#silverxblaze

They'd found books too, but most of them had been historical or fantastical, it was rare that those sorts of tome would be useful. The hedgehog had however managed to uncover a city map, confirming this was Station Square and giving them a rough understanding of their position. Meanwhile, she'd found nothing of real use, besides a few phones to add to his piles and wallets with cards and pictures, identifying the departed.

It was as if she'd been searching in all the wrong places, selecting bad spots to look by virtue of bad luck alone. Well, no, that wasn't true- bad luck wasn't to blame for the disparity in their success. The hedgehog had simply gotten better at sorting through the rubble. His psychic grasp had spread throughout much of the room, raising and sifting piles of debris to quickly determine of anything was worth a closer look. With a single wave of his hand he could pull open bags and float free their contents, spreading them into the air.

They'd found evidence of upper floors, though the entrances to them had been blocked off by more wooden boards. In the rooms outside of this central one, there was more evidence of past activity but no living people nor machines or evidence they could harness. If only there was-

Blaze felt something familiar hit her grasp, presently shoulder deep in digging through that overlarge rucksack. A papery texture, wedged at the bottom of this bag, dry and flakey but undeniably intact. Multiple pages, there was a chance!

The clothing on top was quickly removed, though now she worked with delicacy rather than speed. Beneath the creased shirts and ancient trousers, under trinkets from a lost life, Blaze found the perfect clue to solve their present mystery. Gingerly, she pulled it from the depths, giving it a quick glance to ensure it was modern.

"Silver!" She winced at her own loudness, throwing a glance around the room, but it truly seemed they were alone in here, "Newspaper."

Immediately, the hedgehog flew over, abandoning his own search and coming to land beside her. She unfolded the paper gently, feeling its age in her hands. The intensity in his eyes was undeniable as he looked over her shoulders, so the feline's gaze soon fled back to the pages.

A colour image of a skyscraper knocked over with a sand dune burying its upper portion was plastered on the front page; it looked to have been taken from a helicopter. There was evidence of car crashes upon the nearby road, clearly the event had been destructive, perhaps even unexpected. Judging by the police gathered about the fallen building, the photo had been taken not long after the structure had fallen. Judging by other indications on the front page, the event had occurred without warning. She couldn't help but grimace at the thought of those who'd been inside.

"Localised sandstorm knocks over office block, first in series of impossible weather events spread globally," Read the newspaper's title, a date plastered in its top right corner, "Worldwide panic ensues as countless lives are lost. Planes fall from the sky and bridges crumble," The following lines confirmed.

It was perfect- despite its morbidity, it was exactly what they needed! Her eyes flickered up to the hedgehog and caught that intense look again. A mixture of pain and excitement had claimed him, he was plainly happy that she'd found the resource but the loss of life clearly irked him. Even still, like before, the emotions weren't crushing him externally, no matter how they burned internally. They'd save those people, just as they'd save everyone else. He was steadfast in that belief, so she would cling to it too. They'd fix this; they would save this world.

"This is great Blaze, we know what days to avoid returning to. We can read through and get more surrounding details, see if there's any evidence of the others," He stepped closer still, "Although," He stretched around the feline, brushing her arm, "This is dated three weeks from when we left the present, things certainly weren't good for long..."

"It is an unfortunately short window. Perhaps the others weren't expecting another attack so soon," As silence hung in the air, she dared to reach up and ruffle through his quills, "We'll manage to save them, we have a heading now."

Perhaps their positions truly had swapped, now she was the one speaking openly of what was obvious. In their lasts life, he had been the one to state the obvious to enforce it. He'd felt the need to highlight everything aloud, would she end up the same? What would she highlight? Her finding the newspaper had been more born of desperate luck than a calculated approach. She felt so foolish but she couldn't pull away.

"We will. Now that we're together, I feel unstoppable," She heard him insist and felt his body tense, "We'll find even more evidence, chart this whole apocalypse so we can undo it."

Well, the more things changed the more they'd stay the same.

"We're almost done here," She tried to retake the lead, "Let's clear through the last of the rubble and settle on where to search-

Movement in the corner of her eye tore the feline's attention away from the hedgehog and in the direction of the cassino's entryway. The blocking of one of his psychic motes had revealed a presence, something floating above the ground and to the left. It was relatively small but plainly metallic; a pill shaped device with three claws protruding from near its centre, spinning like a top with a pulsing read beacon near the far end of its length.

