ROULETTE (Sonic the Hedgehog / mixed continuity setting / AU/SI)

[Tangent]

ROULETTE
A Sonic the Hedgehog AU/SI fic​

There was a crack of thunder accompanying an actinic flash as lighting struck Rouge, who was currently holding the blue Chaos Emerald she had just liberated from Dr. Robotnik's device, with secondary arcs passing from her through Tails and the Eggman himself before flowing back into the blue gem and out the other side. All of which taking place in less than a second, however much longer it may have seemed to those experiencing it and leaving four of the three individuals laying spasming on the floor as the lingering vestiges of electrical energy coursing through them arced and danced across them for a moment longer before fully dissipating.

The fourth figure, who had not been there before, was the first to get up, grabbing the Chaos Emerald in the process, and she immediately stepped up to the nearest console to type in a couple of commands that she had no business knowing before flying away into a side corridor even as the other three recovered.

Rouge quickly kicked Eggman, knocking him into the nearest wall as Tails spot-checked the consoles then took to the air, following Rouge as she flew into the same side corridor that her new double had.

"Your clone somehow bricked the console back there," Tails commented. "I didn't know you knew how to do that."

"I don't," Rouge denied in a frustrated tone, seeing no trace of either her double or the Chaos Emerald anywhere. There were too many corridor junctions, pipes and ventilation shafts everywhere, and enough background noise to make finding anyone difficult if they knew what they were doing.

"I, uh… couldn't help noticing that your double wasn't wearing…" Tails started awkwardly with a growing blush.

"Not the time, Foxboy," Rouge interrupted that particular conversation abruptly, intending to continue it basically never. And then she decided to divert it down a different track instead. "Although, given her lack of attire, she's probably heading for one of the fabricators used back when this facility still made Shadow clones."

"That makes sense, I guess," Tails responded. Then his receding blush returned with greater intensity! "Wait, don't those fabbers only produce…"

"I know! Now where's the nearest one?"

"How the heck would I know?"

O o O o O​

I cursed quietly to myself as I entered the codes to activate the dispenser and produce a set of Shadow's regular outfit. Which is to say, shoes, socks, gloves, and chaos regulator bands. I didn't worry about resizing them as I somehow knew that the chaos energy still leaking off of me would take care of that, but would it really have been too much to have these fabricators able to dispense other types of clothing? If I had time, I knew I could reprogram them myself, but I didn't so I just shut the fabber down and took off.

Literally.

The nice thing about Shadow's shoes was that they each had a row of small thrusters that sort of acted like inline skates. Much like the hoverboots from the Ratchet and Clank games, really, but much faster.

The great thing about that was that I had wings, which let me apply a controlled lifting force to go with all that thrust. The main reason Shadow didn't spend more time in the air was that he had so few ways to control where he went unless he cut loose. Whereas I had Rouge's body, or at least a chaos produced copy of her body, and the knowledge and muscle memory of how to use her wings.

Honestly, I'd probably be freaking out right now if I had any time to do so, but I was in a bit of a rush so I differed my panic until later. Things to do, plans to foil, and so little time before a genius like Robotnik realized what I was planning to do based on what I was already doing. Which is why the first thing I had done was to purge then brick the control room I had appeared in via the console located there. The longer Eggman was denied information, the longer I had until he started devising effective ways to prevent me from accomplishing my goals.

On the face of it, my self-appointed mission, given to me by myself based on my own authority over me, was simple: Asset denial.

Okay, I was probably messed up in the head, as that sounded arrogant even in the privacy of my own thoughts, but I couldn't let that stop me. This was Doctor Robotnik. The man was dangerous. And killing him wasn't really an option for several reasons. Not the least of which being that I didn't really want to kill anyone unless there wasn't any other option, but in Eggman's case there wasn't really much point as it would both take too long and wouldn't do any good as he'd just show up again later anyway.

Better to let his current body be and have to recover naturally than to force him to reboot into yet another copy of himself.

Ah, here we go! Just the air gapped server I was looking for!

Enter these commands to delete the pertinent data, followed by another set of commands to overwrite the deleted section with new and different randomized garbage data, rinse and repeat a few times, and finish everything off by purging and bricking the servers.

I'd like to see anyone try to recover anything from that mess!

Oh, wait, no I wouldn't.

So I disabled the fire detection system for this server room, then set everything on fire before leaving.

One facility down, one flying fortress to disable before I moved on to Dr. Robotnik's current hidden base.

Actual clothes would be nice if I happened to come across anything that fit Rouge on the way, but those were way down on my list of priorities as a nice to have but not necessary item that I simply did not have time to purposely divert from my goals to go for…

O o O o O​

"Your double is a surprisingly effective and efficient saboteur," Tails commented to his impromptu partner as he and Rouge watched Eggman's airship crash into the nearby coastal cliffs through one of the facility's windows.

"Well, she certainly knows how to make an impression," Rouge admitted, torn between frustration and begrudging admiration. "We should probably regroup with our respective teams and try to figure out what my double's goals are, because I wouldn't even know where to begin to accomplish that particular feat this quickly."

"Well, at least she doesn't seem to be working with Eggman."

"There is that, yes."

O o O o O​

I had made two quick stops on the way here to cause a couple of Dr. Robotnik's outpost bases to self-destruct. More as a stopgap to slow the villain down and buy myself some time to run amok in his main hidden base than anything else.

Time enough to program a fabber to start producing a more complete set of outfit and gear while I busied myself with running rampant through his systems with my newfound chaos-granted skills.

Mentally, I seemed to be an amalgamation of Rouge, Miles, Dr. Robotnik, and some outsider for whom each of the previous three had been fictional characters. Which was patently ridiculous in the face of my current existence, but that perspective seemed to be the basis for my current personality, so I guess the Reality as Myth hypothesis for the multiverse theory gained a few points.

It really would have been better had this outsider's memories been better though, or if they had been focussed on the continuity that I actually found myself in.

Which was one of the versions in which Team Dark had formed, obviously.

Sonic was a hero, which was good. Somewhat arrogant, but definitely heroically inclined, which I took to be a very good sign.

Princess Sally Acorn was a thing, rocking the boots and vest aesthetic, and in some sort of relationship with Sonic. Though there were no signs that they were thinking about marriage yet, so I might be relatively early in the timeline of what the outsider referred to as either the SatAM or Archie continuities…

Except that the Dr. Robotnik who was now part of me had never been Julian Kintobor of House Ivo. He was born Ivo Julian Robotnik and had never once looked like the version of Dr. Robotnik from SatAM or early Archie. The version of the doctor in this world was more in line with the physique and aesthetics that first appeared in the Sonic Adventures games and refined since. Although this Dr. Robotnik hadn't had the mental break that had caused him to become Mr. Tinker in some continuities, meaning that Dr. Starline either might not exist in this reality, or simply hadn't revealed himself yet.

No matter, that was unimportant and would remain so for a while yet. Not to ignore the issue, of course, but there were other priorities to take care of first.

Such as purging decades worth of accumulated research data from this base's systems and getting dressed before setting the self-destruct timer and leaving.

There were a few more hidden outposts with back-up data to take care of, but once that had been taken care of, I will have given this version of Mobius the greatest gift I could.

The gift of time.

I was taking a big gamble here, but was buying everyone time.

A gamble…

I have a name for myself now.

I am Roulette.

As the title block says, while the setting for ROULETTE is that of Sonic the Hedgehog in general, this is specifically a mixed Alternate Universe continuity drawing elements from the various games, comics, cartoons, and other media, and should be considered its own thing existing in tandem with the various canon and non-canon continuities in the greater Sonicverse.

Of note, and something that I will state right now, this particular iteration of the Sonic continuity has already been overwritten at least twice prior to Roulette manifesting on Mobius. Albeit this is something that very few within the setting are aware of and even fewer actually believe.

Anyway, As I had already posted eight chapters in my Crazy Big Ideas thread, I thought that it was time this fic received its own thread...

Click to shrink...

Spoiler: Roulette outfit idea

basically something to more easily differentiate Roulette from Rouge without her just going about wearing nothing but a copy of Shadow's shoes and gloves.

Spoiler: Another outfit idea for Roulette

I like several elements of this one, although I'm not much of a fan for the red eyeshadow.

Spoiler: Yet another outfit for Roulette

I like this one, so Roulette is probably going to add this to her wardrobe options soon.

Spoiler: Roulette is absolutely going to add this set to her ensemble

Probably mostly to mess with Rouge, but she'd still wear it as one of her day-to-day options.

Spoiler: And now she's just messing with people

 

[Tangent]

ROULETTE
A Sonic the Hedgehog AU/SI fic​

My next stop after rendering Dr. Robotnik's primary hidden base inoperable and setting back his various secret projects back to square zero was his more open headquarters in Robotropolis as neither GUN nor the freedom fighters had managed to liberate the city from the botnik forces yet. Honestly, while Dr. Robotnik did base his command post there and did perform a lot of experiments and research there, most of the actual projects conducted in Robotropolis were lower priority ones that wouldn't put the villain out too much if they were disrupted. Well, that and botnik production and robotization conversions of captured humans and mobians, although those were slowing down as cases of immunity to that particular process were on the rise.

Infiltrating the city was depressingly easy, although perhaps that was only due to the chaos-gifted knowledge I had received from having Dr. Robotnik's memories as part of my mental gestalt. Well, a good portion of them anyway, the same as with Miles, Rouge, and the Outsider. Fortunately, the Outsider's core personality seemed to be dominant for now, with some bleed through of various traits from the other three.

Which was another reason why I felt I was on such a harsh time limit that I hadn't even bothered dressing properly until I had reached my previous location on my chain of goals. I really had no idea if my current mental state was stable or if my core persona would shift towards one of my other three primary components at any given time.

While I suppose being more like either Miles or Rouge wouldn't really be much of a problem, the only part of Dr. Robotnik that I liked was the small part that had become Mr. Tinkerer in certain other continuities.

Hmmm…

Note to Self: Keep an ear out for Dr. Starline. That time traveling platypus favors ambushing from behind and implementing hypnotic attacks via a special device in his left glove. For a moment, I assumed that this was just another property of the Warp Topaz in his possession, but if the wonky memories from the Outsider are right, the magical gem actually had nothing to do with that particular ability.

Anyway, while I was arrogant enough to feel that I might be able to resist such mental manipulations, I was neither foolish enough to count on this actually being the case, nor proud enough to not take precautions against a known issue.

Things would be so much simpler if I didn't have to worry about time travelling fanboys from the future.

And yes, I was counting Silver among those.

I did not tarry long, making my way straight to my destination even as my thoughts wandered along a thousand different paths. It wouldn't take a genius like Dr. Robotnik long before realizing that I had to know at least some of what he did to have gotten this far as fast as I had. And once he reached that conclusion, he'd be doing his level best to get ahead of me before I disrupted everything he'd been working on.

Really, Robotropolis was literally the last stop I could make where I was guaranteed to still be ahead of him, and that was only due to a fluke in positioning that placed it on the far side of the hidden base that I had destroyed. I didn't even have a lot of time remaining to do much more than grab a few more resources and cause enough of a disruption that either GUN or the Freedom Fighters would consider attempting to recapture the city, and leave.

I'd blow things up to grab their attention if there were any way to be sure that there weren't active infiltrators within any of the likely targets, but since I had no way of knowing and nowhere near enough time to get that particular bit of information, I settled on the next best thing.

Upon reaching Dr. Robotnik's command center within Robotropolis, I started inputting the proper codes and initiating all the correct protocols to safely bring everything I could to a halt. Then I sent a brief message containing the location of various points of interest to GUN and the Freedom Fighters, signing off with my chosen nom de guerre, and using the encryption security utilized by Rouge and Miles respectively.

They'd both get those changed as soon as they were aware that I had them, of course, but hopefully this will earn me a bit of good will.

Okay, time to…

Whups!

I adroitly dodged the shot Dr. Robotik made as he rushed into the room trying to surprise me, and was thankful that I shared the same sharp sense of hearing as Miles and Rouge or I would have missed it altogether. For such a large man, Robotnik can be very quiet when he wants to be.

"Damn you, you crazy chaos-spawned bat! You set me back years with your little rampage!"

"Decades, you mean," I couldn't help but taunt as I continued to expertly dodge his shots.

"I'll kill you, you demented randomized amalgamation! And then I'll…"

"Ooh, kinky! Although necrophilia is a bit much, don't you think?"

"ARGH!"

Oh yeah, that pissed him off enough to cause him to start making bigger mistakes!

Taking advantage of my opponent's temporarily diminished tactical capabilities, I used a spin-dash attack that Miles knew how to pull off to knock Robotnik into a wall and stun him for a moment so I could finish up here by quickly entering the right command to brick everything in this control center, then I pulled off a multi-kick attack from Rouge's move list and capped it off by shattering the window with the final kick in that particular combo.

I could hear Dr. Robotnik cursing at me as I swiftly circled around the nearest corner of the tower so as to be out of his line of fire, then activated the thrusters on my boots.

I was out of time for my current task, so it was time to switch goals and find some place to set up a hidden workshop so I could build a serviceable nonlethal weapon to defend myself with.

O o O o O​

"From the look of things, Eggman caught up to Roulette here and they had a brief battle before she escaped out the window," Shadow commented as he and Rouge examined the disabled control center.

"While I'm happy she got away and appears to be more or less on our side, I'd be even happier if she wasn't actively avoiding everybody," Rouge put in. Granted, she'd be happier still if she could know for certain that her double was wearing more than just a copy of Shadow's shoes and gloves, but nobody else had even seen Roulette since she first manifested. It'd be different if she had, oh say, as much body fur as Amy Rose or Sally Acorn, but Rouge was one of the few Mobians who happened to have a lot of exposed skin.

Sure, Rouge liked to flaunt her figure, but going all shoes and gloves and nothing else was a bit much even for her. She just had the wrong body type to be able to pull off that particular look with the current cultural norms.

Eh, maybe Rouge just had too much exposure to various human cultures to be able to feel comfortable going full naturalist. There were plenty of female Mobians who wore nothing at all, or only accessories.

Still, even so, Rouge did hope that Roulette had taken time to put something more on than just rocket shoes and a pair of gloves.

"No sign of Eggman or your double anywhere in the city, Rouge," Sonic reported as he appeared in the doorway.

"Well, that was practically a given," Rouge stated bluntly. "Eggman will have gone to somewhere where he can consolidate his remaining assets and restart, while Roulette will have gone into hiding now that she's apparently carried out her current goals as far as she can with no resources to speak of."

"It would have been nice if she had come to the Freedom Fighters or even GUN," Sonic voiced his opinion.

"Given our track record with body doubles, clones, and Metal copies, I think that it's perfectly understandable for Roulette to be avoiding everyone until she can be sure of a friendly reception."

"I hate that that's a valid point," Sonic retorted.

"Until we know what her motivations and personality are, we're just going to have to be cautious," Shadow pointed out. "I get that she might prove to be a good ally, but if Tail's observations are correct, Roulette shares a lot of what he, Rouge, and Eggman knew right up to the point she manifested. Hopefully, she's friendly, but any way you look at it, she's dangerous."

"Yeah yeah, Shadow. So's everyone in this room. Not to mention several of our friends and allies. I'm not about to condemn anybody just because they're dangerous."

"Didn't think you would. Just reminding you to be cautious if you come across her."

"I suppose we should report in before looking any further for either Roulette or Eggman," Rouge interjected. "I have some ideas where my copy might have gone, and I'm sure Tails will have some other ideas as well. However, at this point she's unlikely to be hiding anywhere that Eggman is currently aware of."

"Huh."

"What is it, Shadow?" Rouge prompted. "Did you find something?"

"Yeah, there was a small duffle behind one of the consoles. Looks like it might have been on the console but got knocked off of it during the fight."

"Anything inside?" Sonic asked curiously.

"Yeah. Looks like a copy of my shoes and gloves and a set of chaos regulator bands, all somewhat smaller than I can wear. Bunch of rings too, so we know she was at least planning to actually pay for things. Eventually."

"I buy things!" Rouge protested.

"You buy things now, you mean," Shadow teased drily.

"I'll have you know that I've paid for plenty of things prior to coming to my current arrangement with GUN!"

"Yeah yeah, but you also stole plenty of things too."

"Just gems, really," Rouge pointed out. "Perfectly understandable." Well, she thought that was a reasonable argument anyway.

O o O o O​

I suppose hiding out in Green Hills wasn't the best idea, but it was both reasonably safe and somewhat isolated, and the presence of badniks was currently negligible. There were even caves available if I couldn't find a decent abandoned workshop, although I could easily just hang by my ankles from a random branch if I had to.

According to Rouge's memories, or at least the ones that I had anyway, as I was hardly in any sort of telepathic contact with any of my donors, hanging upside down was both comfortable and relaxing, and with her physiology I didn't have to worry about my blood rushing to my head.

I hadn't really been able to gather as much supplies as I had wanted back in Robotropolis, and pretty much had to abandon anything that hadn't been on my person when I escaped out that window, so I didn't really have much of anything at all.

Serves me right for thinking I had time to set my bug-out bag down in the control center.

I had enough rings in my pocket to buy more clothes from a public dispenser if I had to, but I kind of wanted to replace the shoes and gloves that were my first outfit. Oh, and another set of chaos regulator bands would be nice too if I could manage it. Sure, I liked the outfit I had now, but I'd have more accessory options if I also had my original set.

Well, I knew of at least one easy to reach location where I could acquire yet another set. For free even!

I just had to return to the facility I had first appeared in, pick any Project Shadow fabber, and activate it to produce as many replacements as I cared to accumulate!

