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Chapter Text

"Woah! Where are we going now?"

The surprised cry echoed through the shaking wide chamber as a blonde, teenage human girl tried to hold on to a circular console in the middle of it, her face glowing with excitement (and just that little bit of motion sickness. But it really wasn't that bad.) The chamber itself seemed to be a criss-cross of spaceship control room and golden coral reef, with some old car seats thrown in for the hell of it. A huge, glowing column was moving up and down in the middle of it, bathing the cavern in bluish light.

"I don't know! But according to this distress signal, somebody needs help!" This came from a tall and grinning, spiky-haired man in a blue suit, also hanging onto the console but with considerably more style than his flailing companion. He was pulling and pushing all sorts of levers and wheels, but if that made the shaking better or worse it was hard to tell.

"What were you before you became a time traveller, an obsessed ambulance driver?" the girl laughed as she had finished her question, the room they were in lurching to a final, juddering halt and sending her flying in a rather undignified way onto her backside. Her trainer-clad feet shot upwards as she went down and her usually pretty face with its full lips, high cheekbones and dark eyebrows screwed up upon impact. The apparent madman on the console (who had unfairly managed to stay on his feet, despite his lanky form) shot her an amused look.

"No, actually, I wasn't. Just a Doctor, that's me." Then he frowned. "Well. Actually, there was that time on Betelgeuse, when I was driving an ambulance, but that was because this woman from the 34th century was pregnant - all Jack's fault - and about to give birth and there were about two dozen raptors on hoverboards chasing us down-"

"Doctor," the girl cut through the excited babble of her skinny friend with a tone that suggested she had had quite a bit of practice at interrupting him. She tried to straighten her pink cotton jacket, rolling her eyes as she looked at the slightly older man again. "Don't you wanna tell me where we are?"

He gave her a bright smile. "Oh, Rose, all the right questions! Now, let's see..." He bent over the console screen, muttering as his eyes scanned over the strange symbols,"...though I have to tell you that raptor story at some stage, contains a few brilliant last minute ideas on the side of little ol' me - ah, here we are! On Mobius, that is."

"Mobius," Rose repeated, her eyebrows raised. "Is that a nice planet?"

"Very similar to Earth, I think, though I haven't been here before." His brown eyes flashed brightly as he said that, as if those words were for some reason an announcement that Christmas this year came early.

Well. A Christmas that didn't involve England getting attacked by aliens, anyway. The Doctor, as he had been called, adjusted his red tie and motioned for the door. "Ready for some adventure?"

Even without his waggling eyebrows, Rose couldn't help but grin in return. The Doctor's enthusiasm was more infectious than leprosy - and a lot more fun to contract. She grasped his outstretched hand, eager to set foot onto one of the many outlandish planets their spaceship, the TARDIS, regularly dumped them. About half of them usually turned out to be 21st century London anyway, so a true strange planet always stirred some excitement in her. (Although talking of stirring her, the young Doctor with his tousled brown hair, small sideburns, handsome angular face and friendly dark eyes usually did that all by himself.)

Just as they were about to open the doors and depart the TARDIS, something went very strangely bonk. Against the outer wall of their ship, that was.

"Doctor?" Rose had stopped. "What was this distress call about, again?"

"Well, only one way to find out, isn't there?" He grinned like an imp, before yanking the door open and stepping outside into brilliant sunshine and a green meadow. "Oooh, countryside. Love countryside. With uh, checkered earth, apparently," the space traveler added as he set eyes onto one of the features of Mobius. "I think I even read something about this planet having talking cows, wouldn't that be great?" Then he frowned. "Although I'm not too sure how you would milk them in that case, as advanced as this civilization is supposed to be they probably would have sexual harassment laws. That would mean tea without milk."

There was a moment of silence.

As no appropriate sounds of dismay were coming from his companion, the Doctor turned around to look. The blonde girl was kneeling on the ground next to their box-shaped space ship, seemingly not paying attention to anything he'd said.

"Hey, did you hear m-" he began, striding toward her, but being silenced as he saw what she was looking at. Right in front of her laid a blue-furred animal half the size of Rose, looking like the result of a very unlikely relationship of a porcupine and one of the cat girl nurses they had encountered in New New York. It was covered in short blue fur and had human-looking arms, hands and legs, a tan-furred belly and muzzle with a pointed black nose, as well as two triangular ears on top of a very large head in proportion to its body. The back of its head and backside was covered in large blue spines and Rose thought she could even see a short blue tail poking out from underneath it. Its eyes were currently closed as it lay on its back, probably because of the rather prominent bump on its forehead.

"Doctor?" Rose asked. "I think I know what just hit the TARDIS."

"Oh. Well, the old girl is rather sturdy, to give her her due. TARDIS: one, Spiky alien: zero," the man continued jovially, although he had now pulled out a silver, pencil-shaped tool and was waving it over the creature. The thing hummed and glowed blue, although that was mainly lost on the alien's pelt anyway.

"Doctor! It could be seriously hurt!" the girl protested at his light-hearted tone, and her friend visibly flinched.

Young human females and small furry creatures. How could he have forgotten?

He tried to speak in a soothing tone as he pocketed his gizmo again. "Not to worry, screwdriver says it doesn't even have a concussion. By the looks of it it ran against the TARDIS and knocked itself out. Seems like we got ourselves a planet with either an overly enthusiastic or not very bright fauna." He cocked his head straightened. "Now, how about finding out where that distress call hailed from? Because that was definitely human..."

"I say we should put this little guy in the TARDIS first. Out here it could get eaten by predators." Rose had picked the creature up in her arms where it lay limply like a human child. The Doctor glanced at her worriedly as she carried it back towards the entrance. He had a certain sinking feeling the 'Can we keep it? Please?' -talk was already waiting just around the corner.

Sighing, he ambled a couple steps through the grass, hands in his pockets. Having companions would be so much easier if they didn't insist on complicating his life, be it resurrecting an ancient squid-race bent on exterminating everything that refused to roll around as a giant pepperpot, or taking in a porcupine that had apparently fallen into a paint bucket. Then, of course, he grinned. He wouldn't trade Rose for the universe, and he knew it.

About then was the point when the robot materialized and the Doctor's eyes grew wide.

"What?"

It was a very eccentric contraption. It consisted of a flat, round disc with two glowing eyes, its metal shining golden. The metal frisbee was hovering a little over two metres from the ground and from both sides extended an arm downwards, thin steel rods that both ended in another round disc, although these were vertically arranged. It looked a bit like a very strange pair of salad tongs, or perhaps a mechanized jellyfish. On both its sides was a grinning emblem with glasses and a huge moustache, for some reason. The Doctor stared at it, perplexed and too curious for a second to move, and then it was already above him, encircling him with its arms.

"What?" Surprised, the tall man tried to step out of the thing, but then the underside of the disc started to glow and his skin prickled as a cone-shaped ray of light rings washed all over him.

"WHAT?!"

Rose broke through the doors of the TARDIS at a run. She had just deposited the unconscious body of the alien on the car seats for want of a better place, when she had heard the Doctor's cries from outside. As a companion one soon learned that repeated 'What!'s from your space-travelling friend were never a good sign.

"Doctor!" she yelled, then gasped as she beheld the scenario before her. Several strange robots or aliens were floating in the air, one of them apparently having captured the Doctor in a kind of energy ray. He was fumbling for what Rose presumed was his screwdriver, but the process was made difficult by the fact that in the ray the Doctor had lost his footing and was being turned head over converse as if he was in some sort of anti-gravity washing machine.

"Rose!" He called out frantically as he saw her, "Get back into the TARDIS! Don't let them catch you, this is a transmat, they-!" The rest was cut off as suddenly the Doctor vanished from within the ray. Rose gaped for a second, but only a second, because now the remaining robots suddenly started turning towards her. And floating towards her. She darted back into the space ship with a panicked dash, pressing her back for a clichéd moment against the closed doors.

The Doctor had just been kidnapped.

To be continued...

Chapter Text

"He's been kidnapped. Right. And there's dangerous robots outside. Right. And he constantly tells me not to wander off!" Rose muttered, before dashing to the console inside the TARDIS control room. She was talking just to distract herself from the panic that was threatening to overwhelm her. That was usually what happened when your resident friend and protector suddenly decided it would be fun to get himself abducted and leave you poor human all alone on a strange planet. Right now she was fingering the various controls of the TARDIS, not for the first time wishing the Doctor would have had the good sense to install a TakeMeToHimIamPanicking!-button. No such thing, of course. Most of the inscriptions were in Gallifreyan, the language of his odd species, anyway, and she couldn't read any of that. She would have to go search for the Doctor on foot, or - she shuddered - let herself also be transmatted by those weird robots. Not that that would please the Doctor much...

Her gaze flickered to the unconscious form on the car seats again. Of course, she had almost completely forgotten about him. He was male, she had decided, on account of the lack of milk glands. Only now she noticed that somebody had made the poor thing wear gloves and shoes. Without thinking about it, she knelt down to remove them, frowning as she did so. Even in London she couldn't stand people that made their dogs or cats wear clothing just because it looked 'cute' and 'chic'. It made the poor things uncomfortable and the fact that these people spent money on clothes for their pets while in other parts of the Earth there were people who couldn't clothe their children, always let her hackles rise.

Carefully she stripped off the gloves, socks and shoes to put them away. The breathing of the alien was more regular now and judging by the little noises he made, he would probably wake up soon. On a flash of inspiration (and slightly desperate hope for maybe a mobile number), she checked for a collar, but found nothing. Pity. But still, if the robots were gone outside, maybe he could lead her to his owner, where she could get help. The Doctor had said they were human here, and if they wanted his aid, then she hoped she could count on them to help rescue him so he could solve whatever problem the people here had.

Which is probably jellyfish robots kidnapping you, Rose thought. The girl sighed, striding back to the console and rubbing her head.

There was a sound from the unconscious alien. Rose looked over her shoulder with raised eyebrows. To her it had sounded almost like human speech. But then again, "Aargh. Somebody got the number of that Badnik?" didn't make much sense, so she assumed that it had been the telepathic TARDIS, who usually translated everything for everyone. ("She gets into your head," the Doctor had said. "It's a lot nicer than a fish in my ear," Rose had replied.) It meant they could talk to people across the galaxy, and if the TARDIS had now tried to interpret the sounds of the animal, it was no wonder that the result was gibberish. Nevertheless, it was a sign that the alien was waking up. Rose went over and squatted in front of the bench.

"Hello there," she cooed, smiling at the stirring form. He really was rather cute.

Groaning, the alien on the couch slowly turned his head and blinked. It was only now that Rose noticed he had brilliant green irises, and in some very strange way, it was a single eye that stared at you, even if there were two pupils in it. It was shaped a bit like a figure eight, so there was only a thin strip of eyeball connecting the two orbs. Now the eyes/eye widened.

Thinking that he might be scared of her, Rose tried to make her voice sound as friendly as possible. "Don't be afraid, little guy, I'm not gonna hurt you." She made a few chirping noises with her lips, the way she usually attracted cats.

"Uhm...that's nice. Although I'm kinda worried that you took my clothes."

To Rose's credit, it only took her two seconds to scramble back against the TARDIS console.

"You...you talk!" (Rose usually took her companion duties, aka Pointing Out The Obvious, very seriously.)

The blue animal sat slowly up on the seats and gave her a bemused smile. "It's one of my habits," he admitted. Then he winced and gingerly touched the bump on his head. "Ouch. Judging by that headache, that bump must be the size of my own skull." He gave Rose a look and then raised an eye ridge. "And judging by you gawking at me as if I had grown a second head, apparently it is.'

"What are you?" Rose finally managed, working herself back into something resembling poise. It wasn't the first weird alien she had encountered, so there wasn't any actual reason to freak out about it. His light voice sounded pleasantly normal even, like a young human male in his early twenties, maybe. Now she could also recall some nonsense the Doctor had spouted earlier about talking milk tea or something. Her eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"You're not a cow, are you?"

There was a bit of a pause.

Finally, the alien said: "You're not from round here, huh?" The creature looked around, as if noticing his surroundings for the first time. "Then again, I don't actually know where here is, so maybe you are." He noticed Rose still staring at him and cocked his head. "What, you've never seen a Mobian before?" He accompanied that question with a grin to make clear it was a joke, but Rose didn't reciprocate. Instead, she stared at him. By now she was getting quite good at it.

"Mobian. Is that what you are?"

"Uhm, yeah." The grin had vanished in favour of a more awkward expression. "You humans usually call us Sapients, though. Well. That, or 'furry little bastards', depending on who you ask."

The blonde girl nodded. Sapient. As in, homo sapiens, intelligent. That made sense, then. It meant that on this planet, the animals had learned to talk.

"So...what should I call you, then? Mobian, Sapient or Furry Little Bastard?" She made an attempt at a smile. This alien seemed friendly enough and not averse to a joke or two. As she had hoped, he grinned.

Then he stuck out a tan-furred hand. "I suggest 'Sonic'. Sonic the Hedgehog. Nice to meet you, alien girl!"

xxx

Elsewhere, introductions weren't going quite as smoothly.

"Well, well, well." A rather large but tall man, whose physique suggested somebody who had sat on wall and now needed royal assistance to be put together again, was pacing the floor like a tiger in charge of the butchery storeroom. He was also stroking his rather absurd giant moustache that called a sort of evil walrus in mind, especially since he was otherwise bald. In a very unwise moment of fashion choices, he had apparently decided that a skin-tight red frock with yellow lapels and black jodhpurs and boots would look good on him. To top it off, he was wearing a pair of round sunglasses that hid his small eyes completely. He stopped fingering his facial hair long enough to grin and rub his hands instead. "Well, well, well."

"Haven't seen one around, sorry."

"What?" The grin vanished and the large man frowned.

"A well," the Doctor replied cheerily. The fact that he was currently strapped to some kind of operating table didn't seem to bother him. "Of course, if you were looking for one to offer me a glass of water - or even better, maybe a cuppa Earl Grey, would be lovely - I'd be happy with the tab sort."

Very slowly, his mustachioed captor brought one of his gloved hands up and pinched the skin over his enormous red nose. "Your imminent demise does not seen to dampen your mood. Wonderful. I have a feeling you'll be about as annoying as that pesky hedgehog," he muttered sourly.

The Doctor opened his mouth. Then he shut it again. Finally:

"Hedgehog?"

He had to admit, in between "I finally have you where I wanted, ha-ha!" and/or "EXTERMINATE!" that was a new one.

"Never mind." The fat man waved a hand in an annoyed way.

"Oh, but I mind everything."

"Then mind your gabble," his captor shot back without missing a beat, and the Doctor couldn't help but grin. Here was somebody who knew how to banter. Next, though, he winced as suddenly the bands that wound around his wrists and ankles tightened uncomfortably and he decided that, just for once, driving his company mad with talking might not be the wisest option.

In fact, he was actually rather grateful for the fact that unlike the last time he had been restrained by an evil scientist, this time he had been allowed to keep his jacket and shirt on. Honestly, the fangirls didn't need more fodder.

"Eggpawns, search his pockets." The Doctor turned his head as two bulky, squat robots with spherical bodies (not unlike his captor, he couldn't help noticing) ambled towards him and started patting him down and rifling through his clothes. For a moment he was glad that he had left his coat with the transdimensional pockets in the TARDIS, otherwise this could have taken quite a while.

"Hmm." The other man looked over the contents. "A piece of string, a key, a pair of glasses, a bag with very ancient jelly babies, a wallet claiming you're..." he frowned, "...my mother, apparently. Any explanation for that?"

Yes. My psychic paper thinks this is funny. The Doctor shook his head. The paper usually appeared to people as the ID of some kind of local authority to grant him access to places where people didn't want him nosing about. He could only deduce from that that there was no authority (but one) that his captor particularly respected.

"Next, a rubber duck..." the moustache man shot him a funny look at that, which the Doctor returned innocently, "And finally, something interesting." He held up a silver tool. "Mind explaining what this is?"

"A device for warming tea?" the Doctor asked with little hope. Anyone who could have programmed a transmat with such accuracy that he had been beamed straight into his current manacles was no technology freshman. By now the space-traveller was becoming rapidly convinced that he had been lucky enough to be kidnapped by the local evil genius. Next, he was already gasping with pain as his handcuffs tightened enough to nearly crush his wrists for a moment.

"Care to try that again?" the moustache asked kindly.

"Ow. Yes. It's my sonic screwdriver."

For some reason, that seemed to have been definitely the wrong answer.

xxx

"'Rose', huh?" For some reason, the name made the hedgehog smile.

"Yeah. Rose Tyler, in full."

"Nice name." He nodded, then looked around. "Did you bring me here? On that topic, where is 'here'?"

"It's the TARDIS. The spaceship of my friend." Her stomach suddenly knotted as she remembered she wasn't supposed to chat with some hedgehog but had to find the Doctor. She tried to reply quickly. "I found you outside unconscious and took you in. Just after that those jellyfish robots showed up and kidnapped my friend, so I think that was a good idea."

"Klagen eggbots?" Sonic shivered. "In that case, thank you. If they had teleported me, I'd probably be dead already."

"What?!" The blonde girl jumped up, horrified. "They took the Doctor! We have to get him back!"

"Relax!" The hedgehog's bright green eyes had widened at her forceful reaction. "These things belong to Robotnik and the only one he wants dead in particular is me. Your friend is probably a prisoner. We can get him out."

"Can you?" Her blue eyes showed a flash of hope, but also some doubt. It wasn't often that somebody half your size promised to play the hero.

"Uh-huh." Sonic shrugged. "Before that, though, shoes back, please. And gloves." He shifted a bit uncomfortably. It wasn't that Mobian males were generally embarrassed to be seen without clothing, but it was still something one wouldn't generally do and he felt just a tiny bit awkward, even if not threatened. Rose was a harmless human female, as far as he could tell. The way she looked, Shadow would probably have a Maria-attack the moment he saw her. Sonic rubbed his bump again. "Any idea why your spaceship knocked me out? I was just running through the zone and something suddenly appeared. I thought I'd dodged it, but then I think I hit an invisible wall or something."

"That could have been the forcefield. The TARDIS sometimes activates it, it's like a bubble around it. But usually she only flicks it on for incoming missiles or something..."

"Incoming missiles, huh?" the hedgehog chuckled. "Well, that explains that. Now, just before we get going, I'm just curious why you took my stuff," he said, pulling on one of his loose white gloves and letting it snap into place.

"Uhm..." Rose shifted. "Well, I was kinda checking whether you had a collar, you know?"

"A collar?" Sonic looked puzzled.

"Yeah, like, you know, with a number of your owner I could call."

"Owner," the hedgehog deadpanned and Rose couldn't help but sense that she wasn't doing much for intergalactic diplomacy. She waved her hands a bit helplessly.

"Look, I'm terribly sorry, but when I found you I thought you were someone's pet..."

This time, the hedgehog visibly flinched.

"Uh. Ah. Uhm. Do yourself a favour and don't ever call a Mobian that again. Please?"

"Okay, I won't. I'm sorry, I'm from another planet." She sighed. "Calling... Sapients like you a 'pet' is rude here, yeah?"

Now it was Sonic who shifted. "I guess you could say that. The last human who did so publicly was thrown by the wolves."

"Don't you mean to the wolves?" Rose knew she should technically be running around to save the Doctor, but couldn't help herself. "And not for real, I hope."

"No, by. Into a swimming pool, that is, and quite literally."

"Ah," Rose managed. She couldn't help but wonder whether the human/freaky talking animal relations weren't quite the best on Mobius.

"Well, then!" Sonic clapped his hands and gave her a grin. "Best get going, shall we? That the exit?" He asked, striding down the ramp that led to the doors of the TARDIS.

"Yeah, but wait! The TARDIS protects us while we're inside, but the robots could still be out there!"

Sonic nodded, reaching up to grab the door knob and looked outside. "Yes. Yes, they are," was all he said before calmly walking outside.

"Then don't-!" Rose began running up to the doorway, but stopped. As she was speaking, the small hedgehog had suddenly launched himself at the closest robot with a physics-defying jump that took him to nearly thrice his own height into the air. Within fractions of a second, he had curled up in a spinning blue buzzsaw and crashed into one of the Doctor's kidnapper's metallic brethren, tearing the thing in half. It gave a small explosion and Rose ducked back into the entryway to shield herself from the flying fragments, but couldn't take her eyes off the hedgehog. He had used the force of the explosion to catapult himself towards his next target, never once touching ground as he destroyed the second and then the third one. He seemed to be almost dancing as he flipped over and around in the air, grinning as he whirled and kicked with deadly grace.

Within ten seconds the last robot had exploded and he landed lightly on his feet again. "Well, that's that. Now... you trying to catch flies there?"

Rose snapped her mouth shut, just a tad bit annoyed at herself and at the cocky hedgehog.

"No. Uh, just...testing the atmosphere. Oh, and yeah, nice show."

"Thank you." He grinned even wider. Then his eyes doubled their size as he for the first time beheld the TARDIS from outside. She was, indeed, a wooden phone box about one square meter big and approximately two metres tall, completed with a police phone on the door.

Rose sighed and waited while Sonic performed what she had come to mentally label the 'companion dance'. It was relatively simple and consisted mainly of four steps, those being

1) double take,

2) open door, step inside,

3) open door, step outside, look up/down,

4) merry-go-round-the-box and finally-

"It's-"

"-bigger on the inside. Yes, I know," Rose finished for Sonic, giving him a weak smile. "My friend is kind of special."

"Actually, I was about to point out it's blue. I like the colour." The cobalt hedgehog grinned up at her, and Rose couldn't help but feeling that maybe she had picked up someone special as well.

"Also, don't worry about your friend too much, I know this model," he continued, gesturing toward the robot remains. "If these were the Klagen that kidnapped him, then I have a pretty good idea where he is. They don't teleport their captives very far and in this zone there's only one prison fortress, so we should have him out fairly soon."

"How do you know all this?" Rose asked, bemused. She didn't suspect him as such, but if there was someone who strangely knew a lot about your enemy and was all eager to help you without reward, taking you straight into the bad guy's lair in the process, then you couldn't help but feel just a little suspicious. After travelling with the Doctor for quite a while, Rose was anything but naive. She might not have been as brilliant as him, but the time-traveller rarely chose his human companions with the IQ of a brain-damaged cucumber, either.

When the hedgehog did not look at her when he replied, her unease intensified. Sonic stared into the distance. "If you have to know, two years ago it was me that got kidnapped by them."

"Didn't you say if this Robotnik ever got hold of you you'd be dead?" Rose pointed out, trying to keep her tone neutral. This alien's story wasn't adding up and she was mentally preparing to dash back into the TARDIS. But when he looked at her again, she froze.

"No," he said. His eyes had clouded over and she could see the amused sparkle in them had all but vanished, the hedgehog looking...haunted now. "Back then he only made me wish I was dead."

"I'm...I'm sorry," was all she could manage to say. Privately, she thought nobody could play-act the flash of pain that she thought to have briefly seen in his eyes. Her words seemed to snap Sonic out of it.

"That's okay." He smiled at her, suddenly his friendly expression back in place. "Thank you. But it wasn't your fault and a long time ago. And now, what do you say, let's kick some robot and rescue your friend?" Once more, the grin seemed to reach his ears.

She blinked. "Uh...sure." Mentally she shook her head. Before, the only person she'd known that could go from "The Time War killed all my people... I am the last of my species." to "Hey, have you ever been to the Candy Planet?!" in seconds had been the Doctor, but this hedgehog was serious competition. She had to admit that overall, the two seemed actually rather similar, and wasn't that a bit disturbing.

"Right," Sonic said at this point, rubbing his chin. "Only problem is, we're in the middle of nowhere in Green Hill Zone and I'm not entirely sure how to get you away from here. You can't fly that box... thing... ship, can you?"

"No," Rose admitted. "Don't you, like, have a car or something?" she asked, feeling slightly ridiculous. After all, the last hedgehog she'd seen had been stuck to the underside of a car tire, not driving in one.

"Nope. Myself, I run." He shook his head, the quills on the backside rustling. Then he snipped his fingers. "Ooooh, brilliant idea. Wait right here."

"Where are you go-?" Rose started, but again she was cut off. In a startling dust cloud, the hedgehog suddenly had departed, leaving a blazing blue trail to where he disappeared over a grassy hill in the distance. Almost immediately, the rumble of a sonic boom washed over Rose who recognized the sound from when the Doctor had taken her to see the first run of the Concorde.

"-ing,"she finished, but almost swallowed her tongue when Sonic was already back by her side, a monumental screeching sound and a good twenty metre long new rut in the ground testament to his braking skills. To her horror, the hedgehog appeared to be brandishing a fold-up wheelchair.

"Borrowed that from a human hospital in Station Square," he said non-chalantly, forcing the thing apart and to stand. Then he gestured at the seat as if it was the door to a royal limousine.

"Well, Rose Tyler," he began, grinning, "Ready for the ride of your life?"

To be continued...

Chapter Text

The Doctor was trying to remember how he had gotten into this predicament. Kidnapped by jellyfish robots after following a distress call. Right. Strapped to a kind of operating table by a rather obese evil alien. Right. Having his pockets rifled through and his possessions taken away from him to be examined by the human. Right.

How come your horoscopes never, ever warned you?

"..and finally, something interesting," his captor said at this moment and held up a silver tool. "Mind explaining what this is?"

"A device for warming tea?" The Doctor asked with little hope. Anyone who could have programmed a transmat with such accuracy that he had been beamed straight into his current manacles was no technology freshman. By now the space-traveller was becoming rapidly convinced that he had been lucky enough to be kidnapped by the local evil genius. Next, he was already gasping with pain as his handcuffs tightened enough to nearly crush his wrists for a moment.

"Care to try that again?" The moustache asked kindly.

"Ow. Yes. It's my sonic screwdriver."

For some reason, that seemed to have been definitely the wrong answer.

"Are you in league with him?!" The mustachioed man was suddenly bending over him close enough for the ends of his facial hair to touch the Doctor's shoulders and he was snarling in rage.

The Doctor wondered for a moment whether he might not have been imprisoned by the local raving madman.

"No," he replied very carefully, trying to speak very clearly. "No, I am not in league with my screwdriver."