The moment she'd clocked it, it had started to flee. She saw the hedgehog's psychic motes moved to crash into the drone, two bounced off of its metal exterior but it wasn't enough to stop the spindly craft! Before he could stop it the device was outside and, almost instinctively, they were in pursuit.

"Keep it safe!" Blaze demanded, shoving the paper into the hedgehog's chest as she hurried.

"Don't destroy it if you can, it might lead us to others," Jumping over a table, Blaze heard him call from her right, "An Eggman base might be around here!"

She took on his words as she leapt over more clutter, feeling her temperature rise as she burst forward. The building just wasn't made for running through, even ignoring mess; there were pillars and displays all around, slowing her process. In the dark it was easy enough to track the machine, its glowing beacon stood out against both the shade and Silver's light, but panic struck as it escaped the cassino.

Frustrated at the barriers, the cat jumped to the air and used a burst of flame to launch herself forward. Her thoughts were only just able to move faster than her body, plotting steps ahead. The drone could fly, but the day was cloudless. Either way, if it flew high enough, it would disappear from view. Silver would stand a chance catching up, but they'd be separated and more vulnerable.

Now outside, she threw her gaze to the sky, finding it a cloudless sunset orange rather than the blue of earlier. Almost immediately she caught sight of it vanishing over a dune, racing roughly eastward! It was higher than before, but it hadn't disappeared into the sky yet!

Flames ignited at the feline's heels, scorching the sands a crystalline black as she raced off; even if Silver lingered to gather what they'd found, he'd know what way to race! The cat shot off again, rushing with all her might but finding the terrain was to her disadvantage. While she then had to race down the other side of the sand pile, the small robot was able to simply fly straight over the gap. As a result, she almost immediately lost sight of the drone again as it slipped behind another dune, a wall of sand the cat herself had to clamber up.

A look was thrown backward, she found her black trail was lingering in the sand, but the undulation of the dunes kept both the cassino and her companion out of view. When her gaze snapped to the front, she found that the path ahead of her was set to steeply drop. She slid, crouching low, igniting more to compensate for the angle and feeling flames flare from her back.

Looking back for the hedgehog was no longer an option, not until he caught up. If this machine was aiming to separate the pair of them, or lure her into some sort of trap, it was certainly succeeding. The cat began to bounce her attention between the path she was walking and the robot, making sure it was still ahead of her but the sands weren't disturbed.

Time became almost entirely lost on Blaze, as she continued to shoot after the device. It never turned or changed in any way from its straight path, always keeping a consistent height above the ground- now beyond the reach of the cat's jet boosted jump. Only her partner could achieve a matching height, soaring up to grab at-

"Blaze! I'm here!" A familiar voice called out from behind her.

She threw a look back and saw Silver was catching up, flying at speed but plainly weighed down by the heavy rucksack on his back and the fact he was now carrying her one- she'd shed it during their search! He was keeping pace but stood no chance of overtaking, let alone getting in range of the strange machine. If he shed the bags he could surely have caught up though, if not simply got in range and tore the robot from the sky. He was flying a fair distance above her, but not nearly matching the machine's height.

"We need to just keep chasing it, it might be rigged to explode if it's stopped, I've had that happen before. Not seen a drone quite like this though!" The psychic called forward, "This is our best lead, bases don't pop up overnight! We find it, cross reference with the news paper, then we tell the others."

"We might have to run for miles more," The cat reminded him, "We have no idea where if it will even come to a stop, let alone when."

"It's flying, so it should take the most direct route," She looked away as he disappeared behind the dune she'd just clambered over, again just managing to catch sight of the drone, "If we know there's not another option, then we can bring it down!"

If the worst came to the worst, then either one of them could easily push themselves and bring it down. A single well placed fireball, a telekinetic tug or some combination of the two would be more than enough to stop this machine in its tracks... though all of those options may prevent them salvaging much knowledge from it. He knew what he was doing, this was to him as royal life was to her; whether he enjoyed his current position was irrelevant, but he was more than completely adapted to fulfil his role. She would trust his choice, just as he had so often trusted hers.

