The fallen Egg Fleet was a graveyard of ambition.
Eggman's aerial armada—once a terrifying symbol of the doctor's technological supremacy, a fleet of warships that had darkened skies and reduced cities to rubble during the war—now lay scattered across the badlands like the discarded toys of a petulant god-child who had been sent to his room without supper. Massive hulls jutted from the earth at broken angles, their once-gleaming surfaces scorched and corroded, their weapon systems dead, their engines silent. Sand had already begun to claim them, drifting against their flanks in amber dunes that softened their harsh edges and made them look almost peaceful.
Almost.
Because one of them was still active.
Marcus could feel it before he could see it—a low, subsonic hum that resonated through his chaos energy like a tuning fork pressed against his sternum. It was faint, buried beneath layers of interference from the surrounding wreckage, but it was there: the unmistakable electromagnetic signature of an operational Eggman command vessel, its systems running on minimal power, its presence deliberately masked.
Hiding.
Waiting.
Marcus and Rouge landed on the spine of a crashed destroyer about half a mile from the source of the signal. The metal groaned under their weight—Rouge's landing, in particular, produced a structural complaint from the hull plating that Marcus chose not to think about too carefully—and they crouched behind a bank of dead sensor arrays, surveying the landscape.
"There," Marcus said, pointing toward a particularly large vessel that had come to rest in a shallow canyon between two mesas. It was a command carrier—one of the big ones, the kind that served as mobile headquarters for fleet operations. Its hull was intact, relatively speaking, and several of its external systems showed faint signs of power: a blinking navigation light here, a slowly rotating sensor dish there, the ghost-light glow of emergency power running through conduits visible through breaches in the outer armor.
"Cozy," Rouge observed, her teal eyes reflecting the distant glimmer of the active vessel. "If you're a megalomaniacal robot with delusions of grandeur, anyway."
"Which is exactly what Neo Metal Sonic is."
"You keep calling him 'Neo.' Most people just say Metal Sonic."
"He's not just Metal Sonic anymore. He upgraded himself using Eggman's experimental systems during the war. Shapeshifting capabilities, bio-data absorption, adaptive combat protocols. He's..." Marcus paused, searching for the right word. "...More."
"More dangerous?"
"More delusional. Metal Sonic's original programming gave him one objective: surpass Sonic. Neo Metal Sonic has expanded that objective into a messianic complex. He doesn't just want to beat Sonic anymore—he wants to become Sonic. To prove he's the real thing and everything else is a copy."
Rouge was quiet for a moment. "That's... actually kind of sad."
"It is," Marcus agreed, and meant it. Because underneath all the chrome and combat data and stolen bio-signatures, Metal Sonic was a tragedy. A machine built to replicate something it could never truly be, driven mad by the gap between imitation and authenticity. In Sonic Heroes, when Metal Sonic had finally revealed himself—shedding his Eggman disguise, ranting about being the real Sonic—there had been something almost pitiable about it. A robot having an identity crisis. A copy screaming into the void that it was the original.
IDW, characteristically, had not explored this angle with any particular depth. IDW's Neo Metal Sonic was a threat to be defeated, a plot device to be overcome, a villain whose complexity extended exactly as far as the current arc required and no further.
Marcus intended to change that too.
But first, he had to stop him.
"Where's Sonic?" Marcus asked.
"Two minutes out," Rouge said, tapping the communicator in her ear—one of the units Amy had distributed before they'd left the base, because Amy was competent when the narrative remembered to let her be. "He took the scenic route. Something about 'needing to warm up' before fighting his evil twin."
"He doesn't need to warm up. He needs to focus."
"You try telling him that."
A blue streak appeared on the horizon, growing rapidly, resolving into the familiar silhouette of Sonic the Hedgehog running at approximately the speed of sound across the flat expanse of the badlands. He reached the crashed destroyer in seconds, vaulted onto its hull with a casual triple-jump that covered the vertical distance like it was nothing, and landed beside Marcus and Rouge with a grin that suggested he'd been looking forward to this all day.
"Miss me?" Sonic asked.
"It's been four minutes," Marcus said.
"That's like a year in hedgehog time."
"That's not how time works."
"It's how my time works. Being the fastest thing alive means the rest of the world moves in slow motion. It's very boring. I have to make my own entertainment." He cracked his neck, rolled his shoulders, and peered toward the active command carrier. "So. Metal Me is in there?"
"Neo Metal Sonic. Yes."
"And the plan is...?"
Marcus had been thinking about this.
In the original IDW storyline, the confrontation with Neo Metal Sonic on the Egg Fleet had been a mess. Sonic had boarded the command ship, fought Neo Metal Sonic, and then—in a moment that had made Marcus throw his phone across the room when he'd first read it—ran away. Sonic the Hedgehog, the hero who had defeated Perfect Chaos in base form, who had outrun a black hole, who had never backed down from a fight in thirty years of franchise history, had retreated from Neo Metal Sonic.
The justification had been tactical—Neo Metal Sonic was absorbing Sonic's bio-data during the fight, getting stronger with every exchange, and Sonic had realized that continuing to engage was playing into Metal's hands. It was, on paper, a strategically sound decision.
But it had felt wrong.