"What? Who's talking about screwdrivers?!" the fat man snapped, straightening himself again and staring down at his captive. For a second, the pair of geniuses held eye contact like a feral hawk and Tweety the Canary, both trying and failing to understand the concept of each other. "I'm asking you whether you're working with Sonic the Hedgehog!"

"Sonic...the Hedgehog?" the Doctor asked weakly. That was the second time that the concept of spiky mammals popped up in this conversation. Maybe the large man had some odd fixation.

"Yes. You never heard of him? Thought the nuisance was world-famous by now," grumbled his captor. "But since you asked, he is Obstacle Number One for my achieving world domination - and will hopefully be dead by noon."

"Your archenemy is a hedgehog. That you call Sonic." The Doctor tried to talk very soothingly and understandingly now, trying very hard to keep the worry out of his face. At the moment he was hoping that any second now people with white coats and huggy jackets would storm into the door and apologize to him for letting one of their inmates out.

"Anything wrong with that?!" The moustache turned on him.

"No, no, nothing at all!" The Doctor quickly said, "But tell me...does this 'Sonic' sometimes say things that upset you? Maybe we can talk about this. Is Sonic in the room right now?"

"Right. Forget this. I'm trying to collect information, not nonsense," the man in the red suit grumbled, turning around and sitting down in front of a screen.

"Oh, I can help with that," said the Doctor cheerfully, "Did you for example know, that the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow-"

"Will you shut up!" the moustache roared from behind the monitor and the time-traveller couldn't suppress a grin.

"You remind me of some old acquaintances of mine. Used to shout "Exterminate!" a lot. I think you'd get along well - similar sense of humour and all that. Oh. Ow. Yes. Painful manacles. I get it." The Doctor's face was a grimace as once again the restraints on his ankles and wrists tightened and he could feel his bones grinding together.

"Good." His captor's voice was velvet again, sounding as content as a small kid who'd gotten his hands on explosives and about equally as worrying. "Now, let's start this with a bit of style." He drew himself up before the Doctor. "I am Doctor Ivo Robotnik, future ruler of Mobius and the Eggman Empire."

The Doctor nodded. "How nice. Did Sonic give you this idea?"

Robotnik shot him a blazing look. "If it didn't kill humans, I would roboticize you on the spot, you know that?"

"You haven't done your homework very well, have you?"

"What?"

"Nothing." The Doctor gave an innocent grin.

"You appear to think this is funny. Maybe you're hoping there's help coming. In that case, let me inform you that there isn't – the distress call that lured you here was placed by me for that purpose. I guess it never occurred to you that it might be a trap."

The Doctor winced. In fact, so far they had had the 'Ha-ha, I sent out a distress call to lure into my evil fortress – now prepare to die! Wait, what are you doing with that screwdriver…?'' -situation three times this month already. Rose would never let him hear the end of it.

"No," he said carefully, "That was very clever of you."

Giving him a scathing glance as if sensing that he was being mocked, Robotnik merely strode back behind the console. "Have fun while you still can, alien. Now I want you to answer a couple of questions, and I should warn you there is a lie detector. Now, first query. Where are you from?"

"Ooooh, everywhere really." The Doctor gave as much of a shrug as his position allowed. "Traveling around, you know."

"Your home planet?" Robotnik's hand reached toward the dial that would tighten the manacles.

"Uh, Gallifrey! Lovely place, really, nice orange sky, you should visit, you'd probably love the fashion, actually, try not to fall into the Untempered Schism when you're there."

His captor frowned. "Where is it?"

The Doctor's grin dropped and his eyes became hard. "Burned. Destroyed. There was a war…with a race called the Daleks. I am the only one who's left of my entire planet."

"Hmm." The big man scowled, entirely empty of compassion. "That means the only time travel technology in existence is the one that you brought with you."

"I don't know what you mean." The Doctor's face turned expressionless.

"Please, alien," Robotnik scoffed. "I get reports. The population of this planet might not be space-faring very far as of now, and I, frankly, don't care for the galaxy as long as I can only conquer this world, but I do receive wayward transmissions about you from other civilizations. I can judge their age by their point of origin and the time it took them to get here and I can deduce from that that you must have been around for a couple of hundred years. Now how would you manage that without time travel?"

"Doctor."

"Yes?"

"No. I meant that is my name. I'm tired of you calling me 'alien' all the time, that's so…B-movie. I'm the Doctor."

"Doctor who?" Robotnik asked, frowning.

The younger man gave him a very pained look as if he had heard that line a lot. He bet that his childhood friend from Gallifrey, the Master, never had to put up with that.

"Just. The Doctor," he said with forced patience.

"What, just that? What kind of society do you come from, using a title as your name?"

"Well, I do have other names. 'Get him!' seems to be fairly common. Or," he said, his voice now abruptly serious and his eyes, looking straight into Robotnik's, intense, "the race that tried to wipe out my people also have a name for me now. They call me The Oncoming Storm." His voice was low as he said the words and a silence followed as his captor gazed at him, suddenly expressionless.

The Doctor waited. Maybe now the human would realize just who he had kidnapped and how much trouble he potentially was in.

Robotnik snipped his gloved fingers. "Eggpawns."

Two robots ambled forward, awaiting instructions.

"I have all the information I need. Now throw that weather pattern in a suit into one of the cells. "

xxx

Rose wasn't screaming. She'd long since run out of breath.

At the moment, the air was beating against her face with the force of a thunderstorm, making her struggle to draw even normal breaths while adrenaline danced in her veins at the thrill of absolute speed.

In a fold-up wheelchair.

If she had had breath to spare, she wasn't even sure whether she'd use it for screams of terror or whoops of disbelieving excitement.

Of course, then they hit another bump and gasps of pain were another option. She had been bouncing around on the fake black leather so much she was sure her bones had already turned to mush and her brain had made time to say hi to her kidneys. Her fingers meanwhile had made an attempt to start a symbiotic relationship with the armrests they were clutching with screw-like force.

"You okay there?" for a moment, Sonic the Hedgehog (or rather, the blue-furred, total nutter that had had the idea for this stunt in the first place) was running beside her, looking at her with concern in his eyes, trying to ascertain how his new human friend was holding up when things turned formula one.

Rose managed a shaky nod at him, then her eyes widened.

"Who is driving the chair?!"

It was amazing where you could find reserves of breath when you really needed them.

Sonic merely flashed her another lightning grin. "No worries. Already on it again." He fell back immediately and Rose managed to turn her head enough to see him behind her once more, thankfully having taken hold of the asylum express again.

They had left the meadows and the TARDIS behind them a couple of minutes ago, and the landscape had quickly turned into forest, then the outskirts of a city and now they were rushing over a bridge next to what appeared to be train tracks. Darkness enveloped them as they were passing through a tunnel, then they were out in the sunlight again and Rose could see the sea and high cliffs towering above her. The force pressing her into the chair gradually lessened and she realized that Sonic was decelerating, now running in a kind of wide circle as he tried to brake gradually to avoid her being thrown out of the chair and crashing into the ground, possibly fatally.

Rose decided that she would never, ever complain again when the Doctor had trouble flying the TARDIS smoothly.

They finally stopped and the human girl took her first step out of the chair and promptly fell over. She then decided, that instead of not complaining the next time, she'd make the Doctor take a ride in the hedgehog rickshaw.

"Oh, sorry! Shoulda seen that coming. Want a hand up?" The hedgehog's voice enquired next to her and Rose forced her arms to lift her face from the dirt. A white glove was thrust forward into her direction. Well, maybe two white gloves. Her eyes had trouble deciding.

"No, I'm… oooooh, fine…" she protested, using the wheelchair to drag herself to her feet. "And no offence, but I don't think somebody only three feet tall could help me stand anyway," she said, giving the hedgehog a weak smile.

He chuckled. "Fair enough. Anyway, this is the place of my friend Tails." He indicated the generously-sized two-storey house in front of which they were currently standing. It was a fairly unnecessary gesture, since the house was also the only building in sight, the pair being surrounded on all sides by rock walls, a pond, bare earth and the sea. "I was hoping to stop off here first so we could get some transport and back-up before going to Robuttnik's all alone. Wanna come inside?"

"Yeah, thanks…" Rose muttered, a house seeming pleasantly normal in all this madness. She just hoped that this friend wouldn't turn out to be another supersonic hedgehog. Hopeful visions of a comfy seat and some nice, soothing drink before rushing off again danced through her head as Sonic skipped up the two stairs leading to the front door, grabbing for the handle. As it turned out, he promptly collided with the closed wood.

"Ow! What…? Oh, that's right." He turned to give Rose an apologetic grin, again reminding her of someone a good three feet taller but no less exhausting to accompany. "I had completely forgotten that Tails is dropping somebody off at the moment. Seems like we have to wait after all. Uhm. Sorry?"

Rose had the sudden desire to either collapse with exhaustion or bury the hedgehog under his own wheelchair.

xxx

"There seems to be an unusual level of activity today at Robotnik's base."

This observation was made by somebody who was probably quite unusual himself. Miles "Tails" Prower, was a young humanoid fox with golden fur and a junior master mechanic and pilot in his spare time, to name but a few of his attributes. Currently he was busy steering his most prized possession, a small blue bi-plane called the Tornado over said prison fortress, pointing out the procession of robots and jet planes apparently gathering for some major expedition.

"Yeah. So?" a disinterested reply came.

"Well, he could be up to something."

"Yeah. So?"

"He could have captured a new prisoner."

"Yeah. So?"

"It could be Sonic!"

"… Yeah. So?"

Miles "Tails" Prower also currently had one of the grumpiest passengers imaginable, namely Knuckles the Echidna. The blood-coloured anteater crossed his arms in front of his chest and stared at the building complex below balefully, as if the steel and concrete was personally responsible for this new development.

"If that immature prankster let himself get captured by that human because of one of his idiot stunts, he deserves everything that's coming to him."

"Knuckles! Sonic's my brother!" Tails protested, ignoring several biological impossibilities in the process. Of course, the other knew that the fox was referring to the fact that five years prior, the hedgehog had decided to 'adopt' the orphaned fox kit as a kid brother (after a three-year-old Tails had all but stalked him for a week), resulting in a fierce loyalty of Tails towards his hero ever since. Currently the foxlet was also giving the echidna a look that couldn't quite decide whether it should be accusatory, hurt, or insulted. Somehow, it managed to be all three. The older Mobian pinched the skin above his nose and sighed.

"Let me guess. You will not be flying me home where I will be left in peace like you promised. Instead, you will be asking me to join you in another mad goose chase, infiltrating the base to see what the ruckus is all about, where I will be shot at, attacked by robots, and might end up in a cell myself if worst comes to worst."

Tails nodded, his bright blue eyes now positively huge. "Please?"

Knuckles heaved an even bigger sigh.

The fox kit for a moment focused on his gloved hands on the steering wheel of the plane again, having gone into orbit around the fortress a little while ago. "Of course, you don't have to. I promised to bring you home. It's just that Sonic's been missing for a while, and-" he started, somewhat timidly, but the deeper voice of Knuckles interrupted him.

"Spare me. I'm coming already."

"Thank you, Knux!" Tails gave him a big grin full of razor sharp teeth which you could only get from a fox face.

"And don't you start with that nickname," the echidna grumbled, but there was no real malice in it. Even though he was a rather reclusive nature and would have loved to be left alone by Sonic and all his insane adventures, he didn't want the hedgehog dead. If Sonic even was a prisoner. But Tails wanted to investigate anyway and even if Knuckles didn't like to admit it, he went along just because if something happened to the kit, Sonic would never forgive him, nor he himself.

But I swear, blue hedgehog, if you really are the reason that I have to go through this, I'm going to knock you tail over snout back into your cell.

To be continued…

Chapter Text

The Doctor actually quite liked getting thrown into a cell. It didn't have anything to do with a bondage fetish (no matter what fanfiction claimed), but the fact was that getting imprisoned rather than, say, being marched straight to the execution chamber, gave him time to think.

Fortunately Robotnik, like most evil overlords, seemed to disregard Rule #1, namely, 'Do Not Leave The Doctor Unsupervised In Your Dungeon'.

Well. High-Tech prison more than medieval dungeon, really, but to the universal time-traveller it was all the same anyway. In most cases he had already been there, done that and bought the (striped) t-shirt. The cell the robots had escorted him to (there hadn't been a single human guard around anywhere, nor other prisoners at all) was rather bland in comparison to some other containment facilities. It was three by three metres wide, lit by a bright, unforgiving neon light embedded in the ceiling and consisted of silver grey steel plates on three sides and a kind of energy shield as a door on the fourth. On the two walls to his left and right were the moustachioed grinning face-emblems again, which he by now thought to be his crazy captor's signature marks. The guy was obviously off his mechanized rocker. The Doctor sighed.

Unfortunately, despite that, Robotnik seemed to have known at least about Rule #2, which was 'Never Ever, Let Him Keep His Goddamned Screwdriver,' which left him a bit stranded in his current predicament.

He had had the idea of faking a sudden fit of an illness to get Robotnik come running and then maybe convince him that he had to be taken back to the TARDIS in order to survive. He could possibly bait the fat human with the promise to demonstrate how his ship worked – just in order for him to land right at the gates of the next Judoon prison colony. They would probably arrest him there for that ridiculous moustache alone. The plan had sounded good in theory, but after collapsing and then getting bored lying motionless on the floor for all of five minutes, the Doctor had to concede that maybe this time he wasn't a very high-priority prisoner.

Somehow, he felt insulted.

Previously, having been imbued by mother nature with a great deal of curiosity (and a rather equally large amount of disregard for personal safety) he had of course already tested other means of escape, namely the bluishly flickering, semi-transparent force field keeping him captive.

Being the Doctor, he had poked it.

And so it was, that during the very moment when Knuckles and Tails were smashing their way through the fortress, The Oncoming Storm sat in his cell sucking rather morosely at a burnt fingertip.

xxx

"This is all going much too easy," Knuckles muttered as the pair paused at a corner, cautiously peeking around into the empty, metal-built corridor. They had parked the Tornado some distance off the base and then Tails had lifted them both over the fence. Boxes had provided enough hiding space in the courtyard, before Knuckles had smashed in one of the doors leading into the back of the fortress, used for deliveries. It was amazing how often evil geniuses forgot to provide security there.

"I know." Tails bit his lip. "Maybe that means that this is a trap…or we're already too late."

"Kid. Just because Sonic meant to be back this morning and he isn't, doesn't mean he's been captured. You know that that hedgehog is about as easily distracted as a kitten in a room with 200 neon mice on ecstasy. He's probably seen something shiny or chili dog-shaped and forgotten all about everything else," the echidna hissed back, before quickly reaching behind him into some robot rubble and hurling a piece of metal at a surveillance camera in the corridor before them with pinpoint precision. The thing sparked and went dead. Tails and Knuckles turned the corner and hurried on.

"But we've barely run into any robots at all," the fox kit pointed out. "It almost looks like Sonic put up a fight or something."

"They're probably out on that little expedition we saw when we flew in. Robotnik is going out to investigate something or maybe planning a battle. Try to calm down for a moment, because if you're not focused I do not want to rely on you for watching my back, okay?" The echidna's tone wasn't hostile, just business-like. It was clear that he didn't intend to hurt the kit, but wasn't prepared to wrap him in cotton just because of his young age, either.

"Okay. Sorry, Knuckles," the fox' voice was small.

"Good. Now, let's steal Robotnik's new toy right from under his backside, shall we?" the echidna gave Tails a small smirk over his shoulder and the kit immediately lightened up, eager to please again.

"Yeah!"

"Here we go…" Knuckles grunted as he forced two halves of a metal door apart. "The prison complex."

It was a huge hall, its walls lined with rows upon rows of walkways leading past empty cells like a giant beehive of some sort, some of them just used for dumping trash of discarded robots. Earlier, they had been filled, but lately Robotnik hadn't had the impetus to capture Mobians but focused rather on constructing more powerful weaponry. Tails pointed to a cell a few rows downward on the other side.

"There! That one's forcefield is activated! There must be somebody inside!"

"Right." Knuckles leapt over the railing and his dread lock-like red spikes hanging from his head fanned out and let him glide like a physical impossibility towards the lower walkway. Tails, not to be one-upped in terms of ridiculous flying manoeuvres, followed him instantly, his two rear appendages whirring like helicopter blades.

Both dropped down in front of the flickering curtain of light with ease. Then there followed a lot of staring, and that from both sides.

xxx

"So, your friend," Sonic said eventually after staring slightly cluelessly at Rose. The girl had slumped down on the steps in front of the door, her head in her hands for the past five minutes, wondering if any of the other companions of the Doctor ever had gotten into situations like this. She knew she should be running to save him, but before that plane-flying friend of Sonic's came back, there really was only the wheel-chair as a transport option and right now her bones, her inner organs and most decidedly her backside were voting against that idea.

"Any idea why Robuttnik kidnapped him?" the hedgehog next to her continued, probably trying to get her to talk again. "He doesn't look like us, does he? Like…furry."

Rose had to smile at that idea. The Doctor as a blue-suited hamster. She shook her head. "No. He looks human."

"That's weird." Sonic frowned. "Usually that egghead only takes Mobians. He's got this thing, the roboticizer, a machine that can turn us into mindless workerbots. But if you use it on humans for some reason they just die and turn into metal statues."

"What - that's horrible!" Rose exclaimed. "What kind of person is this Robotnik?"

"A scientist gone mad." Sonic shrugged, as if unwilling to talk about it. "He's trying to take over the world and me and my friends stop him. That's basically it in a nutshell. So, what about your friend, then? How is he special?" he asked again, suddenly eager to change the topic back.

"Well, he's not technically human." Rose ventured, not entirely sure how to explain someone like the Doctor. It was rather like trying to "explain" a cat, except this one was also from another planet. Rose tried to start with the basics.

"He's called the Doctor and he's a Time Lord, an alien. People just mistake him for a human because he likes to hang around with us." She gave a small, sad smile, adding somewhat quieter: "Sometimes I wish he was."

"A Time…Lord," Sonic repeated, apparently not having heard the last phrase. "So, what's that? Does he own a castle made from clocks or something?"

"No." The blonde girl's lips finally twitched. "It's more like a human with superpowers. He's lived for hundreds of years, he's got two hearts, hardly ever sleeps or eats. Also, he talks a lot but I'm not sure whether that's a Time Lord thing or just him. I think just him. And when he's dying he can change his face...he calls it Regenerating, and it means he changes his appearance completely and comes back to life."

"Sounds more like a pop star, if you ask me," Sonic remarked and had the satisfaction of Rose briefly breaking into a giggle.

"Yeah..." she grinned. "I should tell him that. I met him first when he looked different, you know? Had the hugest ears ever, but he was...kinda cute." The human girl smiled, brushing some of her blonde hair out of her face. "Now he's got big hair, though. It's good, big hair." She nodded at him like a sage divulging some great truth and Sonic was happy to play along. He liked this girl.

"Sure," he agreed easily, patting his own quills proudly. "Get your hair right and the planet's half saved, that's my motto." They both managed to hold eye contact for another second before instantly snorting in companionable amusement. Sonic shook his head. "Oh, man...anything else I should know about this Doc?"

In the background, the hedgehog also fancied he could hear the roar of Tails' plane landing somewhere in the distance, which was good. It meant they could set out for Robotnik's soon and everything would turn out all right. When the human girl began talking again, her voice was sombre again, though.

"Well…his mind is also different." Her eyes unfocused slightly as she stared into the distance, maybe reliving something. "I became sort of like him, once. He can see all that was, all that is, all that ever could be, all the time." She sighed, now staring at her shoes. "It is wonderful and it absolutely terrifying. Just like him." There was a sudden flash of pain behind her eyes as she looked at him again. "That was when he...died, you know? To save me." She sagged a little, rubbing at her mascara-lined eyes. "Which is what I should be doing now. Saving him. Except I'm not 'cause I have no idea how to. Urgh." She let her head go 'bonk' sideways against the door frame, looking distinctly unhappy. Her eyes now stared at nothing in particular as if the answer to her problems was written in the pale sky.

Sonic had listened with interest, even though parts of that tale remained a mystery to him. But he easily understood the bottom line, which was that Rose was feeling frustrated and guilty because at the moment she couldn't change the way things were and neither could he. Sonic hated seeing his friends unhappy, but what could he do until Tails came back...? Finally, on a flash of inspiration, he settled for doing the only thing he knew of, which was giving Rose a hug.

"No worries. We will save him."

"Wha - hey, thanks!" Rose seemed slightly startled at suddenly finding his arms around her shoulders, but then actually relaxed to hug back and let even see a somewhat grateful smile. It turned into a grin when she then ruffled his head fur, her eyes regaining a bit of their sparkle. "Say...you're fluffy."

"Hey!" The hedgehog protested, although he did not attempt to stop her physically, instead rather opting for a dry smile. "Well, I'm happy to see you at least pulled out of your funk enough to mistake me for a pet again. Mind the spines, they're sharp."

Rose's full lips parted as she gave an apologetic grin, but heeded his advice and instead sat up straight again. She couldn't resist a last pinch at his ear, though, which flicked like a feline's. She couldn't help herself, but this one was just too cute.

"Oy!"

"Sorry." She sighed, withdrawing her hand and instead looking at her amused new friend again. She shook her head. "I'm alright again, thanks. It was just becoming a bit much…you know, I miss him a lot and can't do anything right now." She managed a tired laugh. "And now I'm bothering you instead of thinking of ways to rescue him. No wonder he always calls us humans 'stupid apes'."

"Oh, come on, I haven't done that in ages!"

Both heads of human and hedgehog shot up to look in the direction of the new voice. Then the girl suddenly jumped up and positively flew into the new arrival's arms.

"Doctor!"

"Hi, Sonic!" Behind the tall man, a fox and echidna ambled into view, the first one waving at the hedgehog excitedly. "Look who we picked up from Robotnik's base!"

"Nice work, Tails!" The hedgehog held up a hand to let his kid brother jump for a high-five. "Thanks for helping out, Knux." He nodded at the other Mobian, who seemed slightly less happy to be here than the others.

"Well, I hardly had any other choice," the echidna commented wryly. "I just hope this guy is at least worth all the trouble he put us through."

"Well, look how happy he's made her. She's Rose, by the way," Sonic jabbed a thumb into the direction of the girl still intent on smothering her companion. "So I'm pretty sure he is."

"Missed me, have you?" the Doctor laughed out loud as Rose finally let go enough of him so he could look into her face. "Seems like their friend brought you here, too, huh?" he asked, nodding towards Sonic now talking to his rescuers. He smiled and said somewhat more quietly: "I'm glad you're safe."

"Hey, me more than you – I wasn't the one getting kidnapped this time!" Rose replied with a cheeky grin, trying to elbow a mildly surprised Time Lord. "How did you even get here?"

A huge grin spread across the Doctor's face at this question, the sort that usually preceded either a brilliant plan or a story as unlikely as Elvis selling beachfront property on Atlantis. He couldn't wait to tell Rose about his wild ride here – the two aliens, Knuckles and Tails, had offered him a seat in their two-people plane. The echidna had actually ridden the wings to make room for the Doctor, performing stunts like an acrobat to stay in balance, while the time-traveller himself had to ride that plane akin a rodeo horse, both long legs dangling over the sides on account of him being twice the size of a usual passenger. It had been exhilarating and he'd almost been sorry to reach the fox' home. But, as Tails had said, this was where he kept his other equipment that would be able to locate the Doctor's TARDIS. Now he was preparing to retell the experience, possibly leaving out him almost heaving up his breakfast tea.

"You won't believe how I got here!" he started and was just a tad bit surprised to see Rose lean on what appeared to be a fold-up wheel chair.

"Try me," she replied.

Leaving the aliens to their antics, Sonic was still talking to his friends about their latest arrival, "Say, actually we were planning on rescuing her friend when you got back, Tails. How on Mobius did you guys know to get him out before you even knew he had been kidnapped?"

"Well…" Tails began…

(cue wavy-wavy flashback sequence! Add black-and-white colouring, if you want to...)

"A human prisoner?"

The Doctor's eyes had widened for a moment as the two strange creatures had dropped down from nowhere and stopped in front of his cell, perplexed expressions on their faces. He didn't recognize this species – and the pair looked more like two separate forms of alien, anyway. Both seemed anthropomorphic animals, a little bit like the one Rose had found earlier, but it was impossible to tell which races they were trying to represent. They both wore gloves and shoes, but no other clothing. The smaller one that had spoken, a kind of fox-creature with golden fur and a white belly and muzzle, appeared to be little more than a kit. He/she/it had a child-like face with large trusting eyes and tufts of fur sprouting from his chest and top of his head, giving him a rather fluffy appearance. He also had two tails, adding the Freakish Mutant-angle to the teddy bear-look, but the Doctor tried never to be judgemental at first introductions.

Especially if the creatures you were introduced to could maybe decide whether you rotted away in a cell or could go chasing after your companion and ship.

"Oh. Hello there," the Doctor gave them his usual friendly grin which he fancied disarming. True, people often shot at him despite it, but a part of the Doctor also was never giving up hope. "Nice to meet you. I'm the Doctor!"

"Yes, a human prisoner. And probably nuts." This statement came from the other creature, which was a lot harder to categorise. Judging from his human-sounding voice, he was a young adult male, though sounding deeper than the Doctor himself. His entire fur was crimson, except for a white crescent across his chest, which looked also more muscular than that of the fox. The nose on his tan-coloured muzzle was a lot less pointy than that of the first blue alien and he was missing the spikes on his back, although in other respects the two looked similar. From his head dangled several spine-like protrusions reminiscent of dread-locks and behind him the Doctor could see a thin, stiff, zigzagged tail pointing to the ground. He appeared rather more threatening than his younger companion, due in no small part to the two large spikes on each of the backs of his gloved hands where his knuckles would have been, but also because his expression was a lot more unfriendly, violet eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"I'm not!" The Doctor protested, a picture of bruised innocence as he stood up and dusted himself off.

"What? Human or nuts?" The red-furred creature quirked an eye ridge at him, his tone one of dry sarcasm. The young fox just regarded the time-traveller curiously.