That would have to wait until tonight though. Right now the place would be crawling with either GUN agents or Freedom Fighters if not both, and while they'd still be present for at least a week, it'd just be easier to get past them at night.

For now, I was just going to pick a tree and take a nice relaxing nap…

 

[Tangent]

TETHERTIN
The Mobius that Time Wishes it Could Forget​

The first thing you should know about Tethertin (AKA Terra Thirteen, AKA Terra, AKA Gaia, AKA Earth, AKA Mobius) is that it is, first and foremost, essentially a dimensional analogue sinc reflecting variations of other dimensional versions of itself. As a world, Tethertin isn't exactly stable and has in fact been destroyed and/or overwritten numerous times due to various reasons, even if the farthest back any inhabitant who is vaguely aware of this can remember is roughly the two immediately prior iterations. It's just that, due to its place in the local multiverse, it keeps being reformed by the same forces that caused it to exist in the first place.

It's not even the only such so-called sinc world, nor even the worst. It is, however, one of the weirdest as it has perhaps just a bit more than its fair share of Chaos Energy. Oddly, despite actual existing evidence to the contrary existing on this version of Mobius, the current state of the world is not the result of the Ancients nor alien interference. That evidence only exists because it also exists on other versions of Mobius.

Little is known about the actual history of the world, as the records are a mess of missing and/or outright contradictory information. Which most local historians on Tethertin blame primarily on the war that led to the creation of GUN as well as the subsequent wars to follow. But the actual truth is that Tethertin's known history looks like a mish-mashed hodgepodge of contradictory events because that's exactly what it is. Tethertin doesn't have its own history as much that it sort of lurks in a dark alley and mugs other versions of itself for loose continuity...

All those odd bits of distorted and/or floating landscape and architecture? There's no actual reason for any of it locally - it's just there because they exist on other versions of Mobius.

EDIT: Some of the locals are fully aware that there are other versions of Mobius (as well as other, similar, worlds such as Earth), and that it's possible to travel to and from those other worlds by various means, but none of the locals are currently aware of Tethertin!Mobius' status as a dimensional sinc world.

Tethertin's Dr. Robotnik has even "borrowed" ideas and technology from other iterations of himself, whether they knew it or not. One such technology was a robotization process, which allowed him to accelerate his plans greatly for a while until the process mysteriously started to fail, as if the locals were becoming either resistant or immune, and those already transformed started to regain their will and sense of self.

And then a reboot happened, leaving most of these victims back in their original states, with only some remaining fully or partially roboticized (for now), and very few (including Dr. Robotnic) even aware that this reboot even happened This is one of the reasons that he's being cautious about the sudden appearance of power rings...

EDIT II: Basically, if any version of Mecha Sally makes it to Tethertin, it wouldn't be long before she at least regained control over her own body.

This is the basis I'm using for having this version of Mobius draw from multiple and occasionally contradictory sources of Sonic media. We already know that Sonic has a multiverse. I just extrapolated the existence of dimensional analogue sinc worlds due to there being a multiverse.

I'm also playing with the idea and turning it into a plot point.

Click to shrink...

And when (not if) the local iteration of the Shatervese happens within the Sonicverse, it will have an impact on Tethertin. In fact, Roulette's mere existence on Tethertin is actually a sign that the stresses that will cause the local Shaterverse to form are fast approaching.

Kind of a pre-tremor, if you will...

Oh, and the wisps are about to arrive, but hey, what could happen, right?

But, eh, I'm sure everything will be fine.

Spoiler: Events that took place prior to the most recent resets...

The Bitter Taste of Victory - Ixis Naugus had won...

 

[Tangent]

ROULETTE
A Sonic the Hedgehog AU/SI fic​

"I hadn't really considered attempting to enhance my flying with rocket shoes like yours before today," Rouge admitted as she and Shadow settled down in the mess tent of the GUN forward operations camp that had been set up outside of Robotropolis.

With Dr. Eggman unable to actually issue commands en masse to his badnik minions with the command center so thoroughly disabled, both GUN and the Freedom Fighters were engaging in a cooperative joint effort to not only drive him out of the city but set things up to actually keep him out as well.

Oh, they'd capture Dr. Eggman if they could of course, maybe even kill him (although he had a terrible track record when it came to staying dead), but the main objective for taking Robotropolis was effectively the same one that Roulette was apparently engaged in: Asset denial. Take out the concentration of factories, laboratories, and roboticizers with the intent of slowing Dr. Eggman's villainous efforts down to a crawl.

They just had to hope that Roulette continued her campaign of eliminating any further hidden facilities Dr. Eggman may still have access to.

"It wouldn't work for you anyway," Shadow stated bluntly as he looked at the chili dogs on his tray. Sonic has a hand in arranging for GUN's mess supplies for this operation, he could just tell.

Eh, it wasn't as if he actually hated chili dogs. He just didn't see why Sonic was usually so hyped up about them when it came to food choices.

"Why not?" Rouge asked as she prepared to eat her own chili dogs. Said preparations consisting of extra napkins to hold the messy food item with.

"The thrusters in my shoes are empowered by my chaos energy. Roulette obviously also emits chaos energy, meaning that she can use the same type of thrusters without having to carry any fuel for them. Whether that chaos energy is from her or the blue Chaos Emerald she still has is up for debate, but my shoes wouldn't hold enough fuel for you to fly more than maybe five minutes."

"Oh. Well, what if we had a set of my long boots modified along the same lines as your shoes?" Rouge asked. "I mean, sure, I'd still have limited boost time, but surely I'd be able to carry more than just five minutes' worth of fuel."

"We can ask the GUN techs about designing a pair. And if that doesn't go anywhere, you can always ask Tails. He seems to be good with flight systems."

O o O o O​

After my nap, I foraged for various fruits and vegetables that Mile's memories had informed me were both viable food and readily available in Green Hills at this time of year. If I had the inclination, I also knew how to craft some primitive hunting tools from scratch, but I really prefer to acquire meat the way nature intended it: by buying it at the store like any other civilized Mobian.

Okay, so that's not really how nature intended it, but the sentiment was there. I'd hunt only if I had to, and I was hoping to join civilization closely enough to not have to resort to hunting just as soon as I assured myself that I would be considered to be at least a net neutral element rather than somebody that had to be defeated.

At least Green Hills had plenty of clean springwater available.

Once I had gathered enough food, I considered my selection and set up near a small stream to wash everything. Then I stripped down and set my clothes on some dry rocks so that they wouldn't become stained from any fruit or vegetable juices that happened to escape me as I ate. Which turned out to be a good idea and I did end up having to take a brisk dip in the stream myself afterwards.

I flew around au naturale for a while afterwards to help speed up the drying process, as there wasn't much point in getting dressed if I was only going to make my one outfit damp.

I… may have lost track of time for a bit as I explored Green Hills for myself more thoroughly. Sure, I had Mile's memories of the area, but it was honestly exhilarating to be able to form my own memories as I poked about here and there. In fact, I was most likely long since dry by the time I noticed that the sun was setting.

I should probably go find my clothes.

Fortunately, the stream I had laid them out near was by an easily recognizable landmark.

Equally fortunate was the fact that my outfit was exactly where I had left it, spread out across some dry rocks. I shook each article out before putting it back on of course. No sense picking up unwanted pests after all. Not that the chaos regulator bands needed shaking out, being basically metal rings worn over my boots and gloves.

Finally, I checked my pocket to make sure I still had the blue Chaos Emerald, taking it out to inspect it more closely as the sun continued to set.

Hmmm…

Knuckles would probably appreciate it if I returned this to him. Maybe even enough to vouch for me to the others, or maybe even stay on Angel Island?

Something to do tomorrow, I guess. After I replaced my Shadow set and perhaps took the time to program the fabber I used to produce more garments than just that single style of gloves and boots. And another duffle to carry everything in, of course.

I set off for the facility I had manifested in once the sun was fully over the horizon, opting to not use my boots' thrusters so that it would be fully dark out when I arrived. I'd scope out the situation more when I got there, of course…

O o O o O​

"Oh! Hey, you're Rouge, right?"

"That would be me, yes. And you are… Bunnie, was it? The one who married Captain Antoine d'Coolette?"

"Got it in one, sugar! Anyway, I wanted to ask… By any chance have you been in Green Hills at all today?"

"I have not," Rouge denied. "The last time I was there was sometime last month, when Amy Rose was hosting one of those little get-togethers that she likes to have over there. Very relaxing, even if Omega stayed back at the base and Shadow spent most of his time avoiding everyone as usual."

"So you haven't been to Green Hills at all today?" Bunnie asked again, insistently.

"Why… No, don't tell me, let me guess. A bat who looks just like me was seen there, right?"

"Yep! Except not exactly just like you. According to the rumors going around, you, or rather your look-alike, was flying around all starkers. Not that there's anything wrong with that mind you, but it is a bit odd for a Mobian with so little body fur to do without, if you know what I mean."

"Oh my God, Roulette," Rouge complained under her breath as she pinched the bridge of her muzzle, "could you please just… not!"

"Who's Roulette? Oh, wait, this is another one of those body double things that sometimes happens, isn't it? So which type is she? Long lost twin? Evil counterpart from Moebius? Robot copy? Clone?"

"That last one would be the most accurate," Rouge conceded with a heavy sigh. "She was generated earlier today when I was struck by lightning while holding a Chaos Emerald."

"Sugar, it hasn't rained in these parts for a week."

"I know. Nobody can figure out where the lightning came from. The best guess so far is that Dr. Eggman's machine wasn't as stable as he thought. Anyway, she may look like me, but she apparently knows at least some of what Tails, Dr. Eggman, and I know! Enough to be a frighteningly quick and efficient saboteur. She disabled the facility she was born in, one of Eggman's flying fortresses, two of his hidden bases, and she's the reason GUN and the Freedom Fighters have finally managed to gain a foothold in Robotropolis!"

"Well, at least she's on our side, right?"

"That's just it! We don't know that for sure, as she's been avoiding everyone! The only reason we even know what she's calling herself is that she dropped a message to GUN and the higher ups in the Freedom Fighters using encryption codes and protocols that only Tails and I should know! And to top everything off, she's apparently lost what little clothes she had been wearing, as Shadow found her shoes and gloves in the Robotropolis command center!"

"That's… an unusual choice, but not too bad, right?"

"I AM NOT A NUDIST!"

O o O o O​

Huh. I might want to program a jacket or something to wear once I get a fabber running. I could swear that I just felt a chill running down my spine!

Or maybe it's just nerves. As much as I may remember breaking into places like this many times as Rouge, this will be the first time that I've actually done so myself. Dr. Robotnik's airship, hidden bases, and even Robotropolis don't count as I knew exactly how to bypass the need to sneak around. Granted, having Dr. Robotnik's memories of all the passcodes and protocols he used in those locations wasn't exactly fair.

It also wasn't an advantage I expected to keep as Robotnik was definitely smart enough to prioritize actually changing all of those from here on out so I would be forced to guess rather than just recall the information I needed to bypass any particular security system of his.

Or, y'know, just do what I'm doing right now and rely on Rouge's skills as a thief and spy. Scope out the situation. Figure out where the weak points in the security are. Memorize the general timing of any patrols.

Good patrols are supposed to be randomized, but patterns tend to develop anyway for various reasons that aren't always the fault of those actually conducting them. Sometimes those patterns even develop against the guards' best efforts due to interference from the very people in charge of arranging the patrols in the first place, whether they be superior officers, clients, or even something as simple as an unavoidable scheduling conflict.

In this case I was both familiar with the facility due to Dr. Robotnik's memories from the times he had used it and from the prior times that Rouge infiltrated it herself. So I already had my preferred entry and exit vectors plotted out and just had to watch them from the outside for an hour or two to see if there was any unusual patterns or changes in the patrols covering those areas.

I found a nice tree branch to hang from and settled in for that observation period…

After what felt like a couple of hours or so, I was sure that I had a solid handle on the blind spots in the security coverage that GUN had set in place. As usual, at least according to Rouge's memories, the guards were neglecting the fact that silent flyers that don't need much (if any) light, such as bats and owls, even existed. I feel your pain, Rouge. I really do, and I'm not even the one who has to work with these mooks.

I mean, come on, when one of your top infiltrators is literally a Mobian bat, it's kind of insulting when the bulk of your forces keep forgetting that she's not the only one around!

Okay, I don't have any tools, so that limited my entry points to those where I wouldn't need them. Of which there were three, including the window I had left through earlier in the day.

Which was still wide open.

Really guys? That's either the most obvious trap ever or just pure negligence. Granted, I had rendered many of this facility's systems useless, so maybe they just didn't see the need to make sure the building was protected from potential weather damage.

No, going in through the wide-open window was definitely a bad idea, no matter how you looked at it. I knew that. The part of me that came from Rouge knew that. Even the bits that were copied from Miles and Robotnik knew that.

So of course I went in through the window anyway, confident that I could handle any trap or ambush…

Only to be severely disappointed when nothing happened.

Oh well.

Okay, down the hall to the left, take the first corridor on the right. Second room on the right to tap into a power bypass and pass the cable through the interior vent back to the first room on the right. Go back to that room, swap out the inactive power cord for the cable that I had just fed into this room, and boot up the fabber.

Quick, simple, and unnoticeable with all the other systems down. Leaving me with plenty of time to fab up another set of Shadow's gear. This time purposely resized to fit me without having to rely on my chaos energy to adjust things for me.

What else?

Another duffle to carry them in of course. Oh, and some lock picking tools, Ooh, another few sets of chaos regulator bands would probably be a good idea! A couple of alternate outfits just to have something clean to change into of course. Not too much, as I still had to carry everything while flying and I didn't want to weigh myself down too much even if my boots did have thrusters.

Then shut everything down, swap the cords back, return to the previous room to put everything back the way it was, and then out the way I came in!

In and out with no-one the wis-"oof!"

Okay, being tackled from the side while three stories up was unexpected. Not gonna lie, I was a bit disoriented and actually grateful to be caught by a familiar black and red hedgehog before I hit the ground.

And there's Omega…

And a very angry looking Rouge who must have been the one to hit me out of the air given that she's only now landing nearby.

"If you were going to put clothes on anyway, WHY DID YOU SPEND HALF THE EVENING FLYING AROUND GREEN HILLS COMPLETELY NAKED!? YOU LOOK JUST LIKE ME!"

"Um… Oops?"

 

[Tangent]

ROULETTE
A Sonic the Hedgehog AU/SI fic​

"Oops? You flew around Green Hills stark naked for hours, looking just like me, and all you can say is oops!?" Rouge demanded, albeit at least a little calmer than she had been a moment ago.

"Huh. I don't remember seeing anybody there," I note, rubbing my chin. "So, are you going to set me down anytime soon?" I ask Shadow, who is still holding me in his arms.

"That depends. Are you going to fly off?"

"Maybe?"

"You're not making a very good case for setting you down."

"I apparently have poor impulse control, a curious mind, and exhibitionist tendencies."

"THAT'S NOT HELPING YOUR CASE EITHER!" Rouge interjects loudly.

"Oh come on, you flaunt your body all the time!" I complain.

"By wearing clothes that properly accentuate my features without showing more than any other Mobian does!"

"Most Mobians consider clothing to be optional," I refute. At about this point, Shadow sets me down anyway and folds his arms as he looks at Rouge and me with a bemused expression on his face.

"I'm not most Mobians!"

"And that's a good thing, 'cause you'd be a heck of a lot bigger and more blob-shaped if you were."

"Are you trying to get me to strangle you!?"

"Kinky, but no. Not my thing. I seem to be into flying around naked."

"Why are you like this!?"

"In retrospect, I seem to have a combination of your positive self-image, Miles' innocence, and Robotnik's general lack of shame."

This apparently causes Rouge and Shadow to wince, but Omega has an entirely different reaction as his gun arm moves up and starts tracking me.

In a moment of pure terror, all I can do is squeak out a quick "Eep!" before everything flashes blue and I'm suddenly elsewhere…

O o O o O​

"Well, if there was any question as to whether or not Roulette still had the blue Chaos Emerald on her, I think that reaction proves that she does," Shadow observes drily even as rouge whips around to confront Omega.

"Why did you aim at her!? We were resolving this peacefully!"

"Roulette is mentally compromised by Dr. Eggman."

"So!? At least two thirds of her mind is comprised of Tails and me! Her actions up to this point should prove that our part of her mind more than balances out any influence that the Eggman part might have!"

"Analyzing… Circumstantial evidence to date seems to bear out your hypothesis. I will adopt a more meatbag friendly approach when we next encounter Roulette."

"You really need to work on your people skills more, Omega," Rouge points out as her shoulders slump.

"Look on the bright side, Rouge," Shadow comments in the same dry tone as before. "Roulette made herself a new outfit, so you know that she intends to spend at least part of her time wearing clothing."

"Maybe so, but it's the rest of the time that I'm worried about given that she's admitted to exhibitionist tendencies…"

O o O o O​

I have no idea where I am once the blue light goes away.

I can't think…

I can barely breathe…

I feel like my heart is beating a thousand times per second…

I don't know where I am…

I barely know who I am…

I am alone…

So very alone…

Mom…

Dad…

Bad Dad…

Anyone…

Help me…

Even as I start to calm down again, it's all I can do to just curl up on the grass and cry, oblivious to the world around me…

Yeah, I know that part four is a bit shorter than the previous parts, but this seems like such a natural cut-off point that I ended chapter four there.

