the cyan wisp.

"I understand. It is not a native ability, but one granted through the use of technology and wisp," Metal Sonic said, nodding slowly to himself. His red eyes shot down towards Violet, who was suddenly looking over some of the dents on his arms. "What is she doing?"

Whisper relayed the message. "I'm looking over the dents. Mr. Sonic told me a lot, that Eggman always called you one of his greatest creations. It's easy to see why I think-" Violet started.

"Are you seriously excited over some dumb robot? No need to wet yourself kid. Just a robot. These things are the same," Surge said, shocking the other buzz bomber that threatened to come online. The action knocked it out again.

"No need to be crass, Surge the Tenrec."

Whisper didn't want to relay that one, and remained silent. One of the customers, a particularly brave lion, looked outside and sighed with relief as he saw that Dr. Hopps had been taken care of. "Oh thank goodness, we had stopped hearing sounds..." he said, opening up the door and letting the others exit out.

One of the kids, a small cougar islander, ran out and gave a hug onto Metal Sonic's leg, before running back to his mother's car, incidentally the same one that Violet hid behind. Many others walked up and said their thanks to both Surge and Metal Sonic, with a few giving polite nods to Whisper.

"He's not just a robot, he's practically a full AI built into a robotic body. Da...Mr. Sonic said that he was basically a fully built AI clone of him, with the same personality, same likes and dislikes, and even the way he thought. The only thing different was the pre-programmed set of allegiances," Violet retorted.

"She is incorrect. I do not think the same as the Hedgehog. However, my personality core matrix was modeled after his key behavioral pattern," Metal Sonic explained.

Whisper hoped that Cyan would explain the difference to her, but it appeared that even though Cyan knew the words the actual meaning was a bit beyond her. "Is that why you turned?" Whisper asked quietly.

"It is. My master left me and Sage with one wish; to let no one ever rise above him, no matter how we did it. Sage locked herself away in the Starfall Islands, looking through cyberspace for anything to assist with a world-wide intranet. I dedicated myself to the physical world."

So even now, Metal Sonic wasn't truly 'good'. He was, at best, an ally. But to hear that even now Eggman's ego was actually doing the world a favor...that stung a bit, Whisper had to admit. It was fully in character, too, which made it kind of worse.

"I think I can probably repair some of these with Kit's help," Violet murmured. She ran her hand down the robot's arm, feeling the dents and scratches that had gone into his actual carapace.

"Eh, Kit won't. He could, but he's always too busy playing with those damn dolls of his," Surge complained. She threw her hands behind her head again. "We gonna find a place to sleep or what? We found the robot."

Metal Sonic's red eyes went out and turned back on. The equivalent of being taken by surprise, or blinking? "You were searching for me?"

"Kit brought up a prophecy," Whisper suggested, before Violet took over.

"Oh yeah! There's a prophecy about my sister or something?"

Metal Sonic looked down. "Who is she?" he asked Whisper directly.

"Violet Prower. Daughter of Tails-" Whisper started.

The robot cut her off, "Of Miles Prower and Blaze the Cat. The resemblance is quite...uncanny?" he asked, making sure that was the right word. "I had heard of her birth."

"She has a sister. A two-tailed cat."

Metal Sonic blinked. "...I see. How old would she be?"

"Ten."

"That's more than slightly alarming," Metal Sonic admitted. "Please excuse me, I must converse with Sage on this. There is a hotel just down the street, The Snow Day Inn. You will find that a room has been reserved for you, under Surge."

"Metal Sonic says we already have a room under the Snow Day Inn-" Whisper said.

Surge whistled. "That place is nice! Seriously, best amenities money could ask for. How'd you get that much dough just lying around? You ain't made of money Metal."

"Donations go a long way. As do online game tournaments."

And no one else realized that Metal Sonic was playing with them? Whisper wondered how that went; did no one think that his latency would be ultra-low? He was a robot, not just 'essentially' a robot. How did that even work, given that most places would require things like ID?

Unless Metal Sonic faked that too. Whisper had to admit, he could probably do it. Surge led the way to the inn as Metal Sonic stood stock still, Lavender having to forcibly pull Violet away from the robot.

The police had come by and picked up Dr. Hopps, arresting him easily considering he was still out cold. Whisper was glad to have at least one thing work out easily.

The Snow Day Inn looked like it was one of the higher quality inns in the area. The lobby was a mass expanse, almost three stories tall with various railings and elevators to the other floors. It allowed anyone on the third floor to look over the railing and tower over everyone beneath them.

There were a few screens that played various things that people could do at the hotel, and it included things like a water slide, room service, a game show that was taped every night for the kids to watch and or play. There were advertisements for other places around, including a lot of skiing and hiking.

Surge marched straight up to the front, ignoring most of it even as the screens glitched out. The human behind the counter didn't look concerned at the villain in front of her. "Hi. Surge, room for minimum three and a whole lotta wisps," Surge introduced herself, leaning against the counter. Fortunately it was islander sized.

"Surge, Surge...like power surge?" the human asked. When Surge nodded, she glanced back down at the keyboard and computer screen, before pulling back another set of keycards from the back. "Alright, all checked in. Check out is at eleven, if you want room service please call, the numbers on the phone. If you want the front desk, please hit the zero and we'll answer," she said with a smile.

Surge grabbed the keycards, barely returning it with a snarl before she turned around. "Right, room forty six. Wolfy here's your key, don't lose it. I ain't picking up a replacement. Hold on," she said, before she turned around, "Can I get your number!" she called out to the receptionist.

"Just press the zero key!" the receptionist called back.

"Yeah that ain't what I meant," Surge murmured as she turned around dejected. "Whatever. Come on," she said, marching towards the door.

With all the signs around, it was easy to find the right door. It was mostly plain, with a simple number plate spelling out '46' on it. Surge ran the card next to it, letting the door open automatically.

There were three beds all of equal size. Surge bolted in and grabbed the one in front of the TV, immediately turning it on to a channel that Whisper didn't care for, some game show. Violet wandered in, before she went exploring into the various nooks and crannies. Lavender started to bounce up and down on the beds, creating a strange pattern.

Whisper pulled the wispon up and planted it on the bed. Cyan was still in her radio, but there was no energy being used. The wisp was waiting, watching.

Surge bolted out the door a moment later, saying something about being a bit hungry and wanting to get some food. Cyan came out of the radio the second she did, breathing deep as if she'd been holding her breath.

Immediately the other wisps followed suit. "I cannot stand that girl!" Orange complained. "Seriously, how do you do it!? When you know what she did!?"

"What did she do?" Violet asked. "I was only given a quick run-down, but..."

"We're energy. Surge took that energy from us, almost killing us, and used it to almost kill Whisper," Green murmured.

"And don't forget that she tried to kill Sonic and Tails too!" Blue brought up. Whisper ignored them, pulling out some of the tools that had been used to make the variable wispon.

It'd been a long time for the maintenance on it. She'd been using it a lot, and had barely a day to really get into the nitty gritty. The worst part was, she still wasn't feeling tired. The knowing that the Time Eater was after her too...

"Doing maintenance? Can I watch?" Violet asked as she leaned over Whisper's shoulder. The wolf stared at her, before she sighed and shrugged.

"It's nice to be out of the canisters at least. How's Surge been so far, Lavender?" Orange asked, hovering close to the nega-wisp.

"She's been mean, but nowhere near trying to hurt people. I think she's just too hurt herself," Lavender said quietly. "She's definitely in pain, but she's not...bad."

The variable wispon was a hodgepodge of parts that only Smithy had been able to understand well enough to create. Whisper knew enough to take care of it, and she would, but to re-create? Even Tails couldn't do that the one time she'd left it with him for a day or two.

She'd needed it too soon, not because it was a security blanket.

"I think I get it," Violet murmured as Whisper cleaned off a few of the more random pieces. She had no idea what they did, but they were necessary for the wispon to fire. Even the wisps had only the bare functioning idea of how it worked.

"You do?" Whisper asked quietly.

"Yeah. See, this is the polarizing frequency control board, it's what enables it to change based upon the wisp imbuing it. The energy comes from elsewhere, probably the actual wisp," Violet said, staring at one of the parts that Whisper had no idea what it did. It was just a green part, it didn't have the usual signs of being a computer chip or part.

"And that controls the modulator down here. Changing this up allows you to fire different things, rather than just the one. This here is the shifter key, which is entangled with this part here-" Violet started.

"Wow. She figured out more about that by looking at it for ten minutes than you have in your entire life," Cyan murmured. "Not that I blame you. I don't make heads or tails of it either."

"Really? I didn't find it that hard."

"Violet, Tails looked at this and even he couldn't figure half of that out. Let alone in ten minutes."

"He probably could. Just didn't want to make you feel bad. So...sorry about that," Violet said, shrinking back into herself. Whisper almost hesitated for a second, before the wisps helped her and pushed the vixen forwards again.

"Don't be! Can you change it can you change it can you change it!" Blue asked repeatedly. Violet blinked at him before she shook her head.

"Probably not. I could be wrong about it all too. Sorry, didn't mean to get your hopes up," she murmured.

Whisper thought that there was something else going on. But...if Violet didn't think she could do it, Whisper wasn't going to bring it up. The fact she'd even let Violet take a look at it spoke volumes of the wolf's trust towards her. "You can keep looking at least," she murmured towards the vixen.

Violet gleefully took her up on at least that much. The wisps played throughout the room, bouncing on top of the beds and enjoying being out of their canisters for a bit while Whisper did her supposed nightly routine maintenance. Even if she hadn't done it in a few days.

There was a strange whistling sensation to Whisper's ears, before she perked up. The lights had been dimmed a bit, and there was a...girl off in the corner. She was mostly white, with a hint of blue or red in the other areas. "Are you Whisper?" she asked, her voice hollow and harrowed. She was human, but probably not much older than five. It was hard to tell human ages.

"Are you floating?" Blue asked, taking a peek. Cyan slammed her appendages onto her face in some form of a facepalm.

"I am an artificial intelligence, given form through projectors that this hotel uses. I am not actually here," the girl answered.

"So...you're Sage?" Violet asked, sitting on the bed next to the variable wispon. Whisper took another moment to finish putting it back together, letting her mask run a quick diagnostic on it. Thinking that everything was clear, she too stood up and glanced at the artificial lifeform.

"I am," Sage nodded. "You must be Violet," she said. The fox grinned. The door slammed open and immediately the wisps, minus Lavender, gave a heartfelt scream before heading towards their canisters. Surge stomped in, followed by Shadow and Kit, with Metal Sonic bringing up the rear and closing the door softly. It was strange, for a robot that had earned so much of her attention while working for Eggman, he was strangely cautious about hurting too much.

Shadow was covered in snow, as if he rushed here with Kit in tow. The blue fennec fox had snow mostly on his ears, but otherwise seemed fine. Was his hydrokinesis capable of manipulating snow?

"Oh good, everyone's here," Shadow said quietly. "We have...issues to discuss."

That was one way to put it. 'Issues to discuss'. Whisper rolled her eyes in Cyan's honor, as the wisp wasn't there to do it herself. They had fled as soon as Surge came in, not that Whisper blamed them.

Metal Sonic said nothing, but Whisper heard the same crackling sound over the radio. She knocked gently on Cyan's canister, and the wisp leapt out almost as fast as laser to go within her headset. "Alright, ready to go! Sorry, had to make sure Surge didn't see me."

Again, Whisper didn't blame her. "We do?" Violet asked. "I don't see much, unless you're talking about Mata."

Shadow nodded. "That, among other things. There's been some suspicious quakes and holes on the pathway down to Fern Valley. Whisper, can you and Violet take a look at that when you're down there? That's why Metal Sonic was over here."

Whisper raised an eyebrow. "Sure," she answered. She didn't quite know how she was supposed to combat the earth, but on the other hand they've done the impossible before. This was just another version of the same.

"Violet," Sage asked quietly, "Metal Sonic has confirmed to me that your sister is a two tailed cat?" she asked.

Violet nodded. "Yeah. Not sure what it is that you're looking for-"

"Thirteen years ago, I, or rather my father Dr. Eggman, received a prophecy from an islander woman in a brown cloak. The prophecy was vague at best, as they always are. 'The Final Path starts when the living guide the dead, and the future becomes unwritten, the past forgotten, the present unlived."

Whisper glanced up. She noticed a few things. Shadow, Surge, and Kit were staring at Sage, while both Metal Sonic and herself were staring at Violet, who was saying the exact same things, whispering gently underneath her breath.

"The end comes, fire breathes its last, and all will fall under the undying hordes of the once-forgotten."

Violet leaned back. "I was hoping it wasn't that one," she said mirthlessly. Whisper stared at her. She seemed much older now than the twelve year old that Whisper knew she was.

"You are aware of it?"

"Mom and Dad told me the story. Mom was...experienced in pyromancy. They suspected the 'fire' bit was referring to her," Violet murmured. "They got the full thing too, long before I was born."

"Before you were conceived, I feel," Sage said softly. "Your sister practices necromancy, correct?"

"She does. She's the only one that could 'guide the unliving'" Violet said. "I hid it from her pretty well, I don't think she knows."

"It's quite likely that she knows other things then," Sage said quietly. The red lines she had changed to blue, and back to red a moment later.

"She always said they knew more than they were allowed to say," Violet explained. "Still, that doesn't explain anything, even knowing the 'prophecy'. Which as my Mom explained it, is mostly crackpot theories anyways."

Shadow snickered, and Whisper gently hit her radio as Cyan snickered as well. Hearing Blaze refer to anything as 'crackpot theories' though...well, that was kind of funny.

"And yet she chose to believe them."

"Belief is funny like that," Surge answered. "Anyways, this doesn't really matter to us, so Kit and I are just gonna...go."

"No," Sage interrupted. "Please stay, there's more."

"There's more of this nonsense!?" Surge cried out. "Kit, when you told me this was going to be entertaining I expected actual entertainment, not this occult madness!"

"Metal Sonic said we were necessary! For some reason."

"I've done many analyses on the first paragraph, and I think that's the warning. The second is the repercussions of allowing the first to happen," Sage explained.

"That tracks," Shadow spoke up. He turned to Whisper. "Belle ran another translation suite on that clock device that brought you here. It's the same thing, said over and over. 'Healed Time, Hurt Time'.

In a circle, a never ending cycle of healing and hurt. That sounded...familiar, in a way. That was her life in a nutshell, wasn't it? On the other hand, that could be fundamentally extended to all life, a cycle of hurt and heal that belonged to everything.

"I just want to go back," Whisper whispered.

Yet despite the quiet, her voice carried far. Her basic want, at its most basic, was to simply 'go home'. To make sure her friend...lover...whatever Tangle was to her, was safe. She'd move heaven and hell if need be.

There was a chirp in her ear as Cyan agreed.

Unless she wasn't the target. But then something had made that clock point to this time, with prophecies and just...

A hurt Sonic. A pained Surge. Missing Tails, missing Blaze, no Silver, Rouge and Omega gone...A shattered Shadow, a broken time.

A thought came to her. She wasn't supposed to be the one healed by time. She was supposed to be the one doing the healing.

Except what had she done? She hadn't done anything.

"That's not true," Cyan whispered. Whisper wasn't sure how Cyan knew what she was thinking, unless she was whispering so quietly under her breath that she couldn't even hear herself. The wisp came out, ignoring the spike of fear that was from seeing Surge in the corner, and knocked on every one of Whisper's canisters. "You've done a lot here already."

"Shadow's started his healing. Sonic's started his healing. Violet and Mata are learning to live without Blaze and Tails, rather than living in their shadows. You helped Jewel, trapped within her own mind by a power of one of our own," Orange summarized.

"You helped free Green Hills. You helped free Spiral Hill. Even this place. Who are you, Whisper, to say that you don't help?" Pink said.

"We allied with you because you were the last Diamond Cutter. We stayed with you because you were the Guardian Angel," Green kept going.

"Do you remember what the director or admiral of GUN said? That the Restoration was always what he had hoped GUN would be. And then...it came back," Blue.

"Sonic called you a hope-bringer. Your response, if you remember it, was what happened when that hope-bringer had no hope of their own?" Cyan asked.

"You take hope from everyone and everything around," Lavender said. "But you don't keep it. You spread it. You know what's right, and what's wrong."

"Now is our chance to help you," Sage said succinctly. "Shadow...contact Sonic and the others. Everyone you can. Meet at those coordinates that Metal Sonic is about to give you."

"I'm not bringing Faker into this if I can help it," Shadow answered. "He has a family, down in Green Hill." Sage glared at him, the effect given extra by the fact she was completely holographic. Her red turned to blue for another instant before she nodded.

"I get it..." Violet muttered. She turned to Kit, "When you get a chance, alternate the soporific from the knee and up, make sure it's aligned to chaos energy, not just electrical. It should work, if it's for who I think it is."

Kit nodded. "I'm not surprised you figured that out. Alright, I'll do that," he said. "It's only fair, after all."

"Yeah, so with all this nonsense, what exactly is going on?"

"Whisper and Violet are heading to Fern Valley. I'm heading to Angel Island. After that, we have to wait and see. Not much more we can do right now," Shadow answered. Whisper admitted he probably had a strong hunch, although it appeared that Surge didn't as she threw her hands behind her head again.

Shadow nodded towards Kit, and pulled out the green chaos emerald. Whisper could feel its power from where she was, although it disappeared a moment later as he teleported with both Kit and Surge.

Metal Sonic stared at her for a moment, before he started to move towards the door. Sage's lines turned from red to blue again, and she gave a quiet nod before she too, disappeared into midair.

Whisper's mask booted up the night vision instantly. She waited another moment. "You knew this prophecy?" Whisper asked suddenly.

Violet let Lavender out of the hold she'd had her in. "Yeah, but it was...well, Mom thought it was just the Sol Emeralds messing with her. Dad was ambiguous for a while, but I noticed he started preparing early."

Whisper nodded slowly. "Tomorrow morning?" she asked.

Violet nodded. "Yep, we'll go early."

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Journeys

The sun was strange at the higher altitudes. Whisper knew that it was effectively early morning, but it should have been high latitudes that had the sun still being down at eight in the morning. Instead she and Violet were waking up at seven to an entirely still dark skyline.

The hotel at least offered breakfast, and was high end enough to have special wisp biscuits. Pink in particular was enjoying them, although Whisper caught Lavender sneaking a few extra. The wolf wasn't going to say anything.

It was warm inside the hotel at all hours of the day, so it was a shock when they finally left the warm confines to the near blizzard outside. There was no sign of Shadow around, having teleported Surge and Kit. Not that Whisper was sad about sending Surge back. The less time she spent around the tenrec, the better.

They might've gone back to their little shack higher in the mountain range, or they may have stayed at some other places. Or in some other room.

Violet was wearing the big snow jacket again, complete with a hood that hid most of her face. It wasn't the type of hood that led people to believe she was hiding something, but rather the type that scrunched in that barely let her see out. The type that said, 'why am I walking in a blizzard'?

Whisper had just tossed down her mask and called it a day. Her cloak kept her warm enough to not freeze, even though the temperatures were astonishingly cold.

The road leading down the mountains to Fern Valley had dozens of signs saying 'beware of ice'. Whisper could believe it, as even though the sky was dark with the cold black clouds above them. She saw small shiny patches on the side and on the pavement, the pavement slowly moving away from actual road to the dirt road that she was more familiar with.

"How long to Fern Valley?" Violet asked. Her sleeves were limp and lifeless. She'd probably brought her arms in to keep them warmer inside the jacket. That's what Whisper would have done, if she needed to.

But honestly? While it was cold and freezing, it was hardly anything new. She'd done this before, both with the Neo Diamond Cutters and the originals. "Not sure," she answered. "Could be anywhere between a few hours or a few days."

The snow started coming down harder, a few flakes landing on the tip of Violet's nose. The temperature starting dropping again. "I think we should have waited until the blizzard was over..." Violet murmured.

"They didn't tell us the blizzard was even going on," Whisper corrected. The hotel people had plenty of opportunities too. It was as if what happened outside of their own little world didn't concern them.

Maybe it didn't. Maybe that was what was wrong with this place; everyone was concerned about themselves more than the others. Truthfully, she'd seen those signs since long before her own time, so that was nothing new.

"Where do you think Metal Sonic went?"

"Why do you want to know that?" Cyan asked as she popped out of her canister. "Ooh, brr, it's chilly out here."

"We are in the middle of a blizzard," Whisper stated simply. Cyan nodded, as if the chill didn't actually bother her and she was just saying it to make conversation.

"I want to know because he's so interesting! I mean, he's one of Eggman's robots from years ago, and yet he works for the side of good now!"

He didn't, of course. He fought on the side of Eggman. Seeing the man was dead, he was still using it for his last wish; to make sure that no one was ever seen as great as he'd been. The man's ego had been astounding, and it was no surprise to Whisper that he was using the loyalty of essentially his greatest creation and his second greatest creation, depending on if Sage considered herself a creation, to ensure it.

"He doesn't," Whisper corrected. "Eggman's last wish on his deathbed was to make sure that no one was ever seen as 'great' as he was."

"Oh," Violet said simply. As smart as the girl was, it took some circular logic, and not everyone was as good at that. "Why was he here then? That Dr. Hopper was in no way a threat to Eggman's ego. He'd probably let the little rabbit keep going on for a bit before shutting him down."

Whisper shuddered. That was in fact exactly what Eggman had done to Starline. Kept him around for entertainment, and the moment that Starline thought that Eggman was a dunce that he showed his true colors. They'd found the journal that truly showed what happened to Starline, and it wasn't pretty.

The mad duck was most definitely dead. That didn't stop Surge from being an ass though, so in Whisper's mind it was just one more egomaniac gone.

The world could use a lot less of them.

"Shadow mentioned that he was here to look for a source of quakes and other shaking," Whisper recalled. It was an off-handed remark that the only reason Whisper was listening was because it was Shadow saying it. The dark hedgehog almost never spoke if he could help it.

Although he'd lightened up a lot in the last twenty three years. There were still remnants of the dark and 'edgy', according to Green, persona still in there, but it had softened remarkably. He'd probably been a lot worse right after Rouge and Omega had died.

Not that Whisper would blame him for that particular thing. She remembered what she'd been like after the first Diamond Cutters had been...after they were gone. The wisps didn't like to think of that time, but she knew they recalled their origins with near perfect clarity, and like most wisps thought that the time they had with them was the best part about it.

She wished she could be that happy about things. Instead here she was in the snow, with a wind that was threatening to knock her off a mountain, with a violet fox and a blue metal hedgehog walking right beside each other and wait what.

She turned to stare. When had Metal Sonic joined them? "What are you doing here?" Whisper asked. She knocked on Cyan's canister, forgetting the wisp was already there. The wisp gave her a quick raspberry before diving into the circuits on her mask.

"He just came out of the snow. I think he slept out here," Violet offered.

The metal hedgehog didn't shake his head or nod, or any other human-like gesture. Instead he merely spoke directly into Whisper's ear, "I had come out here to find the source of the quakes. It does not bode well to leave a job unfinished."

"He's here for the same thing as us," Whisper summarized. Violet gave a small leap, throwing her arm into the sky before she landed, her shoes almost losing traction on the now icy dirt. She didn't fall, but Whisper could tell it was a close thing.

"Could...I...could I use your mask to talk to him!?" Violet said, appearing next to Whisper. Her original declaration was a very adamant 'No' but she thought about it a bit more. It couldn't really hurt.

"Not to mention I want to talk more and you're so quiet right now it's boring!" Cyan commented into her ear. Orange popped out of her canister, glaring at the cyan wisp.

Whisper rolled her eyes, before she reached one hand behind her head, undoing the buckle on the mask. It fell into her hand gently, and immediately the cold infected her face. It really was a bit chilly, wasn't it?

She handed it over to Violet, who was grinning and shaking in near excitement. "Cyan, don't translate every word," Whisper said. "Especially curse words."

"No, no, translate those, especially those!" Violet said as she grasped for the fox-esque mask. It fit her face near perfectly as she buckled it on, having to take down her hood for it. "Wow. This is...incredible," she murmured.

It had a half dozen features and only a few of them were known by someone who wasn't wearing it every day. Visual clarity was only one part of it, as was the wisp translator. "It's weird to see you without the mask," Orange said.

Blue and Green popped out, followed a moment by Pink and Lavender. "Everyone else was out, so I figured I'd come out too," Lavender answered without prompting. Whisper nodded.

She hung back a bit as Violet and Metal Sonic started talking. Mostly it was simple things, but it was obvious that Metal Sonic wasn't taking into account Violet's age with his answers, based on her responses.

Whisper had almost forgotten that Violet was just as smart as Tails, even if she didn't know it. The girl wasn't nearly the same. Even though they had been similar ages, Tails four years younger, they acted...kind of differently.

Tails was the kind of person to hold too much responsibility onto himself, and sometimes he catastrophized so much in his mind that he froze up, and it was only action that let his mind wander again. The Metal Virus had been a lot for him, and the Grand Prix as well, with his EX-Gear having been sabotaged...no eight or twelve year old should have that much burden on himself.

"They're kinda similar, aren't they?" Orange asked. Whisper glanced up at her. "Metal Sonic and Violet, I mean."

"How so?"

One was a robotic blue hedgehog modeled after her adoptive father, and the other was a violet fox who was born to two people that Whisper was only mostly sure hadn't even spoken to each other in her time.

"One wants to do good, that's Violet. The other just doesn't want to besmirch an evil's mind. And yet...they have the same earnest thoughts. Look at Metal, right now," Orange said. Whisper glanced at him.

The robot was walking along, just like all the other times. And it took a few moments before she got it; Metal Sonic was moving exactly as Sonic did. His arms were moving in the exact same way that Sonic's did when he was trying not to brag about an impressive achievement.

"He claims only his personality matrix was designed off of Sonic, but I think it's more than that," Orange said. "Not that I have any proof, mind."

"And you don't know computers."

"And I don't know computers that well. Blue, what's the chance of Metal Sonic being more related to Sonic than we thought, based upon narrative dissonance?"

Blue glanced at her. "Narrative dissonance isn't a thing, Orange. What you're talking about is narrative cognition, which is being aware you're in a narrative."

"So that thing you have," Pink summarized. "Not that we are, of course."

Blue rolled his eye. "Fine, just for that I won't mention it. At all. Good luck prying it out of me!" He blew a raspberry, a distinctively Pink or Cyan maneuver, before he flew off into the small grasses off to the side. Orange and Pink flew with him, trying to needle him for all of those things.

Whisper gave them barely a glance. As much as it lifted her spirits to see the wisps acting like the world didn't matter to them, it was exhausting at times.

"What was that all about?" Lavender asked. "I don't remember any mention of any of that before."

"Blue thinks we're in a story," Whisper explained. "Personally it's how I think he comes to terms with being flung twenty three years."

"That is a long time for a mortal."

"Mortal?" Whisper asked. Wisps almost never said the word. To hear it from Lavender, a white wisp turned violet or purple, was...different.

"Sorry, it's a force of habit. Dr. Henderson and I were working on it. Before he figured out how to create the purple frenzy. Some of the white wisps just referred to those that died as mortals."

"No, that's what it means, but I've never heard a wisp say it before."

Lavender nodded. "Most of the time we shouldn't. We die too, we aren't immortal. Just...very old. Did you know that wisps can tell approximately how old other wisps are just from a glance?"

"I had a similar feeling," Whisper said, nodding. The Diamond Cutters already had their wisps when she joined and she met with Orange for the first time, but Smithy had often told the story of how the wisps had come to them.

They had just recently saved a small town from one of Eggman's random mechs, long before the Resistance was formed. They did it through cunning and intelligence, and more than a hint of strength and ferocity. The wisps had been impressed, and approached them all directly.

Then the Resistance had been formed, right as Eggman started his attack on a global scale. Other wisps saw what the ones that joined the Diamond Cutters were doing, and shared the plans to create weapons that utilized their own unique characteristics. Those became the wispons.

"They're old," Lavender said. "Very old. I'd say just short of the Mother honestly, maybe in the first or second brood."

"Mother?"

"The Mother Wisp. The one who...well, created us all, or gave birth to. No one's really sure, and she never speaks of it. There was a time when she was a violet wisp too, but then...well, Sonic beat it out of her."

Sonic beat her? The originator of all wisps, and by far, according to what she could piece together, the most powerful of them all? Whisper had no doubt he had to go super for it, and she'd seen first hand what Super Sonic and Super Silver could do.

"I wasn't there. I'm from the fortieth thousand brood. About...-" Lavender started, before Green came out of the snow, and held out an obvious sign of not saying anything. "I'm not supposed to say?"

"Nope! We're keeping how old we are a secret! You can tell her your age though, that won't do a thing!" Green said, before he turned to Whisper. "You don't mind if I keep things secret right?"

Whisper shook her head. "As long as it doesn't come back to attack us."

"It shouldn't."

"Then no, I don't mind," Whisper acknowledged. She had secrets too, although they were unlikely to ever bother her now. Twenty three years was a long time for a secret to die. It'd be hypocritical if she started to demand to know all the wisps' secrets.

"And that's why she's the greatest," Green nodded. "Much better than the other guy Blue was with. That's Mimic, in case you forgot."

"No, I remember," Lavender clarified. "You said he was a kind of shape shifting octopus?"

"He is," Whisper said. Her hand crunched down on her glove as she clenched her fist. That was still a thing she needed to see. Was he still out there, or had Eggman's downfall led to his own? He'd infiltrated the Restoration, but Jewel had somehow figured it out instantly.

Lanolin was fooled, but anyone who reminded the sheep of that particular trait was promptly glared at. Whisper remembered when it came to light that Duo, a new cat had joined the Diamond Cutters. She had recognized him instantly, but gathering the evidence for it...that took a long time. Especially because Lanolin didn't want to take her word for it.

It was something that Whisper should have blamed her for, but somehow the wolf didn't. Whether that was because of some other global disaster that had promptly struck the Restoration, or because she knew firsthand just how hard it was to believe anyone could be Mimic.

She still carried a fire in her heart for the day she'd find Mimic gone in the world.

Metal Sonic and Violet had stopped abruptly, and the fox was taking a look at some of the metal hedgehog's workings in his torso. "Whisper, do you think we can wait a few minutes?" Violet asked.

The wolf glanced around. They'd made pretty good time, about halfway down the mountain. The blizzard had started to recede a bit, so now it was simply a gentle snowfall. The ground was covered in it, but it looked like it wasn't sticking, based on the green grasses off to the side.

"A few minutes," Whisper said. She'd made it this far, and now she was finally on her way to where Tangle supposedly was. Or it would be another red herring.

In truth, this was actually a fairly normal adventure so far. Yes, they'd had accidents, yes she'd almost been eaten by a Time Eater of all things, but in general, she had a goal and she stuck to it.

Compare that to the tales that Amy told of Little Planet and Sonic's 'dazzling rescue' of her. Which was less dazzling and more 'eye-rolling'.

Not that Whisper was there for that. She'd been on the other side of the planet, untouched by Eggman until that final push, or when Dark Gaia had struck.

Or when Eggman had destroyed half the moon. Or, according to the notes that Whisper had access to as part of the Diamond Cutters, almost destroyed time. Twice.

He was a big proponent of time travel, it seemed. He'd used some form of it three times. Little Planet, 'Solaris', whatever that was, and one time with the Time Eater.

Most of the time Eggman's plots didn't affect her actual hometown. It was probably buried in rubble by now, if Whisper was honest. It was the landing point in which he'd attacked that continent during his takeover.

"Alright, you should be good to go now. Any resistance?" Violet asked as she pushed away a screwdriver, shaking out the cold from her hands. Metal Sonic twisted a bit, his legs moving a lot like Sonic did when he was stretching, only slightly more robotically.

Was she...fixing him? Even with the white scarf, it was odd seeing the robot as anything other than the killing machine it could have been. How Violet didn't see him like that, Whisper didn't know.

She grinned suddenly. "Of course you're welcome! That's what friends are for!" she said. Whisper blinked. Friends? That was fast, Violet.

The fox turned back to Whisper. "All done! He had some extra tension in the left leg ligament connecting to the hips. The joint had to be adjusted a bit. He says it's better now, so we can keep going."

Whisper blinked, before she nodded. Pink, Orange, and Blue were still playing in the reeds off to the side. The mountain was still going downwards, but Whisper could see the bottom now, and where Fern Valley got its name from.

It was practically a jungle, although snow-covered as it was at the moment. Tall trees struck out from the bottom, and the bottom of the ground was covered in hundreds of ferns. Most of the pathway was a light brown, almost a red, from the fallen leaves of the trees above.

"You can see the valley from here!" Green said quickly. "It's like seeing an ocean of green!"

"It's beautiful..." Lavender said, and Whisper got a distinct thought that her hue had lightened up a bit, before darkening once more. Was that because the wisp was finding her own dark thoughts, or was that something else?

Whisper took a few steps, and promptly slid down another ten or fifteen feet. The area here was slippery, and the snow wasn't helping, even as gentle as it was. "Watch your footing," she warned, right before Metal Sonic jumped down thirty feet, Violet trying to match his jumps one to one.

With a sigh, she checked her medicine bag. Good, she still had plenty of medical supplies, especially for when Violet was doing something like that.

She walked on in silence for a few minutes, satisfied with the one-way conversations that Violet was having with the robot, or the talks of Green to Lavender, or the furious attempts at 'getting' one another from the other three wisps off to the side.

"Lavender..." Whisper started after a moment. There was only so much of Green's poorly made attempts at flirting that she could take. She was fortunate enough to be able to tune most of it out, but the subtle jab at her own relationship troubles pierced that like a needle.

The lavender wisp immediately floated next to her, and Whisper almost thought that she'd say 'thank you' for getting her out of there. "How old are you? I know Green said not to tell me how old they are."

"Not very. Only about two, maybe three thousand years. Unless you mean into a violet wisp, that one's about eighteen or thirteen, maybe eight depending on which planet you're thinking of. Or less. Or more. Not long."

That wasn't confusing at all. Whisper nodded, before Lavender went back to Green. She said she was from the forty thousandth brood. That was...that was a lot. How many wisps were in a brood? Did they even think of terms like that?

Whisper's eyes peeled around, taking in the area around her. The mountain snow had kept going, but while it was a blizzard at the top, down here it was just a gentle snowfall. It curved over the rocks and edges, sometimes lying about where the edge actually was. More than once Violet slipped for a moment, only to catch herself a second later.

The grasses were tall here, too. Generally that meant there was no one for upkeep. Seemed they were native grasses as well, which meant that people didn't come this way to live and bring their own seeds of invasive species along with them. Was there anyone even living in this canyon?

There may not have been. Whisper couldn't recall seeing any houses, or any smokestacks that represented a house. Even Surge and Kit's place on the top had one of those.

