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He'd been trying to find Sonic. That was the whole point of building the ship in the first place. If this "paradox prism" had the power to send people to alternate realities, then surely Sonic had been sucked into one of them and that's why there was no trace of him in New Yolk City.
So Nine followed him.
For weeks.
He slipped in and out of a few realities - the shatterspaces - but tracking Sonic's energy signature proved to be more difficult when each one had their own shard of the Paradox Prism. When he and the hedgehog reunited, his first order of business was going to be recalibrating his tracker to account for a living organism's bio data to distinguish him from a hunk of crystal.
Sometimes he didn't find anyone. No Sonic and no shard. A couple times he found some topsy-turvy version of himself, those two rebels, and the mechanically enhanced hedgehog, but he never stuck around long, unimpressed by their antics depending on how civilized their environments were.
But one time, he found him.
At first Nine assumed he'd be no different from the other benign two-tailed foxes he'd seen. A far cry from his own intellect, lacking any sort of cunning or ambition for a better life, not even trying to utilize the resources at his disposal to make improvements to his situations.
It was clear after only a few hours of observation that Sonic had gotten lucky finding him out of the lot of them. Nine was so clearly the most capable, as clever as Sonic was fast. The best possible companion.
He'd expected nothing less from the next two-tailed copy he came across, in gloves and shoes that didn't quite fit, as though they were hand-me-downs or something he scrounged out of a dumpster and made due with, tying fasteners around the cuffs to keep them cinched. Nine didn't think about how that had been how he'd found most of his clothes until he learned how to make his own, optimized for both aesthetics and function. Just because his focus was in mechanics didn't mean that he didn't have an eye for design in general.
This copy didn't appear to share that same quality, just like all the others. He wore nothing but those ill-fitting gloves and shoes. His tails were also exceptionally fluffy in a way that would've had him feeling self-conscious about his own scraggly pair if it weren't for the fact that he had seven others that were ten times more functional. More useful. Better.
What was excessive fluff good for? Nothing much. A way to disarm opponents maybe. Lower someone's guard. An ornamental asset at best. Still not practical.
He watched him for an hour or so, just like he did for all of his copies until he inevitably tired of them and set his sights back on tracking down Sonic. This world appeared to be more along the lines of what he was used to back in New Yolk City. Before he'd found his copy, Nine flew over the cityscape and took in the grungy, graffiti-ridden streets. Unlike his old home, however, anarchy ruled in place of the Chaos Council.
He'd tracked the energy signature to a vault somewhere in the city center, a quick scan affirming that it didn't belong to Sonic. It was there that he found the clue that one of his copies was present in this world. A stray orange fox hair was caught on one of the vents. Just different enough for Nine to know it hadn't come from him.
Curiosity piqued and interest in the prism shard already waning, Nine used the fur to track his copy down. He was far beyond the outskirts of the city. Past junkyards and landfills, dry, yellowed fields full of unwanted things until he came across a particularly run down shack.
Despite its haggard appearance, it was surprisingly clean. There was even an orchard and flowering bushes that led the way to a trickle of a stream not far from it. It was there that he found him.
Nine parked his ship out of sight of the shack, hiding it near piles of scrap metal with the hope that it would be indistinguishable from the debris around it. He used his tails to lift up into the trees, the metal appendages climbing them to keep him hidden from sight in the upper branches. Peering through the leaves, he silently observed this new copy.
Of course he'd have nowhere better to live than some dilapidated shack. It was to be expected at this point. While Nine had made his shelter from an abandoned maintenance room of the subway system, at least it was heavily fortified and it wasn't as though he lived there by choice. What else could one do when their very existence was rejected by an entire city?
It wasn't the same. Not one of his other selves so far had to deal with anything remotely close to what he'd endured.
That was probably a good thing. He didn't think any of them would've adapted the way he had. The pirate him would've been strung up by his tails and hung from the tallest skyscraper. Not even that odd excuse for a limb enhancement would've helped him. The rudimentary design hardly enough to protect himself from a common bully let alone a fleet of robots.
Nine wouldn't have bothered with this particular copy at all, content to leave him to his meager existence, except…
This copy built a tracker.
