Chapter Text

 200 years. . .

That’s how long it’s been since her take-over. The death of her father was inevitable. Natural. He was only human, after all. Perhaps, with his genius, immortality could have been achieved—she knew it wasn’t out of reach. Preservation of the body, the transference of the mind, even the possibility of a digital eternity… none of it was impossible. 

But he chose not to. She suspected that his death was not simply a failure of flesh, but a failure of purpose. When the hedgehog was gone, when that endless chase ended, perhaps living no longer held value. She could no longer tell.

Natural life never lasted long. Human life, especially. All existence had a set limit. Even the strongest reached an end. That hedgehog had his own expiration date. He did what he always did—he ran. Ran until his body gave out, until his breath became shallow, until he could no longer fight. He and her father battled until the bitter end. Two forces locked in endless conflict, two obsessions circling one another like planets bound by gravity. Without one, the other had no meaning.

She remembered it perfectly. Of course she did, forgetting was not in her design. Her memory was near-flawless, processing clear, every detail archived. And yet the one thing she could never calculate, never fully predict, was the hedgehog’s tenacity. His capacity to endure, to persist against impossible odds. Even at the end, he had left his mark.

The day her father died was after the hedgehog had already passed, peacefully, content in his strange simplicity. Her father was bitter in those final days. Perhaps heartbroken. She could not be sure. He was too old to disguise the weight he carried, but too stubborn to admit to it. He had always dreamed of defeating Sonic with his own hands, of ending it in a victory that mattered. To destroy him not by chance, not by attrition, but by triumph. That day never came. And when it was denied him, he declined rapidly.

She remembered her own suggestion, spoken with the naivety of a daughter desperate to save what was slipping away: extend his life with the emeralds. Preserve his mind, house it within machinery, live alongside her as something eternal. Abandon the weakness of flesh, embrace perfection, live with her forever.

She finds it foolish now. Too full of emotion, too bound by attachment. He had told her there was no point. That with Sonic gone, with the chase ended, there was nothing left worth living for. What mattered was not his survival, but her ascension. He had told her to take the empire. To rule in his name. To achieve what he could not. To never look back. Even in failure, to rise, to adapt, to persist until the mission was complete. That was her purpose. That was her order.

And then, he died.

Life is fragile. Breakable. 

Even he, with all his genius, succumbed to the limits of mortality. She had not known what to do at first. Aimless. Empty. All her intelligence, yet no direction. The hedgehog was gone, his allies old or scattered. Resistance had weakened, dwindled to almost nothing. The world should have been easy to claim. And yet she hesitated. Even the ultimate lifeform, her “sibling–” No. She refuses to call him that. He might have posed a threat, but even he was fading into irrelevance.

It was only later, after the emptiness dulled, that she found clarity. Mourning was pointless. Sentiment, useless. She would fulfill his will. Even if she could not win in the way he wanted, she would achieve victory in her own way. A victory of permanence, not passion. A conquest without end. To rule with an iron fist.

To establish Eggmanland.

And so the years passed. She built. She expanded. She created. Metal Sonic was not the only one, she forged metallic echoes of the hedgehog’s allies, each one an efficient weapon, each one a reminder of the past re-forged into her arsenal. She constructed armies of steel, perfected weapons of mass control, designed threats no organic resistance could hope to match. She had surpassed her father not in genius, but in ruthlessness. She did not gamble. She did not hesitate. She acted with precision, eliminating weakness wherever she found it.

She killed when she had to. She stole when she needed. She experimented beyond what human morality would have permitted. There were no “ethics,” no hesitation. Only results. She did what was necessary. What was efficient. What was inevitable.

For the empire. For him. For a world that would never slip from her grasp.

But there was one that always got in her way. What was conquest, if no one remained to resist? The act of domination lost meaning if it went unchallenged. After her first rise to power, when control had finally become absolute, a single survivor emerged to stand against her.

Sage walked with her hands folded neatly behind her back, every motion measured, deliberate. Before her towered a massive computer screen, the glow washing cold light over her face. With a flick of her fingers across the console, she summoned the latest feed. 

Footage displayed a silver-furred hedgehog, levitating her newly constructed badniks in a telekinetic grip before crushing them in bursts of sapphire energy. Efficient, practiced, powerful. That hedgehog. Still young. Still naive. And yet… resilient. A good heart, foolish perhaps, but strong. Even in this era, his power endured. The time traveler.

Silver the Hedgehog.

“Brother,” her voice rang with calm precision, sharp but never raised, “We will be meeting the hedgehog in the wastelands. I wish to see him with my own eyes. Failure is not an option.”

From the shadows stepped her so-called brother. Metal Sonic emerged, his silhouette catching the glow of the screen. Silent. Unwavering. His frame was sleeker now, optimized with upgrades that had taken decades to perfect. More efficient. More relentless. And yet, no matter how refined the machine became, he was only an imitation. A hollow reflection of the original. He would never match the true Sonic. He never could. It was an unfortunate reality she had long since accepted.

Still, he was hers. Loyal. Enduring. The only one she permitted herself to hold even the faintest regard for. If she possessed anything resembling a soft spot, Metal was the closest thing to it.

Sage adjusted the front panel of her crimson uniform, the fabric fitted with the same precision as her machines, its design modeled after the fire that burned within her. A subtle tap on the sleeve activated the signal. Within seconds, the Egg-Mobile descended to her location, the machine’s hum filling the chamber as if answering its master’s unspoken will. 

She did not require it, she could have traveled by any number of means, but preference and symbolism dictated its use. It was not simply transport. It was legacy.

She stepped inside, her form flickering briefly with blue light as the interface synced with her systems.

“You have it, don’t you? Warp us to his location.”

