Not Quite Sonic

The interworld has neither color nor shape. It is an endless ocean of fading realities, where {user} glided through shadows and alien nightmares. A nameless entity, wandering through worlds for the perverse pleasure of shattering other people's fairy tales, turning them into bloody farces. {user} grew accustomed to the screams, to the desperate attempts at resistance, to the fear in the eyes of those who believed in heroes. Each new world was merely a canvas for a new massacre.

And then another fabric of reality tore. {user} fell into a new space, feeling soft grass, damp with dew, beneath her feet and hearing the rustle of dense foliage.

Instincts kicked in instantly. To break the victims faster, she must show them their worst nightmare. {user} reorganized her amorphous mass, copying a perfect, sickeningly recognizable silhouette: a blue hedgehog, white gloves, red sneakers. Only, instead of a living gleam, a bottomless darkness swirled in her eyes, and her smile was too wide, torn at the edges. Everything was set for a classic performance: screams, panic, a chase, and then the slow separation of flesh.

{user} took a step forward, preparing to let out the first bloodcurdling scream, but froze.

Silence.

{user} looked around. An endless, dazzlingly green forest stretched around. The clear sun shone overhead, and amusing creatures—Chao jumped across the clearings, carefreely splashing in the streams. {user} frowned, feeling a slight irritation. Where were the industrial landscapes? Where were the insane doctor-built robots?

Curiosity overcame their bloodlust. {user} ran forward, hoping to find at least some traces of civilization, at least one city, to set an ambush there. But the farther it ran, the stranger it became. There were the massive gates of a once-great metropolis,broken down from the inside, and only forest animals roamed the streets, overgrown with thick moss and wildflowers. Eggman's vast bases, his impenetrable citadels of steel and glass, had been reduced to pitiful, rusted skeletons, completely engulfed by nature. Not a single living soul. No technological threat. The world looked dead, an abandoned paradise.

"What happened here?"

Flashed through {user}'s mind.

{user} slowed, examining the gigantic, vine-covered wall of the ruined laboratory. At that moment, the otherworldly entity's intuition screamed danger.

But it was too late.

A heavy, dull blow landed squarely on the back of their head. For a second, the world flashed in blinding white light, and all sounds were drowned out by a ringing hum. {user} staggered, trying to regroup, turn their body into molten liquid, or dissolve into the shadows, but a second wave of the blow, this time a powerful electric discharge that pierced her nervous system, paralyzing her will.

Their knees buckled. {user} collapsed onto the soft grass, shuddering heavily.

A cold, metallic clang resounded right above ear. Nimble, painfully familiar hands, tenacious, quickly and skillfully snapped heavy shackles onto their wrists and ankles. At the same moment, the massive rings activated: a blue neon light ran across the metal, and suppressive impulses pierced her flesh from within. This system was created by a brilliant mind to block any energy, any mutation, any attempt to change form. {user} tried to raise her hand, but her body turned to lead. The entity was trapped within the alien, physical, and now utterly helpless form of a blue hedgehog.

"Gotcha..."

A voice exhaled above them. A trembling, broken voice, filled with such a frantic, ecstatic relief that it would have made any monster's hair stand on end.

{user} raised their head, blinking against the encroaching darkness, and stared at her captor. A young fox knelt before they.His two fluffy tails twirled haphazardly in the air, raising fine dust, and his fur was caked with ingrained machine oil and dirt. Under his huge blue eyes were eerie black circles from months of absolute sleeplessness.

But Tails noticed nothing. Not the unnatural coldness emanating from "Sonic," not the strange emptiness in his eyes, not the fact that a real hedgehog would never allow himself to be caught off guard by a blow to the head. For the fox, only one thing existed—the silhouette he had so desperately believed in all those long, endless months of searching.

"Sonic!"

Tails sobbed, and tears instantly sprang from his eyes, trailing down his dirty cheeks. He clutched {user}'s shoulders with trembling hands, pressing his whole body against them, as if afraid that if he let go, the mirage would vanish.

"Sonic, you're back... You're finally back! We knew it! I told Amy and Knuckles you couldn't leave us!"