Blaze lessened her flames, wanting to make sure they still had a track to lead them back to the city but no longer worrying about him having to follow. A feeling of relief washed over her with that change, a certain comfort that came with knowing they hadn't been separated on this dead world. That feeling was interrupted as another caught her off guard, she slid down the dune at breakneck speed only to notice the environment had totally shifted after that sudden feline.

The terrain had flattened, were they outside of the city? The great dunes have become so much less common, only a few dotted their surroundings; her view of the hovering drone was completely clear! Even the sunset was plain to see, finally lowering onto a visible horizon. In the distance she could see green shapes looming on the horizon, in the direction of her approach.

Those green shapes were soon identified to be cacti; if Silver's earlier guess about the city's concrete was correct, then they had most certainly escaped Station Square. The dunes were so much less common here, so much less steep to, because they weren't built with skyscrapers and other buildings to act as their core. They were just sand built on sand!

They sped by those cacti, scarcely getting a look at them as the cat found herself able to run more comfortably. Without the endless slopes and harshly uneven terrain of before, though her pace didn't slow the effort required to keep up with the drone had greatly decreased. Moving like this, the pyrokinetic was entirely comfortable looking back and speaking with ehr companion.

"We've left Station Square, I'm almost certain," The cat relayed to him.

"I agree, I can see more plants spread far away. Thought we might have hit an oasis by now, but there's still no clouds. Maybe all the water is gone?" He hypothesised.

"That does sound like something Eggman would be foolish enough to do, that or isolate it all in one area," Blaze considered aloud, "I'm not sure how well it fits with what we've read in the newspapers though."

"Even if he'd made some sort of machine that could control sand, or made some sort of weapon from it, you'd still expect rain. It's not like it doesn't rain at the beach or where sand is used in construction, the whole environment has changed," He pointed out, she could imagine that his brow had furrowed hard in contemplation, "Maybe he did it in stages?" He seemed to mentally crumple his theory and throw it out, "I suppose it's still to early to tell."

"Sooner we figure out where this thing is going, the sooner we'll be able to hypothesise," Blaze responded.

"After that, we can bring down as many of them as we have to," She heard him rearrange the bags carried about his person, trying to better distribute the weight, "Provided we aren't run all the way to the horizon."

"If this machine is smart, I don't think that's impossible," Blaze cooly responded, "It's uncommon, but some of these robots have the intelligence required," She threw a glance upward only to almost stumble and quickly return her gaze to the empty path ahead, "Rarely one as small as that though, typically their personality shines through their construction..."

"The Metal Sonics I've seen aren't much like the original, but I get what you mean," The hedgehog confirmed, "Eggman seems to plaster a face or some sort of quirk on the machines that have more advanced intelligence, it'd be weird if this one did."

Blaze's mind trickled back to what few Eggman adjacent adventures she'd had, and the parallel she'd drawn was proving all the more true. Even if some were his descendant's inventions, the most important robots at his beckon call either had a port for him to manually operate them or a face and some sort of personality. Whiskers and Johnny were the two that came to mind, how starkly over the top they were. She'd only briefly encountered a so called Metal Sonic recently, and it had been almost entirely taciturn.

Come to think of it, if this was Eggman's doing, neither this drone nor the state of the world had the makings of his work on it. Even if most of his robotics had been buried, there should have been a few lingering pieces. If casinos and skyscrapers had survived the sand, then surely the machines designed to weather attacks from all sides would last this long? The basic peon machines the fool sent out weren't the toughest ever, but they'd travelled so far and this was Station Square of all places. Surely they should have passed an arm or a leg, if not an entire machine.

Instead, they'd only encountered a single drone. It hadn't drawn others, there was no flock, just a single seemingly useless machine that was now fleeing them. It didn't have a face or an Eggman insignia painted on, let alone the space for a personality. No arms for flailing, no voice-box from blurting out inane nonsense and a distinct lack of the usual popping colours that weird man seemed to use. If this robot was something smarter, it'd almost certainly confirm that the Doctor wasn't behind this apocalypse and-

"Blaze, stop!" The cat came to a screeching halt, she threw her gaze back to the air only to find the drone had vanished. Again, thoughts had taken over; Blaze had lost track of time. She looked back to him, thinking he might have finally decided to grab it, only to find him stopped a few feet back.