Her boot crunched down on a hard surface, and not on the soft dirt that she'd been used to. Or the soft snow, rather. There was still a way down to the canyon floor, and the sun was barely over halfway through its daily trek. Or at least, as far as Whisper could tell based on its position, a dull gray slightly shining orb surrounded by other dull gray slightly shining clouds.

Pink, Orange, and Blue came out of the bushes, rustling gently as they passed. They were blabbing something, talking about something, but they were a cacophony and she couldn't make out what any one of them was saying. "Slow down," she commented.

"There's a what?" Green asked instantly.

Orange spoke up. "There's something big heading this way, and it's not a Time Eater you don't need to worry about that, you and Lavender did a lot of damage to it, but there's something big and it's heading right for us!"

Whisper nodded. "Violet, Metal Sonic-"

Violet was already dragging the blue hedgehog robot down to the ground, trying to get under any amount of cover they could find. There wasn't a lot to be found in the area, given they were out in the open. They hadn't quite reached the valley yet. "We heard!" Violet called back.

At first Whisper wanted to call Cyan back, to use her for scouting purposes, but Cyan was needed to help translate for Metal Sonic. Which meant Whisper was essentially down to Pink, Orange, Blue, and Green. Lavender wasn't the type, Whisper felt, to be shot out of a wispon. What would the variable wispon even change it to?

They'd have to test that. "Pink, imbue. We'll use you for scouting, Green, go upwards and see if you can't find it again. Keep an eye on it. Orange, scout at this level. Can you still see it?" Whisper asked.

Orange shook her head, just as the ground started to shake and rumble.

Another of those interim chapters.

Until Next Time!

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Drill

Whisper immediately turned to Violet and Metal Sonic, telling them to get out into the open. By the time she could, she saw them ten feet in the air, hovering using Metal Sonic's inner jet. Good, that was one thing she didn't have to worry about.

"Green!" She called as the ground started to shake and vibrate more. He looked down from his position, immediately imbuing himself into the variable wispon and ejecting Pink. Whisper didn't have the chance to say sorry, not yet.

She jumped off the ground, letting Green hover her in midair for a few moments. She could see the ground vibrate hard, rocks being torn apart and sundered, parts of the snow falling into a crack that suddenly appeared, and the crash of snow and water being ejected as the rocks were pushed together.

It was over in a minute. In that minute, the landscape had changed dramatically. Where before it was mostly rocky, hidden by the snow, now it was mostly dirt with nothing but ice hidden. The green grasses had been eaten up by the quake, and spat out somewhere else.

Whisper landed, her boots clanging down. This wasn't a time for stealth. "Whisper! Metal has an idea, we're looking in the center!" Violet called as the robot hedgehog turned his jet and flew off towards the center of Fern Valley.

Orange watched her go. "That seems kind of stupid."

Whisper could only nod. "Why? He seemed nice to me," Cyan said from next to her head. Whisper blinked. "You do look strange without the mask on."

"Shouldn't you be with them?"

"Nah, they can get by...no they can't. Shoot! I'll be back, keep your radio on!" Cyan yelled as she shot towards the quickly disappearing duo.

"I repeat. That seems silly," Orange said. Whisper nodded.

"Orange, Pink, Green. You three saw it. Explain in more detail whatever it was," Whisper said, sheathing the variable wispon on her back. She wasn't silly enough to try running through a jungle or forest she didn't know in bad weather when an earthquake had just happened. Honestly Metal Sonic should know better too.

Orange nodded. "Right. So we were hiding in the grass, arguing with each other. Pink noticed it first."

"Yeah, Orange was too busy trying to win," Pink said, sticking out his tongue, "But it also helps that it was through vibration. You know, spikes and all that, sensitive to that kind of thing. At first it was real subtle."

"Neither of us noticed it either," Green offered. "But that changed once Pink brought it up. It was as if it was moving through the dirt, rock, and roots."

"Once Pink spotted it, it was easy to track. Small vibrations of the forest just kind of...got bigger. And bigger," Orange explained. "We figured it was getting bigger towards us, and that's when we ran back."

So it had been some kind of creature or something? Whisper wasn't sure what kind of creature could do that. She knew robots that could do that easily, but they would have heard robots coming a mile away. Robots that could make that kind of destruction were usually loud and made no attempt at hiding their presence. Probably not a robot then.

To create a localized earthquake, she knew, expended a large amount of energy. To create any earthquake actually. But the kind of devastation that this one caused, based on the way her boots were now hitting dead grass rather than the green stuff, meant it was either extremely close or extremely powerful.

She wondered then if it would be possible to alert the creature or specimen or robot or whatever it was to come back...if they also created a localized quake of their own. "Blue. Think you can create a cube that's heavy, and send it flying down from high up?" Whisper asked.

The blue wisp nodded. "Easy enough. What's the plan?"

"I want to lure it out. If Metal Sonic and Violet think it's heading towards the center of Fern Valley, we want it to be somewhere else. If we can lead it out here, it'll be easier."

Blue nodded, along with the others. Good, she knew they were smart, but it was a stark reminder how smart they were. He waited until she had gotten on top of a larger rock, despite the cold biting into her, and gave him the go ahead. He flew as high as he could, or at least as high as Whisper thought he could, before he created a cube.

Whisper had seen him create cubes before. It was nothing new. What was new was how big and fully dense he could do them. "They are old...and wisps get stronger the older they are," Lavender said to her quietly. She must've shown the surprise on her face.

It was a cube, yes. But it was a massive one, nearly the size of a small hill, or of Surge and Kit's house. Basement included. And it was so dense that it didn't show blue anymore, but rather pure black, a lightless void that absorbed anything, even light that tried to go against its power.

Whisper motioned to Green to imbue the wispon. She had a feeling she'd need him, and she hovered in the air nearly ten feet off the ground before Blue let it drop.

The impact force shot her straight up in the air. It shattered the rocks below her, the snow in the area melting instantly as the pressure overrode its ability to stay as a snowflake. The pressure wave itself was visible, the trees shaking as it passed them, half of them already down and partially fallen onto others nearby.

If Whisper needed a reminder that the wisps were powerful, she had it.

Blue came down as Whisper landed, feeling the aftershocks of the localized earthquake still jump up and down on the ground. He wasn't breathing hard, wisps didn't breathe per se, but he looked tired. "That was fun!" He grinned.

He turned to the others. "And you all wanted to take a vow. Proved useful now didn't it?" He asked, a teasing voice in his tone. Orange and Pink decided to take up Cyan's usual position and start arguing with him.

"Do you think it worked?" Whisper asked Lavender, one of the only ones to not keep up the argument. There were some words that Whisper understood, but she also knew that this was a conversation that she shouldn't have been a part of. They wanted her to be, their use of the learned language proved it, but she didn't know half of their culture.

"One would hope so. They took a Vow?" Lavender asked. Whisper shook her head.

"You weren't there for that. Green Hill. I was...healing, basically. I'd gotten hurt. They wanted revenge, and in turn remodeled the entire landscape. Not just geographically, either."

"I couldn't even dream of being so strong I needed to make a Vow," Lavender sighed.

"So what is a Vow? They've mentioned it before, right after the Green Hill incident. But they needed more evidence first, so they took a...Geas, I think it was?"

Lavender nodded. "It'd have to be. A Vow is...honestly, it seals away about three quarters of a wisp's ability to manipulate themselves. A Geas on the other hand, is a time-locked version of the same, or given a mission or something. It allows them to act more freely, without worrying about hurting others."

They locked away three quarters of their power? Or no, that was what they wanted to do. "How much does a Geas...?"

"About one half or two thirds, whichever is higher. It's intrinsic to wisps, basically it's just pure instinct. The fact that Blue can do that...and still under a Geas? Green Hill must have been terrified."

"They were Islanders. I think they were fine with it, honestly."

Whisper remembered the conversation with the GUN leader, before knowledge of the Time Eater hunting her, about how an ice cream seller was just waiting for an opportunity. And he did. The Islanders of Green Hill weren't just opportunistic for it...they wanted the change.

Or at least, from Whisper's perspective, they had. "That's honestly more terrifying. I've heard Mother had two Vows before, but now I wonder. To have a being that strong..."

"Violet did mention that it required Super Sonic to break through to her."

"Who's that?"

Lavender had met Sonic, right? Maybe she hadn't. No...she wouldn't have. "Sonic is Violet's adopted father, considering her own biological is...well, we're helping search for him. With the power of the seven chaos emeralds-"

"Say no more," Lavender said instantly. "I remember hearing about those. Dr. Henderson wanted one to study, badly, hoping that it was the chaotic power of the emeralds that would bring a painless transition to Nega."

Admittedly, if he had mentioned that to anyone of the Restoration, he probably would have been visited by Sonic or Shadow much earlier. It must have been one of those thoughts that one has, even if they never act on them. "I doubt it would have been painless."

"I doubt it too," Lavender said. She was about to keep going when Orange suddenly shouted in alarm.

"It's coming here! Your plan worked, Whisper!"

"Well I did the real hard work," Blue said, preening himself. Whisper smiled but rolled her eyes.

"We don't know what this thing is. Green, get ready for imbuement. Pink, Blue, get ready for blocks and spikes. Orange, get ready to switch with Green at a moment's notice," Whisper commanded.

The wisps nodded. "And...me?" Lavender said.

"I don't know the form the wispon would take with you. I don't know if you can fight as a wisp, or if you need to imbue."

"...That's fine. I'll just...stay out of the way."

Whisper stared after a moment. No time like the present, really. But not during a potential combat situation, like this one was going to be.

The ground started to shake again, and Whisper noticed that the Blue cube was starting to evaporate. It was slow going though, unlike his usual cubes.

She jumped into the air, letting Green keep her there for a few moments. The ground was shaking visibly, and she started feeling confused and annoyed.

The world was hers, darn it. Why did everything have to be so annoying all the time? If the world was shaking, then she should have been the one doing it. Not anyone else, her! Orange started to speak up, and Whisper felt herself calm down a bit. It was almost relaxing, the tones of soothing and understanding. And explanation.

It was a wisp causing it. And it was a wisp that didn't know she had a translator.

Green put her down gently as she motioned for him to do so, and the shaking stopped as a pair of yellow eyes popped up out of the ground. Her heart sang with happiness, but it was dulled by lack of understanding.

"She's new," Green hovered next to her. "Only a few years at most. Practically a child, still trying to understand what life is, and what's going on."

Orange hovered next to her, her own feelings of calming. Things were going to be okay, she translated in her head. Lavender's hue brightened up a bit, before it darkened again. "It's been so long since I heard our voice..." She murmured.

Blue came up next to Orange, chatting amicably. Pink came up to him, and Whisper felt herself be positive for a bit, not happy but content, before Pink's words started, then she felt only teasing and virtue.

There was a sense of questioning, and it tossed Whisper around as if she was in a laundry machine. Questions and answers were passed around and through her, and each one only left a taste of what the emotion was before it left.

Minutes passed, and by the end of it Whisper had a raging headache that was as if Blue had landed the giant cube straight onto her head. She had questions, answers, more questions, calmness, happiness, contentedness, questions, understanding, annoyance, more answers, everything raging like a hurricane inside her mind.

"Uh...I think we messed up Whisper," Orange said softly. Whisper's eyes opened as she stared into Orange's. "You okay?" She asked.

When had she gone onto the ground, why was she facing skyward, and why was there a good inch of snow on her stomach? She'd been there for that long before the wisps thought to check up on her? Or maybe the snow just came down harder.

The snow was coming down harder now. The sun was high, according to the bright spot in the dark clouds, so it was probably around noon or early in the afternoon. It hadn't quite reached blizzard levels again, but it was starting to get there.

"I'm alright."

The yellow wisp, a small pyramidal creature came up to her. It had one eye, with three small appendages hanging down. A small feeling of greeting someone new, half-bothered by anxiety. The headache that she had roared back to life.

"Wait, don't...argh this is going to be frustrating. She's too young to know how to talk. To Whisper, at least," Pink muttered under his breath. He came up to her, and Whisper got a sense of containment, ease, and rest. The headache came back as another sense of contentment and agreement was reached in her head.

Despite the feelings being calm and soothing it sure did nothing to calm and soothe the headache in her mind!

Pink reached in for a canister...specially Lavender's original canister, the one that the nega-wisp had vacated. Seven canisters, seven wisps.

Whisper sighed as Yellow soared into the canister, and with it the sense of unease and distrust slowly started to vacate. Whisper hadn't even realized it was there.

"Yeah, so that's gonna be a problem..." Orange said. "So. Who wants to be the one to teach her how to speak where she won't cause problems?" She asked.

"Is that what happened?" Whisper asked. She waited around on the rock for a moment, but it didn't seem as if any of the wisps were alarmed at the newly identified Yellow.

"You know our language, our original one, deals with emotions? Or rather, we talk through our emotions, and channel those out to everyone nearby," Orange offered. Whisper nodded. She didn't quite know the exact science behind it, but she'd at least put together that much. "When we're born, that's instinctive. Talking like this, vocally or at least sonically, requires effort to learn, and time to learn."

"Yep. Yellow hasn't had the time yet, even if she had the inclination. Judging on her annoyance when Blue did his thing, it was unlikely that she would have," Green continued.

"I'm sorry. I didn't think it would cause that many issues. I thought your plan was good!" Blue commented. Whisper shook her head. It wasn't his fault. It wasn't even her fault. It wasn't anybody's fault.

"What that also means is that some people's emotions aren't supposed to change that rapidly, especially during a long conversation like that one. It...uh...well, it knocked you out," Orange explained.

That also explained why she didn't remember most of that long conversation. "Did Metal Sonic and Violet come back yet?" Whisper asked.

Lavender shook her head. "Not yet. They said towards the center of Fern Valley, that'll be a bit for us to get to."

Yes, it would. It would probably not be another full day, but it would be early evening by the time she managed to reach down to the forest in general.

"Any idea how to get used to your language?" Whisper asked as she jumped down from the rock. Her boots crunched on snow, and she missed her mask again. It not only kept her face warm now in the cold but she had grown so used to wearing it that she felt off without it.

"There really isn't one," Orange answered. "Just...be around it. With Yellow you're probably more bound to get used to it."

"The first few days might be a bit rough. We'll try to keep her from being too excitable," Green said. "But Yellows and excitement go kind of together. They like the earth, and they really like water."

Which explained to Whisper why Yellow had been in the mountains to begin with. Particularly mountains with a lot of snow. She wondered idly if any of the yellow wisps had helped Sonic out during their original fiasco. Some had helped the Resistance. There was another yellow wisp, too, shaped more like a lightning bolt.

"In the Resistance, there were multiple yellow wisps, but they looked different," Whisper started. Orange and Green nodded.

"Yeah, we know the ones. We just called them gold. Gold wisps and yellow wisps. Gold ones are the ones that are more about current and flow, kind of like Cyan except without the laser aspect," Orange explained.

"How many different types are there? I've heard you mention Crimson and Black."

"A lot," Green muttered. "Blacks are kind of the explosive ones, they really like explosions in general. Some don't, but broad strokes and all that. Crimson are the time-alterers, they kind of...bend time around themselves, recalculating probabilities."

"In reality, they just like hitting things and making sure they hit," Orange deadpanned. "Think of them like red shells from that one kart game Tangle used to try to get you to play."

"Ooh, we talking about plumber kart!? I loved that game!" Pink said, jutting himself into the conversation instantly. "Seriously, I'm like the best there was!"

"Best being compared to...who? The people like Tangle who beat you every time you tried to play?" Blue teased. Pink's eyes narrowed, and Whisper ignored the two as he dive-bombed Blue.

The mountains around slowly started to fade from the rocks and snow to more plants and snow. There weren't nearly as many large boulders now, nor were there any paths. Although the paths Whisper could understand, depending on how long Yellow had been out here.

But if Yellow was young, didn't that mean that she wasn't as powerful? In that case, how could she cause that much damage? That had to be a lot of energy expenditure.

"What other types are there?" She asked after a moment. She had a lot of questions, and right now it looked as if most of her friends were forthcoming. Unlike Green's 'Don't tell her!' moment from earlier.

"We mentioned Gold, or Ivory or whatever, we called them Gold, there's...regular reds, not crimsons, and they have fire. Or...Burst? I don't know what they called it. Let's see, the nega-wisps with Void and Frenzy..." Orange started to go on.

"You've mentioned bomb, right?" Green asked. "Wait, you did, those are black. Um...I think that's most of them."

"There's white, like Lavender was originally," Orange said, nodding her head to the lighter than normal purple wisp. "Um...I think there's a few more."

"Jade! The ghosty ones, they're fun to play with!" Green suggested. "They can do all kinds of fun things. Even the oldest ones aren't that old, only a few million years old."

Whisper made sure to note that in her mind. 'Not that old' meant 'a few million years'. And here she thought she was getting old when she was only sixteen. No, seventeen now. Not including the plus twenty three from the time travel.

Which meant that when Lavender had suggested that her friends were 'old', as in first or second, that meant they had to be nearly several times older than 'a few million years'. What was the term she'd heard before? Time abyss?

"The grays, too. And indigo, which aren't nega-wisps, surprisingly. They're like...more voidish," Orange commented.

"How does that one work?" Lavender asked, her head tilted entirely one way.

"Oh, they like to break things down. There's more than that, but I think the others are rarer. The most common of us are all of us here, actually. Orange, pink, cyan, yellow, blue, green, and white. Lavender, actually, but you get the idea."

"I completely forgot about the grays. They could do the same thing Yellow was doing, but more localized. That was their own unique power. And the less said about the black bomb power, the better," Green nodded.

By now the forest start line was just ahead, and off to the side Whisper could see a small dirt road that probably led to a main interstate. It was in shabby condition, not just because of the snow, but because of Yellow's influence. There were no tracks on it, and what snow was on there was quickly building up after having melted.

Fern Valley was considered to be a destination hotspot for hikers in her time. Probably not so much in winter, or close to it like they were. It wasn't winter, not yet, but in a few months it most definitely would be.

The snow was still blotting out the sun, but it had gone back from its heavy snow to a lighter one, and more than once Whisper felt it fall onto the back of her head and chill her spine and tail.

She reached down for her belt, reaching down to her emergency pack. No matter what anybody said, she'd always carry one, least of all because of situations like this one. She pulled out a small physical radio. Short distance only, unlike the one in her mask, or the ones most of the Restoration had carried.

"Violet. This is Whisper," she called out into it.

"Whisper?" The answer came back instantly. Violet's voice sounded strong, that she wasn't in pain. "Hold on, I need to turn up the volume on this thing, I can barely hear you!"

That was the point of her whispering, Whisper thought. So that way she wouldn't be loud. She waited patiently for a moment. "There's a button on the inside, next to the clasp. Hit that twice. Cyan can do it too," she advised.

"Oh hey there it is! Thanks Cyan!" Violet's voice called out. "So uh...what's wrong?"

"Just got to the entrance of Fern Valley. How far in did Metal Sonic take you?"

"Not far! He's actually been really nice, I don't know why anybody would be afraid of him- that's a compliment Metal!" Violet shouted. Whisper held the radio away from her head for a moment before she brought it closer. "He's been helping me learn about all kinds of mechanical stuff."

"What's the path?" Whisper asked. While she was interested in Violet's newfound technological ability, not that it was newfound at all to anyone who was remotely informed about the girl, Whisper still wanted to actually get to Tangle.

The entire reason she was here to begin with.

"Uh...Metal Sonic doesn't know. Trees are interfering with the GPS signal. And so is Angel Island actually. So...just go on in, we'll find you!"

No one actually had taught Violet the mechanics of being lost in the woods, did they? That was both smart and extremely worrisome on both Tails and Sonic's part. How often had those two gotten lost in the forest?

Actually now that she thought about it, probably not often. "No," Whisper said gently. "Stay there, I'll find you," she said. Rule number one of being lost in the forest; stay put. It was much easier to find someone who wasn't walking any which way than it was to find someone who was.

Rule number two was to try to find water, and stick by it. Everyone needed water, and if someone was lost, by following the water they reduced the amount of space needed to look for someone by a lot.

Whisper turned to the five wisps still outside of their canisters. Pink and Blue were continuing to argue about...something. It was obvious on Pink's side that he was just bored, and Blue was just humoring him. Green and Orange were trying to remember times on Planet Wisp with the other species...varieties...with the other wisps.

And Lavender was close by, eager for the next thing she could help with. Whisper nodded to her. "Alright. Into the forest. We'll stop for the day once we find Violet and Metal Sonic."

"I bet those are words you'd never thought you'd ever say!" Green grinned. Whisper rolled her eyes but had to admit he had a point.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Curiosity

Fern Valley was aptly named. For one, there were dozens of ferns everywhere. Despite the current snow level, it was clear that most of this place never saw snow for very long. The trees were tall and surprisingly large, and Whisper felt a sudden connection to the land as a whole.

She would always prefer cities, but something about being out here made all of her worries just drop away. And it wasn't because some of the wisps were talking in their natural language, she'd made sure of that.

"Remember that one time when Black decided he'd built the best bomb yet, and was rolling it down the mountain yelling 'look out below!'" Orange said, lost in her memories.

"I do remember that! That was a pain, because I had to hover that thing out of the way. There were a few whites down there that didn't realize what was going on until they saw the giant black bomb rolling down the mountain," Green said.

"That was you!?" Orange sounded shocked. "You kept that thing afloat for nearly a mile before you dropped it into the ocean."

"On an indigo actually, they were more than happy to take it apart and not let it explode. Black wasn't happy, let me tell you that much!"

"How big would that explosion have been? He was bragging about it making a new valley."

"I don't know, it was a big one. Those black bombs can hit hard, but I don't know about damage."

Pink sidled up to Lavender. "How much time did you spend on Planet Wisp?" He asked. "Those two are reminiscing about ancient times!"

"Not ancient..." Blue corrected with a smirk. Pink rolled his eye.

Lavender nodded. "Not long. Maybe...three, four hundred years? Six maybe."

"Wisp years or earth years? Found out there's a big difference between the two."

Whisper's ears perked back. Did that mean that Green's slip up meant they were even older than Whisper thought they were?

"Wisp years. How old is that?"

"About twenty per one. Twenty earth years for one wisp. Cyan figured out that calculation and told us all once we realized just how young Whisper actually is," Pink stated.

The forest encroached around Whisper, and her boots crunched against the snow and dirt. There was a path, ages ago, but it had been lost to time, and now Whisper was just finding her own direction. She knew which way she had to go, and Violet had said she wasn't far in.

She made sure to keep looking around and down, more than once taking care to look up too. Most animals that lived in woods like these liked to come up from the treetops, if only because no one looked up.

There was no sign of Violet and Metal Sonic, but the signal had been strong on the radio. It was unlikely that she was far. "Orange, no Time Eater?" She asked.

Orange blinked, before she rocketed up above the treeline. She came back down a minute later, Whisper staying in one place. "Nope! You're good, for now. Good catch, I always keep forgetting to keep a lookout."

Whisper's attention was suddenly turned away as the wisps slowly started teasing Orange about her being the eyes of the group but not being a good lookout. There was some movement of another color not far off.

Blue. It reminded her of Sonic strongly, but it couldn't have been him. For one, he was in Green Hill. Although he did have Chaos Control...could it be Metal Sonic?

She walked towards it, jumping over a fallen and dead log of a tree as she did. Her boots crushed a small fern as she did, before she started to see the clearing.

It was a small area, not too far in, exactly as Violet had described. There were a few stumps that had been broken down naturally in the middle, and Whisper could tell most of the trees came from those stumps. What was it they were called? Fairy circles? Something close to that.

The grass was mostly pure white, small stalks of green trying to poke out from the snow. Violet herself still had the mask on, a funny look considering that she was a fox herself, talking with Metal Sonic, who stood straight stall, his white scarf flowing silently in the small wind that was there.

Most of the dents in his torso and arms were gone. Had he taken Violet here for repairs? Whisper knew that he was intelligent, very intelligent, so it was likely that he knew Violet would help him if he asked.

Whisper trudged through the last bit of the snow covered ferns before she entered the clearing. "Whisper!" Violet shouted with a broad grin. "You made it! Metal checked this place out and said it's mostly clear. We can probably settle down here for the night. It's likely whatever caused those quakes will get us out here."

Oh right, Whisper hadn't told them. "We don't need to fear those. It was caused by a yellow wisp too young to understand," Whisper explained.

Violet blinked. "Oh. Oh that's neat I didn't think wisps were that powerful. I mean, I saw what they did to Green Hill...oh right you weren't there for that," she said, looking over to Metal Sonic. "They're really strong!"

Whisper sat down on one of the stumps as Violet started explaining what happened at Green Hill. There were more points that Whisper was aware of that she wasn't, but she didn't feel like she should mention those. Most of those were wisp secrets.

She reached down into her emergency pack again, grabbing that same tent that Tails had built for her. Immediately the wisps in the know gathered around, watching with excitement as the tent folded itself out and up. By the time Violet stopped talking, the tent was fully functional and ready to go. "When did that get there?" Violet asked.

"About three seconds ago!" Pink chimed in before he raced into the tent. The other wisps followed instantly, although Lavender stayed out. Cyan popped out of the fox mask, taking deep breaths even though Whisper knew she didn't need to.

"These people talk. A lot. A lot a lot. I ain't blaming you Metal but why. Does. Violet. Talk so much," Cyan muttered under her breath. Metal Sonic made an odd sound, as if he was chuckling at the wisp's words.

"I don't talk that much!" Violet retorted.

"Yes you do! Seriously! I mean it wasn't so bad at the beginning in fact it was kinda nice because Whisper don't talk at all basically-" Cyan started.

Whisper rolled her eyes. She did talk. She just didn't talk a lot.

"And then when it went on for the last four hours while you were helping Metal and please Whisper I need something!" Cyan begged and pleaded for a moment.

"Oh. Uh...hi?" Lavender said quietly. Cyan looked up at her.

"Hi! Welcome to Whisper's Wispy Wisps Woods! I'm Cyan, and I'm the host of this place! In first place, of least amount of talking, we have Whisper the Wolf, who probably has the least amount to say out of everyone. In normal things, this isn't okay but she's also usually surrounded by Tangle who does all the talking for her. In second place, we have Metal Sonic, who talks so robotically that I created a small subroutine in the mask to automatically translate so that way I could get some rest and take the juice out of the batteries. I'm not sorry Whisper."

That was why she had the batteries there in the first place. "I knew the mask was acting funny! It kept saying low battery but I thought that was impossible..." Violet said.

She unclasped the mask and handed it over to Whisper, who took it with a grateful nod. She checked the fittings for just a second before she set it again on her face, resting at its usual place. It did have the low battery warning, but that was only for the wisp batteries.

"It's fine," Whisper said.

"Cyan seems...odd. Is this behavior normal for cyan wisps or is she just unusual?" Metal Sonic's voice said into her ear from the mask.

"It's not unusual. Cyan wisps are...strange, at the best of the times."

"Just for that Whisper, you're back down to second, with Lavender in first," Cyan nodded.

"I don't know what I'm in first for."

"Least amount of words spoken in the last five hours. Or six hours. Or seven, I don't know," Cyan murmured.

"Oh, then Yellow would win. She doesn't talk."

Cyan turned to Whisper. "Yellow?" She asked without a slight bit of hesitation. Whisper nodded and opened up her cloak, showing off the canisters inside. Most were empty, although one showed a small sleeping yellow wisp. "Huh. You have the entire set now. You know, laser, cube, frenzy, rocket, hover, spikes, drill?" Cyan brought up.

No, actually, Whisper hadn't know that. She tilted her head to the wisp. "Yeah, all the wisps' that were in Sonic's adventure up there. Lavender, I'm not sure if you count as nega-wisp or a white wisp, so I'm counting as both," Cyan explained.

She shrugged, as best a nega-wisp could. "I...don't know either," she said softly.

"That's alright! We have time. Plenty of it. Kind of our thing by now," Cyan grinned, her tone teasing. "Come on! I'll show you the tent, it's awesome!" Cyan said, diving into the tent with the others. Lavender gave Whisper a quiet side-eye, before she took went into the tent.

"Is that one of Dad's?" Violet asked after a moment. "I know Mr. Sonic had one, but after the time Velocity and I went on a prank war he decided to not let us go camping again," she continued.

Whisper tilted her head, raising an eyebrow. That was a story she hadn't heard. She'd heard that Violet was mostly of the calm kind of kid, but...well, Whisper was an only child. An adopted kid with one blood sibling and two adopted ones? No way that there wouldn't be some kind of rivalry there.

Whisper nodded her head. "It is. He gave it to us after Tangle kept forgetting hers."

"Tangle is the lemur, correct?" Metal Sonic's voice paraded out of the mask. Whisper had an idea, and unclasped the mask, turning it over and increasing the volume to the point that if anyone had been wearing it, their hearing would be off.

"She is. Grey, yellow shoes, long stretchy tail and somewhat carefree attitude."

Metal Sonic's voice rang out through the clearing. "I know of her. Twenty years ago she demanded where my Master had misplaced you. Violently."

"That's horrible!" Violet said, her hands coming over her mouth.

Actually that seemed perfectly in character. "That was when Eggman was still around. Seems normal, actually, considering what the Restoration normally did," Whisper explained.

"Yes. Tangle and I have fought briefly only a few times. Whisper and I even less. But fighting with the Restoration was not uncommon."

"I don't think that anybody should have fought!"

"We had no choice," Whisper said. "Eggman wanted us all subjugated or dead. Or robots."

Metal Sonic nodded. It was odd agreeing with the blue hedgehog robot considering how many times they were at odds. "He would have, as well. I was not created at the time when he first stormed onto South Island, however that was his modus operandi. He would steal away everything that gave off heat energy, using that heat to power robots."

"And it was the heat that came off of people, wasn't it?" Violet asked.

Metal Sonic nodded. "It was. On Little Planet, he did not want to invoke Sonic's ire. He found that the plants there gave off the radiation needed to power his badniks, so he used that rather than living beings. When Sonic came after him anyways, he reverted back to his South Island style when he tried to find the seven Chaos Emeralds on Westside."

"Why did Sonic go after him on Little Planet? Da...Mr. Sonic never told me any of these. He mentioned them, briefly, but always in a 'and then I went here.'"

Whisper reached down to her emergency bag, grabbing a small boxed ration. She had a few extras in the tent, too, because somehow it was capable of that spacial distortion, but she also felt that when Metal Sonic told her of all the negative things that happened. All of the negative things that Sonic had deliberately withheld from her.

She'd seen bad things, but Violet had never actually seen just how bad the world was when her parents were kids. And as much as Whisper hated to admit, she was still one of those kids.

"Sonic went to stop my Master because the Time Stones were on Little Planet. If my Master had gotten his hands on all six of them, it would be quite unfavorable to living beings."

Whisper hadn't expected that. "You mean everyone else except robots. I get that. That's what the Metal Virus did, too, right?" Violet asked.

"More so," Whisper admitted. "It was...did your parents ever let you watch any zombie movies? Night of the Living Dead? The Dead Island Experience?"

Violet blinked at her. "Yeah! I loved the Dead Island Experience, especially the third one. The third one's the best in the series."

Metal Sonic's hand went to his forehead. Whisper hadn't even known there was a sequel in the works, let alone more than that. She turned to Metal Sonic. And he answered without Whisper having to even vocalize the question. "Five years after you disappeared for the second, thirteen years for the third. Fifteen for the fourth, sixteen for the fifth, ending with the sixth three years ago."

There were six of them!?

If she stayed in the future for long, she was definitely going to have to watch some of those. Or would those be undone as well? Probably, truthfully, but she'd have to figure that out. Someone would get the ideas anyway.

"It was like those," Whisper said. "Except...darker. More real. Tangle said that she could feel the virus in her arms and legs, and she'd done everything right, but had to make a call to hold everyone back."

Violet stared at her. "That's..."

"That was the Metal Virus. All things to metal and robotics, including grasses, trees, and all life. All organic life would be changed and altered."

"How did you all win? How could you win against a force of nature like that?"

"We used a force of nature back," Whisper explained. "Super Sonic and Super Silver."

"I've never met Silver. Mr. Sonic spoke of him a lot, as did Mom and Dad, especially Mom, but...I don't think he ever showed up."

"Nor would he. He is a being of the future. He was flung to the past by machinations made only possible by a being of outside time. The Time Eater would also most likely go for him. Although he has not shown himself in over twenty three years," Metal Sonic stated simply. He stared at Whisper for a moment. "Twenty three years, three weeks and four days, to be exact."

Whisper wondered for a moment the importance of such an exact date. Three weeks and four days...if someone included the time she was in Green Hills for an unknown amount of time, that sounded like the exact time that she'd been misplaced. She'd been in the current timeframe for three weeks and four days. Spiral Hill they were only at for a day. Central City just one day. Surge and Kit's...only a few days. Had she really spent so long at Green Hill? No wonder the Time Eater had been able to track her there.

"Huh. Why so exact?" Violet asked. She let out a loud yawn a few seconds later, almost interrupting herself. "Food first, then I'll turn in," she said, turning to the boxed meal Whisper was starting to light up.

It was a quick thing, some meaty soup with beans and a bit of hard cakes to go with it. Nothing sugary, but plenty of everything else. It took not long to cook, and by the time Whisper was halfway done, Violet was heading into the tent. Whisper overheard the wisps arguing about silly things again, as they were constantly doing.

"Why do you trust me?" Metal Sonic asked, his head tilted oddly to the side. "I have done nothing but hurt you especially. My Master has only caused you harm and grief. Sage is not alone in knowing that. And yet, you trust me."

"I don't," Whisper clarified. "But I also think that giving second chances is what Tangle would think is best. If you worked with her at all, if you knew anything about her-"

He nodded. "I understand, then. You wish to appeal to be like her nature, so that way she could say in which she influenced you. Just as you influenced her."

Whisper shook her head. "No. I wish to be like her because she was a good person. She didn't do everything right, I'm here after all, but no. I want to be like her, a good person. And a good person gives second chances."

"I have been given many more."

"And yet you're here. We aren't friends, Metal. I don't think we ever could be. But Violet trusts you. And I trust Violet."

"She will make mistakes."

"Everyone does."

Metal Sonic kept staring for a moment, before he nodded. "The Valley is not far from here. The Time Eater has yet to make a presence in this forest, and I believe that with the runaway yellow wisp no longer causing an issue, it will soon track you here."

"The Time Eater doesn't like wisp energy?"

"Correct. My Master has long associated that the Time Eaters as a whole were meant to be predators of wisps, and wisps in turn became predators of them. Ecosystems are odd, that far into space."

"Any way to kill it permanently?"

"Data unknown. Neither Miles nor my Master has ever seen another one outside of the White Space. And yes, my Master did check. Many times, in fact."

So she'd be playing that one by improvisation. That was fine with her. She could do that without too many issues. She'd made it this far, after all. "Anything you can tell me about this place?" Whisper asked, putting one of her boots over the other. Her hands glided over the variable wispon, and she noticed they were taking the same motions they did night after night. Cleaning it, scuffing out the dirt and scratches that had been built up over the day. Last few days. Weeks. She'd cleaned it just recently hadn't she?