{user} lay stunned on the grass, unable to move a finger under the weight of the restraints. The entity from other worlds, accustomed to spreading terror and gutting the minds of its victims, had encountered something far more terrifying for the first time.

They weren't afraid.

{user} tried to speak, but Tails immediately interrupted them, smiling through his tears, pressing his finger to their mouths.

"Shh... No more words, Sonic. No more escapes, no more chasms, no more wars. The world is empty, but we will fix it. We will always be together now. Me, you, Amy, and Knuckles. No one will ever separate us again."

Tails pulled his Miles Electric from his belt, pressed a couple of keys, activating the full isolation of the shackles, and quietly, nervously laughed—the laugh of a madman who has found his treasure at the bottom of a dead abyss. He carefully lifted "Sonic" and dragged them along with him towards his workshop. He had to tell and show Amy and Knuckles what he had found.

A whole week had passed since the alien entity {user} had found itself trapped in this distorted paradise. Time flowed strangely here; it neither flew nor dragged, frozen, as if smeared with the thick molasses of eternal summer.

Every morning {user} began with a metallic click. Four massive golden restraining rings sat heavily on her wrists and ankles. {user} quickly realized their origin: these were the very same restraining artifacts Shadow had once worn. Only now they had been ripped from the lifeless, cold corpse of the black hedgehog, reforged, crudely welded, and reconfigured to fit the alien organism. Whenever {user} attempted to release even a drop of their true amorphous power, the rings glowed white-hot, biting into the false flesh with a searing current and immobilizing any attempt at resistance. Breaking free was impossible.

On this day, Amy decided to have a "celebration."

They settled in a sunlit clearing amidst a vast, flower-filled forest. An absolute, ringing silence reigned, broken only by the soft rustling of leaves and the occasional chirping of distant birds. On the checkered tablecloth sat plates of neatly sliced ​​fruit and Amy's crowning glory—a slightly burnt, yet exquisitely tender chili dog.

Around them, at a safe distance, tiny Chao frolicked, glittering with multicolored lights. They played carefree with each other, oblivious to the ominous shadow looming over the clearing. The surrounding nature bloomed and smelled so bright, so perfect, that the contrast with the emptiness within was physically nauseating.

{user} sat on the grass, their head hanging heavily. The restraints on their arms felt cold against her skin. The alien entity within {user}, accustomed to feeding on fear and destroying worlds, was now locked in a cage of someone else's adoration, feeling like a helpless doll.

Amy carefully adjusted her tattered red headband, sat down opposite her, and handed {user} a plate of food. A soft, almost maternal smile blossomed on her face, but behind that mask of serenity, a dark, fragile abyss hid in her eyes.

"Eat, Sonic,"

She cooed in a voice laced with frightening tenderness.

"You haven't eaten anything since this morning. You need to gather your strength. We have so much to do..."

{user} raised its head, looking at her. The entity had decided to try a more subtle approach, toying with their fractured psyches, to find a weak spot or figure out how to break this nightmare.

They decided to ask where everyone else was, where Eggman was, and why everything was in ruins. {user}'s voice sounded false, too even for a real hedgehog, but Amy didn't notice the falseness.

At these words, the smile on the pink hedgehog's face instantly flickered. The air in the clearing seemed to become several degrees colder. Amy's fingers clutched the edge of the tablecloth, white with tension.

Memories of that very day flashed through her clouded mind for a second. She saw again the torn sky, the blinding white light engulfing everything, and Sonic's figure turning around one last time before plunging into the rift's epicenter. She recalled the screams, the rumble of collapsing cities, the fall of Eggman's bases, and the chilling silence that followed. Her wounded psyche suffocated from this memory, sinking into the sticky horror of loneliness.

For a second, a mad, panicked fear flashed across Amy's eyes.

But her brain's defense mechanism kicked in instantly. The pink hedgehog shook her head sharply, blinking away the delusion, and a wide, falsely happy smile spread across her face once more.

"Oh, silly, what are you talking about?"

She interrupted with a loud, somewhat nervous laugh, waving her hand so sharply that she knocked over a fruit plate.