It had felt wrong because Sonic didn't retreat. Not like that. Not in a way that left the villain stronger and the hero diminished. When Sonic disengaged from a fight, it was because he had a plan—he fell back to regroup, to find a better angle, to come back with his friends and finish what he'd started. He didn't just leave. He didn't just let the bad guy win a round.
And the worst part—the absolute worst part—was what happened after. Neo Metal Sonic, emboldened by the bio-data he'd collected, had launched his endgame. He'd gone to Angel Island. He'd taken the Master Emerald. He'd absorbed its power, combined it with the bio-data of Sonic, Shadow, and others, and transformed into Master Overlord—a kaiju-sized monstrosity that had required the entire cast working together to defeat.
All because Sonic ran.
All because Knuckles left the Emerald unguarded.
All because the story needed its characters to be stupid so that the plot could escalate.
Marcus was not going to let that happen.
"The plan," Marcus said, "is that I go in first."
Sonic blinked. "You go in first."
"Yes."
"Into the ship full of robots. Controlled by your evil... well, not your evil twin, my evil twin, but the evil twin of the franchise. You want to go in first."
"Neo Metal Sonic's primary objective is to collect bio-data from the strongest fighters he can find. That's what these coordinated attacks have been about—probing our capabilities, cataloging our abilities, building profiles he can absorb and integrate. When he fights you, Sonic, he copies your speed, your techniques, your combat patterns. The longer you fight him, the more data he collects, the stronger he gets."
"Right," Sonic said slowly. "Which is why fighting him head-on is—"
"Which is why you shouldn't fight him head-on. Not yet. Not until we've neutralized his data absorption capability." Marcus paused. "But I can."
Rouge's eyebrow arched. "You want to give him your bio-data?"
"No. I want him to try to take my bio-data." Marcus allowed himself a small, sharp smile—a Shadow smile, rare and dangerous and promising violence. "And I want to show him why that's a mistake."
Marcus entered the command carrier alone.
He didn't sneak. He didn't infiltrate. He didn't skulk through ventilation shafts or access corridors or any of the tedious stealth-game approaches that lesser operatives might have employed. He walked through the front door.
Well. He Chaos Controlled through the front door. But the energy was "walking through the front door."
The interior of the carrier was dark, lit only by the emergency power running through the conduits—a deep, pulsing red that turned the corridors into arteries, as though the ship itself were alive and bleeding light. The air was stale, recycled by systems running on minimum power, carrying the metallic tang of ozone and old circuitry.
Badniks lined the corridors.
Not attacking. Not moving. Just... standing there. Egg Pawns, mostly, arranged in neat ranks along both walls like an honor guard. Their optics glowed faintly in the red emergency lighting, tracking Marcus's movement with synchronized precision as he passed. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds.
They were watching.
He was watching.
Marcus walked deeper into the ship. Past the barracks. Past the armory. Past the engine rooms and the storage bays and the medical wing and all the other spaces that had once housed Eggman's war machine and now served as the throne room of a robot with delusions of divinity.
The bridge was at the heart of the ship.
It was a massive space—a semicircular command center with a panoramic viewport that currently showed nothing but sand and stone, its weapons consoles dead, its navigation systems dark. The captain's chair sat on a raised platform at the center, flanked by tactical displays that flickered with fragmentary data.
Neo Metal Sonic was sitting in the captain's chair.
Not Metal Sonic. Neo Metal Sonic. The distinction was visible: where the original Metal Sonic was sleek, compact, a streamlined copy of Sonic rendered in chrome and blue steel, Neo Metal Sonic was more. Taller. Sharper. His chassis had been redesigned with angular, aggressive lines that suggested a being who had outgrown his original specifications and rebuilt himself in his own image. His cape—a long, flowing mantle of dark metallic fabric—draped over the chair behind him like a banner. His optics blazed crimson in the darkness, two points of burning red that fixed on Marcus with the focused intensity of a targeting system acquiring a lock.
"Shadow the Hedgehog," Neo Metal Sonic said.
His voice was wrong. Not wrong in the way that robot voices were usually wrong—too flat, too mechanical, too obviously synthetic. Neo Metal Sonic's voice was wrong in the opposite direction. It was too close to organic. Too fluid. Too alive. It had the cadence and inflection of a living being, but underneath it was a harmonic resonance that set Marcus's teeth on edge, a subsonic frequency that said I am not what I appear to be and I know exactly what I am in the same breath.
"I've been expecting you," Neo Metal Sonic continued, rising from the chair with a motion that was simultaneously mechanical and organic—servos and actuators moving with biological fluidity, chrome joints articulating with the grace of living muscle. "Though I expected the blue one first. He usually can't resist a direct challenge."
"Sonic has better things to do," Marcus said. Arms crossed. Weight centered. Voice flat. The stance of a being who had walked into the heart of enemy territory and felt absolutely nothing resembling concern about it. "You're dealing with me."
Neo Metal Sonic tilted his head. The motion was eerily reminiscent of Sonic—the same cocky angle, the same insouciant curiosity—but filtered through chrome and crimson optics, it became something else entirely. Something wrong.
"Acceptable," Neo Metal Sonic said. "Your bio-data is... valuable. Perhaps even more so than Sonic's. The Ultimate Lifeform." He said it like a title, like a classification, like a specimen label on a jar. "Chaos energy manipulation. Regenerative capability. Combat experience spanning decades. Yes." His optics brightened. "I've been looking forward to this."