Between the two of them, more than four hundred feet off the ground, the drone was hanging still.

"I've never seen anything like this, why would it stop?" He shouted across the gap, before looking to the ground, "Is the base buried?"

"Maybe?" Was all Blaze could manage in response, refusing to look away from the machine.

She heard the sounds of psychic whirring, cyan light entered the edge of her vision, only for it to quickly cease, "If it is here, then it must be buried really-

The light at the top of the drone turned from red to green in the blink of an eye, the claws that stuck out of it collapsed inward. All of a sudden the drone was falling, tumbling top over bottom toward the ground a tremendous speed. She caught sight of the hedgehog jumping backwards and did the same, quickly concluding that the device might explode... but it didn't. It crashed to the sand with perhaps the most mundane thunking sound ever, scattering a small amount of sand into the air.

Silence hung the between the pair of them for a beat, tense glances were quickly exchanged.

"The drone is almost certainly old," She said, having been unable to get a good close look, "But it'd be foolish to think it has run out of charge."

The hedgehog nodded, "It was fleeing in a direction certainly, heading toward something, even if it was just this open space," He glanced around their surroundings, this flat land with a few scattered cacti and a thoroughly dehydrated tree, "Maybe it didn't want to explode in a space with objects to use as barricades, or dunes to jump behind?"

"It's possible..." She hummed, tapping her foot, "In all your travels, have you found a way to check for explosives?"

"Contact usually causes the detonation, but this one was programmed to run from us. Maybe it was programmed better than past ones, Eggman has planned for me before," The hedgehog grimaced, "I have an idea, but maybe back up a little further, just to be safe."

"Will you be safe?" Blaze interrupted his scheming.

"I should be? It just depends how big the explosion would be," He answered but, even at this distance he could clearly read her frown, "I'll be as safe as I possibly can be, I promise. I'll keep a good distance away until I'm confident."

Though she was unconvinced, the cat backed up. She watched as he shed his luggage before crouching down and pressing his palms to the ground. Cyan energy rippled out, coating and raising a mass of sand before it began to reshape. It took a moment for him to get the form right, starting with the torso before before forming a set of arms and legs. Finally, a head with a set of five overlarge forehead quills and two elongated backward ones were formed. The hedgehog had effectively made a doppelganger from their surroundings

As the Silver made of psychokinesis and sand started to walk toward the fallen drone, the real thing took off into the air and circled around to hang high above it. Tension swelled as the hedgehog double reached down and managed to touch the metallic object. The entity managed to fully stand up straight, still holding the device in its hands. A moment past, there was no response. The clone shook the robot, there was no explosion. It was thrown back to the ground to zero response only to be picked back up, dropped again and lightly kicked once for good measure.

"I think it's safe," The real Silver called out, "At the very least, as long as I'm cloaked in psychokinesis, I should be able to get close and pick it up."

Blaze's worry was still flaring, "Maybe just get close enough to see and check it over using your double," She suggested, "Just to be fully safe."

Silver nodded, descending as the psychic clone picked back of the device and raised it for viewing. The psychic hovered around it, conducting the clone to turn it for viewing different sides. He brought a hand to his chest fur, clearly tugging it as he thought. From Blaze's position it was difficult to make out the intricacies of the design, whether there was any imprinted writing on its mass or damage from the years it'd spent in the sand. In the cat's opinion, if this truly was one of Eggman's machines, it looked to be a uniquely sleek robot with none of his usual trimmings. With its claws now locked away, it simply looked to be an overlarge dark green pill with a light on one of its ends.

Something wasn't right. Was this some sort of decoy? Bait meant to lure them in? But why would it lure them out into the middle of the desert, on a cloudless day, where any attackers could be seen approaching from miles away? if the attack was set to come from underfoot, the only hidden direction, then why would it be designed to drop to the ground? In the hopes of pulling them to a single spot? Why this particular place though? Why not a mile or so back, they'd still have been outside the city.