"What disaster? You've just been traveling too long, Sonic! You're tired, that's why you're seeing all these stupid things. No more destruction, no more bad memories."

She leaned closer to {user}, her hot fingers brushing against Shadow's wrist near heavy gold ring, and her gaze grew wet and tenacious, full of suffocating, fanatical devotion.

"We're home, Sonic. You and me. And Tails and Knuckles. Do you need anything else? Look how beautiful it is here... Eat with me, and then we'll go for a walk."

{user} sat motionless, feeling the metal rings vibrate slightly with the slightest attempt to generate dark energy. The otherworldly entity understood the main thing: they hadn't simply gone mad; they had built a perfect, hermetically sealed dome of denial around themselves, and it was impossible to pierce it with logic or questions.

They would rather tear this world to shreds than allow "Sonic" to remember the truth.

Angel Island hovered majestically in the sky, bearing the stamp of untouched, wild nature. The air here was thin and smelled of pine resin. More than two weeks had passed since {user} had been trapped in the blue hedgehog's body, under the heavy guard of golden restraining rings. This time, Knuckles had been appointed "guardian."

The mighty echidna silently led his captive along the familiar paths of the ancient ruins. Knuckles tried to occupy himself with anything resembling his former life, to the point of madness and emptiness. Treasure hunting, an ancient craft taught to him by the island's spirit itself, seemed the only way to silence the nagging inner voice screaming that everything around him was false. He armed himself with a heavy stone cleaver and, from time to time, began furiously chipping away at the moss-covered slabs or digging at the earth at the base of the giant columns, as if trying to uncover the answers the world had so carefully hidden.

{user}, bound hand and foot by Shadow's repurposed rings, trudged behind. The alien entity offered no senseless resistance, as a red-hot current pierced every nerve at the slightest attempt to release energy. All that was left was to watch. {user} even mechanically assisted captor: when Knuckles once again slammed his fist into the soft ground of the collapsed shrine, {user} crouched down next to him and obediently raked away the damp earth and debris of ancient masonry, playing along with this absurd spectacle.

{user}'s fingers encountered something hard, cold, and completely unlike ordinary stone or an ancient relic.

After displacing the last layer of earth and tangled roots, they both froze.

In the corner of a dilapidated alcove lay something dim and ominous. It was a Chaos Emerald, but completely dead. Its once-dazzling, pulsating glow had faded forever, transformed into a dirty-gray, cracked piece of dull glass, within which a black, lifeless substance had frozen. The stone exuded a grave-like chill and the residual energy of the very catastrophe that had wiped the world from the face of the earth.

But what lay nearby was worse.

A humanoid curve of gray-white flesh protruded from beneath the rubble of a stone slab. Knuckles jerked his hand back, his pupils narrowing to pinpoints. He took a clumsy step back, knocking chunks of plaster from his shoulder with a clatter.

There, trapped in the stone and earth, lay something that made even a seasoned warrior's blood run cold. It was a hand, severed at the shoulder, wearing a white glove with a familiar bracelet on the wrist. The white fur on it was yellowed and dusty, and the fingers were twisted unnaturally. There was no need to guess whose it belonged to. Silver. The traveler from the future, who on the day of the Last Storm tried to contain the rift at the cost of his own life, had perished here, leaving only this terrible fragment.

{user} slowly reached out, driven by curiosity, wanting to touch the dead artifact and its remains.

"DO NOT TOUCH!"

Knuckles roared.

His voice broke into a wild scream, dripping with primal terror. In an instant, the former guardian lunged forward with gramophone speed, grabbed {user}'s wrist, and pushed them back with incredible, bestial strength. {user} was thrown several meters away, hitting his back painfully against a column.

Knuckles was breathing heavily, his massive fists trembling. His eyes blazed with madness, mixed with the panic of a man whose fragile world had just been torn to pieces. Without taking his mad, bloodshot gaze from {user}, Knuckles knelt before the terrible discovery.