He moved.
Fast. Incredibly fast—not Sonic-fast, not the pure footspeed of the blue blur, but a different kind of velocity. Explosive. Aggressive. A lunge across the bridge that closed the distance between them in a fraction of a second, chrome claws extended, targeting systems locked, every combat algorithm in his considerable processing power focused on a single objective: engage, analyze, absorb.
Marcus didn't move.
He stood exactly where he was, arms crossed, weight centered, and watched Neo Metal Sonic come at him with the clinical detachment of someone watching a nature documentary about a predator that had mistaken its own reflection for prey.
Neo Metal Sonic's claws struck.
And stopped.
They stopped because Marcus's hand was around Neo Metal Sonic's wrist. Not blocking—catching. The way you might catch a ball thrown by a child. Casual. Effortless. The chrome claws trembled three inches from Marcus's face, frozen in place by a grip that channeled the full, terrible, star-burning power of a chaos energy reactor refined over fifty years and contained by inhibitor rings that were currently straining at their operational limits.
Neo Metal Sonic's optics flickered. Processing. Recalculating.
"You're fast," Marcus acknowledged. "Let me show you what fast looks like."
He moved.
Not Chaos Control—not teleportation, not the spatial shortcut that bypassed distance entirely. No. Marcus moved. He moved at the speed that Shadow the Hedgehog was capable of when he stopped holding back, when the inhibitor rings did their job but the chaos energy behind them surged, when the Ultimate Lifeform reminded the universe why Gerald Robotnik had chosen that designation and it hadn't been hyperbole.
He swung Neo Metal Sonic by his captured wrist, pivoted on one hover shoe, and threw the robot through the bridge's tactical display console with enough force to reduce several hundred thousand rings' worth of Eggman technology to sparking, shattered debris.
Neo Metal Sonic crashed through the console, through the wall behind it, and into the corridor beyond. The sound was spectacular—metal on metal, chrome on steel, the shrieking protest of materials being forced to occupy the same space simultaneously.
Marcus followed. Unhurried. Arms re-crossed.
The White Wisp on his shoulder chirped urgently.
"Stay behind me," he told it.
The Wisp retreated to the back of his neck and peeked over his shoulder like a bioluminescent prairie dog observing a predator interaction from the safety of its burrow.
Neo Metal Sonic extracted himself from the wreckage with a motion that was less "standing up" and more "reassembling." His chassis bore damage—dents, scratches, a hairline fracture along his left shoulder plate—but his optics burned as bright as ever, and his systems were already compensating, rerouting power, adapting.
That was the thing about Neo Metal Sonic. He adapted.
"Bio-data acquisition initiated," Neo Metal Sonic said, and his voice had changed—it was faster now, more clipped, the cadence of a system entering combat mode. "Chaos energy signature detected. Analyzing. Cataloging. Shadow the Hedgehog—Ultimate Lifeform designation—combat capability assessment: significant."
"You have no idea," Marcus said.
He raised his hand. Chaos energy gathered in his palm—not the focused lance of a Chaos Spear, but something broader, deeper, rawer. The energy of the Chaos Emeralds, filtered through Gerald Robotnik's genius and the biological architecture of a being designed to channel it. It glowed gold, then white, then a color that didn't have a name because it existed outside the visible spectrum and was only perceived by beings with chaos sensitivity.
"Chaos—"
Neo Metal Sonic's optics widened. His adaptive systems screamed warnings. Every combat algorithm he possessed simultaneously concluded that the incoming attack exceeded his defensive parameters and recommended immediate evasion.
"—BLAST."
The corridor ceased to exist.
Not destroyed—ceased to exist. Chaos Blast was not a conventional attack. It was not an explosion in the traditional sense. It was a spherical expansion of raw chaos energy that unmade everything within its radius, converting matter to energy and energy to chaos and chaos to nothing. It was the Ultimate Lifeform's ultimate expression of destructive power, and Marcus unleashed it with the precision of a surgeon and the restraint of a man who knew exactly how much force was necessary and applied exactly that much and no more.
The blast radius extended thirty meters in all directions. It vaporized the corridor, the adjacent rooms, a significant portion of the ship's internal structure, and approximately forty Egg Pawns who had been standing in neat ranks along the walls and were now standing in the quantum probability space between existence and nonexistence.
Neo Metal Sonic survived.
Marcus had expected that. Neo Metal Sonic was tough—built from the most advanced alloys in Eggman's arsenal, reinforced by adaptive shielding systems that could redistribute energy across his entire chassis in microseconds. The Chaos Blast had hurt him—his chrome plating was scorched black on one side, his left arm hung at an angle that suggested compromised joint integrity, and his cape had been reduced to a few tattered strips of metallic fabric—but he was functional.
And he was scared.
Marcus could see it. Not in his face—robots didn't have facial expressions, despite the best efforts of their designers—but in his movement. The way he positioned himself. The way his optics darted, scanning for escape routes. The way his combat algorithms cycled through options and kept coming back to the same conclusion: this opponent exceeds current combat parameters.
"Bio-data acquisition—" Neo Metal Sonic began.
"Let me tell you what you've acquired," Marcus interrupted, walking toward the damaged robot through the smoldering ruins of the corridor. His hover shoes crunched on debris. The White Wisp peeked over his shoulder. His red eyes reflected the dying glow of the Chaos Blast like embers in a forge.
