Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Agent Stone had made a huge mistake.

He had gotten into the habit of making two lattes with steamed Austrian goat milk at exactly four o’clock each afternoon, one for him and one for Dr. Robotnik, complete with a latte art portrait of the two of them, surrounded by little hearts. After eight years of working for Dr. Robotnik, he could make the doctor’s usual coffee order from memory, and he had the exact shape of his mustache engraved in the back of his mind. Dr. Robotnik rarely acknowledged Stone’s latte art, but he never objected either, and for Stone, it was his way of showing the doctor that he cared about him, that he loved him, even if he doubted that Dr. Robotnik felt the same way.

And then Robotnik’s long-lost grandfather showed up, and it was as if Agent Stone didn’t exist. He was watching them now, eating cotton candy and enjoying a fireworks display, and the doctor didn’t even turn his head to acknowledge Stone’s presence, too busy spending quality time with the professor to drink the latte with steamed Austrian goat milk that his assistant had prepared for him. Agent Stone gazed longingly at the doctor for a few minutes longer, and then he threw his painstakingly crafted lattes into the garbage and removed his virtual reality headset, pangs of jealousy and heartbreak running through his chest as he looked back at Dr. Robotnik and his grandfather, enjoying their one perfect day together.

Just as Stone returned to the Crab’s computer to chart their route to the G.U.N. headquarters in London, the professor suddenly turned to Dr. Robotnik and said, “Grandson?”

“Yes, Pop-Pop?”

“I just got a low battery warning on my headset.”

“Agent Stone!” Dr. Robotnik called out to his assistant, who was sulking in front of the computer. “Go get some spare triple-A batteries for my grand-popsicle! They should be in the Closet of Abandoned Inventions, next to the Egg Dealer.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Stone said, and while Dr. Robotnik went back to bonding with his grandfather, Agent Stone headed towards the walk-in closet. However, as soon as Stone opened the door, dozens of the doctor’s old projects spilled onto the floor, everything from rejected Badnik designs to a dusty old robotic arm to a tiny model of the Crab. He dug through all of the doctor’s brilliant creations, smiling as he remembered the day he’d built each of them, and finally, Stone found a set of triple-A batteries on the top shelf, lying on top of some kind of strange contraption that he’d never seen before. It appeared to be a metal box with a red button on the side of it, and there was a label on the button that said, in big block letters, “MULTIVERSE TRANSPORTER - DO NOT TOUCH.”

The top shelf was well within Dr. Robotnik’s reach, but it was too high up for Agent Stone, so he set up a stepstool and carefully reached over the top of the Multiverse Transporter. However, just as he placed his hand on the batteries, he slipped off of the stepstool and accidentally knocked the red button on the metal box with his elbow on his way down. As he got up from the floor, cursing under his breath, Stone noticed some strange flashing lights on the Multiverse Transporter, and then, he felt a powerful electric pulse running through his body. “Doctor!” he screamed, hoping that his boss could still hear him from inside the Closet of Abandoned Inventions, that the doctor wasn’t too busy riding a rollercoaster or going trick-or-treating with his grandfather to help Agent Stone. “I don’t know what I did, but something’s very, very wrong here…”

That was when everything went black.

When Agent Stone awoke, he felt waves crashing against his skin and water filling up his lungs. His suit was dragging him down, but he kicked up to the surface and tried to tread water, and for a moment, he managed to get his head above the waterline. He gasped for air and spit out all of the sewage-infested water that had gotten into his mouth, and before he went under again, he spotted Big Ben and the London Eye in the distance.

He was in the River Thames.

Drowning.

Stone attempted to resurface and swim to the edge of the river, but the current was working against him. Nevertheless, he splashed his way towards the nearest dock, and when he lifted his head to breathe, he spotted a woman standing on the shore. She appeared to be in her early sixties, she had blue eyes and blonde hair streaked with gray, and she was wearing a lab coat, a dark blue dress, and the exact same control gloves that Dr. Robotnik had. “Hey!” she shouted to Agent Stone as he desperately treaded water, struggling to keep his head up. “I’ve got you, kiddo. Just come a little closer to the dock, and I’ll pull you in.”

“I don’t know if I can make it…” Stone said.

The woman glanced around for a moment, trying to figure out what to do, and then she looked back at Stone and said, “Throw me your tie.”

Agent Stone frantically removed his tie and tossed one end of it out to the blonde woman, and sure enough, she snatched it out of the air and pulled him to the shore. “Are you okay?” she asked him as she helped him climb onto the dock. Stone noticed that she had an American accent - she clearly wasn’t from around here either.

“I-I don’t know,” Stone said, shivering and gasping for air again. “Where am I?”

“Just outside of Battersea Park in London,” the woman said as she took off her lab coat and wrapped it around Agent Stone like a towel. “I don’t know what happened - it was like you magically appeared in the river.”

As he dried off his face, Stone at least took comfort in the fact that he hadn’t gone very far. He must have gotten thrown out of the hideout after he pushed the red button, and all he had to do now was find the Crab, or possibly just meet Dr. Robotnik and his grandfather at the G.U.N. headquarters.

“Listen, I-I’ve got to go,” Stone said as he gave the woman her lab coat back, even though he was still dripping wet from his impromptu swim in the River Thames. “I have to find my boss, he’s probably wondering what happened to me…”

“What’s your name?” the woman asked him just as he was about to leave.

“Agent Stone.”

“Agent?” she said skeptically. “Which agency do you work for?”

“It’s just my first name,” Stone said, much to her relief. “I work for Dr. Ivo Robotnik. I’m his assistant.”

“No, you’re not,” she said. “Ivo doesn’t have an assistant - unless you count me and Shadow, but I’d say that we’re more like moral support.”

Agent Stone suddenly looked back at the woman, and he wasn’t sure whether he was more shocked by the fact that she supposedly knew Dr. Robotnik or the fact that she thought he didn’t exist. He was about to say something, but all of a sudden, he remembered the label on the metal box, and the gears began to turn in his mind…

“Have we met?” the woman asked. “Your voice sounds kind of familiar.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Stone said. “Uh, this is going to sound crazy…”

“Please. I hang out with anthropomorphic aliens on a regular basis,” the woman said. “Whatever you’re about to say, I’m sure I’ve heard worse.”

“I think I’m in an alternate universe.”

The woman took a few minutes to process that, and then she said, “I told Ivo not to test the Multiverse Transporter without me! We agreed to wait until we could replace the flux capacitor, but no, my baby cousin decided to play around with the fabric of the multiverse instead of fixing the espresso machine…” She then laughed and said, “Who am I kidding? I’d do the same thing if I was in his shoes.”

“So…how do I get home?” Agent Stone asked. “I’m supposed to be picking up some spare batteries for Dr. Robotnik. In my universe, not yours.”

“We’ll get this sorted out once we get back to the lab,” the woman said. “I don’t know if it’s quite what you’re used to in your universe, but we have hot tea, snacks, and a couple of very comfy lounge chairs in the break room, and I’ll work with Shadow and Ivo to get you back home.”

Stone sighed with relief, glad that this nightmare would be over soon, and then he turned to his newfound companion and said, “Thank you. You didn’t have to do…well, any of this.”

“No problem, Agent Stone,” she said, and as she typed something into her control gloves, Stone took in his surroundings. The park they were in appeared to be empty, and it was enclosed on all sides by a large, chain-link fence. There was a construction project happening on a nearby street, blocked off by rows of orange traffic cones, and there was no obvious entrance or exit to Battersea Park.

“Wait, how are we going to get out of here?” Agent Stone asked. “How’d you even get here in the first place?”

“Don’t worry about it,” the woman said as she continued typing. “I can use these gloves to replicate Shadow’s teleportation abilities. All I have to do is snap my fingers, and we’ll be in the lab.”

Sure enough, the woman snapped her fingers, and she and Agent Stone instantly appeared in the middle of a science lab. It was about twice the size of the Crab, but it was about three times as messy, with beakers, telescopes, and unfinished egg-shaped drones strewn about the lab benches. Stone spotted Shadow out of the corner of his eye, although he looked a little different than he remembered, a little older, grayer, and grizzlier, and then he looked all over the lab for Dr. Robotnik, hoping to find another familiar face, but he didn’t immediately see the doctor anywhere. Stone panicked for a moment, but he reassured himself by remembering that Dr. Robotnik at least existed in this strange alternate reality, if what the blonde woman had said earlier was true.

“Welcome to Robotnik Labs,” the woman said. “Oh, and, by the way, I think I’ve forgotten to introduce myself.” She reached out to shake Stone’s hand and then said, “I’m Dr. Maria Robotnik.”

Chapter Text

“Who’s the new guy?”

Before Agent Stone knew it, Shadow suddenly appeared next to Maria, and Stone finally got a good look at the hedgehog. It occurred to him that he’d never actually seen an adult member of Shadow’s species before - this version of Shadow was a little over four feet tall, his black quills were flecked with silver, and he was wearing a lab coat and a tiny pair of pince-nez glasses. As Agent Stone examined the Ultimate Lifeform, he wondered if the dark-furred hedgehog had somehow managed to avoid being imprisoned in this universe, if he’d actually been around all this time. Considering that Stone was also standing next to a woman who had been dead for the last fifty years in his universe, he supposed that anything was possible.

“This is Agent Stone,” Maria said to Shadow. “He came here from an alternate universe. Apparently he works for Ivo.”

Shadow looked at Stone warily, and then he asked, “Why does he look like he just walked out of a swimming pool?”

“I can explain,” Stone said. “I was inside of a giant mechanical crab at the bottom of the River Thames, so when I set off the Multiverse Transporter and came here, I ended up…in the river.”

“And then I rescued him,” Maria said.

“I can’t complain about you saving a man from drowning, but Maria, what exactly were you doing by the Thames?” Shadow asked.

“You know that astronomy app you told me to download? The one that lets you see stars during the day?” Maria said. “I thought I’d test it out. Battersea Park has the lowest amount of light pollution in the city, so I went there first.”

“Battersea Park is under construction until August.”

“So what?” Maria said. “I got in there, didn’t I? No one stopped me.”

“You should be more careful,” Shadow said. “The FBI is still on the lookout for us, so you might need to be…a little bit more discreet.”

“They don’t have jurisdiction here, Shadow,” Maria said. She looked around the lab and then turned to Stone and said, “I’m sorry about the mess, by the way. We weren’t expecting visitors.”

“I’ll clean up,” Shadow said. The hedgehog suddenly ran off, and when he returned a few seconds later, all of the lab benches had been scrubbed and polished, and he was carrying a dry change of clothes for Agent Stone. “I found these at the souvenir shop next door,” he explained. “I’m sorry about the design. It’s the only thing they had in your size.”

He handed Agent Stone a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt that said “I Went To London And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt,” and Stone immediately thanked him and then ducked into the nearest bathroom to change. When he emerged again, Maria and Shadow were in the middle of a conversation that he didn’t fully understand.

“How’s Sonic doing?” Maria asked Shadow, while Stone stood in the corner, confused as to why Maria, Shadow, and the doctor apparently weren’t trying to destroy the hedgehog in this universe.

“He’s okay, I think,” Shadow said. “He keeps trying to challenge me to a race. When he called me this morning, I had to explain to him that I’m not nearly as fast as I was when I was his age.”

“So…you used to be able to run at the speed of light, and now you can only run at the speed of sound?” Maria said. “Is that the problem?”

“Something like that,” Shadow said.

Maria laughed and then said, “If I had to guess, Sonic’s races are less about the race and more about the family bonding. He just wants to get to know you, Shadow. And I know you have a lot more to offer than just your powers - although I’ll admit those powers are also pretty cool.”

Shadow was about to say something, but all of a sudden, Maria noticed Agent Stone standing there, carrying his drenched suit and tie. “Let’s put that in the washing machine so it’s ready for you when you go back to your universe,” Maria said to Agent Stone just as Shadow took Stone’s old outfit, darted off, and then returned. “And speaking of going back to your universe…Shadow, do you know where Ivo went?”

Agent Stone had been wondering the same thing ever since he got here, but thankfully, Shadow immediately answered the question. “He went back to his lab after we finished hate-watching Mufasa.”

“Ivo has his own lab that’s attached to ours,” Maria explained to Stone. “I work with a lot of chemicals, he works with a lot of electronics, so we decided it was best to keep those things separate. We help each other out though - I work on his projects sometimes, he works on mine, and Shadow works as a lab assistant for both of us.”

“What exactly do you study?” Stone asked as he followed her to Dr. Robotnik’s lab.

“Exobiology, mainly, but I occasionally dabble in biochemistry and astrophysics,” Maria said. “I also went to music school for a few years, but that was more for fun than anything else.”

“You almost gave your grandfather a heart attack when you showed up to Christmas that one year saying that you wanted to be a professional guitarist,” Shadow said.

“No regrets,” Maria said with a smile. “Oh, and then Ivo’s expertise is mostly in engineering and robotics. Applied physics has never really been my thing, so it’s good that we have my cousin around to help us out.” As they finally approached the doctor’s lab, Maria turned to Stone and said, “You know, I should probably warn you that Ivo can be a little…intense sometimes. But he’s a total sweetheart once you get to know him.” Agent Stone gave her a perplexed look - the doctor was many things, but he’d never once heard anyone describe him as “sweet.” Maria must have noticed his confusion, because she quickly said, “Who am I kidding? You work for Ivo. You’re probably used to all of his idiosyncrasies by now.”

Maria pushed the door open, and Agent Stone looked around the lab for a moment, taking it all in. Dr. Robotnik’s lab looked almost exactly like the main lab in the Crab, filled to the brim with storage space for all of his Badniks, and Dr. Robotnik himself looked much like he had a year ago - before he met Sonic, before his trip to the Mushroom Planet, before Stone spent eight months waiting for the doctor’s return. However, unlike Stone’s version of the doctor, this universe’s Dr. Robotnik appeared to be actually working instead of lying around on the couch eating burritos and watching telenovelas all day.

“I’ve done it!” Dr. Robotnik said as he closed the side panel of the espresso machine and then tore off his goggles. “Using my unparalleled intellect, I’ve made a breakthrough beyond your feeble imaginations, I’ve succeeded where you, my dear relatives, have so painfully and repeatedly failed. Maria, Shadow, I’m proud to announce that…I’ve fixed the espresso machine!”