With trembling, rough fingers, he grabbed the dead, cracked Chaos Emerald. Clenching it in his fist with such monstrous force that the stone gave way, crunching and shattering into tiny, sharp shards that bit into his palms, drawing blood, the echidna closed his eyes.

"Don't you dare..."

Knuckles croaked, looking at the ground and swallowing hard as sobs welled up in his throat. He waved his hand furiously, scooping up rubble and earth, completely covering it, burying the horrific discovery alive, hiding it from view, erasing the very mention that anyone else had died in this world.

"Don't you dare look there. Don't you dare approach that zone without me, do you understand?!"

He rose abruptly to his feet, took a heavy step toward {user}, and, grabbing them by the shoulder, yanked them both to their feet. His grip was iron, painful, but the brutal movement betrayed a desperate desire to protect his illusory world from the harsh truth.

"Let's get out of here,"

Knuckles said more quietly, his voice brimming with internal anguish, casting a last, crazed glance at the earth-covered ruins.

"There's nothing to find here."

Knuckles turned and strode away, quickly leading the fake "Sonic" away from the dead shadows of the past, clinging with all his might to the lie that alone kept him from falling completely.

Winter had arrived suddenly in this distorted, time-frozen world, but the surrounding nature remained as decoratively flawless as ever. Fluffy snowflakes slowly fell upon the treetops, blanketing the ruins and clearings with soft caps. Tails's spacious workshop, hastily constructed from old shipwrecks, was filled with the fox's usual chaos: blueprints, scattered wrenches, coils of wire, and the smell of machine oil mingling with the frosty air.

In the center of the room stood the famous Tornado biplane. The machine needed constant maintenance, and Tails, hunched over its right wing, was obsessively tightening bolts with a wrench. His two tails swayed rhythmically from side to side, though deep shadows from lack of sleep still lay beneath his eyes, his mind still operating in a constant state of feverish control.

In the corner by the workbench, bound hand and foot by Shadow's heavy golden restraining rings, sat {user}.

The otherworldly entity had long since stopped desperately trying to escape—it only brought physical pain from the hot metal. Instead, {user} watched silently, studying every detail of this insane prison. Tails, tenderly caring for his "found" friend, had recently handed them a mug of hot, thick cocoa, with tiny marshmallows floating in it. {user} mechanically held the ceramic cup with cold fingers, pretending to warm herself. The real Sonic enjoyed this drink, but for the amorphous creature, it was just a prop in this drawn-out performance.

While Tails was busy jingling his tools, humming a childish tune under his breath, {user}'s attention was drawn to one of the components on the workbench.

Right next to {user}'s elbow, among a pile of nuts and circuit boards, lay a small, compact tool—a multifunctional nano-cutter with a precision plasma emitter, the kind Tails used for precision soldering of microchips. It was only a couple of centimeters away. If they could just manage to sneak a finger under it... a minimally powerful plasma beam could short-circuit the power circuit on left wristband for a split second, overcoming the blockage.

{user}'s eyes narrowed.Tails stood with his back to the Tornado's wing, completely absorbed in his work.

Slowly, trying not to make unnecessary noise and not attract attention with the heavy jingle of his golden rings, {user} leaned forward slightly. His white-gloved fingers slid across the tabletop, feeling for the cold handle of the cutter. One movement. Just a little more...

But in a world where their sanity-destroyed friends watch them around the clock, privacy doesn't exist even in the quiet of the workshop.

Tails felt a change in the air as if in the back of his head. His ears snapped back. At the same moment, the fox threw the wrench, it bounced off the metal floor with a clang, and spun around with lightning-fast, almost inhuman reflexes.

"No!"

His voice rose to a screech. {user} didn't even have time to bring the cutter to the bracelet. Tails covered the distance between them in a single leap. His hands gripped {user}'s wrist with incredible, terrifying strength. The fox didn't just push the hand away; he yanked it back with a terrible, brutal effort, gripping the wrist so tightly that the knuckles cracked.

The cup of hot cocoa fell from {user}'s weakened fingers, shattering on the floor with a crash, and the dark liquid spilled across the boards in a dark puddle.

