Flipside Chapter 1: New Reality, a sonic the hedgehog fanfic

Flipside

Chapter 1: New Reality

"No way..." Sonic muttered, shaking his head vigorously, trying to get those images out of his mind. What kind of fresh hell had he waken up to? This wasn't his life, this wasn't him. Eggman was playing a trick on him. Or someone was. This couldn't be real. He'd been knocked out and was dreaming. Something. No way was this reality right now.

"I've got you this time, Sonic!"

There was no tone of voice in the universe that could make Sonic run faster than hearing Amy Rose call after him. It didn't matter what he was doing, who he was fighting, or who he was talking to. He'd left perfectly good chili dogs behind just to get away from this crazy girl. Maybe Eggman kept him on his toes, but he never scared Sonic. Amy, on the other hand?

She was terrifying.

But where was she? He swiveled his head around, looking for anything pink and red. There. Only a few yards from him – how had she snuck up so close, and so quickly? He'd only been sitting here for a few moments after enjoying his lunch... had Amy stalked him to the chili dog stand and followed him out here? Undoubtedly…

"Amy..." He sighed in greeting, ready to run after just a short conversation. Most of the time, he was too nice to not at least give her that much. If he gave her a few sentences, she'd be less likely to pull her hammer on him next time.

She ran up to him and came to a halt a mere foot from his spot, smiling from ear to ear."Well, aren't you going to tell me how pretty I look?" Amy asked, doing a twirl and batting her eyes at him.

Sonic blinked and had to sigh again, his foot already tapping from impatience.

She giggled. "I know, you're too shy to share your feelings. It's okay, I know you're too stunned for words."

Exactly Amy, you know me so well, he thought wryly.

"So, how about a date today?" Amy asked, her eyes wide with excitement.

He shook his head. "No, not today. I got stuff to do." Sonic stood up and stretched his arms.

"Aww, why not? You always say that..." Amy pouted.

"Catch ya later, Ames," Sonic said and ran off, leaving Amy and her annoying persistence far behind. She'd follow him, surely, but would eventually give up. Part of him felt bad for leaving her, but he also didn't really care. He'd given her enough to leave him alone until tomorrow, and the hammer wasn't likely for at least another week.

No need to be terrified today. He smiled a little, calming down his rapid heartbeat that Amy always gave him.

But enough about her, right? What did he feel like doing today? It'd been a while since Eggman had done anything threatening and things were slow. In fact, he was bored, he realized. He didn't feel like hanging out with his friends, he wanted some action, something new, something exciting, some adventure... not running around the same world he did everyday. The only thing that consistently gave him those thrills was being challenged in some way, usually by Eggman himself. But hell, he'd take anything different right now…

On a whim, Sonic changed direction and headed toward's Eggman's latest base of operations. He seemed to move them all the time, but his latest one was far to the west, surrounded by flatland. Sonic sometimes took pre-emptive strikes on Eggman's operations, but usually with his team around him. Now that he didn't have much to do, why not just go and say hi to the fat doctor? He didn't have to engage him in an all-out assault, but just busting a few bots might help him get his fix for now.

"Should I call in Tails for backup... nah, I'll be fine," he thought and continued running.

Before he could get close to the ominous factories belching out black smoke in promise of creating horrific robots, Sonic actually spotted Eggman himself in the fields nearby. He was floating in his Egg Mobile, eight large bots made of dark silver metal circling him. They were squarish in form, and held up by four cylindrical legs. Their feet were tripods, similar to birds. Weird-looking things.

"Eggman!" Sonic shouted as he drew near, trying to draw attention to himself. He pulled up in his signature pose, arms crossed, wearing his cocky smile. "What are you doing out here? Shouldn't you be taking over a city or something? Is this field your new Eggman Empire?'

"Ah, Sonic" Eggman grinned down at him, his dark blue glasses shimmering. He steered his Egg Mobile so it hovered several feet above his opponent, and his grouping of bots surrounded both of them. "How nice of you to find me, when I've been seeking you out this whole time."

"You need to test your latest weapons?" the hedgehog asked, stretching his legs as he surveyed Eggman's entourage. The bots had just circled around him, moving in unison, but painfully slow. He wasn't concerned in the least, as he couldn't make out any guns, missiles, or lasers attached to the bots. "Your army is looking pretty lame."

"Oh, ho ho! You're awful confident for a blue rodent that's completely surrounded," Eggman sneered.

Sonic shrugged, and even closed his eyes. "I'm just giving you a headstart. Let's just say that you've done nothing but bore me lately. How about a challenge, Egghead?" He was ready at a moment's notice to smash each one to bits, but wanted to hear Eggman's threats first.