“Oh, thank goodness,” Maria said as the doctor danced across the lab, clearly getting a little carried away with his celebrations. “I was starting to get caffeine withdrawals.”

“Doctor,” Agent Stone said, sighing dreamily as he watched this alternate version of his boss, only now realizing how much he’d missed the doctor in the hour or so since he’d last seen him. “It’s really you.”

“Don’t call me ‘doctor.’ We’re all doctors around here, so that’s going to get very confusing very fast,” Dr. Robotnik said as he approached Maria, Shadow, and Stone. “Maria has six PhDs, I have five, and Shadow…you have one?”

“I have an honorary doctorate from Harvard,” Shadow said. “I was asked to give the commencement speech two years ago, being the first alien to land on Earth and all. So yes, I’m Dr. Shadow Robotnik now.”

“Which seems very unfair, given that’s my alma mater, but whatever, who cares, we’ll let bygones be bygones,” Dr. Robotnik said before turning to Agent Stone and shaking his hand. “Call me Ivo. Everyone else does.”

“Okay…Ivo,” Agent Stone said. The words came out strangely, as if his mouth was physically rejecting the idea of calling the doctor by his first name.

“Anyways, this is Agent Stone,” Maria said to her cousin. “He says he’s your assistant in an alternate universe.”

“Hmm, a henchman from another dimension,” Ivo said as he carefully studied Agent Stone. “My Multiverse Transporter must have worked…or at least, it did in your universe. Tell me, what kind of flux capacitor did you use? Was it static? Quantum? Or did you decide to use the wormhole method instead? My last round of calculations indicated that a Schwarzchild black hole would be too unstable, but perhaps it could work if the background radiation levels in your universe are greater than in ours.”

“I don’t know how the Multiverse Transporter works,” Stone said sheepishly. “I accidentally pushed a red button, and I ended up here.”

“Well, clearly, I didn’t hire you for your brains,” Ivo said dismissively.

“Says the guy who used to lick Shadow’s quills because he thought it would give him superpowers,” Maria snarked.

“First of all, I was all of five years old when I did that. And second…” A devious smile appeared on Ivo’s face, and then he said, “If we’re going to share all of our most embarrassing childhood memories, I could always tell Agent Stone about the birthday cake story.”

“You wouldn’t dare!”

Agent Stone quietly chuckled, and then he glanced toward the espresso machine, realizing that he was in more familiar territory now. “Could I interest you all in some coffee?” he said to the Robotniks. “I studied at the Istituto del Caffè in Milan, and the doctor…the Ivo in my universe loves the way I make his lattes.”

“Yes, that would be great, Stone,” Maria said. “Maybe we can figure out how to get you home while we have our coffee break.”

“What can I make for you?” Stone asked.

“I could go for a chai tea latte with a splash of oat milk,” Maria said.

“I’ll just have a black coffee,” Shadow said.

Ivo was about to tell Agent Stone his coffee order, but Stone just said, “And you would like a latte with steamed Austrian goat milk. I’ll get those brewing for you.”

“I like him already,” Ivo said.

The three Robotniks went into the break room while Stone worked on preparing their drinks, going through the familiar motions of brewing the espresso, steaming the milk, and then, finally, drawing a design in the foam of the latte. For Maria, he drew a portrait of her peering through a telescope, carefully capturing the soft lines of her face and the brightness of her eyes. Shadow hadn’t ordered a drink with milk, so Stone placed a lid over his black coffee and doodled a portrait of him in Sharpie, nearly running out of black ink as he tried to nail down the hedgehog’s dark fur and his usual grim expression.

As for Ivo, Stone had been drawing him for years. He had Dr. Robotnik’s face burned in the back of his brain, it lingered in his mind and haunted his dreams. Stone only had to resist the urge to draw little hearts in the doctor’s latte - after all, from Ivo’s perspective, the two of them had only just met.

Once Stone finished making the Robotniks’ drinks, he loaded them onto a tray and brought them into the break room. “Here you go,” Agent Stone said with a smile as he handed the Robotniks their coffee. “One chai tea latte with oat milk, one black coffee, and one latte with steamed Austrian goat milk.”

“Wow, Stone, this is…impressive,” Maria said as she admired the design that Stone had made in the foam of her latte. “It’s almost too pretty to drink. Thank you.”

“I’ve never seen anyone get my quills right before,” Shadow said.

“My mustache isn’t that bushy, the hairstyle is completely wrong, and you’ve made me about 36% more physically attractive than I am in real life,” Ivo said. “But otherwise, yes, it’s a shockingly accurate likeness.” Ivo then took a sip of his coffee, and his eyes suddenly went wide. “Stone!” he exclaimed as he frantically looked back and forth between Agent Stone and his latte. “I don’t know how you did it, but this…this is the SINGLE MOST DELICIOUS LATTE I HAVE EVER HAD! What did you put in it?”

“One shot of espresso and six ounces of Austrian goat milk heated to exactly 150°F and frothed with a steam wand,” Agent Stone said, glad that the doctor was finally taking an interest in the latte making process. “Usually, I add two teaspoons of sugar, but you didn’t have the same brand of goat milk that we have at home - we normally import it from a smallholder goat farm in Carinthia - so I adjusted that to one teaspoon to account for the difference in taste and to better match your preferred flavor profile.” He smiled and then said, “It’s a lot of work, but you are Dr. Ivo Robotnik, the greatest engineer on the planet and the most gifted mastermind of the 21st century. You need fuel so that your brilliant brain can operate at maximum efficiency.”

Ivo stared at Agent Stone, dumbfounded, and then, after a few moments, Maria said, “I think you broke Ivo.”

“No, no, I’m perfectly fine, just as functional as the espresso machine, thanks for asking,” Ivo said. “I think my mind just short-circuited for a second there. You know, in all of my years of coffee drinking, I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone pay that much attention to my latte order.” He glanced back at Stone for a moment, and then he asked Maria, “Where did you find this guy?”

“Drowning in the Thames,” Maria said, but that seemed to confuse Ivo even more, so she just said, “I’ll explain later.”

Ivo took another sip of his latte, and then he said, “I would be extremely curious to learn more about what Agent Stone’s universe is like. He and my alternate self certainly seem to be…close.”

“But he didn’t seem to recognize me when I pulled him out of the river,” Maria said. “Ooh, maybe his universe is the one where NASA accepted my application to be an astronaut, and I’m off exploring Mars without you guys. That would be cool.”

“Hopefully, in Stone’s universe, you two talk less,” Shadow said.

Maria, Shadow, and Ivo looked toward Agent Stone expectantly, and it was only then that Stone realized that he was going to have to be the bearer of some very, very bad news.

Chapter Text

“Let me get this straight,” Maria said to Agent Stone as the four of them sat around the table, drinking their coffee. “In your universe, I died as a child, Shadow was trapped in stasis for fifty years and just now woke up, and Ivo is evil for some reason.”

“And you work for me,” Ivo said to Stone. “Or, more precisely, you work for some alternate version of me, who is an unrepentant, card-carrying, world-conquering supervillain. And he’s bald, apparently?”

“Why is that the part you care about?” Shadow asked him.

“I told you that you needed to do something about that receding hairline,” Maria teased Ivo. “But this…this is all so weird.”

“Maybe you could tell me about your universe, since I’ve already told you about mine,” Agent Stone said as he sipped on his latte.

“Uh, sure,” Maria said. “As far I can tell, our universes diverged when Project Shadow was cancelled. You said that I died in an explosion and that my grandfather and Shadow were imprisoned, but…we escaped. We left in the dead of night, and G.U.N. couldn’t find us when they came to shut down the program. While we were in hiding, Grandpa tracked down his long-lost grandson…”

“Otherwise known as me,” Ivo interrupted. “Out of all of Papa’s precious grandbabies, I was always his favorite.”

“You know that’s not true,” Shadow said.

“Well, maybe if I say it enough times, it will be,” Ivo said.

“Anyways, Ivo came to live with us, and we all had a pretty normal childhood from there…or at least as normal of a childhood as it’s possible to have while also hiding a hedgehog from the U.S. military,” Maria said. “The ACLU eventually took up our case, and the Supreme Court ruled that Shadow was legally a person in The United States v. Shadow The Hedgehog.”

“Is your grandfather still alive?” Stone asked.

The three Robotniks exchanged confused looks. “Is he alive in your universe?” Maria asked.

“He would be 110 if he were alive today,” Ivo said, pretending to type into a calculator as he did some quick mental math. “Only about one in five million people survive for that long, although we Robotniks do have a tendency to beat the odds.”

“Except for when it comes to male pattern baldness,” Maria said, earning her a death glare from Ivo. “I’m sorry - you set up that joke way too well!”

“If you bring up my impending hair loss again, I will use the Multiverse Transporter to go to Agent Stone’s universe, find out where you were buried, and dance on your grave.”

“Yeah, right,” Maria said, laughing. “I’d like to see you try.”

“Our grandfather died of a rare lung disease in 2005,” Shadow said to Stone.

“2005?” Ivo said. “I thought it was ‘04, and our grandgeezer only made it that long out of pure spite.”

“He wasn’t at my wedding, so it must have been ‘04,” Maria said.

“He wouldn’t have been invited to your wedding even if he was alive,” Shadow reminded her.

“My relationship with my grandfather was…complicated toward the end,” Maria explained to Stone. “He said something once about all of my troublemaking being cute for a little girl but uncouth for a grown woman, and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I mean, between the three of us…we really did love our grandfather as best we could, but he wanted two spoiled grandchildren and a science experiment, not two disaster bisexuals and a brooding hedgehog.”

“And yet, you found a cure for pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis for him,” Ivo pointed out.

“No one deserves to die like that,” Maria said sadly.

“What about the Badniks?” Agent Stone asked. “You don’t work for the military, you’re not trying to rule the world…what exactly do you use them for?”

Ivo grinned, and from the sheer manic delight in his smile, Stone could tell that this universe’s Dr. Robotnik didn’t get too many opportunities to pontificate about his robots. He leaned closer to Stone and then said, “Finally, someone has their priorities straight! My precious babies might look like oversized hard-boiled eggs, but they’re actually autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles, perfectly programmed to execute a variety of complex tasks that would be frankly impossible for the common commercial drone. My machines are capable of virtually anything from conducting search and rescue operations to distributing humanitarian aid to assisting people with disabilities - all thanks to me and my genius-level intellect.”

“That’s incredible, Doctor…I mean Ivo,” Stone said.

“Thank you, Agent Stone,” Ivo said as he took one last sip of his drink. “And thank you again for the latte. It was truly delicious.”

Stone glanced at the empty cup in front of Ivo, and he said, “I could make you another one if you’d like, sir.”

Ivo thought about it for a moment, anxiously fidgeting with his coffee mug as he did so. “As much as I would enjoy that, I think I would prefer to have you stay at the table,” he said, staring intently at Agent Stone. “And please. Call me Ivo.”

Agent Stone suddenly turned bright red - was this universe’s Dr. Robotnik trying to flirt with him? He couldn’t help but think that Ivo was just toying with his emotions - the disparity of their intellects was too great for Ivo to be genuinely attracted to him - but whatever he was doing, it was definitely working.

“Uhh…so what about the Pacific Northwest blackout last year?” Agent Stone asked in a desperate attempt to change the subject. “Did that happen in your universe?”

“Yep, the Department of Defense hired me to investigate, and I brought Shadow and Ivo along for the ride as usual,” Maria said. “We found Sonic in about five minutes, talked to him and the Wachowskis for a bit, confirmed that he wasn’t going to cause any more trouble, and then told Sonic to call Shadow if he needed anything.”

“Sonic and I remain very close friends,” Shadow said. “Tom and Maddie are still his parents, but sometimes, he needs another mentor figure to talk to, hedgehog-to-hedgehog, and…I’m always here for that.”

“To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of Sonic being raised by a cop instead of a perfectly competent hedgehog, but that’s just my two cents,” Maria said.

“To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of that dork-upine in general, but that’s just my two cents. Tails, on the other hand, at least has a functioning brain - I help him build gadgets from time to time,” Ivo said. “Also, Maria, is there any chance that I could hire an assistant?”

“We don’t have the funding for that,” Maria said.

“Can I apply for a grant so that we have the funding to hire an assistant?”

“Is Ivo…volunteering to do paperwork for us?” Shadow said, and he high-fived Maria while Ivo’s gaze lingered on Agent Stone.

“Let’s at least try to stay on track here,” Maria said as she gently elbowed her younger cousin. “Ivo, how close are we to having a working Multiverse Transporter?”

“The Multiverse Transporter is about as close to completion as Robot vs. Biolizard 3, which is to say that it’s 98% finished and has been for the last several decades. I just need to…run some tests. You know, to make sure that Agent Stone doesn’t get blasted with cosmic radiation or split into his constituent atomic particles on his way back to my bald-headed doppelganger, who, for the record, just so happens to have impeccable taste in both lattes and baristas,” Ivo said as he glanced back toward Agent Stone with a smile. “A lesser man might take years to finish it, but I can have the Multiverse Transporter done for you by tomorrow.”

“Stone, can you wait that long?” Maria asked.

Dr. Robotnik couldn’t wait that long. The doctor was supposed to be at the G.U.N. headquarters in Stone’s universe in less than an hour, and he would need his trusted personal assistant to deliver him his laser-bending thermo-distortion suit. As for Stone, however, he had absolutely no desire to betray his boss in his hour of need, but he wasn’t sure that he had much choice in the matter. He could ask this universe’s Dr. Robotnik to test his Multiverse Transporter on him right now, and maybe it would send him home, but he would be of no use to his universe’s Robotnik if something went horribly wrong. It would be best to wait until the Robotniks were sure that the transporter was working properly.

Besides, just from the way this universe’s Robotnik was looking at him, Stone was starting to think that he could get used to this alternate reality, even if only for a day.

“I can wait,” Agent Stone said.

“Great, glad to hear it,” Maria said. “We have a spare bedroom down the hall, since we always seem to end up working in the lab at three o’clock in the morning, and it’s easier to sleep here than try to catch the Underground that late. You can stay there for tonight.”