"The Valley is a approximately thirty kilometers north to south and approximately forty kilometers east to west. The easiest points of entry, and thus the ones they'd expect if hostile, are the Fern Valley and the King's River to the east. Annual rainfall is around forty milliliters. Average conditions are harsh, rocky, barren. Considered to be not suitable for expansion, as heat waste drifts downwards rather than up, creating areas of obviousness when building fortresses. Mirage Desert to the east is considered to be better, as heat waste can be cycled into the ground."

When she'd asked him for anything he could tell, she hadn't meant for him to read the entire paragraph that Eggman had put together on the place. But on the other hand, knowing the general layout and conditions was priceless, especially if this place was as barren as he'd said. She said nothing then, allowing him to continue as he so needed.

"Average chaos levels are low, meaning that the giant rings and entrances to the Special Zones are unlikely. Majority of life are small mammals, non-sapient, with a single small town on the edges towards King's River. Name unknown. Plants..." Metal Sonic's voice trailed off, and Whisper could tell he was either pulling up a particularly old file...or...

"Bah," Eggman's voice rang out from the mask. An old voice file then? "This place is useless to me. Cacti and gophers. That's all that's out there. Metal, Sage, what other places have you found?" Sage's voice rang out. "It's a good place, Father. No one would search for you out there. We can lead Knuckles to have the Angel Island over it, the water from Hydrocity-"

Eggman's voice again. A definite recording then, especially if it had Sage's voice on there. But why was this recorded? There had to be a reason that this, more than anything else, was recorded. "Knuckles and Angel Island is half the problem! The Master Emerald is blocking temporal readings from stabilizing. If a fortress were to be put out there, and an anomaly structured itself there, the entire thing could be lost."

"Angel Island's stabilizing presence itself could act as the anchor!"

"I've dealt with the Master Emerald before, Sage. Chaos and Tikal have made sure that it can not be used as an anchor, for me at least. And how would you convince Knuckles that it needs to be here to begin with? I'm legitimately concerned about your friendship with them."

"They're not bad people."

"Of course they aren't. It's why I use them," Eggman's voice was quiet.

"We lead him there. We use the Master Emerald's signature, not the emerald itself. We stabilize a temporal anchor, and with such low chaos levels Sonic wouldn't be able to turn Super."

"I wouldn't put anything past the hedgehog. He is chaos personified. And that's to say nothing of the Restoration. The lemur, Prower, Shadow...they wouldn't need high chaos levels to make my plans disappear. No, we find somewhere else."

"Yes, Master."

The clearing went silent. "Apologies. It has been a long time since I've last played that voice file," Metal Sonic stated simply.

"How many others do you have?"

"Many. Some I listen to more often than others. I had forgotten that the desert here was one that my Master and Sage had a discussion about, until I went searching in my file banks."

Whisper stared at him for a long moment. "You miss them too, don't you?"

"I am a robot, Whisper the Wolf. I do not 'miss' things. I keep to the present, and do what my Master asked of me," Metal Sonic retorted flatly. Whisper didn't believe him; his voice, toneless though it was, had that air of memory to it. As if to agree with his words, however, the white scarf around his neck wrapped around him, fluttering into the wind.

Whisper's hands were done with the variable wispon. It had been cleaned to perfection, exactly as Smithy had taught her, and just as she'd taught Tangle the one time the lemur had asked. She'd only done it the once, but teaching Tangle anything was an example of pure patience.

"Why are you still here? The source of the quakes has been found," Whisper asked suddenly. Her mind went to the yellow wisp in the canister, still sleeping away. She'll probably let her out into the tent.

"Because I wish to see if Angel Island can be visible from the ground. Early reports from my Master stated that the island could become invisible at will, but I have never witnessed it. If the Island is over or even near the desert, if there is a civilization, it would likely cause a panic. The Echidna would not want that."

"So you're curious."

Metal Sonic looked away. "Yes. I suppose I am...curious."

Was curiosity a thing that she knew Metal Sonic could have or be? According to Sonic, Sage had shown that capability but Metal Sonic was always just a robot. Was it possible his AI had learned during the twenty three years?

Or was it possible that he'd always been 'curious' but had never been able to show it?

A better look into the mindset of Metal Sonic.

Until Next Time!

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

On Chaos

Whisper woke up with a sense of dew on her face. With one hand she ran it through her fur, getting rid of the water that had built up overnight.

The tent was immaculate, which immediately told Whisper that either something was wrong or something was wrong. She'd slept outside that night, with Metal Sonic standing guard and watch. Violet had taken the tent, alongside all seven wisps. She'd let Yellow out into the tent, having Orange explain what was going on.

The sun had risen, and while there was a cloudy gray cover above them it had at least stopped raining and snowing. The ground wasn't white anymore, it was the normal brown and red that such forests usually had.

The variable wispon was next to her, exactly as it should have been. Metal Sonic hadn't taken it during the night, in fact the robot had hardly moved.

Her mask was still in the center of the clearing on a stump, allowing everyone to hear Metal Sonic should he want to talk. "Good waking," he said tonelessly.

That was a bizarre way to say good morning. "Violet and the wisps still asleep?" Whisper asked. Metal Sonic nodded, and Whisper took a deep breath as she slowly walked over to the tent, peering through the side.

She was expecting to see chaos, and on the wisp side that was...pretty much exactly what she got. Fortunately it hadn't gone through the tent yet.

Small toys and various other things the wisps liked to play with were everywhere, and there were scorch marks from Cyan and Orange, and more than a few flat areas where Blue had started something. Lavender and Yellow were off to the side, both of their eyes shut. Although Lavender was mostly mouth, and in fact was a bit darker this morning than she usually was.

The other side was seemingly fine. Violet was on the ground, her legs splayed out with her head facing the wisps, obviously still asleep. The coat was in perfect order, and there weren't any crumbs or obvious problems that had occurred overnight.

Gently Whisper knocked on the tent flap. "Violet, it's' time to wake up," she said as loud as she could. Violet rolled over, still asleep.

She felt a cold metal hand on her shoulder, and she tensed up a bit as Metal Sonic's visage filled her sight. He had her mask in one hand. "Good waking Violet. Whisper says it's time to leave."

His voice echoed through the small clearing, and immediately Violet jumped up, her head almost hitting the top of the tent. "Who, what!?" She yelled before she saw Metal Sonic and Whisper standing outside. "Oh...oh, right. Sorry..." She murmured as she gathered her stuff together.

The wisps didn't bother yawning as they took left, instead heading straight to their own canisters for either another nap or just because they needed to regain some energy. Even Lavender took her own canister.

She also brightened up a bit as she woke up, so maybe it was just while she was asleep she was much more purple.

As soon as Violet left the tent, Whisper went to work to break it back down. She did grab one of the ration bars off to the side, holding it for the one tailed fox to grab.

Just as putting it up was simple, taking it down was also simple. Tails knew that Whisper was smart, but he was also building it so that Tangle or Lanolin would be able to tear it down easy enough. Not everyone was able to run faster than the speed of sound to find a motel or park to sleep in.

In only a few minutes, the tent had been collapsed, and Whisper was letting it shrink down to where it could fit in her pack. "Whoever designed that thing was brilliant," Violet yawned as she started to eat the ration bar. "It had just about everything I'd need."

"It has everything everyone needs," Whisper answered. "And your dad built it. He might have made more, but this one was the prototype."

"That explains it," Violet stated quietly. "I don't think I'd ever be able to build something like that."

Whisper's mask was still in Metal Sonic's hand. "Unlikely. He was a genius raised in war conditions, whereas you are a genius raised in standard. Do not compare the two of you; you are not the same as him."

"Everyone says I am though. And Mata has all the magic in the family, she has the whole prophecy thing which admittedly is something I'm glad I'm not saddled with but at the same time I wish I was, and sometimes...I just wish I was more like him."

"Do not be. Miles Prower was an exception, due to chaos radiation when he was born. When he first appeared next to the Hedgehog, my Master ran a full report on him."

"Did Eggman run reports on all of us?" Whisper asked. She wouldn't have put it past him.

"He did. Many times, in fact. There were times he even predicted how he would be defeated, and what the parties would say and do. Everything led to everything else."

"And yet he's still gone," Violet said. "So he couldn't predict for everything."

"He could not. He could, however, predict that the Zeti would renege on their deals. He could predict that the Time Eater he augmented would not survive out of the White Space. He predicted that Infinite would lay the way for The End."

"Explain," Whisper asked, her tone flat. The End...she'd heard of it, but only in the stretches of silence from Sonic, Tails, and Amy. Usually when it came about all three of them would start to act shifty, as if they didn't understand what they themselves witnessed.

"The Phantom Ruby was embedded into Infinite's chest. The Phantom Ruby was chaos made manifest, an artifact of similar make to the Chaos Emeralds. My Master hypothesized that it was in fact the Ancients' attempt to make another set of Chaos Emeralds, before the Master Emerald stepped in to stop the experiment, warping the nature of the creations."

"What's the Phantom Ruby? Dad never said anything about it!" Violet said. "And Mom never mentioned it."

Whisper raised her hand. Metal Sonic's would be full of technicalities. "The Phantom Ruby was a gem, similar to the Chaos Emeralds. With enough control, one could warp the area around them into a virtual reality that the wielder could control. The original wielder was named 'Infinite'," she explained. "It was when Eggman took over the world, and the Resistance was started."

"Close enough. Infinite was a jackal, part of a team that my Master hired to protect one of our fortresses. Shadow killed most of the team, not for lack of trying not to, that is. He spared one on purpose, claiming him to be weak. That was Infinite."

"How come no one would tell me that one? It's not even covered in the history books that talk about recent history. We almost never talk about Eggman or anything."

"Probably to shelter you kids. It wasn't fun," Whisper advised. "You'll probably cover it more when you're a bit older. As time goes on, the age will get lower, as more and more of the memories are forgotten, and the nostalgia comes back into play."

"Whisper is correct."

"You never explained how Infinite would lay the path for The End," Whisper said, her eyes narrowed. Metal Sonic nodded.

"Yes. The Phantom Ruby would awake my Master's desire for a reality, any reality, in which he had full control over. That desire turned to virtual reality, and from there he stumbled upon the information stored on the Starfall Islands. He created Sage as a way and means to protect himself."

"So how did he 'predict' it?"

"My Master was very good at seeing the patterns. Anything that he woke up or tried would inevitably betray him. The Phantom Ruby is gone now, lost to time itself. The Zeti are back in the Lost Hex, where they will stay, permanently. The Time Eater augmented is destroyed. Dark Gaia was put back to sleep. The Mother Wisp is back on her home planet. It is without fail. He knew from the beginning that the entity it contained, that Sage knew it contained, would betray him eventually."

"That's why she's still on Starfall," Whisper noted.

Metal Sonic nodded. "Correct. She remains there to permanently keep an eye on The End's attempts to escape free from virtual reality, destroying it again and again."

"What is...how are you saying it, 'The End'?"

Metal Sonic's red eyes close for a moment, or as much as they could. The red irises became lines for a moment, as if he was deep in thought. "The End is...complicated. An entity that resembles more of a concept. A destroyer. It is safely locked away, and need not be spoken about."

Whisper glanced at the sky, searching for the bright spot that would be the sun. They were burning time, but Fern Valley was, from the maps, not actually all that big. Maybe a few dozen miles across at best. By the end of the day they'd make it to the other side, and that's by walking casually.

Violet did a few stretches as she forced herself up off the stump. "We should go. We can talk more on the way," Whisper said. Violet nodded, and Metal Sonic agreed.

"It's too bad your mask only has a one-way speaker. Otherwise I'd say you can keep it on and we can all talk through it," Violet said, peering at it. "Or...hold on," she said, reaching for it. Whisper's first instinct was to grab it again, but she stopped herself.

The fox fiddled with a few settings, before handing it back to Whisper. "Alright, I think I got it. When Cyan made the translation package, she also added a few extra settings. Just put in an earmuff or an earplug so that way it doesn't blow your ears out."

"What settings did you change?"

"Directional output! Now it focuses on one side of the speaker more than the other, allowing it to seem as if it's coming from the mouth. It'll be loud, but it's better than nothing."

Whisper nodded, and attached it not to the side of her face as was traditional, but fully affixed on. Violet blinked. "I suppose now we test," Metal Sonic said, an empty tone that Whisper thought was almost teasing.

The speaker channeled it exactly as Violet had said it would. Rather than going straight to the ears, it went downwards a bit, echoing around the mask before leaving right where the 'nose' portion of the mask was.

"Ha! Got it in one!" Violet cheered. Whisper gave her a helpful nod, and Metal Sonic started to lead the way through the Fern Valley.

"Was the Phantom Ruby and The End really that powerful?" Violet asked. "Or any of those other things you said?"

Metal Sonic nodded. "They were. The Phantom Ruby was eventually brought down by an early recruit by the Resistance."

Whisper nodded. "I never met him. I know Amy and Knuckles did, as they were the commanders at the time. Jewel knows who it was, but she refused to give me a name."

"There was no record of him in my Master's files. And I've checked the current Restoration's; he is gone. There is no trace of whoever it was."

"What about Mr. Sonic? Wouldn't he know?"

"Most likely. But again, as Amy Rose would also know, but hasn't said. It's possible they simply respect the right to privacy."

"Or..."

"Sage's current running theory is that he, too, was a figment of the Phantom Ruby. They were originally Chaos Emerald experiments, after all."

"But Dad created false Chaos Emeralds too," Violet retorted. "According to the old files, they had the same wavelength and properties, but not nearly as powerful."

"I'd assume not. The Chaos Emeralds power is directly connected to the global Chaos Field. A spike in one region is often pronounced as a spike in another. The Master Emerald regulates these spikes, ensuring that the Emeralds do not wreak havoc upon normal spacetime."

"But they're chaos. That's what they do. Dad's only studied the Master Emerald whenever Uncle Knuckles says he can, so it was rare even ages ago, but he gathered that the Master Emerald was more of a hub than anything. Not even much of a regulator."

Whisper wondered if Violet should really be telling this to Metal Sonic of all people. On the other hand, Eggman was dead here. Gone. No way to be coming back, and Metal Sonic seemed to have changed.

"Spacetime and Chaos are very different," Metal Sonic advised. "Chaos is simply the field around our planet. In fact it's near universal as far as my Master could tell. If the Master Emerald is a hub, then...could it regulate all travel through it?"

"If it acts like most hubs, then it would have to," Violet commandeered. "Dad was very specific on the wording, and he always used the word 'hub'. Which means that Chaos energy was always flowing through it, not to it."

"Flowing from one side to the other. From one spike, to the other, creating fluctuations. Areas that the Emeralds were tied to, received more. Opposite, and yet the same."

"Eggman never seriously realized that?"

"He never could. The Guardian was always on his guard around my Master. After being tricked for the second and third time. I had wondered if there would be a fourth."

"Isn't there?" Whisper added in. Metal Sonic turned to her as she stepped over a small branch in the middle of the pathway. Although there was no true trail, but rather simply the trees parting ways at points to make it seem as if there was. "You said it last night in the file. The desert. Leading the Master Emerald to the desert."

"To act as a stabilizing temporal agent," Metal Sonic said.

"Wait, the Master Emerald can act in both Chaos and spacetime?" Violet ejected herself back in. "Isn't that a bad thing? That means the Master Emerald connects the global Chaos Field with that of regular spacetime. The fluctuations, if they occurred through the Master Emerald, would mean that they bend it too. Maybe that's how the Phantom Ruby got made!"

Now the talk was starting to hurt Whisper's mind. She knocked on Orange and Cyan's canisters, knowing this would only end poorly for her. Both wisps came out, Orange looking a lot less tired than Cyan did, who let out as big of a yawn as the cyan wisp could.

"Oh hey we're still in the forest. Boo forest! Forest's are boring!" Cyan noted sleepily. "How's my program doing, still banging on?"

"It's quite well done," Whisper admitted. "I was wondering if either of you were listening in."

"I was asleep. Sleep. Sleep," Cyan said, yawning again before diving into the canister.

Orange stared at where Cyan had gone. "I was...partially? I was teaching Yellow last night how to talk like we do so that way she wouldn't mess with your emotions as much. I think I got through to her, but tonight we'll have to practice more."

"Oh yeah, the Yellow wisp! She was really happy last night, it reminded me of what Dad said about Yacker. A white wisp," Violet noted. "She was also really confused about things like grammar. I suggested trying to try and find a dictionary with pictures, but obviously I don't have one."

Whisper stared at her. "You...withstood the wisps talking in their native language for multiple hours?"

Violet stared back, before the look of the mask got to her and she looked away. "Yes? It's not hard, it's just like dealing with Mata when she's summoning. The things you feel and hear aren't yours, so you have to disassociate a bit."

"Fascinating. Most people have obtuse negative reactions to the wisps native language. Even my Master could only withstand for so long," Metal Sonic interjected. "I wonder if it's from, as you said, learning to live with your sister as she summons the memories of those deceased."

"You can say soul. We've gotten used to it," Violet murmured. "We all know what you're saying."

"Souls have not been proven to exist."

"Yes they do," Orange protested. "Just like Chaos. In fact they're kinda close to each other, yet opposite."

Metal Sonic said nothing, walking straight ahead of the group. Whisper rolled her eyes. "I got you out here for a different reason though. Can you break down what Metal Sonic and Violet were talking about?" Whisper asked as she started to repeat the conversation.

There was some worry there between Metal Sonic and Violet, about the Master Emerald being a 'hub'. What exactly that meant for the world, Whisper didn't know. She wasn't a genius. She didn't know these things.

To be fair, she kind of doubted that anyone else would know these things either. Maybe Tails did. Maybe Knuckles had an idea, and probably Eggman too. The rest of them? Just scattered in the dark, and hoping to pick up the pieces.

"Uh...probably not? I know a lot of things, but Chaos and wisp energy are inherently different. They're similar in ways, but one comes from us simply being, and the other comes from all life, not just us."

Well, it had been worth a shot, at least. The forest around them hadn't changed much, but now Whisper could tell there was a small river flowing through.

The woods slowly changed from being a dry forest to a wetter forest around it. There was a hardened wooden bridge that connected one side to the other, and to Whisper's fortunate luck the wood hadn't rotted away yet. Even when Metal Sonic stepped on it, there wasn't so much as a creak.

"The Phantom Ruby was held by Infinite. Infinite died, and the Ruby disappeared. Probably into a virtual reality of its own," Metal Sonic said softly, his voice barely able to be heard over the sound of the river below.

The trees looked a bit downcast, despite the cloudy sun above them. The rays were cast down through them, giving a gray and yellow tint to the various woods around them. There were other sounds beyond the river, but mostly in the form of small insects or birds.

"Wouldn't that mean that it's capable of inputting into an infinite loop? If the Phantom Ruby could disappear into itself, that means it was never truly there," Violet answered.

"Wait, was this the same Phantom Ruby that the Resistance had to fight against back when it first started?" Orange asked. "Because that kind of recursion only occurs when something has gone really, badly wrong. Cyan would know more."

"It didn't explode or anything. At least...did it? I wasn't there," Violet asked.

Metal Sonic shook his head, "It did not. However, my Master believed that after the forces behind it were defeated, it sought refuge in the Virtual Reality world on the Starfall Islands."

"Where that...The End is."

"Yes."

"Woah woah whoa. Slow down. When did we start talking about The End of all things!?" Orange commented. Whisper tilted her head at the orange wisp.

"Oh, for a while. Eggman apparently predicted that The End was coming out of containment because Infinite died. Or something," Violet tried to summarize.

"Chaos begets chaos," Metal Sonic shrugged. "It made sense to my Master."

"Chaos does beget chaos. It's the whole butterfly theory thing, you know it flaps its wings down in Mazuri and suddenly there's a hurricane on South Island."

"South Island does not get hurricanes," Metal Sonic voiced easily.

"It shouldn't! But I bet if you ask Sonic, considering that he lives there, there's been at least one or two in recent memory."

"I wish I had a computer in front of me now. I'd be able to check on that, now you've got me interested!" Violet grinned. She jumped over a small tree that had fallen in their chosen pathway, Whisper a moment behind her.

"I have a connection," Metal Sonic said, "and there have been three hurricanes that have hit South Island within the last twenty years. Each of them have been known as typhoons, and each of them have been due to 'anomalies' within the ocean's currents."

"How much do you want to bet that those anomalies can be lined up with other Chaos energy spikes?" Orange gloated.

"Wait, how did you know we were talking about spikes? You said you weren't listening for that," Violet commented. Orange froze for a moment, before she blurted out that she needed to 'go do something else' and dove into her canister.

Whisper stared at the canister for a bit. "She knows more, but doesn't want to tell," Whisper understood. The wisps were smart, but sometimes they didn't want it to be known that they were smart.

"The path to the desert valley is over in that direction," Metal Sonic pointed towards a small grove of trees. It had a ray of white coming out of it, despite that the forest wasn't all that dark or dreary. It was actually kind of nice, in Whisper's mind, but it still didn't beat civilization.

"Oh wow..." Violet said as they got closer. A large field of grass and hills dominated the landscape, before it became obvious sand further in.

Mountains sat on all sides, some of them much taller than even where they'd come from. The skyline was much clearer here, spots of blue opening up the cloudy grey.

Metal Sonic perused the sky. "No Angel Island. All reports have it as being here, and yet invisible it remains. It appears that the Guardian can turn it invisible."

"Oh, it's not invisible," Violet said with a smile. "It's just higher up. Above the clouds. I can see it," she said, pointing straight up. Whisper narrowed her eyes as she tried to glance, before zoomed in using the mask.

She still saw nothing. "I see nothing there at all ranges," Metal Sonic answered for her. "While I do believe that it is there, it is not within the visible spectrum."

"Should be," Violet said. "I can see it just fine," she answered. She shrugged, before she took the first steps into the grasses around Fern Valley. There were still a few trees into the plains, but it was definitely a different change. Small stumps were lying around, areas where forest had once been but had either been cut or had fallen away to the elements.

"I can't see it either," Whisper admitted. Violet glanced at her, before she shrugged.

"Your goal is there," Metal Sonic pointed out to the desert area. "I will meet up with Surge and Kit again, before going where next I'm pointed."

"Alright. It was nice meeting you!" Violet said, waving her hand. "Be sure to stay in touch, I'm sure Mr. Sonic would like that!"

"I highly...highly, very highly doubt that," Metal Sonic answered, before he turned around and walked back through Fern Valley, his white scarf playing in the wind and around his eyes.

There was a click in Whisper's radio, and she hurriedly turned down the volume and decreased the settings that Violet had changed. "Shadow to Whisper. Have you gotten past Fern Valley?" Shadow's extremely garbled voice asked. It was familiar, and yet not. She'd only seen him two days ago, and yet it had felt like a lifetime.

"Yes. We're in the bottom valley now, heading towards the city."

"Understood. Knuckles wants to see you both when you get a chance. Could you send your coordinates?"

Whisper raised an eyebrow. Shadow needed to see some place before he could Chaos Control into it, not get coordinates for it. She had a bad feeling about this. She turned off the radio. "Get ready," she turned to Violet. The violet fox stared at her in confusion for a long moment while Whisper repeated her coordinates.

As if on cue, the earth beneath their feet started to rise up.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Knuckles

The earth rose and the grasses were killed as it formed into small forms. Slowly features were being added. Legs, arms, an obvious head. "What are those things!?" Violet asked as she jumped backwards towards Fern Valley. "Metal!? We're gonna need some help!" She called out, hoping that the robot was still within hearing distance.

Whisper knocked on all of the containers for the wisps. "Trouble!" She said with only a word. Immediately the wisps took the golems into view as they started to roll into balls, surging towards Whisper and Violet.

One was knocked off course by Blue, and Green tried to make one miss by hovering it just as it jumped over a hill. There were five of the things Whisper counted. "Green! Protect Violet!" She suggested.

Immediately Violet was whisked into the air, standing on top of a small green cloud. "I got her Whisper!" Green shouted.

One problem solved. Three more were surging for her, and the other two were starting to turn around. "Orange!" She called out, firing towards the ground to fling herself up. Two of them collided where she'd been, and instead of collapsing, they bounced off each other.

They had a hard shell, too, it seemed. "Get a hold of Shadow!" Whisper said towards Violet. She gripped into her belt on the radio, flinging it towards Green and Violet. Hopefully she'd catch it, but Whisper didn't have enough time to check.

"Blue!" Whisper said as the wispon changed from the sniper shot to the hammer. Yellow gave a careening cheer, and Whisper felt herself suddenly start to have a lot more fun as she dove into the ground. They might have problems because of that.

The golems ignored the lasers from Cyan, or the pockets of force that Orange gave out on her own. The last one jumped over a hill, aiming towards the still-in-the-air Whisper. In an instant she knocked it straight up, well away from the ground.

Blue couldn't hurt them, Cyan couldn't hurt them, Orange couldn't hurt them, Pink probably wouldn't and Green was busy. Lavender couldn't unless..."Lavender, not the best time but want to try?" Whisper asked, pointing to the variable wispon as she landed.

The nega-wisp shook her head in obvious fear as two of the golems started rolling towards her faster.

Whisper was about to call for Blue when Yellow gave another careening shout, this time of determination and unbridled fury. She dove out of the ground, and through one of the golems, cutting it in half, and imbued herself into the variable wispon.

With each form change, the wispon shifted and manipulated itself to the best choice for each wisp. There were many that Whisper didn't know, and she'd only been able to convince her five friends that it was okay to try. But Yellow wanted to try.

The plates shifted and cracked. Smithy was a genius, Whisper knew, but it was an entirely different thing to realize it when it became a giant drill. And based on how Whisper knew the wispon worked, she pulled back and stabbed it just into the golem that was about to savagely wreck her day.

Immediately the wispon dug through it, and Whisper felt her body pull with it. The golems were just dirt, animated by technology or...something else. She didn't want to think about that. But they were still just dirt.

And Yellow? Yellow was a drill. Yellow dug through dirt like it was sand. And could probably dig through sand too. And probably through lava, if she really wanted to. That might end up with burning her, honestly, but Yellow could probably do it.

The golem burst into dirt, an explosion of ground matter that was honestly more surprising than her digging all the way through it. The variable wispon spun in place, and the other golems turned, uncurling from their balls. Now uncurled, they stood nearly ten feet tall with balls of dirt and mud for hands that were nearly half their size.

Whisper noted that Green hovered Violet just a few feet higher. The girl had caught the radio without a problem, but getting it to work was another. "Cyan," Whisper warned. The cyan wisp gave her a glance, before looking up towards Violet and the radio, and blasted herself towards it.

"Blue," Whisper muttered, another plan forming in her head. Yellow wanted to go, a small sound of rushing and digging, aggressive and yet fun-loving. Yellow was probably too young to know that this was actually life-threatening for her, if she got hit.

That's why her best bet was to not get hit.

One massive hand tried to slam down on her, only to be paused by Blue's cube. Whisper took the opportunity to slam the drill wispon through its body like a sword, and in an instant it collapsed, the dirt coming out of its stomach as if she'd disemboweled it. Despite it being made of dirt and mud.

These golems were weird, Whisper noted absently.

One was knocked off balance by Orange, trying to blast it now that they'd uncurled. She couldn't do anything while they were in ball form, simply too much mass there, but now that they were standing up? Easy as pie.

It collapsed onto the ground, where it immediately started to coalesce back together. Whisper took the opportunity to slam the wispon into it, where it disintegrated for good.

The other two slammed their massive hands together, and Whisper almost sighed as they joined together. A mass of ground nearly thirty feet tall. Its legs were massive instead of its hands, And its feet were nearly ten feet wide. It slammed down with one blocky foot, trying to squish her.

Whisper hoped Yellow was up for one more. The wispon answered with an excited shout, one that made her feel light and airy, energized and ready to go. Yellow was good.

The wispon dug through its foot, through its legs and into its torso. Whisper held her breath, but Yellow and the variable wispon was causing some kind of bubble around her. She still felt small rocks trying to crush her legs, but it was only at the far end.

The drill went all the way to the top, where Whisper exploded out of its head. Had it been a living thing, she'd probably have been traumatized more than she was already.

Instead it fell to the ground, breaking into hundreds of pieces. Whisper jumped off at the last second. Yellow dis-imbued the variable wispon and gave off a happy chant. "Good yay!" She said, her voice translated as extremely high-pitched. "Me go brr!" Yellow said. Whisper nodded, an obvious smile on her face as she breathed heavily, trying to get herself under control again.

Green lowered Violet to the ground. "Thanks Green, and Cyan!" She said as she jumped off the green cloud. "What were these things?" She asked.

"No idea," Whisper answered. "But I had a feeling. Shadow already knows where we would be. Why would he need to ask?"

"Maybe he wanted to come visit?"

Whisper stared at her for a moment. "Yeah, I didn't think so either," Violet finished. "Just...trying to come up with something," she stated. "Still, was that normal for you? You seemed to know exactly what to do!"

Whisper shrugged. It seemed normal at the time. "I...know how to respond. To things such as threats and such."

"Wish I could," Violet murmured. "I always hear stories of Dad, both of them, to being heroes and doing amazing things. And I wanted to do that. I wanted to be like them all. And yet...here I was, the perfect opportunity, and I ended up just needing to be saved."

"Don't put yourself down. It took Whisper a long time to get as good as she is," Orange commented. "And the first thing you did wasn't try to help or run for cover; you ran for help. That wasn't running away, that was running away with the intention of coming back."

Violet kicked the ground a bit. "It doesn't feel that way. Feels like I'm a coward," she said. Whisper shook her head. She knew where Violet was coming from; most people did. When the time came for action, did they run or did they fight? Whisper fought, because she knew what would happen in her time if she ran; nothing. Sonic fought. Tails fought. Knuckles fought. Amy fought.

Mimic? He ran. Starline? Ran. Eggman? Honestly, Eggman would probably fight but for the purposes of this analogy in her mind she'd say he would run. "Not a coward," Whisper commented. "Not like Mimic. Not like Eggman."

Violet stared at her for a long moment. "They weren't cowards though. They didn't immediately run for help-"

"Yes they did," all the wisps said, minus Yellow and Lavender. Yellow was actually quite happy, drilling into the ground and coming back up a moment later, happy that she was of assistance. Lavender was trying to calm her down. "No, really," Pink said, "When the Eggmanland thing was blowing up, the first thing Eggman did was run away. Granted, that was also because wisp energy was blowing up around him and...well, it created a black hole."

"Yeah, that wasn't a fun time. Then we had to rescue Sonic from that. I think that was mostly the White's helping him though," Cyan kept going. "But yeah, not a coward. Heck, if you want we'll teach you how to fight!"

Alarms blared in Whisper's mind. "I don't think that's a good idea-" she started to say.

She was cut off by Violet agreeing instantly with the cyan wisp. "Yes! That sounds great! Teach me so that I don't have to just be held aloft by Green next time!"

Whisper just knew that this was probably going to be a bad idea. But...she also knew that this trip was important to her, and it would help out a lot if she had at least a small amount of self-defense training. Maybe that's what she could authorize. Self-defense.

"Oh I know! I can use a wispon! Does the Restoration still have a bunch?" Violet turned to her, excited.

Whisper hadn't seen any while she was there, but that didn't mean they weren't. She shook her head, "Not that I know of," she answered.

"They were there! They were off in the corner though. They had a lot of dust on them, so I doubt they'd been imbued for ages. Red bursts, ivory lightning's...oh yeah!" Pink offered. "We could teach you a lot!"

If red flags could be even more red, it'd be the most red flag that Whisper could find times three. If both Pink and Cyan were excited for it, it was a bad idea. If all of the wisps seemed excited for it...well, even the temperance of Green and Blue had a limit.

"I can just ask Shadow next time I see him. That reminds me, I never did get through to him, but I know Angel Island is right up there, and that's where he said he was going," Violet said. "Too bad the Tornado was busted. I bet Dad could've fixed it..."

"Eh, don't hold it against yourself. We know where it is at least. I'm pretty sure your dad had it destroyed like five or six times during the first few years," Cyan said. Whisper wasn't sure if that was the best of ideas-

"Oh yeah! Like the time in Station Square, Eggman shot him down using this giant laser. Then it became the Tornado 2, and he had to rebuild that after the whole thing for the ARK!"

...Okay, maybe that was a good idea. Whisper shut her eyes. This was so far outside the boundaries of her normal control. "We should get going," she said quietly. Violet's ears twitched towards her, but mostly just kept talking with Pink and Cyan.

"Although reaching out to Shadow is still a good idea I think," Violet offered. "Any ideas, Whisper?" She asked directly. Whisper was only a foot in front of her, trying to get everyone to move.

The Doomsday Deserts weren't going to cross themselves.

"A few. There's an extra battery, built in. Push the red button in, that's the emergency override for the battery. It pulls in extra power, allowing it to double or triple its usual range," Whisper said. The mask had the same feature by default, charged by being so close to the wisps at almost all times.

Which always made Tangle give her a weird look, as if asking why she would bring along a normal radio at the same time as the radio in her mask.

Honestly it was because Tangle kept forgetting her own radio, but Whisper wasn't about to tell her that.

"Oh, right! Shadow?" Violet asked, pushing in the red button on the side. Whisper nodded, hearing it pulse out of her mask too.

The plains stretched out seemingly endlessly, with the grasses slowly turning visibly into sand later on. It was as if someone had simply hovered over an area, pointed to this spot and said, 'Desert starts here, goes to here'. What was worse is that Whisper was fairly certain that this didn't used to be desert, as proven by the tall wheat-like grasses that were all around.

Grass like that didn't end up near the desert if the desert was created naturally. At least, her mind told her so.

"Violet?" Shadow's voice called out through the radios. "What is it?"

"Violet?" Another voice said, much farther away than Shadow's. It was much, much more gruff and deep. It reminded Whisper of someone, but it wasn't quite the same. Then the thought hit her; he probably already made it to Angel Island. Which meant the voice belonged to Knuckles.

"We made it to the Plains outside the Doomsday Deserts," Violet answered, "and uh...we were attacked, basically, as soon as we told someone who claimed they were you. Used your voice and everything."

"Desert's not far from here," Knuckles' voice was quiet, almost silent. He must have been listening in.

"I know," Shadow's voice was also far away, before it became much louder. "Attacked by what?" He asked.

"Whisper called them golems. Basically dirt monsters-"

"Violet?" Knuckles' voice was suddenly much louder, much more clear. "This is your Uncle Knuckles, not sure if you remember that. You're close to the deserts, right? Stay there."

"Knuckles, wait-" Shadow's voice called out, much further away as suddenly the sound of rushing air came from the radios. Violet turned from her's, her confusion quite evident on her face as she looked towards Whisper.