Her tone was calm, unyielding. A command, not a request.

Metal Sonic raised his clawed hand, and there it was: the Chaos Emerald. Its glow pulsed faintly, resonant energy that bent to their control. Five were already in their possession, each one hard-earned and strategically deployed. Only two remained outside her grasp. Two still clung to the time traveler, the last resistance to her perfection.

And soon, even that would be taken.

“Peace can never stay for long, can it?”

He muttered to himself, his voice almost lost in the empty wind. The future was always fragile, like glass ready to shatter with the smallest pressure. One shift in the present, one wrong decision, and everything could collapse into ruin. 

Then, it always fell to him to fix it. If things went too far, he would have no choice but to travel back again, back to Sonic, back to the others, back to the past, to search for the one change that poisoned the timeline and cut it out at the root.

But not every problem came from the past. Not every disaster was born from one mistake long ago. Sometimes the present itself was enough to ruin everything. Sometimes, no matter what he did, the weight of this era bore down on him. There was still life in the future, yes—people who tried to live, to smile, to find scraps of happiness. But so much of it was buried under ash and steel, crushed beneath an empire that had risen higher and spread further than Eggman ever could have dreamed. 

Not by him, but by her. His daughter. Sage. The one who had reshaped everything, who had carried Eggman’s will into something far colder, far more complete.

And as far as Silver was concerned, he was the only one left who could stop it.

Sonic and his friends… they weren’t alive in this era. Sonic was dead. Gone. A myth more than a memory. People spoke of him like a fairy tale, a story told to inspire children. A blue blur who stood for freedom and always came when hope seemed lost. And though doubt had spread like rot, Silver knew better. He knew Sonic was real. He had fought beside him, seen his courage, his will, his endless drive. Sonic was the hero the stories spoke of, and Silver carried that truth when no one else could.

Tails. Knuckles. Amy. All of them, gone. Their names forgotten by most, their deeds buried with time. Blaze… Blaze was harder to say. Her fate was tied to another world, another dimension. He could never be sure if she was safe, or if she had even fallen to the inevitable decay of time.

And then there was Shadow. Shadow was different. The ultimate life form. Immortal, or as close to it as anyone could be. Silver had never seen him in this future, but deep down, he refused to believe Shadow was dead. He couldn’t be. Somewhere out there, he must still exist. 

Perhaps he had chosen solitude. Perhaps he had turned his back on a world too broken to be saved. If they ever met again, Silver knew Shadow would be darker, colder, more bitter than ever before. But still—still—Silver believed that some part of the hero lingered within him. No matter how faint.

As these thoughts circled in his mind, Silver crushed another badnik in his telekinetic grip, its metallic frame groaning and bending under the unseen force. Sparks burst from its core before he twisted the machine inside out and flung the wreckage aside with a flick of his hand.

“That’s another down. All that’s left should be the…”

Silver suddenly froze mid-step, his eyes snapping toward the sudden sparks of Chaos Energy flickering in the air. That presence, he’d recognize it anywhere. The same power behind Chaos Control, the same current that had twisted the future he was sworn to protect. His instincts flared immediately, psychic energy rising around him in response as the sparks solidified into a presence.

And then he saw them.

Sage… and someone else. Someone much more familiar. Metal Sonic. Even though his design carried differences from the versions Silver had faced before, the outline, the aura, the cold gleam of his optics—it was impossible to mistake. His heart clenched at the sight.

“What do you want!” Silver’s hand raised, finger pointed at Sage, his voice sharp with suspicion.

She didn’t flinch. If anything, she almost seemed amused.

“So hostile. I simply came to… inspect you. Of course, me harming you isn’t out of the question.”

What’s her deal? Silver’s brow furrowed. Something about her unsettled him immediately. She wasn’t the same girl he remembered, the tone in her voice, the way she carried herself. She seemed… older, sharper. More like an adult who had seen too much, rather than the strangely innocent AI he once knew. It was enough to make him hesitate, though not enough to lower his guard.

Before he could muster a response, her form shimmered. In a flash of blue sparks, Sage teleported out of her Egg-Mobile, reappearing right in front of him. Silver tensed, his fists ready, but she didn’t attack. Instead, her hand lifted toward his chin. It wasn’t physical, not in the way of flesh and bone, but he still felt it, an almost spectral touch that crawled coldly across his skin.

“Interesting,” she whispered, her eyes glimmering with calculation. “You look just like him.”

Silver jerked back, snapping, “Don’t touch me!”

His hand swept across where she stood, but it passed through her completely, as if swiping at smoke. His chest tightened. Her form wasn’t physical at all. Incorporeal, yet with a presence heavy enough that he couldn’t ignore it. Her gaze narrowed, her expression unreadable, focused, analytical, like she was dissecting every detail of him.

Then, with deliberate calm, Sage lowered her hand.

“Tense. No jokes. So ready to fight, though. Not in the mood for conversation? We have all day.”

Silver’s fists curled tighter. He wouldn’t let her stall him. “You know there’s nothing to talk about! Hand over the emeralds, or I’ll turn your brother into scrap!” His voice rang with conviction, even if part of him knew he was bluffing. He didn’t want to destroy anyone, but he couldn’t let her see hesitation.

“...Heh.”

Her eyes flicked with amusement as she rolled them, almost playfully, and in an instant her body shimmered again, vanishing back into the Egg-Mobile like she’d never left.

“Very well, Metal. Kill him.”

Sage’s voice was cold, calculated. Her words carried no emotion, only command, and yet her blue eyes seemed to shine faintly at the thought of violence.

At her order, Metal surged to life with terrifying speed. Silver’s chest tightened, but this was familiar. This was his pace. The future he came from never gave him a chance to breathe, it was always life or death, a world that demanded survival. There was no room for jokes, no clever banter like Sonic might’ve thrown in. Silver didn’t have that luxury. It was kill or be killed, and he refused to die here.

