Chapter 1: Loss of Humanity

Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue. =3

Notes: This chapter is written by Ri2, and is the only chapter in this story that will be outsourced. This was originally written as a birthday gift to me, which is why it has an abrupt ending and a "THE END" statement at the end, but be assured, I will continue this story.

In addition, Chris and Helen here are their Teenage/Adult forms from the end of Sonic X.

Finally, this world is not based on any one continuity in particular, and is, as usual for me, a mix of all continuities.

"Eggman!" Sonic the Hedgehog shouted as he smashed through the door to his nemesis's inner sanctum, leaving a trail of robot parts and lubicrant in his wake as he ran into the center of the large round room he assumed to be the hideout's boss arena. "Show's over, Doc! Guess who's here to pound you and blow up your latest stupid plan to take over the world?"

"Ah, Sonic, right on time as always!" the rotund mad scientist grinned evilly from his characteristic flying machine. "You're just in time to witness my latest invention!"

Sonic smirked, not in the least bit worried. "What is it this time, Doc? The Egg Beater? The Egg Whisk? The Egg Spoon? The Egg Timer?"

"No, don't be preposterous!...though that last one actually sounds pretty good, I should probably write that down," Eggman muttered, tapping something into his control panel. Sonic sweatdropped. "No, it's this!" He said triumphantly as a giant ray gun with seven colored bulbs, each of which contained a Chaos Emerald, ringing its barrel, lowered from the ceiling. "The Egg Transmogrifier!"

"Trans-whatamafier?" Sonic asked.

"Transmogrifier! With it, I will be able to rearrange the genetic structure of any Mobian or anthropomorphic animal or furry or whatever you're calling yourselves this week and turn them-" Eggman started.

Sonic gasped in horror. "Into completely ordinary animals? Eggman, you fiend! That's too evil, even for you!"

Eggman blinked. "What? No, that's not what it does! Although…that's a good idea too, I should write it down as well…" Sonic sweatdropped as the madman typed it into his console. "Anyway…as I was saying, it turns creatures like you into creatures like me!"

Sonic's face turned green in disgust. "You mean..."

"Yes, that's right!" Eggman cackled.

"Fat?" Sonic cried.

Eggman facepalmed. "No, not fat, you idiot! Although…that's a good idea too, I should write it down as well…" Sonic facepalmed as Eggman typed it in "Anyway, it doesn't make you fat, it makes you…HUMAN!"

Sonic nearly had a heart attack at the unimaginable horror that announcement sent down his spine. "…Okay, that…that's actually pretty darn evil. I think I'm impressed. I didn't think you had something like that in you."

"As you should be, Sonic…because YOU will be the first to taste its power!" Eggman said as the ray gun pointed in Sonic's direction.

Sonic smirked. "Oh yeah? And what's to stop me from coming up there and smashing it to pieces before it gets off a single shot?"

"Because if you so much as move an inch, they will pay the price!" Eggman said, pushing a button and causing panels of the far wall to slide up, revealing…

Sonic gasped. "No!"

"Yes!" Eggman cackled evilly, his pod swiveling to face the force-field enshrouded cells within which Sonic's human friends were shackled to the wall. "Chris Thorndyke! Helen! Agent Topaz! GUN Commander! Professor Pickle! And of course, the love of your life, Princess Elise of Soleanna!"

"Sonic, help!" Chris cried.

"Get us out of here!" Helen wailed.

"This is so embarrassing…how'd I even wind up here?" Topaz wondered.

"I'm wondering the same thing, I would have thought I was too badass to be captured so easily," GUN Commander agreed.

"Sonic, dear boy, do something!" the Professor shouted.

"Soniiiiiiiiic!" Elise screamed.

"Don't worry, I'll get you guys out of there!...And wait, since when has Elise been the love of my life? I barely even know her," said a confused Sonic.

Eggman frowned. "What are you talking about? You had a disgusting interspecies romance that one time you were in Soleanna. And she brought you back to life with a kiss after you got killed by Shadow's evil(er) twin. And almost all of time and space was devoured by a giant golden eagle. And there was a whiny time-traveling psychic hedgehog trying to kill you for some reason…you don't remember any of that?"

"No," said Sonic.

"Not even the part where I revealed that my left eye is actually a sophisticated high-tech scanner that can pick up Chaos Emeralds, which was probably the only cool and redeeming moment of the whole sordid mess?" Eggman asked.

"Doesn't ring a bell," Sonic said.

Eggman scratched his head. "Huh. Oh well, I guess it doesn't matter. Either way, I'll kill them if you move from that spot!"

Sonic snarled in frustration. "Damn you, Eggman! But why'd you kidnap them instead of my usual friends?"