Ivo was about to say something, but all of a sudden, a loud buzzing noise rang through the lab. “That’s the dryer,” Shadow said to Agent Stone. “I think your suit’s done.”

“I’ll go get it,” Stone said, flustered, but as soon as he left the room, he could hear the Robotniks talking about him behind his back.

“Ivo, you have got to stop staring at Agent Stone!” Maria said. “He’s going to think you’re a creep. Why don’t you just ask him out to dinner like a normal person?”

“Because I’m his boss in an alternate universe?” Ivo said. “I wouldn’t want to…make things awkward.”

“You’ve already made things awkward, Ivo,” Maria said.

“Well, what do I do now?” Ivo asked.

Maria thought about it and then said, “You’re his boss in an alternate universe, but I think the key words here are ‘in an alternate universe.’ And I’m pretty sure Stone wouldn’t look at you like you just hung the stars in the sky if your evil twin paid him any attention, so maybe you should just shoot your shot and see where this goes,” Maria said. “Right Shadow?”

“I think you’re playing with fire with all of this multiverse stuff,” Shadow said. “And I don’t want Ivo to get his heart broken.”

Maria sighed and then turned to Ivo and said, “I just want you to have what me and Elise have. I want you to be happy, so…do whatever makes you happy, okay?”

“Okay,” Ivo said. He was quiet for a moment, and then he shouted, “Agent Stone!”

“Yes, Doctor…I mean, Ivo?” Stone said as he ran back into the break room.

“Would you like to go out to dinner with me this evening?” Ivo asked. “There’s a lovely French bistro just down the road from here. C’est très romantique.”

Stone felt his heart pounding, remembering all of the times he’d imagined this exact scenario, barely able to believe that it was happening now, in real life, but as he locked eyes with the doctor, Ivo must have noticed his hesitation.

“If this is too forward of me, or if you’re not interested, just say so,” Ivo said. “I promise I won’t be offended in the slightest.”

“No, that’s not it at all…” Stone said before his face broke out into a wide, joyous smile. “I would love to, Doctor.”

Chapter Text

“Stone, can we talk?” Shadow said to Agent Stone a few minutes before his date with Ivo was supposed to begin. Stone nodded as he adjusted his tie, and the hedgehog immediately pulled him aside and gestured up towards the wall. “Do you see that?”

Stone looked up, and there was some sort of strange-looking multicolored rifle hanging from the wall. “It looks like a…gun?” he said.

“It’s not just any gun,” Shadow said. “Maria and Ivo helped me build it. This weapon is infused with chaos energy, and it has the power to send people to a planet that only has mushrooms. We’ve only used it once, and it took the victim eight months to find his way home.” Shadow looked at Stone intently, and then he said, “I know who you are, Agent Stone. And if you hurt Ivo in any way, I will hunt you down, and I promise that I will make your life into a living hell, just like Maria and I did to Ivo’s high school bullies. Do you understand me?”

“Y-yes,” Stone said nervously. “I understand.”

“Good, I’m glad we’re on the same page,” Shadow said. “Enjoy your date.”

Just as he said that, Maria and Ivo finally emerged from Ivo’s lab. “Well, we made some good progress on the Multiverse Transporter, and we can finish the rest tomorrow morning,” Maria said. “Ivo, Stone, have fun on your date. Shadow, I think it’s just you and me tonight.”

“Just like old times,” Shadow said with a slight smile.

“So…jam session, Robot vs. Biolizard 2, and then we’ll go stargazing?” Maria said.

“Sounds like a plan,” Shadow said, and just as he said that, Ivo took Agent Stone by the hand and dragged him out the door.

“Are you okay?” Ivo asked as soon as they were out of the lab. “You seem a little…trepidatious.”

“I think Shadow just threatened to kill me,” Agent Stone said.

“Oh, he does that every time,” Ivo said. “It’s scared away a handful of our prospective suitors over the years - one of Maria’s ex-boyfriends ran for the hills the second Shadow called himself ‘the ultimate lifeform’ - but really, I wouldn’t want to waste my time pursuing someone romantically unless they can figure out how to deal with my overprotective big brother who just so happens to be a hedgehog.”

As they started walking toward the bistro, Ivo suddenly smiled, threw an arm around Stone, and pulled him closer. Like his alternate counterpart, Ivo didn’t seem to have much understanding of the concept of personal space, not around Stone at least, but unlike his alternate self, he just came off as playful and affectionate rather than sinister.

“If it makes you feel any better, Shadow volunteers at the local animal shelter when he’s not at the lab, so just ask him for some pictures of cute kittens next time you see him,” Ivo whispered to Stone. “I’m sure he’ll kindly oblige.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Stone said, smiling at the ground.

“You clean up nicely,” Ivo said, and it was only then that Stone realized that this was the first time that this version of the doctor had seen him in anything other than sweatpants and an ill-fitting souvenir T-shirt.

“Oh, this is just what I wore to work this morning,” Stone said.

“Well, it suits you very well,” Ivo said.

“Thank you, Doctor…I mean, Ivo,” Stone said as he chuckled over Ivo’s terrible pun. “You look nice too. You always do.”

Just as he said that, Stone and Ivo arrived at Chez Pierre, and the doctor immediately asked for a table for two just outside the restaurant. The waitress led them to a secluded spot right by the river, and as he sat down across from Ivo, Stone couldn’t help but notice the way his eyes sparkled in the moonlight, the way the unseasonably warm breeze gently tousled his hair and his mustache.

Très romantique, as the doctor would put it.

As Ivo leaned over to grab a complimentary slice of bread, Agent Stone realized that even physically, he wasn’t a perfect copy of the doctor from his universe. The differences were subtle, but they were there, and Stone was surprised that he hadn’t noticed them earlier. His hair was a few shades lighter, his smile lines were deeper, and there was a faint scar on the bridge of his nose.

“Where did you get that?” Stone asked, gesturing toward the scar.

“Oh, this?” Ivo said. “When I was nine years old, I went roller skating with Shadow and Maria, and Shadow triple dog dared me to copy one of his spin jumps. I calculated the precise angle and launch speed necessary to accomplish this remarkable feat, but I neglected to take into account that I couldn’t skate quite as quickly as that radioactive rodent, so I fell on the sidewalk and broke my nose instead.” Ivo paused for a moment, and then he said, “For the record, my calculations were correct. They always are. It’s not my fault that I’m not Shadow. I can’t run at the speed of sound or breathe in space or shoot lightning out of my fingers…”

“Actually, I have seen you do that,” Stone said.

“What, shoot lightning out of my fingers?” Ivo said with a disbelieving laugh.

“When you absorbed the power of the Master Emerald,” Stone said, sighing dreamily as he remembered the moment. “You were magnificent. Divine, even.”

Ivo took a moment to process that, and then he lowered his voice and said, “Now that my family isn’t here to make fun of me for saying this, I will admit that my villainous alter ego sounds extremely cool. Not that I condone enslaving humanity or taking over the multiverse or trying to murder Sonic, but I do admire his confidence. Wait, remind me why I’m trying to kill Sonic in your universe again?”

“You want to use his quills to power your machines,” Stone said.

“I guess you don’t have Maria’s artificial chaos energy in your universe,” Ivo said. “Still, Sonic’s a child. A talkative, egotistical child with infinite energy and unlimited speed, but that’s not even close to a fair fight! I should pick on someone my own size.”

“There’s no one as brilliant as you in my universe, Doctor…I mean, Ivo.”

“That’s only because Maria’s dead,” Ivo said grimly. He then paused and said, “Did you know that she’s won the Nobel Prize twice?”

“Really?” Stone said.

“She doesn’t bring it up often, but it’s true - although if you want to get technical about it, her second one was rescinded because she kept insisting to the committee that Shadow and I should share the prize with her,” Ivo said. “They decided in the end that it would be easier to give it to someone else.”

“I’m sorry you didn’t get your prize.”

“It’s their loss if they don’t want to recognize my genius,” Ivo said. “But my point is that it’s easy to feel like a disappointment around here, and I can’t even resent anyone over it - Maria’s too nice to me, Shadow has his own issues, and if it wasn’t for Grandpappy, I wouldn’t have had a family at all.”

Stone was about to respond, but before he could say anything, a waitress arrived at their table. “Are we ready to order?” she asked.

“I think so,” Agent Stone said. “I’ll have the coq au vin.”

“Excellent pronunciation, Stone,” Ivo said while Stone beamed in his direction. “And I will have the Croque Madame.”

“But hold the ham, substitute sliced cheddar instead of Gruyère, substitute plain white bread instead of pain de mie, and cut it at a perfect 45 degree angle before you serve it,” both of them said simultaneously.

The waitress seemed befuddled, so Stone turned to her and said, “Just put a poached egg on top of a grilled cheese off of the kids’ menu - he won’t be able to tell the difference.”

“I will most definitely be able to tell the difference, Stone!” Ivo insisted, but as soon as the waitress was gone, he asked, “How did you know all of that?”

“Because you ordered the same thing when we took some of our government clients to a French restaurant two years ago,” Stone explained.

“It’s nice to have someone who pays attention to me for once,” Ivo said with a smile. “But it seems strange that you know everything about me, and I know virtually nothing about you.”

“That can be amended,” Stone said. “Ask me anything, and I’ll do my best to answer it.”

“Anything at all?” Ivo said, and Stone nodded. He couldn’t think of anything that he wouldn’t tell Dr. Robotnik, if he ever bothered to ask. “What’s your IQ score?”

“I’ve always thought that IQ scores were meaningless,” Stone said.

“They aren’t,” Ivo interrupted.

“But you made me take the test a few years ago in an effort to prove once and for all that I was an imbecile, and I got a score of 301.”

“One point higher than me,” Ivo said, somehow simultaneously both impressed and infuriated.

“I’m sure it was a fluke,” Stone assured him.

“We’ll see about that,” Ivo said. “Name the most elegant formula in mathematics.”

“Euler’s identity.”

“European capitals arranged alphabetically by the fourth letter?”

Stone laughed and then said, “Doc…Ivo...when I said you could ask me anything, I was hoping that you’d ask me what sport I like to watch or what movie I’d recommend or which historical figure I’d like to go to dinner with. This feels like I’m back in school.”

“Alright, I’ll humor you,” Ivo said. “What’s your favorite sport to watch?”

“Freestyle motocross.”

“Favorite movie?”

“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”

“If you could have anyone in the world as a dinner guest, dead or alive, who would it be?”

Agent Stone smiled, and then he said, “I’d have to go with you, Doctor.”

As soon as Stone said that, Ivo nearly choked on his baguette, but he quickly regained some semblance of composure. “I’m sorry, that…that is the most adorable thing I’ve ever heard,” Ivo said, blushing furiously. “It’s a terrible answer though. I would have gone with Nikola Tesla.”

It was then that Agent Stone realized that the puddle of a man in front of him wasn’t the doctor, or at very least, he wasn’t his doctor. Ivo might have had the same face and the same voice and the same mannerisms as the Dr. Robotnik he knew, but he still wasn’t the mad genius that Stone had spent the last eight years with. They’d never gossiped about their colleagues at the Department of Defense or bonded over their absent families. Stone hadn’t taken over a coffee shop while waiting for Ivo to return from the Mushroom Planet or fought alongside him in the Death Egg or made him a latte with steamed Austrian goat milk every morning for nearly a decade. He had no history with this version of Dr. Robotnik, and Stone still wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that.

The food finally arrived - a plate of braised chicken and vegetables and a sandwich that, to the restaurant’s credit, perfectly matched Ivo’s ridiculous specifications, although the doctor couldn’t bring himself to compliment it beyond telling the waitress that it was “satisfactory.” As they both started to eat, Ivo turned to Stone and asked, “Do you have any siblings?”

“I have one younger sister,” Stone said. “We’re not in touch though. I’m not as close to my family as you are to yours.”

“That must have its perks though. Maria and Shadow can be a bit…overbearing at times,” Ivo said. “How many languages can you speak?”

“Three - English is my native language, I spoke Arabic at home when I was growing up, and I learned Spanish in high school,” Stone said.

“I’m fluent in seventeen,” Ivo said. “English, Español, Français, Deutsch, Italiano, Português, Nihongo, Hanguk-eo, Tagalog, Farsi, Hindi, Türkçe, Nederlands, Kiswahili, tlhIngan Hol, Tiếng Việt, and…” He made a few gestures with his left hand, and upon seeing Stone’s confusion, he clarified, “American Sign Language.”

“That’s…a lot,” Stone said. “I think the doctor from my universe only knows about eleven or twelve.”

“I picked up most of them while we were hiding from G.U.N. It turns out that moving to a new country every month while you’re still in the critical period for prefrontal cortex development does wonders for language acquisition,” Ivo said. “Is there anything you like to do outside of work?”

“Drawing, cooking, making coffee, going on long motorcycle rides, sometimes knitting,” Stone said. “I made a knit replica of a Badnik for Dr. Robotnik’s birthday one year.”

Ivo smiled and then said, “I’m sure my criminal counterpart appreciated your gift.”

“No, he actually used it for target practice for the latest version of the Buzz Bombers,” Stone said.

Ivo’s smile suddenly fell, apparently appalled by his alternate self’s actions. “My alter ego sounds like a real piece of work,” he said, as if Stone didn’t already know that, as if it wasn’t part of what he liked about the doctor. “You deserve better.”

Stone nodded, even though he wasn’t sure if he really did deserve better. Even if he did, he wasn’t sure that he wanted better.

“The Multiverse Transporter is going to be finished by tomorrow morning,” Ivo said. “But if you’d like to stay in this universe and take a nice, extended vacation from my evil doppelganger…I wouldn't mind that.” Ivo smiled and then added, “I’d like it very much, actually.”

“I’ll think about it,” Stone said, and he was telling the truth. A part of him liked the idea of staying in this alternate reality for a while, making coffee for Ivo, Maria, and Shadow every morning, having a million more nights just like this one, but on the other hand, he didn’t know what his Dr. Robotnik would do without him.

