It was never this dark before

Chapter 3

"Tails... What did you just say?"

"He won. Sonic, Dark Gaia won, we have to get out of here—"

He frantically pressed the button, but nothing happened.

"Nonononononono, I forgot that I made it so that we can only go into a new version of Mobius once per day, we're stuck here, we have to run, Sonic, NOW—"

Then more Dark Gaia spawn came.

Nightmares and Deep Nightmares began to come after them, Tails having to grab onto Sonic's hand as the Zombot ran at a perfectly-intact very fast speed to keep them from drawing their blood.

"SONIC, YOU NEED TO RUN FASTER!"

"I'm running as fast as I can, buddy!"

A Titan got in the way. The hedgehog took a sharp right turn to avoid that club smashing them.

"Sonic! Over there!"

Oh, thank goodness, Sonic thought. Finally, somewhere where these things aren't trying to kill us...

It was a little hut, apparently made out out wood, stone, and metal.

Whoever was living there certainly knew how to put it together, that's for sure.

Sonic dashed inside and slammed the door shut.

"Wow, Sonic," Tails said. "I never thought this place might be so big in spite of looking so small on the outside."

"Gotta admit, that kinda surprised me, too," the Zombot responded.

Tails picked up something.

Somebody was muttering...something, he didn't know what, really...

He got closer.

"Hmmm... No, that's not right... This isn't right, either..."

The muttering was coming through that door.

He didn't want to disturb whoever was in there, but he really needed to know what was going on, too.

He opened the door.

"Hello?" he called out.

The person in the room flinched at the sound.

"Who's there?! Show yourself!"

"Tails, what's going... Whoa."

The person at the desk wasn't really a person at all. They looked like some sort of mix between a fairy and a small dog, and they looked so familiar that...

Hold on...

"Chip?" He immediately recognized the little guy. "It's me, Sonic."

"Sonic...?" A large grin lit up his face. "Sonic!" He went at him for a hug. "I thought you'd never change back after what happened out there!"

Then he realized something was off.

"Okay, are you sure you're actually Sonic? You resemble what you used to look like before all this, but you just look so...different, too?" He started inspecting the Zombot closely. "Why do you look so pale? And why are your eyes red? Odd, you even have claws..."

"I am Sonic, I'm just not your Sonic, who apparently got turned into one of those things...going by what you're saying."

"Oh." He stopped inspecting him. "Yeah. That's right. Things started going wrong the moment Dark Gaia took his energy back.

"I thought Sonic...the Sonic of this world, just to clarify...was going to change back to normal. But he didn't. Instead, he started generating his own Dark Gaia Energy, and... That's when he started changing even more. He became a Dark Gaia spawn, right there in front of me, and the transformation was so long and agonizing that I couldn't help but watch. But it wasn't just agonizing for me, it was agonizing for him, too. He was screaming the entire time it happened, and..." He shuddered. "I couldn't do anything to stop Dark Gaia after that."

"So, what you're saying is that Dark Gaia essentially won here because he turned your Sonic into one of his minions?" Tails asked.

"Mhm. He also broke the world apart again very shortly after becoming complete. I don't know if that was possible to begin with, or... No, no, what am I saying, I need to come up with a way to stop him..."

"Care if we help?" Tails asked. "If you need the brains, I'm the one to call."

"Yeah, I guess."

"Good," Sonic said. "Now we think."

Author's note: As you could probably tell, this specific universe is actually a variant of the Archie Comics version of the Unleashed arc. The moment when this Mobius's Sonic transformed was initially supposed to be him losing his Werehog form as he does in that arc, but this version had him become a Dark Gaia spawn.