A quick note on Omega's reaction: He wasn't actually going to shoot. His response was more akin to a proactively cautious reflex to the individual in front of him unexpectedly admitting out of the blue that she's basically mentally corrupted by someone he hates. The fact that Roulette also admitted to being mentally corrupted by Rouge and Tails would have prevented him from actually firing at her, but she kinda panicked and popped the heck out of there faster than anyone expected.

Click to shrink...

 

[Tangent]

ROULETTE
A Sonic the Hedgehog AU/SI fic​

"Rouge…"

I shift a bit, blearily trying to ignore the familiar voice and try to drift deeper into sleep.

"Rouge, wake up!"

"Dnwnna…" I mumble incoherently as a mitten covered hand shakes my shoulder, denying my desire to just keep sleeping.

"Dammit, Rouge, wake up already!"

"M'up, m'up…" I mumble just a bit louder as I finally open my eyes and start to sit up, glaring balefully at the red menace Mom loved to flirt with. "'M'not Mom… I'm Roulette."

"What are you talking about, Rouge? Did you hit your head?" Knuckles asks me bluntly as he begins to check me out. "You've been crying. Who hurt you!? Where are they!? Wait wait… How much do you remember?"

"I already told you, I'm not Mom! My name is Roulette, not Rouge!"

"Uhuh. Rouge isn't old enough to have a daughter than looks just like her," Knuckles stated just as bluntly as before, although he did step back and started rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Memory loss? No, she clearly remembers me… Possessed? Let me see your eyes!"

Knuckles grabs my face in his mittened hands as I just glare at him again in irritation.

"Not red, but not Rouge's green either. More of a teal or aqua. Who are you, really?"

"Would you please let go of my face," I grumble, prompting him to release me. "As I was saying, my name is Roulette. And I was more or less born yesterday in one of Dr. Robotnik's old facilities."

"Huh. You admitted that rather easily."

"Well, it's not like you wouldn't find out anyway, and I'm trying to make a better impression than I did with Mom's team." I experience a flash of memory of a gun arm rising up quickly and drawing a bead on me. My heart is pounding in my chest as I start to hyperventilate and curl in on myself…

"Hey hey hey!" Knuckles exclaims hastily as he puts his hands on my shoulders. "You're safe now! Whatever happened, you're safe now!"

My emotional dam breaks and I hug Knuckles desperately, sobbing into his chest in grief and relief.

One of Mom's friends, someone that she felt safe around, that I felt safe around, had just tried to kill me last night! And while I knew I wasn't actually Rouge and so it wasn't logical to feel this way, I still felt a sense of betrayal.

And it hurt!

O o O o O​

"You are still angry," E-123 Omega stated.

"Of course, I'm angry! We practically had Roulette ready to come with us and you scared her off!" Rouge pointed out in an acidic tone.

"Don't worry, Rouge, we found her once, we'll find her again," Shadow said in what he assumed was a reassuring tone (it wasn't, but nobody ever claimed that he had good social skills).

"Shadow's right, Rouge," Amy Rose said as she brought over a couple of glasses of coconut milk for the two members of Team Dark that could actually drink it. "Sonic and the others are looking now, and I even called the Chaotix Detective Agency. We'll find Roulette in no time, you'll see!"

"Thank you," Rouge said as she accepted a glass. "It's just that she looked so terrified as she disappeared. I'm worried about her. For her…"

"She'll be fine, you'll see," Shadow said, once again trying (and failing) to sound reassuring rather than arrogant. "She's got your's, Tail's, and even Eggman's skills. She can take care of herself."

"She flew around Green Hills naked yesterday, totally unaware that there were other Mobians there to see her," Rouge stated pointedly through half-lidded eyes. "Somehow I don't find that to be a very reassuring statement of her ability to avoid danger."

"It's Green Hills. There hasn't been anything more serious than a stray Crabmeat or Catakiller there for over a year. She was fine."

"I will make an apology gift," Omega suddenly stated before Rouge could snap at Shadow's apparent insensitivity.

"What kind of apology gift?" Rouge asked suspiciously.

"A bomb with a heart on it."

"That's not the sort of gift you apologize with!"

O o O o O​

"Are you okay now?" Knuckles asked as I finally pulled myself away from him.

"Yes. Thanks for letting me cry myself out."

"No problem. I'd offer you a tissue, but I don't have one and your snot is all over my chest fur already anyway."

"Sorry about that." This was somebody Mom was interested in? I mean, I knew what she saw in Knuckles, having a lot of her memories of her experiences with him, but the other three parts of me simply did not see the attraction.

"Now that that's settled, I'm going to go clean myself off and prepare something for us to eat, then you can tell me what's going on so I know who I have to put the hurt on."

"Um… Okay?" I responded uncertainly.

I guess I could see what Mom saw in him after all. Sorta. Not that Mom had to worry about me stealing her man. That would be weird and gross! Ew!

And now a part of me felt somewhat offended that the rest of me felt that way.

What is my life now anyway?

O o O o O​

One meal and a longish explanation later and I've caught Knuckles up on my situation.

Minus the bit about there being a fourth component to my amalgamated mind. Nobody needs to know about the Outsider.

"So you're saying that you sorta see Rouge, Tails, and Eggman as being your parents?"

"Yeah. It's a bit weird, I know…"

"More than a bit, I'd say," Knuckles interjected rudely.

I just shot him a glare, sighed, then continued. "It's just how I seem to feel about them. Mom, Dad, and Bad Dad."

"Well, at least you got your priorities straight there. Bad Dad is Eggman, right?"

"Yes! Ugh! What does Mom see in you!?"

"Wait, you mean she's actually interested in me?"

"Oh my God, have you always been this obtuse?" I complain, palming my face in frustration.

"Hey, I grew up alone on a flying island! It's not like I have a lot of social experience here!"

"Fair point," I concede and let the matter drop. "Anyway, here," I say as I pull the blue Chaos Emerald out of my pocket and offer it to him. "I meant to give you this at some point anyway."

"Nah, you keep it."

"But you're…"

"I'm the Guardian of the Master Emerald. If I was worried about the other Chaos Emeralds, I'd bitch about the one Shadow has. You keep it. You'll need it to practice with your Chaos abilities. Besides, I trust that you know better than to hand it over to Eggman."

"Oh, you got that right. Bad Dad is too much of a goofball to trust with a Chaos Emerald."

"That and he's a supervillain."

"Yeah yeah, that too I suppose."

"I'm beginning to have second thoughts about letting you keep that."

"Hey, if you want it, all you gotta do is say so. It's not like I'm not going to give it to you if you do."

"And that, more than anything else, is proof that you are more than just your component personalities and why I'm still willing to trust you with a Chaos Emerald."

"Look, just because Mom is a bit obsessed over shiny rocks…"

Knuckles snorted, then fell over laughing his ass off.

 

[Tangent]

ROULETTE
A Sonic the Hedgehog AU/SI fic​

"Ugh… I'm too stressed, I need to build something," I informed Knuckles. "I don't suppose that you'd be willing to let me set up a defensive infrastructure for Angel Island?"

"No."

"Robot horde?"

"Definitely not."

"Race kart motorway?"

"Roulette, why are you leading with options that you know I'm going to reject?"

"Er… um…" Wait, why was I yanking Knuckle's chain like this? It's not like we've actually known each… Oh. "It's kinda hard to explain, since it comes from different parts of me with different motivations…"

"Ah. you're still figuring yourself out then," Knuckles nodded (I'm pretty sure he's nodding to himself rather than me, but I can't be sure). "How about you just fly around like you did yesterday back in Green Hills. You said that you had enjoyed exploring and checking out nature, and Angel Island has lots of that."

Okay, that was a blatant attempt to steer me towards an activity he would approve of, but it's not like he doesn't have a point.

"You don't mind me poking about?"

"Nah. Go knock yourself out, Kid. Just don't go into any of the ruins. There are unmarked unstable areas in a few of them and, on top of that, there's still a lot of active traps in some of them."

"Okay! Thanks!"

And with that, I flew off to explore Angel Island and form my own memories of the place. Not bothering to activate my thrusters, because I actually wanted to experience the location, and it's hard to do that when I'm zipping about at high speed.

O o O o O​

Tails paused his efforts to figure out exactly what had happened to cause Roulette to be created the previous day so that he could answer his buzzing communicator.

"Hello? Tails here!"

"Hey, Tails…"

"Oh, Knuckles! I hadn't seen you since the last get together that Amy hosted! Whatcha need?"

"You're actually the second person I tried to call, but Rouge isn't answering her comm for some reason."

"Oh, she's probably deep asleep by now. Team Dark was up all night looking for…"

"Roulette."

"You've seen her!? Wait, how did you find out about her?"

"I came across her sleeping out in the open on Angel Island."

"That's great! I'll get the others and we'll…"

"You'll all stay the hell off my island!" Knuckles practically shouted over the communicator. "Look, I'll be over with Roulette when she's good and ready, but that damned robot on Team Dark scared her half to death last night! I'm not sure what you think is going on, but Roulette considers you, Rouge, and Eggman to be her parents! She's all mixed up right now, and trying to figure herself out, but she already considers Eggman to be her Bad Dad, and after last night I wouldn't be surprised if she's iffy on Rouge as well. I'd like her to meet at least one of her parents on good terms, okay?"

"Okay, fine. I'll contact everybody and call off the search," Tails conceded. "So… She considers me to be her dad? I'm not sure I'm ready to be somebody's father figure."

"Well, you better figure it out fast, because she definitely takes after either you or Eggman considering what she offered to build for me, and I'd rather she went with you as her main influence rather than him."

"Not gonna blame you there. I'll think of something by the time you bring her over."

"I'll let her know once she's calmed down, and we'll be over when she's ready, got it?"

"Got it."

"Good." And with that, the link went dead.

"Sheesh, ever hear about actually saying goodbye?" Tails grumbled as he moved to put the main console to call off the search for Roulette.

"Huh… Guess I'm a Dad now. I better let my folks know so they don't freak out and get the wrong idea if somebody else tells them first…"

O o O o O​

I'm more than half tempted to find somewhere to strip down and leave my clothes as I continued flying around Angel Island for a while, as that had felt… nice… yesterday back in Green Hills. However, I resist the urge for a couple of reasons even though a large part of me doesn't really care who sees me au naturale.

The main reason being that I was now aware that at least Team Dark was looking for me, and I wasn't about to separate myself from my best means of escape until I was damn sure that Omega wasn't going to try to kill me.

Reason number two was that I was nowhere near as familiar with the landmarks of Angel Island as I had been with Green Hills, so the only place I could think of where I could find my duffle if I needed it in a hurry was all the way back by the Master Emerald.

A somewhat distant third reason was that the idea of getting naked in front of the guy Mom was interested in felt really weird and off-putting.

After a while, I eventually set myself down on a path and activated the thrusters in my boots so I could practice skating. Which was really awkward because it had been years since the last time Mom skated, decades since the outsider had, and skating wasn't something either of my dads were really into (Miles sometimes used a skateboard or hoverboard, but he mostly either walked or flew under his own power, or used one of his planes for longer trips or if he had passengers).

It turns out that skating on thrusters is almost nothing like skating with wheels or blades outside of a few of the leg movements to change direction or provide forward momentum. The training montage from Wreck-it Ralph comes to mind, and I'm so startled to actually hear familiar music that I quickly find myself careening uncontrollably into a bush.

After extracting myself from the foliage, I look around and try to figure out where the music is coming from. It sounds really close, almost like it's originating from my…

…pocket?

The blue Chaos Emerald can play music from my old world!?

After a bit of experimentation, I quickly determined that the gem can only play music that I can remember, although it doesn't seem to matter which part of me these memories come from. I apparently now had a rather eclectic collection of musical favorites from Mom, Dad, Bad Dad, and the outsider, and I loved it all!

With a grin, I reset the song to the first one that started playing and started singing along as I began skating again, losing myself in the moment of pure unbridled joy…

"I'm looking for a driver who's qualified~"

 

[Tangent]

ROULETTE
A Sonic the Hedgehog AU/SI fic​

"You what?" I asked somewhat incredulously, although at least part of me was also somewhat relieved that this was happening.

"I called Tails to let him know you're here," Knuckles replied calmly as he handed me a kabob skewer with roasted fruits, veggies, and some type of bird meat on it.

Which I accepted readily with a grateful smile, even though some of the veggies were onions, which the outsider part of me had been averse to.

Only the outsider part though, as the rest of me was just fine with them, and the outsider was only part of me. I was my own person.

I… just had to figure out who I wanted me to be.

And I couldn't afford to be picky about food anyway.

Literally.

Almost all the rings that I had managed to accumulate between the facility I had first appeared in and Robotropolis had been in my previous duffle, with only seven being in my pocket along with the blue Chaos Emerald. Not really enough to buy much of anything until I had more rings...

Wait, Knuckles had still been talking while I had been stuffing my face and thinking to myself.

I stopped eating and looked at him sheepishly as I wiped some juices and crumbs from the skewer from my mouth with the back of my hand (gonna have to remember to wash that glove right away before it stains).

"You haven't heard a word I said since I handed you the skewer, have you?"

"Um… No?"

"Tch, fine, I'll start over. I called Tails and got him to agree to call off the search for you. I told them not to come here, but once you're ready, we'll go to them, okay?"

"And Omega isn't going to ignore that and come hunting for me?" I ask even as I try not to think about the gun arm tracking up and… and…

"Hey hey hey! Calm down!" Knuckles grabbed my shoulders and stared into my face in an attempt to prevent another episode. "I'm positive that Tails will make sure that Omega stays away from you! You're safe here! Angel Island is safe for you!"

I take a few deep breaths and force myself to calm down. "H-heh… S-sorry 'bout that."

"It's okay."

"It's… I-I don't really think it'd be a problem if I didn't remember him as a friend. I mean, Bad Dad already shot at me and I'm not afraid of him." A boldfaced lie, given my initial actions throughout half of yesterday, but Bad Dad was technically an avoidable problem now that I've severely curtailed his ability to swiftly enact his plans for a while. Yes, I was deeply afraid of Doctor Robotnik. I just wasn't disturbed by my being afraid of him.

"Yeah, but you obviously don't view Eggman as somebody that you should trust either, while Omega is one of Rouge's teammates," Knuckles points out. "You remember him from Rouge's perspective."

"Yes! Exactly!"

"Look, I'll talk with Tails and Rouge and try to get things cleared up before you meet them. In the meantime, you're welcome to stay on Angel Island for as long as it takes for you to feel ready to face the others, but there are going to be some ground rules."

"Fair enough," I agree readily and wait for him to continue.

"First off, no advanced tech. You can fix up some of the old echidna mechanisms if you absolutely have to work on something, but only up to their undamaged and functional states. No Eggman tech, and no Tails tech either for that matter. And certainly NO ROBOTS!"

"Allright, allright, none of my Dads' stuff and respect the culture of the local tech. Got it."

Knuckles nodded, then continued. "Okay then. Next: While I don't mind feeding you as a guest for a week or so, any longer than that and you have to help out with the hunting, gathering, and food prep. I'll teach you if you don't know how, but I know Tails has at least the basics of camping skills down so I know you're smart enough to pick it up quick even if you don't remember that part for some reason."

"Fair enough," I agreed with a sigh. If I still had enough rings I could hunt down the nearest store and gather food there, but somehow I don't think that's what Camp Counselor Knuckles is getting at here.

"Finally, you take care of your own messes. I ain't picking up after you, I ain't doing your laundry, and I sure as hell ain't bathing you, got it?"

"Yes." Okay, the first thing I'm gonna do is make myself a spear and outfit like the set Prim Rouge has over in Boscage Maze. Keep the stuff I already made clean until I have access to more modern amenities and all that.

Might even be kinda fun! No part of me actually engaged in authentic cosplay before, and I'm pretty sure that dressing up like Prim totally counts even if nobody on this iteration of Mobius would get the reference…

"So, you want another skewer?" Knuckles offered with a kind smile. "You seemed kinda hungry there."

"Oh! Yes, please!" FOOOOOOOD! WOO HOO!

Oh, wait, hope I didn't seem too eager there...

O o O o O​

Amadeus Prower absently scratched at his eyepatch before catching himself and forcing his hand down to his side as his son wrapped up the explanation of recent events over dinner.

"So you're saying that you are now effectively one of the parents of a chaos generated clone of one of your occasional allies? With Rouge and Eggman being the other two contributors?"

"That seems to be the case, yes," Miles agreed. "At least according to what Knuckles told us over the conference call."

"We could set her up in your old room," Rosemary Prower offered. "Unless you'd like to move back in with us?"

"Mom, I literally live right down the street. I only moved out because..."

"I know, Son," Amadeus interjected. "Bad memories and we were gone for a long time. Still, did you have to remodel your house to look like your head?"

"I was eight when I did that. I thought it looked cool. Besides, it's too overbuilt for me to remodel it again this soon."

"Well, you have to admit, not too many boys your age own their own fully functional home and workshop," Amadeus chided, then gave his son a bemused smile. "What say we buy the lot next to your home and give your new daughter her own house built to look like her head? She can stay in your old room until it's finished."

"I… Um… Well, I suppose that would resolve some immediate issues…"

"Oh, I can take her clothes shopping!" Rosemary said excitedly, getting into the idea of having a granddaughter, even if the apparent physical age in relation to her son was wrong. "She can't have much of anything yet, and while I'm not going to knock Rouge's taste in attire, perhaps Roulette would appreciate something less… provocative?"

"Ah, about that…" Miles began hesitantly. "Her tastes are absolutely more natural than Rouge's."

"Oh excellent! What are the colors she prefers?"