Then again, why did he care? Dr. Robotnik had his grandfather, and now that he had a real family, he couldn’t care less about Agent Stone. Meanwhile, this Robotnik’s grandfather was dead, and even though he had his surrogate siblings, he actually seemed to want Agent Stone in his life, and right now, that was more than Stone could say for the Robotnik from his universe.

The two of them finished their meal, and after Ivo paid for their dinner, Stone followed Ivo back to the lab, listening as he rambled on about his latest Badnik designs. However, when they reached the door to the lab, both of them lingered in the doorway for a moment, and then Ivo smiled and said, “I had a wonderful time tonight.”

“Me too,” Stone said with a smile, and that was when Ivo leaned in close enough for them to kiss. It wasn’t the first time he’d done this, but usually, he only did it so that he could yell at Stone, or at best, tell him something absurd like that he could smell the electricity in his brain. This time, Stone thought that Ivo might actually want to kiss him.

He’d waited so long for this moment, and yet, it still felt weird, knowing that the man in front of him wasn’t his universe’s Dr. Robotnik. And yet, Agent Stone still found himself leaning closer, he still found his eyes flickering upwards towards Ivo’s lips, and it was only then that he realized just how badly, how desperately he wanted this.

“Wait a second,” Ivo suddenly said when they were just millimeters apart. “The motorcycle, the lattes…” He backed away from Agent Stone and then said, “You’re the Enforcer.”

“I don’t know who that is,” Stone said, but it was too late.

“I should have known that this was a trick,” Ivo said. “You’re just abusing the fact that none of us have seen you without your helmet to get close to us! Well, what do you want from me, Stone? Did your bosses at the FBI put you up to this? Were you just biding your time until you could shoot me like you did to poor Elise?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ivo!” Stone exclaimed.

“You’re the FBI agent who’s been after us for the last eight months,” Ivo said. “You know, I might not be the evil Dr. Eggman in this universe, but if there is a card-carrying supervillain running around this place, it’s you.”

“I’m not…” Stone protested, but before he could finish his sentence, Ivo slammed the door in his face and locked it, and then he went back and checked to make sure the door was locked three more times before finally walking away. However, just as Ivo was about to disappear into the night, Stone swore that he could hear him muttering to himself.

“And to think that I was beginning to like you.”

Chapter Text

The next morning, Agent Stone woke up to the sound of Dr. Robotnik’s voice. He couldn’t make out the words, but it was unmistakably him, yelling at the top of his lungs, and Stone rolled over in bed, worried that he’d overslept.

“You’re up early, Doctor,” he said groggily. “I’m sure you’re ready for your morning latte, I’ll get that brewing for you…”

Stone opened his eyes, and when he looked up at the cracks in the ceiling, it suddenly hit him that he wasn’t in the Crab, this wasn’t his universe, and that wasn’t his Dr. Robotnik. The memories of the previous day came rushing back to him, from the drone attack in Tokyo to meeting Dr. Robotnik’s long-lost grandfather to Stone’s accidental trip into an alternate universe.

Had he really gone on a date with Dr. Robotnik? Nothing about this universe felt real, but by some miracle, he’d somehow gotten his chance with the doctor, and he’d blown it. He didn’t know exactly how he’d blown it, but he had, and now, this universe’s Robotnik wanted nothing to do with him.

Agent Stone finally got out of bed and threw on his suit, but as soon as he walked out of the spare bedroom in the Robotniks’ lab, he caught a whiff of fresh salsa. He followed the scent, and sure enough, Ivo and Shadow were busy making huevos rancheros in the kitchenette in the break room.

“Put extra jalapeños on mine,” Shadow said, sitting on the counter as he watched Ivo dice up a pepper. “I want to feel the infernal fires of Hell in my soul.”

“I can’t believe I’m the one telling you this, but you might need to turn the drama down just a notch,” Ivo said.

Agent Stone didn’t know that Dr. Robotnik even knew how to cook - while they lived in the Crab, Stone always did the cooking, or they ordered takeout. However, as he watched Ivo and Shadow make breakfast, he realized that while Ivo was busy translating the recipe, Shadow was the one frying the eggs, checking to make sure the beans had been seasoned properly, and telling Ivo which vegetables to chop. The hedgehog was the head chef around here, and if the smell coming from the kitchen was any indication, he was exceptionally good at it.

Stone briefly wondered where Maria had disappeared to, so he searched around the compound, and sure enough, he found her in Ivo’s lab, dressed in a lab coat and goggles, closely examining a device that looked suspiciously similar to the Multiverse Transporter from his universe. “What are you working on?” he asked her.

“Ivo asked me to check his work on the Multiverse Transporter,” Maria explained. “He spent all of last night building it - I guess he wants it done as soon as possible. Also, Shadow wants to keep me out of the kitchen so I don’t set fire to the espresso machine again.” She set the Multiverse Transporter down, took off her goggles, and then turned to him and asked, “How was your date?”

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

“That’s almost exactly what Ivo said when I asked him,” Maria said as she went back to tinkering with the Multiverse Transporter. “The flux capacitor seems to be working, let’s check the voltage…”

“Who’s the Enforcer?” Stone suddenly asked her.

Maria looked startled by the question, but she quickly pulled herself together and then said, “Why do you ask?”

“Just something weird that Ivo said last night.”

Maria sighed, set down the Multiverse Transporter, and then said, “So…I might have left out some details when I told you about the blackout.”

“Like what?” Stone asked.

“When we told the government that an alien hedgehog had caused the power outage, they asked us to capture Sonic, either dead or alive, and experiment on him,” Maria explained. “Shadow’s a person, he has to consent to any research that’s done on him, but…that ruling only applies to him, not to Sonic or Tails or any other aliens that land on Earth. The government had a long list of invasive procedures they wanted to conduct on Sonic - all of them legal, most of them wildly unethical. We refused to comply with the order, so they charged Shadow, Ivo, and I with treason and sent someone else to go after Sonic and his friends. That someone else was the Enforcer.” She paused and then said, “He’s the FBI’s top agent - unfailingly loyal, ruthlessly efficient, never takes off his motorcycle helmet. He…he shot my wife Elise last year, I think he was trying to kill Sonic instead, but he missed. She was in the hospital for weeks, and she hasn’t been the same since.”

“I…I’m so sorry,” Stone said.

“It’s not your fault,” Maria said. “Considering how poor Elise’s initial prognosis was, she’s handling it really well. She’s a minor member of the royal family of Soleanna, and she just returned to royal duties last month, so the great Princess Elise the Third has been going around officiating ceremonies and cutting ribbons for the last few weeks. She’ll be back to the lab on Monday.” Maria had a faraway look in her eyes, apparently thinking of her wife, and then she said, “In the end, we did get our revenge for what the Enforcer did to Elise. Shadow shot him with the Mushroom Gun, and he was stuck on a planet with nothing but mushrooms for eight months.”

“Oh, so that’s what Shadow was talking about yesterday…”

“Yeah,” Maria said. “The Enforcer’s back at the FBI now though, and he’s presumably looking for us.” She sighed and then said, “I’m not even sure he’s that evil - I think he’s just trying to complete his mission so he can get a promotion at the FBI. Tails ran into him once while he was off the clock, and he said that the Enforcer was kind and polite when he wasn’t trying to kill us. Apparently he used to be a barista, studied at the Istituto del Caffè…” She then paused, carefully studying Agent Stone, but before she could say anything, Ivo sprinted out of the break room and ran up to her.

“Maria, why are you talking to him?” he said. “He’s the Enforcer!”

“Yeah, I know, Ivo, I just figured that out,” Maria said.

“I knew he was an alternate version of the Enforcer from the moment you said that his name was Agent Stone,” Shadow said as he approached Maria and Ivo. “Unlike you two, I remembered the Enforcer’s real name and not just the nickname that Sonic gave him.” He then glanced back and forth between Maria and Ivo and said, “You know, for the smartest people in the world, you two can be really dumb sometimes.”

“Ugh, I can’t believe I rescued the Enforcer of all people!” Maria complained. “And then Ivo went on a date with him, and now I have to go clean up my cousin’s mess. Again.”

“My mess?” Ivo said. “If I recall correctly, which I always do, you were the one who told me that I should ask him out to dinner.”

“I wouldn’t have done that if I knew that he was the Enforcer!” Maria exclaimed. She then turned to Shadow and asked, “Why didn’t you tell us sooner?”

“Because you and Ivo seemed to like him, and I would trust you both with my life,” Shadow said. He paused for a moment, and then turned to Maria and he said, “By the way, your huevos rancheros are getting cold.”

“Okay,” Maria said as she took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down and process everything that had just happened.

“Do you need me to shoot Stone with the Mushroom Gun again?” Shadow suddenly asked Ivo and Maria.

“Not yet, Shadow,” Maria said. “Let’s talk about this over breakfast.”

The four of them retreated into the break room, and as Agent Stone sat down across from Ivo, he noticed just how thoroughly exhausted the doctor looked after working on the Multiverse Transporter all night. “Do you need a latte, Doctor?” he asked.

“Do I look like an imbecile? You’d slip cyanide into my coffee and arsenic into my Austrian goat milk. No, as a matter of fact, I do not need my worst enemy in the world to make me a latte. What a ridiculous notion, I would never in a million years fall for such a foolish trick,” Ivo said, but he sounded so sleepy that Stone was half-tempted to make one for him anyways.

As Ivo struggled to stay awake, Agent Stone wondered what kind of person his alternate self would have to be for the doctor to turn down one of his lattes. Before Stone found out about the Enforcer, he had been vaguely aware that an alternate version of him must exist in this universe, but he’d assumed that his counterpart had never met Dr. Robotnik, and he’d been too distracted by his interactions with Ivo and his family to think about that any further. He’d never once thought that his alternate self might be working against Robotnik.

Stone had applied to work for the FBI in his universe a number of years ago, but they’d been slow to get back to him, and they hadn’t asked him to come in for an interview until after he’d already been working for Dr. Robotnik for two weeks. He’d thought about interviewing with them anyways, but he was starting to like his new job - the work was interesting, the salary and benefits were unmatched, and although his boss was clearly a sadistic jerk, his cartoonish antics were at least occasionally charming - so he’d decided to stay.

In this universe, Ivo wasn’t hiring, so Stone must have taken the FBI job instead.

Just as Ivo was about to fall asleep in his chair, Shadow teleported back into the break room and set down plates full of huevos rancheros in front of Agent Stone, Ivo, and Maria. Stone took a bite, and, as he savored the fresh, intense flavors of the dish, he turned to Shadow and said, “This is delicious.”

“Well, my brother is quite possibly the best Mexican chef on this side of the Atlantic,” Maria said as she devoured her breakfast.

“That’s a low bar,” Shadow said.

“Sí lo es,” Ivo agreed. “Considering that the cretin who runs the Mexican food truck outside the British Museum has yet to figure out that a quesadilla is supposed to contain queso, I’m reasonably certain that our brother can very comfortably claim the title of El Mejor Chef Mexicano en Londres.” He then glanced toward Stone and asked, “Why is the Enforcer still here?”

“I’m not the Enforcer,” Stone argued. “And Doctor…Ivo…when I said I was from an alternate universe, I was telling the truth.”

“How do we know that? What if this is some elaborate trick, a nefarious plan from the FBI’s master manipulator to dispose of his enemies and finally get revenge on the hedgehog?” Ivo said. “We’ve been over this, Enforcer. By definition, it is thoroughly impossible to outsmart the smartest people on Earth, so whatever evil scheme you’ve cooked up for us in the J. Edgar Hoover Building is ultimately doomed to fail.”

“He knows how to make your lattes with steamed Austrian goat milk, and that’s not something that’s easy to fake. So maybe Agent Stone’s telling the truth about being from an alternate reality,” Maria said. “If that’s the case, then the real question is whether this Enforcer is anything like the Enforcer from our universe - whether he’s the sort of person who would hurt us to get ahead - but I don’t think he is. He’s had plenty of opportunities to kill us, and he hasn’t taken any of them.”

“Who cares, Maria?” Ivo said. “The Multiverse Transporter is fully operational as of this morning. All I have to do is press that big red button, send the Enforcer back to his home universe where he belongs, and watch all of my problems conveniently disappear into another plane of existence.”

“But you said yesterday that I could stay,” Stone said.

“Only because your lattes and your compliments and your perfectly tailored suit turned my brilliant self into a sappy lovestruck idiot in a Hallmark film!” Ivo shouted.

Stone looked toward Ivo, his heart breaking when he saw just how angry this version of the doctor was, just how deeply Ivo despised him. A part of him hated the Agent Stone from this universe for making the doctor feel this way, a part of him wished he could go back to last night, before Ivo figured out that his alternate self was the Enforcer, and a part of him just wanted to go home. Mostly, he missed Dr. Robotnik. His Dr. Robotnik.

“I don’t see why Stone can’t stay in this universe if he wants to,” Maria said to Ivo.

Ivo sighed and then said, “Maria, I know you want to see the best in everyone, and I really do admire that about you, but the Enforcer almost killed your wife. We are not letting him stay here.”

“By your logic, if Agent Stone could be the Enforcer, then you could be the Ivo from his universe,” Maria said. “The unrepentant, card-carrying, world-conquering supervillain. And I know that’s not who you are.”

Ivo was quiet for a moment, and then he began to speak. “Taking over the world is a bit much, but that alternate version of me…he didn’t have you, he didn’t have Shadow, he didn’t even have Grampsy. He grew up alone, and he’s probably alone now, without anyone in the world who cares about him,” Ivo said. “No wonder he lost his marbles.”

“I care about you,” Stone said.

“Shut up, sycophant,” Ivo said in a voice that immediately reminded Stone of the other doctor, the one from his universe. “My point is that I’m him, he’s me, we’re all capable of good or evil. Is that enough of an explanation for you, Maria?”

Maria turned to Shadow, hoping that he could resolve their dispute, and while the hedgehog thought about it, Agent Stone looked towards Ivo, curious as to how much of this Robotnik’s personality was hidden somewhere inside of the Robotnik from Stone’s universe, wondering whether this was someone that Stone’s doctor could have become, under different circumstances. And if Ivo could have become Dr. Robotnik, then could Stone have become the Enforcer? Was there a supervillain somewhere within him too?