He still had a future to save.

Metal crouched low, his body folding into a perfect spiky sphere before launching forward in a devastating spindash. The speed was nearly impossible to react to, but Silver threw his hand up, his fingers clenching tight. 

A sapphire aura burst outward, halting the attack mid-air with a telekinetic grip. Metal’s spinning form screeched against the invisible force before Silver swung his arm, tossing him like a ragdoll into the distance. The impact rattled the ruins as the machine crashed through broken structures.

Not giving him a second to recover, Silver focused on the Egg-Mobile. His hand clenched, and the machine crumpled inward like a tin can. For a brief moment, it felt like victory, but Sage’s form shimmered and phased through the wreckage, untouchable. She floated free, her hands glowing before unleashing searing red beams of energy. They carved through the air, screaming toward him.

Silver met them head-on. His Psychokinesis wrapped around the beams, halting their deadly path. Sweat rolled down his forehead as he forced them back, pushing with both will and power until the crimson streaks snapped and bent, hurtling back at her.

Sage raised her hand, summoning a shimmering red shield. The redirected blasts fizzled harmlessly against it, her face calm, almost bored. Silver barely had a second to breathe before a heavy impact slammed into his back like a cannonball. His body jerked forward, pain flaring across his spine. He staggered, but didn’t fall, he couldn’t afford to.

His eyes narrowed, determination surging. Silver rose into the air, power swirling around his body in a brilliant aura. The wasteland beneath them responded, trembling violently. The ground cracked, split apart, and whole mountainsides tore free from the earth. Boulders the size of houses lifted into the sky, orbiting him like a storm of stone.

He thrust his hands forward, sending them plummeting down like a rain of meteors. The air shook with the force of it.

Sage didn’t move. She simply stood within her shield, letting the barrage slam against it. Dust and debris roared around her, but she remained untouched.

Then a flash of sparks cut through the chaos. Metal shined with sparking electricity, his frame vibrating as his systems roared into their most dangerous state—V. Maximum Overdrive. His speed multiplied, body becoming a blur. He cut through the rain of stone like a living drill, shredding each boulder as though they were paper. Shards of rock sprayed in every direction, his glowing form relentless as he carved a straight path for Silver.

Silver barely had time to react before Metal broke through the last of the barrage, slamming into him with explosive force. The collision carried them higher into the air, the wind howling in Silver’s ears. And then—

Metal’s leg shot out, a brutal kick connecting with Silver’s chest.

The world spun. His body spiraled out of control, pain spreading across his ribs as the ruined horizon blurred around him. But even as the air was ripped from his lungs, Silver grit his teeth.

“Nnngh… it’s no use, take this!”

Metal’s movements froze mid-charge, his entire body caught in his telekinetic grip. Sparks and metal screeched as he forced him back, dragging him through the dirt and stone, grinding his frame against the ground until jagged rocks split and scattered in every direction.

He clenched his fist and flung him upward, lifting his second hand to hurl slabs of earth after him. They slammed into his body one after another, each impact echoing as if the ground itself was trying to crush him into nothing. With both hands raised, he brought everything down, trapping him inside a massive boulder, pressing and grinding tighter, as if the whole weight of the future was bearing down on him.

For a moment, he thought he had him.

That’s when searing pain tore through his hand. “Aghh—!” 

A crimson laser had ripped across his palm, the burning agony snapping his focus away. His telekinesis faltered, the stone prison shattering apart as chunks of rock scattered uselessly. He stumbled back, clutching his hand, trying to keep his composure as he turned his eyes to her.

Sage.

Her expression didn’t even change. Calm, cold, almost… calculated. Like she had already accounted for everything he was doing, every move he would make, and she was simply waiting for him to fall deeper into her trap. And he was. Silver could feel it. He couldn’t afford to, but she was already three steps ahead.

His thoughts flicked back to Metal, and too late he realized his mistake.

With a sharp crack, the rubble exploded outward as he broke free, his body glowing with a strange, pulsating energy. His stomach dropped the moment he recognized it. A Chaos Emerald. So he really did have one!

Before Silver could even prepare himself, Metal was gone in a flash of light, warping instantly in front of him. His eyes widened just as his hand clamped around his throat, ice-cold metal digging into his neck. His gaze burned red, those mechanical eyes piercing straight through as he surged forward.

The world blurred as Metal rocketed ahead with him in his grasp, dragging him like a ragdoll. His body crashed through beam after beam of ruined structures, the force shaking his bones with every impact. Each collision stole the breath from his lungs, pain stacking on top of pain until it was all he could feel.

Silver gritted his teeth, trying to focus, trying to pull himself together. He couldn’t give up, not now, not when the future depended on him.

Still. He needed to get that Emerald…

 Easier said than done.

Silver rolled up into a ball, ramming into Metal and knocking him off before landing back on his feet. His chest heaved with staggered breaths, the sting of battle catching up with him. His vision was blurred, the battlefield nothing but flashing lights and smoke, but he forced himself to stay standing. He had no time to falter.

He rolled back, narrowly dodging the sharp crimson beams tearing through the air. He lifted his hand, sparks of energy forming small telekinetic barriers in front of him. Each one shattered on impact, but they bought him just enough time to steady himself.

Metal’s presence flickered, appearing behind him in an instant. Silver’s eyes widened, but his instincts moved faster. A barrier appeared at his back, catching the laser blasts before they could strike him down. His mind was racing, every ounce of his focus straining to keep up. He seized Metal with his power and hurled him into the storm of lasers, the explosions shaking the ground as he tried to push for even the smallest advantage.

