Marcus needed a vacation.
Not a real vacation, obviously. Real vacations involved beaches and cocktails and the absence of existential dread, and Marcus hadn't experienced any of those things since before his death by dairy product. What Marcus needed was a break. A day off. A single twenty-four-hour period in which he did not accidentally quote a video game villain, convince someone he was an omniscient mastermind, or destroy public property with a reality-warping gemstone that had the emotional maturity of a golden retriever and the destructive capacity of a nuclear weapon.
He had been a Freedom Fighter for one week.
In that week, he had:
Accidentally saved Sally from SWATbots by tripping over a root.Quoted Vergil from Devil May Cry at Sonic the Hedgehog.Fought Sonic over a Chaos Emerald he was trying to return.Joined the Freedom Fighters by being so condescending that everyone thought he was confident.Pulled an Aizen during a strategy meeting and convinced Sally he was secretly orchestrating everything.Soloed an army of SWATbots while walking slowly and quoting Sephiroth.Made Robotnik genuinely afraid of him for the first time in the dictator's career.Accidentally started what he was now privately calling "Sally's Beautiful Mind Board" — a sprawling conspiracy web that grew larger and more elaborate every single day.
He needed to get out of Knothole.
Not permanently. Just for a day. Maybe two. Somewhere far away from the Freedom Fighters, far away from Sally's increasingly intense analytical stare, far away from Sonic's friendly attempts to hang out that inevitably resulted in Marcus delivering philosophy lectures about the nature of power while internally begging for the sweet release of unconsciousness.
Somewhere where nobody knew him. Somewhere where he could just... exist. Quietly. Without drama.
He considered his options.
The comic book world of Archie Sonic was big. Really big. Much bigger than the games had ever depicted. There were entire continents, civilizations, cultures, and ecosystems spread across Mobius, and Marcus — having read a significant portion of the comics before his untimely cheese-related demise — knew about most of them.
He could go to the Dragon Kingdom. Too many ninjas. Ninjas would inevitably lead to combat, which would lead to edgy quotes, which would lead to someone thinking he was a prophesied warrior of shadow or something equally ridiculous.
He could visit the Acorn Kingdom proper. Too political. He'd end up monologuing about the nature of power in front of a royal court and accidentally starting a constitutional crisis.
He could try Angel Island. Too dangerous. The Master Emerald and the Phantom Ruby in close proximity sounded like the setup for either a catastrophic energy feedback loop or, worse, a dramatic confrontation with Knuckles that would end with Marcus accidentally becoming the echidnas' new spiritual leader.
And then it hit him.
Downunda.
The Archie Sonic equivalent of Australia. A continent on the other side of the world, separated from the main conflicts by an entire ocean, populated by Mobians based on Australian wildlife, and — at this point in the comic's timeline — relatively disconnected from the Freedom Fighters' storyline.
It was perfect. Nobody there would know who he was. Nobody there would have preconceptions about him. He could walk around, see the sights, maybe find a nice cliff to sit on and contemplate his situation without his mouth ruining everything.
How much trouble could he possibly get into in Downunda?
The answer, as Marcus would discover approximately four hours later, was: so much trouble. An almost impressive amount of trouble. A quantity of trouble that would have been comical if he weren't the one experiencing it.
But he didn't know that yet. At six in the morning, standing in his tree hollow with the Phantom Ruby in one hand and a stolen map of Mobius in the other, he felt something he hadn't felt since arriving in this universe: optimism.
It was a fragile, tentative optimism, like a baby deer taking its first steps on ice, but it was there, and he clung to it with the desperate grip of a man who had nothing else.
He left a note for the Freedom Fighters. Or rather, he tried to leave a note. He picked up a pen, put it to paper, and attempted to write "Gone exploring. Be back soon. — Infinite."
What his hand wrote was:
"I walk the paths that others fear to tread, seeking truths that hide in the spaces between worlds. Do not search for me. When the time is right, I will return. Until then, let the silence of my absence speak louder than any words I could leave behind. — The Void Remembers."
He stared at the note.
He had signed it "The Void Remembers."
His hand had signed a casual "be back soon" note with "The Void Remembers" as if that were a normal signature that a normal person would use on a note that was essentially the equivalent of texting your roommates "going out, brb."