"Ah... pale...ish...?"

O o O o O​

I felt another shudder down my spine, which left me wondering what was going on as the environment on Angel Island was actually quite warm despite its elevated state.

After a moment, I shrugged it off and continued eating the dinner Knuckles had prepared for me. Fire baked fish and fruit, with some nuts and a coconut half with the original milk still in it.

Watching him husk it and literally punch it open had been enlightening, and I certainly hoped that he didn't expect me to use the same methods. Not that I thought that he would, really, as I definitely don't have his knuckle spurs.

Nearby, the start of my Prim Rouge outfit lay on a flat stone, maybe about 22.3% completed and still lacking any of the cloth bits that should comprise the inner layer under the leaves. Right now it was more of a jungle bikini top and shoes and not much else. I'd have to deviate from the design quite a bit if I wanted a full outfit without sacrificing bits of one of the ensembles I had made yesterday.

Doing that would defeat the primary reason I was even making an outfit out of leaves and grasses in the first place, so I supposed that I'd just have to deviate from the original design after all…

Spoiler: Prim Rouge outfit

I actually forgot that Prim's Boscage Maze outfit actually did have underlying cloth, unlike Gnarl, Mangy, and Hangry.

I also forgot that all of the iterations of Rouge in Sonic Prime were a bit less busty than she usually is in other versions of the franchise (only Lego Rouge is more flat in that area). Roulette is definitely built more along the lines of classic Rouge than her Sonic Prime variants.

 

[Tangent]

ROULETTE
A Sonic the Hedgehog AU/SI fic​

After I finished my Prim set (redesigned by necessity - lack of cloth I was willing to sacrifice and the fact that Prim Rouge is apparently a bit flatter than most other iterations of the bat, including myself), I spent the better part of the week exploring Angel Island by air, practicing my thrust-skating on the many many paths, and engaging in various other minor busy-work projects.

Such as actually taking time to study and repair the ancient echidna defense infrastructure closest to the Master Emerald and showing Knuckles how to use it once it was functional again. Which, given that the vast majority of those defenses were traps, and sensors for those traps, mostly entailed showing him how to safely activate and deactivate the system, how to key individuals at various levels ranging from Admin all the way down to Eliminate with Extreme Prejudice.

I felt kinda bad that Knuckles immediately put Dr. Robotnik all the way down at the bad end of the list, but to be fair, Bad Dad did sorta deserve to be there given their mutual history.

Eh, I'm sure it would be fine...

As for me, I apparently shared the same place on the list with Mom, and would receive a paddlin' if I got within fifty paces of the master Emerald.

Ah... Don't ask me how I found that out!

No matter what Knuckles may say, it didn't happen!

And Knuckles definitely wasn't laughing his ass off when he got me out of that trap!

Really!

(Mom can have him! I was just curious! I wasn't actually going to take it! It wasn't that funny!)

Not being stupid, I also took Knuckles up on his implied offer to teach me various survival skills. As much as I might find certain aspects distasteful, and I definitely still preferred to shop for my meat as nature intended (and apparently soap and candles - I can make my own soap and candles now if I wanted to - which I don't), actually knowing how to do all this from scratch was just too valuable to disregard.

I could tell that Knuckles really enjoyed teaching me and appreciated my overall interest and willingness to put up with even the icky bits. He even helped me to begin to refine my personal fighting style out of the mess of amalgamated moves and muscle memories that my creation left me with. And hoo-boy was my initial fighting style a mess given that the bulk of my existing mash-up style needed to be adjusted for my actual body type and abilities.

Neat little bit of totally useless trivia: Apparently, I can spin my tail in the same weird way that Miles' tails do, which will even give me a tiny boost in speed while flying. However, as this is totally negligible compared to the speed boost my thrust shoes give me, I just don't see this ability ever becoming useful except in niche situations.

I could also run surprisingly fast without activating my thrusters! Which, oddly enough, is a trait I think I picked up from Dr. Robotnik rather than either Rouge or Miles.

And, as much as I knew Mom would hate it, once I was familiar enough with the local landmarks I started stripping down from time to time and flying around au naturale again while I was exploring the island. Oh, I made sure that I was well away from Knuckles whenever I did so, because the idea of being naked around the guy Mom was interested in still felt weird.

Flying sky-clad was just so…

Liberating!

Thrilling and peaceful at the same time.

Relaxing, yet exhilarating, and totally pizza…

Er… I mean one with everything.

Maybe I should broach the subject of meeting the others with Knuckles. I was apparently a bit more ready to return to civilization than I thought.

Or maybe I just wanted a pizza.

It was hard to say.

O o O o O​

"Alright everybody! Knuckles is bringing Roulette over today, so let's get those decorations up and make sure to give her a warm welcome!" Amy Rose directed as everyone set about preparing her preferred beach on the coast of Green Hills ready for the party.

"Where do you want these tables, Amy?" Big the Cat asked, carrying said tables on his shoulders all at once like he usually did. The faster he got his part set up and done with, the sooner Amy would let him and Froggy go fishing after all.

"Right over there by the palm tree, Big!" Amy replied cheerfully, fully aware of Big's motivations but not minding because he'd at least get the job done before he wandered off. And he sometimes ended up bringing extra fish back to these parties when she let him do this, so it was kinda a win-win to just let it happen.

Amy was feeling very stoked. The Prowers were going all in on accepting Roulette into their family, and were presently hanging up a HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY, ROULETTE banner between a couple of posts, and most of the guests were bringing at least some small item as a gift for their new friend's special day!

Although…

"Rouge… What is in the long box that Omega is carrying? It's not another bomb, is it?"

"No," Rouge denied this, but her slumped shoulders and defeated tone did not sound promising. "Shadow and I managed to finally talk him out of gifting Roulette with any sort of bomb. So he made her an anti-material rifle instead."

"Bitches love cannons", Omega stated with finality. "This weapon will greatly improve Roulette's combat effectiveness against Eggman's hardened units!"

"It was the best compromise option we've managed to talk him down to," Shadow said with a shrug. "I see that Big already has a couple of tables up. Let's just pick one and drop our gifts off."

"We're staying for the party," Rouge said flatly. "By which I mean you too, Shadow."

"Tch, fine. I'll stay." Shadow then turned his attention to Amy. "You did arrange for more party food than just chili dogs, right?"

"Oh, absolutely!" Amy assured him. "Knuckles said that Roulette was craving pizza, so Sonic should be arriving soon with about a dozen or so with various toppings!"

"And speak of the charming devil," Sonic announced his sudden arrival, presenting three warming cases worth of pizza boxes in the process. "Where do you want these, Amy?"

"Just put them on one of the tables near the grills, Sonic. And thanks for coming!"

"You know I'm always up for a bash, Ames! I'm just going to set these down and be off again. I didn't have room to carry all these and the gift, so I have to go back for it!" And with that said, Sonic was off in a streak of blue.

"He totally forgot that this was a belated birthday party," Shadow conjectured in a dry tone.

"Most likely," Rouge agreed.

"Sonic's gift will not exceed the greatness of the apology gift I prepared for Roulette," Omega insisted. "Bitches love cannons!"

"We never should have let him watch that show," Rouge commented even as she palmed her face in frustration.

"I think it's hilarious," Shadow retorted with a slight smile.

"O… kay then!" Amy clapped her hands and started to side-step away from the trio comprising Team Dark. "I'll just… ah… Check on how the others are doing!"

O o O o O​

"You know, we could just glide down to the mainland and make our way to Green Hills normally," Knuckles said as I finished connecting us with the harness-and-rope rig I had crafted from vines and grasses. It was solid work, despite the primitive materials, and would hold up for at least a full day of the kind of stress we were about to put on it.

Not that it would be used for more than just a small fraction of that time, but it was better to overdesign something like this than to have it fall apart on the first (and only) use.

I had, of course, changed out of my Prim set and had put one of the ensembles that I had designed back at the facility I was born in back on.

"We'll be fine," I assured him. "Besides, this will get us to Green Hills much faster than just gliding."

"Or, and here me out here, you could just use the blue Chaos Emerald to port us there?"

"Where's the fun in that?" I asked as I stepped up to the edge of Angel Island, turned around, closed my eyes, and let myself fall backwards into the air below…

"I changed my mind!" I heard Knuckles call out even as I began my freefall. Oh well, he had plenty of time to cut the vine if he really…

There was a sudden tug and a scream indicating that I may have underestimated the speed that I was falling at. Either that, or Knuckles had shortened the effective length of the vine by grabbing it much closer to my end than his.

Oh well, too late now, I guess. May as well kick things off and see just how fast I can go while dragging a magically aerodynamic echidna behind me…

I spread my wings and activated my thrust boots, gradually ramping up the boost they gave me until my eyes started to water, then I slowed down just a bit until I could see again.

Hmmm… I could probably fly faster with goggles, a breather, and a Speed Core…

Another project for later.

Feeling just a tad guilty, I decided to look back at my mentor to check how he was doing and if I should perhaps set down after all. However, by the way he's grinning and laughing, I think he got over his last-minute nerves and is actually enjoying himself back there, so I return my attention to the horizon before me and concentrate on getting us to Green Hills…

 

[Tangent]

ROULETTE
A Sonic the Hedgehog AU/SI fic​

I blinked as we drew near her destination along the coast of Green Hills. They had arranged a party for me?

That was… Rather touching, actually (even if a small part of myself insisted that I remain cautious and suspicious - however, as this part most likely stemmed from Dr. Robotnik, I chose to ignore it as best I could).

Cutting my thrust, I angled my wings so that I drifted back to where Knuckles was gliding, and then we undid their respective harnesses, cut the rig in several key places, and let the whole mess drop into the ocean below. An obvious benefit of it being made from vines and grasses was that it was fully biodegradable and would soon either decompose or otherwise be eaten before it could become an issue.

Just because part of me could easily pull double duty as a Captain Planet villain doesn't mean that the rest of me agreed, and it was easy enough to make sure that I wasn't part of the problem.

"Did you know that they were going to throw a party for me?" I ask Knuckles as we continue to glide down towards the beach.

"Not really," my mentor replied. "Mind you, there was a strong possibility since Amy Rose was involved, but it was just as likely for this to be a quiet get together."

"Huh… Looks like Sonic is taking a shortcut across the floating docks?"

"Oh great," Knuckles grumbled. "Why does he keep doing that? He knows that he somehow attracts…"

There was a shuddering crash as a huge black and white form burst through the dock below Sonic, tossing him forward where he took off at an even faster pace than before.

"...orcas," Knuckles finished belatedly.

"You head for the beach, I'll rescue the blue idiot," I state, activating my thrust boots and angling my dive to intercept Sonic's projected route.

Part of me really hated that hedgehog, part of me thought of him as my best friend, and the rest of me was bemused by the situation.

Story of my current life, really.

O o O o O​

"Why does he keep doing that?" Tails groaned as he and the others watched the floating docks get torn up yet again. "Sonic knows that that orca has it out for him!"

"Should we go help him?" Amy Rose asked, somewhat rhetorically, but somebody had to voice their concern.

"Why bother," Shadow commented. "The idiot got himself into this mess, he can get himself out."

"Besides, it looks like Roulette has it covered," Tails pointed out.

"Where?" Rouge started to ask, then sighed in relief once she spotted her clone. "Oh thank God she's actually wearing something!"

"You do realize that most Mobians consider clothing to be optional, right?" Rosemary Prower asked pointedly. She, like Amadeus, had decided to forgo their usual preferred style and dress down to Mobian Casual (basically shoes and gloves) like their son out of support for their new granddaughter's reported naturalist tendencies.

"You may not have noticed due to the amount of clothes I wear, but most of my fur is restricted to my head," Rouge pointed out bluntly. "I, and therefore Roulette, both lack enough body fur for basic modesty."

"Well, there is that, I suppose, but it's not like nudism is actually against the law," Rosemary countered.

"I'm afraid our princess would have to have herself arrested if it was, Dear," Amadeus quipped in a deadpan tone.

"I don't see what the issue is, Rouge," Tails interjected, hoping to diffuse the verbal confrontation. "You and Roulette look okay to me."

Rouge looked at Tails with a bemused expression, cocking an eyebrow but deciding to let the issue drop for now.

O o O o O​

I let go of Sonic's hands while we were still about wading distance from the shore, then touched down on dry sand well clear of the water.

In my defense, part of me honestly despised the blue menace for a host of reasons, and while the rest of me liked him well enough, I was frustrated by the fact that he'd been teasing the resort's orca again.

Why the resort kept an orca was beyond me. Along with the how, since it wasn't actually penned in to its designated habitat and could leave any time it liked. It was just one of those quirks that the outsider part of me thought was odd, along with the bits of floating terrain and those road-themed art installations that were weirdly popular in a lot of Mobian cities.

Seriously, some of those looped and spiraled sections of isolated road surface had been in place since before Dr. Robotnik was born. So why does nearly every city on Mobius still have one of these art installations? It boggles the mind, and my mind has two separate geniuses as part of it!

Wait, wait, gotta keep that arrogance in check. No need to go down Bad Dad's path in life.

Now where was I?

Oh yes, Sonic.

Sonic may be generally heroically inclined, but he can be a bit of a jerk at times, and I felt justified to be a little petty about it right now given the self-inflicted incident I had just rescued him from.

I eyed Omega cautiously, but his arms currently ended in actual hands rather than guns, flamethrowers, or whatever other weapon he had managed to add to his self-modulating arsenal. Not that this would prevent him from using any of it if he felt like it, it was more of a visual statement of non hostile intent, so I tried to relax some more and released some tension.

Then I got a good enough look at the banner.

"You guys are throwing me a birthday party? If I'd've known I would have worn my Birthday Suit!" Ack! Too much relaxation! Why did I say that!? Abort! Abort!

"ABSOLUTELY NOT!" Rouge protested loudly, incidentally distracting me from my internal panic and engaging my inner snark.

"You're not my mom, Mom! I can dress how I like at my own party!" Oh God, please stop. Why am I saying this!? Oh, wait, I know why, and the reason is basically arguing with the original source right now. Stupid amalgamated personality…

Just step it down. Deescalate the situation. Don't provoke Mom needlessly…

"Tch, fine!" Mom huffed and turned her head to the side. "Do what you like. See if I care!"

My eye twitched, and I'm pretty sure I heard something break inside my own head…

I felt an aura of chaos spread through me as I felt a paradoxical mix of calm serenity and apocalyptic rage.

"Okie dokie!" I exclaimed with cheer that was only partially genuine. "IT'S NAKED PARTY TIME!" I announced loudly as I shucked my jacket and started to pull up my shirt…

In retrospect, I wasn't the least bit surprised when mom pounced on me in an attempt to keep me from flashing everyone at the beach.

"Huh. Food and a floor show. I'm glad you told me to stay, Rouge," Shadow stated in a deadpan tone so dry that both Mom and I immediately stopped wrestling for dominance over my apparel and looked up at him.

"I like him," I stated, pushing Mom off of me while she was still mentally stunned, and stood up, brushing sand off of me as I did so.

I presented my hand out to Shadow. "Let's start over. Hi, I'm Roulette! Want to be friends?"

Shadow seemed to consider it for a moment, then shrugged and took my hand. "Sure, why not?"

"Oh, many reasons, but none of those are actually important right now," I state glibly. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go introduce myself to my Dad and see if we can avoid traumatizing each other!"

And, with that, I turn and walk off towards the Prowers, leaving Mom sitting there in the sand with one of her eyes twitching.

O o O o O​

Tails eyed Roulette warily as she approached him and his parents.

"Hi, I'm Roulette! I understand that Knuckles told you what was going on?"

"He and Rouge said that you told them that you were a mental amalgamation of Rouge, Eggman, and myself, and that you considered us to be your parents," Tails summarized in agreement.

"Hello, Roulette. I'm Rosemary Prower, and this is my husband, Amadeus. We're…"

"Dad's parents. I know."

"You can feel free to call us Grandma and Grandpa if you like."

"Really?"

"Yes, really."

Tears of relief started trailing down Roulette's face as she grabbed all three Prowers into a tight, desperate, group hug.

"There there, Roulette," Amadeus comforted his new granddaughter. "We'll always be there for you. In fact, we already consider you to be part of our family."

"Does that mean…" Roulette hesitantly asked as she released her hug.

"We've already drawn up the papers. All that's needed is your signature and you'll be a Prower. That is, if you want to be."

Roulette began sobbing all over again as she resumed the group hug, only tighter than before!

"Air!" Amadeus managed to gasp out as he, Rosemary, and their son struggled to loosen Roulette's suffocating embrace a bit. "Need… Air!"

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Rouletted exclaimed as she quickly let the three go and stepped back in horror. "I didn't hurt any of you, did I?"

"No no, we're fine," Amadeus lied blatantly. "Just… Next time, don't use so much strength when you hug somebody, okay?"

 

[Tangent]

ROULETTE
A Sonic the Hedgehog AU/SI fic​

"Huh," I tilted my head to one side as I looked over my new grandparents after we separated. "I coulda sworn neither of you went for Mobian Casual…"

"Oh, we usually don't," Grandma said as she rubbed the back of her head a bit sheepishly while Grandpa just rocked the same shoes and gloves look as if he wore it every day. Well, plus the eye patch, of course. "It's just that all the reports we've heard of you indicated that you had naturalist tendencies, and we wanted to show our support for your lifestyle…"

"Naturalist?" I blinked, tilted my head to the other side, then rubbed my chin in thought. "I… Suppose that's accurate. More or less. Either that or exhibitionist tendencies, or maybe both…"

"Try not to think about it too much," Grandpa advised. "You're still young yet. Plenty of time for you to figure out who you want to be. No need to force the issue."