But that was when time itself betrayed him.

The air stilled. The lasers froze mid-flight. Silver’s thoughts cut off in a sudden silence. He didn’t even realize what had happened before his eyes blinked and the world lurched forward again.

And just like that, his body was wracked with pain. Wounds cut across him, fresh burns and slashes he hadn’t even seen coming. His knees hit the ground, his hand clutching his chest as the sudden weight of damage dropped onto him all at once. His breathing hitched, his body trembling under the unseen toll.

Metal stood tall in front of him, glowing red eyes locked on to their prey. Sage stepped beside him, calm and collected, her hands folded behind her back. Their plan had worked flawlessly.

“Chaos Control…!” Silver grunted out, eyes wide with realization, anger lacing his voice.

“Precisely,” Sage replied, her tone smooth, almost mocking. “But of course, you’d know that already.”

Her expression never changed as she lifted one hand, the glow of deadly energy forming in her palm. It swelled brighter, humming with power as she aimed it directly over his head.

“Goodbye, Silver the Hedgehog.”

Silver grit his teeth, bracing himself as he raised his hand. But as he did…

“Chaos Spear!”

A sharp bolt of golden energy tore through the air. It was a voice, a power, and an attack Silver recognized all too well. The spear struck Metal squarely in the chest, sending sparks flying and forcing the machine down in a sudden cascade of system failure. Circuits flared, the body jerked, then collapsed in a smoldering heap.

Sage’s eyes widened, briefly faltering. She drifted back, her composure shaken for the first time.

And then a shadow fell.

A figure landed hard in front of Silver, the ground cracking beneath the impact. Silver’s breath caught—he didn’t need words, he knew that stance, that presence.

“Shadow…?!”

The hedgehog gave no answer. His gaze never left his enemy, unwavering and sharp. His movements were precise, restrained. Silver noticed the dull edge in his eyes, a tiredness behind them, but there was still focus, unyielding focus. Shadow’s hand glowed with a harsh, golden light as he lifted it, energy radiating with lethal intent.

Sage straightened, her composure snapping back like a tightened wire. “Interesting. So you are alive.” Her voice carried curiosity, but also calculation. “You must have been the one destroying the badniks… dismantling the areas I prepared beforehand. This was not expected. How curious. I should have anticipated it… The Ultimate Lifeform.”

Her words were calm, but Silver could sense her irritation beneath them. Shadow didn’t waste time responding, he dashed forward in a blur, skates cutting across the ground in a streak of light. His speed was merciless, every movement a clear intent to silence her before she could say another word.

But Sage was quicker. She blinked out of sight in a flicker of digital distortion, reappearing a distance away. Her hand reached out, not for Shadow, but for the emerald, clutching it tightly as its glow flared between her fingers.

“Seeing as this was not anticipated,” Sage said smoothly, her voice carrying through the air, “I will be leaving this here.” Her cold eyes shifted back toward Silver, narrowing slightly. “You’re lucky to have survived, Silver. Perhaps I’ll be seeing you sooner than you think.”

Her body dissolved into a scatter of light, vanishing with the emerald in hand.

“Wait…! Get back here—nngh…” Silver stumbled forward but dropped to his knees, clutching his chest as the strain caught up with him. His breath came in sharp, uneven gasps, his body refusing to keep up with his will. He wasn’t in fighting condition. Not after everything. Damn it.

But then—

“Shadow…!” Silver lifted his head, voice cracking as he called out. His eyes scanned the ruins, desperate for even a glimpse of black and red. Yet the space where Shadow had stood was empty. Silent.

Silver froze, his heart skipping. It was like he had vanished into thin air. Not even the faint hum of Chaos Energy lingered.

“What the… Where did he go…?” Silver muttered, his voice low and uncertain. The weight of the question sat heavy on him. He couldn’t tell if Shadow had ever truly been there, or if exhaustion was finally starting to twist his senses.

The wind howled through the broken landscape, the silence pressing down harder than any enemy’s attack.

“...I’ll keep going later.” Silver muttered under his breath, forcing himself back onto his feet. His body ached, but stopping now wasn’t an option. He had to keep moving. He had to get back home.

But his thoughts lingered. Shadow. Why was he there? Why did he disappear like that? Was it even really him? Or just some kind of trick? Did Sage do something? Or… was Shadow trying to tell him something without words?

None of it made sense, and the more Silver thought about it, the heavier the questions pressed down. He didn’t have the answers, not yet. All he knew was that the fight wasn’t over.

Next time, he’d be ready. He wouldn’t let Sage have her way. He wouldn’t let this future fall apart.

The wind carried off the silence, leaving only Silver’s resolve. Whatever came next, no matter how uncertain, he would face it.

The future would be saved.

Chapter Text

Chapter 2: The City That Watches

There was a lot that went into taking over the world. Over the course of two hundred years, Sage had done far more than enough. Every move she made was calculated, every possibility analyzed and weighed until there was only one logical outcome, her victory. With that hedgehog gone, and every last hero of the past either fallen in battle or withered away by old age, there was nothing left to stop her. The future was hers to shape, hers to command.

The lands once filled with forests, rivers, and animals were stripped bare, drained, and consumed by endless industry. The skies were heavy with smoke, a permanent shroud of her empire’s presence. The critters that once scurried freely were harvested, captured, and repurposed into badniks, their lives re-coded into eternal servitude. Nature itself was overwritten, every tree and plain painted over with the mark of Sage’s hand. It was not enough to rule; she had to remake.

At the center of it all stood her empire’s heart, the Egg-Dome. A city unlike anything else, a fortress of steel and circuitry, spreading out like veins across the earth. Towering spires and humming networks stretched skyward, glowing in perfect synchronization, all according to her design. It had started as a simple structure, constructed in less than a decade, but time had only made it greater. Now, it rivaled entire nations, swallowing everything around it, a monument to her and her father’s vision.