Eggman hesitated. "Oh, er, because, ah, I knew you had a special bond with these people, and their loss would scar you so deeply you would never-"

"The others beat the crap out of your robots, didn't they?" Sonic asked.

"…Yes," Eggman said reluctantly. "Yes, they did."

"If it's any consolation, I ran over a robot's foot in my wheelchair," Helen said helpfully. "But then it knocked me over…"

"It was a good try, Helen," Chris said consolingly. "You did your best."

"Which wasn't good enough, because after all, you're only human!" Eggman taunted. "Which is what Sonic will be soon enough, followed by all his little friends! And with them stripped of their powers, there will be nobody capable of stopping me from taking over the world! Muwahahahaha!"

"Nobody except for all of GUN and the worlds' armed forces!" the Commander said defiantly.

Eggman clutched his chest and laughed so hard he almost fell out of his chair. "Hahahaha…as I was…haha…saying, there will be nobody capable of stopping me from taking over the world!" GUN Commander's eye twitched.

"Eggman!" Sonic snarled angrily, clenching his fists…and hesitated when he saw Tails on top of the ray gun, fiddling with something. The two-tailed fox winked at him and went back to work. Sonic smiled to himself, realizing there might be a way out of this after all…he just needed to buy his lil' bro some time. "All right, Eggman! I give! I don't think there's any way I can get out of this!"

Eggman blinked in surprise. "There isn't? Er, I mean, of course there isn't! At last, you admit you've met your match! Gyahahaha!"

Sonic's human friends gasped in horror. "Sonic, no!" Chris yelled.

"You can't give up!" Helen shouted.

"You're the world's only hope!" Agent Topaz cried.

"That's kind of stretching it a little, don't you think?" GUN Commander asked. She glared at him. He sighed. "Oh whatever…why couldn't you be Shadow? He can teleport. And shoot people. He'd have blown out Eggman's brains and gotten us out of here by now."

"You can't give up, old boy! Not after everything you've been through!" Pickle protested.

"Sonic, please, no!" Elise begged him.

"No! I have no other choice," Sonic said, striking a dramatic pose. "I can't risk the lives of you, my precious friends…do your worst, Eggman! But before you do, one question."

"Yes, what is it?" Eggman asked in annoyance.

"How do you know I'll be powerless as a human?" Sonic asked.

Eggman blinked. "Huh? What do you mean?"

"Don't you read comic books? People get superpowers from getting hit by ray guns all the time," Sonic pointed out. "How do you know I won't still be the fastest thing alive even after you rearrange my DNA? Will your machine be able to get rid of the part of me that's got super-speed, too? Because if it can't, then that means it won't do much to my friends other than changing their species either, and they'll be really pissed, and take it out on you, which will hurt even more than usual since they'd be bigger on account of being human and all."

Eggman scoffed. "What? Don't be silly! Something like that could never happen!" he said while frantically making several adjustments and recalculations. "Now hedgehog, prepare to become…HUMAN!" he declared, preparing to fire.

"Will I still have my hair?" Sonic asked.

Eggman paused. "What?"

"My hair. Will I still have my rad spikes?" Sonic asked, rubbing a hand over his blue spines. "I won't mind being a human or slow so much so long as I still have these." His eyes widened, a horrifying thought occurring to him. "I'm not…I'm not going to wind up with normal hair, am I? Or worse, become as bald as you? Because…because if I did, I don't think I could go on living anymore."

"Er…" A very evil grin slowly formed on Eggman's face as he pressed a few buttons on his control panel. "Well…we'll just have to see, won't we?" The cannon hummed ominously, the bulbs holding the Chaos Emeralds lighting up and crackling with energy as lines of power started gathering at the tip of the ray gun. "Now…prepare to lose your humanity, Sonic!"

Sonic glanced at the top of the ray gun, where Tails gave him a thumbs-up and flew off of the machine. Sonic puffed his chest out and gave his foe a defiant look. "Do your worst, Eggman!"

"Oh, I will, Sonic, I will!" Eggman said gleefully, raising a finger dramatically.

"Sonic, noooooo!" all the humans cried except for GUN Commander, who was mostly indifferent.

"Say farewell, Sonic!" Eggman shouted, stabbing a button on his console.

There was a loud whir, and abruptly the ray gun exploded, releasing a tremendous wave of multicolored energy that rocked the entire fortress and slammed into Eggman's pod so hard it smashed through the wall and went flying off into the great beyond, the madman screaming in pain and surprise as he vanished into the distance. The blast also flung the Chaos Emeralds out of the room and scattered them across the horizon, causing Sonic to grimace as he realized he'd probably have to go on another global hunt for the precious gemstones in the near future. You might want to tone it down a notch next time, Tails… Sonic thought to himself.