"Neither, actually." The Doctor grinned. "But I would be rather grateful if you could let me out of here."

"First I want to know why Robotnik locked you up," the red alien crossed his arms in front of his chest, the universal gesture of people who will budge when the sky falls down and not a minute earlier.

"Oh, you know, we had a bit of a misunderstanding. I'm a door-to-door vendor of fitness equipment and I have a feeling he wasn't very interested in my products. That, or he kidnapped me to get at my time-travelling space-ship. Although now that I say it out loud, the second one doesn't sound very convincing either, does it?" He suddenly gave them a worried look.

"Wonderful, Tails. You led us here to rescue a basket case."

"We'll get him out anyway, Knuckles, won't we? I think he seems nice," the fox-thing called Tails made himself heard, giving the Doctor a kind smile which the tall man returned. "And besides, no matter why Robotnik locked him up, nobody deserves to be imprisoned here."

"Fine." Knuckles sighed, before suddenly smashing his fist in the wall next to the force field with surprising power, making the metal plating fall off. The fox gave the surprised Doctor another friendly look.

"This won't take a second. Just have to fiddle with the wires a bit to deactivate the energy shield." To his crimson friend, he added: "Don't worry. I think he's just a bit confused, s'all. Maybe Robotnik hit him on the head, you know?"

The Doctor could only shake his head at the indignities he was forced to endure, but wasn't about to complain if Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy over there were actually going to get him out of here.

To his surprise it really only was seconds until the forcefield flickered for one last time and vanished from existence. The fox waved at him, one wire still in his…hand? Paw?

"Don't be afraid, you can come out now! I've disabled the barrier."

"Thank you." The Doctor raised an eyebrow. Yes, this was presumably the fox that the fables portraying the animal as particularly clever seemed to be based on – a quick look at the wire chaos behind the panel told him that the little guy had to know a lot about electronics to be able to switch that energy shield off so quickly and efficiently. He gave the small alien an appraising look.

"Right. Can we get going, then?" Knuckles looked at both of them impatiently. "I know everything looks deserted, but reinforcements could arrive any minute."

"Sure!" The Doctor nodded brightly at him. "I mean, you two can go, thanks a lot for coming here to get me. But I have to go back to the room Robotnik had me transmatted to, he took my sonic screwdriver and I want it back. It's the only one of its kind, you know? The only similar thing I've ever seen is a laser screwdriver and that's just not the same. I mean, who would ever look at a screwdriver and think 'Hey, this could be a little more laser!'? Just silly."

"What? Are you trying to tell me that after we went to all the trouble to rescue you, you are planning to waste all that effort by running right back into the busy part of the fortress?" the crimson creature glared up at the Doctor, apparently quite good at filtering information from babbling.

The Doctor shifted uncomfortably, his expression apologetic. "Well, sorry. But it's my screwdriver. I need it."

"Right. That settles it." The red alien shook his head and advanced toward the time-traveller, violet eyes locked on his face. The Doctor suddenly felt the urge to take a step backwards, despite being almost twice as tall as his opponent. Something about Knuckles' demeanour suggested that even if you were six feet you did not want to cross him, unless you particularly wished to be punched in the knee. "I have had a very stressful day, human. And I'm telling you now that if you don't come with us right now I will drag you out of this fortress by the fur of your neck."

"Knuckles!"

The echidna briefly stopped his advance and glanced over his shoulder. Both Time Lord and Mobian now looked at the fox kit that currently spouted the most imploring look ever.

"We've got to help him," Tails pointed out, "This is about a screwdriver!"

xxx(Present!)xxx

Sonic couldn't help but laugh. "Oh, this is rich," he managed, "Poor Knux, being outvoted by two engineering maniacs."

"Well, my screwdriver can do a lot more than just engineer things," the Doctor pointed out, but it was said with a smile. The five mismatched adventurers, hedgehog, Time Lord, fox, echidna and human were now sitting inside the house at a table, listening to Tails', Knuckles' and the Doctor's joined accounts of how they had rescued the time-traveller.

"Oh, if it had only stopped at that," the echidna grumbled.

xxx(wavy-wavy! Wheee!)xxx

"So, we've made it into the laboratory room," Knuckles' voice was stoic, "It took bloody ages, we've ran into about thirteen robot patrols sentries, one of them exploded into my face, and if Robotnik had actually been in this room instead of being on a field trip we would be in serious trouble now, but we made it into the laboratory room, where you said he interrogated you. All so you can now stuff your pockets with the contents of what appears to be the charity box of a junk yard sale. Give me one reason, human, just one reason, why I shouldn't break your legs right now."

All this was said with the calmness of somebody reading a phonebook aloud and it sent a chill down the Doctor's spine. Especially after what he had seen the echidna do to some of those robots. Giving him what he hoped was his most winning smile, he waved the sonic screwdriver into Knuckles' face after having collected his glasses, piece of string, psychic paper and rubber duck again. After some thought he had decided to leave the jelly babies here, though.

"Now, now, I'm not human and this isn't just a screwdriver," he started, whirling to the next door. "For example, I have to admit it was very…impressive…how you could, ah, punch those steel-reinforced doors in and, uh….tear those metal walls down…" his voice trailed off as Knuckles' glare intensified and told the Doctor to get to the point before it was something else than doors being punched in.

"But!" the Time Lord started up again, just a tad bit faster than before, "With my sonic screwdriver, everything becomes so much easier! If we wanted to get out of this room, for example," he said, fiddling with the controls of the screwdriver for a bit, before waving the suddenly blue-glowing tip over the bolts and locks of the door in the wall, "all we'd have to do was simply find the right sonic setting and-"

"Doctor!" Tails cried at this, finally realizing what the time-traveller was going for, "This is not the way ou-!"

"Voilá!" The Doctor shouted triumphantly and yanked the door open effortlessly. Which wasn't a door into another room at all, but a sort of cupboard in the wall. A cupboard containing a large, mean-looking, now activated battle droid.

"INTRUDERS DETECTED," it grated in its metal voice. "ENGAGING PRIMARY PROGRAM: ANNIHILATE!"

xxx(aaand, back again...)xxx

"Yeah," Knuckles said, "That was how I cracked my second rib this day."

By now Rose was giggling helplessly despite herself, Sonic's grin threatened to take off the upper half of his face and the Doctor at least had the decency to look embarrassed.

"Look, doors usually lead outside, and the third door I opened did really-" he started, but another glare from Knuckles told him to better be quiet for now.

Rose put a calming hand on his arm, still having trouble to stop laughing. "Well, so far I think nothing on Mobius is usual," she said, smiling at the Sapients, two of which returned the sentiment, "But did you at least find out why we're here? Like, did whoever sent the distress signal do that because of this Robotnik?"

"Oh, yes, the distress signal! Weeeell, it turned out to be a tr…trivial matter that has already been resolved. In fact, we can go straight back to the TARDIS after this and never mention this little trip again," the Doctor replied brightly and just a tad bit too cheerfully.

Sonic cocked his head. "You meant to say 'trap', didn't you."

"Maybe." Now the Time Lord had crossed his arms himself and was frowning at the ceiling, not before shooting Rose a pointed look. "That could have happened to anybody, you know?"

"Right. This is getting ridiculous. I want to be flown back to my island right now," Knuckles said at that, standing up and slamming his hands down onto the table with force.

Tails quickly jumped up. "No, please stay for lunch! I invited Rose and the Doctor too, and afterwards we can all pile into the Typhoon and I'll fly those two back to their ship and you up to Angel Island. How's that sound?" he smiled at the frowning echidna.

Knuckles sighed. "Fine. But the food better be good."

Tails nodded. "Oh, I'm sure it'll be. Amy's coming over to help with the cooking. She wants to be Sonic's girlfriend," the fox kit added in explanation for the two new arrivals, although it wasn't half as informative as the hedgehog-shaped dust cloud that was left where Sonic had sat a second ago.

Knuckles shot Rose a silent See what I have to put up with?-look, but the human girl was enjoying herself too much to be able to really sympathize. It had been too long since any adventure that didn't endanger her or the Doctor's life and was there simply for some fun. Why couldn't things like this happen more often?

xxx

A good hundred miles away now, Doctor Ivo Robotnik sat in his hovercraft at the head of his battle mech procession, smiling to himself. The convoy wasn't moving very fast, but he'd get there. To the fabled TARDIS. And with time-travel at his disposal…

The robots were merely there to carry some valuable equipment and protect him should there be any automated aggressive defence systems, but he doubted it. He had heard the passive defences of a TARDIS were almost impenetrable anyway, so there was actually little point in firepower short of the fact that he liked surrounding himself with weapons. And he wasn't too worried about the Doctor's ship putting up a fight.

Still laughing to himself, the future ruler of the Eggman Empire let his army march on, his eyes focused on a single object in his hands…

To be continued…

Chapter Text

"So, you're the Doc, huh?"

The Doctor turned around. A hedgehog girl called Amy had shown up for lunch with their new friends and for some reason, Sonic had instantly disappeared before she could set eyes on him. Since houses never did much for him, the Doctor had ambled outside to escape the activity rush as the preparations for their meal were going on – Rose had said she was hungry and wanted to try their food, and so they were staying. Now Sonic had apparently decided to return, grinning up at the Doctor and tapping his foot.

"Rose told me a bit about you. I'm Sonic, since we haven't been exactly introduced yet. Sonic the Hedgehog."

The combination of those three words suddenly prodded a memory of the Doctor's conversation with Robotnik.

"So you're actually real?" the Doctor blurted out.

The hedgehog raised an eye ridge and gave the Time Lord a 'Have you expected the Tooth Fairy?' –look. He shook his head.

"Do I look fictional? But hey, I wanted to say sorry for Robotnik kidnapping you, couldn't 've been a great reception. Usually this planet is more friendly, but with my li'l bro Tails and Knuckles you were in good hands."

"And Rose apparently with you." The Doctor nodded. "She seemed very…impressed with that wheelchair ride. You run quite fast, then."

He had chosen his words well. Sonic's expression turned pleased and his eyes twinkled with appreciation and good humour as he winked at his visitor. "Faster than sound, Doc."

He pointed to the rearing cliff face in the distance. "Wanna see me run to this wall and back?"

The Doctor couldn't help but smile at the hedgehog's enthusiasm. "Sure, show me!"

Sonic grinned even wider if possible, and for some reason just a little bit smugly now.

"…wanna see me do it again?"

Behind him, there was suddenly a line of slowly settling dust leading up to the cliff.

A sparkle seemed to flash through the Doctor's brown eyes. "Oh, that was good," he finally managed, before delving into his pocket and somehow producing a small statue. It showed Sonic and Rose racing in the wheelchair and was, in turn, the colour of the ground. The hedgehog regarded it curiously.

"While you were busy earlier I made this," the Doctor explained cheerfully. "It's made of pure sand but hardened to rock consistency by modified sound waves." He handed the figurine to the Mobian and with the same movement got out his screwdriver and twirled it in the air. "Sonic properties, eh?" He winked. "It's amazing what they can do when you harness them correctly."

Sonic stared at him and the ten inch figurine for a few moments, confounded, and then simply guffawed with laughter. Before the Doctor could say anything, the hedgehog had shoved the statue back at him and suddenly leaped into the air where he curled up and became a blue tornado. The Time Lord turned his head just in time to see the Mobian aim for the tree behind him, when said plant was already enveloped in a storm of spiny blades. Within seconds, Sonic fell back to the ground, twigs, branches and leaves fluttering down all around them.

It took the Doctor two blinks to realize that his new acquaintance had hedge-formed the tree into the shape of a (green) TARDIS. Somehow, he had even managed the phone outside.

"Sure. You can do anything you set your mind to."

Now both man and Sapient were grinning at each other like two Cheshire tigers, delighted to have found the one other animal in the wonderland zoo that could possibly be a match for them and actually wanted to play.

"Mind, eh?" The Doctor waggled his eyebrows, before delving once more into his apparently bottomless pockets to show Sonic a hand of ordinary playing cards. "Well, if you take a card from here, any card…it will be the seven of diamonds."

"What?" The hedgehog regarded him, surprised, hand still outstretched."I haven't even drawn a card yet," he pointed out.

"Nope, but that's the one you wanted to take." The Doctor nodded sagely, slipping something that looked suspiciously like a leather wallet back into his suit. "Don't tell me that's wrong."

"No…I was planning to take that card." Sonic dropped his arms, a smile creeping back on his face before suddenly turning mischievous again. For a second, he dashed back into the house before appearing right in front of the Doctor once more, for some reason holding a green gem in his hand that was the size of a human child's head.

"Right. Well, if you want to play it that way, Doc, be prepared for a surprise…"

"SONIC!" The door opened and a rather ticked-off Knuckles came striding out. He held out his hand. "Give back that Emerald right this instant. It needs to recharge Tails' plane or else I never get home. And you're also going to get your tail into the kitchen right now and prepare the lunch Amy's brought since it's your turn and you're not going to dodge it this time."

Sonic briefly tossed the Chaos Emerald in his hand, wondering whether a fight with Knuckles wouldn't be an even better spectacle to impress the Doctor than the simple Chaos firework he'd planned, but then dropped the idea. It was his turn to do the cooking and he didn't usually ditch his friends like this. Plus, his new friend could get hurt in the brawl (Knuckles had this nasty habit of hurling boulders at people he didn't like and not everybody could dodge them as fast as Sonic) and maybe Rose wouldn't be that pleased if her companion got abducted and concussed on the same day.

Giving the Doctor a last look, Sonic shrugged and sighed. "Sorry, Doc. Gotta go. But I'll ask mom and dad whether I can play again later." Saying so, he casually tossed the Emerald to a grumbling Knuckles, briefly appeared to brace himself in front of the door and went inside. The last thing the Doctor heard was an ear-piercing female squeal, a yelp from Sonic and then a few thumping noises that sounded like somebody was running over (and crashing into) furniture. He wondered whether he should be worried but was already distracted as somebody else timidly tugged at his trouser leg.

"Hello, Tails. Anything I can do for you?"

The fox smiled up at him, looking very much like a kid about to ask for the cookie jar.

"Uhm…could I maybe have a look at that screwdriver? Please?"

xxx

"'Amy Rose'. That's funny. We kinda share the same name, then." Rose Tyler made an attempt at a smile.

"Yeah. Funny."

The temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees.

For her part, Rose didn't know what she was doing wrong. The pink hedgehog Amy was the first female Mobian she'd seen, her age somewhere between Sonic and Tails in the middle of puberty, and so far the only one who wore clothes besides shoes and gloves. She had a pretty red dress and matching boots and headband, contrasting her jade eyes. Her face was framed by dangling soft pink spines, not unlike Knuckles', but she'd claimed to be a hedgehog rather than an echidna. Rose had seen Amy only briefly when she arrived and was only with her now after the sounds of Mortal Combat in the entrance hall had died down- after which she'd seen Sonic briefly hustled by her into the kitchen. Which was a pity, since Rose had enjoyed watching the Doctor and Sonic in their little boasting match. Soon afterward, the female Mobian had marched into the living room and plonked herself next to Rose on the sofa, asking for her story which she'd missed.

Rose in turn had told her about how she'd found Sonic unconscious, thought he was 'kinda cute' (Rose had to giggle at that part) and rescued him from the robots – which had led for the blue hedgehog to save her from imprisonment in the TARDIS in turn and then give her the (wheel chair) –ride of her life.

But Amy, who at first had seemed rather bubbly and friendly, had become oddly cold by now.

"Well, uh, maybe I should check up on the Doctor now-" Rose made to rise to get out of that awkward situation, but a sharp remark of Amy brought her back down.

"Not so fast. First tell me what exactly your relation with Sonic is now." Her eyes had turned into jade chips of suspicion.

"My…relation…with Sonic?" Rose repeated, dumbfounded. She stared for a few moments, uncomprehending, but then something seemed to click in her head and she reared back in shock.

"Amy!" she almost shrieked. " For gods' sake, I'm human and he's a hedgehog! That's just...ew!" her face was screwed up akin the visage of the newly-initiated slash reader.

The reaction did not seem to faze the pink girl. Amy crossed her arms, not looking at Rose anymore but staring at the flour with her lower lip jutting out, her voice wobbling slightly now.

"So? On our last adventure, he met with this human Elise and we all know how that ended."

Rose did not know how 'that' had ended, and wasn't particularly sure she wanted to. Judging by Amy's tone, it was pretty sure the hedgehog wished for this Elise it had ended with a fatal accident. Rose shot the other a still disbelieving stare, shaking her blond head slightly as she tried to grasp the reason for the sudden zoophilic paranoia. She leaned a bit backwards, her pretty lips drawn into a grimace.

"Like...no? Amy, that is insane. What kind of warped mind would even ever think that?" she asked, looking straight into the jade eyes of the other. The young hedgehog girl stared back and then there was a split second where something seemed to break behind her eyes as Amy finally appeared to recognize the clear, natural repulse on Rose's expression and how her previous statements were likely to have sounded to the human.

Amy then very efficiently drew the consequences of the situation and promptly burst into tears.

"I'm…I'm sorry, it's just…with Sonic, it's so hard…" she managed in between the weeping and this time it was the human girl who suddenly found herself in the role of the supporter, awkwardly cradling the small, furred frame. Soon enough, the sobs subsided and Amy drew herself back up, wiping at her eyes.

"Thanks. Sorry about that. But, you know…it really isn't easy. I always get suspicious, because…Sonic is always running around everywhere. He could have every girl he wanted with his charm and looks. And…it's so hard to keep up. He's a hero and I'm just an ordinary girl and his biggest fan and sometimes I just wonder whether I'm simply not good enough for him," she gushed out before shooting Rose a sad smile. "I'm sorry for loading all this onto you, by the way. But I don't really have any girlfriends I could talk to about this and I still need to get it off my chest, sometimes. Just please don't tell me to give up on him. I have been running after Sonic for more than four years by now and I know it's silly. He could never settle down for a girl, could probably never give me a family like I wish for. It just wouldn't be him. But, you know…" Amy stared into the distance again, a slight smile now tugging at her lips. "Sometimes. When he saves me, or when I manage to grab his hand, or maybe when he just smiles at me because our eyes meet…I know that I would go to the end of the universe for him even if there's not the slightest grain of hope that he could ever be with me."

She looked at Rose again. And then her mouth fell open as she caught the human's eyes for the second time.

"Oh, sweet Chaos…" Amy whispered, then couldn't hide a rueful chuckle. "You too, huh? Your Doctor."

"My Doctor." Rose nodded, then let her head fall into her hands, groaning. "A nine-hundred year old Time Lord whose only home is a crazy space ship." You travel to the other end of the universe, meet talking hedgehogs fighting mad scientists, only to find out that these creatures at home have the exact same problems as you. Kind of puts things into perspective, she thought. She looked up as Amy tugged one of her hands away and patted it reassuringly between her own, a determined look in her now once more sparkling eyes.

"Hedgelords. Timehogs. They're all the same. But a strong girl never gives up, does she?"

"Never." Rose confirmed, equally serious and then both girls broke into a companionable giggle. The Doctor, on the search for Tails and his screwdriver chose that moment to walk through the room and gave the laughing friends a quizzical look.

"Hey, what's so funny?"

"Nothing…Mr. Hedgelord," Rose answered, and the two girls immediately started their hysterical giggling again. The Doctor merely sighed and walked off in search for Tails once more, knowing that he understood vortexes and quantum science much better than he ever would the female mind.

xxx

Sonic at the moment was chopping capsicums with his trademark speed (and hoped Amy wouldn't notice her oven mittens - that had fallen victim to said speed - missing anytime soon). Lunch was almost ready and he heard Amy's and Rose's laughter from the living room with a smile. From his vantage point in the kitchen he could also see the Doctor and Tails in the fox' workshop, where most of the kit's planes and other projects were mounted on various benches. They had apparently a little routine going, which consisted of Tails bouncing excitedly, the Doctor waving a glowing blue torch over various bits of machinery, and Tails bouncing a lot more.

Curious, he tried listening in on their conversation a bit, but when Time Lord and fox started throwing around phrases sounding like 'chaotical interference with temporal drive', 'Trousers of time in potentia' and – Chaos help - 'Reversing the polarity of the neutron flow', the hedgehog knew that 1) this was way beyond him and 2) now that Tails had found somebody who could actually understand the technobabble he always spouted, the kit probably wouldn't stop ranting for a week.

All in all, the two space-travelers were a lot nicer to have around than the last aliens who visited, who had mainly been concerned with trying to enslave their planet and making Shadow angst even more than usual.

And I honestly can't decide which bit of that was worse.

Sonic chuckled, tossing the sliced vegetables onto the sandwiches. Only one thought kept nagging at his mind.

If Eggman had kidnapped the Doctor, then what had he actually wanted from him? The Time Lord had said that Robotnik had asked barely any questions and not even detained him in a high-security cell, almost as if the Doctor himself was worthless to him…

Time-travel technology, though. What could Robuttnik want with time travel? The guy specialized in blowing up stuff and inventing ten-storey robots. Sonic shook his head. He'd ask the Doctor again later, maybe he had an idea…

xxx

Amy had left sometime later to help Sonic in the kitchen and Rose was sitting in the living room once more alone when the Doctor entered, apparently quite pleased with himself.

"Hey guys!" Sonic's voice echoed through the house, "Lunch is almost finished, so get into the living room, I'm hungry! Rose, Doc, what you want to drink?"

"Water, please!" Rose called back for both of them, before turning to her friend, raising an eyebrow.

"He calls you 'Doc' all the time," she said, grinning.

"Yes. I've noticed." The Time Lord looked just slightly exasperated.

"You know…"Rose looked thoughtful. 'This being the planet of talking animals and all, I think I could do my Bugs Bunny impersonation."

"Rassilon, no-"

"What's up, Doc?" Rose asked, drawling in a terribly fake American accent, before bursting into giggles anew.

"Don't – don't do that," the Doctor pleaded, not finding this half as funny, but to no avail.

"No, this is great, I have to ask Sonic for a carrot…" The blonde girl disappeared into the kitchen, leaving a groaning Time Lord behind. At this point he was sure the Master never had to put up with this.

"I'd better get used to it, if I were you," a voice interrupted his tortured thoughts at this point and he could see Knuckles in an armchair with a newspaper. "In this house they have a fondness for nicknames. You don't think the fox kid is really named 'Tails', do you?"

Right then, a door was kicked open and Sonic wobbled in, balancing a tray laden with food. "Hey, Knux! Knucklehead! Don't just sit there, set the table, willya!"

The echidna threw the Time Lord a look.

"And you honestly think that 'Doc' is that bad?"

xxx

"Heh, thanks for cooking, Sonic, this is brilliant!" Tails was digging into the food hungrily like any other nine-year-old after a day of excitement and everyone else seemed to enjoy the meal as well. The only one who hadn't yet eaten anything but was rather gingerly examining the different layers of his sandwich was the Doctor. Amy shot him a look.

"Are you alright? You eat human food, don't you? Oh, I'm so terribly sorry, I should have asked! I don't know what Time Lords eat…would you like some, oh, I dunno, watches?" She blushed, probably realizing herself how ridiculous that sounded.

The Doctor gave her a slightly odd look.

"Human food's alright. But, how do I put this…there's luncheon meat in this sandwich, right?" He pointed to a slice of rosy meat in his sandwich.

Tails nodded. "Yeah. I'm a fox and eat lots of that, but there's the chips and we do have some vegetarian ones, I think…" he started to root through the pile of sandwiches in the middle, but the Doctor cut him off, just looking slightly uncomfortable.

"No, that's not it. I was more concerned – on Mobius, animals are all intelligent beings, right?"

Rose, suddenly realizing where this was going, turned a very distinct shade of green. The half-eaten sandwich dropped out of her limp fingers.

"Oh…oh, god…"

"So, I was wondering, just where exactly does this meat come from?" The Doctor's tone now was decidedly dangerous.

The Mobians looked at him, stunned.

And then, Sonic started to laugh.

"We keep humans on meat farms, what did you think?"

"Sonic!" Amy shot up from her chair and whacked the snickering blue hedgehog on the head. Rose now looked as if she very urgently needed to visit the bathroom and Tails was shaking his hands wildly, his eyes wide.

"No, no, no, no! This is chicken! And it's not sapient!"

"It's...it's not?" Rose managed, weakly.

"No!" Tails protested vehemently, "Of course not! There's humans, there's Sapients and there's feral animals. And only the latter are made into food!"

"Good to know," the Doctor replied, and instantly dug into his own sandwich cheerfully.

"Anguent hoo eakin angyhin?" he asked Rose after a moment.

"W-what?" the girl still hadn't quite recovered from the blue hedgehog's warped sense of humour.

"Aren't you eating anything?" Sonic translated with a grin, being a fluent master of Mouthfullamese himself.

"Wha-how could I now?" Rose protested, looking at the assembly exasperated. "Just a moment ago I thought I was eating your cousin or something!"

"Well, Sonic usually is something of a headless chicken, you're right," Knuckles interjected calmly from the other end of the table. Rose's disbelieving expression turned on him for a second, but then even she couldn't help but give finally a defeated grin and a headshake.

"You're insane, all of you. Especially you two," she added with mock severity and a glare directed at Sonic and the Doctor, who both snorted. "And I think I will go for the vegetarian option now, thank you very much. How come you guys eat human food anyway?"

"Supermarket's close." Tails shrugged. "Knuckles enjoys the odd insect snack, though, and Sonic adds the hedgehog crispies from the pet store to his cereal in the morning. Except he doesn't want anybody to know that," the fox added with a mischievous grin, ignoring the indignant 'Hey!' of his big brother in the background. Rose relaxed again. She liked this. Just the Doctor was already slightly edgy to get away. Despite being similar to the hedgehog in many other ways, he seemed to have a lot more trouble to be simply relaxed and at ease among friends even when there wasn't anything happening.

As if sensing the restlessness of his new friend, Sonic finished his sandwich at that point and turned toward the Doctor.

"Right. In my opinion, it's time we get back to adventure and smashing robots. Why do you think Robotnik lured you here in the first place? It doesn't make sense, he's never done anything like that before."

The Doctor shrugged, dipping two fries into tomato sauce and licking his fingers thoughtfully before he answered. "Why, I believe he's trying to steal my TARDIS. And oooh, this ketchup is good!"