“I don’t think Agent Stone is as evil as the Enforcer from our universe,” Shadow finally said. “If he was, I never would have let him step foot in this lab. But Ivo’s right. We can’t trust him.”

Maria nodded understandingly, and while Ivo ran to get the Multiverse Transporter, she turned to Agent Stone. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I really tried to help you.”

“It’s okay,” Stone said. “I…I think I’m ready to go back.”

When Ivo returned, he pressed the red button on the Multiverse Transporter, and then he suddenly hurled the device across the room and into Stone’s arms. “Thanks for nothing!” Ivo shouted as Agent Stone caught the Multiverse Transporter, and in an instant, everything went black.

When Stone awoke, he was back in the Crab, inside the Closet of Abandoned Inventions, and the first thing he noticed upon returning to his home universe was Maria Robotnik’s absence.

Maria would have been here with the rest of her family if she was alive. She should have been here, she should have had the chance to grow up. She should have had the chance to win the Nobel Prize, fall in love with a princess, apply to become an astronaut, set fire to the espresso machine, go on the run from the FBI, pick fights with her adoptive brothers, go stargazing every night, save a mysterious stranger from drowning in the River Thames, and lead a big, long, beautiful, messy life, but she never got that chance, and without her, the Crab felt strangely empty.

Her relatives seemed different too, like broken, half-formed versions of the people that they were supposed to be. It was as if Stone could see the holes where their relationships with Maria should have been. Dr. Robotnik should have had a cousin, the professor should have had a granddaughter, Shadow should have had an older sister, all three of them should have had one more person in their lives who loved them deeply and unconditionally, and yet, that person was dead, she’d been taken from them fifty years ago when Project Shadow was shut down.

Stone briefly wondered if this grief, this overwhelming emptiness, was what Shadow and the professor felt all the time.

As Stone walked out of the Closet of Abandoned Inventions, he found Shadow sitting on the couch next to the professor, smoldering with barely suppressed rage. “I could have already stolen the key by now,” he said. “Let me have my revenge.”

Agent Stone hadn’t had much of a chance to properly talk to Shadow in either universe - he seemed to be a hedgehog of few words, but Stone had gotten some sense of his character. Shadow’s alternate self could be angry, violent, and needlessly edgy, but he also had a fierce love for his family, impressive cooking skills, a dry sense of humor, and a deep wisdom that even Maria and Ivo had to respect. In Stone’s universe, all of that was buried underneath the unimaginable pain of losing his only friend he had in the world, the girl that he’d come to think of as a sister.

“Be patient, Shadow,” Gerald said. “We have to wait for my grandson to return.”

“Where’s Dr. Robotnik?” Agent Stone suddenly asked.

The professor gave him a disapproving look, and then he said, “I thought he was looking for you. He rudely interrupted our family bonding time to search for his ‘most loyal minion.’”

“He also said something about a Multiverse Transistor,” Shadow added.

“The Multiverse Transporter,” Stone said breathlessly as he ran back into the Closet of Abandoned Inventions, where he found that the Multiverse Transporter was still turned on, the lights still flashing on the metal box. Dr. Robotnik must have noticed that his assistant was gone, he must have gone into an alternate universe to look for him, as insane as that was, and now, he was trapped in that alternate reality, just like Stone had been for the past day.

He had to rescue him.

The Multiverse Transporter was right where Stone had left it, on the top shelf of the Closet of Abandoned Inventions, and once again, Agent Stone climbed up on that stepstool and immediately slammed his hand on the red button.

There was a series of flashing lights, a strange spinning sensation, and then, just like that, the world went black once again.

Chapter Text

When Agent Stone awoke, he was back in the strange alternate universe that he’d just left behind. However, this time, instead of drowning in the Thames, he was back in Maria’s lab, and there were two Ivo Robotniks standing in the middle of the room, shrieking in terror at the mere sight of each other.

“Imposter!” the two Robotniks shouted at each other simultaneously. “No, wait, it’s worse than that. You have my face, my voice, my glorious mustache. You must be…my despicable doppelganger from an alternate reality! And for the love of steamed Austrian goat milk lattes, STOP COPYING ME!”

“What are you doing here, you bald-headed freak?” Ivo asked his alternate self.

“Where’s Agent Stone?” the Dr. Robotnik from Stone’s universe shouted. “What did you do with my trusty barnacle?!”

“I used my unparalleled intellect to send the Enforcer back to your stupid reality, where he belongs!” Ivo exclaimed.

“Actually, I’m right here, Doctor,” Agent Stone said with a smile.

As Ivo let out an exasperated sigh, Dr. Robotnik pulled Agent Stone in close, and just as Stone thought that the doctor was going to embrace him, Robotnik said, “You forgot my four o’clock latte.”

“I’m sorry, Doctor, I…”

“Do you know what that does to me? It gives me headaches. It makes me fatigued, depressed, more irritable than usual. It takes my whip-smart, highly caffeinated brain and turns it to useless slop!”

“You were having fun with your grandfather,” Stone said, a sense of warm affection filling his heart as he realized that his boss was here, alive and unharmed. “I didn’t think you wanted me to interrupt you over a latte.”

“Do I look like an imbecile?” Robotnik said. “Of course I wanted a latte! You, on the other hand…you must be either illiterate, an imbecile, or both if you couldn’t read the sign that I put on my Multiverse Transporter. What did it say, Agent Stone? Do…not…”

“Multiverse Transporter - Do Not Touch,” Stone answered.

“Oh, so you can read, you just can’t follow directions,” Robotnik said. “I bolded it, underlined it, put it in 300 point font, and it still wasn’t enough to keep you from disobeying a direct order. You know, I hired you because I thought you were loyal, compliant, did exactly what you were told, but no, instead you go gallivanting around an alternate universe like a heartless traitor!”

“It was an accident, Doctor,” Stone assured him. “It won’t happen again.”

“Accident schmaccident,” Dr. Robotnik said. “I know you’ve been jealous of my grand-potato, but disappearing into another universe? I should fire you just for almost giving me a heart attack! I thought you were dead, or worse, stuck in an alternate universe with an inferior incarnation of my wondrous self!” Dr. Robotnik shot a glance at Ivo, and Agent Stone tried to hold back a giddy smile. He hadn’t been sure about returning to his home universe before, but with his universe’s Robotnik here by his side, all of his doubts faded away. The doctor then turned back to him and said, “I’ll keep you around for now, sycophant, but please remember that you are on very, very thin ice, and if you make one more wrong move, I won’t hesitate to throw you in that frozen lake and let you swim with the fishes.”

All of a sudden, Maria ran into the room, and as Shadow quickly followed her, she asked, “What’s all of the commotion? What’s Agent Stone still doing here, and…Stone, is that the version of Ivo from your universe?”

“I’m sorry, who are you again?” Dr. Robotnik asked Maria as he casually tossed Agent Stone aside.

“I’m Dr. Maria Robotnik,” she said. “Your cousin.”

For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, Dr. Robotnik looked toward his long-lost relative, overcome with joy as he realized that he might not be so alone in the universe. “I…I have a cousin?” he finally stammered out.

“Yes, Maria and I have the same grandpasadoble, so yes, that would make us cousins,” Ivo said. “Try to keep up, you smooth-headed sociopath.”

Dr. Robotnik angrily glared at his alternate self, and then he asked Maria, “So if I have a cousin, do I have an aunt? An uncle? A niece, a nephew, a third-cousin-twice-removed? Why haven’t I been invited to any Robotnik family reunions?”

“Trust me, I’ve reconstructed our family tree, and I couldn’t find any other long-lost relatives lying around,” Maria said. She then turned to Ivo and added, “It’s probably for the best. Don’t get me wrong, Ivo, I love you to death, but the last thing I want in my life is another one of you.”

“What, you don’t want more of me and my beautiful eggspawn?” Ivo said.

“Please never say that word again,” Shadow said.

“Eggspawn, eggspawn, eggspawn,” Ivo taunted his brother. “And do I need to remind you how wonderful my eggie-weggies are? The last shipment successfully delivered twenty thousand polio vaccines to at-risk children in Pakistan. Twenty thousand!”

“Don’t get too full of yourself,” Maria said. “The shipment before that couldn’t even make it to its intended destination without exploding in transit.”

While the Robotniks squabbled amongst themselves, Dr. Robotnik turned to Agent Stone and said, “I thought I would get along swimmingly with another version of my genius self, like two evil peas in a pod, but this one is such a goody two-shoes.”

“He certainly is, sir,” Stone agreed, and he found his eyes fixated on Robotnik once again, admiring the bald head that Agent Stone had shaved for him just yesterday, the new outfit that Stone had stitched together from his old black dress shirt, all of the little ways he’d helped the planet’s future ruler on his quest for world domination. Robotnik was brilliant, magnificent, a scientific genius beyond compare, and Stone wondered why he’d ever, even for a second, wanted anything less.

“I can’t believe this!” Ivo complained to Shadow and Maria. “My own next of kin, ganging up on their defenseless widdle baby brother!”

“Oh, I have an ingenious idea for you, my straight-laced second self,” Dr. Robotnik said to his alternate self. “Let’s make a deal. I’ll take Maria and that stinking hedgehog off of your hands, and you can have Stone in exchange! Does that sound like a fair trade?”

“No, Doctor, please…” Stone begged before casting a look towards Maria and Shadow, his expression slowly turning to a resentful glare. However, the three Robotniks from this universe just stared at Agent Stone’s Robotnik, genuinely horrified by his suggestion.

“How dare you?” Ivo said as he pulled his big brother closer. “Shadow’s not a ‘stinking hedgehog!’ He’s just as much of a Robotnik as you are!”

“And Maria and I aren’t trophies to be won,” Shadow said.

“Shadow’s right,” Maria said. “You can’t use us as bargaining chips in whatever game you’re playing here.”

“And for the last time, I don’t want anything to do with the Enforcer!” Ivo said. “I don’t care if he’s infuriatingly handsome and makes the most delicious lattes I’ve ever had - he’s evil!”

Dr. Robotnik seemed taken aback by every single detail of that last sentence, but after a few moments of confusion, he turned to Stone and asked, “Who’s the Enforcer?”

“Me,” Agent Stone said. “I’m the bad guy in this universe.”

“Intriguing,” Robotnik said. “I always thought you’d make a good villain.”

Agent Stone gave the doctor a wide, toothy smile, glad that someone at least saw the potential in him. He knew that he couldn’t measure up to Dr. Robotnik, but a small part of him at least wanted to try emulating the doctor’s evil genius. The closest he’d ever come was manipulating a few coffee shop employees while Dr. Robotnik was on the Mushroom Planet, and even though he’d mostly done it to prepare for Robotnik’s return, even though he doubted that he’d ever truly want to hurt someone without a good reason for it, framing Karen for money laundering after she’d so rudely insulted his steamed Austrian goat milk latte had filled him with a powerful sense of catharsis.

“Well, my kindhearted knockoff, suit yourself with your gerbil and your cousin and your happy little family,” Dr. Robotnik said to Ivo as he typed something into his Robotnik control glove. “This has been an…interesting diversion, but Agent Stone and I had better be going. We have a key to steal and, more importantly, a supercentenarian to bond with!”

“I thought you broke into the G.U.N. headquarters yesterday afternoon,” Stone said. “Without me.”

Robotnik gave Stone a strange look, and then he asked, “How long have you been in this universe, Stone?”

“About seventeen hours, sir.”

“But you were only gone from the Crab for an hour and a half,” Robotnik said, slightly perplexed. He then turned to the three Robotniks from this universe and asked, “Excuse me, my interdimensional relatives, but…what's the date today?”

“It’s Friday, July 11th, 2024,” Maria said, trying her best to be helpful.

“That explains everything,” Dr. Robotnik said. “The Multiverse Transporter’s temporal stabilizer must have failed, because it keeps sending us four months into the past.” Robotnik then glanced back toward his alternate self and spat, “No wonder I look so skinny.”

“How are we going to get home, Doctor?” Stone asked.

Dr. Robotnik typed something into his control glove, and then he said, “It’s only a minor technical error - nothing worth worrying your pretty little head about, Stone. If I reset the temporal stabilizer, it will erase all of this wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey nonsense and send us right back to the exact moment we left our universe. It will be as if this whole adventure never happened.”

However, just as Agent Stone and Dr. Robotnik were about to leave this universe behind forever, Stone heard a jangly guitar riff playing, and after a few moments, he identified the song: it was the opening to “A Letter To Elise” by The Cure.

“Sorry, I think someone’s trying to video call me,” Maria said. She quickly pulled out her phone, and as she looked at the screen, she grinned and then said, “It’s Elise! I need to take this! Everybody else, just hang tight for a few minutes, okay?”

Shadow quietly nodded, while Stone quickly glanced toward Maria’s phone. On the screen, there was a redheaded woman around Maria’s age with a black patch over her left eye, and Stone suddenly had the horrifying realization that the eyepatch was there to conceal the bullet wound from when Agent Stone’s alternate self - the Enforcer - had shot her.

“Elise!” Maria exclaimed with a huge, gleeful smile on her face, but the camera was shaking violently, as if Elise was running away from something. “How’s my princess in shining armor doing today?”

Elise giggled and then, with a sweet, lilting voice and a vaguely European accent that Stone couldn’t quite identify, she said, “You’re mixing up your metaphors, Maria.”

“I’m just glad to see you,” Maria said. “How was your visit with the president of Azerbaijanistan?”

“I don’t know, I couldn’t make it,” Elise said. “I…I’m actually not in Soleanna right now. I’m in a hidden temple in the Pacific with Sonic and Tails and this new guy…Knuckles?” Agent Stone grimaced at the mention of Knuckles the Echidna, but no one else seemed to notice. “I think you’ll like him,” Elise said to Maria. “He’s been telling me all about the echidna warriors for the last hour - they remind me a bit of the Knights of Soleanna back home.” All of a sudden, Elise noticed Dr. Robotnik in the background, and she said, “Hi Ivo! You look…different.”

“And you look extremely easy to kidnap,” Dr. Robotnik retorted.

“That’s not Ivo, that’s Ivo’s evil clone from an alternate universe,” Maria said, and upon seeing Elise’s confusion, she said, “It’s a long story, I’ll explain later. Is everyone okay on your end?”