As the building trembled and began collapsing, the wave washed over Sonic (and, to his relief, did nothing but cause a faint tingle), then slammed into the wall where Eggman's prisoners were being held, causing the force field barriers to flicker and short out and the humans to cry in pain as the energy sank into their skin. Sonic frowned in concern. "Whuh-oh," he murmured out loud. "That can't be good!"

Chris gasped in pain as his shackles shorted out and retracted, dropping him to the floor. "Uhhh…S-Sonic…help! My skin…it feels like it's on fire!"

Sonic was at the boy's side in a Sonic second. "Don't worry, Chris, I'll get you to a hospital-"

"Aaaaaahhh!" the others cried, also clearly in pain.

"I'll get you all to a hospital," Sonic corrected quickly, mentally cursing Tails. What had his crazy tinkerer of a sidekick done this time?

He found out soon enough when the changes began. To Sonic's disbelief, Chris began shrinking before his eyes, his limbs becoming much skinnier as his mass shifted and caused his clothes to hang off him like rags. His messy hair rustled and elongated, growing outward and solidifying into dreadlocks. Fur the same color as his hair started sprouting over most of Chris's head and body, oddly leaving his limbs alone. His eyes grew bigger as his ears vanished behind his dreadlocks and his nose shriveled and hardened into a black lump which protruded outwards as his face suddenly extended forwards in a longish snout. His hands grew into comically oversized fists that convulsed rather painfully as a pair of pointed bone spurs tore out of the backs of his knuckles. His shoes burst open as his feet grew to similar proportions, though thankfully without any spikes. Almost as an afterthought, the seat of his pants bulged outwards and split as a small crooked tail the same color as his new fur grew from his rear. "Ohhhh…" Chris moaned. "What…what's happening to me?"

"That's…a very good question," Sonic said slowly, staring at the new echidna in disbelief. How had this happened?

"Amazing!" Tails said as he appeared next to Sonic as if from nowhere, causing the hedgehog to yelp and jump six feet in the air. "When I rerouted the power discombobulator circuit in Eggman's Transmogrifier device so that it would create a feedback loop channeling energy from the Chaos Emeralds from the genodisassembler to the deoxyribonucleic buffer, I must have somehow reversed the polarity of the machine so that it would have the exact opposite intended effect and transform hominids into anthropomorphic animal-like beings like ourselves!"

"….Huh?" asked a completely dumbfounded Sonic.

"He accidentally set the machine to make humans into things like you instead of the other way around," Chris translated.

"Oh," Sonic said.

Chris looked down at his meaty hands and sighed. "Oh boy…well, I guess this is better than me being de-aged back into a kid again for some reason that seemed rather contrived at the time…" His eyes widened in alarm. "Wait…but that means…Helen!" He staggered to his feet, shoved his way past the startled Sonic, and lurched into the next cell, where the love of his life was already in the midst of a transformation. He fell to his knees and grabbed hold of her arms as she thrashed and gasped in pain, blond fur starting to sprout all over her body except for her limbs and face. "Helen…Helen! I'm here!"

"Ahhh…Ch-Chris…help!" she cried as her hair hardened into spines hanging down to her shoulders and her eyes grew so big they took up at least half her face and merged into one.

"Helen!" Chris whirled to look at Sonic and Tails, who were at the entrance to the cell. "Guys, do something!"

"Uh…" Sonic glanced at Tails. "Tails, do something!"

Tails stared at him incredulously. "Like what?"

"Reverse it!" Sonic said.

"…How?" Tails demanded.

"I dunno, you're the smart guy, you figure it out!" Sonic said.

Tails shrugged weakly. "I…I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do."

As he said this, Helen's transformation continued. Much like Chris, she grew smaller, her body changing shape. Her hands grew to somewhat freakish proportions, though not to the same extent as Chris's, and her shoes popped as her feet became too big to fit in them. Finally, her nose became a black speck and her face protruded outward in a small muzzle, one shorter than Chris's. "Uhhh…" she moaned as she leaned against Chris, the pain diminishing as the transformation ended, her now-oversized clothes covering most of her.

"Helen, you're…you're a hedgehog!" said an amazed Chris.

"And one who's a more sensible color than Amy, at that," Sonic said. They stared at him. "What? She is!"

"You're one to talk," Tails muttered.

Sonic frowned. "Hey, blue is way cool!"

"Sonic," Chris said. "If Helen's a hedgehog and I'm an echidna, what are the others?"

"That is a very good question," Sonic said, rushing out of the cell to see what was happening to the other humans. Or rather, former humans.