"What?" Rose stared at him, wide-eyed. It usually spelled not disaster but apocalypse if their ship was gone and she wasn't quite sure how the Doctor could be so calm about this. Seeing her agitation, the Time Lord merely smiled at them.

"Oh, relax. He won't be able to transmat it, since that wouldn't work with the force field of the old girl. And he will never be able to get inside, since he doesn't have this." With a triumphant smile, he reached into his suit pocket. And into his trouser pocket. Into the other one. Then he stood up and patted down his back pockets, before then meeting the confused eyes of his audience. His throat was suddenly very dry.

"This is bad…"

xxx

A thousand miles away…

Laughing like the criminally insane genius he was, Doctor Ivo Robotnik felt a rush of triumph like he hadn't in years as he smoothly inserted the shining key of the TARDIS into its lock.

To be continued…

Chapter Text

Chapter 6: Blast To The Past

"Rose! How far from here did you leave the TARDIS?!" The Doctor had leapt up from his chair, his tall form nearly knocking the table over. His usual good cheer was gone to be replaced by wildly staring eyes and a frantic energy, letting everybody realize that for the first time they were actually in trouble.

"I, I dunno, maybe ten miles, I have no idea how fast we were going!" Rose waved her hands at him helplessly, her voice also on the edge of panic.

"What-?" Several people began to stutter, but the Time Lord had already dashed to the door. Hanging onto the frame with one hand as if some supernatural force was pulling him outward, he cast a panicked glance back.

"Tails! We have to get into one of your planes and fly to the TARDIS now! The fastest!"

"Wait." This had come from Sonic, who had also risen, now looking serious. "I know something faster." Within the blink of an eye he had disappeared, only to zip right back into their midst, now holding the head-sized green gem Knuckles had prized off him earlier.

"Sorry, Knux, but your ride home might have to wait. Now, everyone who's coming, grab a hold of me. I'll Chaos Control us there."

"'Sorry, Knux, but your ride will have to wait.' Hah. The way this day's been going I'd be up there faster if I built my own plane," the echidna muttered in the background, but the other Mobians were quick to grab their hero by the arms and shoulders.

"Knux? You coming?"

The echidna hesitated, then shook his head. "No. If Robotnik succeeds in whatever he's planning, then I have to protect the Master Emerald and Angel Island more than ever." He locked gazes with the blue hedgehog until Sonic finally dropped his eyes and nodded.

"Fair enough. I hope it won't come to that," he said, quietly. Then he shot Rose and the Doctor a curious look, all contemplativeness gone.

"And what are you two waiting for? Secure your ticket on the hedgehog express. Mind the spines, though, they're sharp."

The blonde girl exchanged a shrugging glance with the Doctor, but then both reached down and instinctively went for the two blue ears.

"Hey!"

"Sorry. But they're cute."

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that. Chaos Control!"

The Doctor instantly gasped. He had to admit that he had never expected anything like this (indeed, had felt slightly ridiculous crowding around the hedgehog and the gem) and now he was on a roller-coaster-ride of madness.

His surroundings had disappeared in a blinding white light that hinted at all the colours of the rainbow - and then some more. He first thought he had been thrown out of his TARDIS into the Time Vortex, except that this wasn't movement in time. It rather felt like a transmat - in a washing machine. It was wild, it was unpredictable, it was…Chaos.

And then suddenly there was solid ground meeting his face at approximately 9.81 meters per second.

"Hold it right there, Robotnik!" Unlike the Doctor (who was right now taking a closer look at Mobius' yellow and brown checkered earth), Sonic had landed on his feet and appraised the situation in an instant. They were back in the meadow where the TARDIS was parked – and surrounded by battle robots; the fat scientist had been expecting them. The blue hedgehog tensed up. His enemy was standing in the entrance of the Doctor's weird space ship and it was obvious that if he moved a muscle, Robotnik would have Rose and her friend shot. The self-satisfied grin of the human also told him that Robotnik knew he knew and relished every second of it.

Dazed, the Doctor at this point lifted his face from the ground where he had landed flat on his belly. Next to him Rose groaned in a similar state, muttering something non-understandable about certain hedgehogs and how she was going to kill them and produce sandwiches.

"Sorry, Sonic. But if I stay and chat any longer, I'm going to miss my flight. Goodbye for the last time…"

Ivo Robotnik slammed the doors of the TARDIS shut.

And the robots opened fire.

Complete mayhem erupted in split seconds, laser blasts and bullets flying through the air wildly, occasionally blasting into earth and other robots, letting them explode. It was obvious that this uncoordinated attack was merely a distraction maneuver – Sonic, Amy and Tails immediately had their hands full shielding their new friends, smashing into the fighting mechs before any of them could fire a blast that would actually have hit a target. But even while he was dodging, twisting and turning for his life, the Doctor could hear it clearly… the unmistakable grinding noise signalizing that his TARDIS had just been taken from him.

An explosion only a metre from his right let him stagger but he barely noticed it. Sonic had sliced the last robot in two, a quick glance assuring him that everybody was still left standing.

The blue hedgehog whirled around.

"Alright Buttnik, your last toy just went back to the box, so you better…wait a moment, where's he gone?" the hero of Mobius blinked in confusion at the space where just a moment ago the blue policebox had rested peacefully. Uncomprehending, he scanned the empty skies, then glanced at Rose and the Doctor for help, but the girl merely looked terrified and her companion stared blankly into space.

"No," he whispered. "No. no, no, no, no!" He buried his face in his hands, running them through his disturbed hair. "NO!"

"It…it just disappeared. With a vworp-vworp noise," Amy managed, looking as stunned as the rest of them, especially not having seen the eccentric space ship of their new friend before. "Err…is he okay?" she asked Rose tentatively, taking a step back from the Doctor who was still waving his hands in the thin air where the TARDIS had vanished.

"Uhm…no. This is kind of bad. The only time he ever abandoned his ship before is when he was ready to die. She is really important to him," Rose managed to explain, her heart going out to her distraught companion. Next, however, all heads turned as a shriek pierced the silence of their little battlefield.

"Sonic! What is happening to you?!" Tails was pointing at the blue hedgehog, horrified. The reason for his terror was that Sonic, still standing in front of them, had suddenly turned transparent.

"What?" Sonic's eyes grew wide as he stared at – and through - his own hands. And then met the eyes of the Doctor, which had all at once darkened with a sadness that seemed almost too much to bear.

The Time Lord seemed to have trouble to speak. "…Robotnik just killed you, Sonic." His expression turned pained. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

"You mean…in the past? Because you said your ship travels through time, right?" Tails stared at the Doctor with wide eyes, his young intellect working in overdrive to compute the bizarre events of the last five minutes. "But…but he's still here, isn't he?"

"The time vortex is being disrupted this very minute. I can feel it." The Doctor's voice was strained as if he was suffering. "Robotnik went back to the past and killed Sonic a long time before today. But apparently - and this is mere guesstimation - at the same time somebody also went back and saved him. At the moment it is not clear whether Robotnik is going to succeed or not. So, Sonic is flickering in and out of existence, which is why he looks transparent – basically Schroedinger's Hedgehog."

Nobody laughed at the poorly-timed joke, but the only thing that seemed to matter was that the Doctor's spirits had slightly picked up as he started to explain things. Or tried to, anyway.

"Whose hedgehog?" Amy asked in puzzlement.

"Nevermind. Has to do with quantum. And cats. What I am trying to say is…" the Time Lord moved his hands in a way as if he was attempting to braid spaghetti. "People assume that time is a strict progression from cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly…" he gave a slightly disconcerted pause here, mostly because the expressions of his audience were starting to turn a bit wibbly-wobbly as well, "…a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff! That's it, basically."

He beamed into an assembly of question marks. The only exception was Sonic, who took the silence as a prompt to slap Tails on the shoulder.

"See? You could learn from him, li'l buddy, his explanations actually make sense. So, Doc, what next?"

Now the Time Lord looked slightly crestfallen again. "I don't know," he admitted. "Technically, he shouldn't even be able to pilot the TARDIS. That's Time Lord stuff."

"Believe me, if there's one thing Robotnik can do it's handling technology," Sonic gave a cynic smile. "But there's gotta be something we can do. Come on, Doctor, think," he said, for once using his new friend's proper address as the situation looked ever bleaker.

"As soon as the TARDIS reappears in this time, the new alignment will have solidified. Meaning, if Robotnik returns before someone can go into the past to save you, you will vanish completely."

"Right." Sonic nodded, looking grave but determined. "Do you know where he has gone? Or rather, to when?"

The Doctor nodded. "He's gone back 11 years, two months, 15 days, four hours, 29 minutes and 36 seconds exactly. My screwdriver can tell me that by analyzing the residual artron energy of the TARDIS, but I can't follow." His brow creased once more in unhappiness. Having silently listened to the exchange, Rose knew how much he suffered whenever somebody came to harm through his actions, be it directly or indirectly. To her surprise, however, Sonic looked far from desolate at their predicament.

"So traveling in time is the only problem, huh? Well, if this weird state of mine still allows me to Chaos Control, I think we can help with that…"

And with a wink and a flash, he had vanished.

"What is that?" Rose finally managed to ask. "Some sort of Christmas teleport lightshow?"

"Close. We call it Chaos Control." Tails smiled. "There's seven power gems called the Chaos Emeralds, and with them, certain individuals can warp time and space. They can also be harnessed for offensive attacks, like Chaos Spear or Chaos Blast. However, the only users capable of those techniques we know of are Sonic and-"

A blinding flash of light interrupted them as Sonic returned. The hand that wasn't grasping the Emerald was holding the arm of yet another new arrival, a black hedgehog that looked very similar to Sonic, but sported upturned head quills, red stripes across his limbs and spikes, as well as a patch of fluffy white fur perched on his chest. His eyes were dark crimson and looked at first very surprised, then very angry and then his fist landed in Sonic's face.

"…and Shadow," Tails finished happily.

xxx

"…so now we either go back in time and stop myself from becoming a rather sad special effect, or this timeline unravels and Robotnik rules Mobius. And for that we need you," Sonic rattled off his version of an explanation after people had managed to stop Shadow from killing the blue hedgehog. "All rather wibbly-wobbly, as I understand. And ow, by the way," Sonic finished, still holding one hand over his bruised eye.

However the black hedgehog, Shadow, was still scowling. "For some reason you appear to think that I would care whether you lived or died. Abducting me with a sneak Chaos Control is not making me any more likely to help you with this."

Rose could see the flash of anger darkening the eyes of the Doctor, but before either of them could say something, it was Amy that took a step toward Shadow.

"Well then how about this, you Ultimate Lifeform, if Sonic never lived to battle Eggman, then there wouldn't have been any reason for him to go and excavate you from Prison Island lab as a weapon to conquer Mobius two years ago. You'd either be his mindless slave by now or sleeping away your days in that tube until the day humans turn green! Now help us save my Sonikku!" Amy finished, accentuating her little speech with a rather vicious poke into a surprised Shadow's chest.

Rose shot a look at Tails. "Robotnik tried to use him as weapon? And he…slept in a tube in an underground lab?"

The little fox nodded. "That, and Shadow is also the Ultimate Lifeform created on a spacestation by Robotnik's ancestor, and he lost his entire family to a military raid half a century ago. It's…complicated. But the bottom line is, he mostly glares a lot."

"Uh-huh." Rose gave the Doctor a look, who shrugged. It basically said that at this point he didn't care anymore whether Shadow was a tentacle monster who sang operas, dated Captain Jack and feasted on small children, as long as he somehow helped them get the TARDIS back. The Time Lord clapped his hands.

"Right! Time to get back on track, here. How are you lot planning to achieve time travel, then?"

"We had this adventure in the future, some months ago." Sonic stepped forward, holding out his Emerald. "Shads and I learned a new trick. Apparently, all we need is a double Chaos Control to travel back and forth in time. You got your Emerald?" he asked the black hedgehog, who reluctantly pulled out a red gemstone from his quills.

"Yes. But we haven't done this since and there's no telling where or when we'll end up. It's one of your hare-brained ideas, as usual."

"Heh, no worries, Shads! That's why we've got the Doc. He's a Time King and everything," Sonic grinned and at the same time patted the time-traveler on the back – or rather, his upper thigh since the rest of the lanky Time Lord was quite hard to reach. "He'll guide us through this time-stuff in a cinch."

The Ultimate Lifeform gave the grinning Doctor a look that suggested he'd just as soon trust him with his life as proceed to eat his Emerald, but seemed to acquiesce.

"Very well. But the only reason I'll let you go ahead with this is because I am ageless, have nothing to hold me here, and if we end up in the stone age because of your idiocy at least I can go on to see this century again. Ready?"

The others nodded, coming together closer to grab a hold of Sonic (for some reason nobody wanted to hold Shadow's hand) again. Just before the two hedgehogs could shout their strange incantation, Rose shot the Doctor a look.

"Have you actually done this before? Ridden the time vortex without your ship or any gadgets?"

"No, never. The thing would tear you apart without the protection of a TARDIS or similar. But hey, it can never hurt to try, right?"

Rose opened her mouth to tell the Doctor that no, being torn to pieces hurt a lot, but then a chorused 'Chaos Control!' drowned out her words and next, her breath was driven from her lungs anyway.

xxx

It was amazing. The Doctor felt like he was a Time Toddler all over again, staring into the untempered schism, a gap in time that had scared him into running when he had been a child. He was within the roaring vortex, awed and absolutely terrified. Traveling through time like this was comparable to jumping out of an airplane with a parachute made from handkerchiefs as opposed to riding safely in the passenger cabin and bothering the stewardess for peanuts. The unbearable, beautiful symphony of Time itself sang its roaring song in his head, obliterating his consciousness and destroying the core of his being with its immeasurable power.

Except it didn't.

In the non-second after the immediate shock of entering the time vortex had waned, the Doctor realized with wonder that he and everyone was still alive. He could still feel the power of the time stream surging all around them, but they were shielded – as safe as in the TARDIS, Sonic and Shadow's consciousness was a protective bubble around them, Chaos Energy hissing when Time sucked and nipped at it as it was forced to part for the travelers. Mesmerized, the Doctor stared at the impossible colours swirling around them, greenish crimson mixing with infra-violet, all of it tinted blue…and then of course, giant letters spelling DAVID TENNANT spinning past. He'd never quite understood what they were doing in the time vortex, but no one besides him ever seemed to see them either. He was still musing, when, with a jolt, the Doctor realized that they were relying on him for guidance.

Here we go…it's my ship, the fate of this world, and the lives of these people at stake now.

As always, no pressure.

He concentrated. And picked it up.

Amid the overwhelming symphony of the vortex, in between the roaring and hissing and surging of the energies surrounding them, he could hear it – the faint singing of his own telepathic space ship, the TARDIS. She was crying for him, exactly eleven years, two months, 15 days, four hours, 29 minutes and 36 seconds ago.

The Doctor reached out to the time stream and squeezed.

xxx

This time, when they were dumped back into the world, it was only Rose, Tails and Amy that fell over. The blonde human idly wondered whether there was some universal rule that thought sidekicks with aching bums were funny.

"This…this is my old school." Sonic's voice sounded strangely strangled and they all took in their surroundings for the first time. It was a meadow similar to the one the TARDIS had stood in, indicating that they perhaps hadn't travelled in space as far as in time.

"Where's Shadow?" Tails asked dizzily, climbing back to his feet.

"Probably lost contact and got teleported somewhere else. We'll collect him later," Sonic muttered absent-mindedly, still lost in their surroundings.

A hundred yards distant from them stood the wooden school house Sonic had been staring at, a dirt path leading from it through the grass to other dwellings further in the distance. A small green hill, a forest and a freaky giant stone loop-de-loop surrounded them on the other sides. It looked all very idyllic, especially with young sapient children of various ages and species now emerging from the front doors, apparently on their way home from school. More than a few of them shot the group goggle-eyed looks, which wasn't very surprising – the Doctor thought that for two neon-coloured hedgehogs, a twin-tailed fox, the only human girl for miles plus the last Time Lord in existence, they should probably try to sell them tickets for ogling.

And then the screams erupted behind the hill.

"Chaos," Sonic whispered. "That's me."

To be continued…

Chapter Text

Sonic took off immediately, leaving the rest of the mismatched adventurers to scramble up after him. On the crest of the hill he halted to see that below him, only a couple yards in the distance, the flying circus was in town.

Well.

The situation was too serious to joke about it like that, but if Sonic hadn't been in mortal danger, it would have been hard to describe it otherwise. For a second, the blue hedgehog simply stared at the scene before him – Robotnik was sitting in his wildly bouncing Egg-O-Matic, a kind of hovercraft shaped like the lower half of a ball, and he was trying to strangle a screaming hedgehog kid in his large, fat hands. Apparently, it wasn't an easy task. The kid kept wriggling in his grasp, screaming for the police, his friends, and yelling general obscenities questioning Robotnik's purity of lineage. For the human's part, it turned out that strangling a hedgehog of all things poses certain problems of the spiky sort, and when the wretched runt keeps kicking your nose with his small sneakers, you idly wonder why you left your laser blaster at home. Nevertheless, the little hedgehog was fighting a losing battle, his cheeks starting to turn bluish with oxygen deprivation…

"Robotnik! Unhand me at once!" Sonic shouted, feeling slightly ridiculous had this situation not been so grave. His younger self was only six years old and he knew himself how defenseless he had been at that age. He wasn't quite daring to go in for a spin-dash yet, lest he would bring the hoverpod crashing down and maybe bury the kid beneath it. Fortunately, he had at least managed to distract Robotnik, whose eyebrows rose momentarily in astonishment at seeing his archenemy as transparent as a spectre.

"Sonic?! How did you-?" he sputtered, momentarily releasing his chokehold on the Mobian child in surprise, who drew a gasping breath. Then:

"Lemme go, you filthy, rotten sonnuva bi-"

"Oy! Language!" The blue hedgehog barked reflexively at his younger self, a habit born out of long-suffering years of raising Tails. The fact that the fox kid now soon would be prime witness to see just what kind of vocabulary his hero had used when he was his age made Sonic's cheeks flush just ever so slightly.

"If you lay one more finger on him, Buttnik, you're gonna lose it!" the blue hedgehog yelled again, this time falling easily into a battle stance to fling himself at the pair with pin-point precision.

"DON'T!"

At this point the rest of the group finally caught up with them, the Doctor already having taken in the situation. "Sonic!" he called again, "You mustn't touch your younger self or you will create a paradox!" His hand was already delving into his jacket as he shouted, presumably to pull out his sonic screwdriver.

"What?" Sonic turned around briefly, but another scream from the little hedgehog in Robotnik's hands let him snap back around and he hurled himself towards the hoverpod, which had already started to ascend. Even with the second Sonic aboard, it still managed to gain more than thirty feet of height, a distance from the ground that could already result in death by freefall. A wild struggle in mid-air ensued, the participants being a supersonic hedgehog who tried to rescue somebody without touching them or crashing the hoverpod, an overweight scientist who tried to hold on to his victim and the controls of the ship while fending off said angry hedgehog all with just two hands, and a young, scared Mobian who thought that right now was a good time to bite the hand that suspended him high above thin air.

His tongue between his lips, the Doctor pointed his tool at the hovercraft, but the screwdriver only lit up briefly, before it gave a small, unhappy whine and died.

"What? Battery failure? Now?!" The Doctor looked at the thing with disbelief.

"Sonic!" Tails took off flying instead, using his two rear appendages like a helicopter. The little hedgehog was now screaming incoherently after Robotnik had dropped him and was clinging to the rim of the bowl-shaped hovercraft for dear life. Meanwhile, the obese scientist was trying to strangle the other Sonic, who in turn was pulling the man's moustache.

"Rose! Give me the batteries from your mobile, I need something to charge the screwdriver!"

"Alright, alright, no need to shout-!" The girl tossed the thing to the Doctor, but was more concerned with something else. Waving at the spectacle, she pointed out:

"But isn't anybody besides me noticing that this hedgehog kid is brown?!"

"I was going to say that," Amy nodded.

In the aerial battle, the little hedgehog's screaming had just become a tad bit louder as he now saw what he perceived as a freaky flying fox mutant and a ghost trying to abduct him. Sonic finally managed to headbutt Robotnik what resulted in the hoverpod doing a loop-de-loop, and the rest of the fighters now yelling in unison.

Rose was about to ask the Doctor whether he was sure about this being Mobius and not the Marx Brothers Planet, but it was Amy who spoke first.

"What…what was this about the paradox, then?" the pink hedgehog looked nervously at both human and Time Lord. "What happens if you come into contact with your younger self?"

"Err…" for some reason Rose suddenly seemed rather sheepish.

"I will get eaten by feral, time-feeding pterodactyl monsters," the Doctor replied instead of her, still fumbling with his gizmo and doing something with the screwdriver to the cell phone that looked vaguely improper, "They appear through a gap in reality - usually because someone breaks the rules." He shot a pointed look at Rose who turned away with crossed arms. "Long story," he added to Amy. "And now let's see whether I can't put a stop to this nonsense."

He whipped out his re-charged sonic screwdriver and pointed it straight at the Egg-O-Matic. It buzzed with its strange vibrating noise and the crazily rocking hovercraft immediately steadied itself and then began to spark and smoke, descending down to safe ground slowly.

"What?! NO!" Robotnik exclaimed and began to fumble with the controls wildly as the control over his ship had been wrested away from him, but to no avail.

"Oh yes, Eggman. Curses, foiled again and all, admit that you're beat!" Sonic had leapt onto the controls and kicked the steering lever out of the human's hand. "Tails got me covered and the Doc controls your ship. There's no escape now," he finished with a triumphant grin.

"So you think, Sonic," the human snarled, in turn pressing a button on his wristband. "But I still have the time machine and there's lots of other possibilities." And with that, he turned for an instant as transparent as Sonic, before vanishing completely.

The hover pod touched ground.

"What happened?!" Amy yelled, the three members of their troupe that had stayed on the ground running towards them.

"Robotnik teleported," Sonic ground his teeth. "He must have parked the TARDIS somewhere else, that's why she wasn't here when we landed. Dammit!" he kicked the destroyed controls again in futile anger, his leg still as transparent as ever.

"Well, can't you just teleport after him?" Rose urged, grabbing Sonic's arm. "Just do that Chaos thing of yours or something! Transmat us into the TARDIS before Robotnik takes off!"

"Won't work, Rose." The Doctor smiled sadly. "Bigger on the inside, remember? The inside of the TARDIS resides in a different dimension, and I doubt that even Chaos Control could jump through realities."

"Well, then in front of the TARDIS!" Rose was getting exasperated. "Just teleport to us to the fat bloke before he can vanish, honestly, why do all of you Time Lords and, and hedgehog aliens have to be so complicated!"

Sonic winced at her sudden outburst. "Sorry, can't do that. I can only Chaos Control to places I know or can feel. We'll have to chase Egghead down at his next destination."

"Uhm, guys…that is all very interesting and stuff, but the little guy here has fainted."

Heads turned to Tails. The fox had been standing in the grass behind them, the now limp form of the hedgehog kid in his arms. Tails was only three years older than his charge, so that was no mean feat for him and his arms were trembling from the exertion.

"Lay him…me…down, bro. You were great," Sonic said quietly. They moved a step backwards to make space for the unconscious hedgehog and everyone for the first time got a good look at him.

Short of the species, there were no resemblances at all. Instead of the eight big blue quills present Sonic sported, this one's back and head was covered in hundreds of thin brown ones, much more like an Earth hedgehog in appearance. His shoes were run-down blue and white trainers, nothing like the sleek, red, gold-buckled versions the young adult Sonic wore. The kid's eyes were still open, rolled back to stare sightlessly at the sky and there was no hint of the brilliant green irises, but only two strangely black, giant pupils.

"Sonic…that's not you, is it?" Amy asked again, glancing from the kid to the hedgehog standing next to her.

Sonic nodded grimly. "Oh yeah, it is. Believe it or not."

"But your fur, your quills -"

"There was an accident." Sonic cut her off curtly, turning around to indicate that this topic was closed. "I better Chaos Control to collect Shadow so we can enter the time vortex again. No idea where he ended up but at least I can find him because of his Chaos Emerald signature." And with that, he vanished.

"Huh. You think supersonic hedgehogs regenerate, too?" Rose whispered to the Doctor after this strange display had taken place, but her companion didn't even appear to hear her. Instead, the Time Lord was deep in thought.

If not even Sonic's friends had recognized him at an earlier age, then how come Robotnik had?

A flash brought the Doctor back to the present (or, as the case might have been, past) time. Sonic had materialized again, once more holding the arm of the black hedgehog Shadow. The dark-furred Sapient grumpily yanked his limb away from Sonic.

"You don't have to grab me all the time. I got lost once, I won't get lost again."

"You just got lost because you refused to hold hands with anyone," Sonic retorted, unperturbed, "Now grab hold just like everyone else or we'll have to look for you again."

"Again?" Shadow looked irritated, for the first time now taking in the blue hedgehog's still transparent appearance. "Does that mean you let Robotnik get away? Do you think this is a game of some sort?'

"Yeah, myself, I've always had a weakness for Jeopardy," Sonic said with a pleasant smile, before instantly turning serious again, "What do you think, Shadow? This is the fate of flippin' Mobius in the balance!" The blue hedgehog waved his hands in agitation, yet his black double merely crossed his arms, his tone still condescending enough to put the Niagara Falls to shame.

"Well, then I would have expected you to handle this with more than your usual, non-existent care."

There was a sharp intake of breath from the insulted hero. "Oh, this is rich! Now listen, faker, if you had not been gallivanting off on your solo trip, then maybe we could have-"

"ENOUGH!"

The Doctor's voice bellowed both the ranting hedgehogs into silence. Both blue and black looked up at him like interrupted cats, their faces only inches apart where their noses had been touching.

