Hey, miss me?

Yup, the mystery franchise that I was teasing these past couple of months is in fact the Sonic the Hedgehog series!… however… this isn't that story.

Yeah, I started having a bit (ok a lot) of trouble with writing that story, so I kinda just put it off for a while. I am kinda just writing this one to try and get back into writing, especially with these characters, also to hold you guys over a bit until that story is done.

I guess I can also mention that, seeing as there are many universes with this franchise, this series will take place in the IDW comic universe… which may be the game universe as well, not entirely sure about that quite yet. The other series I am working on takes place in the Archie universe, in particular, it will be focusing on the timeline that the 25 years later arcs take place in. It is just gonna be me trying to theorize how a couple of things that happened in that timeline that never really got explained… It's going to be a long story btw, which is part of why it is taking so long. Legit, some chapters are longer than most of my stories I have written so far. That thing is a MONSTER! So look forward to it!

Any-who, this story is honestly something I came up with in the car the other day, there have been multiple stories where this kind of thing happens, and everything just goes wrong because of it, so I thought I would mix it up a bit. In case it isn't obvious however, this story is not done yet, so updates won't be consistent, especially since I have an actual job now. That being said, I will try to update it as often as possible.

All right, now that that is all done, please enjoy this short prologue, with chapter 1 releasing tomorrow afternoon!

Prologue

Angel Island, present day

Not too long after what had been dubbed the "Metal Virus incident", Sonic and friends were currently engaged in a heated battle with the evil Dr. Eggman, who was currently attempting to steal the Master Emerald. Things were going well for the heroes, while Eggman did power up his machine with the power of all the Chaos Emeralds, which he received from his associate, the currently missing Dr. Starline, Knuckles was able to nullify their power with the Master Emerald, though only for a short time.

That short time proved to be all that was needed, as Sonic and Tails was then able to make short work of the machine using a rolling combo attack. The machine collapsed, and Eggman was defeated.

At least, that is what they thought.

When the heroes let their guard down, the Chaos Emeralds regained their power, and Eggman was able to quickly swat Tails away, as he was attempting to retrieve the Chaos Emeralds from the destroyed machine.

"TAILS!" Sonic yelled out as he sped over and caught his best friend. When Sonic got a good look at him, he was relieved to see that he was still conscious, but his injuries meant that he was most certainly out of the rest of the fight. And that, made him angry.

Without warning, Sonic placed Tails on the ground against a tree, and sped towards Eggman at top speed, tackling the machine with all of his might.

Then the machine began to glow.

Turns out, all of the damage that the machine took thus far had completely messed up the power regulators that Eggman put into place to handle the power of the Emeralds, and Sonic's tackle was the final straw, as the energy of the Emeralds began leaking out, causing both the machine, as well as Sonic, to be engulfed in a blinding light.

When the light faded, they were both gone.

"…Sonic?!"

?

Knuckles was currently gliding away from Angel Island. He has promised an associate of his that they would go on a treasure hunt that day, and he had been looking forward to it. That is, until the Master Emerald called for him.

"Huh?" Knuckles said. "That's strange, it's been so long since the Master Emerald called for me… this can't be good."

Deciding that his friend would probably understand the situation, he quickly turned around and returned to the island. When he approached the island, he noticed that a blinding light was shining on the northern end of the island.

"Isn't that the same spot where…" Knuckles then sped up, hoping to find the source of this light. When he got there, he couldn't believe what he was seeing. "Sonic?!"

Indeed, Sonic was laying in the center of a newly created crater, completely unconscious.

After approaching the blue hedgehog, and shaking him for a bit, Sonic finally woke up.

"Knuckles? That you?" Sonic said.

"Yeah it's me, what happened to you?" Knuckles asked.

"What do you mean what happened to me? You were there weren't you?" Sonic asked. He then finally got a good look at his friend, and he immediately knew that something was wrong.

Knuckles looked… well, different. While he was mostly the same as he remembered, the Echidna was now noticeably taller, and had several scars littered across his body.

"Wait… are you really Knuckles?" Sonic asked.

"I did say yes to that already, didn't I?" Knuckles replied snarkly.

"What happened to you?!" Sonic asked. "You look different from a couple of minutes ago!"

"… A couple of minutes ago?" Knuckles asked.

"Uh, yeah! You hit your head during the fight or something?"

"Sonic, I don't know how to tell you this but uh… you went missing for a while after that fight." Knuckles explained.

"Oh, really?" Sonic asked. "That's weird, last thing I remember is charging into Eggman after Tails…"

Then he remembered what happened to Tails.

"IS TAILS ALRIGHT?!" Sonic suddenly yelled.

Normally, Knuckles would be quite angered by being yelled at in the face, but he was starting to understand what exactly was going on.

"He's fine, more than fine really." Knuckles explained. "He recovered from that fight a while ago."

"Ok… ok that's good." Sonic said. "So… you said I went missing for a while, right?"

"Uh, yeah? Why do you ask?" Knuckles responded

"Well... I was wondering how long exactly." Sonic asked.

"Oh not too long, just about say... fifteen years..." Knuckles answered.

…

…

…

"WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!"

End of Prologue

Sorry for the shorty, but hey, this is only the prologue.

Welp, Sonic is stuck in a weird situation isn't he, being sent fifteen years into the future. A lot can change in that amount of time, let's just hope he is ready to find out exactly what did change for him.

I am going to be doing things a bit differently with this story. Each chapter will be centered around a specific character. That is to say that they aren't going to be the ONLY character (aside from Sonic) that will appear in each chapter.

That being said, in case this isn't obvious, Knuckles will be the first character on the list!

So, I will see you tomorrow, for Knuckles.

… Oh, there is one little thing about this story that is kinda important, but that won't come into play for a couple of chapters ;)