Topaz gasped in pain, sweat rolling down her face as her body started shrinking, clothes drooping from her now much lighter and thinner form. Yellow fur the color of her hair began sprouting all over her body. Her shoes swelled up but, surprisingly, didn't burst. Her nails became somewhat elongated and formed dainty claws. Her ears shrunk into the sides of her head and a pair of much larger bat ears grew from the top of her head. Her eyes grew larger to the point that they took up the upper half of her face, while the lower was occupied by a small muzzle with a petite, almost cute black dot of a nose and a mouth from which a pair of fangs rather painfully sprouted. That wasn't the only thing to sprout, though, as the back of her uniform bulged out and burst as a pair of blond-furred bat wings grew from between her shoulderblades, the special agent crying in agony followed by relief as her transformation came to a halt. "I'm…I'm a bat?"

"Whoa," said an astounded Tails. "She's beautiful!"

"Yeah, but Rouge is hotter," Sonic said.

"Oh yeah, definitely. And she has bigger-" Tails started.

"Hey! I can hear you!" Topaz shouted, face turning red as she tried to keep what was left of her suit from falling off and exposing her.

"With those ears, that's not really surprising," Sonic said.

"I think those are about the only part of her that's bigger than Rouge," Tails said.

Topaz turned redder from anger. "Commander, help!"

"I'm…a little…busy right now!" GUN Commander ground his teeth in pain, digging his fingers into the metal ground so hard he was actually denting it. His gray hair rustled and exploded outwards, ripping the back of his dress uniform open as fused quills of hardened silvery fur grew from his spine and the top of his head, curving out and back on themselves in a rather familiar formation to anyone familiar with Sonic's Super form or the appearance of his darker 'twin,' Shadow. The silver fur grew on the Commander's limbs, unlike Helen or Chris, covering all of his visible body except for the lower half of his face, which was turning into a short muzzle with a long black nose while his eyes swelled up to occupy the top half and merged together to form a single eyeball of a sort. His boots split open due to his increased feet size, but his gloves managed to remain intact, though they were rather tight against his engorged hands. They were the only piece of clothing he had that was still in one piece, as the rest had been shredded by the growth of his quills or the small tail on his rear. He looked down on himself in horror as the rest of his uniform fell apart. "What…what's happened to me? What have you done?"

"Tails's fault," Sonic said quickly.

"Hey!" Tails said.

"What? It is!" Sonic said.

"I'll court-martial both of you for this!" the Commander shouted.

"You can't, we're not part of your army," Sonic said.

"I'm afraid he's right, Commander," Topaz said reluctantly.

"…Oh. Darn," the Commander grumbled. He looked down at himself in dismay. "Well, at least I don't have to worry about balding anymore…" Sonic decided not to mention there was a rather glaring blank spot on the back of the new hedgehog's head.

"Sonic, look what's happening to Professor Pickle!" Tails shouted.

"Is he turning into a pickle?" Sonic asked. Tails glared at him. "What? It was a reasonable question to ask, given the circumstances."

Professor Pickle was not turning into a pickle, or any other vegetable for that matter. He was, in fact, becoming a fox. As he moaned in pain, gray fur the color of his hair sprouted all over his body, except for the lower half of his face, which was covered in white fur and grew forwards into a muzzle about midway in length between a hedgehog's and an echidna's. Like the others, his shoes split due to the increase in the size of his feet, but they weren't quite as extreme in size as the others. In fact, most of his clothing was relatively undamaged…except for the rear of his pants, which exploded as a long, thick, furry tail ending in a white tip sprouted from it. "Oh…oh my," the researcher moaned as he examined himself, somehow seeing clearly despite his eyes being closed as always. "I seem to be in quite the pickle, aren't I?"

"Well, at least his sense of humor's the same," Tails said.

"Only one tail…guess you're still the only one of your kind, little buddy," Sonic apologized.

Tails sighed in frustration. "This is ridiculous…it's like you can't walk a few feet without bumping into a new echidna from some other dimension or another time these days, but I'm still the only fox with more than one tail! What gives?"

"Maybe they were all sealed inside orange-suited ninjas?" Sonic joked.

Tails gave him a withering look. "Don't even joke about something like that."

They heard a moan from the last cell, reminding them there was still one last transformation going on. "Oh no, Eliza!" Sonic gasped.

"Elise," Tails said.

"Right, her. Eggman thought I was in love with her or something. What's up with that?" Sonic wondered.

Tails shrugged. "Who can tell with that cracked egghead?"

Knowing that was a rhetorical question with no answer, they went to see Elise. Her transformation was visibly different from the others. While fur had sprouted from the skin of the rest of the humans, for Elise feathery patterns appeared instead then peeled off and fleshed out to become actual reddish-brown feathers the color of her hair, which fused together and turned into feathers, with several tufts poking out all over the place and making her tiara go askew. Two especially long tufts spread out from the back of her head and took the form of wings. As her body shrank, her dress became far too large for her, her form becoming lost in its white folds. Her shoes fell off as her feet and lower legs were covered in hard scales rather than feathers, and talons formed on them. Similar talons formed on her hands, tearing apart her gloves and rings, which were now too small for her digits. Her eyes grew larger, and her nose grew out and melded with her mouth as her teeth fell out, curving and hardening into a hooked yellow beak. "Oh…oh my…what in Solaris's name?" she whispered in wonder and fear.