He crumpled the note, threw it away, and tried again.
"The horizon calls to those who cannot rest. I answer not out of obligation, but because stillness is the death of purpose. My journey takes me beyond the borders of your knowing. Guard the flame of resistance in my absence — not because I command it, but because the flame itself demands to burn. — Infinite, Walker of the Liminal Dark."
"WALKER OF THE LIMINAL DARK?!" Marcus hissed through clenched teeth. "WHAT IS THE LIMINAL DARK?! THAT'S NOT A THING! I MADE THAT UP! MY HAND MADE THAT UP! THE LIMINAL DARK IS NOT A REAL PLACE AND I AM NOT WALKING THERE!"
He crumpled that note too.
Third attempt.
"Out. Back later. Don't worry."
He stared at it. It was normal. It was beautifully, perfectly normal. Three short sentences. No philosophy. No metaphors. No references to voids or abysses or liminal anything. Just a normal note from a normal person.
His hand twitched.
"No," Marcus said firmly. "We're done. That's the note. We're leaving that note."
His hand twitched again, moving toward the pen.
"NO."
He slapped his own hand with his other hand, grabbed the note, pinned it to his hammock with a claw, and fled the tree hollow before his treacherous appendages could add a postscript about the eternal darkness that dwells within the heart of all things.
Getting to Downunda was easier than expected.
The Phantom Ruby, for all its dramatic tendencies, was genuinely useful when it came to transportation. Marcus discovered that by focusing on a destination — really concentrating, pushing past the Ruby's instinct to make everything as theatrical as possible — he could create a localized spatial warp that functioned as a teleportation portal.
The portal, naturally, looked like a tear in the fabric of reality itself — a jagged rift of crimson energy that crackled and hummed and looked like something a final boss would step through during a cutscene. It was completely unnecessary. A normal, circular portal would have worked fine. But the Phantom Ruby didn't do "normal" and it certainly didn't do "circular." It did "dramatic interdimensional wound in the flesh of spacetime" and that was the only option on the menu.
Marcus stepped through the rift and emerged on the other side of the world.
Downunda was gorgeous.
That was his first thought, and it caught him off guard. He'd been so consumed by his edginess problem and Sally's conspiracy board and the general existential horror of being a reincarnated mozzarella stick casualty that he'd forgotten to actually appreciate the world he was living in. But Downunda demanded appreciation. It insisted upon it.
The landscape was vast and open in a way that his old world rarely managed. Red earth stretched to the horizon in every direction, dotted with scrubby vegetation and the occasional massive rock formation that jutted up from the ground like the bones of ancient giants. The sky was enormous — a dome of blue so expansive that it made the sky above Knothole look like a ceiling by comparison. The air was dry and warm and smelled like dust and eucalyptus and something else, something he couldn't identify but which his new jackal senses found deeply appealing.
It was beautiful.
And for one perfect, crystalline moment, Marcus just stood there and breathed.
No edgy quotes. No dramatic poses. No involuntary Sephiroth monologues. Just a guy — a weird, furry, interdimensional guy, but still a guy — standing in a beautiful place and appreciating it.
The moment lasted about forty-five seconds.
Then he heard the explosion.
It came from the east — a deep, resonant BOOM that rolled across the flatlands like thunder, followed by a plume of smoke rising from behind a ridge of red rock. It was the kind of explosion that said "something is happening and it is not good" in the universal language of things blowing up.
Marcus closed his eyes.
Don't investigate, he told himself. You're on vacation. Vacations don't involve explosions. Walk the other way. Find a nice rock. Sit on the rock. Contemplate existence. Do NOT investigate the explosion.
A second explosion. Bigger this time. The ground trembled slightly beneath his feet.
Do NOT.
A third explosion, accompanied by what sounded distinctly like someone screaming.
Oh for the love of—
He was already running. His body moved before his brain could finish its objection, his legs carrying him across the red earth with a speed and agility that he still wasn't used to. He crested the ridge in seconds and looked down into the valley below.
What he saw was chaos.
Pure, unbridled, extremely Australian chaos.