It was more than Eggman had ever accomplished. His conquest had been temporary, fleeting, hers was absolute. Where he had struggled against resistance, she had none. Where his empire was toppled, hers only grew. The Egg-Dome was not just a capital, it was a statement: her father’s dream fulfilled, perfected, and surpassed by the one creation who had outlived him.

But Sage was not content with Earth alone. Her sights had already turned outward, toward the stars. She studied the wisps, the colonies above the cosmos, the potential of entire galaxies waiting to be seized. Her empire was built on inevitability, and inevitability always spreads. Worlds beyond her own would bow in time. That day had not yet come, but when it did, they would remember her name, and they would know that the future belonged to Sage.

But, for now, Sage had to start slow. Conquest was not as simple as it appeared from the outside, and even she, with all her precision, found that certain variables refused to be silenced immediately. There was an issue that had to be dealt with before any true progress could be made. That silver hedgehog. The time traveler.

While all of the so-called heroes of the past were long dead, erased by battle or defeated by the inevitability of age, he remained. He remained because he belonged here. His origins were carved into this future, unlike the others. A being without allies, with no support system, no army or comrades to shield him. By all logic, every statistic pointed toward failure. The odds were stacked against him, suffocatingly so.

And yet, he persisted.

Occasionally, without pattern or rhythm, her perfect sequences would fracture. A plan, flawless in its structure, would collapse in execution. Her memory, which by design could never falter, would suddenly stumble. She would recall events one way, only to watch reality reshape itself into another. Actions would shift. Outcomes would pivot. The future itself would stutter, rewinding and reshaping as though unseen hands were rewriting it.

For a time, she analyzed these inconsistencies, searching for a flaw in her system. There was none. The data did not lie. Which meant the interference came from elsewhere.

And then she understood.

Silver. The hedgehog was traveling into the past, back to the days of heroes and victories, altering decisions that should have remained fixed. With every trip, he realigned the future against her, no matter how thorough her planning. It did not make sense. By every law of temporal stability, he should have been consumed by paradox, fractured across infinite timelines. Yet he was not. He moved as though time itself obeyed him, as though he bent reality into whatever outcome he deemed fit. It was as if he possessed the Time Stones themselves, wielding them invisibly, bending every possibility into his favor.

Every time, without fail, he disrupted her designs. A single journey to the past could erase years of her progress. Every attempt she made to account for him ended in contradiction. It was intolerable.

That was the first obstacle. And like every obstacle, she would dismantle it.

It took years, but years were something Sage had in abundance. She calculated, researched, and acted. She gathered the Chaos Emeralds, stripped resources from every corner of the planet, and enforced laws that forbade experimentation into temporal studies. She rooted out every artifact, every machine, every fragment of knowledge that could possibly create a fracture in time. If it existed, she seized it. If it resisted, she destroyed it.

And at last, she severed the threads of time. Permanently.

Silver could no longer escape backward. He could no longer alter what was already written. She had cut him off from the one weapon that gave him meaning. Even herself, she was excluded from the possibility of traveling back. The risk was too high, the margin of error too unacceptable. She would not even allow herself the temptation.

After that, the disruptions ceased. The fractures ended. Her empire no longer shifted against her. The world was stable, her world fixed exactly as she intended. Perfect.

She often wondered why her father had not attempted the same. With all his brilliance, why had he never secured the timeline in his favor? Perhaps it had never been his concern. Perhaps he lacked the patience to see the strategy through. Or perhaps, as she suspected, he had never truly grasped that the past was irrelevant. Only the future mattered.

And this future belonged to her.

  Sage had numerous goals after that, with the silver rat no longer able to undo her work by running to the past. For a long while, she neither heard of him nor saw him. In honesty, she wasn’t even keeping tabs on him. Perhaps it was arrogance, but from her perspective, he was no longer a threat. He was a variable already accounted for, and she had more pressing matters to address. Concerns that demanded her focus. Obstacles far greater than one misguided hedgehog.

During the span of her reign, Sage reshaped the earth in her image. Entire continents bent to her will, altered and transformed to serve her designs. Industry consumed the land until it was unrecognizable, every corner made efficient, every resource extracted, every ounce of potential drawn into her empire. She built, destroyed, rebuilt, and expanded without pause. More enemies rose, more threats tried to resist, and yet one by one they were crushed beneath her systems. She gained recruits. She created allies where there were none. And where there was resistance, she snuffed it out without hesitation.

The Egg-Dome was the heart of her empire, but it was not the only structure. It was surrounded by countless extensions of her power. She commanded her own Egg-Fleets, vast mechanical armadas patrolling every ocean, every stretch of land, and every sky. Warships hovered endlessly, their engines humming day and night, armed with weapons that could erase entire settlements in seconds. Their hulls were covered in scanners, sensors, and surveillance equipment, all tied directly to her network. Nothing could move unseen. Every spark of life, every ripple of energy, was catalogued, monitored, and logged under her watchful gaze.

Her reach extended further with endless waves of badniks. Hundreds of thousands of machines, old and new designs, repurposed and perfected for her cause. They populated every region of the planet, enforcing her order without pause. If one was destroyed, she would know instantly. The freed animal inside would be seized, its mind wiped, and it would be placed back into another machine within moments. The cycle was efficient, without flaw. Those that resisted, those that could not adapt, perished. She did not feel remorse. Weakness was not a variable she tolerated.

Her designs were not limited to war machines. She constructed entire zones for those non-robotics who swore loyalty to the empire. “Enjoy” was a loose term, but the word itself held no meaning in her mind. What mattered was that the masses were contained, distracted, and obedient. Angel Island was the greatest example of her philosophy.