“For now, yes,” Elise said. “But the Enforcer’s back, and I overheard him saying that he was planning to go to London to eliminate you, Shadow, and Ivo. Team Sonic and I should make it to the lab in the next hour or so, but the Enforcer might get there before we do. I thought I should give you a heads up.”

“How would the Enforcer get there first?” Maria asked. “You said you were in the Pacific!”

“He set off some kind of green lightning thing while we were in the temple, and…” Elise said, but before she could finish her sentence, a large rock fell behind Elise, and she immediately started sprinting. “I’ve got to go, but I love you, Maria! And say hi to Shadow and Ivo for me!”

“Love you too, Elise,” Maria said, but the video call suddenly got disconnected, and as soon as Maria was off the phone, Agent Stone looked toward Dr. Robotnik, wondering if they were thinking the same thing, and then, the two of them spoke in unison.

“He’s got the Master Emerald.”

Chapter Text

“What’s the Master Emerald?” Maria asked.

“Normally, I wouldn’t dignify such a moronic question with a response, but I’ll make an exception for family,” Dr. Robotnik said. “The Master Emerald is the most unstoppable weapon ever created, a fabled jewel with the infinite power to transform your wildest dreams into reality. Flight, telekinesis, energy manipulation, improving the taste of bagels…if Agent Stone has the stone, then reality is officially out to lunch, and your archnemesis is in charge, with godlike powers that you mere mortals can only dream of. You might as well give up now, take the L before he comes here and squashes you like a mosquito.”

“Wait, how do you know all of this?” Maria asked.

“Ivo must have used the emerald before,” Shadow said.

“Do I have to spell everything out for you imbeciles?” Robotnik said. “And for the record, my name is Dr. Robotnik, because I didn’t spend three semesters slaving away on my dissertation just for some overgrown shrew to call me by my first name.”

“But I’m Dr. Robotnik!” Maria, Shadow, and Ivo all cried out in unison.

“Sorry, I called dibs,” Robotnik said as he plucked out one of Shadow’s quills.

“Could somebody please explain to me why we have to work with my duplicitous duplicate?” Ivo said.

“He’s the only one here who knows how the Master Emerald works,” Shadow said as Robotnik licked the quill, mildly electrocuting himself. “Unfortunately.”

“So if the Enforcer is invincible, then how are we supposed to stop him?” Maria asked Dr. Robotnik. “Can we stop him?”

“Nope, no way, not a chance,” Dr. Robotnik said as he reached for another one of Shadow’s quills.

“Except there has to be a way to win against an enemy empowered by the Master Emerald,” Ivo said as he stepped between his alternate self and Shadow. “Because you’re not using the emerald to commit horrific atrocities in your universe - you’re here. You must have been defeated like Napoleon at Waterloo. Even with the emerald.”

“Don’t remind me,” Robotnik said. “Sonic and his annoying little rodent friends stole the emerald, destroyed my robot, and then left me to eat chimichangas and wallow in my misery. There also might have been a heavy-handed moral lesson about the power of teamwork somewhere in there, but I’m sure it wasn’t important.”

“It wasn’t, sir,” Agent Stone said. At this point, Stone just wanted to return to his home universe, but at the same time, Maria, Shadow, and Ivo were Robotnik’s relatives, and he’d grown rather attached to them over the past day. Stone couldn’t just leave them to be murdered by his alternate self - he had to help them - and deep down, it seemed like the doctor felt the same way.

“Here’s an idea,” Dr. Robotnik said. “What if we steal the emerald, use it to get rid of your universe’s Agent Stoneless, and then conquer the multiverse together as a sweet, wholesome family bonding exercise? What do you say?”

“No, we’re not going to steal the emerald,” Maria said. “But we need to come up with a plan before the Enforcer gets here.”

“Shadow’s going to have to take the lead,” Agent Stone said. “He’s the only one here who's powerful enough to dislodge the Master Emerald.”

“I've always wanted to punch a god,” Shadow said as he adjusted the limiter rings on his wrists and then got into a fighting stance.

“Relax, hedgehog, we’ve got all the time in the world,” Dr. Robotnik said. “We could all have a nice long chat while Stone brews us some coffee, maybe get to know each other a little better. I’m sure Stone’s alternate self is busy autotuning his voice, showing off his teleportation powers, eating display bagels in a cafe somewhere…”

“No, Doctor, I…I really don’t think we have that kind of time,” Agent Stone insisted.

“How would you know?” Robotnik asked.

“Because you don’t have the Master Emerald in this universe, but I do,” Stone said. “And if I were you, I wouldn’t have procrastinated.”

“What are you insinuating, Stone?” Robotnik said. “Are you saying that I squandered away those precious seconds when I had the Master Emerald? I saved you from Officer Brainfart! You know, between this and the latte, we should really have a chat about your insubordination once we get back to the Crab. It’s very unlike you, Stone…”

That was when Agent Stone heard the sound of an engine revving outside, and all of a sudden, a man wearing jet black motorcycle gear with emerald green accents appeared in the middle of the lab, lightning crackling around him as he briefly scanned the room. Agent Stone quickly ducked beneath a counter, but the other four didn’t move fast enough, and as the ground began to shake, they got caught in the chaotic whirlwind that the Enforcer was creating with the Master Emerald, all of them struck by the green lightning that seemed to be flying in every direction at once…

Within seconds, Maria, Shadow, Ivo, and the doctor were tied up and handcuffed, and the Enforcer was casually pacing around them, confident that he already had the upper hand in this fight.

“Doctors Maria, Shadow, and Ivo Robotnik…you’re under arrest for obstruction of justice, hindering a federal investigation, and aiding and abetting the illegal alien known as Sonic the Hedgehog,” the Enforcer said in a voice that sounded scarily similar to Agent Stone’s, only with a strange, slightly robotic overtone. “Any last words before I take you into FBI custody?”

“Later, hater!” both Ivo Robotniks shouted simultaneously as they attempted to break free of their handcuffs, but the Enforcer used his telekinetic powers to tighten their restraints instead.

“Resisting the arrest isn’t going to work, Ivo,” the Enforcer said as he walked towards Dr. Robotnik. “And…huh. You never told me that you had a twin.”

“Take off your helmet,” Shadow said to the Enforcer. “I want to see your face when we finally defeat you.”

“As you wish,” the Enforcer said as he removed his motorcycle helmet, revealing his face. His hair was a little bit longer and more unkempt than Agent Stone’s, presumably from his time on the Mushroom Planet, and there was a certain steeliness in his gaze that Stone lacked, but otherwise, the two of them looked exactly identical.

As much as Agent Stone wanted to run in and rescue Dr. Robotnik, he knew it would be better to stay hidden, so he waited under the counter, trying to predict what the Enforcer was going to do next. So far, the Enforcer hadn’t done anything that Stone wouldn’t do if he was in his position, so he tried to put himself in the Enforcer’s shoes - what would he do next if he had the Master Emerald?

He could really go for a cup of coffee right now…

All of a sudden, the Enforcer reached toward the espresso machine, and a jet of green lightning shot toward the machine until a perfectly prepared beverage magically appeared in his hand. It looked to be a Stoneacchino - a cappuccino with a spoonful of homemade vanilla bean syrup and a dash of cardamom. Stone remembered that recipe well - it used to be his signature drink before he met Dr. Robotnik, before he’d started drinking the doctor’s lattes with steamed Austrian goat milk instead.

While the Enforcer sipped on his Stoneacchino, Ivo turned to his relatives and said, “You know, if someone had just told me that the Enforcer looked like he should be handing out roses on The Bachelor instead of performing knifehand strikes on our carotid arteries, none of this would have happened.”

“The Enforcer wouldn’t karate chop us in the neck,” Shadow said. “A bullet in the head would kill us faster.”

“Stop giving the Enforcer ideas!” Maria exclaimed.

“I’m not going to kill you,” the Enforcer said. “I’m authorized to use lethal force if necessary, but you three are more useful to me alive than dead. Maria, you’re the world’s foremost expert on alien biology, you’ll do the honors of cutting the hedgehog open. Shadow, we need you as a control subject. And Ivo, your machines…they’re magnificent. The government’s been looking to use them as weapons of mass destruction for a long, long time.” He then turned to Dr. Robotnik and asked, “Who are you, and why are you helping Sonic?”

“Helping him?!” Robotnik said. “I’m trying to kill that annoying blue pest! The only reason I’m here instead of spending quality time with my grandopotamus is because my once-faithful henchman couldn’t follow a simple order!”

“So you’re just a bystander,” the Enforcer said. “A bystander who’s seen too much.”

Robotnik tried to protest, but the Enforcer suddenly shot a green ball of lightning towards the doctor, blasting him with electricity. After a few seconds of screaming in agony, Robotnik slumped forward, apparently unconscious, and Agent Stone knew that it would be safer to stay out of sight, but he couldn’t stop himself from running up to the doctor, desperately hoping that his boss was okay.

“Doctor?” he said as he tapped him on the shoulder, and to his relief, Robotnik’s eyes fluttered open.

“What are you doing, Stone?” Robotnik said. “You had a perfectly good cover, and you blew it!”

“I wanted to check to see if you were alright,” Stone said.

Before Robotnik could reply, the Enforcer immediately teleported over to Stone, and then he looked his alternate self in the eyes and asked, “Who are you?”

“And just like that, Pablo reveals his Juan…” Dr. Robotnik whispered.

At first, Stone was furious with his alternate self for trying to electrocute the doctor, but as the Enforcer came closer, his rage dissipated, and Stone nervously backed away from his alternate self, suddenly understanding why Robotnik had screamed in terror at the sight of his doppelganger. There was something deeply unnerving about this man who shared his face, who spoke with his voice, whose every movement mirrored his own. Just looking at the Enforcer was like having a strange, out-of-body experience, like waking up inside of a horror film.

“Buenos días…hermano,” Agent Stone said to the Enforcer. He was shaking at the knees, but he quickly glanced over towards his boss, and he couldn’t help but smile when he saw the doctor chuckling over his telenovela reference. “I’m you, or more accurately, I’m you from another universe,” he said, more confidently this time. “I work for Dr. Ivo Robotnik. I’m his assistant.”

“You’re not…helping them, are you?” the Enforcer said as he pulled out a handgun and pointed it at Agent Stone’s forehead. “I swear this isn’t anything personal, but I have been ordered to dispose of all of Sonic’s associates by any means necessary. And you, of all people, should understand that completing this mission is the only way I’m ever going to make it to Assistant Special Agent-In-Charge.”

It was only then that Stone realized that he was done for. He was never going to be able to win a fight against his doppelganger, not while he was still unarmed, not while the Robotniks were still tied up, not while his alternate self still had the Master Emerald, but he did have one other weapon at his disposal. As far as Stone could tell, the only real difference between him and his alternate self was that the Enforcer had never worked for Dr. Robotnik. Instead of helping the doctor achieve his dreams of world domination, Stone’s doppelganger had spent the last eight years climbing up the ranks of the FBI, but they were still the same person. They still had the same personality, the same trauma, the same psychological weaknesses.

He could break him just by talking.

“You’re right, I do understand,” Stone said. “I remember my mother - our mother - telling me how she escaped from Lebanon in the middle of the civil war. She worked for the US embassy, and she groveled and sucked up to her bosses until she was practically in charge of the place. When it became too dangerous to stay, she was the only local employee who was granted a refugee visa.” The Enforcer suddenly lowered his gun, and then Stone said, “She died when you were in college, and all you wanted was to be like her. Not like your father, who you haven’t spoken to since he donated your mother’s life insurance payout to that homophobic representative’s campaign fund. Not like Yasmin, who defended him. You used to be as close as the Robotniks, but now, your little sister doesn’t even know which state you live in.”

“Shut up,” the Enforcer bitterly snapped at him, but Agent Stone just kept talking.

“You don’t have a family anymore, and you don’t have friends. You were bullied in grade school, your college friends all moved away or started families, and then after a stint as a barista, you got into government work. It’s isolating, isn’t it? All you want to talk about is your job, but you can’t, it’s classified information, not even your coworkers are allowed to know what you’re really working on. You haven’t had a real boyfriend in years - casual hookups, sure, but nothing serious, since you can’t let anyone into your life when everything is so under wraps. So what’s left? You throw yourself into your job, you comply with every order, no matter how immoral, hoping that you can get somewhere by playing the sycophant…” Stone then smiled and said, “And that’s the difference between you and me. I genuinely fell in love with my job. Helping the doctor, taking care of him…it gives me a sense of purpose. I like fixing his Badniks, I like doing his paperwork, I love the way Dr. Robotnik smiles when I bring him his latte every morning. Me and the doctor. Best of friends.” It wasn’t exactly true, but it felt true enough in the moment. “But you? Would your bosses at the FBI even care if you disappeared, or are you just Special Agent #751 to them?”

“It’s #342, actually,” the Enforcer corrected him.

“You’re proving my point,” Stone said.

“I don’t care,” the Enforcer said, but Stone could tell from the look on his face that he did care. His detached professionalism had given way to ambivalence and hesitancy, and as he reached for his gun, he seemed unfocused, like his mind was elsewhere. Then, just as he put his finger on the trigger, he lost his concentration, causing everything that he’d created with the Master Emerald, from the handcuffs around the Robotniks’ wrists to the Stoneacchino in his hand, to slowly fade away. The Enforcer panicked and turned back towards the Robotniks, pointing his gun in their direction, but it was too late.

They’d already broken free.

“Ivo, cue up our Tunes of Anarchy playlist,” Maria said as her cousin typed something into his control glove. “Let’s show the Enforcer why he shouldn’t mess with the Robotniks.”

All of a sudden, a thundering guitar riff rang throughout the lab, and when the tempo picked up, Maria, Shadow, and Ivo charged towards the Enforcer. Agent Stone’s alternate self tried to fight them off with bullets and bolts of lightning, but even though the Enforcer still had the Master Emerald, he was completely off his game mentally. Meanwhile, the Robotniks were like dancers on a stage, moving with the effortless grace and coordination of three people who had been fighting together their entire lives. Shadow took the lead, dodging the Enforcer’s bullets, shielding his siblings, and relentlessly attacking the Enforcer with a barrage of chaos energy-infused strikes, while Maria and Ivo acted as backup. Maria pulled out some sort of laser weapon and darted across the lab with it, constantly sneaking up on their enemy and shoving him into Shadow’s path, while Ivo sent enough Badniks in the Enforcer’s direction to keep their enemy on his toes, preventing him from ever being able to get a good hit on Maria and Shadow.