"Tails, what is she?" Sonic asked, amazed.

"An eagle, I think," Tails said.

"Ah," Sonic said. "Can she fly with those wing-things?"

"Well, if I can fly with my tails, and Cream can fly with her ears, I see no reason why not," Tails said reasonably.

"Can I fly?" Topaz asked.

"With those ears? No, they're big but not big enough," Tails said.

Topaz sweatdropped. "That's…I wasn't talking about my ears…"

"Cool," Sonic said. He rubbed his quills self-consciously. "I wish I could fly."

"You can, in Super form," Tails said. "Or Darkspine form. Or Excalibur form. Or Hyper form. Or…whatever new form you have this week."

"I mean without Chaos Emeralds," Sonic said wistfully. "Or World Rings. Or Excalibur. Or Super Emeralds. Or whatever mystical plot trinket I have this week."

"Yeah, me too," Tails admitted. "Then I wouldn't have to carry you so much. You really need to lay off the chili dogs."

"Hey!" Sonic said.

"What? You do!" Tails said.

"Sonic…why has this happened to us?" Elise whispered as she staggered to her feet and stumbled out of her cell, nearly tripping on the overlong hem of her dress.

"It's-" Sonic started.

"Eggman's fault," Tails said quickly, which was true…from a certain point of view.

"Figures," GUN Commander growled as he emerged from his cell. "Just about everything that goes wrong is that madman's doing…Sonic, why haven't you just killed him already? It would have made everyone's lives a lot easier."

Sonic narrowed his eyes and clenched his fists. "I don't kill people."

"You have no problem killing robots," GUN Commander said.

"They aren't people," Sonic said.

"What about the ones that can think and talk?" Topaz said. "You destroy them. Do they not count as people?"

"That's…" Sonic hesitated, looking uncertain. "Look, I really don't want to go into this right now…we sort of need to get out of here…"

"Quite right, my boy," Pickle said as he cautiously emerged from his cell. "Considering that the whole place is collapsing…why hasn't it done that completely yet? It's been several minutes now."

Tails shook his head mockingly. "Leave it up to Eggman to not even be able to make his base fall apart properly…"

"Sonic!" Chris shouted. "Come quick!"

"Chris?" Sonic cried. He rushed over to Helen's cell, where he had left the hedgehog and echidna. "What's…whoa!"

"I…I don't believe it…" Tails whispered. "Helen's…"

"Walking!" the new hedgehog said as she slowly moved out of the cell a step at a time, Chris supporting her in case she lost her balance and fell. Her legs quivered a lot and her movements were jerky since she was unused to using her lower appendages, but she was indeed walking. It was a miracle.

"It's a miracle!" Chris said in wonder. "Tails, when the genetic recombination wave emitted by the machine transformed Helen, it must have repaired Helen's legs!"

"I don't think that DNA works that way…" GUN Commander said doubtfully as he and the other transformees came over.

"Do you have a PhD in genetics?" Chris asked.

"No, but neither do you," Topaz said.

"…Well, I took a correspondence course…" Chris admitted.

Abruptly, the whole fortress trembled, and huge chunks of the ceiling fell. "Um, perhaps we can finish this discussion outside?" Elise asked anxiously.

"Yes, since this place has finally decided to stop messing around and properly destroy itself?" Pickle said.

"That would probably be a good idea," Sonic said. "Everyone, let's juice it!"

"Helen, can you…" Chris asked.

"I–I think I can manage," Helen said, gently shaking him off and taking a few steps forward, her motions growing smoother by the second. "I think I'm getting the hang of it. In fact, I almost feel like I can…run…"

Sonic smirked. "Well of course you can, that's the hedgehog in you!"

"I don't particularly feel like running," GUN Commander said.

"That's the tightwad in you," Sonic said. The Commander growled.

"Uh, guys? The collapsing base?" Topaz prompted.

"Right, that. Let's go!" Sonic said again.

They quickly fled the room, though they didn't get very far or fast before the ex-humans started complaining about how much their feet hurt from running at such high speeds without shoes on. Sonic yelled at them to quit whining, but when they didn't, Tails was forced to carry them. Yes, all of them. He hadn't been so sore since the time Metal Sonic had pretended to be Eggman and they'd run around in teams trying to stop him. That had certainly been an…interesting adventure…

Anyway, they all got out safely, and that's all that's important in the end.

A little later, the eight of them watched from a nearby hilltop as Eggman's base impressively crumbled into nothingness. "Well, that takes care of that evil hideout," Sonic said, wiping the dust off his hands. "Now we have nothing to worry about until next week."