The wisps were nodding to each other. "Oh right, so...uh, there's no easy way for us to teach you self-defense, or use a wispon-" Cyan started.

"I think Knuckles coming down right now is taking her mind off of that," Whisper said quietly. The wisps glanced at her, before they looked around.

"You think he's coming here? Right now? How?" Violet asked. She scanned the sky, as if being able to see the red dot that was Knuckles. Whisper couldn't see it, until she zoomed in towards a particularly empty bit of sky.

It was near impossible to see. The sky was blue all around, and there were clouds seemingly everywhere, but there was one portion that was...quite closed off. As if the clouds pulled in one side, and immediately exited the other, leaving a very vague outline of Angel Island.

Whisper nodded towards the radio. The sound of rushing air was much more evident now, and Whisper could hear Shadow in the background trying to keep up with the Echidna.

"Because he's there," Whisper said, lifting up the wispon's scope just to make sure. It was hard to tell, but considering just how fast the red and black dots were coming down...Shadow must have used Chaos Control to get up there.

It would make sense he may not have known exactly where the island was at the time. But he'd been there before, so he could effectively teleport there. It was an odd moment of thought, Whisper knew.

Violet lifted her hand to head, peering over the endless abyss of plains and sand towards the sky. Somehow she could see Angel Island clearly, while Whisper...most definitely could not. She'd been adamant on that point.

Violet started running towards them, or where their point would end, and Whisper felt herself running to keep pace with her. The wisps fell behind for only a moment, before Cyan shot ahead, going at a hyperactive speed that only she could obtain. Orange was behind her, with Lavender and Yellow in the middle. Pink, Green, and Blue were the slowest, keeping pace with Whisper easily.

Just because they were the slowest didn't mean much when they were still just as fast as her. Violet was much faster than her, surprisingly.

Whisper had never actually tried to race her, had she? Violet wasn't as fast as Velocity, or as fast as Sonic was at his prime. But she was still quick, a bit faster than Tails was actually...Whisper felt the need to smack her head. Of course she was fast; she was the daughter of Blaze too. The cat princess who was notorious for being just as fast as Sonic.

She wasn't about to break any sound barriers, probably because she hadn't trained for that thing most of her life the way Sonic or Blaze had. But she was still almost as fast as Cyan or Orange.

The plains were making their way to the end, the red and black dots coming up quick. The sand was starting to become more noticeable, right when Cyan, Orange, and Violet stopped.

Shadow was hovering above them, nearly five or six hundred feet away from Whisper, with the jets on his shoes going full blast. Apparently he could hover with those. Whisper had thought he could actually have flown, so it was good to know he couldn't.

However...the red dot was no mere dot anymore.

Knuckles landed hard on the sand, his giant fist punching the ground. He'd...probably changed one of the most, in Whisper's mind. Jewel had looked much older, but beetle's generally aged well to begin with. Sonic and Amy looked more haggard, but they had four children to deal with and that would age anyone.

But Knuckles? He looked like he was in his prime, still. His face held no wrinkles, not an ounce of extra fat on him, and his body was trained and toned with the best of them. A mix of farm worker who worked out all the time and a bodybuilder who actually used the muscles they worked out for.

There was no amount of laugh lines on him, no sense that he smiled anymore than necessary. And yet Whisper saw the smile break out as he rushed Violet into a harsh hug. Whisper winced internally, aided by the feeling of the various wisps around her making the same winces.

Whisper couldn't hear what he was saying, but he was saying something. She rushed the last few feet.

"-You came out this far. Who's all with you? It's not Sonic, is it?" Knuckles was asking, his voice the same gruff and cold, and yet with a warmth that belied who it belonged to.

"No, just Whisper and the wisps," Violet was answering. She was wincing a bit.

"Oh, sorry about that! You used to love that when I did it to you. Guess I'm stronger now though than I was then," Knuckles laughed it off. Shadow dropped down just as Whisper made it to them. The red Echidna, whose dreadlocks or spines had barely changed in the twenty three years, gave her a look. "So it is you. I'm surprised."

Whisper took a few deep breaths, unable to say anything. "You do need to practice running more," Shadow said. "You did this back in Green Hill too."

"It wasn't that far of a run! It was barely five miles!" Violet protested. "I didn't realize...I'm sorry Whisper!"

Whisper held up one hand, her lungs burning. She could do this, she could make it. Five miles was still five miles, and considering that Violet did that in about five minutes...Whisper had had to sprint the entire way.

The fox girl wasn't even winded.

"I barely got anything from Shadow," Knuckles asked, looming over Whisper. "What's all going on?"

Whisper managed to get a few breaths in. "Saving Tangle and Tails. By saving Tails, we get Blaze out of the emerald chamber in Central City."

"Don't forget the Time Eater chasing her," Shadow supplied. Knuckles nodded, holding out one hand for Whisper to grab.

"You sound as if you're up hydrocity without the ability to swim," Knuckles commented. When he got a blank look from Whisper, the wisps, and everyone else there, he sighed. "Yeah, I need to workshop that one. Up a creek without a paddle? I think that's the saying."

"What's Angel Island doing there? Dad...Mr. Sonic, thought that it was out to the sea," Violet asked.

Knuckles nodded. "That's usually what I tell him when we do our yearly calls. But an island that flies can go anywhere the birds can. And does, often. I've been stopped here for a while though. The Master Emerald doesn't want to leave this spot for some reason," Knuckles said.

Violet's eyes lit up, and Knuckles had a small smirk. "Can you tell me more about the Master Emerald!? Please, please, please-"

"Maybe in a bit, Vio," Knuckles said easily. "So you're taking on the Timeroot huh?" He asked Whisper. "Can't say you're not brave. How do you know Tails and Tangle are here?"

Timeroot? Shadow and Whisper's eyes met each other. Knuckles knew who they were? They weren't ancient echidnas, were they? Whisper had read one of the records that said the tribes back then had been rather violent at the best of times.

"Blaze told her," Shadow commented. "In a dream, while at her house."

"Dreamwalking," Knuckles supplied. "Guess that's as good of an answer as any," he nodded. Shadow shot him an incredulous look. "What? It's a real thing. If Blaze is a guardian, of course she can do it. I can do it. I just don't like to."

"What do you mean that's an actual thing? That's preposterous!"

"Not...really?" Knuckles asked him. "It's a Guardian thing. The Sol Emeralds and the Master run off similar frequencies and abilities. Something about creation and all that. Dreamwalking is simply us calling out to close individuals in the dream worlds, bringing them to ours or us to theirs."

"...Gerald made no note of that," Shadow said quietly. That was the first time Whisper had ever heard him mention the name of his creator. The only reason she even knew the name was because Rouge had mentioned it offhandedly once, about two months before the fated mission where Whisper would end up here.

She never thought she would hear it from the actual black hedgehog himself.

"He wouldn't," Knuckles responded. "I doubt many Islanders know. I know Sonic or Tails didn't, until I brought it up one time."

The sun flashed out from underneath where Angel Island was, and another question popped up into Whisper's mind. "We should think about finding a place out of view," she said, "But who's watching the Master Emerald, if you're down here?"

"Chaos and Tikal. About fifteen years ago a few chao gathered around the Master, and Chaos came back out to play with them a bit. At first I was hesitant, but he seemed gentler than he had last time he broke out. And Tikal started to play with them too, or at least a spiritual version of her. They can watch over the Emerald for a while, although I don't like leaving it to them if I can help it," Knuckles said.

"Perfect! I can ask you so many questions!" Violet said, her eyes lighting up. Knuckles blinked, before he looked towards Shadow and Whisper, as if asking for help as the twelve year old grabbed onto him tight. The wisps nodded to each other, Cyan and Pink starting to do a small eulogy for the echidna.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See last chapter.

Information

The air chilled rapidly as soon as the sun started to set. At first there wasn't an issue, but as the mountains covered up the sun, Whisper noticed that Violet was starting to shiver more and more frequently. Shadow didn't seem to have an issue, and neither did Knuckles. Although really he was muscular enough that even if he did shiver Whisper wouldn't have noticed it.

Eventually it got to the point that Violet couldn't keep talking and walking at the same time, and that was when Whisper put her foot down. "We'll rest here for the night," she said quietly, her tone forcing them to listen to her. Knuckles nodded instantly to his credit, and Shadow took a bit to glance over at Violet before he ceded to her ideas.

Violet nodded, her body shivering lightly. Cyan and Orange surrounded her a bit, trying to warm her up. Whisper was honestly surprised it took her this long before she got cold. The large jacket that she'd been wearing on the mountain seemed almost too warm for here. Whisper took out the emergency tent, once again finding its use for the...third? Fourth? She'd been using it a lot. The entire trip in the desert most likely would find it used by all, although it was only designed for one person, or maybe two.

The wisps gave a cheer, except for Yellow who stayed out, and dove into the tent to energize it and to warm up for Violet.

Whisper could almost feel the heat rise off of it after Violet had dived into it. It would be warm enough there, especially with the majority of the wisps in it. Yellow was instead looking around, her curious eyes glancing every which way.

Knuckles sat down on the ground. "I was wondering when anyone would notice she was getting cold. Good kid, but she's too driven at times," he said.

"She compares herself to her mom and dad all the time," Whisper commented. "She hasn't yet learned to be her own person yet."

"Well, she's in the shadow of Tails," Knuckles shrugged. "Anyone would be overshadowed by that. The kid was a genius, and that was when he was her age."

"She's not exactly a dull stick either," Whisper answered. "She figured out her dad's passwords within a month of him leaving. She figured out the nature of Chaos and the Master Emerald with barely any information."

"Really?" Knuckles asked, his glee unhidden. It was such an odd look on him that Whisper had to do a double take. "I was hoping someone would figure it out. A temporal-spacial anchor is rare."

"Is that why the Floating Island floats?" Shadow asked, his voice barely hiding the sarcasm.

Knuckles rolled his eyes. "No one calls it that anymore. We just call it Angel Island now."

"Speaking of, how are you going to get back? You're still the guardian," Whisper asked.

"It's easy enough to summon a quick wind up from the ground now. I used to not be able to do that. But out here in the deserts? It's not going to bother anyone. It's why I made the island invisible out here. Far as anyone else knows, it's far out at sea."

"That's where GUN thought it was," Whisper said.

"It's where GUN will continue to think it is," Shadow answered. "The last thing we want is GUN getting their hands on the Master Emerald."

"No, the last thing we need is Timeroot getting it," Knuckles revised. "Seriously, they're bad news."

"What are they?" Shadow asked. "You mentioned it before."

"Timeroot is...hmm...how to explain this..." Knuckles started. "I've been watching them for a while, ever since they reappeared here. Actually...they reappeared here around twelve years ago," he said, staring at Whisper meaningfully. "The instant Eggman died."

"You think he could command them? One last final act?" Shadow asked.

Knuckles shook his head, "No. Absolutely not. They were terrified of him. After all, there's only three people who had known time control powers. Eggman, who had the Time Stones. Sonic, who could use them. And Silver, who can use the chaos emeralds to setup a temporary temporal anchor and force his native time to be the local time, and that's if he doesn't use a Time Stone," he explained.

Shadow and Whisper blinked at him. "Wait, what?" Shadow asked.

"Time be silly thing!" Yellow chirped from the corner. She dove into the ground and started to act like a sandworm. Whisper let her continue to act silly. It was good to have some relief.

"Silver's knowledge of time travel is rather...incomplete. I asked him, once, how he manages it. He uses a form of chaos control not to warp around in space, but to warp around in time. You could do the same thing, Shadow, if you pushed a bit further, but I don't recommend it. Especially right now."

"Because the Timeroot."

"Exactly," Knuckles agreed. "The Timeroot somehow knew that Silver's power wasn't going to be working for this time period. And Eggman was dead. The only other person who could use the Time Stones would have been Sonic, and well, his leg was shattered. He wouldn't be running for awhile."

"Who are they, though?"

"The beginning of all things," Knuckles tried to explain. "They were here when the Ancients, those on the Starfall Islands, came here. They used the power of the Master Emerald and the Time Stones to 'skip' periods of time, bouncing around the time stream. Then someone, millennia ago, took the Time Stones from them, and followed it up with stealing the Master Emerald."

"This is sounding more like a bad conspiracy theory," Whisper noted.

The echidna shrugged. "Not wrong, I guess. See, what they want is their stuff back. The Time Stones, and the Master Emerald. And they're willing to destroy the world for it, using every possible thing they can."

"Which would allow them to skip through time," Shadow said. "Why would that be so bad? I have a feeling there's an explanation for that."

"Anyone messing with time is a bad idea," Knuckles said. "Particularly if they're from a civilization that makes habit of...well, they kill a lot of people. I saw their commander's desk when I snuck in once. Tried to hurt him but it didn't work out."

"You should have tried to kill."

"I try not to. Gets lonely enough on my island," Knuckles shrugged. "One of the first targets? Sonic. Which would mean-"

"Oh crap. That would mean that Eggman would have won at the very beginning," Shadow's eyes widened. Knuckles nodded. "South Island. When Eggman took it over. Westside Island. Angel Island..."

"He wouldn't have taken over Angel Island. He would've just grabbed the Master Emerald and left me to die in the falling," Knuckles answered. "But yes, their goal was chaos. Literal."

"They want the chaos emeralds?" Whisper asked.

"No, surprisingly. They can't do anything with the Chaos Emeralds. Only the Master, and the Time Stones. Which are, of course, locked on Little Planet, they won't be going anywhere for a long time."

"Why it called Little Planet? Planet be not small!" Yellow chirruped before she dove back down. She drilled back up and threatened to land on Whisper's shoulder, before the wolf caught her easily and held her in place for a moment. Another second later, Whisper set her down, letting her drill down back under the ground with a quick 'brbrbrbr' drill sound.

That came from her mouth.

"But why would they take Tangle, though?" Whisper asked. "And Tails? They would know that would just spark Shadow or Sonic to go against them."

"They aren't worried about Sonic or Shadow," Knuckles shrugged. "They're worried about the only other person whose still been time traveling recently, the one person who has the thing that could erase them from existence chasing her."

Whisper's eyes widened. "They're worried about me. And the Time Eater."

"Precisely. The Time Stones and the Master act as a shield against the Time Eater, but they found out rapidly what happens when those protections are taken from them. They know one is here, so they keep all who enter away from their main city, just in case they're the ones the Time Eater is chasing."

"They're homicidal, they're worried about the Time Eater, and they can travel through time," Shadow summarized. "Any other really bad ideas?"

"Hmm...no, I think that's all," Knuckles said. "I think I saw a note about resurrection, but that's impossible."

"Unless it's Mata," Shadow said, "then it's quite common. But she's in Green Hill."

Knuckles froze for a moment. "She's...where?"

"In Green Hill. With Sonic and Amy," Shadow said.

Knuckles turned to the Angel Island somewhere above him. "Shoot, I need to go tell him not to come..."

"There's some disaster happening right now, isn't there?" Whisper wasn't sure if that was Blue, Green, or Shadow. She strongly suspected Shadow because the other two were in the tent, but she didn't doubt that they'd come out specifically to comment on things like that.

"Sonic said that Green Hill is becoming untenable. He wants to move Amy, Velocity, Thunder, and Mata to Angel Island for the time being, just in time for it to blow over," Knuckles said.

"Oh, tell him to bring a wispon! I want to learn how they're made!" Violet's voice called out, her head peeking out from the tent. Whisper sighed.

"Vio, I was about to tell them not to come at all," Knuckles said. "Not to bring more stuff with them."

"Besides, you can just learn from Whisper's," Shadow said, pointing to the variable wispon.

Violet's eyes turned to stars. Behind her, Whisper could barely see Orange and Cyan, arguing about something, Orange's flames from his jets warming up the tent. Next to them was Pink, who was nodding extremely fast towards Whisper, pointing to Violet.

A Pink plan was something to avoid at all costs. "Friends!" Yellow trilled, drilling into the tent from the other side. The material parted and sealed itself back up a moment later. Whisper wasn't sure how that one happened, but she blamed it on Tails.

Violet had expressed interest in the past to check out the variable wispon. And it's not like she could hurt it; Whisper had long since memorized how it worked and how it fit together, a puzzle without an edge.

"And aren't you supposed to be asleep?" Shadow turned to her. "It's fairly late."

"Could, but I listened in instead. Also, Cyan and Blue were betting on something but they didn't want to tell me what it was," Violet said.

Yes, it was probably best to ignore those two when they got started. Whisper glanced down at the variable wispon. It had been her lifesaver, it had been her life if she was being honest.

But...she'd trusted Violet with her life too. Tails had a penchant for explosives, not for weapons as a whole. He'd taken a few glances at the wispon, but hadn't really tried taking it apart the way that Smithy would have, if she'd had it when she first joined the Diamond Cutters.

She opened the tent just as smidgen, before carefully handing it over. "Be careful with it," she warned. Whether that was because she didn't want it to get hurt, or for Violet to get hurt, she wasn't sure.

She zipped it back up, and ignored the way that Shadow stared at her or that Knuckles was smirking. If Surge were here, she'd be doing that fake tear thing again, probably with some sarcastic remark.

Admittedly the tenrec had done nothing but give sarcastic remarks.

"What I want to know is what is the Timeroot. Why would they take Tails too? The kid hasn't done anything," Shadow asked.

Whisper gave him a stare. The 'kid'? It'd been years since anyone had referred to Tails like that. At least in her mind. And really, it was kind of obvious.

If they knew enough about things to know exactly when Eggman died, they'd know who Tails was. The genius was pretty much world renowned, and that was before the twenty three years skip she'd done.

Whisper had lived on the other side of the world, and she'd known exactly who Sonic and Tails were. Knuckles not as much, Shadow was iffy, Amy was new to her, but Sonic and Tails? Their exploits in Westside Islands, South Islands, and even Central City were known by everyone the world over.

It was hard to overstate just how famous the hedgehog was. And Tails was just as well known, if also because he was, as a kid, remarkably cute.

"Could be any number of reasons," Knuckles said. "I didn't see any sign of him, but that doesn't mean he wasn't there. Zerotime is a big city."

"Is that it's name? Zerotime?"

"Yeah. It's based off of one of their sayings. 'Zero Time is Local Time'. Basically it's the same as saying 'the biggest adventure starts with a single step' or one of those phrases."

"Now we're learning their phrases," Shadow said quietly. "How quaint."

"The first step to learn how to deal with an enemy is to learn about them. Learn about your enemy, and you need not fear how they fight."

Whisper could admit that was true. She glanced upwards towards where the stars were, and the Angel Island, invisible to her eyes. "Knuckles, didn't you say you needed to call Sonic?" She asked.

Knuckles blinked at her, before he shot upwards, and instantly Whisper felt a dull wind circle from him. He shot upwards at a rate that would make her jealous, and that's if she was using the wispon with Orange.

"Huh. You think he would have remembered that," Shadow said as he watched him fly upwards. "You'd also think he remembered that we traveled a few miles to get here," he finished.

"How long do you think it'll take for him to remember that's not where he parked the island?" Whisper asked.

"Islands can't be parked! Beep beep towing!" Yellow shouted as she dove underneath the tent again. Whisper made a mental note to make sure that Orange taught her what she needed to know. Maybe Lavender too, she was relatively well-spoken. Pink and Cyan...maybe, if she wanted to cause trouble. She'd prefer not to.

"Not long. He has some sixth sense about where the Master Emerald is. I think it's because he's been around it so long that he's become attuned to it," Shadow answered. Whisper nodded. Made as much sense as anything else in her life.

The desert air was starting to bite into her fur, but as she'd done for years she shrugged it off. Her fur was good enough to get through the cold without problems, even without moving for hours on end. Although she hadn't actually taken care of her fur in ages...she'd have to do that once she got back.

And to think that her goal was just a few days travel away. Once she rescued Tangle...and Tails...then she had no doubt that he could probably find some way to travel her back.

It seemed as if things were finally coming to a close. "What's got you so relaxed?" Shadow asked scornfully.

"We're close to the goal," Whisper answered. "A few days and a jailbreak."

"You're acting like it's easy."

"Jailbreaks aren't hard," Whisper shrugged. "Blue, Orange, and Cyan can see to it. Cyan for alarms, Orange to spot the weak points, and Blue for smashing."

Shadow stared at her. "You really are a walking arsenal with them, aren't you? I know that logically, but to see you just talk about them so...blase. Why do you they follow you?"

"They're friends."

"Friends," Shadow said, staring off in the distance. "I used to be the same way. Rouge for the alarms, Omega for the backup, and me for the infiltration directly. We never failed a single mission."

Whisper said nothing, instead sitting down on the cold hard sand. It felt like ice enveloping her legs, but like all snipers, she ignored it as best she could.

"And the one time they needed me to bail them out...Did I ever tell you about the mission?"

"No. And I didn't want to pry."

"Probably for the best. Time travel makes things difficult at the best of times. I was there, when the original Time Eater ate Sonic. I woke up in the white space, with the yellow chaos emerald in my hands."

"Sonic didn't mention much about it."

"For him, it was just another adventure. One of dozens. Between him and Tails, both of them, they figured out that restoring space time stability would require their speed and chaos auras. They wouldn't speak about it much, because why would they?"

Shadow continued, "The only thing I know is that I woke up with the yellow chaos emerald, and a distinct feeling that I shouldn't just give it away. Sonic explained it to me, before I battled him for it anyways. We saw worlds that Sonic had known from his previous adventures, somehow back on the ARK," he said, staring off towards the moon.

Whisper blinked, following his line of sight. There was the moon, still blown in half from way back when. Following it, not far from it, was the other 'moon' that she'd known all of her life. The space station ARK. "Did you see anything you shouldn't have?"

"A few. Worlds that didn't exist. A possible future, and knowledge of it thanks to Silver."

"It dragged in all things from the past, but nothing else?"

"Not as far as I saw. If Sonic did see something, he didn't say. I suspect that even when he started talking, he couldn't assist with most of the events, even if he had foreknowledge. They were just...spots. Areas similar to deja vu. 'Oh, I remember this from that one white space trip'."

That must be frustrating. To know that something was going to happen, but be unable to assist...she was going to be going through that too, wasn't she? She was going to know that Timeroot was going to be coming back, and they were going to appear the instant that Eggman died.

And they would go after the Master Emerald and the Time Stones, in order to go and change time again.

But obviously they wouldn't have succeeded, because then this time wouldn't be happening. Which meant that they succeeded...right? Whisper's head was starting to hurt from trying to figure out all of this time nonsense.

Just from her going into the future to a civilization based around time travel...they probably had some kind of tense trouble for that.

"Do you think I could save them?" Whisper asked suddenly. Shadow turned to look at her, his red eyes glaring out. He tilted his head, his spines following the movement. Easily. She always wondered how he did that. Sonic's were much more natural looking.

"Save who?"

"Rouge and Omega."

Shadow paused, looking up at the sky again. "It's..." He stopped for a long moment. A few seconds, then a minute. "I suppose it could work. I tried all kinds of things. Belle says I was inconsolable, having them taken again."

"What was the mission?" Whisper asked without hesitation. If she could help even one more she would do everything in her power. She may not have liked Rouge, and while she adored Omega she knew that he wasn't exactly the best of heroes to look up to.

Omega had weapons and he wasn't inconsiderate about firing them. If he had joined the Diamond Cutters, Whisper knew that he would have absolutely loved it on some of their missions, the missions where everything went wrong.

And yet she was still here.

"It was...before Eggman died. They had heard that he'd retrieved some jeweled scepter, not the one from Blaze's world, that had a darkness hidden inside. I told them not to go, that something was wrong with it. It seemed basic."

"What went wrong?"

"What didn't?" Shadow said without humor. He sat down on the sand next to her, and she noticed that he pumped out small flames out of his shoes, getting the sand out of them. "First, Eggman's base was set up in a cliff side. Without his face plastered over it. That was warning one. The second was that at first there was no protection. No robots, at all."

He glanced up, continuing a moment later. "We received Rouge's transmissions on the after action report. She thought it was curious, but obviously not worth protecting. She wouldn't have even done it if Eggman wasn't doing it, and it didn't have jewels in it. Mostly the second one. Omega went with to deal with any protections that did show up."

"It was the third room that they went into. Blank. And then the hallway behind them disappeared. Robots after robots starting pouring out, the scepter itself an obvious fake to Rouge's eyes. Omega took care of them all. Then the bigger ones."

"It was a trap for you," Whisper said. That was a similar enough fate to the Diamond Cutters. She knew what it was like; to go against an endless horde that kept growing in power. Seemingly no end to them.

"It was a trap for me. I knew it. They knew it too, once the Executioners started showing up. They were heavily armored, one of the only robots that I have difficulty with on my own.

"Eventually Omega ran out of ammunition. I thought he was endless, before then. Rouge was fighting well, but she's better at the singular enemies than the big ones. And she was doing her fair share too. But once Omega ran out...he ran in. Trying to buy time for Rouge to try to kick her way out.

"I was already using Chaos Control to get there faster. I knew the general area, only a few miles out. I could get there, bust in there."

Hadn't Shadow said previously that he hadn't been there, and that was why it had hurt so much? Whisper wondered if this part was idle thinking, idle wishing of what could have been.

"By the time I got there, Omega was destroyed. His shell was crushed by thousands of spikes, aiming to destroy him. Rouge...there was no door for me, but there was a pressure keeping me out, an invisible wall. She went back in to try to save Omega."

He was saying this without inflection, as if it was too painful for him to pay much attention to what he was saying. "She didn't last long either. She got the transmissions out, and that's when I got there. The walls were packed with hundreds of robots and robot parts. If they had survived for much longer, they would have been crushed just by the pressure."

"Why do you think you had a bad feeling about it?" Whisper asked. She hated asking him that, asking him to keep going into more detail. But the more detail she had, then maybe, just maybe...

She will undo it. Her eyes widened as the message proclaimed itself into her head. Will undo. It wasn't just individual words.

It was a sentence.

"Because I saw a report once, of that scepter out in Soleanna when Faker went there once. Something snapped in my head, and whatever it was the only thing I have left is a bad memory," Shadow answered.

Whisper nodded. Her mask had a recording function, and she'd had it going for the last several days. Ever since coming into the future, actually. She'd have to edit the rest out, but...maybe she could get this information to the right ones.

An invisible pressure urged her not to let the recording end, just yet.

Information, and for once, the name of an enemy.

Until Next Time!

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See last chapter.

Close

Whisper's eyes woke up without her even realizing she'd gone to sleep. She was still outside, and there was a slight white sheen to the desert, as if it had tried to freeze, realized that it didn't have enough water to freeze, and instead ended just making things harder.

Her back was killing her. Her shoulder injuries from where she'd visited Surge, and the stomach injuries from everywhere else were making themselves known to her. She really should just sleep in the tent next time.

She was the first one awake. Knuckles was next to her now, his eyes shut and his breathing rhythmic. Surprisingly even Shadow was asleep, his head tilted back as if staring at the moon and ARK, now long gone throughout the sky.

The big surprise was Sonic the Hedgehog himself next to Knuckles. There was a brace over his leg, as if ready for travel despite that Whisper would be most adamantly opposed to Sonic hurting himself like that.

The tent was still up, although it didn't have a white sheen over it, but rather had nearly iced over entirely. Whisper forced herself up, trying to withhold the groan.

She did make sure to lean against the tent to get rid of the sand in her boots and at the bottom of her coat and tail. Her tail was absolutely filled to the brim with sand.

There was a small sound that came from one of the other three, and Whisper wasn't sure who. She glanced at each of their eyes, seeing Shadow's still shut ones, Sonic's green eyes, and Knuckles eyelids...

Oh, Sonic was awake. Whisper blinked, before looking up towards the sky. It was still dark out. "Yeah yeah, laugh it up. I can wake up early too," he groaned out as he forced himself up. She noticed that his usual crutch had the end replaced with a simple folding claw. Keep pressure on the sand when pushing down, and if it got pushed into sand that it would be easy to retrieve it again, as the end that held the sand would simply fold away.

"You have kids. I'm not surprised, from what I hear," Whisper answered. It was a common theme from what she saw when she was a child.

"They aren't that bad. Although it is nice on those days that they have cartoons to watch instead of begging dad to get their favorite toy from their siblings," Sonic said with a chuckle. Whisper noticed that despite his obvious limp, it seemed somewhat softer on the cold sand.

"What are you doing here? I thought Knuckles was going to tell you not to," Whisper said.

Sonic shrugged. "He did, but by then we'd already been aboard the Tornado 2 for a few hours. You got the original Tornado. Speaking of, where is it?" He asked, his head tilted as if asking an obvious question with an even more obvious answer.

"Somewhere in the mountains," Whisper answered. What she didn't tell him was 'somewhere in the mountains split in half with one of the wings missing, a good chunk of the fuselage seeming eaten and only about half a fuel tank.

The Time Eater had ripped into the Tornado.

"Broken and in pieces right?" Sonic joked. When Whisper stayed silent, he ended up chuckling quietly. "Hasn't been the first time, and won't be the last. That plane's been an actual ship of Theseus for a long time. Only reason we can call it the Tornado is because of the red paint!"

Oh good, he wasn't mad. "You didn't answer the question."

"Nah, I suppose I didn't. We could have turned around. Green Hill was getting a bit hot in there, with GUN on one side and the gangs on the other. Most of my neighbors went and did the same thing as we did. Some went to Central City, others to Westopolis...it's been a mess. We'll come back when it gets cleaned up, as it usually does."

"So Amy and the kids are up on Angel Island?"

"Yeah. Knuckles built a kind of a cabin up there for guests. Far away from the Master Emerald, of course. Mata's been banned from summoning for the duration. We don't know how it would react to the Master Emerald," Sonic explained.

"Probably not well," Knuckles' voice called out. Oh, he was awake too, Whisper noticed. "It acts as a temporal anchor, so it wouldn't surprise me if it was either harder or easier for her."

"Not to mention those ghosts in Sandopolis."

"Those guys? They're easy enough, just light up the ruins and they go away," Knuckles said, waving his hand.

"Yeah, you try telling that to an eight year old," Sonic said. "Or to a twelve year old, too."

"You weren't twelve for that."

"Yes I was," Sonic retorted.

"No you weren't. You were in your early teens. Fifteen at the earliest."

"Then Tails would have been eleven. He was eight. I remember that specifically, because I held a small birthday party for him in Ice Cap!"

"Is that why you guys took so long getting out of there? I thought you just froze."

"As astonishing as this conversation is, we should probably start moving soon," Shadow's voice called out, interrupting both red and blue.

"I'll go wake up Vio," Sonic said as he forced himself up. "How hard are the wisps to wake up?" He asked Whisper as he passed.

"Not hard," she answered, giving a soft whistle. Immediately all of the wisps lined up in front of her, Lavender and Yellow slightly off center and tilted downwards. Yellow was off looking everywhere except at Whisper, and Lavender was staring at the other wisps as if trying to emulate them.

Cyan was saluting, Orange was staring upwards as she'd been awake for hours, Green and Blue were trying their hardest to be upside down, and Pink had saluted and somehow spiked himself on his own spikes. How that was possible, Whisper didn't even want to think about.

"Oh hey those two are new. Hi, I'm Sonic the Hedgehog!" Sonic said, looking at both Lavender and Yellow. "I haven't seen a nega-wisp in a long time."

Lavender went up to him, slightly flying around him as if trying to taste the air near him. "You...I remember you."

"Yeah?"

"Yes. You ran from the implosion of impossibility. Bestowed with our power, you managed to outrun the inevitable."

Sonic looked her up and down. "So you were a white wisp. How's Yacker doing, he still going on about word salads?"

Lavender gave a trill. "He does, when he's bored. He's off in one of the wisp gardens outside Spagonia, constantly traveling between them."

"Wait, white wisps can communicate!?" Cyan immediately popped up. "Orange, that's unfair! How come we don't get cool stuff like being able to talk however far we are from the others!"

"Would you want to be a white?" Orange retorted.

"No," Cyan said instantly. "I get so much more fun as a cyan. I can go zoom zoom!"

"Yay zoom zoom!" Yellow cheered as she dove into the ground, coming up like some kind of sand dolphin.

"Oh that ain't zoom zoom. I can show you zoom zoom!" Cyan shouted, before she went into her full laser, starting to speed around like a Sonic on his first pot of espresso and coffee. Ever.

"Hey, Vio, you awake?" Sonic asked as he lightly tapped the flap. "We're about ready out here."

Whisper heard a small groan before the vixen answered it, poking her head out of the flap. She had small black bags under her half-lidded eyes, as if she didn't get much sleep last night. "You okay Vio?" Sonic asked.

Violet turned to Whisper. "Yeah, just got distracted by them chatting and looking at the wispon. Think I stayed up too late..." she said, glancing around at everyone around before she pulled back in, presumably to change for the day.

Sonic rolled his eyes. "Yeah, that tracks. Not the first time that's happened either. But hey, at least this time it was on Whisper's gear and not Tails or my old stuff. Progress!"

Whisper was also honestly waiting for when Violet would see that her dad was right there. Or at least, one of them. Instead she walked out a few minutes later with a small shirt and some simple pants, yawning wide. "Morning..." She muttered, sitting down on the sand a second later.

Whisper took the time to quickly peek in, seeing that the tent was in near pristine condition. The variable wispon was on its side, looking brand new. Almost better than when Whisper herself was taking care of it. Had she waxed it and shined it? Whisper grabbed it quickly, before pushing the button on the side that would make the tent fold into itself.

By the time it finished, a process which took only a few seconds, Violet had her eyes closed and was leaning against Sonic. "Did she fall asleep again?" Whisper asked.

"We weren't chatting that long. She spent most of the night looking at the wispon. Also, did you know that the energy reservoir was almost filled up?" Orange asked as he leaned over to Whisper's ears.

"So she did this to herself, then?" Shadow asked. "I'll carry her."

Sonic grinned, before he carefully pushed lightly on her shoulder. "Come on Vio. It's wake up time. Your mom is threatening to make meatloaf for dinner," he said gently.

Immediately Violet's eyes opened wide. "Mom, no!" She shouted, before she heard the quiet chuckling from Knuckles. "Very funny Dad," she muttered with more than a hint of sarcasm.

"Ha ha, success!" Sonic cheered. "Word of advice, never let Amy cook meatloaf. Also, the less said about Blaze's cooking, the better."

"She burned water. Dad and I never quite figured out how..." Violet muttered. "Also, Mr. Sonic? What are you doing here?"

"Ooh, back to the Mr. Sonic. Oh well, good while it lasted," Sonic grinned. "We didn't get Knuckles message about not coming here until late last night, so the rest of the family's up on Angel Island."

"I'm not ready to be picked up yet!"

Shadow tilted his head. "I get it's dangerous, but we had no intention."

Knuckles nodded. "Your dad, Sonic that is, and I had a long talk about it. I still don't understand, but that's between him and me. He sees no reason that you couldn't stay and travel with us."