Privately, the Doctor was wondering whether it was an innate trait of Sapients that they seemed to bicker at every single opportunity or whether he had just ran into the champions of the Nerve-Fraying World Championship by chance. The Time Lord strode towards them, both hedgehogs glancing at him warily like squabbling kittens surprised by a lion (and possibly a witch and a wardrobe, in the Doctor's case…)

"Now listen, both of you lot. I've been to planets where people communicate by permanent flatulence and I had to wear a gas mask. But you know what? At the moment I would even prefer that to you two. You argue while the fate of your world hangs in the balance. There's a race called the Daleks who mainly shout 'Exterminate!' but in comparison to you that's cooperative."

He paused and frowned.

"I mean, cooperative in the way that it allows them to continue to try killing me. So, not very cooperative. Uhm. Listen, forget this. What I meant," he said, bending down to them and creepily somehow managing to regain all of his menace again in seconds, "was that if you don't start acting like there's eight billion lives in the balance, then I am going to go Time War on your sorry plumage." His growl let the hair on everyone's neck raise instinctively.

"I think you meant 'pelt'," Amy whispered timidly from behind, thereby shattering the threatening atmosphere rather thoroughly.

The Doctor blinked. "Yes, actually. Thank you." Turning back to the hedgehog pair, he raised an eyebrow, trying to ignore the twitching of Sonic's mouth and the flatness of Shadow's stare. "Are we clear on this?"

Both Sapients nodded curtly, not saying anything in protest. Tails stared at the Doctor in awe. As they crowded around Sonic and Shadow, ready for their next jump through time and space, the fox kit briefly pulled at the Doctor's arm until he could whisper in his ear when he stood on tip-toe.

"Doctor, I've never shut them up before. You gotta teach me!"

To be continued…

Chapter Text

"Right. Where have we landed this time?" Amy looked around warily. They were at the edge of a small village that looked a lot like the one they had just seen from the distance. The only subtle differences were changes in the vegetation, some of the bushes looking just a tad smaller than before. "And more importantly, when are we?"

"Six years, three months, 45 days, two hours, thirteen minutes and twenty seconds further into the past," the Doctor replied without hesitating for a minute. He was clearly not paying much attention to the hedgehog girl, however, but scanning their surroundings for any familiar box-shapes with increasing despair.

"That's…adding up to more than 16 years' worth of time travel," Sonic said, his voice hoarse. He swallowed. "I'm only seventeen."

"He's trying to kill you as a baby," Rose stated, her lip curling in contempt. "What a coward!"

"No time to waste, then. Where is your house?" The Doctor strode toward the nearest cluster of dwellings briskly. "We have to get there before-"

"Help! No, please! HELP!"

"- before exactly that happens. Again," the Time Lord muttered in a resigned tone under his breath, but of course, everyone had already started running.

xxx

"Aleena! Take Ogilvie and run! I will try to hold him off!" A middle-aged, sturdy brown hedgehog with bushy grey eyebrows was shielding the entrance to a house with only his body and outstretched arms. Behind him, a purple-hued female cowered in fright, cradling a small bundle in her arms away from the door.

"But Jules! I can't-"

"DO IT!"

"What is this, Harry Potter?" Robotnik snapped and shoved the smaller Mobian out of the way, reaching for the woman who cried out in sheer terror as his hand wrenched the bundle out of her arms.

Without his hovercraft, he was standing on the ground now, the dazed hedgehog Jules lying at his feet and the female howling and throwing herself at his legs like a feral only to be kicked away brutally. The bundle had started crying now, containing a small, light-brown hedgehog baby, its spines still white at the tips and soft. Robotnik grinned like a satanic midwife and drew an oddly-shaped gun from his belt to press it against the wailing baby's forehead.

"After all these years, Sonic…"

He paused, lowering the gun for a moment again. Then:

"…well, you die. That's it, really." The fat human stuck the weapon into the bundle once more, smiling.

"Help! No, please! HELP!" Aleena screamed, clawing at the human's legs like a drowning cat.

"Please! What have we ever done to you?! If you want to kill someone, kill me!" the father rasped, struggling for breath. Robotnik, of course, was disinclined to answer, but it was fortunately at this point that the world exploded.

"CHAOS SPEAR!"

Everything flashed bright yellow and something like a lightning strike hit the ground right in front of Robotnik, throwing the human off his feet and sending the baby flying. A black streak zipped past him, catching the bundle expertly before forming into the shape of a midnight hedgehog with blood-red eyes again.

"Avada Kedavra, doctor." The Ultimate Lifeform smirked.

"Shadow?!" Robotnik snarled disbelievingly, not even noticing the rest of the troupe coming up behind him. Only Sonic was frozen up, staring at the quartet before him with eyes wide open.

"Mom…" he whispered. "Dad…"

Just a second ago, they had all thought they were too late as they had rounded the corner…

"I can't imagine whatever possessed me to awaken you! When I correct this time line, I will never make that mistake again," the scientist hissed at the black-furred Sapient, reaching for the wristband that was the portable transmat he carried. Instantly, the Doctor had whisked out his screwdriver.

"Oh no, you don't," he managed past the tongue between his teeth and pointed it straight at the obese human, the shrill whine of the gadget piercing everyone's ears.

A flickering Robotnik gave a small cry as his teleport wristband suddenly exploded, but the Doctor's intervention had been but a second too late; the wristband had still managed one last transmat and the scientist vanished within a wink.

"Let go of my baby!"

None of them had even had time to compute these last events, though, as Shadow already found himself under another assault. The female purple hedgehog had hurled herself at the surprised Ultimate Lifeform, snatching the wailing bundle out of his arms in an instant.

"Who are you?" The male hedgehog, Jules, had stumbled in front of his wife and was now staring at Shadow and the rest of the time-travellers bewildered. "And what do you want with Ogilvie?"

"Nothing, we…wait. Ogilvie?" Shadow shot Sonic a look. The blue hedgehog was currently looking everywhere but at the faces of the others.

"Nothingwrongwiththatnameatall," he mumbled and that was as far as he got before the rest of the Mobians started howling with laughter, the reaction probably born as much from the sudden absurdity of the situation as well as the sheer drunkenness of relief that they had prevented another death. The blue hedgehog buried his face in his hands. "Thanks, dad," he groaned.

"What did you just say?" The brown hedgehog stared at the transparent hero with disbelief, but the Doctor stepped in before the scene could spiral out of proportion.

"Excuse me. Government business here," he said, flashing his leather wallet.

Jules frowned at it. "Says here you're a Captain Jock from Burnforest Institute Three. Never heard of it, but it looks official. What is all this about?"

That I seriously need to get this paper examined, the Doctor thought. Aloud, he said: "We're a special ops unit hunting the dangerous madman that you just encountered. Sorry for your distress, he escaped last week. But nothing to worry about, he won't come back here. Better be glad we were in the nick of time, eh?" he winked and was relieved to see the older hedgehog give a hesitant nod, looking a bit like he'd always suspected all humans were mad and this was just further proof.

"You just go back to raising your kid and forget all about this." The Time Lord straightened up again. "And we're going to leave. Good-bye!"

"Wait. Why is he transparent?" The female Mobian asked, pointing a trembling finger at Sonic. Almost instinctively, everyone looked at the Doctor who cleared his throat.

"Officer Sonic is testing new stealth equipment. As you can see, at the moment it's not working very well. However, if timed with the strobe light correctly, he can successfully hide on a dancefloor. Now if you will excuse us," the Time Lord said with emphasis, jerking his head to indicate for the others to move away. But Sonic didn't take a single step, still staring at his parents now fussing over and trying to calm the baby with an odd expression. The Doctor stopped next to him and raised an eyebrow.

"Well? Aren't you coming?"

"In a moment, Doc. Can you guys just…give me one minute?" Sonic's light voice gave nothing away, but his smile looked strangely forced, as if he had to keep himself under control. The Doctor hesitated.

"Sure," he said at last. "Just…don't say anything that could lead to trouble. You know what I mean."

The hedgehog nodded. "Yeah. I understand. I won't…change anything."

"Although," the Time Lord flashed a grin, "I wouldn't mind if you told your parents to teach their son to treat the odd doctor with more respect. See you soon," he said and went after the others that were already looking back from the distance wondering what was taking them so long.

"What's going on?" Rose asked him as soon as he arrived at their little circle.

"Sonic just wanted to say hi to his old folks," the Doctor shrugged, then gave a wink. "Maybe convince them that naming your offspring 'Ogilvie' is just the best way to make your kid call himself after a screwdriver."

"Or maybe you just called your screwdriver after a hedgehog," Amy retorted and both Rose and Tails giggled. The black hedgehog called Shadow only scoffed and looked away, prompting the blonde human girl to turn to him instead and put her hands on her hips.

"Hey, it's not forbidden to laugh on an adventure, you know?" she asked, earning herself a dead-pan stare from the Sapient that somehow managed to still be condescending even if he was a good three feet smaller than her.

"I'll laugh, human, as soon as somebody makes a joke that has more wit than comparing the naming similarities between that faker of a hedgehog and that gadget of your alien friend - although I dare say they both probably have the same amount of brain cells," he informed her, again not even glancing at her face anymore. Rose's mouth opened in protest but then she felt a small gloved hand grasp her arm and looked down to see the sympathetic eyes of Tails, a somewhat weary smile on the face of the vulpine.

"Don't take it to heart. Please. That's just Shadow, and he's really okay. I mean, he just saved Sonic, right?" he asked, also glancing at the aloof hedgehog who only hmmphed in return. Rose crossed her arms.

"Yeah," she said, "and I actually wanted to tell him that that energy lance or whatever and him catching the little guy was really impressive. Now I'm not so sure anymore."

"He'll appreciate it, I'm positive," the two-tailed fox nodded.

"We think that when he grunts twice it's supposed to mean 'Thank you'," Amy added in a conspiratorial stage whisper to Rose, who immediately snorted. Shadow proceeded to glare at the three of them.

"You want to earn yourself a Chaos Spear too, kid?"

"Oy, no friendly fire around here, okay?" the Doctor interjected, before shooting a side-glance at Shadow and adding, "Or, having seen you, I should probably say no cordial collateral damage. What was that, anyway?"

"Chaos Energy, drawn from the environment and harnessed for an offensive attack with a Chaos Emerald," Shadow explained coolly, tossing the mentioned red gem in the air. "Works similar to Chaos Control - except it's more fun."

"Fun. Right," the Doctor repeated dryly, apparently not impressed by the black hedgehog's idea of entertainment. He had appreciated that no-one of his new friends was running around shooting at things so far, despite the odds they were up against, but maybe that didn't count for much when these talking hedgehogs apparently also had the ability to throw lightning spears at will. The Doctor briefly mused that in British forests, there probably would be a lot less foxes if that was also the case on Earth. Well, at least this Shadow character seemed to be on their side and Sonic's friends trusted him...yet the Time Lord couldn't help but wonder why the black-furred Sapient for some reason always looked at Rose a bit oddly whenever she wasn't glancing in his direction. Especially now after she had just indirectly complimented him...

The Doctor had to take just a little time out to wonder whether he was just getting territorial because of a hedgehog (and had maybe spent a little too much time with Robotnik, if that was the case). Fortunately, Sonic zipped back at this exact point in time and interrupted that particular train of thought.

"Hey, Sonic. You okay?" Tails asked, smiling at the blue hedgehog. His older brother ran a hand through his quills.

"Yeah. Just talked to them for a bit, you know. They're real nice," he smiled and the fox kit nodded knowingly.

"That's good. You ready to leave?"

"Uh-huh." Sonic reached out to his friends to form their circle. "Ready to guide us again, Doc?"

"Yeah. And I notice that you haven't told your parents any of my advice on how to address your passing-by Time Lord properly. Typical."

"Wouldn't have changed a thing, Doc." Sonic shook his head and gave him a small, sad smile, closing his eyes. "We're in the middle of summer of my first year of life. My parents are gonna die in a boating accident in a couple of weeks."

Rose's brown eyes widened for a moment, a painful flash of memories exploding in front of her mind's eye; reminding her of the time when the Doctor had taken her to see her own father - who had died in a car accident when she had only been a baby...and then she had tried to change history and nearly gotten everyone killed.

"Sonic, you haven't..." she breathed, frightened of having a repeat experience of their terrible adventure, but then she was silenced when Sonic opened his eyes again and immediately stopped her worries.

"I haven't told them a thing," he said calmly, his gaze only filled for a second with the hurt that she had also seen at times in the dark eyes of the Doctor, that too familiar heartbreaking knowledge that sometimes, you couldn't save everyone. " I'm not Robotnik," he said. "I'm not changing the past." His voice was steady as he looked at her and the Time Lord, still holding his hands out for their next Chaos Control. "So there's only one thing I really need to tell you."

"Sonic," the Doctor began, but before he could finish, the hedgehog was speaking again and had already given both of them a genuine smile this time, eyes alight with his characteristic mirth, outshining the previous grief. "Rose, Doc...thanks a lot for letting me meet my folks."

And before the Doctor or Rose could even reply, Shadow had already summoned the Chaos again, the vortex whisked them away, and the group was hurtling through time and space to their final destination…

To be continued…

Chapter Text

So you were an orphan?

Yeah. Grew up as a pass-the-parcel kid in my village. The mom of my friend Mighty the Armadillo cared for me, though. Wasn't too bad.

…

I couldn't believe I was actually talking to them. My dad told me he was hoping I'd grow up to be an athlete, you know? That was really one of the coolest things I could have hoped for.

You're welcome. I wish you could have kept them in the first place.

It's okay. If I hadn't been an orphan I'd never have started travelling at twelve and become Tails' big brother. Plus, Amy, Knux and Shadow don't have any family anymore, either.

There seemed to be the equivalent of a mental sigh.

A long time ago, there was a war, the Doctor said, and his voice suddenly sounded far, far away. I lost my family. My planet. And my entire species.

...damn. I'm sorry. I don't think I could even imagine anything of that magnitude...when did that happen?

More than a lifetime ago. I was a...different man when the war had ended. Born from rage and fire and darkness, and I was...alone...until I met Rose.

She helped you?

Yes. She helped me oh so much. The Time Lord seemed to think. As Tails and Amy no doubt helped you.

Heh, yeah. The Doctor thought he could hear a chuckle. Looking out for Tails sort of gave me the first feeling of family I ever had.

There was another pause.

Hey, wanna join the club for awesome guys with no related family but *really* cool friends?

...there is a club like that?

Yeah, just founded it! Here's your invisible membership card.

Right, thanks.

Don't mention it. We've got free Chili Dog Fridays, by the way.

The Doctor's and Sonic's conversation was as swift as it was utterly soundless, their minds connected as they were once more inside the storm of the Time Vortex, the hedgehogs' consciousness protecting them while the Time Lord's mind was their guide.

The ride this time seemed smoother, the temporal tide not rushing up against them, but rather whirling them along like a wild water river, the colours surrounding them slightly different, more shifted toward the blue end of the spectrum…

We're travelling into the future this time, aren't we? Shadow's mind-voice suddenly asked, apparently having listened.

Yes, the Doctor confirmed, at the same time trying to hone in on the singing of his TARDIS growing steadily stronger. She was positively howling for him now, her haunting song telling him of fear and loneliness and how it felt to have a dagger twisting in your heart…

The Time Lord's mind reared with a fury that nearly would have thrown Sonic and Shadow off track.

Woah, there, steady! You're gonna get us killed or wind up on the day the sun explodes, or something. Which time are we heading to? Sonic asked, trying to get the Doctor to concentrate again.

Relative to your present, we will be five years, 2 months, six days, three hours and 2 minutes exactly into the past. You would be twelve. He's still after you as a kid.

Well, that's acceptable, Shadow commented. I would have been more worried about the doctor running around killing grandfathers. Seems like the classic thing.

You don't seem too fazed by this at all, do you? The Doctor managed the mental equivalent of a raised eyebrow.

One-year-old-Sonic puked on me, alien. I've done my being fazed for today.

The space-time fabric parted easily as the group popped into existence again, no-one being surprised any more by the overabundance of meadows they were constantly deposited in. They were once again greeted by sunshine, sloping green hills, giant bouncing pads and –

"Doctor! It's the TARDIS!" Rose called, pointing disbelievingly at the blue box resting serenely next to their arrival spot.

"Of course! The Doctor first sabotaged Robotnik's hovercraft and then his teleportation device, so this time, Eggman had no choice but to land straight where he needed to go! That was genius!" Tails exclaimed. "Were you planning that all along, Doct…uh…" the fox trailed off with a rather strange look on his face as he actually beheld their lanky friend, who was at the moment wrapped around his blue box in bliss. It was safe to say that if the TARDIS had been a woman, people would by now have been shouting at the happy Time Lord to get a room.

"Ahem. Doctor, maybe we should be stopping Robotnik," Amy interjected with a little clearing of the throat, privately feeling very sorry for Rose who apparently was losing a contest for affection from the Doctor to a telephone booth. (The pink hedgehog wasn't going to share that Sonic exhibited pretty much the same behaviour when it came to his running shoes).

"Ah. Yes. Of course." The Doctor straightened his tie, acting as if molesting a police box was what he did every morning before tea. "We can't get inside, anyway. Locked," he said, knocking his knuckles against the door for emphasis. "So yes, we need to find Robotnik, because whatever he's done to her…" he trailed off and turned to them, his eyes now as dark as the night sky between the neverending stars.

"…she's terrified. The TARDIS is screaming in pain."

"Well, all the more reason to get to Robuttnik and fast! I know what I was going through when I was twelve and, believe me, this is so not good," Sonic urged.

The Doctor nodded. "Yes. Let's find him before something happens to either you or the TARDIS, and when we do…" he paused, and when he spoke next, all but Shadow couldn't help but feel a shiver run down their spine.

"…Robotnik should hope that you find him before I will."

xxx

"Okay, but first we actually have to find him," Rose tried to sound reasonable. "Where could he have gone?"

"Uhm. I think he might be in a secret underground lab," Tails said. Faces turned. Amy raised an eye ridge and put her hands on her hip.

"Oh, of course. And what makes you think there's one of them around?" she asked, her tone laced with sarcasm. In reply, Tails pointed to something behind her.

The Doctor cocked his head. He had seen quite a few secret underground labs in his time and this one sure didn't disappoint. Its entrance door was cunningly concealed in a boulder lying next to them, the number pad for entry only discernible if you knew what you were looking for. The small hills around them only stood out as just slightly artificial if you noticed them being shaped as perfect sine curves, which gave him a rough idea how big the place under their feet must be, and if he looked harder, he noticed some of the trees were actually brilliantly disguised ventilation ducts and the feral squirrels in them had cameras for eyes. All in all, this hide-out was the work of a genius.

A genius that at the same time had planted a sign saying 'Secret Underground Lab – Please Knock Before Entering' and a welcome-mat with cheerfully coloured flowers in front of the rock entrance. A little letterbox shaped like a happy cow with the name 'O. Kintobor – Please No Junk Mail, We Care For The Environment' on it rounded the ensemble off.

"Is this some kind of joke?" Shadow growled, pulling out his red gemstone. "Maybe I should just Chaos Blast this entire area."

"Don't," mumbled the Doctor, currently working on the keypad with his screwdriver. Rose by now privately thought that on Mobius the primary response to anything was throwing an Emerald at it.

The key pad sparked and smoked, until finally the door opened with a groan. "Right! It's open, so let's get a move on," the Time Lord commanded, pocketing his gizmo again and stepping through the concealed door into a stairway leading downwards.

"Weird," Amy murmured, following after Rose. "I mean, your old schoolhouse and your parents' home I could understand, but why would Robotnik look for you in some random secret base?" the girl hedgehog gave Sonic a confused look. "Were you going after evil scientists even when you were this young?"

"No. I was…sort of living here," the blue hedgehog answered, looking unhappy. "Together with this Kintobor bloke. Long story."

They descended the metallic stairs downwards into the lab, Sonic uncharacteristically bringing up the rear of the group and looking more uncomfortable by the minute. Just before they had reached the bottom of the stairwell, he finally reached for Tails' and Amy's shoulders.

"Hey," he started, "Robotnik must be desperate by now and it could become more dangerous than our usual stunts. Maybe it would be better if you two waited outside. The Doc, Shadow and me should be enough to deal with Eggman, anyway."

"Sonic, our last adventure involved going up against Iblis, a being who commanded the Flames of Disaster and had burned up the future world. Before that, it was the Ultimate Lifeform trying to blow up the planet with a giant cannon from space. Before that, it was Chaos, the god of destruction, who ruled the ocean and the Chaos Emeralds. You really think that Eggman with a laser blaster would scare us?" Amy asked.

"Also, if I hadn't flown up and caught your younger self at our first stop, then you'd already be dead. I'm useful, Sonic!" Tails protested.

"Yeah, but-" the blue hedgehog still looked uneasy.

"If they want to come along and help us, then let them," the Doctor said, apparently having overheard their exchange. "And I'm talking from experience because the last time I left one of my companions behind, she jump-started the TARDIS with a big yellow truck, absorbed the Time Vortex to travel to the end of the 51st century and nearly died in the process all because she didn't want to leave me. For some reason your sidekicks will never actually let you play the hero," he whispered the last sentence to Sonic with a wink, while Amy shot Rose a questioning glance, the human girl blushing.

The Doctor nodded. "Well, that's settled, then. Off we go." He opened the door at the bottom of the stairs with a flourish and they stepped out into a crisscross of futuristic laboratory and the permanent humanitarian aid area that qualified as a bachelor living room. There were strewn socks and gloves atop button-riddled consoles with giant screens. There were empty take-away boxes next to glass cylinders crackling with golden energy. There was even a little feral mouse that squeaked when it beheld them and dropped the RAM bar it had been nibbling on to scurry away in panic.

For some reason, there was also some high-tech treadmill in the middle of the room and a giant pile of partially burnt, worn-out sneakers.

They weren't quite done admiring the sci-fi garbage dump when they could hear the voices from the other side of another door.

"Who – who are you?!" A scared voice of a middle-aged man questioned, obviously trying to muster up some defiance but failing.

"Out of my way. I just want the hedgehog." This was definitely Robotnik.

"No, please, maybe we can talk about this-" The same voice tried to argue again, but was cut off.

"Jus' lemme at 'im, Kintobor, an' I'm gonna kick the ever-lovin'-"

"Sonic! Stay behind me!" The first voice belonging to Kintobor cried, but it wouldn't have been necessary. None of the time-travellers had failed to recognize the distinct tone of the cocky blue hedgehog, barely into the breaking of his voice or no.

"Right. This ends now," the Doctor stated, striding over to the closed door and grabbing for the handle. Rose shot a quick look at Sonic, and was concerned to see her speedy friend suddenly standing with his fists clenched and staring at the floor as if something was troubling him very deeply.

"Sonic? Is everything-?"

The Doctor yanked the door open, revealing their hunted man pointing a gun at two frightened people, one of them now definitely the young Sonic. He had blue fur and was wearing his trademark red sneakers with a white stripe – the only things missing were a couple of inches in height and the toned muscles of an acrobat his older self had already acquired, but there was no way denying the face and the features, even if the younger one's irises were still pitch-black instead of iridescent emerald green. In front of him, shielding the young hedgehog and holding him back stood a human – a lanky scientist, with a bright orange moustache and almost clown-like hair of the same colour sprouting off the two sides of his head, while sporting two small dark round glasses and a set of large front teeth – and other than the white lab coat he wore almost the same clothes as Robotnik.

"May I introduce you?" Sonic stepped up next to the surprised Doctor in the doorway, and his expression had turned grim. He gestured to the younger man trying to protect the young Sonic.

"This is Ovi Kintobor, my long-gone friend. Though you all would probably know him by the name he adopted later," - his gaze shifted and came to rest on the obese evil scientist who right now snarled in frustration that he had been found yet again - "as Ivo Robotnik. And I gotta warn you, Eggman, if you shoot your younger self while trying to kill me, you better be prepared for one whole boatload of paradoxes."

"What?" asked the Doctor.

"What?!" asked Tails.

"What?" asked Amy.

"Hey! You're stealing his lines!" hissed Rose.

To be continued…

Chapter Text

"That- that's him?" Rose asked disbelievingly, pointing at the pair of both Robotnik and Kintobor. "The same guy?"

"Impossible!" Tails cried. "That would mean Sonic and Robotnik would have-"

"Look, I meant to explain it to you guys when you were older, but-" Sonic tried, but didn't get very far.

"Who are you people?" Kintobor stared at the general assembly of madmen aghast, the young Sonic behind him still trying to fight his way out.

"Look, it don't matter who they are, I'm still gonna throw'em out on their stinkin'-!"

"You are too late, Sonic! I am going to kill your younger self now, and not even I will be able to stop me!" Ivo Robotnik shouted, moving towards the pair from the past.

"ROBOTNIK!" The Doctor hollered over the general noise breaking out, trying to attract the moustache's attention. "This is important, whatever you do, don't touch your younger self or-!"

Robotnik shoved Kintobor rudely out of the way to point his blaster at twelve-year-old Sonic. And at the same time, the air suddenly parted with a brilliantly red flash, a pterodactyl-like giant monster appearing to screech and devour young Sonic and Kintobor in just one bite.

"Oh, brilliant!" snapped the Doctor.

xxx

"The sofa! Push the sofa against the door!" the Doctor commanded.

"But that won't keep them out for long!" Amy cried, pointing towards the wooden door that was being abused by scratches and ramming attacks from the other side.

"Oh, believe me, sofas can work wonders against aliens. If nothing else, you can hide behind them," the Doctor assured her absent-mindedly, fiddling with the consoles against the walls.

The rest of the time-travellers were standing around the room, a transparent Sonic shouting at an equally transparent Robotnik who had just had his laser blaster confiscated and Tails staring petrified at the surveillance screens showing the rest of the laboratory complex where the pterodactyl-like monsters were now running rampant and screeching for more prey. The only ones actually doing what the Doctor had asked were Rose and the black hedgehog Shadow, pushing the demanded furniture against the door to at least keep this room safe.

"That blue hedgehog and imminent insanity. Why, oh why do these two always have to go together?" Shadow grumbled as he gave the sofa a final shove, his small frame surprisingly hiding an enormous amount of strength.