"Sonic, do you suppose Eggman got transformed like the others?" Tails asked as the former humans continued to try to adjust to their new forms.

Sonic shrugged. "Could be. He got hit by the wave first. I guess we'll find out for ourselves sooner or later. Emphasis on later."

"…We could go looking for him," Tails suggested.

"Yeah, but I'm not in the mood right now," Sonic said. Tails rolled his eyes.

"Helen, how do your legs feel?" Chris asked, examining her lower limbs.

"Wonderful," Helen said as she flexed them in awe. "Well, my feet still hurt, but I imagine once we get some footwear that'll change, right?"

"Right," Chris agreed. "Hmm…I wonder if I should invest in some gloves…and other clothes…I seem to be kind of naked at the moment."

"That doesn't seem to bother Sonic or Tails or the other male…whatever-they-ares we know," Helen pointed out.

"Yes, but I'm not Sonic or Tails or the other male whatever-they-ares, I'm me, and I feel rather uncomfortable," Chris confessed.

"Considering we've been radically changed into another species, 'uncomfortable' is a bit of an understatement," GUN Commander grumbled. "And I even look like Shadow, too…how're the rest of the men going to react when they see me?"

"By opening fire?" Topaz suggested. When he glared at her, she said, "Well, they do have a bit of a trigger finger where hedgehogs are concerned…" She grimaced and looked down at herself, and how she had to hug her torn shirt tightly to her chest to keep it from falling off. "And I already know how they're going to react to me…"

The Commander made a face. "That's disgusting!"

"Yes, well, I have breasts, and most of them are men," she said tiredly. "It doesn't matter what species I am…"

"Well, at least they're smaller than Rouge's," the Commander said. She glared at him. "What? They are!"

"Professor, you seem to be taking this rather well," Elise commented.

"I feel younger and stronger than I have in ages, Your Majesty!" Professor Pickle said happily. "I can smell, taste, hear, and see again!" Elise wondered how he could do the latter, but decided not to ask. "And you, Miss Elise? You seem at ease as well."

She shrugged. "Well, my family is supposed to be descended from Solaris, so something about this feels…natural, somehow."

"…You're descended from a giant reality-devouring monster?" asked a disturbed Pickle.

"No, I'm descended from an eagle sun god! Solaris, why do people keep saying that!" Elise said in exasperation.

"SONIC!" someone shouted before Pickle could reply.

"Oh good, here come the others," Tails said as Knuckles, Amy, Shadow, and Rouge approached them.

"What took them so long?" Sonic asked.

"Not everyone's as fast as you are," Tails said.

"Shadow is. Almost. So why'd he take so long?" Sonic wondered.

"To wait for the others?" Tails suggested.

"Shadow?" Sonic asked skeptically.

"Hmm. Point," Tails said.

"SONIKKUUUUU!" Amy shrieked, lunging at Sonic. He sidestepped and she hit the ground face-first.

"You'd think she'd be smart enough not to do that by now," Tails commented.

"Amy? Please," Shadow snorted. "She hasn't got enough brain cells for that."

"I should probably defend her, but you're pretty much right," Sonic said.

"Sonic? Where are you?" Amy asked, raising her head from the ground and spitting out grass. Sonic quickly stepped behind Shadow before she could see him. The dark hedgehog rolled his eyes.

"Sorry we're late, but there was this random giant monster on the loose and-" Knuckles gasped when he saw Chris. "Oh no, not this time! DIIIIIIEEE!" Yelling at the top of his lungs, he charged towards the other echidna.

"Aaaahh! Knuckles, stop! It's me, Chris!" Chris cried in alarm, throwing up his spiked hands to defend himself.

"Nice try, I'm not falling for that one! Chris is a human, not an echidna! Just how gullible do you think I am?" Knuckles demanded.

"…Do you really want me to answer that?" Chris asked. Knuckles snarled and drew back his fist…

Only for Sonic to grab it. "Hold it, Knux! He's telling the truth, it's Chris!"

Knuckles paused. "So…it's not a new Robo Knuckles?"

"No," Sonic said.

"Or a member of the Dark Legion?" Knuckles asked.

"No," Sonic said.

"Or one of the Nocturnus?" Knuckles asked.

"For the last time, no!" Sonic shouted.

"Okay, okay, just checking…" Knuckles said. He frowned. "But wait…how did he become an echidna?"

"Eggman's fault," Tails said quickly.

"Oh, okay," Knuckles said.

"Eggman, huh?" Rouge muttered. "Then does that mean…the rest of your new friends are also former humans?"

"I'm afraid so, Agent Rouge," GUN Commander said unhappily.