"You've acquired the data profile of a being who was created by the greatest scientific mind of his generation. You've acquired the combat patterns of someone who has fought gods, demons, and cosmic entities, and won. You've acquired the chaos energy signature of the Ultimate Lifeform—a signature that is, I assure you, completely incompatible with your systems."
He stopped two meters from Neo Metal Sonic. Close enough to strike. Close enough to be struck. The distance of absolute confidence.
"Because here's what you don't understand, Metal. You can copy data. You can replicate techniques. You can absorb bio-signatures and integrate them into your systems and become a patchwork of stolen abilities. But you can't copy what makes any of us dangerous." Marcus's voice dropped to a register that was barely above a whisper. "You can't copy will. You can't copy the decision to keep fighting when every logical analysis says you should stop. You can't copy fifty years of choosing to protect a world that never asked you to."
He paused.
"You can't copy Maria."
The name hung in the air like a bell struck in an empty cathedral.
Neo Metal Sonic's optics flickered. Processing. Not just the tactical data—the meaning. The implication that there were variables in this equation that couldn't be quantified, couldn't be cataloged, couldn't be absorbed and integrated. Variables that existed outside the scope of his programming.
For a machine designed to be the ultimate adaptive system, there was nothing more terrifying than encountering something he couldn't adapt to.
"This changes nothing," Neo Metal Sonic said, but there was a harmonic instability in his voice now—a waver, a glitch, the auditory equivalent of uncertainty. "I will acquire the data I need. I will surpass you. I will surpass all of you. I am the real—"
"You're not real," Marcus said. Not cruelly. Almost gently. "You're not Sonic. You were never going to be Sonic. Not because you're a machine—because you're trying to be a copy instead of being yourself."
Another flicker. Deeper this time. A processing loop that verged on existential crisis.
"I am—"
"You're Metal Sonic. That's not nothing. That's not less-than. But it's not Sonic, and it never will be, and every moment you spend trying to become him is a moment you waste not figuring out what you could be."
The silence that followed was broken only by the distant groan of the ship settling deeper into the sand and the faint chirping of the White Wisp, who had apparently decided that this emotional confrontation was very exciting and was providing enthusiastic commentary.
Neo Metal Sonic stood motionless. His optics were steady now—not flickering, not processing, just... fixed. Staring at Marcus with an intensity that transcended targeting systems and combat algorithms.
Then he spoke.
"You are... not what I expected."
"No," Marcus agreed. "I'm not."
Another beat of silence.
"I will retreat," Neo Metal Sonic said. The words came out stiff, mechanical—the default cadence of a system falling back on baseline protocols when its higher functions were occupied with something unprecedented. "This engagement is... inconclusive. I require additional processing time."
"You're retreating?"
"I am conducting a strategic withdrawal."
"That's the same thing."
"It is not the same thing. Retreat implies defeat. I have not been defeated. I have been—" His optics flickered one more time. "—given data that requires analysis."
He turned. His damaged chassis moved with compromised grace, servos whining, joints grinding. He walked—didn't fly, didn't dash, walked—toward a breach in the hull where the Chaos Blast had opened a convenient exit.
He paused at the opening.
"Shadow the Hedgehog," he said, without turning around.
"Metal Sonic," Marcus replied.
"The next time we meet, I will be... more."
"I look forward to it."
Neo Metal Sonic launched himself through the breach and into the sky, his thrusters firing with a scream of displaced air, his battered chrome form dwindling rapidly against the darkening sky until he was just a silver dot, and then a glimmer, and then nothing.
Marcus stood in the ruins of the command carrier.
He let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
That went... differently.
In the original IDW timeline, this confrontation had ended with Neo Metal Sonic stronger—having successfully acquired bio-data from multiple heroes, having beaten them back, having positioned himself for the Master Overlord transformation. The heroes had been reactive, outmaneuvered, systematically outplayed by a villain whose plan only worked because everyone on the heroic side made exactly the wrong decisions at exactly the wrong times.
This time, Neo Metal Sonic was retreating with a damaged chassis, incomplete data, a bruised ego, and—unless Marcus was very much mistaken—the earliest symptoms of an existential crisis.
And Knuckles is guarding the Master Emerald.
And Sonic didn't give him speed data.
And the timeline is BROKEN and I could not be HAPPIER about it.
The White Wisp chirped triumphantly and did a little victory lap around Marcus's head.
"Yes," Marcus told it. "We did good."
The exterior of the carrier was chaos.
Not the metaphysical, capital-C Chaos—the regular, lowercase chaos of a battle aftermath. The Egg Pawns that had been lining the corridors, briefly activated by Neo Metal Sonic's departure protocols, had poured out of the ship in a disorganized swarm and immediately run into Sonic, who had been waiting outside with the barely contained energy of a hedgehog who'd been told to stay put and had barely managed to do so.
The badlands were littered with Egg Pawn debris. Sonic was standing on top of a small mountain of defeated robots, hands on his hips, quills blowing in the wind, looking like a recruitment poster for being cool. Rouge was beside him—of course she was beside him, she was always beside somebody, and when Marcus wasn't available, Sonic was apparently the default—perched on a separate, smaller pile of robots with her legs crossed and her wings folded in a pose that managed to be simultaneously casual and devastatingly alluring.