That…

…was actually a pretty solid point, really.

I took a deep breath as a feeling of… not quite contentment… more like all the stress that had still been accumulating was just letting go.

Miles and his parents guided me towards the tables.

"How about you open your gifts, and we can all eat?" Grandpa suggested. An idea that I was totally down for.

O o O o O​

Amy smiled as Roulette settled down at the gift table with her new family (she was positive that Roulette would agree to sign the adoption papers and become a Prower).

Roulette's interaction with Rouge had been a bit funny, although Amy did agree with Rouge to an extent in that Roulette didn't really have enough body fur to be able to pull off the Mobian Casual look. Not that she'd ever admit this to Rouge until the bat stopped randomly flirting with Sonic whenever the two happened to be around. Wasn't she interested in Knuckles anyway?

Anyway, Roulette (who was thankfully still wearing most of her outfit, having only managed to toss her jacket before Rouge had managed to stop her from removing anything else) was looking over the various presents. Most likely determining which ones she wanted to open first.

Then Roulette apparently spotted something and gently lifted a crown of flowers from amidst the presents.

"That's from me and Cheese, Miss Roulette!" Cream called out, the little bunny-girl jumping and waving excitedly by her mother, Vanilla, and their chao, Cheese and Chocola.

"It's lovely," Roulette smiled warmly, placing the woven flowers on her head and wearing it proudly. "Thank you, Cream. You and Cheese did a wonderful job."

"You're welcome, Miss Roulette!"

The next gift turned out to be a fishing rod from Big the Cat, and the one after that…

"A plush pocky?" Roulette asked as she unwrapped the stuffed animal. It was sort of a neutral tan close to, but not quite matching, the overall fur color of Vanilla and Cream.

"I determined it to be a safe gift unlikely to be used to bring harm to Cream," Gemeral announced bluntly, indicating that the gift had been from him.

"Okay, I can respect that," Roulette replied. "Good job, brother."

"Brother?"

"I might not have ever been a Badnik, but Dr. Robotnik is one of my fathers. So that makes us sort of related. I like you more than Omega, so you can be my brother."

"That is acceptable," Gemeral stated.

"That is not acceptable!" Omega countered vehemently. "I am the superior robot! I should be the brother in this relationship!"

After visibly flinching at Omega's outburst, Roulette rallied herself and retorted. "You tried to shoot me, so you can be a distant cousin!"

"You will change your perception of me once you accept my apology gift!" Omega insisted as he grabbed the long package off the table, thrusting it into Roulette's arms.

Amy and several of the others crossed their fingers and watched on worriedly as Roulette unwrapped Omega's apology gift (Shadow didn't seem to be worried, and Sonic was sneaking a chili dog during the drama).

"Huh. A custom built anti-material rifle with recoil compensation," Roulette noted as she looked over the weapon. "Thanks, Omega, I love it!"

"As perdicte…"

"You do realize that I'm not a dog though, right?"

"You understood the reference?" Omega asked.

"I have memories of having watched the show, if that's what you mean," Roulette explained. "Fine, you can be my brother too."

"This is an acceptable outcome."

"Now that this little bit of drama is over, let's see what Mom got me…" Roulette stated cheerfully as she picked up a black present with pink hearts on it. "Ooh! A nice one piece and a gift card for Honey Clothing! Thanks Mom!" the chaos clone announced with a genuine smile.

Amy smiled herself as she saw some of the tension leave Rouge with Roulette's happy acceptance of her gifts.

"And this one must be from Sonic," Roulette said as she started wiping wet wrapping paper from the gift. "A Speed Core? Odd, I was just thinking about what I could do with one of these. Thanks! I'm now a little less irritated with you for teasing the orca!"

"You're welc… er… ah… what?" Sonic started with confident cheerfulness that quickly transitioned into uncertain confusion.

"You know that something about your running across certain sections of the floating docks bothers the orca, so why do you keep doing it?"

"Great, now I feel bad about that."

"Good. You should feel bad about that. While part of me considers you to be my best friend, another part hates your guts and the rest of me sees you as a friendly ally. You're Dad's best friend, so I like you, but you're on thin ice. Just so you know."

"Yeah, that's fair," Sonic acknowledged.

"Now let's see what this is," Roulette said as she picked up another gift to unwrap. "A tool kit?"

"Specifically, a Thrust Shoe Maintenance Kit," Shadow stated plainly. "I put it together from various tools that I had taken during raids on Dr. Eggman's bases. I checked the specs on the versions you made for yourself and saw that you just copied the specs for my shoes. You're going to want to fine tune yours to yourself to suit your needs, since we aren't built the same."

"This is a nice and thoughtful gift, cousin. Thank you."

Shadow considered this for a moment. "By your chain of logic, I'd be your grand uncle, but cousin also works."

"Well, I'll be sure to put these to good use later. Maybe design a speed set to be used in conjunction with the Speed Core the Blue Idiot got for me…"

"Your Eggman is showing," Shadow interjected drily as Sonic started choking on the second chili dog he'd been sneaking during the unwrapping (Amy was going to have a few words with Sonic about that later, but now wasn't the time for that particular scolding).

"What!? Oh, geez, sorry! Sorry! I'm trying to keep a check on my ego 'cause I don't want to go down Bad Dad's path, but sometimes it's a bit…"

"Difficult," Shadow finished for Roulette. "I know what it's like to still be figuring yourself out. It can be hard at times, but I think you've gotten yourself into a good situation already. The Prowers are good people."

"That's good and all but get on with the presents already!" Sonic complained. "Some of us are getting hungry!"

"How can you be hungry? You've already eaten two point two six chili dogs since I got here," Roulette noted through half-lidded eyes.

"Hah! Busted!" Vector called out as everyone laughed.

"Okay, okay, ya got me," Sonic conceded with an awkward smile. "Just get on with the presents already!"

"Fine," Roulette beamed at Sonic, showing that she had no hard feelings even as she unwrapped the next package. "And this is… a matched vest and boots set? Must be from Princess Sally!"

"Got it in one," Sally Acorn confirmed as Roulette set the blue apparel next to the black one-piece.

"I'm definitely wearing them later!" Roulette announced with a wide, manic grin.

Amy noted that Rouge's eye had developed that twitch again.

"Don't worry, Mom, I meant over the one-piece you got me. I'm not totally unreasonable."

"Oh, thank God…" Rouge gasped out in relief.

"Just basically shameless and possibly an exhibitionist," Roulette pointed out, counting off fingers of one hand with the other.

"DON'T DO THAT!" Rouge yelled.

"Young lady, I'd thank you not to provide a bad example for my daughter, if you please…" Vanilla just sort of loomed politely over Roulette.

Who just looked at her.

"Okay," Roulette agreed without a single trace of awkward nervousness in her voice as far as Amy could tell. Then Rouge's chaos clone turned and knelt down in front of Vanilla's daughter. "Cream, I have enough issues to count as subscriptions and this can sometimes lead to bad behavior. So, no matter how cool something I might do in the future looks to you, you should think long and hard about whether or not copying me is a good idea, because I might be being naughty at the time. Okay?"

"Okay, Miss Roulette!" Cream agreed readily as Vanilla smiled.

"And then do it anyway! Ow! Ow! Ow! Not the ear! Lemme go!" Roulette called out as Vanilla angrily dragged her away and towards some bushes.

"So…" Knuckles started talking. "I think now is a good time to tell you a little story about a funny bit of trouble Roulette got herself into earlier in the week that I think is Vanilla is about to reenact the end of…"

"DON'T TELL THEM ABOUT THAT!" Roulette shouted even as she and Vanilla disappeared behind the bushes. "THAT NEVER HAPPENED! IT WASN'T FUNNY!"

"It was actually pretty hilarious," Knuckles said, otherwise completely ignoring Roulette. "You see, what happened was…"

 

[Tangent]

ROULETTE
A Sonic the Hedgehog AU/SI fic​

Amy Rose got up when she noticed Vanilla and Roulette returning to the party (with the latter having a distinct grimace on her face and wobble in her stride). Fetching a particular gift from the table she presented it to the returning naughty bat.

Naughtier bat…

This time anyway.

"Here," Amy said as she started unwrapping the package for Roulette before she got close enough to try to sit down. "It's not its intended purpose, but I think we can all agree that you need this right now…"

And with that, Amy Rose revealed a pink, outdoors rated sleeping bag with white hearts on it. She had accidentally ordered two of them a few months ago, but she thought that Roulette wouldn't mind having the extra cushioning for her tender bottom right now.

Amy pulled the sleeping bag out of its storage sleeve, folded it triple, then set it on the bench just in time for Roulette to gingerly set herself down on it.

"You're a real treasure, Ames," Roulette said as she settled more deeply onto fluffy, down-filled comfort. "Don't let anyone tell you otherwise."

"And I trust that you will be good now?" Vanilla prompted as she resumed her own seat by Cream.

Roulette tapped her own head and addressed Cream's mother. "Vanilla, I have an amalgamation of Miles, Rouge, and Dr. Robotnik up here in my noggin' with all the good and bad that entails, and both Mom and Bad Dad use snark as a social tool, weapon, and defense mechanism. My mouth can, has, and will get ahead of me at times. Hopefully that will change in time as I get a better handle on things, but let's be realistic here: If Cream and I were ever left alone together, she'd be the one babysitting me. You've got a good kid. Have a bit more faith in her, okay?"

"You make a good point," Vanilla sighed in mild disapproval. "But I expect you to at least make an effort to avoid being a bad example around my daughter."

"Fair enough," Roulette agreed as she reached for the next present…

O o O o O​

"We are not reporting any of what Roulette just said back to GUN," Rouge stated quietly to Shadow and Omega.

"Agreed," Shadow replied. Sure, GUN had supposedly cleaned house and had punished those who had been behind and/or supported the actions that had led to the deaths of Gerald Robotnik and his daughter, Maria (who had been Shadow's first friend). Not to mention the following fiascos that had contributed to Dr. Ivo Robotnik's fall to villainy. But he and Omega had only agreed to join GUN as Rouge's subordinates so that they could keep an eye on things and make sure that nobody was repeating the same mistakes that had caused so much trouble in the first place.

Something he felt he no longer needed to do personally, now that GUN was working so closely with the Resistance and the two multinational organizations could watch each other.

Besides, Rouge's term of community service was almost up, and Team Dark would be going independent with her when she left.

"Acknowledged. GUN's predicted reaction to receiving this intelligence would be suboptimal and thus negatively impact Roulette's effectiveness against Dr. Eggman and the badniks that still follow him."

Rouge sighed in relief as she and Shadow shared a quick nod. While Omega was technically under Rouge's command as a member of Team Dark, it was sometimes difficult to convince him to deviate from his chosen course once he had made a decision. So knowing that he was on board with their decision to keep GUN in the dark about the implications of Roulette's inadvertent revelation was a good thing in their eyes…

O o O o O​

I was finally down to the last two gifts, which, by default meant that they most likely had to be from either Dad, Grandpa, and/or Knuckles in some combination, and given that Knuckles had claimed to be unaware that Amy was setting up a belated birthday party for me…

"A belt pouch?" I looked it over for a moment then opened it to check the inside. "Ooh! An Augmented Storage System! Pretty high end too - lots of capacity!"

"It's called a Hammer-Space Pocket," Dad insisted through half-lidded eyes. "I made the very first one for Amy, so she'd have some place to carry her hammer without it getting in the way."

"Missed opportunity for awkward acronym fun there, Dad…" I joke, then immediately change tact as Vanilla just gives me The LOOK. Must not be a bad example! Must not be a bad example! Mustang knot a bedding sample… Wait, what? "Moving on… By process of elimination, the last gift must be from Grandpa!"

"Indeed it is," Grandpa announced. "Now open it up before Tails' blue friend starves to death," he joked.

"He literally snuck another six chili dogs while I was opening gifts," I point out. "I doubt he's going to have room for ice-cream and cake, let alone starve to death."

"Hey!"

"Don't sneak food if you don't want to be called out on it," I state bluntly even as I unwrap the final gift. "Ooh! A Miles Electric!"

And indeed it was. One of the best field-grade portable computers on the market, originally designed by my Dad, although this one looked like a production model. A high-end production model, with a custom black and red casing with gold trim and my name in poker table green outlined in gold…

"My son does good work," Grandpa said proudly, and I knew that he knew exactly what he had given me.

An echo of Bad Dad may be part of my psyche, but unlike him, I didn't want to rule and/or punish the world for what had been done to him to make him break (those people had been long since dealt with as far as I knew from the memories I inherited, but that had done little to assuage Bad Dad's rage).

No, what Grandpa had done was give me the means to make and adjust plans without having to rely on my potentially wonky memories.

I had an empire to finish toppling.

And now I had the tools to do it.

 

[Tangent]

ROULETTE
A Sonic the Hedgehog AU/SI fic​

I did a lot of busywork to keep myself distracted when I first moved in with Amadeus and Rosemary (who were now my adoptive parents even though it was their son who I considered to be one of my Dads - Even with a lot of the local government infrastructure within the territory of the Resistance in shambles, I guess Miles is still considered to be too young to legally adopt anybody). At first this work mostly consisted of compiling a database of every base, facility, or resource that I remembered Bad Dad as having access to, hidden, secret, or otherwise. Which I then created back-ups for, both physical and digital in nature, before emailing the files to both the Resistance and GUN (cc'd in that order, to both make my preferred allegiance known as well as to make it as unambiguous as possible that they were getting the same information.

I also asked Grandpa to hire four separate secure couriers, two each for both the Resistance and Gun, to deliver a printout and a digitally stored copy of these same files. Each with a note to check their damned emails.

With that out of the way, my next bit of busywork was spent writing, rewriting, and rewriting my very own personal OS for my Miles Electric that would be both compatible with yet protected from several already existing operating systems that my amalgamated mind was aware of. Including Eggnet, but oddly nothing from the outsider's world as apparently that bit of my psyche was more an end product user than a programmer. Less technically capable than Mom even.

I kinda feel that I got a bit shafted there, given that there were apparently a number of known geniuses or otherwise very skilled agents, warriors, and/or craftsmen in that world and I had been stuck with somebody who was just happy to have ended up in a healthy body.

Frustratingly enough, the outsider bit of me just accepted that dismissal with bemusement, considering that I mostly thought of myself as a singular whole rather than as four minds sharing a body.

Which was probably for the best, really.

"Roulette?" Grandma called out, poking her head into the study I was using and interrupting my thoughts.

"Yes?"

"I was just checking in on you and noticed that you were brooding again. Come with me and we'll get out of the house for a bit. Both Amadeus and I noticed that you are plainly uncomfortable living here, so it's obvious that you share our son's bad memories from when we were taken."

"Yeah," I admitted begrudgingly. I hadn't wanted to say anything due to how generous and accepting they were being, but I haven't had any good sleep since I moved in. If it wasn't nightmares, it was seemingly endless restless fidgeting or tossing and turning depending on if I used the bar or the bed. I still got some sleep, but I had honestly done better sleeping outdoors hanging upside-down from random branches than I did here.

I briefly thought about just throwing on shoes over my socks and otherwise going out as I was and figured that it was good enough. I had basically added shorts, tube top, and vest to one of my Shadow sets and called it good enough for the day. "Just give me a moment to put on shoes and grab my Honey Clothing gift card. May as well get that out of the way…"

"Oh yes, we can easily hit Honey Clothing while we're out," Grandma agreed cheerfully. "I'll just let Amadeus know that we're heading out…"

While Grandma was doing that, I went to my room and made sure to pick a set of thrust shoes that I knew I had already adjusted, then put them on.

I briefly considered swapping out to my Princess Sally set, with or without the one-piece Mom gave me, but discarded that idea as I had yet to add a proper thrust system to the boots.

Besides, the idea of actually going all Mobian Casual in a town or city just didn't appeal to me. Maybe I was more naturalist than exhibitionist after all?

A thought for another day.

It was time to get out of this damned house and all the stress that came from Dad's memories…

O o O o O​

Rosemary hadn't said anything to Roulette about it, but she and Amadeus had been honestly surprised that their newest family member, who supposedly lacked any body shame, actually tended to wear just a bit more than Mobian Casual even when she was just staying inside the house. Not that either she or Amadeus were going to complain about Roulette's chosen lifestyle either way, but it was a bit at odds with her supposed behavior on the day she had manifested.

The perils of incomplete intelligence, as Amadeus would say.

"You know, I could add flight-wheels to this," Roulette commented as Rosemary drove from Emerald Town towards Central City (Honey Clothing didn't have a branch in their small suburb). "Maybe some pop-out weapons… a force field generator… Oh! Boost jets!"

"Please don't modify my car, Roulette."

"Okay."

They rode in companionable silence for a few minutes.

"Do you think Grandpa would let me…"

"Please don't modify Amadeus' car either, dear. It's a classic and he just finished getting it fully restored."

"Oh…"

Another few minutes went by peacefully as they enjoyed the scenery.

"Can I install defensive turrets around the house?"

"Please don't," Rosemary sighed. After a moment's thought, she continued. "No killer robots either, young lady."

"Fine…" Roulette grumbled. "I guess I'll have to ask Dad if I can move Pachinko from the shed out back to one of his workshops."

"Wait, what?"

O o O o O​

The shopping trip didn't happen today after all, and Pachinko, who I had barely done any work on, was now locked down and packed away in one of Dad's many many workshops (and they won't tell me which one).

Oh, and I had to use the sleeping bag Amy gave me as extra cushioning again.