"Yep. You've made it this far. Your mom and dad would be proud of you. And as one of your dads, I can say I am," Sonic said with a smile. "There comes a time in everyone's life when they have to learn to let their kid do what is objectively the wrong thing."

Objectively? That was a bit harsh, Whisper thought. Orange and Cyan winced above him.

"Objectively!?" Violet said with more than a hint of offense. "How is it 'objectively' the wrong thing to do! You fought Eggman when you were younger than me!"

"That's the issue," Sonic answered. "We knew that we shouldn't have, but we were the only ones who could. You at least, have a choice."

"Well there was that Dr. Hopps guy in Snowdrift..."

"Wasn't he the movie villain of that one movie?" Knuckles asked. "I feel like I recognize the name."

"You're thinking of Dr. Hare," Shadow answered. How he was able to answer with as much to go on as 'that one movie', Whisper didn't know. "Not a bad movie, but not one of the better ones."

"Look at this way," Whisper commented, "at least he's still allowing you to go."

Violet relaxed a bit and looked a little less offended, but just a little. "I know. So...breakfast?" She asked, as Knuckles pulled out a small fruit, similar to a mango. She caught it easily as he tossed it to her, before he tossed a few others to everyone else.

Whisper grabbed hers easily, staring at it for a moment. It wasn't a mango, not really, but it held a similar shape and color. But where mangoes were generally soft on the outside, this one was rock hard, as if it wasn't edible yet. She watched as Knuckles punched his, the spurs on his hands digging deep into it, before he held it to his mouth and let the juice flow in.

"What is this?" Violet asked.

"Some kind of Angel Island fruit. Knuckles doesn't like calling them angel fruits, but that's kind of what they are," Sonic grinned, barely hobbling out of the way as Knuckles threatened to hit his arm. "A meal in a fruit. Pretty much everything you need, really."

"How do we open them?"

"Anyway you can, really," Sonic said, punching his with lightning quickness. Whisper blinked; Sonic could actually still move as fast, if not faster than he could when he was younger. He was just disabled in his legs...but his arms were still just as fast. He reached behind him to his spines, running the fruit down one. It split open easily.

Shadow simply snapped his fingers, and the fruit opened. Whisper rolled her eyes; that was just showing off. The wisps though let out small 'oohs' and 'ahhs', gently clapping after the fruit was fully cut open. Shadow glared at them.

"Here," Whisper said, grabbing the variable wispon and letting the fruit set on the sand. "Cyan?" She asked politely, waiting for the wisp to give her a fake salute before imbuing the wispon.

She really should have checked before trying to ask one of the wisps to imbue it, but this was an environment where it would be safe even if it did backfire. If something bad would happen, better it happen now than when she needed it most to not happen.

The weapon felt slightly different, if she had to be honest. Slightly lighter. The cyan laser emitted from the front, and Whisper felt her turn up the energy, turning it from a harmless laser, similar to a laser pointer, to an actual fully functional destruction beam.

Which she was using to cut a fruit open. She'd used Cyan for worse purposes, and Orange had once imbued a car so it wasn't as if she was the only reckless one.

One quarter of the fruit open, she paused the laser and motioned for Violet to put her fruit down. Instantly she did and backed away as Whisper opened that one. "Feel different?" She asked as Cyan disimbued herself from the wispon.

"Yeah! It's a lot stronger now that I have more room in there. Seriously, I didn't even think about how cramped it was with all that leftover energy in there it was all just 'bwoosh' and 'bwish' and 'swoosh'-" Cyan started.

Whisper continued to ignore her as the wolfess moved to the fruits, giving one to Violet. She imitated Knuckles, and almost immediately regretted it.

It had the taste of pineapple, jazz music, and onion powder mixed into one. "What is this!?" Whisper said as she coughed some of it out. The juice was stuck to her tongue like some kind of slime, even though it was actual juice.

Knuckles laughed. "It does have a bit of a strong taste to it," he chuckled. Violet mimicked Whisper and had the same reaction, her face trying to make herself look both disgusted and refreshed at the same time.

"Ha!" Sonic said, snapping a picture with a phone. "I'll have to show that to Tails, he'd get a kick out of it. He had the same look on his face when he first tried one. Disgusting things."

"Grapes aren't ready all year round," Knuckles answered, as if that answered everything. In Whisper's mind, it just made it have more questions. "Onward then?" He asked.

Whisper nodded, forcing the rest of the stuff down. "Does it get better with time?" She asked as she kicked the hard fruit into the sand after she was done with as much as she could.

"No, not really. Just be glad that it doesn't affect canines as much as the stuff it tastes like does," Knuckles advised.

"It tasted like jazz, to me," Whisper shut her eyes. "But not the good kind either."

"Really?" Sonic asked from his position up front. "How does jazz music have a taste? And I happen to like jazz!"

"It's hard to describe," Whisper answered. "But it did."

"Okay, now this I gotta try," Orange said, flying back and grabbing the leftover fruit piece. Whisper walked ahead with the others.

The sand was still cold enough to be mostly solid, and their pace was limited by Sonic. And yet, Whisper felt at ease with the pace. It would take them some time, absolutely, but they would still be making progress.

She'd felt trapped at both Green Hill and Spiral Hill because they weren't making progress. Snowdrift, too. At least out here, and within the Fern Valley, they'd be getting somewhere.

"Oh dear Mother this is disgusting," Cyan offered from the back.

"How did Whisper taste jazz in this? I tasted country!" Blue commented.

Green was obviously next, "Hey, this is pretty good! Knuckles have any more?"

"I taste art. Like...all of the art. All of it, for all time," Pink murmured. "How'd you two get music? And Cyan, you didn't say what it tasted like!"

"I think Green was right, it wasn't half bad," Orange said quietly. "It was like a fruity nut. Mixed with water and juice. I feel kind of energized now. All agreements on not letting Yellow have some?"

"Want! I want! I want try!"

"No!" Five of the wisps shouted at once. Whisper chuckled under her breath. Lavender popped into her view next to her, hovering lightly above her head as she let out a large yawn.

"No offense, but I'm not going to try it," Lavender said quietly. "That's...not a problem, right?"

Whisper shook her head. "No, it's not. I wasn't expecting Knuckles to bring anything. Not a bad thing though, I only brought enough rations for two people and a few wisps."

"You always were on top of it," Knuckles said. "I bet you came forward with everything already accounted for."

Whisper felt her head heat up, but she shook her head. "Absolutely not. I had supplies, certainly, but no plan. My first plan was to radio back."

"So that was your voice we got," Shadow said from the front. "A few days before you showed up, the old radio signals went alive for the first time in years. When Belle heard Whisper's voice, she thought it was some kid trying to play a prank on us."

"I can see it," Sonic agreed. He was hobbling along at a surprisingly good clip, despite the rising heat as the sun rose on the far side. Whisper could actually see the city now.

And the city was astonishingly beautiful. Large white pillars of stone and sand rose out of the ground, topped with reflective blue and green paints, unchipped throughout the heat. Her nose could scent some water there, as well, something that she was glad they wouldn't have to worry about for long.

"That's Zerotime?" Shadow asked. He looked back to Knuckles, who nodded solemnly.

"Don't let its view take you in. It's a cesspool on the inside. But I have to admit, it looks nice from the outside."

"What all have these guys done again, asides from taking Tangle and Tails and keeping them locked up for...some reason," Sonic asked.

"According to GUN sources, they run a raiding trade throughout the area. Snowdrift and Mt. Mary's are just slightly out of their usual range, and on top of a mountain to boot. Not to mention they want to kill you," Shadow said.

"Well that's nothing new," Sonic shrugged. Violet stared at him like she was seeing a new person. "Wouldn't be the first time. That all?"

"Dragged through time, want the Master Emerald-" Knuckles started, getting a 'well we know why you're here now' from Sonic to the Echidna, "and the Time Stones so they can keep up their time jaunts. Which..."

"Ah, say no more, I get it," Sonic nodded. He turned back to Violet and Whisper. "Time travelers tend to destroy a lot of the areas around time when they go through it. Silver not included, because...you know, I don't actually know. But I've never seen White Space around the guy. Except that one time."

"That one time was also when the world was mostly destroyed," Shadow snarked. "So that's hardly unusual."

"Wait, how many people have tried to kill you!? You can't just be acting so nonchalant about it!" Violet retorted.

"A lot of people," Sonic admitted. "I kept you kids out of most of it, but more than once they came to the door wanting to hurt me in some way. Amy always took 'em out."

"Let's see, both I and Shadow did, Blaze did at one point, Silver..." Knuckles started to count off on his fingers.

Violet stared at him. "Then there's Eggman," he continued, without caring about her stare. "And Fang, Surge, Lanolin at one point..."

"Where is Lanolin?" Whisper asked. "No one mentioned her."

"She moved to Central City when the Restoration broke up, and Tangle disappeared," Shadow said. "She's currently leading a non-profit food delivery service for homeless shelters."

Whisper sighed. So at least one person was doing somewhat good in this world. What was next, that she had to go to jail or something because she attacked someone who she thought was Sonic?

"I half expected her to be in Zerotime honestly," Green muttered from behind her. "But seeing as how she hasn't really appeared much, you'd think she would have more importance."

"Or you can't judge importance by whether or not you interact with them!" Orange retorted. "This isn't a story, Green!"

"Seriously? That's a lot of people. Most of them friends. Also, Mom tried to kill you?" Violet asked.

Sonic shrugged. "Wouldn't be the first time. She was confused. Thought I was taking the Sol Emeralds, and considering how I know how guardians are with their emerald set, Knuckles, I knew that eventually it'd come to blows. And boy, did it. That was a hard fight."

"Yeah?" Shadow asked from the front. "Which was harder, Blaze or me?" He smirked, as if knowing that no matter the answer Sonic was trapped in a losing fight.

"That's easy. Tails," Sonic answered easily. Knuckles and Shadow stopped.

"Wait, Dad tried to hurt you!?"

"Hurt me? Yeah. See, there was this robot named Emerl, and it could copy fighting techniques," Sonic nodded. "We never tried to actually kill each other."

"Oh. What happened to him?"

"Emerl?" Sonic asked. "Got blown up."

"Not quite. Faker here needed to go fight him at max strength because he got all seven chaos emeralds. Eggman found the remains and created Gemerl, if you remember Cream."

"Yeah! Wait, that robot is the reason why Dad created those healing nanites?"

What. Tails had done what now!? She glanced towards Cyan, who had a look of ever increasing glee on her face. "No," Whisper said without inflection. Cyan stared at her, before growling and dropping her head.

"Yeah. That was a while before the Resistance, actually," Sonic answered.

The city of Zerotime was in front of them now, only by around a mile or two. The sun was high in the air, beating down on them through the Doomsday Deserts.

And yet, as Whisper watched the golden gates that showed her next destination, she couldn't wait to be home. This journey was starting to come to a close.

Another travelogue chapter. Can anyone tell I actually like writing these things? Updating early because I'll be out for the next few days.

Until Next Time!

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See last chapter.

Zero

The gates of Zerotime were tall, painted gold and with a heavy metal scent. They weren't actual gold, Whisper could tell that in an instant. "When do the gates usually open?" Sonic asked.

Whisper knew that if this was the younger Sonic, he'd have already gone up and around the walls, trying to open the gates from the inside. This Sonic couldn't quite do that.

"Generally they leave them closed. I usually glide in from the top," Knuckles said. "I can go up top, climbing over the walls," he continued, before he jumped high in the air. Whisper thought she felt a small burst of wind with that one, too.

"Sure, sure," Sonic said lightly. "So, Shadow, as Knuckles is currently attempting to climb Mt. Zerotime, what have you and Whisper been up to?" He asked.

"We've done a lot!" Violet answered for him. Sonic grinned, as if knowing that Violet wouldn't help but answer. "So after we went to Spiral Hill, we found Jewel stuck in some kind of depression spiral thing. Basically it made the entire town like a giant zombie village!"

"Zombies huh? I've always hated those movies," Sonic said, his smile not disappearing.

"You never did let us watch them."

"I'm sorry, whose sister are you again?" Sonic asked teasingly.

"I mean, I get it but still. Anyways, Whisper went onto some of the hills-"

Whisper nodded. She didn't particularly want to re-enact that adventure. She still hated the feeling of firing the gun at Dr. Henderson, the maniac who was so far deep into a hell of his own creation that he was killing Islanders and keeping their heads.

Violet repeated almost the same thing that Whisper had said to Jewel earlier, nearly word-for-word. Shadow was glancing at her with surprise.

Had he forgotten she said she had a good memory? Just more proof of it, really.

"Then we left Spiral Hill, and then...well, Tornado is..."

"It's usually damaged at this point in any adventure," Sonic grinned. "How bad's this one?"

"Half of the main fuselage, an entire wing, half of the fuel tank, landing gear is broken and shattered, main engine capacitors are gone and I don't know how Green managed to keep us in the air long enough to get to the ground," Violet listed off, her face getting more and more worried.

Sonic's face darkened for a moment, before he threw his head back and laughed. "Oh man that's hurtful!" He laughed. "Ouch, that's gonna be another rebuild for the old girl. I've had her since I was twelve, you know? That's the...fourth? Fourth or fifth time we've had to rebuild her," he continued.

"Don't forget the other times Tails rebuilt it using better parts," Shadow snarked.

"Nah, that's the Tornado 2. He built that one long before the second rebuild. Mostly because I think he just likes biplanes," Sonic shrugged. "Well, you obviously got attacked by something. Time Eater?"

"Yeah! How'd you know?"

"Because the one I fought was vicious but it was also controlled by Eggman. It's actually kind of funny, it kept twitching as he commanded it to do things. If he hadn't tried to convert it to a robot, I'm not sure I would have won, even with my younger self," Sonic shrugged.

"Wait that actually happened?"

"Yes?" Sonic asked. "Who's been telling you stories that you don't believe?" He finished with a smile.

Whisper pulled up her wispon, glancing at Knuckles. The red echidna was only halfway up, but he was making good time. The walls were made up of some kind of sand, as his hand holds...or knuckle holds, she supposed, disappeared a few moments after his hands left the wall.

"I mean, it's just hard to believe."

"There's a lot that's hard to believe," Shadow said. "Especially when it comes to the Faker."

"So, the Time Eater attacked you guys, and you managed to defend it off right?"

"Kinda?" Violet's face seemed worried again. "We met Kit and Surge."

Sonic winced. "Oof, them. Yeah that's no fun. How was she this time, just as caustic and brutal as the last few times?" He asked Shadow.

Whisper was almost offended he didn't ask her, but then remembered that Sonic knew exactly what Surge had done to her. There was no way she was keeping a bias out of her vote. Good on him, then?

"Little bit more so, actually," Shadow answered. "But no, she didn't help with the Time Eater either."

"Whisper, then?" Sonic asked. "How'd you beat it up?"

"Frenzy," Whisper said instantly, and quietly.

Sonic stopped grinning. "Oh," he answered simply.

He'd been through Frenzy before, hadn't he? He knew the exact cause of what that meant, the exact mindset needed to have a frenzy. "I know you had the Nega-wisp, but I knew you couldn't imbue normally, so I was hoping..."

"Purples can imbue anything," Whisper answered quietly. "Even others who can't normally imbue."

Sonic winced. "Well, that makes sense then as to why it ran away. Frenzy was never fun. I preferred White or Cyan. Or the one time I went Crimson, Crimson was fun. And the ivory lightning, they were fun too."

"Of course you'd like the ones that make you go fast," Orange said, hovering above Whisper. She blinked; when had she come out of the canister?

"Well, yeah!" Sonic said, grinning wide as he was just as go-lucky as he was before. "Alright, so you met Surge and Kit. What then happened?"

"Kit remembered that Metal Sonic had found a prophecy regarding Mata," Violet said. Sonic nodded.

"I remember the one. I remember Tails was only concerned as far as knowing a chaos emerald had a hand in it."

"It was?" Shadow asked. "Which one?"

"Blue. The time one. The one closest in power to the Time Stones. Course, we never went back to North Island..."

"So it wasn't just pulling some words out of nowhere?" Shadow asked.

"Ha, no, it was. That's what Blaze mentioned about prophecies, especially ones regarding her. They not only came true only when she made them come true, but only if they weren't inherently awful about it. Some of them were bad. I'd have to ask Amy about the worst one, she remembered the actual wording. She wrote down the first few, then realized that we were talking about Blaze here and stopped."

"Wait...what?" Violet asked. She was blinking furiously quickly, her mind taken by surprise.

"Yeah, prophecies are real. They suck, almost universally," Sonic answered. "But their origin is almost entirely the reason they can exist. Knuckles would know more, but at least on the spirit side of things it's never just 'spirits coming down to repeat a message'. If it is that, run. That means there's something big, and it has its eyes on you."

"What do you mean spirit side of things?"

"Two things are needed for almost all prophecies," Sonic said. "One, you need a willing person to host it. Two, you need an energy source that can delve into the fourth dimension. According to Tails. The soul itself holds the prophecy, the energy source being the original connection. That being will do almost anything they can to make sure it comes true, but it's usually so insidious and small that no one really notices until it's too late."

"Why do you know this?" Shadow asked.

"Because I remember Solaris," Sonic grinned.

Shadow gripped his head, blinking off to the side, almost as if a roaring headache was going through his head. "Ha, I love doing that," Sonic grinned to Whisper and Violet.

Whisper had no idea what he was talking about. The wisps though were talking amongst themselves, extremely quietly, and using their native language. It was mostly confusion coming from Pink and Cyan, and a bit of alarm from Green. A sense of calm from Orange, and extreme confusion from Lavender and Yellow.

At least, until Yellow decided to dive into the sand and create a sand sculpture.

"I don't get it, what just happened?" Violet asked.

"Ah, just an old trick. Basically, there was a time when I wiped out time. Forward and backward. Restarted the whole thing. Only two people remember it. Myself and Blaze. And Blaze only remembers it because she somehow left the timeline before it got erased."

"That makes no sense. How can you erase a timeline, and how can you leave a timeline if it was erased as a whole!?"

"Time travel," Sonic grinned. "What do they say here, Zerotime is Local Time?"

Almost as if saying a password, the gates started to open up. Massive gears started to turn on the side, as the door slowly opened to the golden city beyond.

Whisper glanced upwards. Knuckles was at the top, and a moment later he looked down, saw the gates were open, and jumped off the top he'd just spent ten minutes climbing.

She at least would be pissed off for having to climb all that for nothing. But it looked like Knuckles wasn't worried at all. It took him around thirty seconds of freefall before he landed with a loud thud on the sand.

"Huh. That was weird," he said as soon as he landed. Sonic was already hobbling towards the open gates, Violet next to him, her face full of wonder.

"Let me guess, nothing up there?" Shadow asked deadpan. Knuckles nodded. "Probably a password thing that Faker happened to say at the right time."

Whisper nodded. She turned to the wisps hovering around her. "Be careful," she said. "Hop into your canisters if something's wrong," she said.

There was an eerie air about the golden city, and Whisper wasn't quite sure what it was just yet.

Sonic and Violet beat the other three to the main opening, and the only one not surprised at how this city looked was Knuckles.

Each building was as tall as most spires, standing tall and proud above the ground. Right inside the gates, it had gone from astonishingly hot to chilled. Not snowing cold, but definitely temperatures controlled in some way.

Each house, shop, warehouse, or whatever they were stretched up to the skies, a golden color burgeoning from the tops. Even on the bottom floors, where the color was a bit deeper, it had a golden shine that wasn't natural.

What she was also surprised about was how there was no one around. "Where is everyone?" Asked Violet after they passed the second block. The ground was sturdy, allowing Sonic to at least hobble a bit faster than he had been. "I haven't seen anyone yet."

It wasn't like Spiral Hill, where it was quiet but there were still people around. There was still sound as if there were people but there was no one around. As if it was just a record, playing on repeat.

"I don't know. I don't see anyone either," Orange said. "This town feels odd though."

"Yeah, I can sense it too," Cyan offered. "Whisper, I think we should really be on our guard here. There's something."

Whisper nodded. She'd already been on her guard, sure, but if Cyan was telling her to be more careful then who was she to disagree? Especially as Pink, too, was nodding. He was visibly alarmed just as much as the others were.

"I'll scout ahead," Shadow said after a moment, his shoes putting him an inch in the air before he started to skate off. There was a booming sound as he broke the sound barrier rather casually.

"That's one way to announce our arrival. I'll do the rest," Sonic smirked. "Oi, Timeroot or what have you! We're here!" He yelled out.

"Sonic, that's a really bad idea," Knuckles said. He glanced around towards one of the golden doors, before he gently touched it over his gloves. "These aren't metal doors. They're...almost plastic."

"Plastic?" Violet asked, before she ran her hands over the same door. She tried the doorknob, feeling it unable to turn at all. "The doors aren't real. Knuckles, can you climb into one of the windows?" She asked.

"Can do," he answered simply, gliding up to one one of the first or second floor windows. He tried to punch the glass, or where the glass was. "It's not even glass! It won't break!"

"It's fake," Whisper answered after a moment. "The doors are fake. The gates probably weren't real, either," she said. She turned to look as Lavender started to scream in fright.

"The gates are closing!" She shouted.

Before any of them could react, the gates behind them swung shut, and Whisper could see the large gears that held them shut turn, hoisting dozens of metal bars thicker than Whisper was tall into them.

"Huh. That's odd. They have to know we can still get out," Sonic said. "Between Shadow and myself, we have enough skill in Chaos Control that we don't need to worry about it."

"Have you been getting better at it?" Knuckles said as he dived down from the window. "Because last I checked, you can only teleport yourself."

"I mean, yeah, but we have Shadow, and we know he's good with it," Sonic grinned. "Assuming he doesn't go and get himself captured."

"I'm not you, Faker," Shadow answered abruptly from behind him. A few seconds later the sonic boom arrived, making Whisper clamp her hands over her ears. The pain in her stomach and back flared up, and she grit her teeth for a long moment.

"We should stick together," Violet said, the worry easily on her face now. "Who knows what other kinds of tricks they'll have?" She asked.

"Not many. There's no one around, except for the center. I didn't go say hi," Shadow answered. "I think that whatever it is that's going on, we should head there first."

"To the center then!" Sonic called out. The wisps nodded for a moment, before they went in front of Whisper.

"This is gonna be a bit out of the blue but...remember that Geas we put on ourselves?" Orange asked.

Whisper nodded. Yellow looked around for a moment, trying to drill into the ground, before she gave up, unable to pierce the solid ground beneath their feet.

"We want to take it off. Something's giving us all the heebie-jeebies," Green replied. "But for that, we'd need to either complete the mission as set by the Geas, or to have a binder do it. You were the witness for the Geas, so it can only be you that acted as the binder."

"What do I need to do?" Whisper asked instantly. She trusted the wisps more than she trusted herself at times. And if they didn't trust themselves with certain amounts of energy, she understood that. She had, too, taken another life not long ago. She understood well what it means to have too much power.

"Nothing," Blue supplied. "You just need to say 'I accept' when we're finished." The wolf nodded.

"Right. What were the terms, again?" Orange asked. It was obvious that she remembered, at least to Whisper, but was trying to get the conversation going.

It was strange. It had been Blue that had been most insistent on not having the Vow, and it had been Green who explained that the Geas was another way to limit their power. That they didn't want to be able to level entire cities.

And now they wanted that power back, on the off chance that they'll need it. Whisper didn't blame them; something about this city was gnawing at her mind too.

Will.

The word popped up unannounced, and it steeled Whisper's resolve. That's right. She'd already come this far. She was so close to Tangle, so close to Tails.

"I, the Orange wisp known as," Orange started, before Whisper got the sense of high flight, the sense of the ground moving underneath her. Movement, high speed, energy, knowledge, sight, wrath, arrogance...there were so many terms and feelings wrapped up in the small amount of words that was apparently Orange's name.

She had been caught so off-guard that it took a moment for Whisper to realize that Orange was staring at her expectedly. "She can't talk right now," Cyan advised, "Otherwise whole thing's moot. You have to say 'I accept all'," she said.

Whisper nodded. The others had gone on far enough ahead that she could barely see them. "I accept all," she said, putting her whole being into the words. The wisps nodded, and Whisper suddenly felt a feeling of being unburdened, as if something was set free.

"I'll go next!" Cyan said, and Whisper barely caught the start before she caught Cyan's name. Energy, hyperactivity, knowledge, math, flight, light...she'd caught it for only a second.

"I accept all," Whisper muttered. Blue was the same, a sense of weight, reliability, solid, helpful, quake, resonance...she was almost learning more from the wisps' names than she had been for years.

Green was a sense of lightness, reliability, lightheartedness, a sense of groundedness, and understanding. Pink's was, surprise, hyperactivity, invincibility, arrogance and planning, with a small hint of playfulness.

Her head felt like it would pop from the sense of all of them. "I accept all," Whisper muttered, pushing her entire being into the words for hopefully the last time.

All.

All Will Undo.

Whisper's eyes opened. They were making a mistake. And it was one that she had to correct instantly, it wasn't the wisps' mistakes it was all of them.

She understood now. What the words actually meant. They would undo it all, undo all of time, if they kept going. "We have to catch them," Whisper said after a moment.

The wisps nodded. Lavender was looking at each one with a newfound respect. Yellow wasn't sure what to think of all that had happened, but she was quiet about it at least.

The others were nearly a thousand feet away. For someone who was crippled, Sonic could move surprisingly fast. Whisper pushed herself faster than she thought she ever could, the variable wispon on her back.

The group passed into the center just as Whisper got there, and they disappeared out of her view.

Right in front of her. Less than ten feet in front of her, she'd been just a bit late. She could see where they would have gone, but as she ran towards where they were, she felt awash of something.

And suddenly she was somewhere very, very different.

It looked the same on the outside, certainly, but there was very much a different energy to it. For one, there were people around now. Islanders, humans, most of them chatting admirably along. Most were dressed conservatively, as if they were cold, and some were bundled up as if expecting snow or rain.

The wisps hovered behind her. "Where'd they go?" Lavender asked quietly. "I don't see any of them."

"Not here," Cyan answered. "Orange, you felt that shift right?"

"Temporal shift, yeah. Whisper, just keep walking. Try not to get in people's way, maybe we can figure out how to get everyone together," Orange offered.

Whisper nodded. A temporal shift? Was this like that one thing that Eggman tried at the Eggperial City? Tangle had phased through reality, becoming some sort of partial spirit back then. Was this similar to that?

Not entirely, otherwise Shadow would have just Chaos Controlled in front of her. One of the islanders, a lynx in a purple toga-esque dress, accidentally stepped on her shoes. "Oh, sorry!" She said, before hovering back into the crowd. Whisper winced. She'd definitely felt that, so not a partial spirit. Or at least, she wasn't the partial spirit.

A shift in time though. So maybe it was much like that clock thing that had brought her here originally. That was a simple temporal shift as well, wasn't it?

Maybe she was already back in her time.

The lynx's words came back to her. They were in common, so at least they had a shared language. That made things easier. It wasn't like they had an entirely different language or dialect. That would have made things...problematic.

There was a small fountain in the middle of the circle. Small children played around it, occasionally tripping some of them to throw them into the pond. It appeared that it was all in good fun, or at least appeared so. Whisper sat down on it, pulling down on her mask.

Separated from everyone. Again. This was starting to become a large problem, in her mind. It just kept happening.

"Hey, is that?" Whisper heard a voice call out from her side. She blinked, turning. Immediately she saw the wisps facepalm in various ways, as best as they could.

"It is!" Another similar voice called out. Whisper sighed. Of course it would be these two.

Skunk islanders were not looked well upon by most humans. By other islanders, it generally wasn't an issue. But these two...well, they were tall, big, burly, and had their tails removed due to some escapade in their past.

How had Rough and Tumble shown up here? "Think we'll get a big bonus?" One of the brothers asked. Whisper didn't bother trying to figure out which was which.

She did notice that they looked as if they hadn't aged a day since her time. They weren't old, like everyone else was that she'd seen recently. In fact, they looked...exactly the same.

"If we didn't, that'd be just as bogus!"

"Then I guess she should get ready to rumble!"

"With the best of the best, Rough and Tumble!" they called out at the same time.

Bonus. Money. Right, they were mercenaries at the moment it seemed. She couldn't even recall the last time she'd seen these two.

Not because she hadn't, but because she hadn't even realized it. They were kinda easy to beat at the best of times.

She did notice though that most of the civilians around them screamed and ran off to the various corners, afraid of the two charging skunks.

"Pink, wispon. Blue, cubes," Whisper said quietly. The pink wisp looked confused for a second, before his eye lit up and he imbued himself into the variable wispon.

The wispon changed to shoot out the pink spikes, just as Rough...or his brother Tumble, Whisper wasn't sure which one was which, tripped on a long blue cube that Blue had set up.

Pink spikes were shot out towards the one remaining brother, before Orange imbued the cube that Blue had created, shoving the tripped brother high in the air. "You can do that?" Whisper asked after a moment.

"Yeah! There's a lot of stuff we can do!" Cyan said as she shot out to the side, blinding Rough. Or Tumble. One of them. He had pink spikes of energy shoved through his shoes to the ground, fortunately having missed his actual feet.

"Argh, my eyes!" He cried. "We'll get you back for that!" he called out.

"I think you'd have to try much harder," Green advised nearby. He hovered a few of the stones that the brother was trapped to, hovering them slowly into the air.

"Oh no don't drop me I'm afraid of heights!" The brother cried as he held himself in his arms. "We're..we're gonna beat you! You just wait and see, this won't be the last! Next time you'll just fumble-"

The other brother, the one that had been rocketed straight up, crash landed on his brother just as he was about to hit his cue for their name.

Green cut out the hover, and both of them slammed down onto the ground in a small pile. "That was easy. That was like taking out the trash," Orange said as she hovered lower. "So uh...you gonna answer questions?" Orange asked.

"Tumble! You missed your cue, that was a perfect chance!" The lower brother said. "Also, ow my ribs."

"Rough! Hard to hit a cue when you're falling from deep space!"

"I didn't send him that high," Orange commented. "Blue, how high did I send him?"

"I don't know. Few hundred feet? Perfect dramatic timing though."

"Dramatic timing! Drama!" Yellow said before she dove into the water, drilling around in a small circle. Whisper walked up to the two that were beaten on the ground, arguing.

She held up the wispon to Rough. "Alright. Time to talk," she said. Rough, the lower brother and probably the older of the two seeing as how it was his name first, gulped audibly.

"Ah...we surrender?" He tried.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See last chapter.

Fire

"Alright, how did we get saddled with these guys?" Pink asked as he hovered near them. They looked up hopefully at him, before his one eye narrowed, and they returned to being panicked.

Whisper had taken them from the square, marching them to a nearby empty house. A conveniently empty nearby house. "Because we need answers. And these two are the only ones with any amount of answers right now," Whisper explained. The sides were a near universal brown or gray that showed the lack of paint. There were a few pictures on the wall, but they looked old and torn up by time.

"No, no, I get that. I meant how."

"Oh. That's because they're idiots," Orange commented. "Seriously. Skunks is one thing, and I mean I've met a few that are decent, but then there's these two. This wasn't in Shadow's little rundown was it?"

"No, they weren't. I completely forgot they existed."

"Hey!" Rough, or Tumble, Whisper still wasn't sure which was which, said. "We aren't that forgettable!"

"...To be fair, I did too," Orange murmured. "Green, Cyan?"

"Nothing around that I can find," Green said, hovering in after a moment. He and Cyan had left to try to see if there was anyone else in this conveniently empty house.

Orange was keeping an eye on the square, now with all the civilians gone and out of the way. Occasionally she could see a few people coming out, but it seems as if the wreckage from their fight was still there. There was a green uniformed Islander, a dog, sniffing around the wreckage. Whisper almost thought he was some kind of officer.

"Checked upstairs and in the basement," Cyan said as she came in from the dumbwaiter. "Seems all clear. Door's locked."

Whisper nodded. "Alright," she said, turning to the two on the floor. "Talk."

"What's there to talk!? Look, we just trying to get money to eat, to feed our starving families!" One of them said.

"Uh, Rough? We don't have no families, sides from each other."

"Shh, she don't know that!"

Yes she did. Whisper sighed. "I meant how did you get here."

"Oh! Why didn't you just ask?" Tumble asked. "So we was out of luck near Studiopolis, and that one Mirage Saloon place. And suddenly this guy popped in, as if by magic!"

Whisper stared at the other brother. "No, that's accurate," Rough acknowledged. "He just kinda popped out of thin air, kind of like that Starline guy did. And then he just pointed at us and was 'You. You be very good mercenaries, yeah?"

"And then we was saying 'we're the best of the best! Can't get no better than us! You gonna be only mumbling-"

"After messing with Rough and Tumble!" Rough grinned.

Whisper stared at them. "And that guy brought you here?"

"Eventually, yeah. He told us that he'll pay us these fancy coins, one each day, as long as we patrol around and do whatever it is he says."

"Coins?" Lavender asked. "Not regular money?"

Whisper repeated the question. "Nah, they only use these coins here. Food's cheap, assuming you can find it. There's all kinds of empty space here," Rough said.

"The entirety of the place is one giant temporal anomaly," Orange said as she stared out into space. "Get ready Whisper, there's a green dog is coming here!" She said.

"Alright. Canisters, don't come out unless I'm in trouble," Whisper nodded. The wisps nodded, even Yellow who seemed to understand that something in this situations was wrong.

They flew into the canisters just as the dog knocked politely on the door. "Oh hey that's the boss! We're in here boss!" Tumble called out.

Whisper sighed. They just had to make this hard. "I would've preferred you stay quiet," she said, before she opened the door. She made sure to keep the variable wispon out of sight behind the door.

He was tall, slightly taller than Whisper herself was, with black fur and tall ears that stretched on for a while, but he definitely had the snout of a dog islander. His green uniform was pressed and clean, and he had a small hat that sat between his ears, giving the impression he was a powerful person.

His eyebrows rose as he stared into the empty room. "Excuse me, miss, I'm looking for two of my..." He said, his voice deep and proper.

He looked behind her, to see Rough and Tumble tied up on the floor. "They seem to be behind you," he noticed.

"I was asking them questions. They should be in jail," Whisper said. The dog blinked in surprise.

"Really? They haven't been model citizens, certainly but they aren't...they don't seem that bad to me."

"She's lyin' boss! She never knew us from before! She's way too young to be the Restoration girl that disappeared!" Tumble yelled out.

Whisper's eyes shut as she sighed. The dog suddenly turned much more conniving, much more studious as he glanced at Whisper. "You? The Root Clock grabbed you?" He asked. He seemed much more interested now. "I'm going to have to ask you to come with me."

"No," Whisper answered instantly. She still had to find her friends, although whether that was Shadow, Violet, Sonic and Knuckles, or Tangle and Tails, she wasn't sure.

"That wasn't a request."

"Careful boss! She's tough!" Rough yelled out.