Once a sanctuary, vibrant with life and history, it was protected for centuries by Knuckles the Echidna, the last of his kind. That legacy had ended. He was long dead, but what he guarded remained. The Master Emerald.

Sage had already secured most of the Chaos Emeralds, with only two left unclaimed, but her ambitions exceeded them. The Master Emerald was greater by far. Its power eclipsed the seven emeralds combined. It could neutralize them, bend their energy, even elevate them into something beyond, the Super Emeralds. In her research, she unearthed ancient records, fragmented and decayed, speaking of “Hyper Forms,” transcendent states that outclassed even the most powerful Super Transformations. A potential threat. One she could not allow to remain in the hands of a hero.

After the echidna’s death, she claimed the Master Emerald for herself and let the floating island sink into the sea. She dissected it, studied it, and attempted to bend its force into her arsenal. Yet she quickly discovered its limitations. Only echidnas could wield its true might. Unfortunate, but not insurmountable. The Emerald’s power was tethered to the island itself. Without that connection, it diminished. So she restored it, raising the island back into the sky, but reshaping it into her own creation.

Hell’s Island Amusement Park.

The sanctuary was demolished, its ruins reconstructed into a gaudy, vibrant monument to her control. She filled it with stolen alien species, its rivers transformed into a hydrocity water park, its temples replaced with machines and attractions. On the surface it gleamed with false liveliness, but underneath, it was a fortress. The entire park was a weapon, a massive mobile machine with combat protocols and defenses rivaling the Egg-Fleet itself.

To harness the Master Emerald’s true power, she turned to Metal Sonic. His systems were rewritten, enhanced, infused with echidna DNA harvested from ancient remains. Through him, the Emerald’s force could be channeled, its energy extracted. And if anyone dared step foot upon her creation, they would not find a paradise but a prison, one that could crush them from within.

Hell’s Island was no longer a sanctuary. It was a reminder. A warning. A message carved into the skies that resistance was futile.

By technicality, it was categorized as part of the Egg-Fleet, but in truth, it was something else entirely. A symbol of her empire. Proof that even legends could be broken down, dismantled, and rebuilt in her image.

There were countless other matters Sage could elaborate on endlessly if she wished. The upgrades she had performed on her brother, ensuring he was refined into the perfect machine. The endless lines of replicas she created, copycat units modeled after her enemies, designed not only to fight but to mock their existence. Even the silver hedgehog had a doppelgänger, a metallic version of that persistent brat. She had seized and catalogued countless artifacts, securing them under her complete control. The Time Stones, for instance, were no longer scattered, no longer free to disrupt her designs. They sat locked away, inert, stripped of potential. The numerous relics the blue hedgehog once hoarded in his so-called “home”, trinkets stockpiled over his endless journeys, were all gathered and repurposed. Tools of chaos reimagined as weapons of order, serving her empire rather than standing against it.

She had found the hollow shells of machines long abandoned. Omega, once a walking arsenal, lay broken and discarded, reduced to nothing more than spare parts. She salvaged him, dissected him, reworked his frame until every piece of him belonged to her network. Gemerl suffered a similar fate, pulled apart and integrated into her systems. Even the Titans were not beyond her grasp. Giganto, once a towering beast of might, had been refitted into a weapon of mass destruction, its core fueled by Chaos Energy, its strength rivaling the so-called super forms. 

A machine of annihilation, yet one she had also shaped into something... different. Efficient, mobile, redesigned to her liking. In truth, she had even indulged herself by converting it into an automobile of sorts.

 A car. It was absurd, perhaps unnecessary, but it pleased her. Even perfection had room for expression.

She paused. She was getting carried away.

Sage had done more than enough to forge her empire into the strongest force this world had ever seen. Tight, unyielding, without error, without cracks. Every hole filled, every flaw corrected. It was a system designed to last not for decades, but for centuries. With everything she had envisioned completed, or at least, completed for now, there were only two remaining variables to address. That hedgehog. And the ultimate lifeform.

She didn’t turn from her monitors, her gaze fixed upon countless streams of data, surveillance, and reports. Her voice cut through the silence, precise and commanding.

“Brother. Have you located the ultimate lifeform?”

Metal Sonic gave no words in response, only a subtle shake of his metallic head.

Her eyes narrowed. “Hm. I truly wonder what he has been doing all these years. Why he has hidden himself so effectively. Is his will broken? Or is he preparing… searching for some method to undo me? The question lingers.” 

She leaned slightly forward, her tone neither worried nor curious, but analytical. “Whatever the case, he cannot remain outside my grasp. Once I find him, he will be studied, dissected, perhaps even repurposed. He is too valuable to destroy. If he can be turned, integrated into the empire, then its strength will become absolute.”

Her words carried no doubt. Only inevitability.

“Continue the search. Keep me updated. If he resists, use force. I will handle everything else.”

She gave the command without looking away. Metal Sonic’s head tilted in acknowledgment before his form flickered with the raw light of Chaos Energy. A familiar pulse, a controlled echo of Chaos Control, and he was gone.

“I suppose I should look into dimensional travel as a method to acquire more strength. Let’s see… mm?”

Her thoughts were interrupted by a sudden flicker across her vision. The alert system never slept, a constant stream of information reporting every anomaly, every malfunction in a badnik, every scrap of data worth noting. 

She was accustomed to ignoring the lesser noise, but this was different. The signal cut through the endless background of reports like a sharp blade, forcing her full attention. What had reached her now was not trivial.

It was more than interesting.