"He got away?" Sonic asked as Marcus emerged from the breach.
"He retreated."
"Same thing."
"That's what I said."
Sonic grinned. Then he looked at Marcus—really looked, the way he'd been looking more and more often, with that sharpening focus that suggested the IDW fog was lifting from his characterization, Sonic the real Sonic emerging from behind the clouds like a blue sun—and said:
"You didn't just fight him, did you?"
Marcus met his gaze.
"I talked to him."
"You talked to Metal Sonic."
"Yes."
"About what?"
"About who he is. Who he isn't. What he could be if he stopped trying to be you."
Sonic's expression did something complicated. Several emotions competed for control of his face—surprise, skepticism, confusion, and underneath all of them, something that looked almost like... recognition. As though Marcus had articulated something that Sonic had felt but never been able to put into words.
"Huh," Sonic said. "You know, I've been fighting that guy for years, and I've never once tried just... talking to him."
"Maybe you should start."
"Maybe." Sonic's grin returned, warmer this time. "When did you get so wise, Shads?"
"Don't call me—"
"Shadow! Sonic! Come in!"
Amy's voice crackled through the communicators, bright and urgent, cutting through the post-battle banter with the precision of a hedgehog who had been monitoring the situation from base and had news.
"Amy! Talk to us!" Sonic tapped his ear.
"I've been tracking Neo Metal Sonic's retreat vector—he's heading northeast, toward the coast, but that's not why I'm calling. I just received a communication from—" A burst of static. "—from Dr. Starline!"
Marcus's blood ran cold.
Starline.
Dr. Starline.
If Rough and Tumble were IDW's most annoying recurring villains, Dr. Starline was its most infuriating. A platypus—a platypus, because IDW apparently pulled species out of a hat—who was Eggman's self-appointed "biggest fan," a sycophantic mad scientist who worshipped Eggman with the devotion of a cultist and the competence of a graduate student. He was the one who had sought out Mr. Tinker, who had worked to restore Eggman's memories, who had set in motion the chain of events that would eventually lead to the Zombot crisis and everything terrible that came after.
In the original timeline, Starline had already reached Mr. Tinker by this point. He'd already begun the process of reawakening Eggman. The dominoes were already falling.
But Marcus had changed the timeline. He'd left Mr. Tinker alone. He'd sent Knuckles back to Angel Island. He'd confronted Neo Metal Sonic directly and sent him retreating with damaged systems and an identity crisis.
The question was: had he changed enough?
"What did Starline say?" Marcus demanded, his voice cutting through the channel with an authority that made everyone—Sonic, Rouge, Amy, the White Wisp—snap to attention.
"He—he contacted us directly. Used an encrypted channel. Said he wanted to 'negotiate.'" Amy's voice carried the audible quotation marks of someone who didn't trust the word as far as she could throw it, which, given Amy's hammer, was probably pretty far. "He says he has information about Neo Metal Sonic's plans. He says he wants to meet."
"It's a trap," Sonic said immediately.
"Obviously it's a trap," Marcus agreed. "But Starline is dangerous precisely because he's not stupid. He won't spring a trap unless he's certain it will work, and right now, he doesn't have enough information about us to be certain of anything." He paused. "Where does he want to meet?"
"He specified coordinates in the Emerald Hill zone. And Shadow... he asked for you specifically."
Of course he did.
Starline had been watching. Of course he had—the platypus was obsessed with the major players of the Sonic universe, studied them with academic fervor, cataloged their abilities and weaknesses and behavioral patterns. He'd seen what Marcus had done to Neo Metal Sonic's forces. He'd seen the timeline deviating from whatever plans he'd been making. And now he wanted to talk.
"I'll go," Marcus said.
"I'll come with—" Sonic started.
"No." Marcus held up a hand. "I need you to do something more important."
"More important than backing you up against a mad scientist?"
"Call Tails."
The name landed in the conversation with a thud.
Because Tails—Tails—Miles "Tails" Prower, Sonic's best friend, his brother in all but blood, his partner since the age of four, the eight-year-old genius who could build a dimensional transporter out of spare parts and fly a biplane through an asteroid field while solving differential equations in his head—
Tails had been conspicuously absent from this entire adventure.
And that was insane.
In the games, Tails was Sonic's constant companion. They were inseparable. Tails followed Sonic into every adventure, every battle, every world-ending crisis, not because he had to but because he wanted to, because their bond was the emotional bedrock of the entire franchise, the friendship that everything else was built around. Sonic and Tails. Tails and Sonic. The fastest thing alive and the kid genius who kept up with him through sheer determination and a pair of helicoptering namesakes.
IDW had written Tails as... peripheral. Present but not prominent. Around but not involved. He showed up occasionally to provide tech support or exposition, but the deep, warm, essential connection between him and Sonic—the thing that made their relationship matter—had been muted, softened, pushed to the background to make room for new characters and new dynamics that IDW considered more interesting.
It was, in Marcus's considered opinion, one of IDW's greatest sins. Greater than the Mary Sues. Greater than the character assassination of Shadow. Greater than the relentless darkness and the nostalgia strip-mining and the self-important "mature storytelling" that confused grimness for depth.
They had taken Sonic's family away from him.