"She beat you? She must be," the dog said. Whisper honestly wasn't sure if he was being sarcastic or not. He seemed truthful. He reached behind him, and Whisper felt herself tense. He pulled some kind of square box, and she heard Rough gasp.

She slammed the door shut, taking off into the empty house. There was a kitchen, bathroom, foyer, hallway, bedrooms, and the basement. Easiest way to get would be through the second floor, if she needed to do another defenestration.

She barely got to the other side of the living room as the door simply disappeared. The dog stood there, holding the square box in such a way that made it obvious he'd used it on the door. "You have the Root Clock energy swirl all over you. You didn't do it right!" The dog yelled as he glanced downwards towards the device. "You're going to doom us all!" He called out.

The wall next to her disappeared as he aimed the device again. It wasn't a disintegration, not really. It was as if the wall had simply never been there. She raced up the stairs, making sure the variable wispon was on her back. She thought about putting it in front of her. At the very least, it would survive...but no, she couldn't think like that.

"Wait, boss, what about us!?" She heard Rough or Tumble ask as the doberman raced up the stairs behind her. She ducked as part of the ceiling disappeared.

"Later!" He called out. "For now I need to catch this criminal!"

"Not a criminal," Whisper retorted as she raced into a bedroom. There was no way out, except for the plastic window which even Knuckles couldn't break. She stood in front of it anyways.

The dog walked into the room behind her. "Nowhere to run now, wolf. Just come quietly. This won't kill you," he said, pointing the strange box at her. Part of her wondered what that meant.

Whisper stared at him. She dared him to come closer, to try to shoot at her. "Fine," he muttered, shaking his head quietly before he fired again.

She ducked to the ground as fast as lightning, letting the window be destroyed behind her. "Shit," he muttered as Whisper turned and jumped out of the now non-existent window.

"Green," she muttered as soon as she was in the air. More of the green uniformed Islanders and humans were waiting down below, each of them pointing those strange boxes at her. "Never mind, Orange!"

Green and Orange both came out of their canisters, but Green hadn't heard the last part, and they both imbued the wispon at the same time.

Whisper felt the umbrella rocket shoot her forward, across the entirety of the plaza. It was hovering her and it was using the rocket part. The wind blew passed her, and she was marveling at the fact that this should have been impossible. The variable wispon wasn't meant for multiple imbuements at the same time!

She landed on the other side of the plaza, on top of another section of buildings. Probably some kind of shops, she knew, but she hadn't had time to pay attention to what.

"Okay, what?" Orange asked as soon as she dis-imbued herself. "I knew there was more room in there, but now with the energy converter completely empty-"

"That was awesome though! Think we can do other combinations? Or, ooh, do you think we can pull off everyone!?" Green asked.

"I wouldn't want to, not really. Not yet!" Orange said. "That's not going to be easy to do."

"I know, but it'd be great!" Green said.

Whisper held up her hand. "I'll ask questions on the how later," Whisper said, as parts of the roof where she was standing started to disappear. "Any ideas besides run?"

"Nope." "I got nothing."

Right. So it was up to her. That was fine. She looked over at one of the skyscrapers next to her. "Green. Hover us over to the other side of this. Orange, keep an eye out in case they see us," she said, before knocking on Cyan and Pink's canisters. "Cyan, go up there and mark out an easy landing. Pink...keep us attached to the wall."

"Orr...I can force the wispon to go laserified, Pink can then use his power to keep us attached, and Orange can use hers to rocket us up!" Cyan came up with.

"Ooh, I like that plan! Yes, that plan! That plan!" Pink said.

She glanced over at Orange and Green. "There was plenty of room even with two of us," Green acquiesced. "After this, if she's wrong then we don't have to do her plans. But this one may work."

"What do you mean 'may work'!? When has my plans ever not worked?"

"Is that a sarcastic question?" Pink asked. "Because I can think of several."

"Alright, we'll try Cyan's," Whisper announced. Cyan imbued the wispon first, and Whisper felt the wispon get a bit lighter. Not so light it could take off on its own, but it was definitely shifting its own mass.

Pink imbued it next, and there was a sudden pull towards the skyscraper. A small pink line came from the wispon to the building, and Whisper took the moment to jump off of on the other side, keeping out of view of the enforcers. If that's what they were.

She felt herself be pulled, similar to the energy whips that they had used as part of the Resistance. Orange imbued the wispon next, and Green to make sure she didn't fall.

It took only a moment before Orange's energy overpowered the others, and she shot up to the roof of the skyscraper. She landed softly on the top, aided by Green, before the other three wisps dis-imbued the variable wispon.

"Alright, that was awesome!" Cyan decreed. "But how did you know that it'd work like that?"

"Cyan it was your plan!" Pink answered. "How did you know it would work like that!"

" I didn't! I had no idea!"

Whisper sighed. That was just like them, wasn't it? "I do want to know."

"Right, so Violet was messing with the variable wispon last night," Cyan started. Orange nodded, before her eyes widened.

"Wait, when she asked me how the energy converter actually emptied its energy!? I said it didn't, it was used to act as battery storage for us!"

"Exactly! She realized that we probably didn't need any extra 'battery' because the likelihood of us being drained was practically zero at this point. So she allowed it to flow into the wispon directly!"

Which was exactly what Smithy had taught her not to do. "Which made it have more room."

"Yeah but now the wispon can't be used to actually shoot bullets now. But I mean...that wasn't a problem right?" Orange asked.

No, not really. She almost never used it as an actual gun. It was capable of that, if she configured it the right way, not that she ever would. She'd used Orange for a sniper shot if she had to make one, as Orange almost never missed.

"Then she made one other change to the main configuration array," Cyan said. "But I didn't understand that one, Lavender did though."

"Oh yeah I remember that! She was saying there was some kind of bio-block on the...uh..." Orange started, before she knocked gently on Lavender's canister. "We're trying to figure out exactly what it was that Violet did to the variable wispon last night because now it allows multiple of us."

Lavender blinked. "Oh, the bio-marker? It was an energy marker that kept the configuration from shifting from one to the other based upon the original configuration, powered by whichever wisp was in there. It was a toggle, buried deep in there, and then of course the energy overflow had to be emptied."

Had...that been it? Was that literally everything that Violet had done?

A small sound made Whisper pause. She recognized it, but it's been ages since she last heard it. She raised a hand to her mask, letting the sound come out. "Whisper, this is Amy. I can't get into contact with Sonic or any of the others," Amy's older voice flooded in.

"They disappeared in front of me. I'm focused on trying to find them. Found Rough and Tumble, but..."

"Those two? Really? I haven't heard those names in years. We thought they'd turned over a new leaf."

She was taking the news of Sonic surprisingly well.

"Also, I'll see you in a few minutes. Tikal's watching the kids," Amy explained a moment after. Whisper blinked. Okay, she was not taking the news of Sonic's disappearance surprisingly well, she was in fact storming the place. She'd have to hurry if only to make sure that she didn't do exactly that.

"We will join you," Metal Sonic's voice said over the radio. Whisper gave a soft sigh. This was turning out to be a bad sign, immediately.

"Wait, no, don't!" Whisper tried to say before she was interrupted by a sudden cut out sound. Metal Sonic had disconnected.

"Was that just Metal Sonic?" Amy's voice asked over the radio. She must've thought that Whisper was talking to Metal Sonic only versus everyone on the radio. "Really glad I'm not bringing the kids. Be there in a bit! Don't do anything too dangerous!" The sound cut out from the radio.

"They're doing something stupid, aren't they? Whoever you talked to," Orange said. Whisper nodded.

"All of them. Amy, Metal Sonic at the least. That probably means Surge and Kit too, as much as I don't like that idea," Whisper admitted. "At least Jewel and Belle aren't coming. They aren't front-liners."

Pink shook his head, "Ah, no they aren't. But if Amy's coming, then what about Thunder and Velocity? Or Mata?"

"Probably means they're coming," Green said with more than a simple hint of worry.

"Amy said she left them with Tikal on Angel Island. So hopefully, no, they aren't."

"Phew, I was worried this was gonna be the last act for a while," Blue muttered. "Everyone's getting together for one last push, definitely trying to finish up."

"This isn't a story," Lavender spouted, rolling her eye. Mouth. Mouth eye.

"We've been saying that for ages but he doesn't believe us either," Cyan admitted. "At this point we just chalk it up to 'its a Blue thing' and call it a day. That's just this one, not most Blues."

"I was about to ask..."

Whisper sat down on the side, glance that most of the enforcers were now crawling down on the building down below. She could see their green uniforms trudge down the swiss-cheesed shop. It was unlikely they'd think to look up.

She had a few things she needed to do now. First things first, come up with a plan. Much as she'd done back at the Restoration, she came up with a bunch, and threw a bunch away just as fast as she did.

A; she needed to find Tangle and Tails. That was still priority. Abandon the others to look for them, and once she found them, hope that they knew where to find the others. Or make a time machine so this never happened.

She threw that plan out instantly. She wasn't about to leave Violet or Shadow, or Sonic or Knuckles, in their hands for any length of time if she could help it. Tangle and Tails...would simply have to wait.

Amy and Metal Sonic, at the least, were coming in as support. Which meant that maybe Sage, Surge, and Kit were too. Hopefully the three kids wouldn't, but Whisper knew better than to hope.

But how to find any of the two groups? Had the same thing happened to her that happened to the others? THere were more people here than there were before, certainly, and Rough and Tumble were...still in the business, apparently. They hadn't had time to explain anything.

And what had the enforcer meant by 'She'll doom them all'?

She was getting nowhere with no information, and considering all she's heard and experienced here, she doubted she'd get many answers.

She should probably start with going to the gates, making sure that Amy, Metal Sonic, and whomever may be accompanying them don't come in.

Actually the gates had shut, right? She should go check it out anyways. A loud banging sound rushed past her ears, and she held her ears shut for a moment. "Alright, so who let Blue explode?" Green asked.

Blue hovered next to him. "I didn't eat the chili, I swear! That wasn't me!" He 'offered'. Whisper sighed. Probably not the wisps then, considering it came from...the gates.

Oh no.

Amy was faster than Whisper had thought. "Green and Orange, imbue. We're going to check that out, it sounded like it came from the gates," Whisper barked with no more hesitation. The wisps gave a mock salute before Green and Orange imbued into the wispon.

Immediately she felt the umbrella control her fall down while Orange kept her at speed. A kind of orange umbrella, actually, if she had to guess. How the variable wispon had that configuration, she didn't even know.

She exited the square to find that the city...changed. Before it had been relatively vacant, with empty blocks everywhere she looked.

Now there were dozens of people everywhere, looking up and over and the green uniformed enforcers walking down each street. None that she recognized.

As she got closer to the gates, a few people started to call up to her to get her to come down, and she realized something had indeed happened. The gates had rusted shut.

And were being pounded down by something on the other side. Whisper reached up to her radio with her other hand, hoping that she could rely on one hand to hold herself up. As long as Orange didn't try anything fancy, she'd probably be okay.

As soon as she heard the sound of it going through, the gates folded in on themselves, and Whisper saw a very, very angry Amy Rose. Her usual dress was changed for a sporting outfit, and she had the kind of steel in her eyes that showed she wasn't about to take no for an answer.

Before Whisper could shout anything, or say anything, Amy ran into Zerotime. The instant she got past the first block, the green uniformed people showed up...and then Amy promptly disappeared.

"It's alright!" One of the green uniformed women shouted out. "The time trap got them. We'll deal with them in the prisons. You're all safe," they announced, the citizens around them all breathing a sigh of relief.

The time trap? Which meant that there was something going on here.

Whisper knelt down on the shop roof she'd landed on, taking out the wispon and activated the scope. "Can you read their lips?" She asked Orange, focusing on the woman who'd shouted.

She was some kind of cat, like a leopard or similar. "I can. Just keep focusing, and I'll try to get what you miss," Orange said for a moment.

Whisper wasn't the best at lip-reading, but she'd had to do it enough that she knew most basic phrases. The important bit was to watch the shape of the mouth, and the tongue inside it. Most people had a noticeable accent, even if they didn't think it.

"Trap always...moment. Prisons...fifth floor," Whisper said after a long moment. The woman was asking another of the uniformed men to keep an eye on the prisons, on the fifth floor. But the fifth floor of what?

She hadn't noticed anything like a specialized jail yet. Which meant it had to be part of some other building, like an array of shops or the palace. There was a big palace right in the center, and Whisper felt the urge to check it out, but had waited until she would have had to.

A big palace like that meant things were kept there, like people or treasure. She wasn't much of a treasure hunter, but if the treasure was other people...

The sound of a rocket approaching brought her back out to the forefront. "Prisons are on the fifth floor of the palace, left side," Orange reported back. "I think we can find the others!"

"Hopefully we can also use that to find Tails and Tangle," Whisper admitted. She glanced out the gates, as the large flare of sand floated up. That would be Metal Sonic, probably. "Metal Sonic, don't come in, I repeat, do not come in!"

Metal Sonic seemed to not hear her, or just flat out ignoring her as he rammed into where the gates would be, going right past them a second later. Almost as if she knew what was going to happen, he disappeared a second later.

"What's with these interlopers!? That's the second one today!" The same woman shouted.

"Fifth actually!" Surge's voice called out as she roared in a hail of electricity and lightning. Kit was right behind her, a tsunami of water gliding over the non-existent desert.

Whisper blinked. Right outside was a canyon. And it was not the canyon that they'd come in from. In fact it didn't look anything similar to where they'd come in from. Before she could think to ask, or tell them to stop, both Kit and Surge disappeared from out of her view.

Whisper sighed. "They're like lemmings, it feels," she sighed. "Time to stage a rescue operation," she said a second later.

"It was always going to be one. The question was how many allies were we going to have?" Orange asked.

"My vote was going to be on three. Total, not including us. You, Shadow, and Violet." Green offered.

"To be fair, my vote was on everyone. That'd you ever met in this new time," Blue said. "And...I'm kinda close!"

"You're close nowadays, but when we started I thought I had a pretty good guess!" Green said.

Pink's eye narrowed. "I thought it was just going to be Shadow and us. Because you know, we shouldn't have brought Violet along."

"She wanted to come along, and I wanted to prove how dangerous these adventures could be," Whisper shrugged. "Let her know she shouldn't compare herself to her dad."

"I don't think it worked," Cyan said. "She's still comparing herself to her dad, and she's on the trip."

"No one else coming in? Come on, we still need Belle, and Jewel. And the other three kids although I'm hoping they don't come in," Cyan shouted into the canyon outside the gates.

"Hey, you!" One of the enforcers shouted at her. Whisper stopped and froze for a moment. "You're not supposed to be on the rooftops. They're dangerous," they said, fairly reasonably. "There's a staircase behind you to get down,"

Whisper raised a hand, as if saying thank you, before she walked out of his view. "How to get to the palace...?" She muttered, before she glanced up. The palace was huge, but she had a decent location now. Fifth floor, left side.

The enforcer down below didn't seem to have recognized her. "Pink, imbue? I think we should try to avoid getting spotted," Whisper said.

Pink nodded, his confusion evident. The spiked hammer wispon popped itself up again, before Whisper switched it to the line configuration.

She flipped it onto a nearby pillar, before she swung herself off into one of the more empty blocks, leashing from one line to another. She'd get there soon, and this was much, much faster than running.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See last chapter.

Reflection

Shadow found himself in the middle of a dark, black void. There was no solid ground, and yet when he moved an inch forward, it landed on something solid, feeling like a year had passed.

"Is this what you wanted?" A voice called out from nearby. It was oddly grating, as if just hearing it brought screws to his head. "Is this how it ends?" The voice asked again.

"Who are you?" Shadow asked, his eyes gazing around every corner. He was expecting his night vision to kick in at any moment now, but instead all he found was more darkness, an infinite abyss of black and shadow that seemed to highlight his own existence all the more.

There was a laugh around him. "Who I am? That is a question that you should be asking. After all, who are you, Shadow the Hedgehog?"

Shadow rolled his eyes. "I've been over this," he answered simply. "You obviously know my name. Then let me ask again, what is yours," he dropped the questioning tone. There was no question in his voice anymore, ready and eager to take the fight to anyone and everyone.

The last thing he remembered was walking to the inner plaza of Zerotime. Then he felt a falling sensation, and here he was. How had Zerotime trapped him?

He couldn't feel the chaos emerald he always had on him either, so he couldn't just chaos control out of here like he usually could.

"I am but a shadow of Shadows," the voice rang out. Shadow blinked as the abyss...converged into a single point in front of him. A mirror reflection of himself, standing proud. The inhibitor rings that he had on him were almost shining, a far cry from the rusted ones that he kept on him.

A shadow of Shadows. "A reflection of me," Shadow stated simply. The reflection nodded. That wasn't the surprise then.

"Do you think you made good choices, Shadow the Hedgehog? Letting Rouge and Omega die the way they did? You told Whisper one thing, but you know you lied," the reflection said.

"I made the only choices I could. I didn't let them die."

"You could have fought more. Done more. Had you been there for them, they might have lived. And instead here you are. On another journey, with the one who abandoned you all..."

"She didn't have a choice," Shadow stated. His eyes narrowed. "Is there a point to this?"

"The point is what you may think. You are wrong. There is no getting out of here, Shadow. You may as well give up."

"I gave up once before," Shadow answered instantly. A connection that he knew he hadn't felt was suddenly there, as if it was always there. "I refuse to give up now. I refuse to give up on Whisper. She will make it home. By my name, I promise that," he snarled, the chaos energy coming easily to his hand.

The reflection laughed before a large yellow spear pierced its head, and the black dissolved from Shadow's vision.

Violet groaned as she forced herself to stand up. The last thing she remembered was walking into the plaza of Zerotime, with Whisper right behind them. She had stayed behind to...talk with the wisps? Yeah, that was it.

The wisps had wanted some words, and Violet had wanted to give them their privacy. They had admitted to her, the night before, that privacy was something that was new to them, and so they liked to celebrate it every time they got it.

And Whisper was very, very good at granting them privacy. Every time they wanted or needed something, she was there, and every time they wanted to be alone, Whisper allowed them to be, unless in combat situations, which they understood.

Planet Wisp was mostly pleasant to be in, except for the one time Eggman got involved. Sure, they had problems too, what with the black bomb wisps wanting to create new valleys and the tribe of pink spikes wisps deciding to make a new game called spikeball that only they could play, or the crimson wisps deciding that they liked being able to flow through time and so randomly decided to leave one day and then come back a moment later with random stuff stolen from the amusement park.

Violet admitted she didn't quite get it. But that was what the wisps did. They made things hard to understand.

"And you think you can start to get there?" a voice called out around her. Violet stopped, before she turned around. All good jump scares were behind the person.

It was a near perfect copy of her, except this one had her mom's gem in her forehead, her fur sharper, less organized. Less soft. "And you. Little old Violet."

It took a few moments for Violet to get it. "This is a trap, isn't it? Zerotime has a trap in place to put everyone who isn't supposed to come here to some other places, and force them to...taunt themselves?"

"And she thinks she's smart! Give the little girl a cookie. A nice, chocolate chip cookie, with a gooey center. After all, what could be better for a little girl."

"Definitely taunt," Violet said, ignoring her copy. "Which means that you're supposed to be trying to get me angry. Which tells me this place feeds on anger and fear," she reasoned.

The reflection growled. "Stop ignoring your better half!"

"I don't see Mata around here," Violet said with a cheesy grin. "I know I'm not the best. I know I'm not 'worthy' of my dad's name. I'm not even worthy of Dad's name. And yet I stand here, having traveled further than ever before, because I have the chance to prove I'm something better than I am."

"No powers, no abilities, nothing special! Not even smart!"

"Oh, I know," Violet admitted. "But it's in that 'being smart' category that I don't need to be. I know I'm not as smart as Mom, either of them, or even either of my Dad's. No, all that I need to be...is smarter than you," she said, smiling gently as the illusion faded away.

"You can't even move. What kind of name is Sonic for a guy who can't move?" Sonic's doppelganger announced to him.

Sonic himself was distinctly unimpressed with the trap he'd found himself in. He hadn't wandered in fast. He knew that. So the fact the trap had sprung and got him and everyone else...well, he was more impressed it got Shadow than anything. Shadow was capable of Chaos Control with an emerald, and Sonic knew he had one.

He was, however, worried for Violet. The doppelganger could say anything that he wanted about Sonic himself. It'd been going for a while, all the doubts that plagued him, that kept him up at night. Violet didn't have the years of life experience to be able to realize that was the entire point of living.

All kinds of words rankled at him. That he'd been unable to actually defeat Eggman permanently, and instead he'd been defeated by just time itself. He hadn't been fast enough to save his friends. He hadn't been able to save Rouge and Omega. He hadn't been able to save Tails and Tangle.

He'd been unable to help Jewel, or Belle. Or Shadow, or Cream, or Vanilla, or Espio, or Blaze, or Marine...friends that he'd left behind, but not really.

The words hit him hard, and yet he stared at the doppelganger. He was whole. He was fast. Sonic was not, either of those.

And yet this Sonic, a copy of him at seventeen, was telling him that he was wasting his time? He'd had twenty three years. More life experience than this doppelganger could even think of presuming he had.

"Nothing!? You are nothing, Sonic. A waste of an era," the doppelganger said.

"That's okay," Sonic shrugged. "I've made my peace with what I've done. I stopped Eggman more times than I can count, and now...I just want to relax in peace. Raise my kids. Love my kids, all four of 'em. So yeah, bring on your words of how I'm 'useless' and 'forgotten'. And I'll point you to five reasons that I'm not."

"You..."

"And hell, I'll do more than that! Yeah, I can't race Shadow anymore. But you know what? He and I don't care! We know he'll out-age me, forever immortal, and yet he still trusts me to come to me! I've never given up on Tails yet, and I doubt he'll ever give up on me. Same with Tangle, and same with Whisper."

"But you-"

"So bring it on. Bring on your words, and your failures. Lash out at me all you want, and I'll point to everyone who hasn't forgotten me, who will forever remember me for me. I've paid my price, in blood, sweat, and tears. And at the end of the day, we did a darn sight better than anyone before me ever has," Sonic smirked as the illusion faded away.

Knuckles was meditating, as he always did whenever he entered a new area he'd never been to before. This one was new, too. A dark abyss, unlike anything he'd seen before.

But there was a memory there, buried deep inside, of being in Angel Island when Lava Reef went out for the first time. He'd been...six? Or seven. He was alone, as he'd been for as long as he could remember. But he had language, so he suspected that someone had taught him.

"This is the great guardian of the Master Emerald?" The voice called out. It had his voice, and it had his memories, but it didn't know he was chaos sensitive. It was why he instinctively didn't trust Sonic or Shadow.

They gave off an uncontrolled chaos aura, and that sense brushed up against his trained chaos senses, and set off dozens of alarm bells.

He'd learned, since then, that it was the chaos emerald's way of marking their favorites. They loved Sonic. Even before he used them against The End, they'd chosen him. A harbinger of chaos, a sign of life yet to live. And he'd lived. Oh, how he had lived.

He had done every experience Knuckles could imagine, and many that he couldn't. And Knuckles was spent on the Angel Island, preventing worse from occurring. "Useless! Forgotten and pale, you can't even control the gem you think you do!"

No one controlled the Master Emerald. That was the point of the Master Emerald. It was the controller. His eyes opened to see the purple eyes of the double in front of him. "The servers are the seven Chaos. Chaos is power, power enriched by the heart. The controller is the one that serves to unify the Chaos," he recited.

Shadow's chaos emerald glowed from wherever he was, and Knuckles knew he was nearby. He felt Sonic's chaos emerald, although why he had it Knuckles wasn't sure. He felt another one nearby, too. He'd been traveling with Whisper, but it was unlikely that she had one.

Whisper was powerful enough not to need one. She may not have been chaos incarnate, but what she was, was resourceful. Her wisps were powerful, but she never let that get to her head.

He had another word of power for her, not that she was aware of that. He doubted she was even aware of what they were. He'd felt it through the Master the instant the first had been given, the most powerful of them all. He'd felt it when the second had been found, and etched.

He didn't know what it meant. But he wasn't meant to know, because the Master Emerald made sure that the message was made clear.

"An incapable guardian. You sat on your island while your nieces and nephews flailed on the ground, unable to see the sky that you sought to protect!"

"Flailed?" This one he would respond to. "They didn't flail. They failed. And that's okay. Just as it's okay on all of us. Because it's what I needed to understand," he said. The doppelganger gave a look of shock before the illusion vanished.

The doppelganger of Amy was crushed under the weight of the Piko Piko Hammer. "Give me back Sonic! This really isn't hard!" She yelled.

More doubles of Amy appeared in the dark abyss, each one seemingly more and more afraid. "Come on! You act as if I'm a failure to a mother because of some financial troubles!? I've met far worse couples than that, at least Sonic and I work through that!" She yelled.

"And yeah, he has times when he bothers me. But I have mine when I bug him too, and we both know that. But at the same time, I don't see a younger me changing Velocity's diapers while trying to catch him running at mach one!" She yelled, hitting another one in the face. It flew back into a second, both of them disappearing a moment later.

"And yeah, maybe I could trust my kids more. But you know, this place is really, obviously dangerous. What mother would I be if I allowed it without so much as a 'by your leave'? Sonic could do it, and I could do it, but that didn't make it right!"

A third and a fourth were cowed under the words. The hammer swung, and they disappeared into black mist. "If this is some kind of trap, it's a really bad one!" Amy roared. "Seriously, I feel him, and he's right there!" Amy pointed to a random direction.

In all honesty Sonic was with her wherever she went, and when she couldn't get a hold of him she did feel the worse. So she entrusted Tikal with watching Velocity, Mata, and Thunder. And made sure that she knew of everything she could possibly need to know about the three.

Tikal's eyes were reasonably spiraled and confused by the time Amy was done handing her the list of things her kids preferred. Of course, if Violet was there it would have been easy. But the girl wanted to leave.

And really, if she wasn't safe with Whisper, then who was she safe with? Certainly not Shadow, but Amy didn't blame the black hedgehog for that. He just led a dangerous life. And Whisper had all the wisps to help out, to make sure that Violet didn't take things too seriously.

And there was the fact that she snuck out. Really, Amy had to hand it to her, if she didn't already know that she was in the Tornado's storage area she might have been worried.

Another slam of the hammer on the ground, and a wide-eyed version of Amy stood there. "Please don't kill me," she said quietly. She was much younger than the Amy of now.

Amy tossed it around in her head. "Can you give me Sonic back?" She asked. The doppelganger shook her head, and was immediately dropped to the ground. "Then no," she said as the illusion was disrupted.

Metal Sonic stood, his blank eyes staring out into the black abyss. Of course, he knew that it wasn't. It was a chaos-empowered illusion trap, meant to attack the weak minds of those that didn't know better.

But he did know better, and he was a robot. It was quite likely that it shouldn't have worked on him, but it did.

A double version of him, from twenty three years ago, popped out. It had the same call sign, the same ID number, and the same hardware dates as his own. It was a nightmare of his own software and hardware, manifested into a form that his visual cues could catch.

"Metal Sonic of now," it said quietly.

"Metal Sonic of then," he responded instantly. "As you can see, I have no doubts."

"You have plenty. You do not know if you are following Master's wishes. You do not know if your Master's words still apply. You do not know if Violet has listened to your words, and this worries you. You have many doubts."

"You are correct," Metal Sonic said quietly. It was an odd feeling, to have it spelled out to his auditory sensors. "And yet while the doubts plague me, they are far from the only thing keeping me here."

"You are also correct. The chaos empowerment in this trap was not meant to last forever."

"Zerotime is Local Time. The heart of their complex is the local time, manipulated into the fabric of the fourth dimension."

"You are quite intelligent, for a robot."

"I am a robot. I am forced by programming to look at things logically."

"And yet logic has failed you, because if this illusion cannot affect robots...than how are you here?"

"For the same reason Sage could be here, if she so chose."

"And yet you do not feel fear? You are a robot, which means you can be destroyed, remade, and forced to work for a new master."

"They may change my outside all they wish. They may dent me, burn me, all they wish. They will never see me bow to another Master."

"You have doubts."

"As you see, I understand now that my programming has grown beyond that of what I once was."

"Which means you are capable of doubt."

"It also means I am capable of reading into orders, to act in the best intention of the order as possible. It also means I can choose to not listen to specific orders."

"You will be destroyed."

"I do not fear the bleakness of non-objectivity. I was created out of such, and I will return to it when my time is done."

His doppelganger, a faker of Metal Sonic, slowly disappeared. He did not fear death, as he was not truly alive, either.

The illusion slowly disappeared from his vision.

Surge was snarling as she glanced around, before she straightened herself up. Why was she doing this again? Oh right, she wanted to prove to Wolfy she wasn't some kind of one-trick pony.

A dark place, with an even darker horizon. "Huh. Still nothing compared to Starline," she humored herself thinking of the duck.

She had to use humor, because she wasn't sure if he was dead or not. The damn duck had managed to defeat death multiple times, and although everyone said he died, Eggman most of them, she still wasn't one hundred percent sure. She'd never found the body.

Even if she did, she doubted she'd believe it.

No, she was here to prove to Whisper that she could be better than she was. And it sounded like the group had needed help, and although she wasn't eager to actually help Sonic, she knew it was the best way to prove that she was an actual hero.

Or at least, she wished she was. She'd gotten the taste of it before, but then...well, things happened, and Clutch was lying to her, and then she was down on the outs again.

She threw up her hands behind her hand, staring out into the abyss. "So what's this supposed to be? A purgatory for those who can't even die right?" She asked no one.

"No. It's a purgatory for those who can't live right," a voice said behind her. A vile voice, a voice that was in her head this entire time, and she gathered electricity to her hands because she wanted him out-

The blast went into the darkness just as quick. She hadn't seen him. "Where are you," she snarled. That was Starline's voice, definitively. How he was here, she didn't know, but she knew he was alive now, and she wouldn't rest until he was put down like the damned he was.

"Why Surge...is that anyway to ask me how I've been? I'm surprised to find that I'm your inner voice," Starline's voice said behind her. Another turn, and another surge of lightning. Nothing but darkness once again. She snarled.

"Most of the others have an earlier version of themselves guiding them through this, because of the time spent with a non-local timed version of that...wolf, ess, thing. What is the name for a female wolf? Besides bitch, that is," Starline's oily, slippery voice said to her side. She turned, expecting to see his face-

She was met with her own. Starline's voice came out of it though. "You do see yourself as him, in a way. Tell me Surge...why do you do what you do?" The doppelganger asked her.

Surge snarled, throwing another bolt of lightning at the thing. It went straight through, and Surge saw that more power would...probably not help. But dammit, she was better than this!

"You don't know, do you? To go from day to day, without ever knowing why," the voice was merging from Starline's to a less raspy version of her own.

"You ain't gonna tell me. And my reasons are my own."

"But that's not the point, Surge...the point is...do you know?" The doppelganger asked. The illusion...stayed up.

Kit looked around, not seeing Surge anywhere. "Surge? Surge!" He called out, expecting to hear some kind of echo, even in the pitch black that it was.

He couldn't feel any water nearby, either. He normally always had some on him, especially for things like this.

Metal Sonic had called him on the radio, asking for him and Surge's help in assuring that Whisper made it to Zerotime, and that she would be able to free her friends. Why Whisper was so important, Kit didn't know.

It could be that because she traveled through time already. But she was far from the only time traveler. Sonic had done it. Shadow...probably had? It wouldn't have surprised him.

It could be that it was because the Time Eater was chasing her. But why would Metal Sonic care if the Time Eater was? The only reason he even knew what it was because Shadow had told him while heading to Mt. Mary's.

He'd done a lot of research afterwards, trying to figure out what it was, and each time he barely got further than the name.

"Hey. Look at you, trying to be all grown up and not useless," Surge's voice called out from the side. A bright grin showed up as he turned...to see only inky blackness.

"Oh. This is one of those doubt things, isn't it, where you try to claim I'm full of doubts and things like that."

"You are, though. Full of them. I barely need to think to get 'em," Surge's voice said from behind him. "Nothing compared to me, can't compare to Tails, can't compare to even Violet, who's only twelve years old. And yet, you try to claim your superior?"

"I never did that. I don't care about any of that. I just want to be useful to Surge. That's all I've ever wanted."

"Is that all you've wanted? Or is that just...you? What is it that you want to do, Kit the Fennec? You think you're comfortable with simply following Surge around, letting her make all the decisions...but are you? Really?"

"It's what I was made for."

"But is that what you want!?"

"Yes!" Kit screamed back. "No! I don't know!"

"You've had so much time to figure it out, so much time, and yet what do you do with it? Instead of trying to live, you hide out in the mountains, complaining that to live amongst normal people would put your research at ease."

"I have to finish it. I have to protect Surge, and I have to protect her from her own mistakes!"

"But did you think of this, Kit the Fennec...?" The voice called out, and Kit knew that it was about to voice the one doubt that had haunted his nightmares and dreams for years.

"Did you think of what would happen if Sonic didn't want it?"

She woke up with a massive headache splitting her head. "Ow..." She muttered, putting one hand on her head. It felt worse than it normally did when she overexerted herself.

She did that a lot, nowadays. Always questioning if someone had seen her mom, or her dad. Anyone she knew. Some of them had, and she got to say her goodbyes again, even if they knew she didn't even know they left.

Most of the time they were okay with that. They recognized that she was inverse of what she should have been.

She should have been brave. She was a coward. She should have been smart. She was dumb. She should have been the older sibling. She was the younger. She should have been better. She was only worse.

She wanted to be like her sister as much as she could. Her sister, the brave one, the smart one. Who cares that she didn't have powers?

Certainly she didn't. The younger sister had never cared that her older siblings never had the same powers. She was her sister, and that was that.

"You are, by far, the youngest person that has ever been caught," her voice called out. She turned to see a duplicate of herself, a yellow-tannish cat, with two triangle, almost fox-like ears on her head.

And two long tails stretching out from behind. "Yeah. Sorry..." Mata said, as she held her arm close to her.

The duplicate of herself blinked, before she walked closer, sitting down next to her. "What brings you here?"

"Don't you already know?"

"I do know. But I want to hear you say it. I need to hear the conviction in your voice."

"I don't have conviction. I thought it was a bad idea, and I knew it was a bad idea, but I had to follow Mom."

"You 'had' to? She was making you?"

"No, I had to save Violet! I'm the only one who can. The inverse of life, the inverse of death, and so many people were worried about this time, right now!" Mata shouted.

"You think you're weak," the duplicate answered for her. "You think you're a coward, unskilled. But...you're not," she kept going. "You can push yourself farther. You already have."

"I can't live up to my Dad's, either of them! And I never will!"

"Why would that matter?" The duplicate asked. "Would you think they care? Do you think they're love is that much of a transaction?"

"...I don't know. It's been so long since I've seen Dad..."