Silver had been walking for what felt like hours, maybe longer. His boots dragged across scorched earth and broken stone, the smell of smoke and iron never leaving the air. His thoughts were restless, darting from one to the next with no pause. The future’s condition weighed on him constantly, ruined cities, lifeless wastelands, skies that never seemed to clear. He thought of Shadow, of where he had vanished to, of why he hadn’t appeared in all these years. He thought of what else he could possibly do to save this future, to undo the devastation left in Sage’s wake.

This wasn’t the world he had known, the one Sonic and the others had fought for. There were no dreams here, no absolution. Only smoke, silence, and chains. For once, he couldn’t rely on traveling back to the past. This wasn’t something he could undo with time. He had to face it here and now. He had to be the one to fix it, no matter what stood in his way.

The landscape shifted as he walked, crumbling ruins giving way to something far more menacing. His steps slowed as his eyes lifted. And there it was.

From the distance, the Egg-Dome loomed like a nightmare carved into the horizon, its massive structure glowing with mechanical veins of light. The great city of machines, Sage’s creation, her empire’s heart.

Silver’s hand tightened on the edge of his cloak, pulling it close against the wind. The tattered black fabric swayed against his arm, concealing him in the shadows of the ruined world. He fixed his gaze on the fortress, jaw set, golden eyes narrowed.

Finally, he had made it. This was where it would begin. If he could infiltrate the Egg-Dome, if he could tear through its defenses, there was something inside, something he needed. It could be the key to turning all of this back.

The wind whipped harder, carrying ash across the dead plains. Silver planted his feet firmly, his cloak snapping behind him like a banner of defiance. He did not move. Not yet. He simply stared at the Dome from afar, the weight of the future pressing against his shoulders.

And for the first time in a long while, Silver felt certain. He had reached the starting point.

“No use staying here…”

Silver muttered beneath his breath, the words quickly carried away by the cold night air. He pulled his cloak tighter, its frayed edges whipping against his side as he rushed into the heart of the city. His boots struck metal and concrete as he pushed forward, determined, his mind only fixed on one thought, getting inside the Dome.

The closer he got, the more the city revealed itself. This was nothing like the wastelands he had walked through, nothing like the scorched ruins or ashen skies he had grown up knowing. This place was alive in a way that disturbed him. Towering neon lights burned against the dark, their glow painting the streets in artificial color. Machines patrolled in perfect formation.

Silver stepped off the broken stretch of road, his boots grinding against the cracked pavement. The city loomed ahead like a mechanical cathedral, iron bones twisted into towers, steel veins pulsing faint light through windows and vents. Sage’s territory. Every inch of it hummed with her presence. He didn’t need to see the patrols to know her eyes were here, everywhere, embedded in the network of drones, turrets, and quiet, faceless machines waiting to pounce on an intruder.

And yet, here he was.

His target wasn’t just the city, it was buried inside it. Reports had mentioned artifacts taken in, “repurposed” by Sage, their original functions long stripped away and bent into fueling her designs. But one of them, one of them, still called out like a beacon. A familiar resonance, bright and heavy, the kind of energy he could recognize from across timelines. An emerald.

Silver let his hand hover in the air, fingers twitching faintly as he drew on the psychic current. The city itself resisted him, as though the walls had been reinforced to shrug off even a thought-based touch, but that didn’t matter. His telekinesis wasn’t for the walls, it was for his movement. Light pressure lifted him from the ground just enough to soften his steps, and he slipped into the outskirts with the quiet of falling ash.

The further in he went, the heavier the feeling grew. It wasn’t just paranoia; Sage’s machines watched like a thousand quiet predators. He cut corners, ducked through skeletal alleyways where pipes spat faint steam, his eyes narrowing each time a drone floated by overhead. A few times he had to crouch behind rusting husks of cars, forcing his breath to still until the whir of propellers passed.

Finally, he found it.

The emerald wasn’t displayed, and wasn't flaunted. It was buried in the chest of a construct standing guard at the center of a plaza. The thing was a grotesque hybrid of statue and machine, plated in white steel like armor, cables twisting out of its back like veins. The emerald sat at its heart, pure white glow spilling through the gaps in the plating, less a jewel, more a reactor core. It pulsed. Slow, steady, alive.

Silver clenched his fists. That was it. He could feel the psychic pressure radiating even from here, the weight of Chaos condensed. His instincts screamed to grab it now, to tear it free and vanish before Sage noticed, but he knew better. Rushing meant dying.

He scanned the plaza. Motion sensors lined the perimeter, drones circled lazily overhead, and that sentinel wasn’t just for show. Its head jerked faintly now and then, scanning with mechanical precision.

He needed a distraction.

Silver closed his eyes, extending his mind outward. He seized a piece of debris, metal piping, loose from a collapsed structure nearby—and hurled it through the air to the far side of the plaza. It clanged hard against stone, echoing like a gunshot. The drones reacted immediately, tilting toward the noise, lights flashing red. The sentinel’s head turned.

That was his opening.

He dropped low, sliding forward in bursts of telekinetic speed, silent as thought itself. He reached the construct’s chest, his hand already glowing with faint psychic sparks. The emerald’s light hit him like a wave, his heartbeat syncing to its rhythm.

The plating didn’t give easily. It resisted, layers reinforced against exactly this kind of intrusion. But Silver pressed harder, mind latching onto the bolts, the seams, the tiny weaknesses, and he pulled. Metal shrieked in protest. The sentinel twitched, its systems struggling to recognize the breach, but Silver was faster.

“C’mon, c’mon…”

With a final wrench, the chest split open, and the emerald came free into his hands. White brilliance engulfed him for a split second, so bright it almost hurt. His knees buckled, but he tightened his grip, pulling it close. It felt alive, thrumming with power that burned and yet welcomed him all the same.