"Wh-what are these things?" Tails stammered, pointing at the creatures on the screens that had appeared out of nowhere. They were covered in brown scales and had a slim body, ending in a long, thorny tail. Any legs were missing, but they sprouted two pairs of arms reminiscent of a praying mantis, as well as a couple of jagged, leathery, reptilian wings with elongated bones poking from the membranes. Their heads were triangular in shape with a pointy beak, two glowing red eyes glaring from their sunken depths, and a pair of horn-like protrusions jutting out to the sides. But the feature that really attracted your attention was the giant pair of gaping jaws each of them had embedded squarely in the chest.

"Reapers," said the Doctor. "They are attracted to temporal paradoxes that damage the time line. Ever since Robotnik went back in time to rid himself of the reason to ever go back in the first place, he opened a wound in time. These things are like bacteria, swarming around the wound, trying to sterilize it by consuming everything inside. Namely, us. And when Robotnik right now created another paradox by touching his younger self, he basically held up a great big sign for them to materialize right here. Now they will continue to hunt until we get this fixed."

"You hear that? This is all your fault!" Sonic scathed at this point, fuming in anger at the scientist.

"Silence, rodent, or I-!"

"Or what, Egghead? You gonna kill me? Oh wait, you already did! You lunatic turned us both transparent!"

"This was an unpredicted side-effect, Sonic, and I couldn't possible have foreseen-"

"You were meddling with TIME! Of course things were gonna go pear-shaped! AND you killed my friend Kintobor! AGAIN!"

"Just to remind you, my little hedgehog, back then it was you who thankfully ended the existence of my pitiful earlier-" Robotnik drawled, but a transparent gloved fist hitting a like-wise see-through giant belly ended his statement prematurely.

"Don't you dare mention it!"

"Oomph! You insolent, spiky pest-!"

"Say what, blubberbutt?"

"Imbecile needlemouse!"

"Bolts-for-brains!"

"Low-life -!"

"WILL YOU SHUT UP!" the rest of the trapped adventurers roared at this point, thankfully finally silencing the hedgehog and evil scientist. Sonic reluctantly released the ghost-like nose he'd been twisting and a grumbling Robotnik stopped pulling at the transparent blue ears, both combatants glaring at each other.

Then:

"He started it!"

"No, you!"

"I, I – nonono, I can't believe this," muttered the Doctor at this, regarding the arguing pair as one might eye a tap-dancing troupe atop a minefield, "Are, are you both aware that you're technically dead?" he asked, his voice high-pitched and slightly hysterical.

"What?!" Robotnik snapped. "Don't be daft, man, I'm still alive. This is nothing but a minor setback."

"A minor setback? The reaper killed your earlier self! Not to mention, killed Sonic. You're both nothing but illogical fluctuating quantum possibilities now, you went and got your younger self absorbed, devoured by the reapers before you were even old enough to steal my TARDIS and summon the reapers in the first place. Time at the moment is not a wibbly-wobbly ball any more, it's a lump of bloody Swiss cheese! And now you argue while the time line of this planet is about to collapse!" He paused in his high-speed babble to give the rest of the Sapients a bewildered stare. "Are they always like this?"

"Been there, done that, bought the earplugs, alien," Shadow dead-panned. "What can we do to get out of this?"

"I need to get inside the TARDIS first before we have any chance of repairing the damage to the time vortex," the Doctor muttered through gritted teeth. He turned to Robotnik and looking at the Time Lord's ancient dark eyes, the human realized that facing all of the combined reapers might have been a smarter idea than to antagonize this time-traveller from Gallifrey. It was almost as if there seemed to be echoes about the Time Lord when he stared at you like this, whispers and half-heard words across time and from planets that were no more, and your mind shivered and told you tales of fire and blood in a war long past and about a storm raging at the heart of the universe...

"The key to my ship. Now," the Doctor said tonelessly, and held out his hand. Robotnik reached into his red jacket and handed the silver pendant over without resistance. The Time Lord's fingers closed over it with a sense of determination, the moment gone as quickly as it had come.

"When we saw her out there, her interior dimensions were still inside," he mumbled, pulling out his sonic screwdriver and then proceeded to hold both items against each other. One of the reapers screeched again and hurled itself against the door with a sickening crack, but he didn't seem to notice it. "Now, with any luck I can summon her right back to us…"

The screwdriver began to hum and the TARDIS key vibrated with its resonance, glowing gold. For the first time since their arrival, the Doctor began to show just the tiniest of smiles and Rose already tried to discern any blue box-shapes fading into existence...just before the Time Lord suddenly gasped in pain and stumbled backwards, the connection obviously broken.

"Ahh – what…?!"

"Doctor!" Rose cried, grabbing out to catch him and Sonic's and Shadow's gazes immediately whipped toward Robotnik, but the fat scientist hadn't done anything.

"Are-are you okay?" Amy questioned, jade eyes concerned. The Doctor meanwhile had got back his footing and was only holding his head with one hand. "Yeah, I'm fine…but the TARDIS isn't." He raised his gaze again and when he spoke to Robotnik next, it was through gritted teeth, his voice as low as it was serious.

"What have you done to her?"

"I…" Robotnik tried to stumble backwards from the suddenly advancing Doctor, but there was no way out of the room. His bulk slammed into the wall.

"You are not even a Time Lord. You should never have been able to fly her. WHAT have you done to her!" the time-traveller barked, barely restraining his fury now, but at that very second, the wooden door of their saferoom finally succumbed to the attack and two of the reapers burst inside, flailing their wings with a battle screech.

"Not again," breathed the Doctor, eyes wide. "Rose, get behind me. If there's anyone they want it's m-"

"CHAOS SPEAR!"

The creatures didn't even have time to scream before they exploded. Shadow raised an eye ridge at the Doctor.

The Doctor opened his mouth. The Doctor closed his mouth. Then he took a breath and gave a tiny nod. "Or that. Yeah."

"Well, if this TARDIS can't come to us, we have to go out there again. It's only a matter of time before their friends arrive here, anyway!" Amy cried, pointing at the free doorway. The Time Lord seemed to consider this option. Then he gave Sonic a sideways look.

"You up for running?"

The blue hedgehog grinned from ear to ear. "Always."

Only two seconds later, the entire troupe was already dashing madly back to the stairs that led outside, only Tails and Rose privately wondering whether their respective friends and heroes really needed someone else to encourage them of all things.

"Right." The Doctor waited until the last of them had spilled out onto the meadow in front of the rock entrance where the TARDIS awaited them, then immediately slammed the door shut to hopefully keep the rest of the reapers contained in the laboratory. Rose already tugged at his sleeve.

"Doctor…"

"One moment, Rose, I-"

"There's a tear in the sky," Tails mused, his tone oddly light.

The Time Lord looked up, but that didn't change much of what Tails had said. Right across the stormy grey clouds cut a giant black rip with swirling vortexes and storms of fire inside. Everyone of their little group, including Robotnik was staring at it with their eyes wide open.

"Yeah," the Doctor nodded, squinting a little. "This planet's time line is about to go pop if we don't do anything about it. This rift will swallow it whole."

"It looks like the end of days…" Amy whimpered, grabbing Sonic's hand in fright. For once, the blue hedgehog didn't resist. Rose suddenly shrieked.

"Oh my god, look! Mobius is already breaking apart!" She pointed at a giant piece of land in the sky, floating seemingly toward the rift.

Sonic frowned. "Err, no. That's actually supposed to be there. Angel Island, that one, wanders around a bit. Twelve-year old Knux is probably having a heart attack up there with that rift-thing."

"I hope the reapers didn't get him," Tails muttered fearfully, but the Doctor interrupted them, finally having inserted the TARDIS key into its lock.

"Well, if we don't get inside, they're gonna get us. So come in, even you," he added toward Robotnik with a scowl. The human scientist however, suddenly seemed rather reluctant.

"Err, about that ship of yours…"

The Doctor opened the doors, stepped inside and then froze on the spot.

"What?"

"Doctor?" Rose came up after him, but also stopped and stared as soon as she'd entered.

Tails and Amy hesitantly followed, with Sonic, Shadow and Robotnik bringing up the rear, all of them except Sonic and Robotnik staring in wonder. The Doctor meanwhile had dashed over to the console, now frantically pushing non-reactive buttons and levers that suddenly looked so, so unfamiliar.

"This is impossible," he muttered, "He didn't recalibrate it, no human could, but-"

"What happened to her?" Rose stared at her suddenly strange surroundings, Robotnik noticeably still slouching in the door as if he really didn't want to be seen right now.

But then again, with the golden shining coral reef walls and the bluish light from the column gone and everything replaced by cold, silver metal plates and computers screens, bathed in glaring neon light the Doctor was too busy staring at this mechanized nightmare of his ship than to actually pay any attention to the obese human.

"She's dying!" he shouted. "What-? How…?!"

The assorted junkyard that usually made up the console boards was gone, replaced by ordinary keyboards and switches arranged in straight rows. The tubes that had sometimes been hanging around and always been softly pulsating had disappeared, in their place now orderly cables. And the rhythm of the column, the pumping of the heart of the TARDIS was barely audible now.

"I think Eggman's gone and roboticized your ship," Sonic said quietly. "Sorry."

"Wow!" Tails said, not really having listened at all. "It's bigger on the inside!"

To be continued...

Chapter Text

"Converted…she's been converted, it's like a Cyberman – no, it's worse, the process is still not stopping…" The Doctor was darting around the circular console muttering to himself at high-speed, poking his screwdriver into crevices and slots, sweat on his brow while he wouldn't even acknowledge the rest of the adventurers.

"Doctor, what's going on?" Rose called out to him, but the Time Lord didn't hear her. "What's 'roboticized' mean?!"

"Robotnik invented the process to turn living Mobians into mindless machine slaves, I told you, remember?" Sonic said quietly. "But I'd never have thought it was possible to do it to a space ship…"

"A TARDIS is an organic creature, hedgehog," Robotnik growled. "To be able to fly it, I needed to make it a machine a human could handle. And more specifically, now the TARDIS is programmed to obey only me. So much more efficient, so much more beautiful…I improved it," he purred.

"You killed her, you…stupid ape!" The Doctor snarled, using one of his favourite insults for the first time ever since he had regenerated. "The Time Vortex, the heart of the TARDIS cannot be contained by a...machine,"he spat the last word out like it was poison. "A TARDIS needs to be alive! And now she's dying because of you and if I can't reverse this process we will be stuck here until the reapers and the rift have consumed everything! Is that your improvement?!"

Robotnik merely scowled at him. "I never said this thing would last for long in this state, but if I hadn't had to continue travelling because you wouldn't leave me alone-"

"Buttnik. Shut it," Sonic snapped, only slightly nervous because he somehow felt he was now flickering out of existence for longer times than he was there. "We need to get this ship de-roboticized and fast. Tails, can you do that?"

"I, I don't know," the fox stuttered, "The last time I helped de-roboticize somebody it was a Mobian and not a space ship and it was ages ago…"

"You've built a…de-roboticizer before?" The Doctor asked, the young fox now doubly insecure now that all gazes were on him, especially the one of the brilliant Time Lord.

"Err, in part, I mean, Sonic was roboticized once, I had to, uh…" the kit was right now busy wrenching both of his namesakes in his hands as he tried to speak. The small part of Rose that wasn't busy worrying about being consumed by a giant rift in the near future wanted very much to squeal and hug him at this point.

"But, I don't know anything about TARDISes, I-"

"Weeell, I think I can take care of that part," the Doctor gave the small fox an appreciative glance. "And besides, since we have the creator of this atrocity here he should be able to help us with the rest," he added, a none-too-friendly scowl directed at Robotnik at that part. The human scientist glared at them.

"No. If I can't have Mobius, none shall have it. Let the rift swallow it all."

"What?! I know you're no Samaritan, Buttnik, but this is your own flippin' life hanging in the balance, so you better get out there right now-"

"We don't have the time to argue," the Doctor interrupted Sonic, already looking stressed, but focused again. "As far as that rift was open already, we have twenty, thirty minutes tops. Whatever we need to assemble a de-roboticizer, we have to get it from the laboratory and build it before that time is up."

"Go back down there?" Amy asked, looking back the way they'd come from reaper-infested territory aghast. "But there's…those things…"

"And we can handle them, Amy. Don't worry," Sonic reassured her. "You two pixel-brains know what you need from the lab?" he asked with a nod toward the Doctor and Tails, the Time Lord only ever so slightly raising an eye brow at the nickname. He frowned.

"Not exactly, no. If I knew more about this roboticizing process, then I-"

"Did Kintobor have a roboticizer we could simply re-wire?" Tails asked at that point, making Sonic look around. "You must know," the fox said and his voice was suddenly quivering a little, "You guys lived together and were best of friends, weren't you?" He still tried to keep it a light tone, but none could fail to hear the ever so subtle accusation lingering beneath those words.

Sonic gave him a pained look. "Tails. Please."

"Sure, Sonic. Or Olgilvie. You didn't even tell me your real name, so why tell me you shared rooms with the man responsible for killing my parents?"

From the background, Robotnik laughed. "Oh, what a revelation! You mean you haven't even told him of our shared past, Sonic? Should I get out the photo albums?"

"Robotnik. One more word and I'm going to snap," the hero of Mobius' voice trembled, both his fists clenched as he fought to keep his anger under control.

"But why, Sonic…you wouldn't hurt your old friend, would you?" the moustachioed man asked, his tone as sweet as a candy cone laced with cyanide.

Sonic lunged as quick as lightning.

"NO!" shouted the Doctor, but even a Time Lord had nothing on the reflexes of the fastest thing alive. Robotnik gasped; apparently he hadn't been expecting an actual physical attack from the hedgehog.

And it was only inches before the blue whirl of deadly spines could impact with the face of the human that Sonic was knocked out of the air by a black buzz saw, the Ultimate Lifeform the only one who had been able to react in time. Both hedgehogs bounced off each other and uncurled to land on their feet in mirroring battle stances.

"Keep out of this, Shadow. This is none of your business," snarled Sonic, trying to find a way around his black look-alike to get at Robotnik. Shadow did not give him a chance.

"This planet my sister Maria wanted me to save is going to go bust because you're wasting time with your childish antics. This makes it my business," he scathed. "You disappointed the fox kid, big deal. You want to disappoint him again by letting him die because you couldn't focus on what was important at the time?"

"He's right, Sonic," Tails said, his tone oddly level and detached. "The Doctor and I have to build a de-roboticizer now. This is what matters. I wouldn't want my real family to have died for nothing."

The blue hedgehog stared at his younger brother for one moment wordlessly, in his eyes a world of hurt. Then he turned away, ears drooping and spoke without looking at them.

"Right. To answer your question, yes: Kintobor had built a roboticizer. For medical reasons, because he wanted to be able to stabilize patients in mortal danger, I should probably add, but it doesn't change anything for you, does it?"

"Sonic…" Amy started, reaching out to the blue hedgehog. "I don't really understand what has been going on between you and Robotnik but I know you'd never intentionally hurt anyone. I believe in you."

Sonic looked up. "Thanks, Amy," he said and sounded genuine. That Tails still refused to look at them couldn't hinder him from giving at least a small smile. "That's all I need. Let's get going to find that roboticizer and the parts you need to re-wire it, right?"

Rassilon, thanks, the Doctor thought. He wasn't entirely sure whether it was the truth, but it did seem to him as if he usually not only always ran into some time-travel/ evil-alien –adventure, but that it also was always accompanied by another episode of Coronation Street emotional drama. At this point he should probably be thankful that Robotnik hadn't turned out to be Sonic's abandoned half-brother, or something.

"Okay. We need to go back in the laboratory and I think we'll be quickest if we split up," Sonic said. "Shadow, take Tails with you and protect him while he looks for the missing parts to reverse a roboticizer. I'll go with the Doctor to find the actual machine and we'll meet back here, okay?"

"Right," Shadow nodded, summoning another crackling ball of Chaos fire in his hands. "But you can't handle Chaos Spears as well as me. Want some other backup?" he asked, pulling his trademark semi-automatic from his quills to offer it to the blue hedgehog.

Sonic shook his head. "No, thanks. Told you before, wouldn't be caught dead with one of these things. You want it, Doc?"

"Nope. Same goes for me, actually. Try shooting at everything opposing you and eventually you'll be the last living creature in the universe," the Doctor shook his head, ignoring Shadow, who shrugged and let the gun vanish again. "Ready, everyone?"

"Wait, what about me?" Amy asked. "I want to help, too."

"You need to stay here in the TARDIS and make sure that Robotnik doesn't do anything stupid. I know you're probably not happy, but somebody has to do it," Sonic said, shrugging apologetically.

"You can't leave her here all alone!" Rose protested. "I mean, what is she supposed to do if this guy, I dunno, attacks her?"

At this, Sonic gave a weak smile. "Believe me, he wouldn't be stupid enough to try."

"But-!" Rose started again, but fell silent as she actually beheld Amy. For some reason, the pink girl was suddenly holding a giant red mallet that was almost as tall as herself and she wielded it with the same ease as if it had been an inflatable toy.

"…oh." Rose managed.

"It's my piko-piko hammer!" Amy explained cheerfully and the human girl decided that maybe all the cartoons showing characters pulling elephants and pianos from behind their back were onto something.

"What will you do, Rose?" the pink hedgehog asked next, twirling her weapon with a worrying mixture of skill and unconcern.

"I'll…go with the Doctor. I always do," she replied, giving the Time Lord a warm smile. Sonic nodded. "Right. Teams are decided, so let's do it to it!" He yanked the door of the TARDIS open.

The Doctor nodded. "Allôns-y!"

"Let's juice and jam!"

"Geronimo!"

Both blue-furred/blue-suited heroes had once again taken off, leaving two slightly disturbed companions looking at each other.

"I'd say their catchphrases are equally corny," Amy finally managed. Rose nodded.

"Yeah. Maybe both of them are secretly hoping one day their enemies will simply cringe to death."

Both girls shared another giggle before the blonde finally turned to leave, Shadow and Tails already gone. "Sorry, but I have to go catch up with them now, or else I'll never find them again. If we leave them alone together they'll probably have too much fun to save the planet, you know?"

"Sure!" Amy waved her goodbye. "Watch out for them reaper things!"

The human girl departed the TARDIS running and Amy finally turned around to the only other passenger onboard that had not yet departed.

"Well, Eggman…" she cooed, raising her hammer while she smiled her most innocent of smiles. "So you tried to hurt my Sonikku today?"

xxx

The Doctor and Sonic meanwhile had dashed down the stairs into the lab again, entering the main room they had been in before. So far, no reapers were to be seen but the hedgehog and Time Lord were too experienced to relax.

"Do you know where we're going?" the Doctor asked as the hedgehog's large ears were twitching, probably trying to pick up any sounds of the monsters before running on.

"Sort of. I remember Kintobor's roboticizer being in the level below us," the Mobian replied, opening a door that led down further into another room, this one containing yet a different large machine, both more complex and less finished-looking than the ones above. It consisted mainly of three platforms with tall glass tubes, their tops connected with tubes and wires to something that could have been a punchcard computer from the outside but sported also already a screen and a console board on the front. It was clear they were never going to be able to carry it.

"Here it is," Sonic said, briefly looking around to make sure there weren't any reapers yet in here. "As far as I understood it when he explained it to me, the important part is the lens embedded in the ceiling of those large glass cylinders. I guess we can't take the entire thing upstairs, but I think, if we take that and some other key parts out, Tails should be able to work with it. Damn, I wish I'd listened somewhat closer when Kintobor was rambling again…"

"You…were good friends with him, weren't you?" the Doctor asked, even if the hedgehog's last remark had only been mumbled and the perceptive eye of the Gallifreyan could almost see Sonic cringe.

"Yes. I was friends with the human who later almost destroyed Mobius and is responsible for the deaths of uncountable people," the hedgehog replied in what was almost a snap, sounding bitter. "Not such a great hero like Ta- everybody thinks, am I?" he turned around. "I'm gonna guard the door. You take your screwdriver thing and see you cut out the important parts that we can actually carry upstairs."

The Time Lord was silent for a moment but then nodded and got to work, his mind just for a second in another world at another point in time – a world with two suns, and a bright orange sky and there were two boys running through the purple grass and laughing…

"I had a friend, once, too," the Doctor said, his eyes not looking at Sonic while he briefly sonicked the screen of the console, the thing switching on and his brain taking in the gigabytes of information and blueprints flickering across it in seconds. "On Gallifrey. We were both special in our ways – also both renegades, later. And of course," he added with a purse of the lips, "both brilliant."

"Not much for modesty, are ya?" Sonic interjected at this point, outwardly not sounding very interested in the seemingly unrelated story, but one blue ear turned toward the Time Lord still betrayed him. Hands now buried in wires after having taken a panel off, the Doctor continued.

"No. But later on, there came the war. Later on, there came the madness and the dark."

Despite their own tense situation Sonic had to swallow at the undisguised pain suddenly beneath the Doctor's words. Still looking out into the corridor, waiting for any attack, the hero of Mobius finally licked his lips. So his friend had descended into insanity…

"That friend of yours, Doctor…what what was his name?"

"We both chose new names over our childhood ones," the Time Lord replied. "You've probably guessed that I wasn't always called the Doctor."

Sonic shrugged. "Hey, I had a mum who named me Ogilvie. I'm the last one to assume anything."

A brief smile flitted over the Gallifreyan's face. "Our reasons for the change were a bit different from yours. We were both renegades from our society, you know? I chose my new name because I wanted to help people…but he…" the Doctor paused. "He called himself the Master."

And then they were interrupted, because a reaper burst through the opposite door, screeching high enough to let glass shatter.

To be continued...

Chapter Text

"Doctor!" Rose called, jogging through the corridors they had come from until she came to a point where they branched off into different directions. Shrugging, she opted for the one on the right instead of the staircase leading downstairs, not particularly fond of the idea of being trapped even deeper in the base. She opened the next door she came to, and entered another workshop – containing Shadow and Tails.

"Rose?" the fox kit looked up from the tool box he was sifting through. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm looking for the Doc-"

"GET DOWN!" Shadow suddenly shouted and Rose, reflexes honed by endless adventures containing homicidal pepperpots, silver storm-trooper rip-offs, and exploding everything, was quick to obey. She threw herself onto the floor, just as another one of the black hedgehog's bright energy lances shot crackling over her head, ending the existence of another reaper coming up behind her with a bird-like scream.

"Close the door," Shadow instructed a bit out of breath. "There will be others."

The blonde girl nodded, not wishing to have a repeat of the trapped-in-a-church scenario back when the Doctor still had had a penchant for leather.

"Where has he gone?" she asked as soon as the door was shut, turning back to the two Mobians.

"Downstairs, I think. I wouldn't advise going looking for him right now," the red-eyed hedgehog replied, although he wasn't looking at her. "You should have stayed in the space ship," he said and it sounded disapproving.

"Oy, don't give me that! I've been in worse situations than this, you know?" Rose shot back, her annoyance with the condescension of the dark look-a-like of the much friendlier Sonic rising. "And besides, I know more about this than you!" she stated confidently, making a point of looking down her nose at the shorter Sapient.

Shadow for a moment seemed to be almost uncomfortable with her staring at him, a rare occurrence even if Rose did not know it. The black hedgehog took a moment to fumble with his golden wrist band.

"…indeed. Well, if that is the case, why don't you tell me more about how to defeat them while the kit is busy?" he finally managed, again pulling out his gun and fingering it briefly. "I'm starting to run out of Chaos Energy. That rift must be sucking it up."

"…ah." Rose suddenly looked a bit sheepish. "Well, uh, the most the Doctor ever managed was to make one disappear by letting himself and his ship get eaten. Er," she said, probably realizing herself that this wasn't very helpful. "But you can escape them by hiding in old buildings," she pointed out.

"Old buildings." Shadow raised an eye ridge. "Like what?"

"Well, there's churches-"

"See any churches in this underground lab?"

"Oh come on, at least I'm trying!" she retorted, getting slightly exasperated here. Then she paused, as she suddenly saw a bit of a gleam in the other's eye.

"…wait. Are you winding me up?"

xxx

"Woah, shit!" Sonic hissed, his younger self's influence obviously making itself known in his language. "Doctor! Hide while I finish it off, they need you more than me at this point!"

"Don't get too close!" the Time Lord shouted, eyes wide and sweat on his brow as adrenaline glands were firing in overdrive for what felt like the twentieth time in as many minutes. "If they catch you in this state, you'll be erased from the Time Line forever!"

"No worries!" For the first time since entering the laboratory, Sonic actually flashed a genuine grin again. "I'm going to teach them what 'Sonic Wind' really means…!"

The monster at this point rushed forward to where the hedgehog stood but of course, Sonic was long gone by the time its beak touched his previously occupied spot. The Doctor's eye brows rose a little as the hero of Mobius then seemed to generate an army of clones – and it took him a moment to realize that Sonic was now actually creating after-images of himself by modulating his speed, slowing down, then accelerating again at record rates. The reaper, in turn, grew confused, snapping and pecking at the phantom images, neither noticing that the Time Lord as the much older creature in the room would have been an easier as well as more rewarding prey, nor realizing what the elusive hedgehog was actually doing as he continued to dodge the attacks. The Doctor first started to guess what was going on as he could suddenly feel a wind picking up…

…wait a moment. A wind in an enclosed room?!

Brown eyes grew slightly wider as he focused on his blue-furred friend again – and found that he couldn't. What had previously been a three feet high, humanoid spiky form was no longer recognizable as anything. The hero of Mobius had accelerated to become a small tornado, a whirlwind about six foot in diameter, howling tightly compressed on one spot. The last of the after-images was just starting to disappear, and the reaper's head snapped around to at last search for the original…

"Sonic Wind!"

With one last spin, the hedgehog released the minor cyclone he had conjured, and the wind funnel rushed toward the monster – hitting it square in the chest and whirling it against the wall of the corridor with a sickening crack where it lay motionless. Sonic dropped to the floor, dusting off his hands.

"There you go. I don't use guns, but when it comes to speed, I'm sure as hell a lot more inventive on how to use it than that striped faker."

The Doctor nodded, emerging from his observation place behind the console with an expression of approval.

"Not bad. Certainly beats my strategy for dealing with them, mind you."

Sonic gave a small grin, as susceptible to compliments as he had been when they very first met. "Why thanks, Doc. How far along are you with the roboticizer?"