"There's no latch to open and poke around in its insides. No sign of any significant breakage either, doesn't look like the fall really damaged it... I can see a charging port though, like the dock on a phone," He relayed, sounding more at peace than he had before, "That green light is still shining, I wonder what changed..."

Blaze turned her stare to their surrounding, looking for any answer she could give him. This spot was just so mundane, more of a regular desert than where they'd been before. The dunes were out of sight now, the closest thing to a barrier they could use were the nearby cacti and withered tree. They'd been drawn into the open, but what was the cause for that? If the device was primed to explode that would make sense.

Was it trying to draw them away from something important? A relic or a chaos emerald? Whatever had happened, the weather had been so starkly changed, enough to cause global crises. They still had such a narrow scope of the world and its state, they hadn't even managed to fully read that newspaper. Maybe there'd be something in there?

"It's getting late," Blaze pointed out, looking to the rapidly darkening horizon, "The desert is cold at night. We need a plan."

"Yeah, we do," He had his counterpart set the drone down before being dismissed, turning it to tumbling sand, "We could try to head back to the city, but I'm going to need a moment," He confessed, "I'm sort of exhausted, I've never really done anything like that so I haven't done it efficiently before," He flew to land next to her, an awkward look on his face, "Maybe it was stupid to focus so much energy mimicking how my quills are quaffed... I wanted to make the best replica possible. You know, just in case there was a camera on it or something."

"It was probably a waste," She couldn't help but snort, "If it weren't for our bags, I'd feel confident running us back to the cassino. If this device is set to lure other machines to us, that's a problem no matter where we bring it. The same issue arrises if it is set to explode, carrying it psychically permanently probably isn't viable."

"I'm sure it'll need to charge eventually, it probably wouldn't have that port otherwise," Silver pointed out before wincing, "But now that it's landed, who knows how long it will take till it needs to plug in. It could be days, weeks even," His hand moved to his chest fur as he pondered aloud, "I've seen roosts and open sockets for Eggman devices before, the smaller sort that don't contain flickies; this kind of looks like one of them. Certainly didn't detect a Chaos emerald or similar energy source inside it."

He turned to wander over to the nearby cacti, looking them up and down. Quizzically, the cat followed his footsteps but caught herself before fully following. It was odd to see him juxtaposed against a background like this; she'd seen him at the beach but the cacti and sinking sun provided something new. The two of them had gained a sort of mutual appreciation for nature having remembered a world so starkly without it; although this world was anything but natural, the sight of new biota was plainly drawing them in. Well, she wanted to think it was drawing them both in, it was plainly holding his attention as his hand found his chest fur and thoughts plainly bubbled.

Blaze knew she shouldn't stare, she should have been splitting her gaze between the downed drone and their surroundings, she trusted him to act wisely or call for help if needed. But he just looked so good in his element; no necessarily comfortable, for how could anyone be in a world so devastatingly changed, but as if he knew by instinct what he was doing. It was a strange thought to have, given how disparate the destroyed worlds he encountered apparently were.

Again her attention was drawn to his frame, the roll of his shoulder blades partially hidden by fluff. As he reached down to cast psychic light deep into the sand his whole posture changed; his right foot planted ahead of the left, his knees bent as his fingers coiled skyward. She wanted to call his movement graceful, but she knew it was born of practice rather than inherent smoothness. She had seen him stumble and throw out stiff arms, the hedgehog had grown beyond that now.

As he buried deeper with his psychic power, thoughts from the casino remounted within Blaze's mind. Silver had grown; she had found the newspaper and picked up a small share of the phones, but she couldn't think her search was anything but slopy when compared to the rolling of his psychokinesis. There was a certain degree of intuitive strategy, plainly second nature to him now, that she no longer exceeded. She was aware of the scars beneath his deep fluff, born of the experiences he'd had walking the futures, but not how they'd shaped him.

Blaze supposed it was easier to see his changes then understand her own. She was certain that she'd changed, grown in a few directions, but they were indiscernible to her as she stood next to him. Perhaps he'd just had more growing to do? Maybe she'd grown up quickly in both lives? He'd kept more of his innocence about him?