Not dramatically. Not with a story arc about loss or separation or growing apart. They'd just... not written it. They'd let the most important relationship in the franchise atrophy through neglect, as though it didn't matter, as though it wasn't the heart of everything.
Marcus was going to fix that too.
"Call Tails," he repeated. "Bring him here. Not for tech support. Not for a quick consult. Bring him with you. He should have been here from the beginning."
Something shifted in Sonic's expression. Not surprise this time—guilt. The faintest shadow of recognition that he'd been neglecting something precious, that in his endless running, his relentless forward motion, he'd left behind the one person who had always, always kept up.
"Yeah," Sonic said quietly. "Yeah, you're right. I should've—yeah."
He didn't finish the sentence.
He didn't need to.
"Go," Marcus said. "Get Tails. I'll handle Starline."
Sonic nodded once—sharp, decisive, the nod of a hero who'd been given a mission and understood its importance—and then he was gone. Blue streak. Sonic boom. A trail of dust and purpose and the sudden, urgent need to find his best friend and bring him home.
Rouge materialized at Marcus's side.
"You're going to meet a mad scientist alone," she said.
"I'm not alone. You're coming with me."
Her smile—the real one, the warm one, the one that made chaos energy do inadvisable things in his chest—bloomed across her face like sunrise. "Was that an invitation or an order?"
"Does it matter?"
"It matters for my ego, Shadow."
"It was a request. From your partner. Who trusts you."
The smile widened. Softened. Became something that was less about teasing and more about... them. About the history between them that stretched back decades. About battles fought shoulder to shoulder. About silences shared on rooftops and glances exchanged in the heat of combat and the unspoken, ironclad, absolute certainty that when the world ended—and it ended a lot, in this franchise—they would face it together.
"Then let's go meet a platypus," Rouge said, and launched herself skyward.
Marcus watched her go.
The White Wisp chirped.
"I know," Marcus told it. "I know."
He activated his hover shoes and followed her into the sky.
Dr. Starline was already at the rendezvous point when they arrived.
The Emerald Hill zone was—like most zones in the Sonic universe—simultaneously a geographical location and a vibe. Rolling green hills covered in checkerboard patterns of grass and soil. Palm trees standing at intervals that seemed designed by a level creator rather than nature. Loop-de-loops carved into the landscape like geological roller coasters. Blue skies. Warm breeze. The overwhelming sensation that you were standing inside a video game, which, Marcus reflected, was technically true from his perspective even if the people who lived here would disagree.
Starline had chosen a clearing at the top of one of the larger hills, surrounded by those distinctive palm trees, with sightlines in every direction. It was a good position for a meeting—open, visible, nowhere to hide an ambush.
Which meant the ambush was somewhere Marcus couldn't see.
The platypus himself was... exactly as Marcus had expected. Tall for a Mobian. Impeccably dressed in a white lab coat over a dark turtleneck, as though he were attending a conference rather than conducting clandestine negotiations with potential enemies. His bill was long and flat and weirdly expressive. Behind his glasses, his eyes were sharp, calculating, hungry with the specific hunger of a fanboy who had gotten too close to his objects of obsession and crossed the line from admiration into mania.
He also had a Warp Topaz on a chain around his neck—a gemstone that could manipulate spatial dimensions, one of the most dangerous artifacts in the IDW continuity—but Marcus already knew that and had already planned for it.
"Shadow the Hedgehog," Starline said, and the reverence in his voice was nauseating. Not the healthy respect of an adversary acknowledging a worthy opponent—the sycophantic awe of a collector examining a rare specimen. "The Ultimate Lifeform. It is an honor to finally—"
"Skip the introduction," Marcus said. "You wanted to talk. Talk."
Starline's bill clicked shut. His eyes—behind those round, gleaming glasses—narrowed with recalibrated interest. He'd been expecting Shadow. He'd prepared for Shadow. He'd rehearsed dialogue trees and contingency plans and psychological profiles based on every available piece of data about the Ultimate Lifeform's behavior patterns.
He had not prepared for a Shadow who didn't monologue.
"Very well," Starline said, adjusting his glasses with a precision that bordered on ritual. "Direct. I can appreciate direct. I'll be equally so." He clasped his hands behind his back. "I know where Dr. Eggman is."
"So do we. He's in a village south of here, going by Mr. Tinker, making toys for orphans."
Starline's composure cracked. Just a hairline fracture—a widening of the eyes, a tightening of the bill—but it was there. "You... know?"
"We've known for some time. We assessed the situation and determined that Mr. Tinker poses no threat. We're monitoring him, but we have no intention of interfering with his new life."
"No intention of—" Starline's voice climbed half an octave. "He is Dr. Eggman. The greatest scientific mind on the planet. The architect of empires. And you're content to let him carve toys?"
"Yes."
"That's—that's absurd! His genius is wasted! The world needs Dr. Eggman! His intellect, his vision, his—"
"His history of enslaving entire populations, destroying ecosystems, and repeatedly attempting to achieve world domination through increasingly unhinged technological schemes?" Marcus tilted his head. "That vision?"
Starline sputtered. His bill opened and closed several times in rapid succession—a platypus expression that Marcus interpreted as the biological equivalent of a buffering icon.
"You don't understand," Starline managed. "Dr. Eggman is the catalyst for everything. Without him, the world stagnates. Without the challenge he represents, heroes like you and Sonic become complacent. He is the engine of progress, the—"
"He's a war criminal with a mustache and a personality disorder," Marcus said flatly. "And you're a fanboy who's confused obsession with insight."