“Here, I’ve got this,” Dr. Robotnik said to his alternate self as Agent Stone desperately tried to pull his boss away from the fight and keep him out of danger. “My control gloves are cross-compatible with your darling little drones, so if you’ll let me take over for just one second…”

“I hate to disappoint you, my treacherous twin, but I don’t think your assistance will be necessary,” Ivo replied, and just as he said that, Shadow suddenly spun towards the Enforcer and forcefully punched the agent in the stomach, knocking the Master Emerald onto the floor.

“You won’t win that easily, Shadow,” the Enforcer said as he reached towards the Master Emerald, but before he could absorb its powers for a second time, Maria popped out of nowhere, stole the pepper spray out of the Enforcer’s holster, and sprayed him with it. Then, while the Enforcer blindly stumbled around the lab, screaming in pain, a group of Ivo’s Badniks flew towards him and slammed him against a wall, knocking the Enforcer unconscious.

As Agent Stone watched his alter ego crumple to the ground, he felt a slight pang of sympathy for his evil twin, knowing that this alternate Stone was no different than him, knowing that their pain and loneliness came from the exact same place. Stone held no illusions that he’d actually gotten through to his alternate self, that he’d somehow convinced the Enforcer not to take the Master Emerald and try to kill the Robotniks again as soon as he woke up, but Stone, the doctor, and the Robotniks from this universe had at least knocked the Enforcer out for long enough for Elise and Team Sonic to make it to London. The residents of this universe could take it from here.

“Awkward sibling hug?” Maria said to Shadow and Ivo.

“Let’s wait until we have the Enforcer out of the lab,” Ivo said.

Maria glanced towards the unconscious Enforcer and then turned to Agent Stone. “Good job, Stone,” she said. “I honestly wasn’t sure that your breaking speech was going to work, but I guess the Enforcer does have a heart.”

“A cold, dead, shriveled-up heart of stone, but a heart nonetheless,” Ivo said.

Dr. Robotnik immediately started typing something into his control glove, eager to get out of this universe as soon as possible, but all of a sudden, Shadow turned to Agent Stone and said, “Stone, before you go…could you do me a favor?”

“What is it?” Agent Stone asked.

“I’ve been thinking about the version of me from your universe, the one whose Maria died,” Shadow said. “Could you maybe…keep an eye on your universe’s Shadow? Make sure that he’s not alone?”

“Uh, sure,” Stone said. “I can do that.”

“Thank you,” Shadow said to him, but just as he said that, Robotnik took Stone by the hand, and before Stone could even process the feeling of the doctor’s fingers entwined in his, everything went black.

When Agent Stone awoke, he was back in the Closet of Abandoned Inventions, this time with Dr. Robotnik by his side. However, just as Stone was about to open the door and step back into the Crab, Robotnik suddenly grabbed him by the shoulders and looked him in the eyes.

“Stone, listen to me very carefully,” he said. “Under absolutely no circumstances are you ever to touch or tamper with the Multiverse Transporter again. And in the very likely event that you forget that I’ve banished you from my Closet of Abandoned Inventions, I’ll hang up another sign right here, right in front of your face. ‘No Agents Allowed.’ Four hundred point font, all caps, plain as day, impossible to miss. Got that, Agent Stone?”

“Got it, Doctor,” Stone said.

The room went silent for a moment, and then Robotnik said, “Stone…what you did back there with the Enforcer, it was…impressive.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Stone said with a bright smile, his whole self glowing from the sound of Robotnik’s praise.

“We make a good team,” Robotnik said. “Like Kirk and Spock. Holmes and Watson. Bonnie and Clyde. Or the greatest duo of all: me and my grandfalafel!” A dejected expression appeared on Stone’s face at the mention of Dr. Robotnik’s grandfather, all of his old jealousy slowly creeping back, but Robotnik suddenly said, “But we’re not ‘best of friends,’ Stone. I don’t know how you got that silly little notion into your pea-sized brain, but it’s thoroughly off base.”

“What are we then?” Stone asked, a small sliver of hope fluttering in his chest.

“You’re my assistant,” Dr. Robotnik said.

“Right,” Stone said. “Of course.”

He didn’t know why he’d expected Dr. Robotnik to say anything different.

Agent Stone then reached for the pack of triple A batteries on the top shelf and presented them to his boss, but Robotnik immediately snatched them away and put them back. “Thank you, sycophant, but due to your outrageous negligence earlier today, I no longer need these,” he said. “However, I will need my laser-bending thermo-distortion suit before we break into the G.U.N. headquarters. Meet me and Grampsy outside of the Crab in five minutes, and DON’T YOU DARE FORGET MY SIX O’CLOCK LATTE!”

“Yes, Doctor,” Stone said with a smile as he watched Dr. Robotnik storm out of the walk-in closet. He was still reasonably sure that Robotnik didn’t feel the same way about Stone that his alternate self did: in the eight years they’d known each other, Dr. Robotnik had never once shown the slightest bit of interest in Agent Stone, or really, in anyone other than himself. Stone had made his peace with that long ago: in some ways, he loved Robotnik the same way he might love a particularly grumpy housecat - affectionately, unashamedly, and without any real expectation that his love would be returned.

Dr. Robotnik thoroughly despised humanity, and Stone was no exception, but the doctor had noticed when he didn’t get his afternoon latte. He’d worried that Stone had disappeared for good when he couldn’t find him in the Crab. He’d gone into an alternate universe just to rescue his assistant. He’d even complimented him just now, without a hint of aggression or irony, and after all of this, Agent Stone was starting to suspect that the doctor might just appreciate him a little more than he usually let on.

With that in mind, Agent Stone prepared Robotnik’s latte with even more attention, ardency, and affection than usual, adding as many hearts as he could reasonably fit onto the latte foam. He then handed Robotnik his six o’clock latte on the way out of the Crab, and the doctor downed it in a single gulp before tossing the cup in the garbage with a dramatic overhand throw, as if he were a star pitcher on a major league baseball team. As soon as Robotnik was done goofing off, Agent Stone took the briefcase that contained the doctor and the professor’s spandex suits, and he met Robotnik, Shadow, and the professor outside the Crab, just as he’d been asked. He listened to Shadow talk about his plan to avenge Maria, he presented Robotnik with his suits, and he stared longingly at the doctor, imagining the two of them breaking into the G.U.N. headquarters, getting their revenge, ruling the world together, side by side…

“Stone, babysit the hedgehog, keep the crab on a low boil,” Robotnik said as he took Stone’s briefcase and then followed his grandfather into G.U.N. headquarters. “It’s time for more family bonding.”

Dr. Robotnik quickly glanced backwards at his assistant as he left the scene, and that split second when their eyes met was a memory that Agent Stone would cherish forever, a moment that would appear in his dreams long after the doctor was gone. Agent Stone didn’t know it then, but it would be the last time he would ever get to see Dr. Robotnik in person.

As soon as the doctor was gone, Agent Stone turned back to Shadow, realizing that this was his chance to bond with his universe’s version of the Ultimate Lifeform, to give him the affection that he so desperately needed, to fulfill the promise that he’d made to Shadow’s alternate self. “Come on, Shadow,” he said to the hedgehog. “Got fresh avocados in the Crab. We’ll make guac.”

Stone leapt back into the Crab, and just before Shadow followed him inside, Stone swore he heard the dark-furred hedgehog say, “Revenge guac.”

Chapter Text

“Gabriella should kill them both. She is not a prize to be won.”

As Shadow fixed his eyes on the TV screen, Agent Stone stirred up their revenge guac and smiled, remembering how Shadow’s alternate self had said nearly the exact same thing when the doctor had offered to trade him for Maria and Shadow. Stone very briefly considered mentioning that incident to Shadow, but then he would have to explain that he’d been to a universe where Maria had never died, and he couldn’t do that to him. Agent Stone had already made guacamole for Shadow, he’d showed him the doctor’s favorite telenovela, he’d argued with him over how many jalapeños were supposed to go into a bowl of revenge guac, but he couldn’t bring himself to do anything that would worsen Shadow’s already fragile emotional state, anything that would make him even more angry and vengeful than he already was.

“Kill this, murder that,” Agent Stone said. “You need to lighten up, Shadow. We’re about to rule the world.”

It was only much later, after Shadow was long gone, that Stone realized that telling Shadow that Maria was alive somewhere, even if it wasn’t in this reality, might have brought him peace. Maybe Shadow would have wanted to talk to Maria, maybe he would have remembered that she was quick to empathize and even quicker to forgive, maybe he would have realized that she never would have wanted revenge, not in a million years.

Maybe Dr. Robotnik would still be alive if Stone had told Shadow the truth, but instead, the hedgehog grimly turned away from the TV screen and said to Stone, “When we’re done, there won’t be anything left to rule.”

And for Agent Stone, that one sentence changed everything.

He tried to stop them. He tried to warn Robotnik about his grandfather’s plan, but the doctor hadn’t listened. He accused Stone of being jealous, he said that the two of them were done, he fired Stone from the best job he’d ever had, and then, Stone watched the Eclipse Cannon launch into space, he listened to Dr. Robotnik’s final livestream, he got to hear the doctor finally call him a friend.

And then, the Eclipse Cannon exploded, taking Shadow and the doctor with it.

Agent Stone knew in his heart that Shadow and Robotnik had done the right thing. They’d kept the professor from carrying out his plan. They’d stopped the reactor core from overloading. They’d rescued billions of people from certain annihilation.

They’d saved the world.

But sometimes, Stone selfishly wished that they hadn’t.

He spent the first few days after the explosion holed up in a cheap hotel in London with a tub of ice cream, a jumbo size box of tissues, and the few items he’d managed to recover from the Crab. An extra copy of the Robotnik Manifesto, a container of leftover guacamole, and the Multiverse Transporter were the only traces of Dr. Robotnik’s brilliance that were left, and Agent Stone kept them carefully perched on the nightstand as painful reminders of everything he’d lost: his job, his home, the man he loved.

Stone hadn’t expected it, but losing Shadow hurt too. It wasn’t like Robotnik, it wasn’t the kind of loss that made him feel like someone had reached into his chest and torn out his heart, but it was there, a dull ache, like a stubbed toe or a pulled muscle. Shadow was just a kid mourning his lost sister, he had his whole life in front of him, he should have gotten a second chance.

Stone should have stopped Shadow and the doctor from going anywhere near the Eclipse Cannon, but he hadn’t. His job was to protect Dr. Robotnik, to keep him safe, but he’d failed. He’d let him die, and now, Stone would do anything, absolutely anything at all, if it meant that he could see the doctor’s face just one last time.

Six days passed by, and just as Agent Stone was about to give up on the thought of ever seeing Robotnik again, he had an epiphany. He picked the Multiverse Transporter up off of the nightstand, and as he admired Dr. Robotnik’s handiwork, he thought of the alternate universe that he’d visited just before he found out about the Eclipse Cannon. The Robotnik from this universe might be gone forever, but Ivo was almost certainly alive and well. Stone could see him, he could talk to him, he could make him another latte with steamed Austrian goat milk, hell, maybe the doctor would even want to go on a second date with him, now that Ivo knew that he wasn’t the Enforcer…

Before Stone could think through his plan any further, he slammed his hand on the red button, and everything went black.

When Agent Stone awoke, he was back in the same alternate universe as before, with the same layout, the same familiar hallways, the same Mushroom Gun hanging on the wall. Agent Stone made his way to Ivo’s lab, and sure enough, the doctor was there, alive and working on one of his many brilliant inventions. He didn’t immediately notice Agent Stone, so Stone waited in the doorway, just admiring the way he flitted from project to project, awestruck by the simple fact of Dr. Robotnik’s existence.

There was a latte with steamed Austrian goat milk on the counter in front of the doctor, complete with a detailed portrait of him etched into the foam, but instead of drinking it, Ivo had stuck a plethora of sensors and samplers into his mug and connected them all to some sort of analyzer.

“Hmm…interesting,” the doctor said. “No traces of arsenic, cyanide, atropine, strychnine, thallium, methanol, ethylene glycol, or common household bleach, indicating that there is a less than 0.0001% chance that the sweet temptation of this delicious latte will lead me to an ugly, premature death...”

Ivo smiled and then immediately took a large swig of his latte, but all of a sudden, he looked towards the doorway and screamed. “Gah! Enforcer!” Ivo exclaimed, nearly spilling his latte. “I swear on my Badniks, if you ever ambush me like that again with your fake smile and your perfectly crafted latte, I will force you to read one of Shadow’s high school poetry collections cover to cover. Shall we start with ‘Seduced By The Taste Of Blood’ or ‘Requiem For A Fallen Angel?’”

Stone’s heart leapt at the sound of Robotnik’s voice, and as a slight smile crept across his face, Ivo slowly made his way towards him. “Hello? Earth to the Enforcer?” Ivo said as he took a closer look at Stone. “Usually, my hyperbolic threats elicit more of a reaction than that, but perhaps you lost some brain cells when you…no, no, wait a minute. You’re not the Enforcer. You’re that other Agent Stone, the one who works for my devious doppelganger.”

As Stone fought back tears at the mention of the doctor from his universe, Ivo’s eyes widened, his brow furrowed, and he looked at his henchman from another dimension with an expression that Stone had rarely ever seen from his universe’s Robotnik: genuine concern.

“Are you…okay?” Ivo asked, but before he could answer, Maria and Shadow ran into the room, and as soon as Agent Stone caught sight of the hedgehog, he thought of the other Shadow, the one that he’d made revenge guac with back in his home universe, and his heart suddenly sank into his stomach.

“Stone, what’s going on?” Maria asked, while at the same time, Shadow turned to him and asked, “Did something happen in your universe?”

