Darkness without end
An unending void
Broken by faint golden light
Emerging from a shadow not quite one with it
Shadow flowing and breaking
The form of a girl as made from water
A form shrinking with tears shed
A form struggling on occasion
A long string of drool trailing its eternal, slow plummet

         Held in an eternal fall, the once girl, likely having before been a sapient hedgehog, gazed along her string of drool into a memory that rose from the Darkness. It was not hers, and never had been, but from the memory someone noticed her as they fell well past her.

         Sonic the Hedgehog. A sapient hedgehog possessed of blue fur and sporting a gold buckled pair of iconic red boots with the legs folded down like sock cuffs. He was a world-renowned, globetrotting adventurer, hailed as a hero for his battles and victories against would be world conqueror, the nefarious super genius scientist, Doctor Eggman.

         For as well-known as both Sonic and Eggman were, their greatest battle was difficult to fathom. Doctor Eggman in his genius had constructed a space station that was akin to a small moon adorned with the likeliness of his face and Sonic had followed him from the legendary West Side Island, resting place of the mythical Chaos Emeralds.

         Like the Rings were themselves a miracle beyond understanding, the Chaos Emeralds too were a work of miracles that granted miracles. Said to be a crystalized manifestation of all life on Earth, the Chaos Emeralds were believed to turn thoughts into power. Such an ability was unimportant to Eggman who simply wished to tap into their power to fuel his ambitions, but to Sonic as his battle with Eggman aboard the Death Egg came to an end that launched him into space, nothing was more important than miracles.

         Inside a jet of flame shot forth from the exploding space station, Sonic dared not breath lest his body be destroyed by the forces at play around him that somehow served as his best chance at survival. Yet despite his best efforts, his doom seemed imminent as he reached the upper atmosphere of the Earth and was alit by the friction of his reentry.

         As Sonic became a shooting star, The Remnant of the girl falling in the Darkness watched him with a face of liquid shadow where no eyes still resided. For how far gone The Remnant was, it recognized Sonic and mouthed out a single word as though to make a wish upon the star that he was becoming. However, the shooting star that was Sonic the Hedgehog was not the one to grant her wish.

         In this moment of miracles, a memory became reality and Super Sonic was able to fully look into the Darkness that spilled out to consume the memory it held. But he was one to never give in without a fight, and he recognized The Remnant. A being the Rings forgot, someone they remembered did not. But Sonic’s memories were far, far greater than the Rings or even The Remnant could handle, and the Rings recognized the bond between the two. But their recognition threatened to tear the girl asunder as the liquid shadow tore apart into flickering light, her image becoming that of a girl with pink spines and green eyes. But her form flickered changing unsteadily and rapidly depriving her of any clear form. Yet she smiled as she looked upon Super Sonic, even as he could only stare on confused and overwhelmed. But something moved to force Super Sonic to act before it was too late, and a single half-meter tall golden loop, a Ring, spun up before him.

         Uncertainty lingered on Super Sonic’s face for less than a heartbeat and he gritted his teeth as he looked through the Ring into the green eyes that stared back at him. And as he looked into them, the Ring burst into a cloud of twinkling gold motes of light and swirled around him and the girl. The cloud did not linger long and soon coalesced onto the girl. But the Darkness consumed her in that moment and took her from Super Sonic’s sight. Reacting on instinct, he reached out for her as his last vision of her was of her eyes turning blue to match his spines as the power of the Chaos Emeralds unexpectedly broke. Falling back to the Earth below, Sonic kept reaching with everything he had, desperate to reach the girl even through the Darkness.

         Alas, Sonic was just a memory of the Rings. And yet, a memory greater than them. Still, like the girl was consumed, the memory too sank back into Darkness. It would be, as was the case for all of the world, just another event the Rings would always remember. And yet, to those who knew, to the scholars who studied the way the world shifted, it was fathomable that the Rings would not remember things correctly.

EPISODE OF NEW HISTORY 02 - END