It wasn't fair!

I just wanted my own version of an Ultimate Robot! Was that too much to ask?

 

[Tangent]

Warning, this chapter is very heavy in introspection and thus has very little dialogue until the very end.

Welcome to Unlucky Chapter Thirteen of...

Click to shrink...

ROULETTE
A Sonic the Hedgehog AU/SI fic​

Rosemary didn't know what to do. She knew that she had overreacted to Roulette's casual admittance of having already started to build a killer robot in the garden shed. The girl didn't even deny that it was a killer robot as apparently it was going to be designed to be able to fight against Eggman's Metals.

Amadeus would most likely have prevented her from lashing out against their adoptive daughter the way she had after driving all the way back and having Roulette actually show her the robot in question.

But he wasn't home.

And then Roulette had jokingly introduced her to the soulless thing she had only just started building in the shed. The thing she had given a name to, like it was some sort of person or doll rather than an abomination.

An abomination that brought up deeply repressed memories of her time in one of Eggman's labor camps being forced to build similar monstrosities as part of an overworked assembly line crew that replaced workers almost immediately as they died on the line.

Rosemary didn't recall precisely what had happened after those memories resurfaced, but the next thing she knew, Roulette was bent over across her lap even as her hand was coming down once again on her adopted daughter's already reddened behind.

And Roulette uttered not a single sound.

Rosemary stopped herself in horror over what she had just done and let Roulette go.

And Roulette said not a single word that she could hear, then or since.

Things had been going so well, and then Rosemary had broken the connection she had made with her adoptive daughter and had no idea how to repair their broken bond...

O o O o O​

I sighed as I sat under a tree at the top of a small cliff overlooking Emerald Beach. I had left the house wearing nothing more than one of my Shadow Sets once again, as I had for the past week or so when I wasn't wearing even less, and had thrust-skated around randomly. I wasn't even really exploring, just wandering around aimlessly as I tried to let my thoughts drift and relieve my stress.

Tried and failed to relieve my stress.

I'll most likely be severely embarrassed and mortified by how I've been dressing this past week but right now all I can feel is emotionally numb. I'm not even getting a reaction from my behavior from me, so I know I'm repressing hard.

Which is bad.

I just don't know what to do about it other than to keep acting out in the one small way that I know nobody else really cares about because most Mobians consider clothing to be entirely optional.

So this was technically a safe way of lashing out because the only people it would matter to was me and Mom. And Rouge didn't live in Emerald Town so wasn't a factor I was concerned about.

Pulling my Miles Electric from my Hammer-Space Pocket, I called up the architectural proposals, made some adjustment notes on one of the ones that had been shaped like my head in much the same way that Dad's house was shaped like his, and sent off my acceptance. Sure, it was the one that was most similar to the design of Dad's house, meaning that it was pretty much going to be single occupant only, but that was probably for the best…

O o O o O​

Amadeus sighed in frustration. Things had been tense between Rosemary and Roulette ever since the discovery that their adoptive daughter had been building a robot in the shed out back.

Granted, Roulette hadn't gotten very far along on that particular project, having only built the framework for a head and upper torso thus far, so not really much of an immediate concern at this time. And had Amadeus not decided to go to Guisseppe's to enjoy an ice-cream soda with some friends while they were out, he'd have been home to mitigate the disaster that had actually happened.

No, the robot hadn't actually attacked or destroyed anything (it was nowhere near complete enough to even be capable of doing anything of the sort).

No, instead Rosemary had taken it upon herself to punish Roulette by administering a spanking.

And Roulette, inexplicably, had let her. Not because she believed that Rosemary had either the authority or the right to do so, but because she understood that she had inadvertently hit one of his wife's trigger buttons and figured that just taking the punishment was the quickest way to deescalate the situation.

Except that now neither of the two were talking with each other at all, and Roulette had taken to dressing down to Mobian Casual or less. Which told Amadeus that it wasn't a sign of either naturalist tendencies or exhibitionism at all. It was Roulette's way of calling for help. Even if she didn't seem to realize this herself. She had somehow associated not wearing clothes as a way to relieve stress when she couldn't relieve it in other ways.

Amadeus didn't know what to do about the situation. Lord knew that the whole Prower family, Miles included, most likely needed therapy.

If only the nearest surviving therapist that was still practicing wasn't seven hundred miles away and fully booked for the next five years…

O o O o O​

Tails looked over the architectural plans that Roulette had picked, somewhat bemused that she actually had decided to more or less copy what he had done when he was eight. Only with a few minor alterations here and there, as he noted where things were to be reinforced, made airtight, and otherwise even more fortified and overbuilt than his own little safe place had ever been.

He should probably try to talk with her sooner rather than later, but he'd just been so gosh darn busy lately with all the strikes and raids the Resistance and GUN were making due to the list of assets Roulette had sent them. It was important hero work and as much as he'd like to see what was going on with the woman who inexplicably considered him to be one of her parents, he just hadn't had the time.

And boy, didn't that feel all kinds of weird, given that Roulette appeared to be Rouge's age, and Rouge was older than Sonic!

Well, he had some time now, so he may as well act on his thoughts, head back to Emerald Town and drop in on his folks to see how his new sister was doing…

O o O o O​

I poked at my dinner, much like Grandma and Grandpa were also doing, shifting the food that Grandpa had made in total silence. Not one of us was talking, as none of us knew what to say.

Then we heard the front door open and close, and looked up as Dad walked into the dining room.

"What happened?" Dad asked. "It's like a funeral parlor in here! More so than usual, I mean."

"In Grandma's defense, I was being an idiot."

Grandma snorted out a repressed giggle, and Grandpa literally fell out of his chair laughing.

And I felt all the pent-up tension just flow right out of me.

The dam had broken, and…

OH GOD, WHY AM I STILL NAKED!?

Grandpa laughed even harder as I jumped up from my seat and raced off to my room to throw on something other than shoes and gloves…

 

[Tangent]

ROULETTE
A Sonic the Hedgehog AU/SI fic​

With a strobing flash of cyan light, a figure stuttered into existence in Green Hills…

"Woah, that was a rough one. Wait, I recognize how that felt. Goddammit, I'm in Tethertin again. The Goddamned dimensional sinc that time wished it forgot. Okay, now how did that go again? Oh yeah! Just a jump to the left, then a step to the right, with my hands on my hips, I bring my knees in tight, and finish off with a pelvic thrust!"

"It's working!" the silver hedgehog cheered as a cyan glow flickered unsteadily into existence again. "I'm going to have to thank Roulette the next time I see her!"

And then Silver the Hedgehog was gone, leaving before he had ever arrived…

O o O o O​

Dr. Eggman fumed as he deftly evaded the patrols around yet another of his fallback bunkers that he had thought were either hidden or forgotten about.

That sinched it. The anomalous chaos generated clone of Rouge had obviously imprinted with at least some of his memories and knowledge. Maybe even more than some.

Most likely got quite a bit of Miles too for that matter, which made her even more dangerous than whatever she got from Rouge.

Say what you will about the fox-boy's choice in allies, at least his genius was respectable.

Still, as annoying as the clone was proving to be thus far (for who else could have leaked the locations of so many of his assets so quickly?), she had not immediately allied with either him or the heroes when she first manifested.

Well, obviously either GUN or the Resistance had gotten their hooks into her now, but that was hardly an insurmountable problem. He'd just have to… liberate her. Show her the light and see if she could be recruited.

She was, after all, the closest thing he currently had to a daughter if he looked at the situation with the right frame of mind. She was just…

Confused!

That was it, she was confused!

He'd take her in, protect her, show her the ropes!

They could rule the world together as father and daughter!

She could be his Maria!

…

No.

No, anything but Maria.

He still had mixed feelings about his late aunt, and was not particularly inclined to share her name, and the good and bad connotations that went along with it, with his potential protégé…

And if she proved to be resistant to the idea?

Well, this wasn't his first rodeo.

She'd come around to his way of thinking.

Or he'd make her come around to his way of thinking!

O o O o O​

With a strobing flash of cyan light, a figure stuttered into existence in Green Hills…

"What, again!? No no no no no! I got stuck in Tethertin enough times already! I thought I was done with these last year! Now how do I get out of here again? Oh yeah, just a jump to the left…"

O o O o O​

"So…" Tails turned to his father after his mother and adopted sister went into the kitchen to have a quiet talk as they did the dishes. "Care to tell me why there's a log entry of a delivery to the secure vault in my Sapphire Town workshop?"

"That would be the robot that Roulette had started to build in the shed out back by the garden."

"Hmmm… I had wondered if she'd be inclined to build any robots. I'll have to look over the design some time."

"Miles."

"Yes, Dad?"

"Your sister hadn't told either your mother or I that she was building a robot."

"Ouch. But still…"

"Miles… Son… I think you're old enough now for me to tell you at least some of what had happened to your mother and I during out time as Eggman's prisoners…"

O o O o O​

With a strobing flash of cyan light, a figure stuttered into existence in Green Hills…

"Woah, that never happened before… Still, looks like I made it! Time to go find Sonic and see if we can figure out how my future went wrong this time!"

And with that, a certain time traveling psychokinetic hedgehog from the future flew off, totally unaware that he was in the past of the wrong dimension…

 

[Tangent]

To help flesh out the scrambled mess that is the Tethertin iteration of Mobius, I'm putting out the call for anyone interested in writing omake's and Side Stories taking place within the setting of ROULETTE. Any entry that I like well enough and deem to be appropriate to the setting will be canonized and threadmarked as a Side Story.

Any character within the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise should be considered to be available for potential Side Story entries, regardless of the origin of their specific continuity (example: Princess Sally Acorn (SatAM/Archie) exists within the setting for ROULETTE, but so does Tangle the Lemur (IDW).

Original characters are also acceptable, as long as they fit within the setting.

For the purposes of ROULETTE, while Sally Acorn's Freedom Fighters are part of The Resistance, they are her personal team, not the entire force. And she's not even the overall leader. That's Johnny Lightfoot (who operates out of the Emerald Hills Zone on South Island).

Oh, and as much as I like the Jim Carry rendition of Dr. Robotnik, he should be considered to be a separate analogue of the man, the myth, the LEGEND...

DR. IVO JULIAN ROBOTNIK
The EGGMAN!​

Spoiler: Dr. Eggman

*ahem*

For one thing, the movie version is actually from Earth, while the one local to Tethertin!Mobius was born and raised on Mobius.

 

[JanCactus]

DR. IVO JULIAN ROBOTNIK
The EGGMAN!​

Spoiler: Dr. Eggman

Click to shrink...

Curse you, image hosting site!!! You have failed us for the last time!
(I'm being silly, but the spoiler'd section's linked image is broken. Also, I'm really enjoying the fic!)

 

[Tangent]

Do we have a list of all the Nicks and their base continuities? I get confused easily.

Click to shrink...

Dr. Ivo Julian Robotnik (AKA Dr. Robotnik Eggman, Dr. Eggman, & Bad Dad): This is the iteration who is native to Tethertin!Mobius, and who had been on track to discover the latest McGuffin (Most likely either the Wisps or the Phantom Ruby, but the order of events doesn't really matter for Tethertin), but that particular plan was derailed before it was even conceptualized when Roulette's post manifestation speedrun blitzed his support base, forcing him to start over again. This Dr. Robotnik considers Roulette to be his potential protégé (once he realized the most probable reason why she was able to so thoroughly shut down his operations within mere hours of manifesting) but doesn't even actually know her name yet. While definitely a villain, he's not necessarily an irredeemable one, and he's the Hero of His Own Story.

Dr. Ivo Julian Robotnik the Human (AKA: Doc): This is the iteration who is native to the Earth depicted in the movies (as played by Jim Carry). While on track to being a villain for a long time, and even embracing the darker image to an extent, he's actually more eccentric than outright evil when not provoked. He has recently suffered two major setbacks, and this is the second time he has been effectively banished from Earth, except this time is going so much better than the prior exile that he's beginning to feel the urge to stay with his new friends and enjoy what is looking to be his dream job...

Hey, when Tangle the Lemur decides to Befriend you, she doesn't need to beat you ten ways from Sunday first, so take that, Nonoha and Naruto!

Dr. Ivo Julian Robotnik (AKA Dr. Tinker): This iteration of Dr. Robotnik is from a Mobius where Dr. Starline screwed up the process of breaking the Mr. Tinker persona so badly that, instead of Dr. Robotnik being completely restored with the Mr. Tinker persona being little more than a set of vague memory fragments, the two personalities merged into a cohesive whole who has decided to call himself Dr. Tinker. He has decided to flat out leave his Mobius to try to discover who he really wants to be on another Mobius entirely, and his (wooden badnik) daughter, Belle the Tinker, has chosen to come with him.

Dr. Ivo Julian Robotnik (AKA: The Doctor): This iteration of Dr. Robotnik is arguably the most outright capable and dangerous of any of the Robotniks to appear in this story. This is largely due to his being from the version of Mobius that he has labeled as Serial, and has been the major villain throughout so many cataclysmic cycles of world ending disasters, and losing literally everything over and over and over again so many times that he's gone past insane and come out the other side. Probably more than once.

The Doctor has finally escaped Serial and picked up a version of Belle the Tinker from yet another dying Mobius that had just entered the final phase of a Zombot Appocalypse scenario, where everyone who could be infected by the Metal Virus had succumbed. He was able to rescue Belle because she is effectively immune, but that was it. Mobius Zed is effectively a write-off until an effective cure for the Metal Virus can be found and somehow applied on a world-wide scale so fast that further mutations fail to happen before it is wiped out.

The Doctor and Belle have currently allied themselves with the Scavengers from Boscage Maze, one of the Shatterverse iterations of Mobius, and have offered them at least temporary sanctuary at Fallback Outpost.

Dr. Julian Kintobor of House Ivo (AKA: Dr. Ivo Julian Robotnik, Dr. Eggman, Eggman, and The Great Rotund One): This iteration is basically the same as the one from the SatAM/Archie continuity, who had either died or gone missing only to be replaced by Roborobotnik prior to the reboot. He has a partially roboticized physique that enhances him in a similar manner that Bunny Rabbot's partially roboticized body does for her. There is only one iteration of Dr. Robotnik who is arguably more outright evil than he is, and the similarities between the two are so prevalent that even I've lost track and had started referring to him as RoboRobotnik.

Dr. Julian Kintobor of House Ivo (AKA: Dr. Ivo Julian Robotnik, Dr. Eggman, Eggman, Roborobotnik, and The Monster): This iteration of Dr. Robotnik has worked cooperatively with other dimensional analogues of himself in the past, and has even given them assistance when they are particularly down on their luck, but he has only ever aided the most evil versions of himself without considering betraying them. In his original timeline, he had fully roboticized himself after a plot to fully roboticize the Freedom Fighters went spectacularly wrong, fully transforming every last remaining Freedom Fighter into robots but leaving them in full command of themselves with no way for him to impose a control overlay, leaving his only option of retaining his edge against them as becoming a full robot himself.

At some point, he found himself taking the place of an Eggman that he had previously freely given assistance to, one who's past was nearly identical to his own, at a point where the locals believed that Eggman had been dead for about a year, only in a body more closely resembling some iterations of himself that had been born as Ivo Julian Robotnik instead of merely changing to that name. Further along this new start, he somehow (alien intervention) became fully human again.

Among the reasons I consider this one to be the most monstrous versions of Eggman are:

• Deliberately roboticizing the rest of House Ivo shortly after they returned from space, offering them refuge in Robotropolis first under the guise of actually welcoming them home. He only missed one little girl when he sprung this trap, and this was not on purpose.
• Use of a nuclear arsenal, both as a coercion threat and by actually launching nuclear strikes against his enemies. This only stopped when his arsenal of nuclear weapons was finally sabotaged to the point of being unusable.
• After the local Princess Sally Acorn became Mecha Sally (or Metal Sally - the names are interchangeable), he purposely grafted a control overlay over her original consciousness so that she would be fully aware of every little thing that he had her do, whether as a personal servant or as a battle machine against her former allies. He even deliberately left her fully conscious, aware, and with her pain receptors fully active when he striped her original roboticized body down to just her "essential" parts (Head, spine, ribcage, and heart), and rebuilt her from that point up to be an even more lethal weapon against her former allies, having Snively dispose of the old parts in a smelter. And the less said about the implied uses he put her to as his personal servant the better, but he has used her as a bathroom attendant to help bathe him on more than one occasion.
• Effectively going the full "Screw it, if I can't win, then nobody else can either" route more than once and essentially resetting everything to a new timeline via Genesis Wave reboots. Which, for the purposes of this fic, were essentially artificially induced shatterpoint events that effectively destroyed the original dimension in favor of creating shatterverse variant continuities, some closer to the original they spawned from, some more divergent. Oddly, this has led to some of his divergent selves that resulted from these splits actually being less evil to varying degrees.

The Chaos Council (the shatterverse iterations of Dr. Eggman):

• Dr. Babble - a baby version, and arguably both the most vicious and amoral of the five. He doesn't speak yet, but the other members of the Council can unsterstand his baby-babble anyway. Prefers to pilot a giant mech and rely on brute force in battles, and some of his ideas for things to do to members of the Resistance are apparently so vile that the other members of the Council tend to veto them as being too evil.
• Dr. Deep - the most physically fit member of the Council, Dr. Deep has the most direct combat experience, although he is not above giving himself a minor technological edge. He is very much enamored with far eastern warrior cultures and is the most willing to enter a one-on-one battle that is almost fair.
• Dr. Don't - the angsty teen powergamer member of the Council. I would place Dr. Don't's ability to remotely battle through a single tough badnik drone at a time to be just short of being a fair match for Dr. Ivo Julian Robotnik the Human's ability to multitask operate entire swarms of Sleekniks.
• Dr. Done-it - the cranky old man of the Council, and arguably the most experienced, but his best days are definitely behind him so he can't effectively lead the Council.
• Mr. Doctor Eggman - The group's leader and possibly the one most like the version of Eggman that they all split off from, only a bit more charismatic. Mr. Dr. Eggman is the nominal leader of the Council, but his ideas can be overridden or overturned if enough other members of the Council go against him.