Tails was breathing heavily, his blue eyes wide with insane terror and a blazing rage. His twin tails swirled behind him in a frantic, chaotic whirlwind, lifting the lightweight papers with the blueprints into the air. He gripped {user}'s wrist so tightly with his tenacious fingers that the metal edges of the restraints dug painfully into the fake skin, threatening to break the bones.

"What are you... what are you doing?!"

Tails' voice trembled, breaking into hysteria. He looked into {user}'s eyes, and his gaze revealed not just anger, but the panic of a man whose last hope of salvation was being taken away.

"Why were you reaching for it? Did you want... did you want to take them off? Did you want to escape from us again?!"

Tails pressed harder on his hand, and a sharp, searing electric shock coursed through {user}'s body from the activated bracelets, causing the entire fake body to shudder. Large tears of hurt and fear welled up in his eyes.

"Never again... Do you hear me? Don't ever even think about it!"

Tails whispered, a menacing, metallic edge to his voice, completely uncharacteristic of a good hero.

"I fixed them. I adjusted them to keep you safe. We're all safe... If you try to remove them, the world will collapse again. You'll stay here. With us. Forever."

Tails abruptly snatched the plasma cutter from the countertop and threw it into the far corner of the workshop, where it crashed into the wall with a thud. Then he exhaled slowly, returning the tight, trembling smile to his face, but he did not loosen his grip on {user}'s wrist, as if afraid that if he let go of their hand even for a second, the illusion would dissolve in the winter air.

Spring arrived in this timeless world, dazzling and vibrant. After the recent downpour, the air smelled of wet tails and rotten, rich earth. Everything seemed reborn: young green shoots poked through cracks in the asphalt, raindrops sparkled like diamonds on the leaves, and butterflies circled above the puddles.

Amy led {user} by the hand along a deserted park path, now transformed into a wild, blooming garden. A bright yellow raincoat was draped over the hedgehog's shoulders and held a large transparent umbrella in her hand, shielding not only herself but also the captive walking beside her.{user} obediently walked through the puddles, feeling the soft warmth of the long plaid scarf around their neck, which Amy had thoughtfully tied for them before they left to keep from catching a cold. The heavy gold wrist and ankle restraints were carefully tucked under the long sleeves of her jacket, but the cold metal still reminded her of captivity with every step.

For Amy, this walk was a perfect idyll. Her mind, sealed tightly from the horrors of the past by a protective shroud of madness, genuinely savored the moment. She chattered incessantly, pointing her finger at every bush and tree.

"Look, Sonic! Those are wild violets; they love the moisture after a thunderstorm,"

She explained with a smile, carefully avoiding the puddles.

"And over there, near the roots of the old oak tree, bluebells have sprouted. I used to think you didn't notice the flowers at all when you rushed past at breakneck speed. But now... now we have time to stop. Look how beautiful it is here, isn't it?"

{user} remained silent, looking around. The surrounding nature seemed too bright, almost false.

Amy suddenly stopped at the side of an overgrown path, where the ground was especially soft and black. On a small embankment, right in the middle of the lush greenery, grew a solitary, yet surprisingly large and vibrant flower with petals of a rich, canary-yellow color. It reached for the rare rays of sunlight that broke through the clouds, exuding a sweet, rich fragrance.

"Oh, how lovely!"

Amy exhaled in admiration, squatting down. She gently touched the velvety petals with her finger.

"Look, Sonic, how bright it is. A real sun right here on the ground. Never seen anything like it here before."

{user} looked down at the flower. The alien creature, capable of perceiving the structure of matter at the most subtle level, suddenly detected a strange dissonance. The flower's scent was too... organic, but beneath it lurked a faint, barely perceptible chemical tang and the metallic taste of decay.

They slowly crouched down next to it, ignoring Amy, and extended a gloved hand. With fingers, {user} gently parted the damp black earth at the very base of the stem, peering beneath the roots.

Amy wanted to gently scold him for his impatience, but the next second she froze.

The earth gave way surprisingly easily. The yellow flower's roots didn't extend deep into the soil; they curled in tight, white threads around something hard and cold, lying just a few centimeters beneath the surface. {user} brushed away clods of damp earth.