Shadow's eyes widened. "Wait a minute. Is that…aren't you…?" He started laughing uncontrollably, pointing at the Commander. "Ahahahaha! Oh, oh, this is great! This is just too great! Oh man, Omega's gonna love this! Ahahahaha! Just look at you!"

"Yes, he looks exactly like you," Rouge said.

Shadow immediately turned serious. "He does not! I look nothing like him!"

"Yeah, your eyes actually match," Sonic snarked.

"And my hair is much better!" Shadow said firmly. When most of the others started snickering, he shot them a death glare.

"If that's the Commander, then you must be…" Rouge frowned and looked at Topaz in alarm. "Topaz?"

"Um. Hi, Rouge," Topaz said.

"Whoa, she looks just like you! Only less hot," Knuckles said.

"Yes, and her-" Shadow started.

"Okay, I get it already!" Topaz snapped.

"Why, this is wonderful! Now you aren't so ugly!" Rouge said, delighted. "And maybe we can finally be partners in crime, just like I've always dreamed!"

"Uh, no," Topaz said.

"Yeah, that isn't happening," GUN Commander said.

Rouge scowled. "Oh, poo."

"Then this hussy isn't some evil skank trying to steal my Sonnikku?" Amy asked, giving Helen the stink-eye.

"Amy, it's me, Helen!" Helen said.

"You are? Oh, okay then," Amy said, immediately cooling down. "Wait…but then why aren't you in a wheelchair?"

"She got better," Chris said.

"Ah," said Amy.

"And you two would be…?" Shadow asked, looking at the Professor and Elise.

"Professor Pickle, at your service!" Pickle said with a bow.

"And Princess Elise of Soleanna," Elise said with a curtsy.

Amy gasped and bowed, although she wondered why a part of her felt like ripping out the eagle's heart. "Your Majesty!"

"Hi," Knuckles said, never one to stand on ceremony. Shadow, even less of a person to stand on ceremony, grunted. Rouge was too busy eyeing the princess's jewelry to remember to be polite.

"It's nice to see you too, Miss Rose," Pickle said, a little hurt Amy hadn't acknowledged him.

She stared at him blankly. "Who are you again?" He sagged in disappointment.

"How exactly did this happen?" Shadow asked Sonic.

"Oh, some crazy machine of Eggman's blew up," Sonic said. "It was supposed to change me into a human, but you can see how that turned out."

Rouge, Amy, and Knuckles gasped in horror. "A human? How awful!" Rouge said.

"Wow, you really dodged a bullet there, Sonic," Knuckles said.

"Ew, yuck! But…don't worry, Sonic, I'd still love you even if you were a human! I'd…just want you to wear a mask of your old face…" Amy said. Sonic sweatdropped.

"…What's so bad about being human?" Chris asked, looking annoyed.

"Oh, uh, nothing," Sonic said quickly.

"Yeah, it's perfectly fine," Tails added.

"If you're happy living as ugly, furless, weak, poor-sighted and poor-hearing apes, that is," Rouge added.

"Yes, other than that," Shadow agreed. Everyone else except Amy, who agreed with that assessment, sweatdropped.

"Anyway," Knuckles said. "Did Eggman's machine happen to be using Chaos Emeralds?"

Shadow nodded. "Yes, I thought I sensed some flying away just now."

Sonic nodded. "Yeah, he was using the Emeralds. As usual."

"And when the machine blew up, they got scattered across the world. As usual," Tails lamented.

Rouge sighed. "Guess we'd better get started finding them, then."

"Yeah, so we can change everyone back to normal," Knuckles said.

Chris blinked. "Wait, normal?"

Pickle frowned. "As in, human?"

"Why would we want to do that?" asked the confused Elise.

"…Uh, because that's how you're supposed to be?" Sonic said, equally confused.

"Yeah, you guys can't stay like that. What would your friends and family think?" Tails asked.

"Or your subjects, Elise," Rouge said.

"Or my subordinates!" GUN Commander agreed. "Yes, we have to change back!"

Chris bit his lips. "But…I like being like this."

Elise nodded. "I have become the avatar of Solaris. This is my fate."

"And I feel better than I have in years! I don't want to give it all up!" Pickle protested.

"And if I become human again…how will we know if my legs still work?" Helen asked, looking down at her fully functioning legs.

There was an awkward pause. "Oh…well…" Sonic scratched the back of his head uncertainly. "That's…a good point…"

"But…but you can't stay like this!" Tails insisted.

"Yeah, your parents would flip, Chris!" Knuckles agreed. "Helen's, too!"

Chris and Helen both looked uncertain. "Well…"

"Their families might find it odd, but not mine," Pickle said. "Since I don't have any family. Or…anyone who really cares about my well-being, other than you, Tails. And I'm healthier now than I have been in ages. Wouldn't it be better if I stayed like this?"