There was a settlement in the valley — a small outpost of buildings constructed from red clay and corrugated metal, clearly a Downunda community of some kind. And it was under attack.
The attackers were... memorable.
There was a large, muscular platypus with a bad attitude and worse fashion sense, throwing punches that cratered the ground where they landed. There was a weasel — or was it a ferret? Some kind of skinny, mean-looking mammal — darting between buildings with a speed that wasn't Sonic-level but was definitely above average, snatching anything valuable he could get his claws on. And there were two others — a small green bird (duck?) carrying what appeared to be a comically large number of bombs, and a large, round, dark-colored figure that Marcus's comic knowledge identified as literally being a living bomb.
Marcus's memory kicked in.
That was Sleuth Dawg — no wait. The platypus was... Platypus. No. Duck Bill Platypus? No that wasn't right either. Wait. The weasel was—
Snively.
No, that wasn't Snively. Snively was Robotnik's nephew. This was—
His brain finally caught up.
That was Smiley. No. Wait.
He squinted.
Actually no. The weasel-like one was Nack the Weasel. Also known as Fang the Sniper in some continuities. Purple, hat-wearing, treasure-hunting, generally unpleasant bounty hunter Nack the Weasel. Marcus recognized the hat. Nobody else on Mobius had a hat that stupid.
And the bird with the bombs was Bean the Dynamite.
And the big round one was Bark the Polar Bear.
Wait no. Bark was a polar bear and he was big and yellow and quiet. The round dark one was... actually, looking more carefully, Marcus realized it was Bomb. Literally a character named Bomb who was a bomb.
And the other one, the small green one with the explosives, WAS Bean the Dynamite.
Nack, Bean, and Bomb. Three characters from the extended Sonic universe who, in the Archie comics, operated as mercenaries and general troublemakers. Not exactly A-list villains, but dangerous enough to terrorize a small outpost, especially one that didn't have a blue hedgehog on speed dial.
They were ransacking the settlement with enthusiastic thoroughness. Nack was directing operations from atop a building, his oversized pistol holstered at his hip, barking orders at Bean, who was responding to every command by throwing a bomb at whatever Nack was pointing at, regardless of whether that was an actual target or just something Nack was gesturing toward for emphasis.
Bomb was rolling through the streets like a bowling ball, knocking over structures and supply crates with equal disregard. The settlement's inhabitants — a mix of kangaroos, koalas, and other Australian-inspired Mobians — were fleeing in every direction.
Marcus watched this from the ridge and had a conversation with himself.
This is not my problem.
These are not my people.
I am on vacation.
I came here specifically to NOT get involved in things.
If I go down there, I will inevitably quote an anime villain, accidentally do something dramatic, and draw attention to myself in a continent where nobody knows me, thereby spreading my reputation of cosmic edginess to an entirely new hemisphere.
A building collapsed. A family of koalas scrambled out of the rubble, the parents shielding their children with their bodies.
God dammit.
Marcus descended the ridge.
He didn't run this time. Running would have been the practical choice, the efficient choice, the choice of a person who wanted to help as quickly as possible.
His body chose to walk.
The slow walk. The Sephiroth walk. The "I have entered the scene and the scene should be grateful" walk that covered ground at approximately one-third the speed of a normal gait but generated approximately ten times the dramatic tension.
His coat billowed behind him, catching a breeze that did not exist in the Australian-equivalent outback, where the air was as still as a painting.
Nack noticed him first.
The weasel was perched on a rooftop, surveying his operation with the self-satisfied smirk of a small-time crook who thought he was a big-time player. His eyes swept across the chaos below, checking progress, and then swept up to the ridge, and then swept back down, and then snapped back up as his brain registered what his eyes had just seen.
A black-furred jackal in silver armor and a flowing coat, walking down the ridge with the measured pace of an approaching apocalypse, a crimson gem pulsing in his hand like a heartbeat.
Nack's smirk faltered.
"Oi," he called out to Bean, who was in the process of juggling four lit bombs while standing on top of an overturned cart. "Who's the edgelord?"
Bean looked up, saw Infinite, and his eyes went wide with the manic glee of someone whose primary personality trait was "explosions." "Oooh! New friend? NEW FRIEND! He looks EXPLODABLE!"