Of note is that the Chaos Counsil is fully aware that they are derivative splits from a singular Dr. Eggman. However, they believe that this split was intentional on their originator's part so that attention to various parts of their grand vision could be divided between the only allies they could fully trust: themselves.

The Chaos Council would probably be open to recruiting other iterations of Dr. Robotnik on a case-by-case basis and would probably even welcome Dr. Starline into their ranks with open arms if they thought that they could trust him (and he's enough of an Eggman fanboy that he could probably win their trust). They are definitely conquerors though, and if given the means and opportunity they would spread their ideal of One New Yolk City everywhere to as many alternate versions of Mobius and Earth (and any other habitable planet) as possible.

The Chaos Council does actually employ minions, but their level of trust in these minions varies on the level of control they can exert on them via lies, implants, blackmail, or various other means.

Minions of note include but are not limited to the following:

• Rusty Rose: An iteration of Amy Rose who sought extreme self-improvement and had bought into the Council's lies. She has been nearly fully roboticized, retaining little of her original organic physiology, and has a control overlay program ensuring her loyalty to the Council (or to whoever hacks her remote link system).
• Shifter (deceased): An iteration of Mimic, an octopus-based Mobian shapeshifter who cut a deal with the Chaos Council to earn a pardon for his crimes against their vision in exchange for assassinating the Resistance cell be belonged to, the Gem Cutters. Shifter was killed by Roulette before he could finish off his final teammate, Silent (an iteration of Whisper the Wolf of the Diamond Cutters).

There may or may not be further iterations of Dr. Robotnik appearing later on in the story, either during this arc or sometime later on...

EDIT: Additional "Robotniks" (of a sort)...

Roulette Prower (AKA: Roulette the Bat, The Anomaly, The Protégé, & Why Are You Naked This Time!?): Roulette is on this list because she is technically a Robotnik by way of having a good chunk of the memories and experiences of Tethertin's local iteration as part of her amalgamated mind, along with Miles "Tails" Prower, Rouge the Bat, and an outsider from so many realities away that her world and everyone on it are considered to be works of fiction. For reasons even she cannot adequately explain, Roulette considers all four of donors for her gestalt personality to be her parents, referring to them as Dad, Mom, Bad Dad, and not mentioning the outsider to anyone at all.

Roulette is still figuring herself out, is as quirky as a wooden clock, and has doesn't have issues so much as she has subscriptions. That said, she is highly intelligent, is not as mature as she thinks she is, and easily distracts herself with her own runaway thoughts.

She is also probably the only individual on Mobius besides Dr. Robotnik himself to not only be aware of the fact that all killing him does is delay his plans for a bit before he inexplicably shows up again for no adequately explained reason, but also knows that he himself does not know why this happens! Sure, the first few times were backup clones or robot doubles, but he's mysteriously woken up after enough totally unexpected (and very successful) assassination attempts to simply not bother with that part of his contingency plans anymore other than to throw off follow-up attempts.

Senator Ivo Julian Robotnik (AKA: Senetor Robotnik): While also having several doctorates (including both medical and veterinary), this iteration of Ivo Robotnik is a passionate advocate of Mobian rights. Unfortunately on a version of Mobius where the local Mobians are in dire need of such an advocate, as most humans culturally view them as little more than particularly clever animals and treat them much the same way as the animals their Mobian subtypes resemble.

And yes, it really sucks if your Mobian subtype happens to resemble an animal locally seen as either livestock or a pest animal...

Senetor Robotnik has actually been making great strides in curtailing the worst of this sort of treatment at least within the United Federation on his Mobius, and had recently decided to put himself forth as a Presidential Candidate with Mobian Rights as his platform. So, while he's happy to be visiting a Mobius where his dream is a reality, he's a bit put out by the timing as he's desperately needed back home...

Dr. Ivy Maria Robotnik (A.K.A. Doc Sonic (blame DReznov for this one, and me for purposely mangling the name even further)): In this dimension, Bernadette married the man who would have been Dr. Ivo Julian Robotnik's father.

Dr. Ivy Julia Robotnik (AKA Dr. Robitnik, Dr. Egg Lady, Egg lady): This iteration of Dr. Robotnik is from a Mobius where most of the genders of the various heroes and villains are arbitrarily the opposite of what their analogues are in most other versions of Mobius. Dr. Egg Lady's attitude towards her own badniks (such as Tribot) is that they were built to suffer, just as the whole world should at her hands. The reasoning behind this motive is currently unknown, but speculation leans towards revenge for the deaths of her great grandmother, Dr. Geraldine Robotnik, and her uncle, Mario Robotnik, during the Space Arc incident roughly half a century ago...

 

[Tangent]

ROULETTE
A Sonic the Hedgehog AU/SI fic​

With things finally settling between Grandma and I, I once again felt motivated to actually tinker and completed the conversion of the boots that Sally Acorn gave me into thrust-boots.

Yes, this is totally something I plan to do for all of my footwear. Thrust-skating is fun, the boost in flight speed when I'm not going slow to enjoy the scenery more is exhilarating, and I didn't have to worry about fuel at all, so why not?

I was even bonding with Grandma again!

Over clothes, of all things, but I'll take it.

"These are pretty… interesting designs," Grandma commented as she looked over my sketches.

"Most of them are variations of what Mom has either worn or might be inclined to wear," I point out. "With some occasional modifications here and there to suit my deviation from her tastes."

"I note that you've been replacing a lot of the pink she likes to use with other colors. You seem to use less purple too."

"My tastes are rather eclectic. I think you can guess why."

"Interesting name choices for some of these ensembles. I mean, Prim for a jungle-themed outfit that looks like it's meant to be made from leaves and rags?"

"Oh! That reminds me! I actually made the important bits of that one while I was staying on Angel Island! I'll go throw it on real quick and show you how it actually looks on me!"

Before long, I had returned from my room and was modeling the very modified Prim cosplay set. It still had the added leaf skirt to make up for the lack of any cloth underlayer (I hadn't gotten around to acquiring any cloth yet), and the leaves and grasses were beginning to turn brown, but it was still flexible enough to wear.

"That's certainly… a look," Grandma said, looking like she was trying really hard not to laugh.

I didn't blame her. The outfit was wonderfully ridiculous in how cliche it was even before the alterations I had to use.

"Hey, it lasted a full week of actually being worn without me having to replace leaves very often, so I'll call it a win. This set isn't going to last much longer though. I'm thinking of getting some artificial leaves to use instead when I finally do the cloth underlayer that's supposed to go with it."

"I see," Grandma said before turning her attention to one of the other designs. "This Batten one makes you look like some kind of sailor."

I just grinned. Possibly like a maniac, but hopefully not.

"Huh. I suppose the armor pieces on the Rebel set are intended to be actual armor?"

"Light armor, yes, since I'm a flier. I could probably wear something heavier even so, but I'd rather keep the weight down so as to not affect my speed and maneuverability too much."

"I see you've come up with a lot of accessory pieces to go with what you seem to be calling your Shadow sets."

"Well, yeah. It's easy to add stuff to a set that's basically just shoes and gloves, so the Shadow sets work well as a base to build from."

Our discussion continued for a good while from there, as we both put the incident from the other day behind us.

The next day, we finally went over to Central City for a day out and to use that gift card at the Honey Clothing located there.

It was a good day.

O o O o O​

All across Mobius, small colorful apparitions began to appear. They came in a variety of shapes, floated in the air, and generally had a surprised expression whenever one first appeared, almost as if they expected to be somewhere else.

If one happened to enter someone's body and merge with them, that person was granted a special ability associated with that particular type of the odd little creatures. This state would only last for a short while before the merger separated once more, but it was apparently a thing that could happen.

They did not all arrive at once. Early on only a few had manifested, and those were scattered to an extent that it took a while for anyone to notice them, and even longer before anyone believed the ones who did.

So, naturally, the first people to actually interact with the wisps when they started to manifest on Mobius happened to be children.

Many of whom made a game of it, even if the kids couldn't directly understand their new glowy friends…

O o O o O​

"So… you're saying that Eggman must have raised another army after we defeated Infinite and broke up his last one…" Sonic summarized.

"Yes, exactly!" Silver nodded excitedly, happy to have found his friend in the past so quickly.

"One question though, well, a couple really."

"Yes?"

"What are wispons and who the hell is Infinite?"

"Wait, what?"

Silver wondered if he had somehow come too far back into the past this time, and had somehow arrived before some of his previous adventures with Sonic had happened…

O o O o O​

Dr. Robotnik decided to change his approach, as attempting to access any of his previous hidden bunkers or facilities clearly wasn't working.

Instead, he intercepted one of his free roaming badnik patrols to use as an initial escort while he gathered even more of his wandering badniks. And then, before this group became too large to conceal, he took them with him so that they could build him a new starting base from which he could begin to restart once again.

And while his new army was building back up to deployable numbers, he'd do research to find out more about his new protégé before he recruited her. For one thing, she most likely had a name by now. One that was picked for her at the very least if she hadn't picked one for herself. That would be incredibly useful to know before the next time they met.

 

[Tangent]

ROULETTE
A Sonic the Hedgehog AU/SI fic​

Huh…

My rings were running pretty low.

Sure, Shadow had returned the ones that had been in the duffle I had lost back in Robotropolis, but working on various projects actually does cost money. Which, for some reason, amounted to rings no matter where you were on Mobius. Usually in the form of paper bills or credit/debit cards actually, but the base denomination was the ring. Which was used all over the world as if it were some sort of super-euro.

The outsider's opinion on how weird the world's shared economy was aside, I was down to three rings in my pocket, which was not enough to get new materials for any of my current projects, and I had basically run through most of the old scrap that my adoptive grandparents let me salvage from their property.

Part of me wanted to go treasure hunting. Another part just wanted to seize the materials I needed from the neighboring yards and houses. The outsider part of me wanted to race around and try to find loose rings that would somehow just be floating in lines all over the place as if that were a real thing that happened. Seriously, what the hell? Those were just videogames, for God's sake!

I carefully ignored the double row of bracelet-sized rings that spontaneously appeared floating in the air beside me, as those were clearly way too big to be ring coins. If I wait long enough, they will go away, and I can pretend that they never existed in the first place.

I question my mental stability enough as it is. I don't need the world poking at my shaky sanity until it dribbles out my ears.

…

The floating rings aren't going away. And they were kinda blocking the door to the study I was in.

Fine.

I'll guess I'll just take them anywa…

GAH!!!

WHY DO I FEEL LIKE I JUST HAD ALL THE CAFFEINE!?

O o O o O​

"Well, that's new," Sonic noted.

"What?" Silver asked as he looked around. The Green Hills of the past just looked the same as ever as far as he could tell, but it wasn't like he spent a lot of time in the past, so maybe Sonic spotted something that he hadn't?"

"You don't see all those rows of rings that just popped up all over the place?"

"That's not new! Rings pop up all the time! From what you told me, they've been doing that since about a year and a half after your Uncle Chuck invented them!"

"Silver, the only thing Uncle Chuck invents is new side dishes for the chilidogs he makes. He's never done anything like this!"

"That can't be right. I may not have understood it, but I've heard your Uncle Chuck describe how he made the first power ring to Blaze so she could set them up in her dimension."

"Who's Blaze?"

"You don't know who Blaze is!? I can't have overshot my mark that badly! What year is this?"

Sonic told Silver.

"You should already know Blaze! She's been to Mobius at least a few times by now!"

"What can I say? Never heard of her," Sonic said with a shrug.

"This is wrong! This is all wrong! TAILS! Please tell me you still know Tails!"

"My best bud? Of course I know him!"

"Okay, good. That's good. We need to go see him right now. Maybe he can figure out what's going on…"

O o O o O​

Dr. Robotnik cocked a brow as double rows of rings started manifesting here and there across the area in and around his new base (well, start of a base, really). Most of the less intelligent badniks (mostly combat drones and general labor that didn't need much in the way of decision-making abilities) simply ignored the floating rings as if they weren't there.

Indeed, they tended to pass right through them without any noticeable reaction at all in either them or the rings.

It was the badniks that did react to the rings that really caught his attention. They tended to cautiously investigate them, and then either ignore them entirely afterwards like the ones that had never noticed them before, or attempt to collect the rings and store them in holding capsules.

The success rate of the latter was mixed, as only some badniks, the ones that had actually developed personalities (either by deliberate design on his part or by happy accident) could collect the rings.

More testing would be required before Dr. Robotnik decided what to do with these rings, but it gave him something to do while an E-91 was located and brought back so that it could be put to use gathering intelligence on his potential protégé from GUN and the Resistance.

O o O o O​

"There seem to be a lot more of these floating rings in our house than in any of our neighbors' homes," Grandpa said as he returned from checking out the neighborhood, carefully maneuvering around the double rows that had taken up positions in the hallways and other natural paths of the structure.

Not that absorbing a ring seemed to hurt any of us, but they did have an effect, and none of us trusted that it was as benign as the simple boost in personal energy it seemed to be.

Well, a simple boost of energy for Grandpa and Grandma anyway.

I was practically bouncing off the walls.

"IthinkweneedtocallDadandhavehimbringoversomesensorssowecanfindoutwhattheseringsarereallydoingtome!"

"A bit slower, Roulette," Granma chided. "You're speeding up again and it's getting hard to understand you."

Oh Goddammit! I must have touched a ring again. Stupid things!

 

[Tangent]

ROULETTE
A Sonic the Hedgehog AU/SI fic​

Dammit! Dammit! Dammitdammitdammitdmtdmtdmtdmtdmtdmtdtdtdtdttttttt!

There were too many damn rings in this house, and no matter which way I turned, I kept touching them and absorbing them into me!

To my perception, Grandma and Grandpa were now so slow they were all but standing still, and I knew they were grabbing as many rings as they could so they could at least try to talk with me!

I noticed smoke and sparks of embers start to kick up from under my feet even when I was just trying to stand still…

I couldn't stay here!

I couldn't let them touch me!

I'd kill them!

I can't help but to absorb another forty-two of those Goddamned rings before I reach the front door, and half of it shatters into smoldering splinters as I try to turn the knob.

The rest of the door just blows out into the street and ends up embedded halfway through a light post…

I take off straight up, hoping and praying that I did not just accidentally kill two of my adoptive family in my backwash, then level out once I'm high enough to avoid touching any more of those cursed rings.

I feel the desperate need to burn off this speed as fast as I can so that I can actually call someone to check on my family.

Please don't be dead!

Please!

Oh God, please let them still be alive!

O o O o O​

Amadeus grabbed Rosemary and pulled her back to safety even as half the foyer and part of the front lawn got pulled straight up into the wake of their fleeing daughter.

"Roulette!" Rosemary called out even as she tried to pull free from his arms, but he kept his hold firm and started forcing her deeper into the house.

"We can't go out there, Rose! All that debris will be coming right back down any second now! We can call Miles from the safe room! Maybe he or one of his friends can help Roulette!"

O o O o O​

The door to Tail's house opened right as Sonic was about to hit the doorbell. "Hey, Tails, Silve…"

"Oh good, you're here already!" Tails interrupted his best friend with a tone of exasperated panic in his voice. "Here's your wrist comm, you left it here when you crashed on my couch last night. You've gotta try to catch up to Roulette! She somehow got super boosted by those rings that are popping up everywhere, and she's going fast enough that the shockwave of her just passing through an area is causing all kinds of havoc!"

"Wait, that's not how hypermode wor…"

"Not now, Silver! Sonic, MOVE!"

But Sonic was already gone, and Tails heard the telltale alert of an incoming comm call from his best friend.

"Come on in, Silver, you can try to fill me in on whatever disaster brought you back in time this time after I help guide Sonic to Roulette."

"Who's Roulette?"

"My daughter. I'll explain more later."

"Wait, what!?"

"Not now, Silver!"

O o O o O​

"Adjust your heading a bit to the north… yeah, that's it, you're on her heading now."

"A bit of a false alarm on the damage her wake is causing, Tails. I think Roulette went high to try to avoid doing any more damage."

"That's good to know," Tails acknowledged.

"Uh, question," Sonic began uncertainly. "I know I'm fast and all, but how am I supposed to catch up with her if she's going supersonic?"

"Oh!" Silver's voice came over Sonic's wrist comm. "Her hypermode should wear off about ten minutes after it started, unless she has the full set of Chaos Emeralds on her! You should be able to easily catch up to her then!"

"Got it! Just gotta keep up the pace so I can get under her when she tires out. No biggie. Not like she's flying out over open water or anything."

"Um, according to the map, you're both over open water right now?" Silver pointed out in a confused tone.

"I NOTICED!"

O o O o O​

My first clue that the boost had worn off was when I was suddenly knocked about by my own turbulence like a pinball caught between way too many bumpers, causing me to spiral downward in an out-of-control freefall.

I just barely managed to regain control and slow my decent enough that hitting the water shouldn't kill me…

… only to have the breath knocked out of me all over again as Sonic caught me in his arms.