"Do you trust him, Mata?" The duplicate asked, putting her hand out. "Either of them, Sonic or Miles?" The voice started to change a bit.

"Of course I do."

"Then trust in their love for you. Trust in Amy's love for you, trust in my love for you..." The duplicate had fully changed by now, the tan fur changing to a beautiful lavender, the likes of which Mata only recalled in her dreams and in photos. "And wake...up..." Blaze said once more, dropping out of the blackness as the illusion around Mata dropped.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See last chapter.

Gray

Whisper found herself into a rhythm. Aim for a spot, combine Orange and Pink's powers to make a line that connected with that direct spot, and use that line to swing herself as far as she could. At the end, disconnect from that spot, and find another one.

As it was using her own mass and gravity's edge, she found herself soaring at a quick and rapid pace. The green tunic clad enforcers down on the ground sometimes looked up, a few of the civilians pointing up at the hopefully mysterious wolf-spider.

That was what Blue had called it, the second time she started her rhythm. She was a fast learner, but being a fast learner didn't mean much when the situation was almost certainly do or die. She kept a few moments at the lowest point on each swing to make sure she knew where she was in relation to the palace.

Fifth floor, left side. She had to keep repeating it to herself. That's where her friends were. Violet, Shadow, Sonic, Knuckles...hopefully even Tails and Tangle. Amy, Metal Sonic, Kit...and she supposed Surge too was there. That was a thing. To keep her there though...? She'd burn that bridge when she crossed it, she supposed.

She hadn't quite forgiven Surge for what she did, and Whisper highly doubted that anyone would think of her badly for that.

"Stop! I don't know what you're doing but you shouldn't be doing it!" one of the enforcers was yelling at the bottom of the road. Whisper barely gave him a glance before she twisted her next disconnect point and connect point to swing around a few of the structures. "Someone stop her!" they yelled.

She flung herself around one of the buildings, some kind of residential or office tower from what she could see, before she looked down again. Most of the civilians had left, only a few of the kids were left, pointing up at her and shouting.

Whisper gave a sigh. Of course she'd be highly visible. It was the middle of the day, she guessed, and she was wearing a black cloak that was standard for her. There were at least two, maybe three enforcers trying to keep up with her as she swung and swung.

"I think we might be in trouble," Green said as he looked down. "They aren't going to stop chasing us."

"Only one thing left to try!" Cyan grinned, as much as the cyan wisp could grin, and Whisper suddenly realized that maybe taking the wisps' geas was, in fact, a bad thing. Green and Cyan high fived each other, or at least as close to it as they could, before they too, imbued the wispon at the same time.

Orange, Pink, Green, Cyan. They'd at most done a three combination wispon earlier. Whisper worried about it for as long as she could before it would take effect. The line disconnected from her chosen point far earlier than intended, and she was sent hurtling towards the ground at a rapid pace, and getting faster the more she fell.

The wispon was changing itself. "Whatever you're doing, do it fast!" Whisper said, spreading out her arms and legs and trying to slow her fall as fast as she could. She didn't know what it'd do, but this was definitely a Cyan plan. She'd have to improvise.

Which, to be fair, she was doing most of the time anyways. If anything, that thought just made it more obvious.

She felt Orange's power first, directing her skyward from his rocket. She felt Green's next, in that she wasn't feeling gravity anymore, the wispon essentially gliding through the air with Green and Orange combined. Then she felt Pink's, which was attaching her clothes to the wispon so she didn't need to hold on pretty much at all.

Cyan's was next. And she felt herself get lighter as the hyper-energetic wisp took over the entire array, both her and the wispon, as they started to swirl and stretch, thin and elongate. Like a beam of light through a small slit, Whisper felt herself change.

Was this what imbuement felt like? She knew she couldn't be imbued, it was a rare skill in the first place, except for Lavender who apparently could do it as part of her transformation to a nega-wisp. She had meant to ask Sonic, although for him it had probably been years since he'd last been imbued. Maybe he wouldn't remember the feeling.

It was easy to think like this, she realized. She couldn't move or turn her head, and it seemed like her entire body had been turned into a tube, turning inside out constantly, and yet guided by the power of the four wisps that imbued the wispon at the same time. Is that why Smithy had made it even possible?

Or had he not known? A singular wispon with a known wisp was...well, it wasn't exactly easy to make but it certainly wasn't the hardest thing in the world either. She herself had made a flamethrower wispon in the early parts of the war, with the help of one of the Burst wisps. Red, it had been. But it was also far more aggressive than she liked, and she gave it, with the wisp's permission, to the local Resistance chapter.

Then she'd been picked up by the Diamond Cutters. And the rest...was history.

The Variable Wispon was unique in that any amount of different wisps could imbue it, one at a time, to get it to change its own configuration. Smithy had told her that it wasn't possible to have more than one imbue it at once, he'd tried.

But what if he hadn't, and only said he had? Or if he had, had Violet changed much more than she said she had? Then the wisps said she had? She allowed the wisps to have secrets, because that was just how she worked. She had secrets too, and wouldn't want anyone to pry into those.

But if the wisps had lied to her, that wasn't a secret. That was something far, far more destructive. And if the wispon had changed this much...she had told Violet to look at it. And she had, and figured out more than Whisper had ever in only ten minutes. When Tails had looked at it, he gave it a good look through, before saying that wispons weren't his particular cup of tea.

It wasn't that he didn't know, but rather that wispons ran on different physics entirely. And at the same age as Violet had, she had figured it out. Maybe she was better with weapons? But her workshop in Green Hills hadn't been filled to the brim with them, but she knew that Tails' workshop had inventions of every kind and caliber. And had been for years.

Maybe the wisps had changed something, without telling her. That was something they could do, and would do if it was proven entertaining enough. But they had seemed shocked themselves that the wispon could now take two, three, or even as it was now, four of them. Pink to include her as part of the wispon array, Green for the lightening of gravity, Orange for the thrust, and Cyan for the directions. One wisp, on their own, could not do this.

But four wisps, working in harmony, could. This way, that way, Whisper felt herself being pulled apart and put back together again. They were slowing down, as Orange's endurance was not the best of the main wisps. She hadn't seen many other orange wisps though, so she wouldn't know if Orange was comparable to other ones. Maybe she was.

Even with Cyan doing mostly just the directional changes, the hyperactive wisp was still moving her forward, even if it wasn't to the same speed or ability as what Orange could do. She felt herself turn left, followed by a right, then another right, then a left, she saw only a white focused void around her.

Was she supposed to be doing anything? Whisper hoped not, because the wisps had done a good job of making sure that she couldn't, even if she wanted to.

Then suddenly a green building appeared in her vision, and just as quickly she snapped back to normal three dimensional spacetime. She had barely an instant to blink as what that meant as the wisps all hid in their canisters, her body still moving forward.

She slammed into it hard. Cold, hard stone. That's what these things would be made out of, weren't they? Whisper could feel her arm bend in a way that it wasn't supposed to, and her shoulder wasn't much better.

She fell off the wall, which was surprisingly based on how far into the stone her imprint was, before she landed hard on the ground with a stonelike thud. The variable wispon landed next to her, crashing into the ground. "Ow," she said simply, the pain in her back and stomach flaring up again, now tied with the pain in her arm.

"That looked like quite a fall. And a crash," another girl said from nearby. Whisper gave her the barest glance, before she tensed up. Emerald tunic, this time a wolf much like herself, except much more gray in color. She must have noticed Whisper tensing. "Woah, hey, nothing's bad gonna happen. Just need to check up on you, alright?" she asked, pulling out a different strange device than the square like one that the dog pulled out earlier.

A purple light shot out, scanning everything over her. "Let's see..." she muttered, before she just stared at it for a second. She turned to Whisper, "How are you walking?" she asked simply. She looked towards the emerald building. "Someone get out here, we need medical!" she called out.

That was bad. That was bad, very bad. Whisper struggled to push herself up, only to realize that her limbs weren't really responding. They were as if her brain was getting an error message, saying, 'error limb not found'. She could still see it though.

She hoped she hadn't been paralyzed. Not this close, Tangle was literally right there. That's all she wanted, that's all she'd ever wanted, and the lemur was just now out of reach.

Another skunk, this time with a tail, appeared in her vision. "Is this the one that Diego's been after?" he asked congenially. "Before you panic and hurt yourself more," he said, looking down at Whisper. "You're going to be alright. We just need to ask a few questions, that's all."

That was bad. That was bad, very bad.

Whisper felt her legs get pulled up first, and she almost sighed with relief. She could still feel, which meant that she was just so injured she couldn't move. That was all. Still a massive pain in the tail, but not nearly as bad as it could have been. Then her arms were picked up by the skunk, and she could see the wolfess dragging her inside the emerald building, the variable wispon slung over her shoulder.

The inside was surprisingly enough, not green. But rather a mix of blues, browns, and various other colors that made her think of general authority. There were still plenty of greens thrown in, but they were mostly just that; thrown in. As if someone had realized what a dull place it was without any other colors.

She was put down softly on a nearby couch. The same wolfess that saw her fall grabbed a chair, sitting down next to her. "Alright, this may sting. Hopefully it stings," the wolfess said, pulling out a small shot of some kind of red liquid. It wasn't blood, Whisper knew, but whatever it was she didn't know.

She felt the effects near instantly. Her breathing was suddenly much easier. Her shoulder almost popped back into place, and she could feel the injuries on her legs, which she'd mostly just ignored, start to vanish in front of her eyes. Her back pain that had been bugging her for weeks at this point, it seemed, slowly went away as if it was never there.

"There, you feel better?" The wolf enforcer asked, sitting back on the chair. "If you want your wispon, it's right there," she said, pointing to the opposite side of the couch. "Now, before Diego realizes you're here and timesets now, may I ask you a few things?"

Whisper pushed herself up, rolling her shoulders gently. "Who's Diego?" she asked simply.

"Ah, starting off with this. Alright, fair's fair. Twenty questions. I'll answer one, then you answer one, we'll start off easy. Diego is Rough and Tumble's boss. He found them as a mercenary force in AR1545. They weren't the most competent, but they were at least silly enough that it softened the enforcer's hand with the locals quite nicely," she explained. "He's the one who told us to be on the lookout for a brown wolf with a black cloak, several wisps of various abilities, and that thing," she said, pointing to the wispon. "Now my question. Who are you?" she asked.

"Whisper."

"Whisper the wolf. The Restoration?" she asked, tilting her head. "Odd. I don't think we picked any fights with your team."

"Don't you want to kill Sonic?"

The other wolf tilted her head before shaking her head. "Not...exactly. I don't know what upper management wants. I can give ideas. Most of us in Timeroot are just here because we were either born into it, like myself, or because we had nowhere else to go."

She looked towards Whisper. "Is that why you're here? To make sure we can't...I mean that's a valid reason, more so than many others," she started to say. "I'm Gray," she smiled, as Whisper's eyebrow rose. "Yes, named after the fur," she smiled, in the way that suggests she wasn't happy at all.

Gray looked down at the device in her hands, before her eyes went to the wispon. "If you ask me, if anyone was going to try to kill a hero like Sonic...and yes, we've heard of his exploits even here, then only the Timeroot could do it. It would change timelines, but we've navigated worse scenarios before."

"How?"

"How do we navigate?" Gray asked, as Whisper nodded. "It's complicated. About fifteen years ago local time, or about three hundred years ago your time, there was a pack of echidnas that, to be honest, messed up. They pissed off an old god, or...I'm not sure what they were. Either way, the end result is that the echidnas died off, the exception of one line. Timeroot's wanted the Master Emerald, if you know what that is, for ages."

"I'm aware of what it is. I'm friends with the guardian," Whisper admitted. That wasn't technically true. They were at least colleagues, and knowledgeable of each other. Whisper often praised Knuckles' self-control, and ability to determine the right path from the start.

He was, however, quite naive and gullible to thinking the best of people, which was something that she'd seen through dozens of times. Perhaps that was the problem of dealing with Mimic, the scars left on her psyche.

"Oh wow," Gray said, blinking in surprise. "I wasn't expecting that."

"He got caught by your time trap. As did many other friends of mine."

"...Does that include Sonic the Hedgehog?"

"Among others."

Gray sighed. "That's not a good sign. It means the Master Emerald is alone right now."

"It's not."

"It's...not? Then who's up there?"

"Other guardians," Whisper said, deliberately being vague. She didn't trust Gray, and she doubted that Gray trusted her, but at least she was getting information. And Gray did help heal her up.

"Huh. Nothing in the reports say anything about that," Gray said, looking down at her device again. "Alright, last question from me. If I were to let you out, right now, what would you do?" she asked.

Whisper didn't immediately answer. She doubted that Gray would want the answer to be, 'to break my friends out', which was the absolute truth. She was so close to it.

The device pinged, and Gray glanced down at it. "Huh. Diego put an update on your report, saying that you came here through the Root Clock, but by using a separate energy source than a usual clockwatcher. Wait a second..." she murmured, as she quickly started moving through menus and files on the device. Whisper didn't know how it worked, but she supposed it had to be some kind of advanced computer system.

"Clockwatcher?"

"It's a device built by the older Timeroot. It's how they timeset to various ways, but you have to do it with temporal energy. I'm not sure how it works, I just know that it does. Most Timeroot citizens don't have one, only we Enforcers use them a lot."

"It's uncommon, then?"

"It's rare. Unless you found a jailbroken one, and those ones are illegal to use, for obvious reasons. Root clock's been missing for eons. Even with our ability to timeset."

"They record where people go. Root clock?"

"When people go, but yes. The Root clock is supposedly the one out there that anyone can use. The first one ever made. But that also opens us up to Time Eaters."

"You know of Time Eaters?"

"When you start time traveling as we do, yes," Gray said, flipping through the records. "They're...well, I'd say monsters, but they really aren't. They're more just forces of nature. People aren't meant for time traveling."

Gray glanced down, before putting the device down and staring straight into Whisper's eyes. "You're being followed by a Time Eater, aren't you?" she asked flatly.

Whisper said nothing, instead matching Gray's eyes stare for stare. Forces of nature? That was basically what Sonic had said, too. There was no way to kill them. They were to hunt, and hunt, and end, and end.

All she could do was end the ends before the end ended her.

"We're going to die, you know?" Gray said simply after a minute. "The Time Eater is going to hunt us just as it does you. The shield around Zerotime is enough to keep them from hunting us if we timeset inside the city, or if the city itself does a timeset. But you...it's following you. It's following you, into the city."

"I don't want to get others hurt."

"It's nothing you could have known," Gray shrugged. "And honestly, most of us will be just fine. Zerotime is localtime to most of us. We stay in the localtime. The only ones that don't is the Enforcers, and really now that we know we can just timeset to our zero time's. The Time Eater won't try to hunt us then."

"To get it to go away, I have to go back to my normal time?"

"Yes? You didn't know that, did you?"

"No," Whisper said. "No one knew. And no one knows how to get me back."

Gray blinked. "Well shit, that should have been Diego's first thought. But you have friends in Zerotime's time trap..."

"What would happen to them?"

"If you went back now? Then however long it was, they'd reappear here, and that's only if things went exactly as planned. In my story, we tried to get Echidnaopolis to evacuate from the water demon. They didn't listen."

"As planned?"

A loud klaxon burst through the room, and Gray immediately grabbed for another device on her belt. A blaring purple alarm burst out from the sides. "Time Eater alert. Our sensors have located it," Gray explained. "Most people won't have an issue."

"How do we kill it?"

"We don't," Gray answered. "We just have to run. Did anyone else in your party ever time travel?"

"No," Whisper answered, before she shook her head. "No, Sonic did. And they've also been to a 'White Space'."

Gray's eyes widened. "Time's End. No one's ever gotten out of it as far as we know."

"Sonic did. As did Amy, and Tails, and Shadow...Knuckles-"

"Shoot. Alright, new plan," Gray said softly, before she spoke into a device. "This is override Gray. Override Diego. Whisper the Wolf needs Zerotime."

"What will that do?" she asked. She stood up from the couch, and her legs protested the quiet motion before they solidified under her.

"That will get you a Clockwatcher, and to go back to your normal time. The Time Eater should follow you, and then lose interest."

"My friends will stay?"

"They'll have to. You'll be watched to make sure the timeline continues as we've seen it."

She couldn't have that. But she'd have twenty three years to prepare...that seemed like forever. And yet...there was a niggling thought in the back of her mind. "You'd said they'd just reappear here?" Whisper asked.

Gray nodded. "What has been done will stay done. Time isn't an immutable river, but it follows the same flow no matter what. It would take a large change to move the flow."

"And that's what Timeroot does?"

"No, we, the Enforcers, make sure that it stays the same. Why...?" Gray said, suddenly narrowing her eyes. Whisper almost felt sorry for her. This would've been easier on her if she hadn't realized what Whisper was about to do.

Gray went down a moment later as Whisper swung the variable wispon at her side. The wolf slammed into the side of the wall. "Why...?"

"Because my friends are there, and they're in trouble. I'm going to get them out, and undo all."

Gray's eyes widened just as Whisper took off through the Enforcer building. Dozens of people in green uniforms of all sizes and shapes were running around, some were screaming around orders, and some were shouting out others.

Whisper sought none of it. Her friends were in danger. And she had to be close, if this was the Enforcer building. Enforcer...more like enforced time.

Maybe that's why their name was the Enforcers. They enforced their own version of time, making sure that things went their way.

No one seemed to be taking care to look for her. She would use that.

She knocked on the wisp canisters just as she glanced out one of the windows. The sky had turned purple and vibrant, as if sucking in all the light around.

Orange popped out, and took only a moment to gauge what was going on. "This is it, then?" she asked.

The other wisps, minus Yellow, flew out of their own canisters as well. The hallway was suddenly quiet, as people went into rooms and didn't come out. The hallways were starting to empty out, but even the ones still around weren't paying any attention to Whisper or the wisps.

"We break out our friends. And then..." Whisper started.

Cyan nodded. "We undo all things. We're gonna break it."

Blue gave a chirp. "Aw yeah, it's time to break stuff!"

"We know the goal. It's four blocks from here. The Time Eater is hunting us."

"We just have to shatter it, don't we?" Green nodded. "Defend Whisper, and get her to the goal."

"Use everything we can!" Pink smirked. "I like this plan! This plan's gonna be great!"

Orange rolled her eyes. "There is no plan, Pink. It's literally just 'break stuff and get the Time Eater's attention!'"

"And that's why it's awesome!"

Whisper shook her head, before she gave a soft clap and started to run down the stairs. She was on the second or third floor.

There was a series of shouts above her as she heard the Enforcer's shots start to eat away at something, not related to her. The purple skyline started to infect the building that she was in just as she landed on the second floor.

There were signs posting various things, but none of them were in a language that she knew. Pink flew up in her sight. "You should put on your mask, you know? The Diamond Cutters would love for you to rescue your friends completing the look. It's this way!" Pink said, pointing down another side hallway. It was long past, and went down a bit towards what Whisper hoped was the end.

Whisper nodded. Once more the thought of the old Diamond Cutters ate away at her, but she pushed down the mask as Pink had suggested either way. Violet was waiting for her. Tails was waiting for her. Sonic was waiting for her.

Tangle was waiting for her.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See last chapter.

Palace

The hallway seemed never ending, and Whisper jumped down the stairs in one long movement. She was no Sonic or Violet, but she was quite capable of speed when she needed to be.

And right now, she needed to be. The Time Eater was probably just on her tail.

The hallway opened up to the Zerotime's plaza, the same place where the others had been time trapped. The skyline was the same vibrant purple mass that she'd seen earlier, whenever the Time Eater did it's time traveling thing. Or warping thing.

The plaza was empty, with all of the citizens being told over a speaker to head to safety. If they were in a traveled state, whatever that meant, to timeset back to localtime. Whisper understood the words, but how they stuck together...

The purple klaxons kept going as well, large lights that shone and shook the world with their sound. The alarms were still blaring.

When the wisps had argued for the geas and the vow, Whisper had honestly thought she'd seen what they could do. They were destructive in Green Hill, and they had shattered the landscape irrevocably. Sonic had said there was nothing wrong with it, and that the islanders had simply shrugged and moved on.

She learned that she was wrong. They could do a lot more than just what they suggested they could.

The Time Eater was right there, right behind her, its long purple claws reaching out for her. The Enforcer's shots, whatever it was that they were doing, was doing nothing. And then Cyan jumped in.

A cyan laser burst plowed straight into the Time Eater, shoving it into one of the nearby structures. Because of how they were built, Whisper supposed, that meant they didn't need to worry about actual destruction, before the shockwave was felt in Whisper's bones, and yet the structure didn't move or change.

It let out a roar, and most of the Enforcer's in front of Whisper shut their eyes and put their hands over their ears. Were they not used to this type of thing? With time travelers, she'd have thought that Time Eaters were common knowledge. Gray, certainly, had known about it.

A blue block shoved itself down on the Time Eater, but it must have known that Blue was planning on that as the cube phased right through it.

"I'm glad I didn't give too much for that!" Blue was shouting from the top of the Enforcer building. Cyan popped out from the top of the other building, some type of shop, looking a bit woozy as she stayed in place.

That one blast must have taken a bit out of her. The fact that a laser wisp could do that was astonishing. Light was not known for its pushing power. And it wasn't as if Cyan could move a lot of mass either.

Whisper moved through the terrified Enforcers, heading for the only biggest building in the area, the actual palace itself. Left side, fifth floor.

She was actually mostly there already, she realized as she went onto the next open street. The Time Eater let out another loud roar, and kept chasing her. This time Yellow popped out of the ground, a large size drill heading straight for the thing.

It stopped just long enough for Yellow to move past it before it smacked the drill out of the way. Yellow let out a cry, only for a much more calming coo come out as Green hovered her down to the ground lightly.

But by smacking Yellow, that also meant it was solid. And it was that solid aspect that Pink took advantage of. A wave of pink spikes shot out from the ground, from the walls, even some from a blue cube that Blue popped into existence right from the top of the Time Eater.

The Time Eater was solid, and Whisper was probably guessing it wished that it wasn't as hundreds, if not thousands of pink spikes shot through it. Some held it down, others were adding edges the more time it took before it left.

While it was held still, that's when Blue tried to drop the spiked cubes above it, crushing it against the ground. Almost as if to roar in victory, Green lifted up the ground based spikes towards it, compressing the Time Eater against the wisp powers.

It howled, before everything phased out of its reality, and it flew above the ground once more. Whisper was only two blocks away, and then she'd be in the palace...against a creature that could phase through reality.

This may have not been well thought out.

"I don't know what to do!" Lavender cried out as the wisps attacked the Time Eater yet again, a combination of their powers that Whisper had never seen. "They're...trying everything, but it's almost seemingly useless!"

"Just keep up with me then," Whisper advised as she kept running. The blocks flew under her feet, and part of her almost imagined the layout from that first Eggman decrepit force that she'd run through, what seemed like forever ago.

Cyan blocked the Time Eater's next flyover, forcing it back straight into Orange's much more physical rocket punch. Every loose item on the ground was imbued with her power as she shot it towards the Time Eater. Some even had the pink spikes on them.

The purple creature thing headed towards the ground once more as it phased out, letting all of the attacks go straight through it. A juggernaut that could go invincible at a moment's notice. Whisper thought that wasn't fair.

Then again, there wasn't much about this situation that was fair.

As it phased back, just in time to reach out an arm towards her, a green glow surrounded the Time Eater directly, this time forcing it towards the ground. Green's power, inverted.

Green could do that!?

And here she thought hover was mostly a utility tool. And now here he was, holding down the Time Eater directly as Orange, Pink, and even Blue went to town on it.

They were like a well oiled machine, really. And that was all without her telling them what to do. There were a few things that she noticed they could improve on, but really, it was stopping the Time Eater so that was enough for her.

The inside of the palace, as she finally reached it, was a wide open waste of space. Hundreds of hallways stretched off to the left and right, and only a few of them had stairs.

She chose one of them at random, finding a hallway that ended with a few rooms she didn't recognize. There was no one around, although those purple alarms were still blaring. She'd gotten used to the sound.

The Time Eater was blocking the only exit that she could find, and Whisper took a deep breath. "Lavender? Imbue me," she asked as the Time Eater soared towards her.

Instantly she felt the power of the frenzy overtake her thinking. She wanted to rip and tear and rend and maim.

But she was thinking. It wasn't as if she was surprised about the imbuement either, she recognized it for what it was; sensations of falling into an anger that wasn't hers.

And Lavender was angry. Angry all the time, but she was trying as hard as she could to overtake that part of her, to come back to being the White wisp that she had been earlier.

Claws struck the Time Eater dead on as Whisper fought back. She felt the jaws start to form, and she forced the energy to her claws instead. That way she could still run. The Frenzy overtook the Time Eater, pushing it out of the way as it phased back out.

Hopefully it was surprised that its prey could fight back. And she was nothing if not fighting back.

There were no signs in the main palace hall, and so Whisper once again took another hallway at random. This one had stairs leading to the second floor, and she could see small lights from the top, this time white and not purple.

The frenzy still forcing her thoughts, that meant that there were others up here. And where others were, could potentially be answers. She took the steps three at a time, bouncing up them in a way that would make even Tangle impressed.

Unfortunately she got up in the first room, where the lights were, only to find there was no one here. The lights were from computer holoscreens.

Maybe there's a map? A voice in her head called. Lavender, directly? That was interesting. She'd never been fully imbued while knowing she was imbued before. Did that mean that anyone who was actually imbued with a wisp could communicate with them?

Most of the time, yes.

That was good to know. She'd have to ask Sonic about that, as he was the only one that she was aware of that could be imbued.

Lavender disimbued her, something that made the intrinsic anger of a frenzy wisp leave her mind. It also had the side effect of tiring her out, leaving her breathless and running ragged. "Sorry, there's only so much I can do!"

"Don't worry," Whisper answered as she ran up to the holoscreens. The screens had that same language on it that she didn't understand, but she knew someone who would. She tapped her mask, "Cyan?" she asked.

Instantly the screens turned a deep cyan blue, and Whisper almost saw as the sigils and odd language changed instantaneously to something she could read.

It was a map, but it was a file map rather than a physical one. Cyan was probably translating things as fast as they came in, and because Cyan was in here she wasn't out there fighting the Time Eater.

Another roar came up the stairs. It hadn't lost her, but it was unused to close quarters combat, something that the wisps had in spades. She could almost feel Pink's giddiness as it was surrounded by walls.

Her hands flew over the keyboards. She was lucky, if anything, that they too were holoscreens. That allowed them to be changed by Cyan's power, allowing her to actually use them in a way she could understand.

Most of the files on the first few screens were nothing but invoices, or some kind of accounts payable options. Neat, but she was on a time limit.

Another roar, and this time it was so close that the screens rippled with the force generated from the Time Eater.

"Cyan, imbue the wispon if you still have energy," Whisper commanded.

"I have energy for days!" Cyan commented as she popped out of a computer screen, imbuing the wispon directly. "Also, I found a route!"

Right, the ultimate hacker Cyan was. Whisper nodded. "Change of plans. Cyan, guide. Lavender, frenzy me if you can," Whisper suggested. The purple wisp nodded.

And that was when Yellow came in through the floor, spinning rapidly and according to Whisper's emotions, was having a lot of fun doing it.

She turned, and her eyes widened as she saw Whisper, and then the wolf's vision was taken up entirely by Yellow.

Spin, spin, spin around the world. Up and down, all around, spinning is so much fun! Go down a floor, go up a floor, ignore the yelling and screaming because she was having fun!

Spin, spin, all over the spin.

It was hard determining what was Yellow's thoughts, and what was her own. She couldn't see anything, only seeing the bare parts of the palace ground floors. Yellow had done the impossible. Yellow had imbued her.

Up and down she went, and there was a lightness to her thoughts, as if the weight of the world didn't matter to her now. The Time Eater? Bleh, who cared? She was having fun. Tangle? Tangle had waited for forever. She could wait a few minutes longer.

That thought made her rethink things. Could Tangle wait? Of course she could, Whisper was having fun now. But that was Yellow's thoughts, not Whisper's.

She wasn't sure if it was because Yellow was imbuing her, somehow, because by all rights that was impossible, or if it was because Yellow was so young, but it was hard to separate her thoughts from Yellow's.

Yellow was having fun. Drilling around the entire palace, going up and down and all around the Time Eater without a care in the world. Whisper was trying to decode her thoughts from the young wisp.

What she really wanted to know though was how could Yellow imbue her? The other wisps had all mentioned that it was near impossible. If someone was unable to be imbued by a wisp, that applied to all wisps.

Unless Yellow was simply too young to know the rules. You think too much, have too little fun. Have fun! That was Yellow's thoughts. Hard to hold. Bye!

What was hard to hold? Whisper found herself then flying through the air and crashing onto a bed, on a floor she didn't recognize. "Oh. Hard to hold onto me," Whisper acknowledged as she laid splayed out.

The Time Eater's roars and howls weren't far, but she was definitely a few floors up from when she had been before. But was she on the right side? Had she skipped it entirely?

She was in some kind of bedroom, full of fancy bed sheets and a nearby closet was full of dresses that looked like they had been taken from ancient times half of the time, and then some other weird times as well. The furniture looked mostly the same, with only a large holoscreen being something that screamed advanced technology.

At least the bed was soft enough to keep her from crashing onto the ground. She forced herself up, landing silently on the rug, as she ran for the door.

The hallway outside looked exactly the same as all the other hallways did, but this one had paintings on the side. Most of them were of the same person in a variety of angles, but as Whisper went she also saw they had different styles to them.

As if one person was traveling through history to get their portrait painted by both future and past masters. A bit egotistical, Whisper presumed, but it was probably the best use of time travel she'd met yet.

Her ears rotated every which way as the Time Eater roared again. She could maybe use its location to determine where Yellow had punted her out at. Unfortunately, it echoed everywhere, so she couldn't tell if she was on the right side of the palace or the left.

Or even which floor she was on. She was usually good at that. She could summon Green, and find a window and float down to the bottom. That would allow her to get her bearings right quick.

Cyan had a map in her head. So maybe she could use Cyan to find her way to the jail from here. Except that Cyan was somewhere that was not here, as was Green. Green was probably busy fighting the Time Eater.

And Pink, and Orange, and Blue...

Yellow had gone off somewhere, and they'd left Lavender behind. Which meant...she was alone.

For the first time in eons...she was alone. No wisps. No friends. Lost.

But she knew where they were. They were close. They hadn't left her behind on purpose. She hadn't left them behind on purpose. She took a deep breath, steeling her heart, as she ran. Any direction was a direction, and a good place to start.

Besides, she doubted that the wisps could hear her whistle right now.

The hallway seemed nearly infinite, with only the paintings changing. They went from old style to somewhat of a more recent one, a style that she recognized. Then just as quick as she recognized it, the styles changed to something she didn't know. Future, perhaps?

There was a dead end in front of her, with some stairs leading up and down. She took a gamble and hopped up the stairs, using that same swiftness that she'd always had.

The upper floor didn't seem to have anything of use either, just another long hallway. This one had portraits of another person. seemingly the queen or princess, in much the same styles as the one below.

There was a flash of white, and Whisper felt her heart stop for a moment. Something unnatural was happening, somewhere, but what it was she didn't know. The Time Eater, too, let out a loud howl, not of pain or agony but of disbelief.

How it was capable of emotion that she could understand, she didn't know. It wasn't like the wisps, where she knew what they were feeling based on how she was feeling.

She stopped for only a moment, and that was to blink the white out of her eyes. She recognized that from somewhere, but what it was she didn't know. As soon as she could see again, she started running. Was she headed the right way? Was she headed in a way?

The corridor seemed like it went forever, a constant in a world of instants and moments. Her ears picked up a sound from down below; Pink's yelling, with a bit of Cyan mixed in. They were right below her.

There were no windows that she could see along the hallway, but she could probably jump out of the windows in one of the rooms.

Could she have enough time to turn around and go back down the floor from there? She'd already been running for a while, nearly a minute or two straight. One of those times she'd wished she could run as fast as Shadow or Tangle. Tangle was fairly quick when she wanted to be, the problem was getting up to that pace.

She didn't stop running though. She had to be nearing the end of this corridor. Maybe this one would have stairs that went down, and it'd be quicker than turning around.

There were stairs in the next dead end, going both up and down, exactly as she'd thought and hoped. It would make the most amount of sense, even if nothing else made sense to her.

She jumped down the stairs, only to turn and see the same corridor she'd just ran from. It wasn't the same; the portrait was different, and this one also had dozens of explosions going off in the center with both Cyan and Pink flying towards her as fast as they could go. "Run for the top!" Cyan commanded as both wisps did just that.

Whisper looked at the explosions, seeing them come closer as the Time Eater started destroying the various rooms. Its purple claws would reach in, and purple fire would emanate out. Oh. That's what it was doing.

She agreed with the wisps, and quickly started to run up the stairs she'd just jumped down. "Cyan, you memorized the map right!?" Whiper asked as soon as she could reach the pair of wisps two floors above where she'd been.

This one had to be the final floor, as it was simply a long hallway with a large wooden door right in the middle of it. The door was open, revealing that massive chasm that was the room behind it. She'd missed her turn off...somewhere.

"Kinda!? This place changes! The only thing that's set in stone is the left side, fifth floor!" Cyan answered.

"How do we get there!?" Whisper asked, taking a deep breath. That was the jail. That was the time trap. That's where her focus had to be. "Where are the others, how are they doing!?"

"Mostly okay. Yellow is coughing up a storm from where, if I heard Cyan and Lavender right, imbued you," Blue asked. "That couldn't have been easy. Orange is trying to wrangle up the others."

If Orange was doing that, it means only good things for the rest of them. She'd only start that up if there was a good chance the Time Eater wasn't going to eat them anytime soon.

"We don't! We just need to keep running until we find the path that heads there! This entire place is non-euclidian!" Cyan answered.

"One way to solve that problem!" Blue cheered, as Cyan tried to stop him. Whisper jumped back as a large and heavy cube appeared right in front of them, the cube slamming down onto the ground...and going right through it.

That's one way to get around.

The cube went down and down, before Whisper's instincts made her look up and jump out of the way. That same cube crashed down where she'd just been standing, slamming down on the floor and passing right through it again.

The hole left in the floor made Whisper's head hurt, as she saw the back of her head fifteen stories down. She looked back up, seeing that same image but in reverse. "Okay. Yeah, that's weird," Blue answered as the cube dissipated after it's third go around.

"It's all connected and yet not connected at all. I don't know how this was possible! The entire thing's seemingly out of time!" Cyan tried to explain. "It'd be really cool if it wasn't also trying to kill us!"

Whisper looked back down the hole. The Time Eater's flames weren't there, even though she knew she'd just seen it. Out of time...

"Will. Undo. All," Whisper repeated to herself as she glanced down. The words resonated in her head, and the hole below her changed. Where before it was seemingly chaotic, a near infinite repeat of what was above and below, the words forced it into alignment.