"He looks like trouble," Nack muttered, reaching for his pistol. "Hey! You! Dark and broody! This is a private operation! Clear off before—"
Marcus reached the bottom of the ridge and stepped into the settlement's main street. The dust settled around his feet in little swirls that had no business being as cinematic as they were. The Phantom Ruby pulsed. His mask gleamed.
He tried to say "leave these people alone" or "stop what you're doing" or "hey, knock it off, that's not cool."
"You descend upon the innocent like locusts upon a dying field, stripping it of what little life remains. You take because you can. You destroy because you lack the vision to create. You are the entropy that gnaws at the edges of the world..."
Nack blinked.
"...and I am the hand that sweeps entropy aside."
I CALLED MYSELF THE HAND THAT SWEEPS ENTROPY ASIDE. ENTROPY IS A THERMODYNAMIC CONCEPT. YOU CAN'T SWEEP IT ASIDE. IT'S NOT A PHYSICAL OBJECT. IT'S THE SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS. I JUST DECLARED WAR ON THE SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS IN FRONT OF A WEASEL AND A BIRD WITH BOMBS.
Nack's response was immediate and practical. He drew his pistol and fired.
The shot was fast and accurate — Nack was a professional, whatever else he was, and his marksmanship was genuinely impressive. The energy bolt screamed toward Infinite's head at a velocity that should have been impossible to react to.
The Phantom Ruby disagreed with the bolt's trajectory.
The shot hit a wall of warped space about six inches from Marcus's face, curved upward in a graceful arc, sailed over his head, and disappeared into the sky where it would presumably trouble some very confused birds.
Marcus hadn't moved. Hadn't flinched. Hadn't so much as blinked.
This wasn't bravery. This was the Phantom Ruby acting on its own, protecting its host with the overenthusiastic efficiency of a security system set to maximum sensitivity. Marcus's internal state during the deflection had been pure, uncut terror. His external state, thanks to the mask and the Ruby's intervention, had been absolute, unshakeable calm.
The difference between those two states was the story of his entire life on Mobius.
"What the—" Nack fired again. And again. And again. Six shots in rapid succession, each one aimed at a different part of Infinite's body, each one deflected with the same casual, effortless impossibility. The bolts curved around him like water around a stone, some veering left, some veering right, one doing a complete loop-de-loop before fizzling out in midair.
Marcus still hadn't moved.
"Are you quite finished?" his mouth asked, with the weary patience of a teacher waiting for a student to stop acting up. "Or shall I stand here until your weapon runs dry and your arm grows tired, and we can address this like entities of consequence rather than a barking dog and the moon it cannot reach?"
I JUST CALLED HIM A BARKING DOG. I COMPARED A PROFESSIONAL BOUNTY HUNTER TO A DOG BARKING AT THE MOON. IN FRONT OF HIS CREW. HE'S GOING TO TAKE THAT PERSONALLY. PEOPLE ALWAYS TAKE BEING COMPARED TO DOGS PERSONALLY.
Nack took it personally.
"BEAN!" the weasel roared. "BLOW HIM UP!"
Bean's face split into a grin that contained far too many teeth and not nearly enough sanity. "WITH PLEASURE!"
The green bird produced bombs from somewhere — Marcus didn't see where, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know, because Bean seemed to have an infinite supply stored in what could only be described as hammerspace or cartoon physics or possibly a pocket dimension made entirely of explosives.
Bean threw.
Not one bomb. Not two bombs. Bean threw approximately fifteen bombs simultaneously, launching them in a spread pattern that covered the entire street, creating an overlapping kill zone that left no room to dodge, no room to hide, and no room to do anything except stand there and accept that you were about to become intimately familiar with the concept of "blast radius."
The Phantom Ruby surged.
Marcus raised one hand — his body did it, not him, moving with that infuriating grace that made everything look intentional — and the bombs froze in midair.
All fifteen of them.
Hanging in space like the world's most dangerous Christmas ornaments, fuses sputtering, casings gleaming, each one suspended in its own little bubble of warped reality where the concept of "forward momentum" had been temporarily put on hold.
Bean stared at his frozen bombs. His eye twitched.