"I think I'm almost done. Just need to disconnect a few more parts," the Time Lord replied, an off-hand gesture briefly indicating the techno-jumble he had already excavated from the machine. The components all more or less could have been smashed kitchen utensils for all Sonic could see in them but he correctly guessed that the Doctor and Tails probably had strange and complicated names for them and were able to make them do even stranger and more complicated things.

"Sure. Go ahead, I'll see to it that no more siblings of this guy come in here," the blue hedgehog said, again positioning himself within the door frame. There were another few moments of tense silence with the Doctor tinkering and disconnecting cables in the background, before Sonic finally spoke again, if only to distract himself from the feeling of time running out.

"…so you had a friend called 'The Master'? Seems like another one of those Names To Run Away From Really Fast, if you ask me."

"Never stopped running," the Doctor replied lightly, yanking another component from the insides and quickly sonicking it to stop the sparks, before he continued with a more sombre tone. "He's gone along with the rest of them, now, though."

There was a pause.

"Maybe it's better this way."

The sounds of parts being tossed aside echoed forlornly through the dimly-lit chamber as none of the time travellers said anything for a moment.

"But you weren't responsible for him…turning dark, were you?" Sonic asked, the hedgehog's voice uncharacteristically quiet now.

The Doctor shook his head. "No. He did that by himself."

"Thought so. You wouldn't be much of an intergalactic hero either if you were the cause of the threat to the universe in the first place, huh?" the hedgehog muttered, giving a slight kick against the door frame.

The Doctor briefly paused in his work to look up.

"Have you ever thought of killing Robotnik?"

The hedgehog didn't turn around. "…yeah. But I never did."

"Even though it might have saved lives in the future?" the Time Lord probed further, and finally, emerald eyes met his.

"Maybe. But I never could. Or would."

"The hedgehog who never would," the Doctor repeated, and Sonic again felt like there was some sort of joke that he didn't quite get, but there was something more in that voice, something like...appreciation...?

"Because he was your friend, once?" the Doctor asked.

"No. Because I don't kill."

"You didn't warn your parents not to go boating, though. You let them die," the time-traveller replied, eyes as old as centuries boring into Sonic's now and the younger hedgehog had to force himself to remain steady to not take a step backwards. The emerald gaze narrowed.

"Yeah, I did. Even if I made Kintobor into Robotnik, it was an accident and before he changed he also gave me the power I have today. If I wasn't around and Kintobor had turned into Robotnik still," Sonic swallowed, but his stare did not waver, "Mobius could already be his."

"Perhaps." The Doctor shrugged. "Or perhaps Kintobor would be a kindly scientist and everybody would live in peace."

The Doctor had the sudden impression of emerald flames dancing behind those otherwise kind eyes and had to remind himself he was treading a dangerous path.

"Where are you going with this, Doc?" Sonic asked, anger and hurt at the perceived betrayal by his older friend brimming beneath his words now. "I just tried to do what was right."

"But do you never wonder what could have been?" the Time Lord questioned. "With those Emeralds, you have time-travel at your disposal. Do you never want to go back and change things? Lots of people would."

"They might. I don't," Sonic replied firmly, wary now, and curiously somehow briefly looking older than his seventeen years would suggest. "I never look back. I never wonder what if."

"Oh. And why?" The Doctor asked, tone still with a predatory edge to it. Sonic's gaze never wavered.

"Because that's the only way I can carry on to protect my world."

There was a pause. Finally, the Time Lord was the first to drop his gaze and a quick smile flitted across his face, dissolving a bit of the tension in the air.

"Sonic?"

"Yeah?"

"I think Mobius has the best hero and timeline it could wish for." The Doctor smiled. "Wanna help me carry the roboticizer upstairs?"

xxx

Tails was still working his way frantically through the technical mess in Kintobor's/Robotnik's laboratory, trying to remember which parts he had used two years ago when he had last fixed up a roboticizer to work in reverse. But still, even with the mortal danger they were currently all facing, he couldn't help but notice what might have counted as one of the rarest things he'd ever seen in his nine-year-old life. The Ultimate Lifeform had just nearly smiled.

"Perhaps," said Shadow at this point, trying to look away from Rose and crossing his arms again, as if he now appeared almost embarrassed he had engaged in some teasing with her. For her part, the blonde girl at this point was more than confused. The black hedgehog had acted unfriendly the entire time he had been on their team, so what was up with that sudden change of pace now? A faint roaring and screeching from the corridors let her flinch again; outside were the reapers. Maybe trying to push through to the Doctor would not be such a smart idea now. So should she stay with the dark hedgehog and the fox...?

"So, what was that you said earlier? This...Doctor of yours, he actually sacrificed himself to get rid of the reapers?" Shadow asked, still not actually looking at her and his voice sounding casual, but the way his ears were turned toward her betrayed his interest.

"Well..." Rose briefly licked her lips. "...yeah. Like I said, we were trying to hide from them. The whole thing was kinda my fault," she said, looking pained for a moment as the memories came back. "I called them the last time. When I was a baby, my dad died in an accident. I made the Doctor take me back to the day he died, and I saved him." Her voice was quiet as she spoke next. "And then they came."

"So even with a time machine more powerful than anything in the universe, going back in time to save someone you care about is the one thing you can't do," the midnight hedgehog stated, and it sounded bitter. "Figures."

"It's complicated," Rose replied unhappily, though she wondered where the sudden flash of pain in the hedgehog's eyes came from, or what he might be seeing in his mind right now. Nevertheless she continued. "When the Reaper showed up in that church we were hiding in, the Doctor stepped in front of us. He shouted at them that he was 'the oldest thing in this room' and distracted it from us. It attacked him and afterwards it disappeared," she said, and only for a moment, there seemed to be a hint of despair in her blue eyes, of the bottomless horror she'd felt at that very moment when the Doctor had been ripped from her life. Shadow was looking at her now, expressionless, and if the black hedgehog had seen the pain of that memory, she couldn't tell.

"After a while, my father managed to... to do the right thing," she said, and even now, remembering that day made her voice break a little, telling everyone listening exactly what her words would have meant. The only way how a man who was meant to be dead could have restored a Time Line broken...

The blonde girl briefly wiped at her eyes, her mascara smudging slightly and she let herself sink onto a battered chair for a moment as there didn't seem to be any immediate danger anyway. Then she blinked in surprise as she suddenly felt a gloved hand slowly, almost hesitantly sink onto her shoulder. Shadow once again didn't seem to be able to bear looking at her, the black hedgehog suddenly appearing almost more awkward than aggressive. She was a bit reminded of the hug Sonic had given her, except for Shadow even this seemed to be a big gesture.

"I lost someone once, too," he said, voice steady, but sounding rusty as if he had rarely spoken those words aloud. He seemed to hesitate.

"I suppose if someone had offered me a time machine, I would have tried to save them as well."

Rose reached up and softly covered his fingers with her own.

"In the end, I couldn't save him, either. But...I got to hold his hand when he died," she said.

The other seemed to nod, but when he looked at her again, the hurt she had seen earlier in his gaze now was there again, and this time it was fresh and sharp. The dark-furred Sapient seemed to be looking at her and at the same time seeing someone else, his gaze travelling over her blonde hair, blue eyes and a face that might have just been a few years older than the one in his memory, before he finally forced himself to look away, his voice nearly too rough to make out his words.

"I wish I could have held hers."

Rose bit her lip, not knowing what to say. But there wasn't ever anything to say really, was there? Not when you stood in front of a gravestone, not when you had been too late, not when you just had to listen to someone being exterminated and there wasn't anything you could do...

"Maybe..." she swallowed. "Maybe when all this is over, we could ask the Doctor if you also could-"

"She died in a bullet hail," Shadow said before she could continue, and then looked at her again, and even if he still seemed far from fine, there was a faint trace in his eyes, almost like...gratefulness? "Not the best place to hold hands."

"Doesn't sound like it, no," Rose replied quietly. "But still, maybe we could-"

We could ask the Doctor whether we can go back and save her.

We could go to an alternate universe where she's alive and you're not.

We could open the TARDIS console if we had a big yellow truck...

None of these made sense, none of these was replicable, but still, she wished she could say something, anything, that could take some of that pain away. The same pain she'd seen in the Doctor's eyes too often, the same pain she knew herself too well...

"It's in the past. But...thank you," the black hedgehog replied, and it sounded sincere. From somewhere at the other end of the room Rose could hear the two-tailed fox alien mutter something that sounded suspiciously like 'Shadow said thank you to somebody. Now that definitely means the world is going to end today...'

And his prophecy almost came true when at this very moment, the door finally crashed into the room and a reaper spread its wings to block the exit it had come from.

"No!" Rose screamed, instinctively leaping backwards and away from the creature, Tails looking terrified and for a moment caught in a terrible decision whether to abandon the excavated equipment and flee, or to do what Sonic would have done and stand and fight...but as it happened, that decision never became necessary.

"I can't take it down from a distance any more; not enough Chaos Energy left in this world," Shadow grunted, squaring himself in front of Rose and Tails, the beast now screeching at him somewhat warily, but still advancing. Rose grabbed the closest weapon-looking thing, but Shadow held up a hand.

"Tails, you almost ready?"

"Y-yes, but-!"

"Good." Not quite turning to Rose, the black hedgehog asked,

"This Doctor...does he love you?"

"What?" asked Rose, completely taken aback.

"Are you why he carries on?" he asked again, and even while he was now circling with the reaper, firing one, two shots from his handgun that let it stagger, but only cowed it briefly, managed to shoot one short glance at her.

"Us timeless creatures," he started, and it sounded a bit tired. "We need someone to live for."

He seemed to take a deep breath, and Rose remembered how they had told her that Shadow was ageless, that he was the only surviving experiment of his creator, and that not only his friend, but his entire family had died in a gunfire a life time ago...so when he asked her again, there was only one answer she could give.

"Rose. Is it you he's fighting to protect?"

"Yes. Yes, he is," she said, and then almost gasped as soon as she realized what her words just had to have meant.

Shadow nodded, once, briefly. "Good," he said. "Help Tails carry the equipment outside; he needs you now. And give your friend and the blue faker my regards."

"Shadow, NO!" Rose called out when the black hedgehog then stepped toward the reaper in front of them, emerald fire starting to crackle in his palms.

"Rose, help me carry these upstairs, I can't lift them on my own!" Tails shouted at the same time, but the blonde girl could only watch as a scene repeated, a scene in a church that happened less than a year ago and now it was all happening again...

"I am the oldest thing in here," Shadow announced to the reaper in the door, a ghost of a dark smile gracing his face as he spread his arms. "'allo, beastie."

And the reaper attacked.

To be continued...

Chapter Text

"NO!"

"Rose! We need to get going! Please!"

Rose whirled around, tearing her gaze away from the spot where Shadow the Hedgehog had just thrown himself into the maws of a Reaper, both hedgehog and reptilian creature disappearing in a screech and a flash of red, temporal chaos. For a moment, she could feel it all happening again, the overwhelming helplessness when someone was torn away from you, taken by something you had no chance of opposing...

"Rose!"

"The parts! Right!"

Tails' shrill voice snapped her out of her daze. She needed to focus. The Doctor was still fighting, somewhere. And he asked you to survive for him, a voice in her head said, reminding her of Shadow's last words. Without another word she turned and was at Tails' side in an instant, looking down at the mess of electronic parts the kit was surrounded by.

"Alright! What do we need to take with us?"

The little fox threw his hands into the air.

"Everything!"

xxx

"This way! No, wait! This way! No, wait!"

The Doctor had to admit, trying to follow a supersonic hedgehog that wasn't quite sure where they were supposed to be going was just a little bit exasperating.

"Is there any way we can go?"

"Working on it!" Sonic called over his shoulder as he rushed past the Doctor again, almost letting the Time Lord drop the lens of the roboticizer he was holding. They had been steadily making their way upwards again, Sonic dashing back and forth into all possible corridors, trying to ascertain which way they could go without running into more reapers.

"Dammit, Doc, I'm sorry, but this is like a nest down here-!"

"Sonic! Doctor! Over here!"

Their heads flew around toward the source of the scream and they saw Tails and Rose hovering with frantic expressions at the end of a corridor leading up another case of stairs. Both of them were precariously loaded with technical debris threatening to spill out of their arms at any moment.

"Tails!" Sonic shouted. He ignored for now the still less-than-welcoming body language of the younger fox as both him and the Doctor raced toward the other two. "Where's Shadow?"

"They caught him. I'm so sorry-!" Rose began, but by then, the hedgehog and the Time Lord had reached them, and she to had break off as all four of them had started running again toward the laboratory exit. Behind them, a reaper screeched loudly enough to let their collective blood curdle.

"No worries. If we can get inside the TARDIS we can still fix this - don't stop, RUN!" the Doctor shouted, just as they had burst out of the laboratory and into the meadow, the police box only a few dozen yards away. Tails and Rose, straining under their load, had slowed down as soon as they had emerged outside and the Doctor coming up behind them nearly barreled into their backs.

"They're still coming! Don't stop!"

Even as he spoke, one of the monsters launched itself out of the door in the rock face, its scream tearing across their ear drums. Tails and Rose gasped, starting to run again, Sonic, the last one in their party, whirled around to face the reaper that would surely have caught up to their group before they ever made it into the safety of the TARDIS. The hedgehog squared his shoulders, preparing to launch himself at the monster even at the cost of his own existence, didn't care what would happen if he could at least get this final act right-

"Don't you dare touch them, you Jurassic Park reject!"

And then the blue hedgehog stared in amazement for a second as a red-and-yellow giant hammer soared over his head and caught the reaper squarely into its toothed chest. The monster vanished with a screech.

"Amy!" Rose called out happily, crossing the last few metres of the meadow and stumbling into the TARDIS whose door the pink hedgehog was holding open and from where she had thrown her mallet to take care of their pursuer.

"Good aim," the Doctor commented, the second-to-last to dash over the threshold, followed closely by Sonic zipping back in after him.

"Thank you!" Amy curtsied happily, but then frowned. "Wait. Where did you leave Shadow?"

"He...he didn't make it," Sonic said, lips a thin line, but in his eyes a world of hurt. Amy gasped.

"What?! Then you gotta fix this mess, Doctor, please!"

"I'll do what I can," the Time Lord said grimly. "Tails, lend me a hand?"

"Right," the little fox said, at once beginning to dig through the mess of components the four of them had brought into the TARDIS. He started to wire them up and, together with the Doctor, connect them to the console in ways neither Amy, Sonic or Rose could even begin to comprehend.

Sensing that there wasn't much she could do for the time being, Rose instead turned to the pink hedgehog. "Hey, I just wanted to say...thanks for the save back there." She gave a tentative smile. "Were you alright with Robotnik here?"

Amy gave her a huge grin. "Oh, right as rain!"

"Yeah?" Rose asked, her lips threatening to twitch despite the dire situation. There was something about the enthusiasm of the residents of this planet that was hard to resist. But then something else occurred to her and her forehead creased up in a frown.

"Wait. Where is Robotnik, actually?"

"Oh, he's resting," Amy replied casually, pointing to something on the other side of the console that had previously been hidden from Rose's line of sight. It appeared to be the red-and-black lump of the wannabe dictator, and he was currently lying on his side, clutching his face and back and groaning.

"Uh...Amy, what happened here?" Rose asked.

"Oh, nothing much," the girl waved a hand, "He was just being silly and fell against the console, 's all."

Rose looked at Robotnik again. The man who had tried to kill Sonic three times today was now sporting a swollen lip, a black eye, a bleeding nose, a serious bump on his egg-shaped head, one of the coat tails of his red jacket was torn off as if he had been trying to flee from something having a hold of it, and his glasses were cracked. Rose shot Amy another look.

"Did he, now."

"He...fell against the console several times?" the hedgehog girl tried innocently.

"Right..."

"You...can try whatever you want...nothing is going to stop this miserable planet's demise now..." Robotnik groaned at this point, apparently having heard that they were talking about him, and turned around on the floor.

"Eggman, I thought I told you to shut it," Sonic's voice came from the door, cold and sharp. The hedgehog was peering out at the landscape outside their space craft, and what he saw would probably have turned the stomach of anyone not used to worlds where physics had gone 'screw it' and left the playground to chaos and nightmares.

The world outside was missing bits.

There were actually several chunks of it already gone, like surreal holes torn into a canvas. The light outside was getting steadily dimmer and more reddish, as if even the sun was dying. Reapers were swarming around outside in the air like a murder of crows looking for carrion, and they kept darting downwards, tearing into reality like vultures into a flayed corpse. The rip in the sky had widened, spewing out more and more of the creatures until every last bit of firmament seemed to be covered by wings and claws and beaks; an army come to devour a world.

So far, none of them seemed to be have been able to come closer to the TARDIS than a few yards, but over half of the bit of Green Hill Zone that they could see through the open doors was already gone.

"Doctor?" Amy tried very timidly. "Is...is this the end of the world?"

The Time Lord shot her a brief glance, only perfunctorily looking up from the machine he and Tails seemed to be assembling. His tongue was wedged between his teeth.

"In short, yes," he said. "I'd wager by now close to all of Mobius has been sterilised. This, and perhaps a few more places like it are all that's left of this world's population." He carefully set another lens into place. "We might hold out for a while in the TARDIS, but nothing can stop those creatures. They'll get through in the end." He didn't look up again, but even as he spoke, features of his face hardened, once again echoes of another time seeming to creep into his voice as he continued.. "There used to be laws stopping this kind of thing from happening. My people would have stopped this. But if we can't finish this now, we'll all go the same way as them."

"And good riddance, too," Robotnik snapped from the other side of the console, having sat up now. "The gods know why I ever bothered to try to improve or conquer this world."

Rose sat down heavily next to Sonic; there wasn't much she could do to help now, except hope that Tails and the Doctor would be able to complete their machine to repair the TARDIS in time. The transparent hedgehog was sitting in the open door of the police box, morosely staring out at his world being torn apart. For a moment the blonde girl feverishly cast her mind about whether she couldn't come up with something to distract him, and then finally settled on something she had been wondering about ever since they had entered that godforsaken laboratory.

"Hey," Rose managed. "Um. Tell me if I'm being rude, but...wanna explain what happened between you and Robotnik? I know we only saw his earlier self like for one second, but he looked pretty different. Is it true you and him were friends once?"

Sonic briefly looked at her, green eyes filled with a mixture of anger and pain at first, but also a sadness that seemed palpable – before the entire hedgehog then simply slumped even more and his gaze dropped toward the floor again.

"Yeah. It's true," the hedgehog said dully. "I was an orphan. I was bored. One day I buried into Kintobor's base sort of by mistake and he made me his," Sonic swallowed, "assistant." The way the hedgehog uttered that last word sounded like he wanted to be sick and Rose felt a stab of guilt for having opened that topic. As far as she could tell, though, she wasn't the only one in the control room who was listening to the story now...

Sonic, apparently unaware of his audience, shrugged. "Then - I caused an accident. I never quite understood the mechanics of it, to be honest, but I made Kintobor trip over a cable to a machine that had been...extracting the 'evil of the world' out of the Chaos Emeralds or something. There was a short circuit and an explosion and when I came to, my friend Kintobor had turned into that," he said, fixing Robotnik behind the console with a baleful glare, before he turned to stare out of the door again.

"Before that, though, Kintobor had helped me achieve my first sonic boom. That's what turned me from brown to blue and fused my quills together," Sonic swallowed bitterly. "So I guess you can say that we actually created each other. Probably deserve each other as well, too," he added, though that had been said a lot more quietly and Rose wondered whether the broken hedgehog had meant it to be heard at all.

"Sound waves turned you blue?" the Doctor piped up at this with raised eye brows, seemingly more honestly curious than the situation warranted. "You know that doesn't make any sense, right?"

"That's what I said at the time," Robotnik cut in. "In my opinion this rodent simply wasn't made to make sense."

"Shut it, you." Amy commented scathingly, and they had the satisfaction of briefly seeing the evil scientist flinch at her admonishment.

"So you...you really were friends," Tails said, and now the young fox' voice was also trembling again, pulling a screw into place. "You worked with the man who invented the roboticizer that killed thousands, including my family. That wasn't just a lie he tried to make up."

Sonic turned to gaze over his shoulder, to catch the gaze of his younger brother, and now he suddenly also looked very tired.

"Tails..." Amy began, biting her lip and stepping up to the fox, the conflict between wanting to defend her hero and comfort the hurt kit visible in her eyes. Sonic started speaking again before she had reached him, though.

"Yes." He swallowed. "We were friends. But Tails, the roboticizer was meant for good," he tried. "And the day Kintobor became Robotnik...it was the worst day of my life. You gotta believe me, kiddo," he said, and now he almost sounded so helpless, it near broke Rose's heart. She licked her lips.

"Tails..." she also tried. "I don't think I told you, but my dad died, too, you know?"

Outside, the winds from the rift were howling and the reapers screeched as the planet lay dying, she knew, and she knew time was running out, but if the Doctor had taught her one thing, it was that sometimes, it was the little things that were important, the little things that you simply had to make the time for...

Tails looked at her now, somewhat curiously where this was going, and she continued.

"The Doctor can do the most impossible things, but even he couldn't save him. He says..." she briefly faltered a little, but then kept going. "He says there's points in history you can't change."

"Yes, but..." Tails started, the hurt you only felt when you thought your best friend in the entire world had just betrayed you still riding on his words. And Rose felt the anger washing through her and rose to her feet.

"Tell him it was your fault!"

"What?" Gazes snapped around to watch the 19-year-old girl, who had stalked around the TARDIS console in two, three quick strides and was now furiously staring down at Robotnik. The older human had drawn himself up into a sitting position against the column and was staring up at her irritably. "What business of yours is any of that?"

Rose's fists were clenched. She had seen the pain of the eyes of the Doctor often enough. She had seen how he suffered whenever something was indirectly his fault, no matter how minor his contribution was. Sonic was so much younger than the Time Lord from Gallifrey. He needed his friends. And if Robotnik thought he could take that away from him-!

"Amy," Rose said sweetly. "Can you come here with that hammer for a moment, please?"

"Hold it!" Robotnik held up his hands preemptively before the pink hedgehog could even take a step. He drew himself up slightly higher. "You don't have to threaten me. I wouldn't let that two-tailed runt go on to think I am no better than a programmed monkey, anyway." He turned his head.

"Fox boy?"

"Y-yeah?" Tails managed, staring into the two black, partially cracked lenses of the scientist's dark glasses as if he was hypnotized. Robotnik curled his upper lip in distaste.

"Remember when I teamed up with you during that fiasco aboard the ARK? Acted near selflessly like one of you, ahah, heroes?" he asked with a hacking cough as he drew himself to his feet. The stances of all three Mobians immediately became noticeably more tense, but the scientist only looked weary and annoyed, and less than threatening now. He waved a dismissive hand in Tails' direction. "That was my own choice to join you and do something 'good'. It was also my choice when I attacked Emerald Hill Zone where your family lived and my choice to let the whole thing burn," he said, at the same time stepping closer toward the little fox, who now appeared rooted to the spot, like a rabbit in front of a snake.

"Robotnik. Cut it out, or else," Amy threatened, putting her arms protectively around the smaller vulpine. "You're a bigger monster than those reapers."

Behind her, Sonic had also stepped up as the evil scientist had advanced, and, while his usual energy seemed to be seriously lacking, there was still a warning presence emanating from him, that told anyone that touching the two younger Mobians would be their last mistake. And behind him, finally, the Doctor had also risen, the Time Lord even taller than Robotnik and his aura at the moment far more menacing.

Robotnik halted his progress, eyeing the sudden triple threat in front of him warily. "Protective of each other until the very end. How charming. But I'm a condemned man, so the least I can ask for is for you to listen - because I refuse to die with anyone thinking I'm nothing else than a product of that rodent's mistake. I have that much pride left." So saying, he turned again, fixing a trembling Tails with a tired glare. "You should be glad you made it out alive and got the spiky pest to take care of you." His moustache quivered dismissively. "If it wasn't for him and all the blood he's spilled on the drills and blades of my machines you'd be dead or roboticized by now, too," he hissed, before abruptly turning away, and then there was only silence, for one, two seconds, before -

"Sonic!"

"Umph! Hey, kiddo-"

"Sonic, I'm sorry!"

Tails had flung himself into his brother's arms again, hugging him tightly and pressing his face into the hedgehog's chest.

"Naw, Tails, it's okay, I'm sorry for not telling you about this earlier," Sonic managed, but the relief was visible in every part of his transparent body and the way he had wrapped his arms around the younger fox like he was cradling the most precious thing in the world. "Sorry for not telling you either, Ames."

"Not bad," the Doctor commented, raising an appreciative eye brow at Rose, who had stepped aside a bit to give the Mobians some space. "Before you know it, we could have you working as an intergalactic diplomat. Mind you," he said with a cock of his head, "The hammer threat was maybe a bit much."

"It's his fault the reapers got Shadow," Rose replied. "I think he deserved it." She looked down at the mess at her feet. "Is this thing working now?"

"Should be. And not a moment too soon," the Doctor exhaled. "Hey! Tails!" he called out, and the fox extracted himself from the hug again. "Ready to save the world?"

"I – yeah," the fox replied, nodding and stepping over to the assembly of wires and bits and pieces in front of the console. It looked a bit like an exploded vacuum cleaner to anyone neither a mechanical genius nor a Time Lord, but both fox and Gallifreyan looked fairly pleased with their work.

"Is that the finished deroboticizer, then?" Amy asked, peering at it curiously, and Tails nodded.

"Yeah! The Doctor and me only need to switch it on and it will fix the TARDIS and then he can save the planet!"

"Nice. Great work, you two," Sonic said, giving the Time Lord a thumbs-up and ruffling the fur on the young fox's head, pride rolling off of him like waves, and the kit was positively basking in it. The Doctor couldn't suppress a smile, and then also couldn't resist throwing a last, amused smirk at Robotnik.

"So how do you like them apples?" he asked, dusting off his hands before he put them on his hips. "Or should I say them hedgehogs? Hah!" He twirled his screwdriver. "Stealing my TARDIS was impressive, I grant you – 'course, it would have been more impressive if you had actually listened to me and not managed to make yourself a rather sizeable snack for the reapers, but..."