No, this change wasn't purely mental; there was an undeniable physical aspect, she'd noticed as much. He was wiser and more skilled than she recalled, but the difference in his physicality was undeniable. She'd always seen him as short, soft, headstrong, explosive and exceptionally naive. The foolish boy she'd felt the need to shield was now in the position of shielding her, it just felt so bizarre. She'd find her footing and stand ahead of him again soon, surely?

"I don't think there is a base under here, the cactus roots go way too far down," The hedgehog's words returned her to reality, even though they were broken by a yawn, "I've found water in the deep sands, if you want to drink, I can refill our canteens while we're here."

"Alright," She answered, only half listening. Again, the need to act was welling within her chest, "I think I've decided, we should head back to the dunes to make camp. Ideally you'll be able to reveal a building, empty enough that we can rest inside," Even though she was sure he understood what she was suggesting, Blaze felt the need to lecture further, "I think being exposed is a bad idea, but going all the way back to the Casino seems too difficult."

"I closed the doors there before I left, just in case," He shot her a thumbs up as he psychically reached out, drawing a canteen from one of their bags, "It should be safe whenever we make and back. If it's not, well, we'll know we're being watched and this desert is more active than we thought, I guess?

Despite him clearly being exhausted, sweat on his brow and weariness in his eyes, he held the green metal container toward her. She tutted something about him being naive as she pushed it back toward him, making her insistence clear. He did hesitate but, after catching her stare, the hedgehog unscrewed the cap and took a long swig.

"Where there's one machine, there'll surely be others. It would be a strange coincidence if the only remaining one found us so quickly," Blaze put forward, "But if they're all like this, then we shouldn't have much trouble. Are drones like this usually the ones to survive?"

As he swallowed, holding the canteen back out to her, he shook his head, "Usually it's the more stationary sort, or those on patrol in isolated areas; typically underground. Flying around up here, just the rain from the years should have worn it down," She took the flask from him, eyes lingering on the mouthpiece, "It looks pretty untouched though, by weather or anything else. Maybe the world really has changed... but there has to have been some rain the past 200 years, cacti couldn't grow without that."

"It would require some rainfall certainly, not a lot but..." Ignoring more foolish thoughts rushing through her head, she took a swig from the container.

Before she knew it, the flask was empty. She caught him looking up at the sky, "We left in winter, you'd expect this to be a wet season if there was one... unless things really have got messed up," He sighed and shrugged, "Weirder things have happened and will happen."

She held the vessel back toward him, "It's a different sort of strangeness than I'm used to, but I don't think it's stranger than what we lived through before."

"I guess that future is probably still is strictly the oddest," The hedgehog conceded, "We'll figure it out."

He turned back to the cacti and the pit he'd dug, waving a glowing hand over it. She heard the sands beneath him begin to churn, only just audible above the whir of his psychic power. Moments later, it was as if he'd conjured a small geyser; perfectly pure looking water, shining with cyan light, rose from the pit in a single line, perfectly directed to the canteen's opening. He'd never been in a world like this, but clearly his technique was practiced. He'd known where to find the water, how to separate it from the sand and then purify out the dirt. She would have happily stood and watched in awe, if it wasn't for a noise pulling her attention away.

Something perked Blaze's left ear, in the direction of the drone and their baggage. Her brow furrowed as she turned, only to find the machine was perfectly still. Its light though had changed from pulsing a dull green to a bright blue.

"Silver?" As she called his name, Blaze caught his gaze switching to the device.

It took a moment longer for Blaze to recognise the sound, long enough for it to grow close and alternate from a light whistle to a cracking rumble. It wasn't a common sound to her, but she had heard it on the high seas of her world. The sudden arrival of a storm, breaking the peace.

Sunset had finally stretched into night, but the once clear sky now had clouds to blot and blank the stars. Clouds that were whipping and whirling in lines and circles like she'd seen no wind move them before. It was only as the sands began to shift at her feet, not induced by the device but the surrounding winds, that the princess put two and two together. Freak weather events, a sandstorm manifesting at the heart of a city. Eggman had taken control and then lost control of the weather!

Silver's back pressed against hers, psychokinesis whirled and rattled, just in time to break a wave of sand that had been encroaching to their right.

"I guess it was a trap," She couldn't help but muse aloud, stepping closer still to him in an attempt to properly brace.