Tails frowned uneasily. "I…dunno…"

"My subjects will be fine with it," Elise said. "They will see it as a blessing from Solaris."

"What, the reality-devouring monster?" Knuckles asked.

"No, the sun god! Why do people keep saying that?" Elise snapped. "Hmm…and maybe I can restore the monarchy so it's no longer constitutional…"

"Oh yes, that will surely end well," Shadow said deadpan.

"Look, I don't know what's wrong with the rest of you, but I for one refuse to stay like this," GUN Commander insisted.

Topaz nodded. "Yeah, I'd rather be human again too."

Rouge scowled. "Ugh, and be so ugly again? You're never any fun…"

Topaz glared at her. "I don't care how you feel about this, it's my body and I'm the only person with the right to decide what should be done to it. I didn't ask for this change, and I don't want to keep it. I want to be human again. And the Chaos Emeralds can make that happen, right?"

"Well…probably," Tails said uncertainly.

"I see no reason why not, they seem to be able to do just about anything else convenient to whatever disaster is going on at the present," Shadow said with a shrug.

"Looks like we're on another globe-trotting Emerald hunt, then," Sonic said.

"Yay," everyone else said, not looking very excited.

"Ooh, can I come, Sonikku?" Amy asked hopefully.

"No," Sonic said.

"But-" Amy started.

"No. Just no," Sonic repeated. "I'm married, Amy. To Princess Sally. And no matter how much you might want me to, I'm never going to leave her for you."

She scowled. "We could have an affair…"

"NO, Amy!" Sonic shouted. She sagged in despair.

"I don't suppose we could just use the Master Emerald, Knux?" Tails asked hopefully.

"No," Knuckles said firmly, crossing his arms.

"But it could make things a lot easier for us!" Topaz begged him.

"I said no!" Knuckles snapped. "The Master Emerald is not a toy. You can't just use it however you please!"

"In other words, he has no idea how to use it to change anyone back," Rouge said.

Knuckles flushed. "Hey! That's…completely not true!" Absolutely nobody believed him.

"Do we have to find the Emeralds?" Chris asked. "I'm sure my parents won't mind my species change that much…"

"And mine would love for me to at least be able to walk, no matter what I am!" Helen said desperately.

Sonic winced as they gave him pleading looks. "We'll…talk about it later, okay? Regardless of whether some of you want or don't want to change back-"

"I very much want to change back, no ambiguity about it," GUN Commander said.

Sonic ignored him. "We still need to find the Emeralds before something else happens, which it inevitably does, sooner or later."

"Or before Eggman recovers and tries to get them back," Tails said.

"Yeah," Sonic agreed.

Rouge frowned. "Say…you don't suppose he got changed, do you?"

"He was the first to get hit by the energy wave that changed all of us, so I see no reason he couldn't have," the Professor said.

Shadow grimaced. "If so…I can only imagine what sort of horrible thing he might have become…"

Somewhere in the Mystic Ruins…

Eggman groaned as he came to, wincing as the bright sunlight and loud cries of the jungle denizens made his already aching head throb even worse. "Oh…what happened…" he moaned as he climbed out of the ruins of his hovercraft, wincing and flinching as he stretched his sore arms and legs. "Owowowow…why do I never remember to install airbags…you'd think after all these times of getting blown up, I'd have learned my lesson by now…" He panted, wondering why he felt so hot and his clothes felt so tight.

"Oh boy! A new friend!" an irritatingly stupid-sounding voice shouted, and before Eggman knew it, he found himself caught in a crushing bear hug from a morbidly obese purple cat. (Would that make it a cat hug?) "Huuuuuug!"

"Gah! Let go of me, you furry cretin! I'm no friend of yours!" Eggman shouted as he desperately tried to break free from Big's grip. Much to his surprise, he succeeded. Strange, he hadn't thought it would be so easy to escape the hold of that bloated behemoth…

"But you look just like me! That means you're my friend!" Big said stupidly.

Eggman blinked. "I look just like you? What…" He froze, a horrible thought occurring to him. He looked down at himself in horror and morbid fascination, at his rolling folds of fat covered in orange-brown fur, at his thick limbs that had split his pants and were stretching his jacket to the breaking point, at the fat paws that had ruptured his gloves and boots, at the long fuzzy tail growing from his rear. Reaching up slowly, he felt his ears, which had now become elongated and stretched out to either side of his head, most of which was now covered in fur the same color of his moustache, except for the very top, which was still bald for some reason. He rushed over to a nearby stream and stared incredulously at his reflection, at the black and white muzzle that had replaced his face, at the small beady eyes beneath his dark glasses. "No," he breathed as he screamed endlessly inside his head. "No. NO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

"Wanna go fishing, new friend?" Big asked, completely oblivious to Eggman's complete mental breakdown.

They did go fishing. It was very nice.

THE END