It was never this dark before

Chapter 1

"So, here's the plan," Tails said. "What I have here will transport us to a random version of Mobius without showing us what it looks like first. We can also use this as many times as we want until we find the perfect place to live in. After that, I'll reprogram this to be something else."

Sonic looked in wonder at the new invention his friend had made. It was very portable, indeed.

"Wow. Looks pretty neat."

"I know, right?"

It had only been a few days since the Metal Virus had laid waste to Mobius.

Sonic had become a Zombot—something he'd coined himself in the early days of its spread, because those things were literally zombie-like robotic beings—during the crisis, but unlike all of them that both he and his young buddy had to take down, he'd never lost his heart to the mindless hunger, and he was still the same old hedgehog as always, even though his body was now just a lighter-colored metal version of its previous form.

"Okay, now that we've got what we need, any progress on our names once we're settled?"

"Yep. You'll be Chroma, and I'll be Lawrence."

Sonic nearly snorted at this. "Lawrence?"

"I know, very unoriginal," Tails sighed, "but I was starting to run out of ideas and I worked on this for days and I was getting really tired, okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, I get it." He licked the residual sauce off of his fingers.

Of course, it wasn't just his personality that didn't change. His appetite was pretty much the same as well.

His love for chili dogs had been left perfectly intact.

"So...we ready?"

"Sure. Just let me press this button real quick, and..."

As soon as he did, their destination was set.

Little did they know, it wasn't going to be easy to get by there.