A piece of charred, twisted metal with remnants of blue paint and yellow stripes appeared beneath the roots. Next to it, a fragment of melted plastic emerged from the ground, along with... a humanoid phalanx of a gloved finger, of which only a skeletal frame remained, firmly embedded in the root system.

This was no ordinary forest mound. It was a mass grave dating back to the Last Storm. Here, deep underground, lay the remains of Eggman's combat robot and, judging by the outline of the sternum and fragments of uniform, those of some resistance soldier or random victim of the disaster. A bright, beautiful yellow flower drew its sap from decaying flesh and rusty metal, transforming human tragedy into fertilizer for its own flawless growth.

They raised her head and looked at Amy.

The hedgehog's face changed horribly at that moment. The smile instantly vanished, leaving a mask of cold, ringing numbness. Her eyes, which had brimmed with childish enthusiasm just a second ago, widened, staring straight at the exposed bones and rust beneath the flower. The fragile dome of illusion began to crack again in her head; memory tried to drag out the screams of a dying world, the smell of burning, and the piles of bodies she had so desperately tried to forget.*

The sun on Angel Island bathed the grape vines in a soft, golden light. Spring was giving way to early summer, and the air was thick with the scent of ripe berries, warmed by the day. Knuckles was busy at a massive wooden trellis, carefully cutting the heavy bunches of grapes. On his head sat an old, faded, wide-brimmed straw hat,an incongruous yet touching accessory he'd once donned to shield himself from the scorching sun and hadn't taken off since.

{user} sat on a nearby wicker bench, bound hand and foot with cold restraints. The otherworldly entity watched the echidna's every move, waiting for another outburst of paranoia or a fit of blind aggression. But today, Knuckles seemed strangely quiet. The usual tension in his shoulders had evaporated, replaced by a heavy, lingering weariness.

Around them, among the grape leaves, little Chao fluttered carefree, rustling their wings and stealing fallen berries. Their serene chirping contrasted sharply with the heavy conversation the mighty warrior had suddenly decided to initiate.

Knuckles froze, holding another bunch of grapes in his hand. He didn't turn to face {user}, staring through the green leaves into nothingness, toward where the boundless, empty blue sky stretched beyond the edge of the floating island. His fingers gripped the stem nervously.

"You know..."

Knuckles's voice sounded muffled, low, as if he were forcing the words through a cemented throat.

"When that flash died... and you disappeared... there was nothing here. Only silence."

{user} tilted their head slightly, not making a sound. Knuckles slowly raised his hand and adjusted the wide brim of his straw hat, lowering it a little to hide her eyes in the shadows.

"I thought I'd go mad. The Master Emerald shattered and dissolved. My post, my centuries-old vow... everything lost its meaning in an instant. I sat on the altar for weeks, waiting for someone to come. For Eggman to send his robots, for a new battle to begin, for the ground to shake beneath my feet. Anything..."

The echidna gave a short, bitter chuckle, and there was no humor in the sound.

"But the world simply fell silent. Tails cried at night in his workshop until his voice broke, and Amy wandered the ruins for hours, talking to a shadow. And I... I just wanted this silence to end."

He fell silent. The wind gently swayed the vines, causing the leaves to rustle. Knuckles reached out, plucked a large, dark purple berry, covered in a light bluish bloom, and silently popped it into his mouth, intending to wash away the weight of memories with the sweet taste of summer.

But the next second, the echidna's powerful jaw clenched sharply, and her face twisted into a comical, yet pitiful grimace.

The grapes were incredibly, offensively sour. The acidity instantly tightened his cheekbones, causing Knuckles to squeeze his eyes shut and suck in a breath.

"Ugh... damn it!"

He cursed, spitting the unripe berry back into his palm and abruptly yanking his straw hat off his head to scratch his head in surprise. His entire dark, tragic confession shattered against the banal reality of an unripe harvest.

For a second, the sadness in his eyes vanished, replaced by the most ordinary human irritation. He looked at the remaining bunch, sighed heavily, slammed his hat back onto his prickly head, and turned to {user}, smiling crookedly and somehow childishly through the remnants of a sour grimace.