The silence that followed was devastating.
Rouge, hovering above and behind Marcus with her wings spread in a casual glide that just happened to position her for optimal combat deployment, made a sound that might have been a suppressed laugh.
Starline's face underwent a transformation. The sycophantic awe drained away, replaced by something colder, harder, more real. Behind the fanboy, behind the academic posturing and the reverent tone and the carefully maintained veneer of civilized discourse, there was a dangerous man. A man who had already committed atrocities in service of his obsession and would commit more without hesitation.
"I see," Starline said, very quietly. "You're not going to cooperate."
"No."
"You're not going to help me restore Dr. Eggman."
"No."
"Then I'll do it myself." His hand moved toward the Warp Topaz around his neck.
Marcus had been waiting for that.
He moved. Not at full speed—he didn't need full speed. He needed precision. A single, measured step that closed the distance between them, followed by a single, measured motion that plucked the Warp Topaz from Starline's neck with the delicacy of a jewel thief removing a gemstone from a museum display—
He paused.
Looked at Rouge.
Looked at the gemstone in his hand.
"This is yours," he said, and tossed it to her.
Rouge caught the Warp Topaz with the reflexive grace of a woman who had been catching valuable objects out of the air since childhood. She held it up to the light, examined it with professional appreciation, and tucked it into... somewhere. Marcus didn't see where. He didn't want to see where, because the logistics of where Rouge stored things given her outfit's complete lack of visible pockets was a mystery he was not prepared to investigate.
Starline stared at his empty hands. At Marcus. At Rouge. At his empty hands again.
"That was mine," he said, in the plaintive tone of a child whose toy had been confiscated.
"It was dangerous. And you were going to use it to do something stupid." Marcus crossed his arms. "Here's what's going to happen, Starline. You're going to leave. You're going to stop trying to restore Eggman. And you're going to reconsider every choice that led you to this hilltop, because every single one of them was wrong."
"You can't just—I have plans! I have contingencies! I—"
"Had a Warp Topaz. Past tense. Your primary strategic asset is now in the possession of the world's most accomplished thief." He nodded toward Rouge, who wiggled her fingers in a cheerful wave. "Your fallback plan—Neo Metal Sonic—is currently flying northeast with significant structural damage and an existential crisis. Your target—Mr. Tinker—is under the protection of heroes who will respond to any threat against him with overwhelming force." Marcus leaned forward slightly. "You have nothing, Starline. Go home."
The platypus stared at him.
The wind blew across Emerald Hill, rustling the palm fronds and carrying the scent of grass and sunlight and the faint, clean ozone of chaos energy.
Starline's shoulders sagged.
Not defeated—not yet, not fully, because men like Starline didn't accept defeat, they recontextualized it as a strategic pivot—but diminished. Reduced. A fanboy confronted with the reality that his heroes and villains were real people who didn't conform to the narratives he'd built around them.
"This isn't over," Starline said, because villains always said that, and Marcus allowed it because some traditions were worth preserving.
"It is for today," Marcus replied.
Starline turned and walked away down the hill, his lab coat flapping in the wind, his posture rigid with wounded pride and recalculating ambition. He didn't look back.
Marcus watched him go.
Eggman stays as Mr. Tinker. Starline loses the Warp Topaz. Neo Metal Sonic is damaged and destabilized. Knuckles is guarding the Master Emerald.
The Zombot crisis can't happen without Eggman.
The Metal Virus can't be created without Starline facilitating Eggman's return.
Master Overlord can't form without the Master Emerald.
I just prevented three major IDW arcs with two conversations and a Chaos Blast.
The White Wisp chirped victoriously.
Marcus allowed himself a real smile. Small. Private. The kind Shadow reserved for moments when the universe aligned with his intentions and no one was watching.
Rouge was watching, of course.
Rouge was always watching.
She landed beside him—beside him, hip almost touching his, warmth radiating, presence constant—and dangled the Warp Topaz in front of his face with a playful swing.
"Not bad, handsome," she said. "You disarmed a supervillain, prevented an apocalypse, and got me a priceless gemstone. All in one afternoon."
"It's not a gift. It's evidence."
"It's mine now. Finder's keepers. Thief's rules." She tucked it away again—into that mysterious dimensional pocket that her outfit apparently contained—and leaned against his shoulder. "You know, if you keep being this competent and emotionally available, a girl might get ideas."
"Rouge."
"Shadow."
"We have work to do."
"We always have work to do. That doesn't mean we can't—"
The sound of twin rotors filled the air.
Marcus looked up.
A biplane—the Tornado, the real Tornado, lovingly maintained and mechanically perfect in the way that only one person in the entire Sonic universe could achieve—descended from the sky in a smooth, controlled approach. Its engine hummed with the contented purr of a machine that was happy, that was being piloted by someone who understood it on a molecular level and treated it with the respect it deserved.
Sonic was standing on the wing.
Because of course Sonic was standing on the wing. Sonic always stood on the wing. It was his spot.
And in the pilot's seat—
Tails.
Miles "Tails" Prower. Eight years old. Two tails. Blue eyes as wide and bright as the sky he flew through. A face that radiated intelligence, warmth, courage, and the unshakeable conviction that as long as Sonic was there, everything was going to be okay.