Robotnik glared at him from across the other side of the roboticized TARDIS console.

"Yes. You and the blasted rodent foiled my plans again. No need to gloat about it."

"Oooh, but gloating is fun," the Doctor protested. "But, then again, maybe we should get going before the last bit of Mobius is entirely gone, so-" he turned toward the wiry mess again, bending down and grabbing two wires, apparently intending to connect them together, when-

"But the one mistake that you made," Robotnik interrupted him, slowly, pleasantly, as he let one of his hands descend onto the roboticized control panel, "was letting me anywhere even close to one of my mechanized creations."

And then his hand slammed down on one of the console's buttons before anyone could have reacted and the entire roboticized TARDIS shuddered like a man with a seizure.

"Self-destruct sequence initiated," a mechanized voice sounded from the speakers. "Please evacuate premises immediately. Self-destruct in 30 seconds. 29. 28..."

"What?! Are you mad?" Sonic whirled around to stare at Robotnik. "You just sentenced us all to death, you lunatic! Yourself as well!"

"26. 25."

Robotnik just shrugged. "It makes no difference to me." He stared coldly at the Doctor. "I had time to look into the records of his travels in the databank of his ship. I have seen what he does to those who lose to him."

The lights in the TARDIS had started to dim as he talked and now they were throwing the face of the Doctor into hard-cut shadows, the Time Lord suddenly having gone very still and expressionless as Robotnik spoke. The human scientist almost idly flicked a hand over a button and a holo-screen flashed into life, the eyes of the Mobians widening as, all at once, pictures of explosion and carnage, green-skinned monsters and rolling metal mini tanks, pictures of an entire world, burning, all with a single man in the middle of it, danced through the air like visions of a bad dream.

"The fate of the Daleks. The fate of the Sycorax. The fate of the Slitheen. The fate of his very own planet," Robotnik counted them off smoothly as the screen mercifully disappeared into nothingness again. The human scientist looked at Sonic in a curious mixture of contempt and almost grudging appreciation. "Contrary to you, Sonic, your new friend has quite the body count. I would not have walked away from this."

"No!" Rose protested desperately. "That's not-!"

"17. 16."

"If I have to die, I prefer it to be on my own hands. And most importantly," Robotnik gave Sonic a smile that had no warmth in it whatsoever, "Taking you with me."

"You-!" Sonic began, but Amy cut him off, staring at Tails and the Doctor with wide eyes.

"What are you doing! Don't just stand there! Initiate the de-roboticizer before it's too late!"

"11. 10."

Tails shook his head, eyes wide, and desperate, even as Amy's scream had apparently shocked the Doctor out of whatever paralysis Robotnik's words had induced him, and he whirled with a muttered 'right!' back to the console, even as Tails was proclaiming the futility of it.

"It wouldn't work!" the fox wailed, "The process would need at least a few minutes, maybe even-!"

"9. 8."

"Doctor!" Rose shouted, the Time Lord the only of them who outwardly still seemed to have retained some semblance of calm, staring down at the console with thin lips and intensely focused eyes, as if he were trying to solve a 600-sided Rubik's cube in his mind. The TARDIS was shaking now, the universe outside of it in its final fits and the core of the engine about to tear itself apart in a self-destruct, the lights inside flickering wildly and going out one by one. And one by one the Mobians fell silent, staring at the Time Lord in front of the console, brown eyes as old as centuries roving over the machinery, while an intellect none of them could even begin to comprehend tried to come up with a solution none of them could, something so smart and impossibly brilliant that would allow them all to survive...

"5."

"Amy," the Time Lord said.

"Yes?" the pink hedgehog gasped.

"4."

"I need you to hit the console very, very hard with your great big hammer."

"What?!"

"2."

"NOW!"

"1."

"DO IT!" Sonic, Tails and Rose yelled in unison - and Amy struck.

They never heard the number zero, because instead, light poured out of the console so bright it was blinding.

To be continued...

Chapter Text

There was light. Light as bright as the sun.

Amy's hammer had torn a hole into the front of the TARDIS console, and now the resulting, searing, golden glow flowed out of it like a living being made of star light, and the Mobians could only collectively stare.

"It's...beautiful..." Amy breathed. "What...?"

"The TARDIS is dying. She can't hold the time vortex for much longer," the Doctor said "This is her heart. Trying to escape while her body is falling apart."

"But...but then what...?" Tails stammered, mesmerized like all of the others by the display. The mist of light was slowly gliding closer through the air towards them.

The Doctor exhaled. "Well. There is a place she knows she can store it..."

And then, even Robotnik's eyes seemed to widen behind his glasses when the light began to circle ever closer to Rose and then all at once crashed straight into her.

Amy gasped, Tails shrieked, as next there was a wave of pressure suddenly exploding outwards from the blonde girl, rocking the TARDIS, blowing her doors wide open for them to gape into the darkness outside. When she opened her eyes again, they were glowing like liquid gold.

"Hello, Doctor," she said, glancing at her companion with a smile as if he were an old friend she hadn't seen for a while.

"What...what in the world-?" rasped Robotnik, just as flabbergasted as Sonic, Tails and Amy as he stared at what had previously been a normal human girl, but now was definitely something else.

At his voice, she turned around to stare at the egg-shaped scientist abruptly, golden eyes narrowed now. Behind her, the winds coming from the nothingness outside howled through the door and picked at her clothes and hair.

"It's a dark night outside, Robotnik," she said. "You should be scared of the wolves."

xxx

"Doctor?" Amy asked, with a timid swallow. "What is happening?"

"It's...complicated," the Time Lord said. "It's something she's done before. When she absorbs the heart of the TARDIS, it is possible for her to rearrange the universe-"

But then he was interrupted, because now suddenly his companion cried out and doubled over.

"Ahh!"

"Rose!" Amy made to dart forward, but the Doctor grabbed her first.

"No! If you touch her, it'll tear you apart!" he shouted, pulling the pink hedgehog backwards. In front of them, the girl had started to stagger and convulse, golden energy bursting out of her body in intervals, but now also interspersed with aggressive-looking, white lightning erratically arcing out of her in places and dancing across her skin.

"What - something is interfering with the Time Vortex, this shouldn't be-" the Doctor gasped, eyes squinting against the glare, "But I don't understand-"

"Interesting. I had read that the Time Vortex tears living bodies apart. I hadn't thought I would see it in action," Robotnik commented, still leaning against one wall. "Perhaps not the worst way to go."

"This isn't the Time Vortex!" the Doctor snarled. "The Time Vortex she could handle, this...this is the Time Vortex supercharged with the superfluous Chaos energy..." he breathed, as if he had only just now managed to figure that one out.

"Doctor! Did you say Chaos Energy?!" Tails asked shrilly, the little fox clinging to the transparent arm of his hedgehog brother, instinctively seeking protection where the Time Lord painfully knew nothing could provide it. "Isn't there anything you can do?"

"I don't-!" the Doctor gasped, "There's too much – I need to -"

"You know, if there's one thing I never liked about the hedgehog, it's that he never knew when to quit," Robotnik snapped, staring at the frantically concentrating Doctor in irritation. "Honestly, do you have to imitate him in everything?"

"Eggman...!" Amy snarled threateningly, but this time, in between the lightning, the howling of the winds of the void, the groaning, the desperate shuddering of the mechanized TARDIS in her death throes and Rose's pained gasping, Robotnik seemed barely fazed by the girl's raised hammer.

"Oh, don't bother, Amy Rose," he waved at her dismissively. "In a minute we will have all died here anyway. Spend them doing something more constructive, why don't you."

The hammer dropped from the hand's of the pink hedgehog as if the words and the cold tone of their arch enemy had driven home to inevitability of their demise sharper than anything else previously. Amy turned her head, tears starting to spring up in her eyes as she whimpered,

"S..Sonic...?"

"No."

It had been spoken softly, but heads still turned. Sonic, still transparent, took this moment to step forward, disentangling himself from the hold of his little brother and looking up at Rose, Robotnik and the Doctor, voice firm now. "We're not going to die today."

"Will you listen-" Robotnik tried to cut him off, but green eyes instantly narrowed at him, a furious blaze of emerald that could have given the exploding console a run for its timey-wimey money.

"No, Robotnik, I won't. And I'll tell you why," the hedgehog said, at the same time striding forward, toward Rose still engulfed in a chaotic thunderstorm, "We're not going to die because unlike you we work as a team – and I'm going to help her!"

"Sonic!" the voice of the Time Lord cut through, just before the hedgehog had been able to reach out to Rose, and it was testament to the command laid into the tone that Sonic actually stopped and paused, looking up at the Doctor, questioningly.

"...Sonic." The Doctor said somewhat more gently. "This is going to kill whoever attempts it. Let me."

"Doctor-" Amy gasped, seemingly utterly clueless for whom she should be afraid most now, but their friend scarcely seemed to be concerned.

"The last time this happened I needed to regenerate as well. Mind, I would have liked to keep this body a while longer..." the Time Lord grimaced, but then ultimately dissolved into a sad smile.

"...but if it's for her, I want to go."

And then, perhaps for the first time in a long while, the Doctor was surprised when Sonic only gave him the brightest grin in response.

"Yeah, no way, doc. My planet, I protect it!"

"What? But-!"

"An' besides," and now Sonic gave a definite smirk, "If you're right about the problem being superfluous Chaos Energy – I might be able to help with that!"

And when he grabbed the wrist of Bad Wolf, the resulting light was as bright as a dying star.

xxx

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!"

The Doctor could hear the others screaming, even Robotnik grunting in pain as they averted their eyes at the searing brightness. But he was able to look, as all Time Lords were, staring into the energy that was pure spacetime converted into light.

And what he saw was utterly beautiful.

In the center of the burning was Sonic, who wasn't Sonic any more, the entire hedgehog glowing golden now, his quills bent upwards like the other hedgehog's had been, floating in front of Not!Rose, who seemed to have recovered now, also floating calmly, the two beings simply staring at each other...

And then they smiled.

"Hello," the hedgehog said. "I'm Super Sonic."

"Nice to meet you." The girl returned the greeting. "I'm the Bad Wolf."

"The heart of the TARDIS, right?" Sonic cocked his head, blinking his now red-tinted eyes. "Or...Rose?"

"A bit of both," she replied easily, before her own eyes glowed just a little bit brighter. "Thank you for taking the pain away so I didn't have to kill my Doctor."

"It's okay." Sonic smiled ruefully. "This whole mess started because I killed mine years ago."

He extended a hand again. "So. Let's end this nightmare, shall we?"

"Yes," the girl replied, also reaching out. "I can see all that was, all that is, all that ever could be -"

" - and I remember it exactly as it should be!" Sonic finished, at the same time grasping her hand in his. The next second, light flashed too brightly even for the Doctor as the universe seemed to shudder as it was reset, and Super Sonic's lips moved and said something that could have been 'Chaos Control' but might have looked like the word 'Chronos' instead.

And then, when the world around them began to disappear, and the dying TARDIS itself dissolved, her final, relieved and freed grinding sound the last thing he could still hear, the Doctor couldn't help but laugh.

xxx

It was impossible to say when they woke up or how much time had passed. This was because Time itself was still very young and confused and not very used to being reset. It was something it suspected it might have to get used to if this Doctor person continued in this way.

For now though, the Time Lord was still lying unconscious on the floor, and it was the blue hedgehog beside him who woke up first.

Sonic blinked. For the first few moments, his eyes seemed to have trouble to come to an agreement just how far away things actually were and whether this whole 'seeing clearly' thing wasn't too much trouble anyway, but then the hero of Mobius at last managed to raise his hands to his eyes with effort, rub them, and when he opened them again, the now-familiar ceiling of the TARDIS above him swam into focus. He turned his head, and could see the bodies of his friends strewn beside him; both the larger ones of Rose and the Doctor, as well as the smaller ones of Tails and Amy, the girl lying draped over the car seats, his little brother somehow face-planted on the console, Robotnik fortunately missing. Both human and Time Lord showed signs of waking. Sonic tried to raise himself, but ended that endeavour quickly when the room threatened to spin around him.

"Ugh," the hedgehog commented eloquently. "If there's anything for breakfast, it better not be eggs."

There was a groan from his right side. Sonic wasn't quite sure whether that was the Doctor waking up or just voicing his opinion of the pun.

"Morning, Doc."

"Morning..." The Time Lord was the first one to sit up, running a hand through his hair and taking in the TARDIS almost absent-mindedly, before his gaze focused on Sonic. "Hey. You look nicely solid again, there." He gave an appreciative nod. "Congratulations."

"...oh. Right." Sonic had finally managed to get himself into a sitting position again and was now looking down at himself, hands briefly running over his abdomen, a slow smile spreading across his face. "That's cool. Everyone else alright?"

"I think they are," the Doctor replied, then, as Rose made a small noise and started frowning, lay back down beside her, propping himself up on one elbow and grinning at her as she also opened her eyes.

"Rise and shine. You saved the planet."

"Mwha...?" Rose blinked at him, clearly not quite coherent yet as Sonic had finally gotten up and wandered over to the TARDIS doors, opening them to reveal the sun-dappled meadows of Green Hill Zone outside, a small, collapsible wheelchair lying peacefully on its side just where it had been this morning. "I did?"

"Oooh yeah." The Doctor gave her a bright smile, his voice an appreciative rumble. "You were brilliant."

"Heh. Really? It's a bit hard to remember..." she said, but then immediately spasmed slightly, as she gave a little cough, something or other obviously lodged in her throat. Then her eyes went wide as the next thing that happened was a thin tendril of golden energy escaping from her mouth, sort of twirling in the air a little, before then slipping back into the TARDIS console. Rose glanced at the Doctor.

"...but I think I believe you."

Next, though, she seemed to have remembered at least something, because then she abruptly sat up, looking around, tense. "Wait. Where's Robotnik?"

"I dunno." Sonic from the door chimed in, grinning at her. "I think I remembered him in an itching powder factory somewhere."

At this, the blonde girl finally had to snort, covering her mouth with her hands. "Really?"

"Uh-huh," Sonic replied, and the Doctor also took that as a cue to jump to his feet. "Nice!" he commented, before gently lifting a just waking up and confused Tails off the TARDIS console, starting to turn levers and wheels on it.

"Everything seems to be in order here, too..."

Rose looked around. Tails and Amy had also woken up, faces amazed at the reverted interior of the TARDIS (and possibly their continued existence). But they were only five altogether...

"Sonic? Doctor? Where's Shadow? He is alive again, right?" she asked, throat suddenly dry. If he wasn't-

"Oh. Oh yeah, he should be," the Doctor replied, looking at his scanners and frowning. "According to this, it's today's morning all over again, so I'd reckon he's wherever he was at that time."

"Yeah, no worries. I remembered him," Sonic said, walking over to her with a smile. "And I've got a feeling if I hadn't, you would have. Made quite an impression on you, huh?"

"I..." Rose looked to the floor, now suddenly feeling slightly embarrassed. "No, it's just...I think I got him completely wrong the first time." She bit her lip. "I'd never have picked him as the type to sacrifice himself. For me."

"Oh, ah," Sonic noted, for some reason his smile now looking slightly like a wince. "Yeah. Right. He's got this...uh, thing for blonde human girls."

Now Rose looked fully awake.

"Wait, what?"

"No no no!" Tails was shaking his hands frantically as he could obviously see just where Rose's thoughts had been going. "Not like that!"

"Not like...ooooh, yeah, no, not like that!" Sonic also managed to clarify as he realized just how his comment to Rose must have sounded. "Yeah, we, uh, generally don't go in for this whole cross-species thing. You guys are too...tall. And stuff. And furless is kinda gross."

"What he means," Amy said, when Rose was mostly staring at Sonic completely nonplussed, "Is that the human scientist who created Shadow had a granddaughter, who grew up as a sister to him. We never met her, but we know she must have meant the world for Shadow. And from what I know..." Amy gave Rose a sad smile. "Maybe you reminded him a bit of her. In more ways than just your hair."

"Oh. Right." The girl nodded. His sister who had died in a bullet hail...

"Hey, uh," Tails piped up, interrupting her train of thought with something he apparently thought far more important:

"If we gained back an entire day this way, does that mean we can have lunch again?"

xxx

"Hey."

"...hey," Rose replied with a slight smile. By now she was sitting in Tails' living room again, while the little fox and the Doctor had disappeared into the two-tail's workshop once more. This time, Amy had volunteered to be the one to prepare the food, though, so now it was Sonic who apparently had come in to talk, letting himself plop into the plushy chair next to the couch she was sitting on.

"I just wanted to say...thanks," the hedgehog said, his gaze unusually sincere. "For..." he paused.

"Telling Tails. Telling Robotnik where he can stick it, too." He gazed over at her. They hadn't been able to talk just the two of them yet since the resurrection of the Time Line, and now, with both of them slumped a bit tiredly in the living room, Rose wondered whether to the hedgehog it also already seemed like ages ago when he had rescued her from the robots and they had been racing madly through the sunshine afterwards...

She smiled at him. "No problem."

"Cool." he tried a small grin back. "Also, I wanted to say I'm sorry about what happened to your dad." He briefly looked at his shoes. "None of us really have family, either. Not all of that's Robotnik's fault, but...yeah."

He seemed to be getting just slightly downcast again, perhaps still wondering whether he was maybe in fact partly to blame for Tails' parents' demise, even if the little fox himself had forgiven him. Rose pursed her lips.

"You know...I met someone once. It was a pretty crazy thing. There were clockwork droids, some sort of time portal in a fireplace and a horse on a space ship."

At her tone, Sonic looked up and a small spark seemed to have returned to his eyes, as his lips twitched. "Only the best stories start that way."

"There was also a girl we met. She trusted the Doctor and she died," Rose continued her tale, and the hedgehog's face fell as quickly as he had lit up. Rose took a breath.

"But do you know what she said just before?" she asked and when Sonic only blinked at the rhetoric question, the blonde girl eventually gave a smile that perhaps seemed only a little older than it should be.

"She said that 'one may tolerate a world of demons for the sake of an angel'."

When the hedgehog didn't say anything then either, but blue eye ridges just started to rise as he perhaps wondered whether Rose could actually have meant that like she had said, the silence was then only ultimately broken by the human girl reaching out to bury her head deep in Sonic's head fur and giving him a bright grin.

"Never seen one so fluffy, though!"

xxx

In the end, both Rose and the Doctor ended up spending an entire two days on Mobius, doing nothing much in particular but having fun. Rose especially was all but dragged out shopping in the closest city by an overenthusiastic Amy, which actually yielded them the first sight of other humans on Mobius, the densely populated Station Square thronged with both furry and furless denizens.

The Doctor, who had tagged along as well, was actually surprised by how peacefully the different races seemed to live together here - the most violent thing they saw all day was a cat Mobian jumping about two feet in the air as a non-intelligent dog barked at him, but with the human owner apologizing profusely afterwards. The Time Lord only briefly sourly wondered why during their travels, usually, it only took two different intelligent species to be present before he and his companion would immediately have the next civil war at their hands.

His mood was considerably improved when later, Sonic also offered him a wheelchair ride.

When it came time to say goodbye on the end of the second day, the sun had just started to disappear behind the horizon and all of them were standing in front of Tails' house again, watching the sun set in the ocean, the wind breezily rushing through their hair, quills and the open TARDIS doors.

"Well, then," the Doctor stepped forward, slightly reaching down to extend his hand to the blue hedgehog and shaking his. "It's been an honour."

"Likewise, Doc." Sonic grinned back up at him, giving him a thumbs-up, and holding the Time Lord's gaze with his own, green and brown eyes for a moment saying more than their words could have. The Doctor nodded, also reaching down to shake Amy's hand, though he certainly didn't need to do so for Tails, seeing as the little two-tail had leapt straight up and enthusiastically hugged the Time Lord's head, (the Doctor also fairly certain that in between the squealed 'Thank You's and 'Come Back Soon's there actually also were a few 'I'll miss you's – addressed to his screw driver).

"Heyyy, come here!"

Rose was certainly showing less restraint in her affections than the Time Lord; she had mostly just picked up all of the Mobians in turn to squeeze them in a hug. The Doctor guessed correctly that on a world where humans and Mobians somehow had to get along, this was probably a very rude gesture - handling the smaller, furry creatures like children or pets - but their friends either seemed to understand or not mind, laughing and hugging back their human friend in turn as their feet dangled above the ground and they were cuddled.

(In what was probably an unconscious reaction, there was even a bit of tail wagging involved, though the Time Lord wisely opted not to tell Rose that as it probably would have brought the "Can We Keep Them" talk up again by sheer reflex.)

In the end, even Sonic got subjected to the treatment despite his spikier back, Rose simply lifting him up by his sides – a procedure that quickly turned rather amusing for any onlookers since the blue hedgehog turned out to be rather ticklish and squirmed immediately in the hold of the human girl.

"Ah! Put me down!"

"Not until you apologize for that crazy wheelchair ride!"

"Never! Agh!"

The Doctor snorted at the unequal struggle and found himself not minding having spent two days without so much as an attempted genocide or a pirate attack after all.

"Heh..ah...you sneaky human-" Sonic was panting as Rose finally set him down again, hugging his own sides for protection immediately. "And you're some fine friends for not helping me out here," he added dryly with a glance at both Tails and Amy who smiled innocently.

In fact, the next one who spoke was Rose again, and now she seemed slightly hesitant.

"Um, say, before we go..."

"Yeah?"

"Is...Shadow around anywhere? I haven't seen him since we came back..."

"Oh. Yeah, he's not the most sociable of types." Sonic scratched his ear. "I think he just didn't drop by yet because he's not the kind of guy who looks for company."

Rose bit her lip slightly. "Can you pick him up again? Just for a short moment?"

"Uh, sure. You want to...?"

"I just want to say goodbye. That's fine, right?"

"Sure," the Doctor shrugged. "Though I'm usually rubbish at goodbyes..."

"Right. One moment," Sonic said, already reaching into his quills to pull out the Emerald, and then, in a flash he was gone. He reappeared two seconds later, this time also holding Shadow's arm again (though in a nice departure from last time's scenario, this time Shadow didn't punch him). When the black hedgehog's eyes fell onto the blonde girl, though, they widened.

"Hey, Shadow," Rose greeted him with a smile.

"...hello," Shadow said, though now his tone sounded slightly rougher than before. "Does you being here mean...everything really happened?"

"Oh. Yeah," the Doctor said, waving a hand. "Planet nearly went pop, of course, but you got resurrected along with everything else, so in the end it worked out fine. 'course, it also means no one remembers this except us, but..."

"Right. I see." Shadow nodded and now he almost sounded relieved. "Then I'm not having amnesia or hallucinations again."

"What? Oh no, no," Rose replied quickly. "I'm sorry if you were confused because we didn't call or anything. Sonic said you'd rather be left alone, but...I wanted to say thank you. For saving me," she gave a slightly unsure smile. "Is that okay?"

"I...yeah. If you wa-" Shadow began, but then the rest of his sentence was cut off by the blonde girl quickly dropping to her knees in front of him and hugging him tight. And then, in what was perhaps an entirely unexpected reaction for the others, Shadow at first seemed to freeze up in her embrace, but then, slowly, almost imperceptibly relaxed and returned it, even briefly closing his eyes.

"...you're welcome."

"The others...told me about her," Rose said, quietly, even though Sonic and his friends had wandered a few metres off when she had hugged him. Shadow had seemed to relax slightly when there were less people around him, but at her words he still stiffened.

"Ah. They would have."

"I think you made her proud yesterday. Or on the yesterday that never was."

And there, much harder to see than Sonic's, perhaps not even really a thing, Rose thought she might just have seen the dark hedgehog's smile.

"...maybe," Shadow replied, quietly. He gently disentangled himself from her, stepping back and regarding her with something she wondered whether it could have counted as...well. Maybe not quite fondness, but perhaps something that could one day become something like it. Shadow reached inside his own quills now, briefly looking down at the red Emerald he pulled from them, like he was contemplating what to say next.

"Thank you," he said, barely loud enough to hear. "And...if you ever turn up on this planet again..." he looked up from the stone, briefly meeting her eyes again with that slight not-smile. "I think I wouldn't mind a hello."

And then, in a flash, he disappeared.

Rose blinked.

"Er. Uh."

"Yeah, he does that," Sonic commented, the blue hedgehog having wandered over again as soon as his darker doppelganger had disappeared. "But I think he likes you, " he grinned.

"Right..."

"Very well then, Ms Tyler. Ready to go?" the Doctor called over, already halfway in the TARDIS poking out his head at them. Rose turned, enjoyed the last gust of wind from Mobius that wafted over from the ocean, picking up her hair as the setting sun hit her eyes with darkening light, just for a moment letting her and Sonic look like something else, something they had been just a short while ago, but then she was already bounding over to the familiar phone box, swinging herself inside.

"Bye, Rose. Doc. See you around," Sonic gave the two of them a last wave along with his two friends, and both human and Time Lord grinned back. The last words they heard were Amy's call of 'Don't be strangers!' before the doors swung shut and the familiar grinding noise of the TARDIS replaced the sounds of Mobius.

"Huh. That was a nice planet for a change," Rose grinned at the Doctor as the Time Lord already busied himself with the controls. It definitely wasn't often that the worlds they visited left her with a wish to return, but this was one of them. "Think we can visit again sometime?"

"Shouldn't be impossible," the Doctor shrugged. "Then again, usually we rarely visit places twice."

"Unless it's 21st century London, yeah," Rose commented innocently.

"That's different!"

"Uh-huh. Different how?"

"Well mostly we're on Earth because that planet needs bloody saving again," the Doctor muttered under his breath, which at least made Rose laugh.

"And Mobius doesn't, then?" she asked.

"Hm, actually," the Doctor said, "Robotnik wasn't the only one who snooped around in other people's history. I had a check on that planet's time line after you and Sonic put it back together again, and if everything about it is right and neither of you made anything up, then..." he indicated a few holo-screens.

"That world survived water gods, alien invasions, at one point it actually fell apart and this Robotnik attacking seems to be somewhat of a biweekly thing, so..." he turned to her, giving her a bright grin.

"My opinion, Rose? Mobius stands defended."

Fin