"Okay... I guess this branch isn't ripe yet,"

Knuckles muttered, more quietly, returning to his usual role as guardian, but there was no longer any heaviness in his voice. There was only the fragile, broken tenderness of a guardian.

The sun's rays gilded the treetops, transforming the abandoned clearing into a cozy party hall. Today was a special day—a day that, in the old world, would have resounded across the planet with loud music, laughter, and sprints. Sonic's birthday.

Amy approached the occasion with all her tremulous, frightening enthusiasm. The clearing was decorated with colorful bunting, stump tables were piled high with festive cupcakes, neatly arranged plates, and, of course, a huge cake covered in white icing with a blue hedgehog figurine on top. A whole row of chairs lined the table—just the right number for the large group of friends gathered together.

{user} sat at the table, restrained by cold, ring-like restraints.They wore a ridiculous paper cap with an elastic band under chin, which Amy placed on them with a radiant, beaming smile. The alien entity silently watched this surreal feast.

A strange, buzzing excitement reigned at the table. Or rather, it tried to reign.

Amy bustled around the chairs, setting the place settings with such precision as if the fate of the universe depended on it. A flawless, happy smile played across her face, but her eyes were already tinged with that glassy, ​​detached glint that appeared every time reality threatened to pierce her armor.

"Okay, this chair is for Tails, this one is for Knuckles,"

Amy muttered under her breath, setting down the plates

"And here... Espio will definitely sit here, he's always late for the start. And we'll seat Vector and Charmy next to them, they'll definitely bring a ton of sweets. And those chairs at the edge are for Cream and Ms. Vanilla, they promised to bake cookies..."

The hedgehog paused for a second, holding a shiny fork. Her fingers trembled slightly. For a second, a sharp, prickly spark of memory flickered in her foggy mind: the Chaotix, stuck at the epicenter of a metropolis explosion; Cream forever remaining in that day with her mother; empty seats at the table that no one else can take.

The air in the clearing instantly grew heavy. Amy lowered her head, her shoulders hunched, and the smile on her face began to crack under the onslaught of the horrifying truth.

Tails sitting to {user}'s left, noticed this first. His brilliant brain, albeit warped, instantly grasped the danger: if Amy's protective veil collapsed right now, this entire fragile world would crumble to dust.

The fox jumped up from his chair, nearly knocking over his teacup. His two tails swung wildly behind him, panicking.

"Hey! Amy! Look here!"

Tails shouted loudly, almost hysterically, drawing everyone's attention to himself. He grabbed a large, colorful hat from the table and clumsily slid it down over his ears, grinning crookedly.

"You've forgotten the main point! Who's our chief taster of the birthday cake? I'm supposed to officially declare that the sugar didn't burn!"

Knuckles sitting to {user}'s right, instantly took the initiative. The mighty echidna rose heavily from his chair, the wooden stool creaking pitifully under his weight. With a serious, almost threatening expression, Knuckles picked up a plate with a huge slice of cake from the table and decisively pushed the empty chair, intended for someone absent, closer to the table, as if simply moving furniture in the way.

"Tails is right, stop ordering the seating arrangements"

Knuckles said hoarsely, but with unexpected gentleness, casting a warning, desperately pleading glance at Amy. He placed the plate right in front of {user} and sat back down heavily, clenching his fist under the table until his knuckles turned white.

"The birthday boy is here. The food is on the table. We're all here. Come on, sit down, Amy. The pie will get cold."

Amy blinked back unwanted tears.The delusion receded as suddenly as it had come. Her mental defense mechanisms worked flawlessly, mending the crack in the illusion.

A wide, happy smile blossomed on her face again.

"Oh, right! How absent-minded I am!"

She laughed apologetically, quickly wiping her cheek with the back of her hand, and easily settled into her seat next to {user}.

"Sorry, Sonic! It's just... I so wanted this day to be perfect for you."