"That's... that's not... they're supposed to GO BOOM," Bean said, his voice carrying the genuine distress of an artist whose medium had just betrayed him. "WHY AREN'T THEY GOING BOOM?!"
"Because I have decided they will not," Infinite said.
And then — because the Phantom Ruby was the most extra magical artifact in existence and subtlety was a word it had never learned — the bombs began to orbit Marcus. Slowly, gracefully, like planets around a sun, the fifteen explosive devices traced lazy circles around Infinite's body, their fuses extinguished by fields of warped reality, their destructive potential neutralized and repurposed as what amounted to a very dangerous decorative display.
Marcus stood in the center of his involuntary bomb-orbit and thought, very clearly: This is the dumbest thing that has ever happened to me, and I once choked to death on a mozzarella stick.
Bean looked at his bombs orbiting the stranger. He looked at Nack. He looked back at the bombs.
"I want them back," Bean said, in the small, plaintive voice of a child whose toys had been confiscated.
"Then come and claim them," Infinite said.
THAT'S ANOTHER VERGIL LINE. OR CLOSE ENOUGH TO ONE. MY MOUTH IS A VERGIL JUKEBOX. INSERT DRAMATIC SITUATION, RECEIVE VERGIL QUOTE. NO REFUNDS.
Bean, to his credit (or perhaps discredit, since "credit" implied wisdom and Bean had none), actually tried.
The green bird launched himself at Infinite with a shriek that was part battle cry and part existential frustration, pulling more bombs from his infinite supply and throwing them mid-leap. The bombs detonated in the air around Marcus — or tried to. The Phantom Ruby intercepted each explosion, containing the blasts in spheres of warped space that compressed the fire and force into tiny, harmless points of light that winked out like dying stars.
Bean landed in front of Infinite, threw a punch that had all of his small body's weight behind it, and connected with — nothing. Marcus had sidestepped, his body moving with that fluid, effortless grace that he hadn't earned and didn't deserve, and Bean's fist whistled through empty air.
"Your passion is admirable," Infinite said, catching Bean's arm as the bird stumbled forward. "But passion without precision is merely noise."
He released Bean with a gentle push that sent the bird stumbling backward, off-balance but unharmed. Marcus didn't want to hurt Bean. Bean was annoying and dangerous and clearly several sandwiches short of a picnic, but he wasn't evil — just chaotic and easily led by whoever was paying him.
Bean stumbled back, regained his footing, and stared at Infinite with an expression that slowly shifted from frustration to something else entirely.
Awe.
"You... you stopped my bombs," Bean whispered. "Nobody stops my bombs. NOBODY. Not even that blue guy stops them. He dodges them. He runs away from them. But you just... STOPPED them. Like they were NOTHING."
"To one who commands the fabric of reality itself... they ARE nothing."
OKAY THAT ONE WASN'T EVEN THAT BAD. IT WAS STILL CRINGE BUT IT WAS CONTEXTUALLY APPROPRIATE CRINGE. I'LL TAKE IT.
"I LOVE YOU," Bean declared with the absolute conviction of someone who had just found religion, and attempted to hug Infinite's leg.
Marcus sidestepped again. Bean hugged air.
"Enough of this rubbish!" Nack snarled, holstering his pistol and dropping from the rooftop. He landed in the street with a thud, drawing himself up to his full height — which wasn't particularly impressive, but his attitude compensated for what his stature lacked. "I don't know who you are, mate, and I don't care. This is OUR job, OUR payday, and YOU—"
He jabbed a finger at Infinite.
"—are going to step aside, or I'm going to make you step aside."
Marcus looked at Nack. Nack looked at Marcus. There was a moment of silence — the kind of silence that existed in westerns right before the showdown, the empty seconds between the clock striking noon and the first shot being fired.
"You speak of making me do things as though the concept applies to me," Infinite said, and his voice dropped into that low, resonant register that happened when the Phantom Ruby was feeding dramatic energy into his vocal cords. "Allow me to disabuse you of that notion."
He didn't attack. He didn't raise a hand. He didn't summon the Phantom Ruby's power.
He just looked at Nack.
And the Phantom Ruby, responding to some unconscious cue that Marcus wasn't even aware he was giving, projected a micro-field of altered perception directly into Nack's visual cortex.