He looked exactly like Marcus remembered.
Not the IDW version—or rather, not just the IDW version. Looking at Tails, Marcus saw every version of the character superimposed on this one like layers of animation cells: the Sonic 2 Tails who followed Sonic everywhere, the Adventure Tails who'd beaten Eggman alone, the Heroes Tails who'd led his own team, the Forces Tails who—
Well. Forces Tails was a conversation for another day.
The Tornado touched down in the clearing with a gentle bump, its wheels finding purchase on the soft grass. Sonic hopped off the wing before it had fully stopped, landing in a crouch and immediately straightening with that irrepressible energy.
"Shadow! We got him!" Sonic announced, as though Tails were a rare collectible he'd found rather than a person he should have been traveling with all along.
Tails climbed out of the cockpit, his twin namesakes spinning briefly to slow his descent as he hopped to the ground. He looked around the clearing—at Shadow, at Rouge, at the distant figure of Starline retreating over the hills—and his brow furrowed with the focused curiosity of a genius mind encountering a dataset it wanted to understand.
"Sonic told me what's been happening," Tails said. His voice was young but steady, carrying the quiet confidence of someone who was used to being the smartest person in any room and had learned not to make a big deal about it. "The coordinated Badnik attacks, Neo Metal Sonic, the Eggman situation. And he said..." Tails glanced at Sonic. "He said you told him to come get me."
"I did," Marcus confirmed.
"Why?"
It was a simple question. A Tails question—direct, analytical, seeking the logical basis for a decision. Not confrontational. Just... curious.
Marcus looked at the kid.
And he saw—beneath the IDW surface, beneath the peripheral characterization and the reduced role and the narrative neglect—the real Tails. The kid who had built a TV out of a paperclip and a rubber band (probably). The kid who had flown into space. The kid who had stared down Eggman in Sonic Adventure 2 and won, not through speed or strength but through courage, the courage to stand up when his hero wasn't there and be the hero himself.
The kid who was Sonic's family.
"Because you should have been here from the beginning," Marcus said. "You're not tech support, Tails. You're not a consultant who gets called in for the hard parts. You're Sonic's partner. You've been Sonic's partner since you were four years old. Every adventure, every battle, every world-ending crisis—you were there. Not because you had to be. Because you chose to be."
Tails's eyes widened.
"And anyone who treats you as optional—" Marcus glanced at Sonic, who had the decency to look sheepish. "—is making a mistake. You don't just make the team better, Tails. You make Sonic better. He's faster with you. He's smarter with you. He's braver with you. And the fact that anyone—" Any writer, any editorial team, any continuity. "—could forget that is a failure of imagination that I intend to correct."
The clearing was very quiet.
Tails stared at Marcus.
Sonic stared at Marcus.
Rouge stared at Marcus.
The White Wisp stared at Marcus and chirped softly, which seemed to translate to something like yes, good, more of this please.
Tails's lower lip trembled. Just once. Just barely. The tiniest seismic event on a face that was trying very hard to be grown-up and professional and not at all overwhelmed by the fact that Shadow the Hedgehog—Shadow the Hedgehog, the Ultimate Lifeform, the guy who didn't say nice things to anyone—had just delivered the most validating speech anyone had ever given him.
"I..." Tails started. Swallowed. Started again. "Thank you, Shadow."
"Don't thank me. Just be here."
Tails nodded. Once. Sharp. Decisive.
Then he turned to Sonic, and something clicked between them—something that had been loose, disconnected, a cable unplugged from its socket—and Marcus watched it snap back into place with an almost audible thunk. The dynamic. The bond. The fundamental, unbreakable, franchise-defining friendship between a blue hedgehog and a two-tailed fox.
Sonic grinned—the real grin, the realest grin, the one that existed at the intersection of joy and relief and how did I ever let you out of my sight—and held up his fist.
Tails bumped it.
The impact was quiet. The significance was seismic.
There, Marcus thought, watching the two of them—Sonic and Tails, Tails and Sonic, the way it was supposed to be, the way it had always been supposed to be. THERE. That's the heart of this franchise. Not the darkness. Not the drama. Not the "mature storytelling." THIS. This friendship. This family. This is what Sonic is about.
And if I have to rewrite an entire comic continuity to protect it, then that's what I'll do.
Rouge's hand found his arm. Gentle. Warm. Present.
He didn't pull away this time.
"You're something else, Shadow," she murmured.
"I'm the Ultimate Lifeform," he said.
"You're more than that."
The sun was setting over Emerald Hill, painting the sky in shades of gold and rose and amber. The palm trees cast long shadows across the checkerboard grass. The Tornado gleamed in the dying light. Four heroes and a Wisp stood in a clearing on a hilltop, and for the first time since Marcus had woken up in a body that wasn't his, pointing at a man who didn't deserve it, in a story that didn't understand itself—
Everything felt right.
Not fixed. Not finished. Not perfect.
But right.
And that was enough.
For now.
END OF CHAPTER 5
Authors note: Yes I Know that they Shouldent Know who Starline is at this point, and yes I Know it seems strange that Starline would just send a message to them but here's the thing I Wrote this mostly for the Shadow and tails interaction I didn't really think about Starline because Honsetly? Starline is Annoying