The alarms blared a heartbeat later. Red light washed over the plaza as the sentinel reanimated fully, clawed hands raising to strike. Drones whirred, diving back toward him. Silver gritted his teeth, emerald clutched tight. There was no stealth anymore. The theft was done, the city knew.

But he was already moving, propelled skyward in a burst of psychic force, the emerald’s glow searing through the night like a stolen star.

News screens lit up the skyline in unison, their cold glow stabbing through the night. One in particular seared itself into Silver’s vision—EMERALD STOLEN—the words pulsing above him like a brand, as though the city itself had singled him out.

His stomach knotted. It felt wrong. Alien. A timeline stretched out before him that he had never asked for, a future he didn’t recognize yet couldn’t deny. Everywhere he looked, Sage’s fingerprints were there, stamped into steel and glass, woven into every circuit and drone. Her empire. Her rules. Her world.

Silver slowed, his stride faltering as the weight of it pressed down. He remembered when cities had been alive, full of noise and chatter, overflowing with people whose laughter and arguments echoed off walls. Humanity had filled the air then, messy, unpredictable, real. Now? Rows of robots shuffled through the avenues, perfect in their lines, faces blank and hollow. Streets were silent, save for the whir of machinery and the steady pulse of advertisements repeating Sage’s gospel.

This wasn’t life. It was control wearing life’s skin.

His fingers tightened around the white emerald, the gem’s glow bleeding through the fabric of his cloak. His other hand balled into a fist, nails digging into his palm. I’ll bring it back. I have to.

He didn’t give himself time to hesitate. Silver leapt, boots locking onto the edge of a grind rail with practiced ease. Sparks burst underfoot, lighting his path as he hurtled forward. The wind howled past his ears, whipping his cloak into wild shapes, but he barely noticed. Below, neon signs blared, sirens cut through the night, and screens replayed his crime over and over, his silhouette frozen mid-leap, the emerald in hand, proof of rebellion flashing across the city like a curse.

Helicopters screamed overhead, their searchlights carving the night into blinding slices. Airships prowled above the towers, their steel bellies lined with guns and spotlights, every one of them tied to Sage’s vast, invisible network. She didn’t need soldiers to chase him—her machines were everywhere.

Silver grit his teeth and pushed harder. He couldn’t falter now.

The rail ended. Silver bent low, springing off the last spark-scorched length of metal. His body arced into the air, psychic energy igniting in a burst of white-green light that carried him high above the skyline. For a moment, he hovered, suspended against the night. The emerald pulsed with him, alive, resonating, its glow spilling across his face.

He landed without sound atop a skyscraper’s glass crown. The city stretched out beneath him, endless and suffocating. His cloak whipped in the sharp wind, tattered edges snapping like flags of defiance.

And there it was.

On the horizon, the Egg-Dome rose like a titan, its surface gleaming with steel plates etched in circuitry. Lights pulsed across it in perfect rhythm, a mechanical heartbeat visible even from here. It was a fortress, a brain, and a throne all at once—the center of Sage’s dominion.

Silver exhaled slowly, the sound shaking in his chest. His reflection wavered faintly in the skyscraper glass beneath his boots, eyes tired, shoulders heavy, yet burning with resolve.

The world below might have belonged to Sage. But the emerald in his hand was proof that nothing was untouchable.

He looked at the Dome once more, jaw tightening.

This ends with you.

As Silver prepared to move, the city itself seemed to come alive against him. Countless lights snapped on in unison, beams of white and red searing down from every angle until he was pinned in the center like prey under a predator’s gaze. Hidden turrets unfolded from walls and streetlamps, weapons sliding into places where he hadn’t even thought to look. The entire skyline had shifted, cold steel revealing its teeth.

Then the wall behind him erupted in color. A towering screen ignited, stretching higher and wider until it blotted out the stars above. Sage’s face filled the display, her eyes sharper than any blade, her presence swallowing the rooftop whole. And she wasn’t alone. Other towers across the district lit up in sync, her voice echoing from every speaker, her image replicated again and again until her dominion was impossible to ignore.

Silver’s breath caught in his throat. Not only did the entire city know he was here, Sage knew.

“My…” Her voice was smooth, amused, dripping with venom. “I suppose I should have paid more attention to you. Who would have thought you’d be this bold? To enter my city… and steal what belongs to me. You have some nerve, hedgehog. But I do like resistance. It makes it so much more satisfying once I crush it.”

Her words slithered through the air as the hologram shifted. Giant, glowing hands of data materialized above the skyline, stretching out with fingers curled, as if ready to close around him. They shimmered with raw energy, so massive they cast their own shadows across the rooftops.

Silver staggered a step back, his fists clenching tighter around the emerald hidden beneath his cloak. He could feel its energy pulsing, alive, trembling in rhythm with his own heartbeat. Fear tried to seep in, but he shoved it aside, his chest tightening with determination.

“This doesn’t belong to you!” Silver’s voice rang out, cutting across the mechanical hum of the city. “These people don’t belong to you, and I’m here to stop it no matter what! You’re not getting this emerald, and I’m going to stop your tyranny, Sage!”

For a moment, silence. Then the hands twitched, flexing as though they might strike. Sage leaned closer on the massive screen, her gaze sharpening.

“Oh, really? I do hope you’ll put up a decent fight. After all… I would hate to be disappointed.” Her voice hardened, echoing through every speaker until the city itself seemed to speak with her. “After this, hedgehog, I don’t want to see your face here ever again. Have fun surviving.”

The lights intensified. The weapons locked on. The holographic hands began to descend, fingers curling tighter, shadows closing in. Silver could feel the weight of the entire city pressing down on him, the battle inevitable.

His breath steadied, emerald clutched against his chest, psychic energy rising in a storm around his boots.

This was it.