A pleased smile lit up the other fox's face as whatever he'd been fiddling with began to chime, twin tails spinning excitedly, though not enough to give him flight. "I think it's working!"
"That's what you said the last fifty times."
Nine's eyes widened as another voice joined the copy. He knew that voice. His gaze wandered from the fox to find the source. It wasn't unusual for the alternate hims to not be alone, but this was one person he'd yet to see in any other shatterspace. The person he'd spent all this time searching for in the first place.
Sonic sat several feet away, almost hidden from sight by thick, scraggly overgrowth at the base of a tree. He lounged on the ground, propped up against the trunk with his arms folded tightly across his chest. There was tension around his eyes, both of them closed, but his ears were pointed in the direction of the fox. Or in the direction of the incessant chiming noise the device in his hands kept making.
"This is only the fourth prototype of the Prower Paradox Prism Position Predictor," the other him pointed out.
Sonic snorted, the sound full of derision. "Yeah, well, feels like the fiftieth with how much you've been going on about it."
Nine's brow furrowed. That didn't sound like Sonic. Not the one he'd come to know. Where was the annoying, bubbly positivity? There was no warmth to this Sonic's voice. It was deeper and more… pointed. Like each word was barbed.
"Why the hell is it making that noise?"
Nine's copy squinted at whatever was on the screen. "It's picking up the energy signature from the Paradox Prism."
"Then it's clearly not working. Didn't you say your last Prower Power Whatever picked up the signal from that bat lady's house?"
"Yeah."
"Well, we're not anywhere near there, are we?"
"But these readings are almost identical," the other Nine continued, heedless of his companion's complaints. "It can't be a coincidence. Something nearby is giving off the same energy frequency as a shard of the Paradox Prism!"
Nine froze. His ship. This fox's device had picked up on the energy signature of the shard he had powering his ship hidden a little under a mile away from here. Despite its terrible name, he'd created a tracker that actually worked.
Not only that, but he knew about the Paradox Prism. He used the same language that Sonic had when they'd infiltrated the Chaos Council's sublevels. Which could only mean…
This was Tails.
"Well, shut it off. I've already got enough of a headache from your technobabble without that thing's ringing in my ears on top of it."
"I will once we find it." Tails hopped to his feet, orienting the tracker so it faced the direction of Nine's ship. "Come on, Sonic!"
"How many times do I gotta tell ya, kid? It's Sharp."
It was an apt moniker, from what Nine could see. From his blue quills finely honed into razer-tipped points to the holster around his waist which definitely contained more than one knife to what very much resembled a sniper rifle resting against the tree beside him indicating that he was, perhaps, a sharpshooter. Maybe that's where the name came from.
Or maybe it was just the quills.
Whatever the reason, this Sharp was in no hurry to get up. Another strike against him, Nine decided. Even if Sonic's constant need to hurry was a pain in his tails - all nine of them - he much preferred it to this guy's attitude.
Nine's copy - Tails - stilled, looking at him for a second with an expression that Nine had definitely seen before in the dim light of the subway in the bowels of New Yolk City. Missing something that was right in front of him, but not. "Right. I'm sorry, Sharp."
While he was distracted, Nine pulled out his own tech and quickly jammed the frequency of the Prower Paradox Prism Position Predictor, disrupting the connection it had to the shard in his ship. Ugh, that name was such a mouthful. It'd be better to call it the-
"The P.2.5.P.!" Tails cried out, the device suddenly going silent as its inner workings were effectively scrambled.
Nine pocketed his device and watched as Tails tried frantically to fix whatever had gone wrong, the former not worried in the slightest that he'd be able to fix it without rewiring the entire thing. He'd fried the circuits. It'd buy him enough time to portal the heck out of here before this other him took what was rightfully his.
Except Tails would fix it. Nine could see it in his eyes as he took the malfunction in stride and picked up his screwdriver, ready to try again. And he'd try again. And again.
Until he succeeded.