"A challenge? Why don't you go ahead and attack? Put your money where your mouth is, hedgehog."

Sonic crossed his arms across his chest and smirked, matching Eggman's look. "I could destroy all your toys now, but that'd be no fun." He opened an eye. "Is this all you brought today, 8 bots? No grand schemes, you just want a fight?"

"Why don't you find out!"

Outwardly he was cocky, but part of Sonic was suspicious. Eggman was practically begging him to attack, why? Then again, it was Eggman. An IQ of 300 and still couldn't outsmart him, hadn't won yet. Oh well, he'd win anyway.

In a quick gust of wind, Sonic launched himself off the ground, creating a tightly packed spindash and hurling his body towards the closest bot. Within an instant, he would be cutting through metal with impossible speed, his quills and body rotating to slice the bots into a million pieces -

But the impact never came.

Instead, a blinding light pierced his eyes, and a booming sound deafened him. Suddenly dizzy and nauseous, Sonic pulled himself out of the spindash, trying to gain his bearings again. He blinked as the tears ejected out of his eyes, trying to figure out what had happened. He couldn't hear anything other than a loud buzzing, and objects were slowly becoming less blurry.

As he descended and his sneakers hit the ground, Sonic only got more confused. Where were the robots? And Eggman? Stretching around him for miles and miles stood nothing but the empty field he had been running through, no metal or evil doctor in sight.

Had he overshot the target? Not a chance.

Feeling okay enough to run, as always, Sonic took off again, looking everywhere for the fight, or even the factories he'd seen earlier. But they weren't in a 10 mile, 15 mile, 25 mile radius... how? There was no way Eggman had invented robots that could have outrun him in those few second he'd been disoriented. What had that been about, anyway?

Nothing looked different, or felt different. He came to a stop in the exact spot he'd been fighting Eggman. Literally the exact same field as it'd looked a few seconds before the doctor had shown up. What was the deal?

When Sonic didn't understand something, there was one place he could always turn to. Without another moment to waste, Sonic took off towards Tails' place, hoping his little brother would have answers. He sped across the open fields, up and down hills, and eventually through the City near Tails' home. On the way through the streets, he managed to hear someone call his name.

"Sonic!"

He was about to stop when he recognized the same tone he'd heard earlier in the day. The tone of a persistent pink hedgehog. Nope! Now running even faster, Sonic had to make it to his little brother. If things were weird, Tails would make sense of them. He just knew it.

...XXX…

"Tails!"

The fox looked up, only momentarily startled by the door opening and Sonic's sudden appearance. He did this all the time. "Everything okay?" The fox asked, prepping his tails in case he needed to fly to the Tornado.

"Is everything okay?" Sonic mirrored back, his eyes glancing left and right.

Tails tilted his head in confusion. Sonic was erratic but this was odd even for him. "Ummm, yeah, everything is fine... why?"

"Well, I was just fighting Eggman, and then something weird happened – a flash of light and some loud sound. And when I recovered he was nowhere. Not even a trace, Tails. He disappeared. And his factory did, too."

"Huh, that's weird. Let me run some tests." Tails flew over to his computer interface and began typing in a few commands, setting up some scans to see if they picked up anything odd. If there were any weird readings, it'd let him know. But it'd take a moment to calculate. In the meantime, he heard his phone buzzing in his pocket. One message from Amy. Hm?

"Is Sonic with you?" she had typed.

"Yeah, why?" He quickly texted back and left his phone out, knowing she'd quickly respond.

"What's weird about it?" Sonic asked, following behind and looking over his shoulder at the computer.

"Well," Tails cleared his throat. "Eggman doesn't usually attack quite so soon after we beat him is all. But perhaps this is his real scheme, and yesterday was just a decoy?"

Sonic looked at him strangely. "What do you mean yesterday?"

Another buzz from his phone. Tails rolled his eyes and read another text from Amy.

"Is he okay? We had a date today, and he just passed me in the city without even stopping. And he's not answering his phone. Can you tell him to pick me up?"

Before responding Tails looked back to Sonic, smiling a bit. "You know Eggman usually takes some time to rebuild his army every time you completely destroy it. And we just did that yesterday, so yeah. Anyway, Amy just told me she wants you to pick her up."

"Tails, Tails, wait -" Sonic ignored his last comment for a moment. "What are you talking about. We didn't beat Eggman yesterday."

Tails looked at him with concern, his tails twitching. "Oh no. Don't tell me you lost your memory."

"Of course I didn't lose my memory," Sonic crossed his arms. "I know exactly what I was just doing and what I saw. I just don't know what happened."

"What did you do yesterday?" Tails asked.

"Nothing in particular," Sonic replied. "I went to check out Eggman's new factories in the west, but we decided to wait and see."