This was actually rather impressive. I honestly had not known that he was fast enough to pull off the running on water trick!

Now if only I wasn't so… tiiiiiiird… riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight… nnn… zzzZZZzzzZZZ…

O o O o O​

"She'll be fine," Silver assured everyone after Roulette, who looked just like Rouge the Bat for some reason, was put to bed in Amy Rose's guest room. "Hitting Hypermode for the first time can take a lot out of some people, especially if they've had no prior experience with speed boosts. Just let her rest and wake up on her own, and she should be right as rain in four to eight hours."

"She can stay here until her house is finished," Amy offered. "There's only three of those floaty ring things here, and they're all in the backyard by the flowerbed. She'll be able to avoid those easy-peasy!"

"Thank's, Amy. My folk's place is being fixed up right now, so Mom and Dad are checking prices for a hotel to stay in for a few days. You letting Roulette stay with you for a while will save on costs."

"So who is she anyway?" Silver asked, his curiosity getting the better of him. "Because there's no way that she's really Tails' daughter."

"Oh, Roulette's not biologically my daughter," Tails stated. "She's Rouge's chaos-generated clone!"

"Wait, what?"

"Oh, and get this," Sonic picked up the explanation next. "Her mind is an amalgamation of Rouge, Tails, and Eggman!"

"Wait, WHAT!?"

"And she considers all three to be her Mommy and Daddies!" Amy Rose added with a (slightly malicious) grin.

Silver the Hedgehog fell over in a dead faint.

 

[MAGNUS1337]

Behold, an Omake! A very cracky Omake!

---

Spoiler: Cracky Omake

Omake: A day in TetherMEM-E (Tethertin Timeline Iteration B-00M-1)
In the vast multiverse, there exists a place where no evil nor good desires to be no matter what. Yes, even the most Evil of all Eggmen dares not to be in there. Why? Because no one can die. It is either exactly the opposite of or even worse than Serial. It is a dimensional dead end for everyone as it is quarantined by most of the forces in the known multiverse in fear of what it will unleash in that timeline. After all, nothing stops the brainrotting horror that is, TetherMEM-E. A place where Chaos is most profound and Order is profane. A place... Where Sonic Boom exists as the main timeline of this dimension and everyone suffers from its memetic influence.

Today, we join Dr. Juliard "Jules" Ivotron Robotnik, AKA the Bro Code Enforcer, AKA the PHD Scientist Guy, AKA the Factorio Addict, AKA the Worst Roommate Ever by Sonic the BASEDgehog, AKA The Guy Who Pissed... on the MOON, as he does his daily nefarious deeds first and foremost by looking at his spy cameras.

"Seen it. Seen it again... Damn, that one still wants to take down the government." As he goes on and on... He immediately stopped in horror. "Oh Chaos, no... Not this again." That's right, on where he is looking is Knuckles, that dastardly handsome Echidna, the Big Buff Red steroid lover, and that Feminist Male Dude has once again, gained a position of power.

"I would like to thank Raid the Shadow Legend for helping me run for the presidency of Mobius." Knuckles stated as Shadow the Raiding Legend face-palmed in the crowd. "Without him, I would just be an ordinary feminist who only guards an extremely large gem on a temple somewhere."

As Juliard Robotnik stared at the screen in immense horror, the wall near the door was slammed open wide by a shoulder check from his greatest creation. Mecha-Sonic.

"Lord Jules, have you heard about that Red Echidna, that dastardly buff feminist, winning the presidency for the entire world!?" Mecha-Sonic said... in a generic text-to-speech program voice.

Jules pinched his brow. "First off... Stop shoulder-checking the damn wall every time you go here! We are going to run out of funds at this point." Jules shouted. "Secondly, yes. I've heard, after all..." He then motioned towards the wide plasma TV's flatscreen with a High-Definition modulator for increased realism. "I'm watching the whole damn thing!"

"Ah, I should've known that our glorious Ivotron is watching the news." Mecha-Sonic stated monotonally.

"Of course I do." Jules sighed. "Why are you acting like this every time I emptied out your memories to make more storage in your head?"

"Because you are a dirty memory napper."

"Of course not, you bucket of bolts. I emptied it because you reached the maximum amount in a single fucking day!"

"Still doesn't excuse you for a dirty memory napper."

"You have ten thousand petabytes for storage! And you maxed it out every night!"

"Dirty memory napper."

"Why you little..." Just before Jules can choke the shit out of the Mecha-Sonic, his other creation appears. And they used the door, unlike Mecha-Sonic.

The door slid up as Metal Sonic appeared with a box of pizza in one hand. "Sup dudes, I'm here with the pizza." Metal Sonic paused before looking at the hole in the wall. "Did Mecha-Sonic pull a Cool-Aid Man again?"

"Why yes. Of course." Jules paused briefly. "BECAUSE HE IS STILL HERE!" Jules pointed at the Mecha-Sonic, who is trying to hide behind a small vase.

"..." Metal Sonic narrowed its LED eyes. "A vase pulled a Cool-Aid Man?"

"Why do I even want to conquer the world you lot!?" And thus, the omake story concludes with Juliard stewing on his rage again.

Meanwhile...

"Holy shit," Sonic uttered, much to Tails and Nines shock towards his casual swearing. "A vase shoulder-checked the wall!?"

Tails looked as confusedly as Nines face-palmed. "Our hero, everybody."

 

[Nitronorm5688]

This is great!

I love the hilarity and chaos. Would appreciate more photos of the characters, but I can generally understand what's going on.

 

[Tangent]

ROULETTE
A Sonic the Hedgehog AU/SI fic​

I woke up with a start, only to find myself in an unfamiliar room with Shadow sitting vigilantly next to the bed I was in. He gently pushed me back onto my pillow even as I threw off the covers and tried to get up.

"But Grandma and Grandpa!"

"Are fine," Shadow insisted. "They had both absorbed enough of that strange effect those rings have to be able to resist the damage you were causing."

"Oh thank God…" I could feel my anxiety and tension leave me so suddenly that I almost fell asleep again.

Almost.

"So… Where am I?"

"Amy Rose's house. Apparently, this guest room is yours until your own house is finished."

"Oh…" Then something occurred to me. "Not that I'm objecting, Unc.. um, cousin, but why are you here?"

"Heh. It's alright if you want to think of me as an Uncle. I'm not going to object. I think your brat of a mother thinks of me as some sort of little brother to look after anyway."

I did not deny this as he's not exactly wrong, even if Mom's feelings towards Shadow and Omega were a bit more complex than "these are my found family." I did, however, give him the look from her that basically meant to get on with it.

"I experienced what those rings can do when a large double row of them appeared directly in front of me while I was already traveling at speed," Shadow explained. "While I wanted to find out what was going on, I wasn't about to submit myself to GUN's scientists to do so, and Rouge and Omega agreed. They'll be in Central City shortly, as Team Dark is ostensibly coordinating with the Resistance in investigating whether or not these rings are another Eggman plot."

"Which should put all three of you well outside any GUN territory when the community service term Mom agreed to ends next week. You guys do realize that somebody in GUN is probably going to try to declare you guys AWOL if you don't show up in person to opt out."

"Do you honestly expect GUN to just let us go if we showed up in person for that?"

"I'd sooner trust my ability to throw the Death Egg back into space under my own power without any enhancements."

"Yeah, that's about our thoughts too. So we've made sure that our final mission is a matter of public record, well outside of GUN controlled territory, and pre-filed our decision to not stay with GUN. Ostensibly, all three of us will be citizens of Angel Island the moment our term is up."

"Does Knuckles know?"

"He thinks it's hilarious," Shadows said with a brief chuckle.

"Okay, I think I can see how that would work, and Omega would be happy to help defend the Master Emerald given that Bad Dad still sends forces to try to capture it from time to time."

"Yeah. Well, anyway, the reason I'm in here with you is that I'm going to help you train your chaos energy emissions."

With that statement, I was suddenly feeling very tense and pensive again. "So it was my…"

"Stop right there!" Shadow interrupted my spiral into guilt and self-recrimination. "Those rings suddenly appeared all over Mobius! The Prower home isn't even the only convergence point where lots of them show up in the same place. Or are you trying to say that you can change all of Mobius at once?"

That…

Huh. I guess it would be unreasonable for me to blame myself in light of this new information.

Hmmm…

Well, while I couldn't effect a sudden worldwide change on the spur of the moment like that, I suppose that I could come up with a few ideas to…

Shadow bopped me lightly on the head, breaking that chain of thought. "Stop that. Your Eggman is showing again."

O o O o O​

"So, what happened to cause you to come back this time?" Sonic finally asked, once everyone was gathered in Amy's living room. It made more sense to him than waiting until everyone was back at Resistance HQ again (and he really didn't care if Silver was going to have to explain his situation all over again).

"I don't know," Silver admitted (yeah, big surprise there, as that seemed to be the case half the time he came back in time anyway). "All I know is that when I went back to the future, there was nothing left. No plants, no water, just a desolate landscape with the occasional outcropping of crystals and a greenish aurora all along the horizon no matter which way I turned. It was very… Grim."

"That sounds even worse than before," Sonic commented. "Think it has anything to do with all those rings popping up?"

"I told you, those Rings had always been there every time I've come back into the past before! You told me yourself that your Uncle Chuck made the very first one!"

"That's a negatory on both counts," Sonic denied. "This is the first time those rings had ever shown up as far as I know, and I already told you that the only thing Uncle Chuck invents is new side dishes to go with the best chili dogs on Mobius! And those chili dogs aren't even his recipe, they're Grandma's!"

"Wait, Sonic," Tails interjected. "I think I know what's going on. We already know that multiple Mobiuses exist…"

"We do?" Rouge asked point blank. "News to me."

"Both Dad and Bad Dad knew," Roulette just shrugged and then went back to sipping the hot tea that Amy had made for her.

"Anyway," Tails continued. "Since we know that multiple Mobiuses exist, and Silver's memories don't match up with his previous visits, it's fairly obvious that this isn't the Silver from our future. You came back to the wrong past."

"That's a thing that can happen?"

"You're here now, aren't you? You tell me."

"It's entirely possible that he went back to the wrong future instead, and this is still the past of that future," Roulette pointed out.

"Bummer. So we still gotta be on the lookout for some impending world ending disaster, only this time without knowing whether or not it's even our future. Well that's just perfect!" Sonic complained.

O o O o O​

On another Mobius, so close and yet so very far away, a rift appeared in the sky and an Eggrider arrived through it before it closed.

Dr. Ivo Julian Robotnik, sometimes known as the Eggman or Mr. Tinker (depending on the damned Cycle of Doom), looked over the metallic foliage below him and immediately began to frantically take readings.

"No no no no no! I thought I had actually escaped that damned hellhole of serial calamities this time! My calculations were perfect!"

After an indeterminate period of intense study of the readings his instruments gave him, he sighed and slumped back in his seat. "Okay, this isn't that Mobius, so I did escape after all. I just had the horrible luck to arrive on an iteration of Mobius where the Metal Virus happened. I suppose I should check to see if there are any survivors and see if I can help out, but the first thing I should do is make sure that my force field is tuned to prevent any Zeti treachery. That idiot platypus keeps summoning them from Lost Hex every time this particular calamity comes up in the cycle, so it must be a lock point for him or something similar. Or he's just an idiot."

"So… Angel Island or… Belle! I need to see if my local self made Belle in this continuity! She must be worried sick at this point If I had! I never think to check on her after that imbecilic fanboy breaks my Mr. Tinker persona, and I'm never in the right frame of mind to build her during other cycles!"

With that, Robotnik flew off towards a certain village where he had occasionally found his brief moments of happiness back on his hellhole of a homeworld…

Spoiler: The Grim future that Silver most recently came from

 

[Tangent]

ROULETTE
A Sonic the Hedgehog AU/SI fic​

While most of the others were out actually investigating the Stupid Rings of Complicating Things (okay, so maybe I was the only one who called them that, and they'd probably be stupidly useful later, but my initial interaction with them had left a bad impression on me, okay?), Shadow was true to his word and had started training me on how to control and use my chaos-granted abilities. And it started with the two of us traveling a fair ways outside of Emerald Town until we found an empty field that was devoid of any rings at all.

Yeah, apparently there were null zones to go along with convergence hotspots when it came to the rings. Good to know, and excellent for when it came to training special abilities without having to worry about unexpected interactions.

Also, I'm going to totally build a workshop, lab, and bunker in a null zone. Possibly this one. For reasons.

"I honestly can't tell whether your Rouge or Eggman is showing through with that particular expression, but whichever it is, stop it. We've got training to do."

"It can't be Dad shining through?"

"Nah, Tails tends to actually share his thoughts when he looks like that, so it has to be one of the other two."

"It could still be Dad shining through!"

"With your impulse control? Doubtful. But given your reaction just now I think it was Rouge instead of Eggman, so that's less worrying."

"I'll have you know I'm an amalgamated mind, not separate personalities sharing headspace! I'm one singular person! Me! Roulette!" How dare h…

"Good."

Wait, what?

"You're at least beginning to figure out your own identity. Who you are and who you want to be. It might not seem like much, but even just having your own sense of identity can be a big help."

I thought about it for a moment, then it clicked. This was sort of like an inverse of the basic training soldiers go through. Instead of breaking me down so I can be built back up, I was already broken so he just skipped straight to the next stage.

I honestly don't know whether to feel touched or insulted.

"I have no idea what you're thinking, Roulette, but you're probably wrong so stop it."

Okay, so maybe Shadow just wanted me to hit him.

O o O o O​

Dr. Robotnik felt that he was making good progress. The new bunker was shaping up into a decent mini-factory/lab combo, he had some good prospects for the next location where he'd be able to build bigger and better, and he was making excellent progress with unlocking the secrets of the rings.

Well, at least when it came to how they interacted with various badniks, as he'd yet to touch one himself, and animal testing was proving to be inconclusive so far.

Which may show a sign of correlation between the rings and how cognizant a subject had to be in order to be able to perceive and possibly interact with the rings.

Which, at the very least, made it a lot easier for him to be able to tell which badniks had that special something that made them more capable minions. Thus, in turn, greatly simplifying which badniks to assign to which tasks.

The less capable badniks who didn't even perceive the rings would get the drudge work. Things that needed to be done, but didn't require much in the way of thought or decision making.

If a badnik could see the rings, but not interact with them, he'd set them up to patrol near particular sets of rings along various approaches to his bunker. Because the damned rings tended to highlight paths, so placing patrols along those paths even when they weren't otherwise readily apparent without the rings being there seemed to be a good idea.

If a badnik could collect the rings, but otherwise not interact with them, they'd be sent out to harvest the rings near his base (and later bases of course). At which point the lesser badniks patrolling those paths would hide themselves and wait in ambush until the rings reappeared and then they'd resume their patrols.

And the badniks that could interface with the rings? They all got some sort of boost from them, whether it be a longer lasting battery charge, a supercharge that let them go faster or exert greater effort, improved durability, or some other special ability. And while the effect wasn't necessarily the same from one badnik to the next, thus far it was always the same for any particular badnik. Or rather, their personality core.

So, while Dr, Robotnik continued to wait for the badniks he sent out to return with an E-91 so he could assign it to gather data on his potential protégé (although if it took much longer, he'd just…)...

Actually, he had the capability right now, and one of his current badniks already in his base got a stealth boost whenever it absorbed any rings. So why wait? He'd just retool it into an E-91 and send her out sooner rather than later!

And should the badniks he had sent out on the retrieval mission actually return with an E-91, he'd test what ring boost she got and make further plans from that point.

O o O o O​

Belle was heartbroken. She hadn't seen her father, or even anyone at all who hadn't already been converted into a mindless zombot, for months, and it was beginning to look like she'd never see another actual person ever again.

At first, she had been too scared to leave the village where her father had made her, but after a while, she had gotten desperate enough to set out to try to find somebody, anybody, so she would no longer be alone.

The zombots didn't count because they ignored her completely.

Only her wanderings hadn't turned up anyone who wasn't already a zombot. Oh, and actual robots. Some of which looking like they belonged in the small theme park her father had made, but they ignored her too.

So she had returned home where at least the faces were familiar and she could pretend things were normal for a while.

"Belle? Are you here, Belle?"

That voice!

"DAD!" Belle yelled out as she ran out of the barn she called home. "Dad! You're back! You're okay!"

Sure, he was dressed differently, and he was inside some sort of vaguely egg-shaped flying vehicle, but that was definitely her father!

"Not… exactly… my dear Belle. I am not the Mr. Tinker you knew, but rather an… analogue would probably be the best term. I am Dr. Ivo Julian Robotnik, and I am from another iteration of Mobius. If you come with me, perhaps we can find out what happened to your father together."

Belle's heart broke all over again. This wasn't her father after all. This must be the villain those heroes had mistaken him for.

But still, he was at least somebody, and not one of those shambling things that used to be people.

"Okay."

"Excellent! Now please stand on that rock over there so I can scan you for traces of Metal Virus. No sense contaminating myself when it's easily avoidable. Please keep watch for Zombots while I'm doing this scan."

"I will. And you promise to help be find Mr. Tinker?"

"I promise. I cannot guarantee what condition we will find him in, but at the very least you will have closure if nothing else. Just know that your father loved you deeply, and treasured every moment he spent with you since you were made. Trust me, I know."

Things still weren't great. This wasn't Dad. But maybe together they could find him and find out what had happened to him after those bad guys had kidnapped him.

Closure, like Dr. Robotnik had said.

So the first time in a long time, Belle the Tinker felt hope.

She had the strength to carry on…

Spoiler: Belle the Tinker