What would stop him from tracking down the prism shard in the city and building his own ship to traverse the shatterspaces? He already knew it was there, after all. And the fact that Nine had found his fur there meant he'd been close to nabbing it once before already. Whatever stopped him then wouldn't stop him again. Not if he was anything like Nine.
Which he wasn't, necessarily, but he was the closest he'd seen.
If this was the Tails Sonic spoke so highly of, then he'd be a formidable opponent at the very least. Nine didn't think he'd let him just keep his shard. And if he didn't let him keep that…
Before Nine realized what he was doing, he aimed his beam gun at his copy's head. It was the only thing he could do, his brain insisted. Survival of the fittest.
Tails was soft. He was smart, but he wasn't aware of his surroundings. He was… secure.
He wouldn't survive.
Nine steadied his arm. He'd make it quick.
Someone was watching him.
Nine froze, hackles raised as he felt eyes on him, piercing his concentration. He held his breath, survival instincts kicking in. Slowly, his gaze abandoned his target and shifted to his right.
Crouched in the tree next to his, Sharp stared at him silently, his expression deceptively blank. There was an alertness in his green eyes that Nine felt in his core. The hedgehog's hands were empty, but from what he'd seen of Sonic, Nine didn't doubt this version would be armed and already striking him down before his finger even brushed the trigger of his beam gun. This version knew it, too. He knew Nine knew that he'd be dead in less than a second.
They stared at one another, seconds passing in slow motion. If the hedgehog wanted to kill him, he'd have done it already. He was giving him a chance to stand down. To run with his tails between his legs like a coward.
But Nine wasn't an idiot. He wasn't going to open the door to a losing battle. He could barely hold his own against a Sonic that wasn't trying to hurt him. This one wouldn't hesitate.
Nine lowered his gun, movements slow and steady as he clipped it back into his own holster. The hedgehog's expression didn't waver. Funny, Nine mused in a half-delirious state as he backed away from his vantage point with both hands up and palms facing out, he hadn't thought this Sonic cared much for the fox down below.
Maybe it was inevitable that any version of Sonic would find something to like about a version of Nine. And vice versa.
Nine attempted to get his metal tails to ease him out of the trees before the hedgehog in front of him changed his mind about maiming him. Nine didn't doubt that he would.
"Sharp?" Tails's voice split the silence between the two of them, a note of concern barely masked as the fox below them realized he was alone. "Sharp, are you still there?"
The hedgehog's brow finally furrowed, annoyance rippling across his features as he maintained his eye contact with Nine. "You're not gonna do something you'll regret, are you?" he asked in a low voice.
Nine shook his head. "I'm leaving."
With a nod, Sharp's eyes flicked down to the fox he'd left on the ground, then back to the fox in the tree. Then Nine was alone again. His ears twitched as Tails called out once more before a lazy drawl answered him.
"I'm right here, you can cool your jets."
Nine could see the way the tension fled Tails's shoulders in an instant, even if it had been unintentional. "It's not my fault you're so quiet. I didn't hear you at all."
"That's the point, genius."
"Did you actually get your nap in? You sound even crankier now."
"Maybe because someone's Powder Puff Palooza woke me up with its stupid beeping."
"Prower Paradox Prism Position Predictor."
Nine quietly crept away, leaving the two of them to their bickering as he made his way back to his ship. Once he was safely ensconced within it, hidden amongst the shatterspaces, did he let himself collapse in on himself. Like a black hole opened in his chest, the edges of him frayed as he clutched at his head with both hands. He curled up in his chair, all nine tails winding around him while he gasped for breath. His heartbeat racing. Blood pounding in his ears.
That was too close.
He couldn't let them get that close again.
Nine tried to slow his breathing, swallowing gulps of air that wracked his chest until he was calm enough to set a new course.
He had to find Sonic. He had to find him first.
If he could get him somewhere safe, somewhere that could be fortified with his own defenses and weapons systems, then things could still work out. There was a shatterspace he'd found that had shown no sign of sentient life. He'd bypassed it once, not thinking anything of it, but perhaps it could make for a good base of operations.
A fresh start.
Nine made a note of the coordinates to the shatterspace where Tails was and burned it into his memory.
Sonic never had to know.