As the Robotniks all looked towards him, the same inquisitive expression on all three of their faces, Stone realized that coming to this dimension was a mistake. He’d thought that seeing the doctor again would help him escape his endless spiral of grief, but every time Ivo looked at him, he imagined someone balder, someone meaner. Every time Ivo spoke, Stone pictured those words coming out of Dr. Robotnik’s mouth. Every time Ivo’s eyes met his, Stone saw the Robotnik from his universe, and Ivo deserved better than that. He deserved someone who loved him for who he was, someone who could see him without preconceptions or prejudices, someone who didn’t struggle to call him by his first name.

Stone looked into Ivo’s eyes one more time, and he longed for the doctor. His doctor.

“The doctor…he’s…he’s dead in my universe,” Agent Stone finally said to Ivo, Maria, and Shadow, his voice choked with emotion, his throat tight with tears. “And…we lost Shadow too.”

As Stone’s lips quivered, a devastated look appeared on all of their faces, and once they’d all processed the situation, Maria immediately took charge, well aware that she was the only one in the room who hadn’t just died in Stone’s universe. She pulled him into the break room, and as soon as they made it there, Stone gave up on even trying to hold himself together, and he broke down crying, his whole body wracked by massive, heaving sobs.

“Can I give you a hug?” Maria asked as Stone wept uncontrollably, his whole self dissolving into a blubbering, devastated mess. Agent Stone tearfully nodded, and she reached out and wrapped her arms around him. Stone gladly accepted the embrace - he couldn’t even remember the last time that someone had hugged him like this, and he only realized now just how badly he needed a shoulder to cry on.

“What happened?” Maria asked once Agent Stone had calmed down slightly. “I mean, aside from clearly having eaten a few too many cheeseburgers, your universe’s Ivo seemed okay when he was here.”

“It was the Eclipse Cannon,” Stone said, drying away his tears. “Your grandfather decided to avenge your death by blowing up the Earth, and he manipulated Shadow and the doctor into helping him.”

“WHAT?!” Maria shouted. “What…no…why…why would any of them think that I would want them to annihilate the planet?!” She then opened the door and yelled into the hallway, “SHADOW! IVO! I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but if I die tragically…PLEASE DON’T DESTROY THE EARTH!!”

“I’ll…keep that in mind,” Shadow said, clearly very confused.

“Did you think that we were going to destroy the planet?” Ivo said.

Maria then slammed the door shut, turned back to Agent Stone, and said, “But you’re alive, so my grandfather’s plan must not have worked.”

“Shadow and Dr. Robotnik stopped him just in time…but they had to sacrifice their lives to save the world,” Stone said, trying his best not to tear up again. “The doctor dedicated his final livestream to me. He called me his syco-friend, he said that he would miss my lattes…and now he’s gone.”

“Listen, I am so, so sorry for your loss,” Maria said. “I can’t even imagine how hard it must be to lose Ivo. But stalking your dead boss in an alternate universe is not a healthy way to deal with any of this.”

“Maria?”

It was Agent Stone’s voice, but he hadn’t said a word. He looked around, searching for whoever had spoken, and a few moments later, this universe’s Agent Stone - the Enforcer - opened the door and stumbled into the room, trying to carry a cup of coffee even though both of his arms were in casts.

“I’m making coffee for everyone - I thought you might like a chai tea latte with oat milk,” he said to Maria. However, his tear-stained eyes suddenly met Stone’s, and both of them said at once, “What is he doing here?”

“I’ll explain later,” Maria said. “Stone…” Both Stones perked up upon hearing their name, and Maria quickly clarified which Stone she was talking to. “The one from my universe,” she said. “Stop making coffee and go get some rest. Doctor’s orders.”

“You don’t even have a medical degree,” the alternate Stone said. “I should sue you for malpractice.”

“And yet, that one human anatomy course I took in college is the only reason you’re alive right now,” Maria said as she sipped on her chai tea latte.

The Enforcer gave her an irritated look and then hobbled out of the room, and as soon as he was gone, Stone dried his tears, turned to Maria, and asked, “Why is the Enforcer here?”

“He fell off of his motorcycle after our last fight, and…you were right,” she said. “The Enforcer’s bosses don’t care about him. In fact, they fired him right after he stole the Master Emerald, and then they abandoned him, left him for dead. And even for our archenemy, that seemed like a terrible way to go, so the four of us talked it over, and we decided to rescue him. None of us have forgiven the Enforcer for shooting Elise or trying to kill Sonic, and I don’t think he’s forgiven us for sending him to the Mushroom Planet, but…we all agreed that your alternate self deserved a second chance.”

As Maria spoke, Agent Stone thought back to the conversation he’d had with the Enforcer last time he was in this universe, and he slowly realized that he and his alternate self were in the exact same boat. Both Stones had lost their jobs, and with it, they’d lost everything they knew, everything they loved. Their lives were empty now, nothing more than blank slates, but a blank slate could be a chance to start fresh. Neither Stone nor the Enforcer entirely deserved redemption, and yet, there it was, waiting for them, an obvious opportunity to erase their past mistakes and start anew.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do without Dr. Robotnik,” Stone said to Maria. “I don’t want to end up like him. Like the Enforcer. Because that’s who I am without the doctor.”

“Stone, I know it’s going to be hard, really hard, but you can live without him,” Maria said. “And Ivo doesn’t get to decide what kind of person you are. You can do or be anything you want.” She then pointed to his heart and said, “It’s what’s in here that counts.”

“I…I think I might be scared of what’s in here,” Stone said.

“Do you think that the rest of us aren’t?” Maria said. “Do you think that Shadow isn’t afraid of how far he might go to get revenge? Do you think that Ivo doesn’t look at his alternate self from your universe and worry about how he might have turned out if he didn’t have a family? Do you think that there isn’t a universe out there where instead of dying young or living out a relatively happy life with a loving family, I experienced enough loss and grief and pain to push me past my breaking point and drive me to villainy?” Maria sighed and then said, “Ivo was right about one thing. We’re all capable of good or evil. And I want you to be happy, so…do what makes you happy. Not what you think Ivo would want. Not what other people tell you that you should do. I want you to do what you think is right.”

Agent Stone nodded, but there was just one problem: what felt right to him, what made him happy more than anything else in the world, was helping Dr. Robotnik, seeing him succeed, watching him smile. He wanted the doctor to help him decide who he was, or, more accurately, he wanted both of them to grow and change and discover what kind of people they were going to be. Together.

But that was never going to happen now.

“Are you sure Shadow and Ivo are dead?” Maria asked when she saw just how distraught Agent Stone was.

“They were caught in a giant explosion in space,” Stone said. “The doctor’s resilient, but…I don’t think there’s a way to survive that.”

“And yet, I’ve seen both him and Shadow survive worse,” Maria said. “Shadow has superpowers, and I’m pretty sure Ivo’s part cockroach. I can’t even count how many times I've watched one of Ivo’s inventions dramatically burst into flames, only for him to show up to work the next day like nothing happened. It’s honestly kind of impressive…”

“Maria!” Elise called out. “It’s time for family game night!”

“I have to go, but you’re welcome to stay here if you need to, Stone,” Maria said, and with that, she opened the door, walked out of the break room, and joined Elise in the main lab.

Agent Stone waited there for a few moments, mulling over what to do next, but he knew that there was nothing left for him back in his home universe, no one who would miss him if he disappeared, so he decided to stay in the break room for a little longer. He went over to the espresso machine, and as he fixed himself a latte with steamed Austrian goat milk, he listened in on the Robotniks’ family game night.

“Are we letting the Enforcer play?” Shadow asked, and Maria, Elise, and Ivo all looked towards Stone’s alternate self suspiciously before nodding.

“Just this once,” Maria said.

“I would say he’s our guest of honor, but I don’t think that’s the right word when we’re talking about the Enforcer,” Elise said.

“For the last time, that’s not my name,” Stone’s alternate self muttered.

“Enough about the Villain Formerly Known As The Enforcer, let’s solve the more important problem here,” Ivo said. “What board game are we playing?”

“If I remember correctly, the rules are no games that take more than two hours to play, no games where it’s possible for everyone to lose, no luck-based games, no expansion packs if we haven’t played the game before, no games that Shadow could plausibly cheat at, no Merchants of Venus, because you guys think I always win, no Risk or Diplomacy, because Ivo and Elise get way too competitive, no Scrabble or any other word game, because we can’t seem to agree on whether or not ‘Badnik’ is a real word, and no Monopoly, because we do not need a repeat of the Great Monopoly Disaster of 2019,” Maria said. “How about Trivial Pursuit?”

“Only if you and Ivo aren’t on the same team,” Shadow said.

“I’ll take the Enforce…I mean Stone. I want Agent Stone on my team,” Ivo said. “Do you want to be on my team, Stone?”

Stone wasn’t sure whether Ivo had said that because he wanted to win the game, because he wanted to keep his friends close and his enemies closer, or because some part of him was beginning to like Stone again, but Agent Stone’s alternate self didn’t seem to be reading too much into Ivo’s intentions. “Uh, sure,” the alternate Stone said as he sat down next to the doctor and then nervously smiled. “I’d like that a lot, Ivo. I think we’ll make a good team.”

“Until you get to the sports questions,” Maria snarked.

“Watch the first question be about freestyle motocross,” Ivo said. “Then we’ll see who’s the real genius of the family.”

Maria picked up the cards and shuffled them, and as they played, Stone noticed that something had changed in the Robotniks’ dynamic since he’d first arrived in this universe a week ago. He could see it in the way Maria high-fived Elise and Shadow every time her team got a question right, he could see it in the way Ivo complimented his relatives as often as he teased them, he could see it in the way Shadow defended his siblings after even the most harmless playground insult, refusing to take his close relationship with his family for granted.

And at the center of it all, there was the Enforcer. Stone remembered how cold and ruthless his alternate self had been just last week, but as Ivo and the Enforcer worked together to win the game, Stone’s alternate self slowly began to relax and loosen up. He became warmer, friendlier, and by the time the Enforcer finished drinking his Stoneacchino, he couldn’t stop himself from smiling, laughing, making small talk, playfully bantering with Shadow, occasionally sneaking wistful glances in Ivo’s direction. He obviously still had a long way to go in terms of earning the Robotniks’ trust, but he seemed to fit in here. He already seemed like a part of the family.

Stone looked back at the Enforcer one last time, and he knew that there wasn’t enough space for two Agent Stones in this universe. He couldn’t stay here any longer, because the last thing Stone wanted was to interfere with his alternate self’s redemption, that process of tearing apart his old personality and rebuilding himself into someone new, someone better. Stone wasn’t going to stop his alternate self from bonding with the people that he considered to be his enemies, the people that he might one day consider to be his friends or even his family. He couldn’t bring himself to ruin his alternate self’s best chance at happiness.

While his doppelganger was playing Trivial Pursuit with the Robotniks, Agent Stone dipped out of the break room and snuck back into Ivo’s lab. He took a look around one last time, admiring the drones and the Badniks and all of the doctor’s brainchildren, and then he found the Multiverse Transporter on the counter, waiting for him. He let out a deep sigh as he cradled the doctor’s invention, knowing that he might never get another chance to hold one of Robotnik’s perfectly crafted creations, and then, Agent Stone finally did what he had to do.

He pushed the red button, and all of a sudden, everything went black.

When Stone awoke, he was back in his hotel room in London, and he lay down on the bed, stared up at the ceiling, and let his mind go blank and his heart go numb. He was forty-two years old, and he had no partner, no family, no friends. He’d lost his job, and he was stranded in a foreign country without any form of identification. If he had a heart attack and died right now, no one would care or even notice that something was amiss.

He was nobody. Nothing. An empty shell, a broken fragment of the man who was once Dr. Robotnik’s trusted assistant, a person hitting rock bottom. Unknown, unwanted, unloved.

He was nothing but a blank slate.

But a blank slate could also turn into a fresh start.

Stone kept on staring at the ceiling, wondering what the hell he was going to do now. Redemption sounded nice on paper, but was he really going to go back to that small town in Montana, re-open the Mean Bean, and draw sad latte art portraits of Dr. Robotnik for the rest of his life? Or was he supposed to somehow get over his ridiculous crush on his boss and settle for some common lowlife instead of a diabolical mad genius - all while his evil alternate self got to live and thrive with the Robotniks? Was he supposed to do something about the gnawing void within his soul, the all-consuming loneliness, the Robotnik-shaped hole in his life? Was he supposed to somehow atone for all of his mistakes without the only person he’d ever truly loved, the person who would quite literally save the world for him, by his side?

Moving on sounded like hell, and Agent Stone couldn’t think of a single thing more miserable than living in a world that didn’t have Dr. Robotnik in it.

There was really nothing left to do but to take Maria’s advice and keep scouring the Internet, hoping that reports of Shadow and the doctor’s deaths had been greatly exaggerated. Stone spent hours looking for even the slightest shred of evidence that they might be alive, but eventually, he found it.

He found one of Shadow’s gold limiter rings in the background of a picture on the Green Hills Park District’s Instagram page, and when he connected to the doctor’s satellite network, he found a technological signal that he eventually traced back to some kind of robotic replica of Sonic. It wasn’t definitive proof, but it was exactly the sort of wondrous, brilliant invention that Dr. Robotnik would create, the perfect weapon for the doctor to finally get his revenge on the hedgehog.

Agent Stone took a deep breath, and he felt alive, renewed, like a blade of grass poking up through a crack in the sidewalk after a long winter. He finally packed up his belongings and checked out of his hotel that morning, and he booked a flight back to Montana on a forged passport and a stolen credit card. He wasn’t exactly sure what he would do when he finally made it back to Green Hills, but while he waited in the departure lounge at Heathrow, he scrolled through the evidence that he’d found online, he highlighted the relevant sections of the Robotnik Manifesto, he sketched out a layout for a brand new, even more evil lair for the doctor, and slowly, surely, he pulled together a plan to find Dr. Robotnik, a plan to reunite with the one and only person he’d ever cared about.

He remembered Maria’s advice to do what made him happy, and for the first time since the Eclipse Cannon exploded, Agent Stone smiled to himself, thinking that he might actually be able to make that happen.

For the first time since the Eclipse Cannon exploded, he dared to feel hope.