Tails could only shake his head. "No, that's not what we did at all. Eggman just unleashed his new fleet of Egg Drills and we had to stop him from digging under the world's most populated cities and collapsing on themselves..." His phone buzzed again, and he sighed. "Can you please respond to your girlfriend on your phone? She's just gonna keep texting me."

"Tails, you're not making any sense. And what girlfriend?" Sonic shook his head, wondering if he was dizzy or disoriented. "Are you... trolling me right now?"

"You know, Amy, your girlfriend, the one you can't stop talking about, that one?"

Sonic had to laugh. "Now I know you're trolling me."

The door suddenly busted open from the whack of a rather large hammer, and Amy Rose entered, looking like she wasn't afraid to use it. Every cell in Sonic's body panicked before he calmed himself.

"Sonic the Hedgehog!" she yelled, and then smiled softly. "I'm glad you're okay! Did you not see me back there?"

"Amy, I'm really not in the mood," Sonic held up his hands, instantly ready to take off. "I already told you I didn't want to go on a date today."

Her mouth formed a confused "o" shape, her brow furrowed. "What do you mean? We had one planned since last week, once we beat Eggman you promised me we could go out..."

Tails was getting more and more uncomfortable. Something wasn't right, and the two of them were certainly about to fight. It was just then that his computer made a ding sound, letting him know his data was finished calculating. Perfect timing.

"Uh, I'll check on that!" Tails made a small grin and flew out of the room, content to leave the hedgehogs to their quibbling. Amy had really mellowed out since her and Sonic had gotten together, but she still had the same temper and potential for anger.

He could hear some angry and confused shouting downstairs, and tried to cover his ears as he looked at his computer monitor. There it was, an anomaly... huh, this was certainly strange…

"This was the first time in 3 weeks you've ignored our date! You said you wouldn't miss anymore!"

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Amy. I never agreed to go on a date with you!"

"Oh yeah?" Amy reached into her pocket and saw Sonic's terrified expression as she reached behind her. Instead of her hammer, she pulled out her cellphone and scrolled down to their last conversation and thrust it towards his face. "What do you call this, then?"

Sonic read the words with wide eyes, his stomach turning over as he read sweet, cutesy words.

"This wasn't me, I would never say that! Ugh!"

Amy pulled out her hammer with one hand, now suddenly pissed. "What do you mean you wouldn't say that?!"

Sonic backed up, wanting nothing more than to run, but Amy suddenly had a tight grip on his arm. He could get away from her if he really wanted to, but knew this issue wouldn't settle itself.

"Have you been seeing another girl?" Amy demanded. "Let me see your phone!"

"I don't even have a phone, Amy," he tried to cross his arms in defiance, but to his horror Amy reached into his pocket herself and snatched a device. "Hey!" He was carrying a phone with him? How…

The girl let go of his arm, turned her back to him, and began searching through his texts. Sonic crossed his arms impatiently, tapping his foot. "See, nothing there. It's not even mine!"

"Hm," Amy turned back around, her face still cross. "Here's the same conversation on your phone." Her expression softened a little. "Do you really not remember?"

Sonic grabbed the phone back and to his shock, the same words read back to him, asking Amy for a date and agreeing on a time and place. What the heck? When did he ever agree to go out with Amy? Never in a million years would he…

Something really, really weird was going on. And he didn't like it.

Looking more through the device, Sonic tapped on his pictures, terrified of what he would find, and it was worse than he imagined. Nothing but pictures upon pictures of himself and Amy together, selfies, closeups, silly faces... he gulped as he saw them kissing, them together in some of his favorite places... but, when? How? He kept scrolling down the gallery, and then fresh heat rose to his face as he saw a few of them, and threw the phone as far away from himself as he could. The device shattered from the pure force of impact, the case and plastic bouncing around on the floor.

Amy looked up at him with a concerned expression. "Are you okay?"

"Tails..." Sonic managed to say, looking up towards the young fox who was still hovering near his console. "Did you find anything out?"

Deep blue eyes looked back at him, looking perplexed and yet determined. "Yeah... I think I know what happened."

Sonic was by his side in an instant, happy to leave behind Amy and look for answers. "What?"

"Well, putting it all together... you seem confused, our memories don't match up, and yet you're still.. you, you're still Sonic. You know who I am, and everything - " he looked at Amy, who looked positively fuming, but decided not to go there, "... well, most everything else seems the same. And then I look at my space-time readings and see there was a humongous energy surge a few minutes ago. Big enough to cause a dimensional tear. And... so I think there's only one conclusion."

"Which is...?" Sonic asked, already guessing the answer.

"You must be a Sonic from a different dimension."