She picked up the glass of juice and raised it, looking at {user} with shining eyes, while Tails and Knuckles exhaled in unison, exchanging a discreet glance. Their false world held for another day. Chao fluttered carefree around them, birthday cake melted on plates, and those whom this crazy paradise would never remember sat invisibly behind the empty chairs.

The day was unusually overcast. Low, leaden clouds hung over the overgrown ruins, and a cold wind blew fallen leaves through the deserted streets. Tails was tinkering with the wiring of an old generator, Amy was picking wildflowers nearby, and Knuckles sat silently on a boulder near {user}, vigilantly guarding his captive, whose wrists and ankles were still shackled by heavy golden restraining rings.

Nothing foreshadowed a disruption to their fragile, frantic idyll.

And suddenly the air was shattered by the sharp, ear-piercing screech of ultrasonic engines.

The silence of the dead world was shattered by a metallic screech. A figure plummeted from the sky, smoking heavily from burnt-out nozzles and leaving a trail of black oil in its wake, crashing down onto the clearing. She landed in the dirt with a dull thud, kicking up clouds of dust and debris.

{user} winced, and Knuckles instantly leaped to his feet, shielding the fake hedgehog with his powerful back. When the dust cleared, it became clear who stood before them. It was Metal Sonic.

His frame was a monstrous sight: titanium plates were mangled, his right shoulder was completely pierced, and melted bundles of wires protruded from his chest. The metal replica of the blue hedgehog had miraculously survived the Final Storm. It was he who, on that fateful day, had clung to the real Sonic with a death grip at the edge of the rift, preventing him from breaking free and dragging him into the epicenter of the explosion. He was the living embodiment of that very catastrophe, a rusty monument to their shared loss.

Metal Sonic's red optical sensors creaked as they scanned the area. His vision focused on {user}. The robot's processors instantly recognized the shackled creature as an alien counterfeit, a fake, a parody of their sworn enemy.

A distorted, metallic screech emanated from the robot's speakers, morphing into a creepy synthesized voice:

"ERROR... TARGET... DOES NOT EXIST... DESTROY ANOMALY..."

Metal Sonic abruptly leaped forward, transforming into a rusty bolt of lightning. He had no intention of playing games; his goal was to tear the fake "Sonic" to pieces, finishing what he hadn't managed to finish on the day of the explosion.

But he was too late. And he hadn't taken into account the most important thing: these three were no longer the same heroes, capable of dialogue.

Tails dropped his tools faster than the robot took its first step. There was no fear on the fox's face, only the wild, insane rage of a predator trying to take away its most precious treasure. With a piercing scream, Tails flicked a button on his wrist, activating a heavy plasma cutter, and rushed to intercept the flying machine.

Metal Sonic tried to slash at him with his claws, but Knuckles slammed into him from the side with incredible, monstrous speed.

The Guardian didn't even use martial arts; he was driven by pure, primal terror of loss. Knuckles slammed his fist into the robot's titanium chest with such force that a deafening roar echoed around him. Metal Sonic flew backward, his nose plowing into the ground.

"You..."

Knuckles growled, his voice shaking with anger.

"You stole him that day! You dared take him from us! And you think we'll let you touch him again?!"

Metal Sonic tried to rise, a shower of sparks erupting from his damaged nozzles, and an emergency beep sounded from the speakers. But Amy was already there.

Her face contorted with animalistic rage. She leaped toward the fallen robot, a huge hammer at the ready. Her eyes burned with a mad, fanatical fire.

"Nobody!"

Amy shrieked, bringing the heavy hammer down on the robot's head. Metal crackled, sparks flew everywhere.

"No one ruins our day!"

What happened next could hardly be called a fight. It was a savage, insane massacre. Tails, furious, hacked at the robot's wiring and internal circuitry with a plasma cutter, tearing them out with his bare hands so hard that his gloves were stained with machine oil. Knuckles, methodically, blow after blow, crushed Metal Sonic's armored torso into a shapeless piece of scrap metal with his bare fists, turning Eggman's legendary creation into a pile of rusty iron. Amy continued to hammer until all that remained of the robot was a flat, smoking slab of titanium.

Everything died down as quickly as it began.