"Right, I forgot about the words..." Cyan admitted as Whisper took a moment to jump down. She'd seen the palace from the outside.

"Cyan, am I on the left or right?"

"Right side! Jump down-" Cyan started to say before things started to shift again. Whisper kept her eyes narrowed, and the words in her head.

The palace was made of fifteen floors, or fifteen sets of windows. To get from the top, where the ballroom was because all royalty wanted something like this place, to the fifth she'd have to go down ten floors.

Meaning that she'd have to wait for ten floors to pass by before she called out for Blue to try to slow her down. Instead of the blue block that she realized would probably just break her legs, although the cubes were kind of soft when they wanted to be, a green glow appeared around her.

"How about Green, rather than Blue?" Green asked from the side. "I am so lost in this place. It wasn't until suddenly a hole showed up that I found you!" Green said, coming in for a hug as he maneuvered Whisper out of the way of the hole.

Whisper held him close, and motioned for Blue and Cyan to join them a second later. "You know where Orange, Pink, Lavender and Yellow are?" Whisper asked. "And this is the fifth floor, right?"

"As far as I know! Orange wanted to grab everyone together but Pink wanted to stick it to the Time Eater some more, so he went off somewhere. Yellow is...tired, I think."

"Yellow imbued Whisper!" Cyan said with a grin. "And if she can, that means we can too!"

"I don't think that's a good idea," Whisper said, looking for only a moment before she ran off towards the other end of the corridor. Like the floors above, this one was almost needlessly long, but there was a halfway point that she could use to reorient herself.

"Why not!? That's a perfect idea!" Green said as he hovered next to her. Blue shook his head, obvious in disagreement. Or he didn't like their chances. Whisper wouldn't blame him.

It was the big open room on the first floor. She was out on the fifth, at least, five stories up, so that was something. But the left side was far over on the other side, and there weren't any stairs that cleared that area.

Also the ground was shattered. Spikes of ground had been raised up, chandeliers had fallen. It was as if the Time Eater had come here just to mess things up. Or her. Whisper wasn't sure which yet.

She glanced at the wispon, still on her back. "Cyan, Green. Imbue the wispon," Whisper asked. Both of the wisps lit up, heading into the variable wispon as it changed forms once again. "Blue, keep an eye for the Time Eater. If we fall, you'll have to catch us," Whisper said.

The blue wisp nodded, all seriousness taking over his face. Eyes. The area where they had a face.

Whisper gave that sharp whistle, the same one that all of the wisp knew very, very well. With Cyan, she was lighter than normal, and with Green, she could hover for however long he could hold it.

She shot across the chasm, the canyon made by mortals, to head to the left side, on the fifth floor.

She made it without problem, her boots slamming down onto the tiled ground with an eminent thud, as all three wisps surrounded her. A moment later, Orange and Yellow popped out of the hallway. "Whisper! Over here!" Orange shouted, her eyes splitting her attention between Yellow and Whisper. "Don't go drilling off now," Orange said to the young wisp.

The young wisp said...something. But it lifted up Whisper's spirits, and the most she could think was that she had made it.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See last chapter.

Prison

The hallways here were short and small, like a maze that had only been halfway filled out by a toddler. One door had opened to another hallway, that was only a few other doors, each one appearing more and more mazelike.

Cyan was leading the way now, going through the door was an expertness that belied her actual area of expertise. Whisper doubted she knew where she was going, but right now Whisper knew they had to stick together. There were too many opportunities for them to simply vanish into the aether.

Which was why Yellow had promptly gone into her canister, ostensibly tired.

The doors led to more doors, and from there to more hallways and doors. It took only five iterations of the same for Whisper to start to get confused. Maybe that was their plan in this place? Or maybe this place, too, had that same non-euclidian effect that Cyan had been talking about.

The Time Eater let out another loud howl, this time from much further away. It sounded less angry, and more...exasperated. As if it was just tired of all the stuff being flung its way by presumably just Pink at this point.

Lavender, too, was still missing.

Although where the purple wisp was quickly known as the doors finally ended, and Whisper found herself face to face with a massive steel vault door.

Lavender was at the side of it, trying furiously to pound as many of the key codes as possible as she could think of. "Whisper! I think this is it!" Lavender announced as soon as she saw the wolf.

Fifth floor, left side, massive steel door? Probably a prison door. "I agree," she whispered back.

The path behind them suddenly spiked up, hundreds of pink spikes coming from the various doorways before Pink came up to them, breathing hard. Or as hard as a pink wisp could. "Oh hi! I knew you went this way, somewhere."

"Did you, though? Did you?" Orange asked playfully. "I think this is all of us! Back together!"

"Us against time! Eater," Cyan joked. She came up and pushed against the vaulted steel door. It was a massive thing, taking up most of the hallway. It had a large ceremonial wheel on it, as if it was the vault of some kind of bank. The kind that did all of its banking networked, rather than with actual cash, and just had the vault to look cool.

The cyan wisp could, of course, do nothing to move the giant wheel, and even with all the wisps combined it didn't move much. Which made sense to Whisper, seeing as how they were all energy. Blue could create a cube, or Green could...this would sound weird...manipulate gravity, but she doubted that it'd move on its own.

There were no voices on the other side, Whisper heard as she put her ear up against it. "Cyan, infiltrate the electric system?" she asked, pointing to the very electronic looking lock right next to them. It had a small keypad on it, looking dusted and clean. Cyan gave a mock salute, before she dove into the system.

"Blue, Pink, stage a lookout. Time Eater is still hunting us," Whisper commanded. Instantly blue cubes and pink spikes dotted the hallways, throughout the hundreds of doors that it had taken for Whisper to get there. That's one way to get it done.

Cyan popped out a moment later. "It's electronic, sure, but it's not connected to any system. It's basically a manual lock," she explained.

Whisper narrowed her eyes, before she sighed. That did make things harder. But...this was always something that Tangle did. Tangle or Mimic.

Her eyes narrowed further, if that was possible, at the remembrance of Mimic. The octopus was their resident rogue and thief. A vault door like this could only have so many pins...

And she was a sniper. Her specialization was as far from this as she could go. But there was always one way, as Cyan liked to say. "Blue. Orange," Whisper said after a moment, pointing to the wispon. They tilted their bodies, before they imbued it. "Everyone, out of the way," she muttered.

She bashed the hammer against the vault door once to hopefully give the wisps the idea. Orange was capable of giving thrust and energy, while Blue was capable of changing his own mass.

Combine the two?

A rocket propelled mass changing hammer that didn't have to follow this little thing called physics.

The second hit resounded with a massive clang, and Whisper took a moment to smirk. She'd left a massive dent in the wall next to the door. The door itself was probably quite solid, and would take a while to break through. The wall, on the other hand? Not nearly as long, not nearly as structurally sound.

She was good at going around obstacles, if she couldn't go right through them.

The third hit and fourth hit she was starting to see small flakes of stone and wood mix together. The vault door was shaking ominously, and she thought she might have been hitting the hinges on the inside.

She took a moment before the fifth hit to give a long wind up, giving Orange the time to really speed up the hammer. The Time Eater's howl was extremely close, almost as if it was right behind her, and Whisper closed her eyes to try to shut out the sound.

That also meant that Blue and Orange took the moment to fire themselves off, using Whisper's body as the fulcrum.

The result was a large hole in the wall, big enough for the wisps to go through, and if she really wanted to hurt herself, for Whisper to go through too.

Blue disimbued himself from the wispon, his body heaving up and down. "Give me a moment, and I'll fix that," he said quietly. A large purple hand came up from the floor, reaching for where Whisper was, and just as quickly one of the cubes that Blue had made glowed green, crushing the purple hand just as quickly as it had shown up.

"You're welcome!" Green cheered. Cyan gave a clap before she went on in through the hole.

Blue took a moment to look at it, before he created a cube in its space, slowly expanding it and pushing the wall out of the way. Once he'd got some space, it was easy for him to make more.

The wall partially collapsed, before he hit a solid wooden beam, or a stone beam, Whisper wasn't sure. The Time Eater was right below them, and she didn't have time to keep making the hole bigger. As it was, anyone except Eggman could fit through it without a problem.

And she had no doubt that if Eggman was here he'd already have three or four extra plans to get out with just a bare thought. She crawled through just as the purple hand flinched away from her, quickly followed by the other wisps.

The inside of the vault door was cold and chilled, and unlike the rest of the palace didn't have the same golden stone or wood look to it. It had a harsh silver, small lights running up the top to give it the barest amount of light and welcomeness.

It looked like a prison.

There were no sounds though, asides from one hallway further down. It sounded like yelling. Whisper ran for it, knowing that the Time Eater was right behind her.

The hallway was separated by another door, but this time it was a simple wooden one. Next to it was a clipboard hanging on the wall, with more names in that language that she didn't know.

Some of them had check marks next to them. Others didn't. She didn't know what that meant.

The voices quieted down as Whisper got to the door. She tried the handle, surprised that it wasn't locked. "Orange, Pink, Blue, keep an eye out," Whisper said, her heart beating a mile a minute.

Was this it? She was close, she didn't know how but she did. Would this be the final step?

This hallway was as dimly lit as the one behind her, with a dozen or so cells separated by small blue barriers. They emitted almost no light, although how that was possible Whisper didn't know.

She wasn't sure how she appeared to them, but there were people here. "Violet? Shadow?" Whisper asked quietly.

"Whisper!" Violet's voice rang through the darkness and made half of the others, and there were others, immediately curl up and shout to shut up.

It took a moment for the others to start realizing what it was that Violet had shouted, and immediately Whisper rolled her ears downwards to avoid the cacophony of sounds reaching her ears.

"Cyan, is there a light switch?" Whisper asked as things quieted down a bit.

"I haven't seen anything. We can't see out though, there's nothing beyond the bars for us," Shadow's deep dark voice said from beyond the area next to Violet.

"Yeah, it's a bit too familiar for me," Sonic's voice called out from across the hall. "Knuckles is next to me, I know that much," he continued.

"And how do you know that?" Violet asked.

"I woke him up by slamming my hammer against the bars," Amy's sheepish voice said from further down the hall.

"Mom still has her hammer!?"

"Yes?" Sonic's voice questioned. "Her hammer's part of her spirit. She can make as many of them as she wants."

"Half of Sonic's adventures couldn't have been done without me!"

"I'd give you a third," Sonic's voice smirked. It was obvious that he was smirking, it had that tone of 'I know more than you' to it that was consistent with him as a teenager.

"North Island," Amy called back.

"I said a third!"

Whisper rolled her eyes. They were still in good spirits. Cyan had flown around, but didn't seem to find anything that she could use to infiltrate the system. "Blue, Green, Orange, help Cyan look. Pink, keep an eye out for the Time Eater. The sooner we get out of here, the better. Lavender, keep an eye on Yellow," Whisper commanded. The wisps gave salutes, except Lavender who seemed merely confused. "If she comes out, she's going to cause trouble. We don't need help with that right now," Whisper explained.

Lavender nodded, and attempted to do the same as the Blue, Green, and Orange, while at the same time keeping an eye on Whisper's canisters.

Not all of the cells were full, and she couldn't see into them either. Each one had a small holoscreen that had some of the strange runes on them, probably ones that said who was where.

It wasn't as if the bars were hindering light, it was almost as if there wasn't enough light to really show it all. The wisp's lights weren't very bright, showing they were either tired from their rampage against the Time Eater, and she wasn't looking forward to seeing the repercussions of that, or something in the area was making sure that they couldn't give out much light.

Even her mask, with its night vision on, couldn't see into the bars. As far as she knew the prisoners could have been elsewhere and simply had their voice taken to here.

"Who all is here?" Whisper asked.

"Um...let's see, me, Dad, Shadow, Mom, Knuckles..." Violet started to name off. "I think I heard other voices down the hall but I can't see anything out of these things."

Whisper nodded. The holoscreens on the outside didn't look like they had an actual connection anywhere. They might have been changed whenever someone gets put in.

Considering the technology of this place, Whisper didn't doubt it. There was always one easy way to get them out, and it was the same way she broke in. "Blue, think you can break the bars manually?" she asked after a moment.

The blue wisp stopped searching wildly, before he started to inspect the bars. They gave off a soft blue light, intersecting lasers that went horizontal and vertical. He tried to find a small space in between them, but every time a small cube found its way in there, it quickly popped. "No can do, sorry Whisper."

"That's alright," Whisper said. "I'll look down the hall, see if there's something down there," she said, trying to reassure the others that were there. She got a few affirmations, and made sure that the wisps knew to keep her in sight at all times.

The Time Eater hadn't tried to get in yet. Why? Her eyes narrowed as she walked the corridor of prisoner cells, some of them without any bars or runes on their holoscreen. Could it be that it couldn't get in?

Or was it simply waiting for a better chance? It was hard to tell with the thing. It was smart and intelligent, but also single minded. No wonder Eggman had taken over one. It was an animal, but a smart one nonetheless.

Several dozen bars down, the holoscreen was dim but the bars were active. Whisper stared into it, her eyes narrowed as she tried to see beyond the darkness, only to find deep blood red eyes peering out.

"Whisper," Metal Sonic's voice rang out in her head. "The faker is here. Why is the faker here?"

Right, he still hated Sonic. "To help," Whisper started to say.

"I see. Kit brought a gift with him. See to it that it gets installed before the next Time Eater attack."

"Do you know when that would be? It's been hunting me, but hasn't for a few minutes. It tried one last time right outside the prison."

"No. I would presume soon, based on that knowledge."

"Who all is here?"

"Surge and Kit entered into the time trap with myself. Amy was before us. I think I also saw a yellow cat disappear as well."

Yellow cat? There was only one cat she knew of who had that coloring. "Two tails?"

"Could not identify."

"How far down?"

"Unknown distance. Sight range decreased rapidly after visible energy signature."

He couldn't see through the bars either. Whisper nodded, and kept going, her steps the only sound that was on the outside of the bars. Occasionally she would hear words being tossed from the first five areas.

Whisper's ears rotated as she kept going, before she heard the sound of crying. It was quiet, gentle, barely a whisper of a sob. The bars were active, and the holoscreen had runes on it, but it was green, as compared to the brilliant orange or red that most of the others had been.

"Hello?" Whisper tried.

"...Whisper?" Mata's voice said quietly. Whisper's protective instincts flared up, and she stomped them down. "That's you, right?"

"It's me, yes. What are you doing here?"

"...I wanted to help. But I just got caught."

"Everyone did."

"You didn't."

Whisper didn't want to tell her about the numerous times not getting caught almost killed her, but held her tongue. Zerotime was not fun in any form of the imagination. "Alright. I'm looking for a way to get you out."

"...Eggman says there should be a switch two hundred feet to the right, above a toggle that lets out the time shield," Mata's voice said quietly.

"And here I thought I wasn't supposed to speak," a voice grated into Whisper's head, an infinite tone that spoke of times best forgotten. It was full of ego, full of impossibility, and wasn't he dead in this time?

Right. Mata. Necromancer.

"Mata," Whisper asked quietly, "Who. And why." She had a feeling, Mata had already said, but she wanted to make sure. She couldn't have. She wouldn't have.

"...He was the only one to answer."

"And I have to say, being a part of this journey is a question to us all. You could've brought back my grandfather. But would he be the one that Shadow knows so well, or would he be the one that tried to destroy the world? So many questions!"

"Eggman," Whisper's voice dropped low. Her body tensed up. This was who they lost a war to. And Mata had brought him back!?

"Whisper, wasn't it? Out of time, it looks like. You haven't aged in years! I didn't think that was a natural property of wolves, you know, but what do I know? I'm just a mad genius."

At least he was self-aware. "Mata. Can you get rid of him?"

"Now that's a question that none of us have the answer to. But I'd like to find out," there was a grin to Eggman's voice, as if he knew something that none of them could imagine. "It's alright Mata. Just let me go back, and I'm sure that Whisper here will be able to let you go without my assistance."

Mata started crying a bit harder. There was another sound there though, as if she was deliberately trying to hide something, but Whisper didn't know what. "It hurts. It hurts to put them back," she admitted. "I can't...I can't..."

"Uncle Chuck could go back whenever he wanted," Whisper tried to remember back then. It had been so long ago, on that first night in Green Hill.

"He just went invisible," Mata said. "Until he realized that it was killing Dad faster. It was killing Mom faster. Velocity, Thunder, Violet..."

Necromancer. Took life force from everyone around her too. Mata could either be the worst disaster ever to happen to the world, or one of its greatest allies.

"I think I see you understand now, Whisper. She finds it easy to pull from the-oh, I can't say it. That's interesting. It's physically locking my body up so I can't say what's on the other side! And my memories aren't complete either. For example, I can't remember Mr. Tinker, even though I knew who he was. Tell me, is Belle even still active? She must pull up the personality matrix and the -oh darn, there's the lock again. It must be based upon her own memories."

"Mata. You have to put him back."

"I can't. I can't put him back, not unless he wants to go back." Again, there was that same tone. Was...Mata planning something? For...for chaos' sake, Mata, Eggman was the one person that no one should try to mess with.

Whisper stared at the empty bars. "And as you might have guessed, Whisper, I have no intention of leaving like this. After all, this is such an interesting life. To know what lies on the other side, to have memories of it, and yet to know that to stay in this world is only a stay of execution. But be a good girl, like the dog you are, and go empty out the bars. I wish for her father to see what his daughter has done."

"Dad...dad's here?"

"The worst part is that it's quite difficult to be mad at you," Eggman's voice snarked downwards. "You're an idiot, and you know it, but you're also only ten. Clearly the intelligence went to the other daughter."

"Mata. There has to be something you can do," Whisper said. If that was truly Eggman, just in spirit form on the other side of the bars...then this time was well and truly messed up.

"She just told you, girl. She can't do anything unless I wish it. She's simply not good enough. Quit you're crying, you're getting better," Eggman scowled towards Mata when she let out another cry. "Please save me from her, if nothing else," Eggman's tone was so sarcastic it was almost biting.

"I should have taken that shot," Whisper answered back.

There was silence for a moment. "...Yes, you probably should have. Who stopped you?"

"Cream."

"The most innocent, the most childlike...and one of the most dangerous. Even before Gemerl imprinted on her. Fortunately, it appears that she stopped most of that, and became even more heartless than I! A lawyer."

"How-"

"How do I know this? I have Mata's memories as well. Every spirit she conjures does. Most don't care to look too deep into it. I doubt Gamma did."

"Mata, why of all people?"

"Because I panicked, and I called...and he was the first one to answer. And...and...I wanted to help..."

"The bars are capable of resisting spirits, as well. I'd be interested in using them in my blueprints, if I didn't have a solid suspicion that things weren't going to be going my way soon."

Whisper didn't say anything to answer that. What did he mean by that? A solid suspicion...something gained from Mata's memories probably.

"I suppose you've forgotten then. Mimic hasn't been able to tell you anything then. My chances have gone up significantly!" Eggman's voice started to laugh, that trademark laugh that was burned and engraved into her memory. How!? Eggman knew where Mimic was, or at least a solid idea!? Her blood boiled, but she took a moment to calm herself. No use in acting rash.

They had managed to kill him once. Even if it was due to time itself that took him rather than one of them. But they could do it again, if they needed to. They'd fought back his attacks once, and she had no doubt that they could do it again too. She'd find Mimic then at some point. In this timeline, or the other.

But for that, they had to get out of there first. Before the Time Eater got her, because otherwise she wouldn't be able to undo anything at all. She looked down the corridor as Eggman continued taunting her, apparently not realizing that she wasn't answering because she wasn't listening.

It couldn't have been too far. Mata had said that it was only two hundred feet before the switch. Hopefully flipping the switch wouldn't also deactivate the time barrier or whatever it was that was keeping the Time Eater out.

None of the wisps were with her, back at the front of the prison. Where Violet was. Why was Mata so far down? And why was her holoscreen green when everyone else's was orange or a dark red? Did the colors mean something?

Just another reason she wished that she had the same powers that Cyan did. Or maybe Cyan herself could explain it, but to do that she also needed an accurate connection, and that seems nonexistent in this place.

It was odd that the hallway just kept going straight, when Whisper knew, according to her internal map of how the palace was laid out, she would be nearly a good few hundred feet away from the place. And she was on the fifth floor, too, so it wasn't as if she had gone underground.

Almost abruptly, the hallway ended, a single extra light showing right in the center. Both cells on either side were also filled, although these screens were also green, rather than the dark red or orange of the earlier ones.

At the end, there was also a single terminal. It had a holoscreen, and more importantly it also had a keyboard on it. Which meant it was some kind of computer system.

She turned around, expecting to have to yell for the wisps, only to find that they were all right there behind her. "Mata did something weird," Orange tattled instantly.

"Orange! Don't tattle on her! She's a little kid, she couldn't have known that it violates the laws of nature by bringing back old souls that should be resting or departing...alright none of that actually sounds good so I'ma just leave it there," Cyan commented.

"Probably for the best," Blue murmured. "Found something?" he asked.

Whisper nodded, about to point it out when Cyan beat her to it, instead going into the computer with a small 'whoop!'.

There wasn't much to the system, really, but with Cyan in the system itself Whisper could log in just as easily as any Enforcer. Assuming that this was the Enforcers base. It was an old style operating system, similar to the ones that she was more familiar with. Basic, with simple operations for turning things on and off.

Or for editing folders. The runes on the sides of the holoscreens changed the moment that Cyan made them translatable for her to read.

Whisper turned to look at the one on the side of her, expecting to see a name she didn't recognize. Instead she found 'Miles Prower'.

Miles Prower. That name rang a bell to her, but she wasn't sure why. Where had she heard that name before? She looked behind her at the other cell, and her heart stopped completely.

'Tangle the Lemur'.

Chapter Text

Disclaimer: See last chapter.

Necromancy

"Get her out!" Whisper roared, going through the file system almost as fast as Cyan could. The wisps behind her floated in confusion, until they read the names on the holoscreens.

"Get her out, it's Tangle!" "Tangle, tangle!" "This is gonna be a big moment, I just know it!" "I hope she's okay..."

Lavender seemed mostly confused, but Whisper's mind wasn't trying to explain it. Tangle was right there she wasn't about to let something like a stupid computer get her way and even if she had to blast the entire prison apart she'd open those bars if it was the last thing she did-

"Whisper?" a hoarse voice said from the side. "I...the voices are getting to me again, Tails." it sounded tired, as if battling against herself for years and years.

"Don't let them bother you," a gruff much darker and deeper voice answered from the other side, the one labeled Miles Prower. "They only want to win. You can't let them."

"Tangle! No, it's really me this time!" Whisper answered. She put her gloves on the bars, only to rebuffed back a moment later. The bars pulsed angrily, turning a deep blood red for only a second before they turned back to the blue they had been.

"Whisper?" Tails' much older voice called out. It was still noticeably his, however deep and older it seemed. "I...you were gone."

"I'm so sorry!" Tangle's voice lashed out instantly. "It's my fault, it's all my fault, I don't even know what I did wrong-" Tangle started to say.

"It's okay. I'm breaking you all out," Whisper interrupted. "Everyone here."

"Everyone?" Tails asked. "Who's 'everyone'?"

"Found the switch!" Cyan called out from the terminal. Whisper had barely a moment to tell her to flip it when the bars glowed for a moment before they turned off, leaving the entire place a deadly silent.

"Now where's the lights?" Whisper asked, staring into Tangle's cell. The night vision still wasn't working on her mask. Had one of the batteries been busted? That was a possibility. She started to walk into the cell anyways, desperate to see her after so long. It felt like forever ago.

The lights turned on slowly, and Whisper heard the party far at the beginning start to really converse with each other, but all she had eyes for was Tangle.

She had gotten taller, of course. The gray hairs that she'd had on her body and tail were a bit darker, more black than anything. The black bits were lighter, almost as if she'd reversed coloring. The white parts had stayed the same. Her face was longer, less of the natural smile. Large bags sat around her yellowed eyes, as if she hadn't gotten much sleep.

Her tail was broken in many places, as if she'd slammed it against a wall again and again. It was curled up around her right now. Her shoes were off, and she had barely much of a blanket covering her. "Tangle...?" Whisper asked quietly as she walked in.

"WHISPER!" Tangle shouted instantly as she proved that however many years were in the cell had not gotten rid of the ability for her girlfriend to jump her at the slightest call. The blanket moved, showing the dark red vest that held hundreds of pockets.

"Your first reaction is to jump on her?" Tails' amused voice called out from behind them. Tangle had launched Whisper over to the other cell, showing that Tails had not been idle.

For one, his cell had been torn apart by some kind of tornado. Every possible thing that could possibly be used to create a machine had been dismantled, put together, and probably dismantled again. The result was a small machine that sat casually on the side, a small green light on it.

Tails himself was much, much taller than Whisper remembered him being. He had to be nearly a head taller than Sonic was. His face was gaunt and rugged, as if his fur had been thin for so long, but Whisper could see the underlying...childishness that lay beneath it.

Tangle too, now that Whisper was essentially tangled beneath her, was also far too light and thin. Her fur which had once been so smooth and neat was tangled up, with hundreds of split ends. She had not been taking care of herself.

But not in the same way that Jewel had. Jewel had been in a false depressive state, and that led to her not being able to take care of herself. It seemed as if Tangle and Tails had just been in the prison for so long that they had ceased to care.

"Well yeah! I told you that was the first thing I'd do!"

"I thought the first thing you'd do is apologize, and then jump her," Tails joked back. "Which you did," he finished. His voice was a lot deeper than she remembered it being.

"Right," Tangle said, forcing herself up abruptly. "But...you don't look...I know you said..." Tangle started, glancing at Tails and then looking back down to Whisper.

"I told you it was a Clockwatcher. It would send her to some pre-determined time," Tails answered. "And that time looked like it was not that long ago."

"A few months. And twenty three years after it was activated," Whisper said. Her eyes were still taking in Tangle's form.

"Oh...right. I..."

"You don't need to say sorry," Whisper answered, wrapping her arms around her.

"As charming as this is, we should get going. No word on how long it would be before the Enforcers get here. Jammer won't last forever," Tails reminded. He pulled Tangle up easily...Whisper wasn't sure when he'd gotten actual muscles on his arms and while he was nothing like Knuckles he certainly wasn't the child she remembered, before he picked up the single device on the bed.

"Ah, right! Whisper, we need to go! If you get caught too, then the whole timeline's in trouble!" Tangle said, hopping around and grabbing Whisper hard with her tail.

"Oh no, a timeline trouble..." Orange muttered off to the side. "Certainly nothing we've never dealt with before..." she deadpanned.

"Oh, hi wisps. Sorry, I don't have a translator on me," Tails said carefully, a pale imitation of his child self.

"That's fine, it was mostly meant for Whisper I think," Blue answered in Orange's stead.

"WHAT!?" Whisper heard Sonic's voice call out from the far side of the corridor. Tails took a deep breath, before he turned to Whisper.

"How many people did you bring with you?" he asked quietly. Whisper was already on the way back, and she wasn't surprised by the way both Tails and Tangle were keeping up with her. How they were still so capable after being locked up for years upon years, she didn't know.

"It was just supposed to be Shadow. Then..." Whisper started. This was going to be bad. "Then Violet joined us in Green Hill-"

Tails didn't even blink. "Violet? You don't mean my-" he started, before Tangle started to laugh.

"Ha! I knew it, you totally owe me! I told you that one of your kids was going to try to rescue you, I know I told you!" Tangle was laughing.

There was more shouting down the way, and Tails stopped abruptly as the small yellow cat with two tails was being shouted down by Sonic and the others.

"Neko?" Tails asked quietly, before he darted in so fast that Whisper was certain he'd have broken the sound barrier.

Tangle glanced towards Whisper, still running towards the group. "You didn't tell us you brought her with you," Tangle said quietly. "She was supposed to stay far, far away from this. With Blaze."

"I hadn't gotten to that point," Whisper answered. Tangle nodded.

"Fair 'nough. We didn't give you much time," Tangle said. She seemed...a lot more chilled than before. Colder. Not nearly as active as she'd been before. There were still remnants of that excitability, especially in the beginning, but now the wear of ages had started to show itself again. The lines in her face were shallow and gave her a much more haunted look.

The group was silent as Tails hugged Mata close, and it took him only a second for him to see Violet next to Shadow, and for him to draw her in close too. Words were quieter, and Whisper couldn't hear what was being said before she got there.

"-what happened, but you're here now and that's all that matters," Tails was saying as he held both of his kids close.

Eggman was nowhere to be seen, but there was a slight cold to the air that said he was probably still around. The fact that he was still here...it rankled on her.

Especially if Mata couldn't voluntarily dispel. That also meant the more she did it, the more spirits would be hanging around whenever. Was each one successive for how much life was drained?

"Whisper," Shadow said from the far side. "What all happened?" he asked instantly. Tails kept up his hug, slowly moving them out of whatever circle had been from whatever had been going on.

He looked the same as he always had, so at least they weren't in there for all that long. "It's a bit of a story, and I don't know if we have time," Whisper answered quietly.

"We've been hearing the howling and roaring from in here. Something's been trying to break in," Amy said. "That's not the Time Eater, is it?"

"I think so. The one I met was mechanically augmented. Although we could just ask-" Sonic said, before he started to snarl and look into the cell that Mata had been in.

"The difference between my Time Eater and a natural one is that mine actually listened to instructions," Eggman spat out, finally stepping out into the light. Whisper's head started to pound the more she looked at him, as if something was there that shouldn't be. "Interesting. You can still see me, can't you?" he asked, gently roving one hand down his mustache.

"We can all see you," Shadow said. "What I want to know, among other things, is how do we get out of here?"

"We can get out the same way we got in!" Cyan chirped up. Only Shadow and Violet's ears perked up, having been so long used to the wisps that they still had their translators. Sonic blinked before his hands reached to his own earpiece. Whisper supposed he must have turned it off at some point, although why that was, she would have no idea why.

"The Time Eater is right out there though. Why can't it come in?" Orange asked. "I didn't feel some kind of barrier on the way in..."

"There's a barrier between the prison and the rest of the place," Tangle answered. Whisper couldn't help but notice that she was the same height as she'd been way back when, if not a few inches taller at most.

"As long as the barrier isn't taken down, we're safe from it. Not from the Enforcers. That's what this is for," Tails said, motioning to the jammer at his belt. The light flickered again, causing Tails to frown as he hit it lightly.

"The Enforcers have other problems," Whisper murmured, trying to hide the smirk from coming on her face.

"Really? What happened? When we came here the Enforcers were everywhere on us in seconds!" Tangle said, her eyes lighting up. Whisper ignored the ways the wisps gave knowing glances to each other.

"They had bigger problems. Time Eater based problems, combined with wisp-induced problems," Whisper answered. Tangle only tilted her head, before she glanced over at the wisps.

"Can they do that...?"

"None of us had ever seen an angry wisp before. They reshaped Green Hill entirely," Shadow answered.

"There was a reason I used them for their hyper go-on energy," Eggman reasoned, his voice grating into Whisper's mind.

"Seriously!? That's impressive. That's super impressive. I might even say-" Tangle started, before Sonic, Amy, and Knuckles just shouted at her 'No!'.

Whisper didn't quite get it, but that was fine. She was alright now. She had Tangle back. It might not be her Tangle, but she had her. And that was enough for the stress ball that had been building in her gut for months at this point to slowly fade away.

Things were looking up. She had Tangle. Violet and Mata had their dad back, both of them, and-

Surge came roaring out of the cell, her eyes a piercing green as she ran at Sonic. "Shut up! Shut up shut up shut up!" She was shouting, her arms coated in electricity. She was smirking psychotically, as if she knew that no one could stop her. There was a part of her that told Whisper that she wasn't quite all there.

Whisper had only half a second to move. Her eyes lay hidden on Metal Sonic, his red eyes barely acknowledging the attacker of Surge as his own jet was forming, heading towards Amy.

She had no time to call out for the wisps to help. Surge was quick as lightning, and even if she had the wisps were still naturally afraid of the tenrec. Cyan was already heading for her canister, where she'd be 'safe ish'.

No time. No way to get in the middle. Where was Kit? He could stop her, but he was...Whisper hoped that he wasn't trying to attack Tails or Knuckles.

Only one thing for it, really. She slammed the wispon into Surge's face just as she passed by, sending her flying away. "Amy!" Whisper shouted as a warning.

Metal Sonic flew right past Amy, past Sonic, and even past Whisper as he stopped himself right between Surge and the others. He said nothing, even to Whisper's mask, instead staring down the green tenrec.

"Oh? Now this is interesting. Tell me, Metal. I wasn't expecting to see you still active. What is your prime directive?" Eggman asked. Whisper concentrated on avoiding the headache.

"To ensure that your status as the most powerful genius in the world is not taken away. Surge is a creation of Starline," Metal Sonic's voice called out. Unlike the type used in her mask, it was extremely robotic, without any tone or rush. The tone in her mask was that of a child who understood where they stood in the world.

"And thus, logically, you leap to his defense," Eggman said. He started to laugh, that same laugh that haunted Whisper's nightmares, and she could tell from the visages on everyone else's face that he haunted theirs too.

"Shut up! You were supposed to be on my side! You want to get in my way!?" Surge snarled. "You don't know what I've lost because of them!"

"We know plenty enough," Sonic said, standing up. The image was lost a bit as he stumbled onto one side, where Amy held him up. "Thanks Ames," he muttered.

The pink hedgehog nodded, her eyes narrowed onto the tenrec. "Haven't you done enough already?" she asked.

Violet was wrapping up telling her dad all the things that she'd been through just on this trip alone. "Sounds like quite an adventure alright..." Tails was saying. "But uh...if you don't mind me asking, where's your mom?" he asked.

"She went into the Emerald Chamber," Violet answered quietly. "She dropped us off with Sonic and Amy, just in case, but she was only expecting to be gone a short time-"

"That must have been after Timeroot came back," Tails responded. "That would set up the soul lock. And without the keys to override, it must have locked her in there."

"Don't...she's not gone..." Mata was saying, burying her head into her dad's shirt.

"Oh, I know. She's in the Sol Dimension," Tails answered. "It just locks it from us so that way Eggman or Timeroot or someone like them can't try to get the Sol Emeralds. If they did that it's quite likely the world would be ashes right now."

"And yet I've only caused minor devastation since I've come back. If I'm hearing right, you managed to ruin both of your daughter's lives," Eggman snarked from the side. Tails ignored him, as Whisper assumed he'd be right to do.

"Where are the keys?" Violet asked, and Tails' eyes turned away. "You...did make extras right?"

"No, we were prepared, but...she must have forgotten. Somehow...I told her...argh. It requires two keys. One from me, one from you, or...one from Mata."

"What?"

"I told her...just have two of the three of us stand in front of the door at the same time. It unlocks the override code panel-"

"Huh. I didn't even know that panel was there!" Cyan chirped from the other side of Whisper.