For exactly one second — one single, solitary second — Nack saw what the Phantom Ruby wanted him to see.
He saw Infinite as the Ruby perceived him. Not as a confused man in a jackal's body, not as a mozzarella stick casualty playing dress-up, but as the entity the Ruby believed its host to be: a being of absolute, unlimited power, standing at the intersection of all realities, surrounded by the ghosts of every universe he had ever unmade, his eyes burning with the light of collapsed stars, his shadow stretching across the landscape like a death sentence written in ink made from the void itself.
The vision lasted one second.
Nack wet himself.
It was subtle — Marcus barely noticed, and nobody else was close enough to see — but the weasel's confident stance crumbled like a sandcastle in a tsunami. His face went white beneath his fur. His hands trembled. His gun hand dropped to his side, fingers too shaky to grip the weapon.
"W-what ARE you?!" Nack stammered.
Marcus wanted to say "I'm just a guy, please don't be scared, I'm sorry the Phantom Ruby did that, it acts on its own sometimes." He really, truly, desperately wanted to say that.
"I am the answer to the question you should never have asked."
OH COME ON. THAT DOESN'T EVEN MEAN ANYTHING. HE ASKED "WHAT ARE YOU" AND I RESPONDED WITH A TAUTOLOGY. "THE ANSWER TO THE QUESTION" IS NOT AN ANSWER. IT'S A DEFLECTION WRAPPED IN MYSTICISM AND SERVED ON A BED OF PRETENTIOUS NONSENSE.
But it worked. It worked because Nack was still reeling from the Phantom Ruby's one-second vision of cosmic horror, and at that point, Marcus could have said "I'm a butterfly made of cheese" and Nack would have believed it.
"We're leaving," Nack said, his voice cracking. "We're leaving RIGHT NOW. Bean! Bomb! We're DONE here!"
"But the PAYDAY—" Bean started.
"FORGET THE PAYDAY! I'M NOT DYING IN AUSTRALIA FOR SOME TRINKETS!"
He called it Australia. Even in this universe, everyone knows it's basically Australia.
Bean looked at Infinite. Then at Nack. Then at the fifteen bombs still orbiting Infinite's body in their serene, peaceful loops.
"Can I have my bombs back?" Bean asked.
Marcus looked at the orbiting bombs. The Phantom Ruby relinquished its hold, and all fifteen devices dropped to the ground in a neat pile at Bean's feet. None of them detonated, because the Ruby had permanently neutralized their explosives — they were now just casings. Decorative. Inert.
Bean picked one up, shook it, listened for the telltale rattle of an active fuse, heard nothing, and his face fell with the devastating disappointment of a child who had just been told Christmas was cancelled.
"You killed them," Bean whispered. "You killed my babies."
"Death is merely transformation, little bird. Your weapons have not been destroyed — they have been... transcended. They exist now in a state beyond destruction, beyond purpose, beyond the crude cycle of detonation and silence. They have achieved what all things aspire to achieve."
Bean stared at him. "What's that?"
"Peace."
I JUST GAVE A PHILOSOPHICAL EULOGY FOR SOME BOMBS. I TOLD A BIRD THAT HIS EXPLOSIVES HAVE ACHIEVED INNER PEACE. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME. WHAT IS COSMICALLY, FUNDAMENTALLY, IRREPARABLY WRONG WITH ME.
Bean looked at his inert bomb. Looked at Infinite. Looked at the bomb again.
"That's... that's the most beautiful thing anyone's ever said about my bombs," Bean said, and he was crying. Actual tears. Rolling down his feathered face. He was emotionally moved by Infinite's accidentally profound eulogy for his weapons of mass destruction.
"BEAN! NOW!" Nack screamed from a safe distance, already halfway to the edge of the settlement.
Bean tucked the inert bomb under his arm like a teddy bear, sniffled loudly, and ran after Nack. Bomb — who had been sitting quietly in a crater for the duration of the confrontation, apparently waiting to see how things played out before committing to any particular course of action — rolled after them both.
Marcus watched them go.
The settlement's inhabitants emerged slowly from their hiding places, blinking in the sudden quiet, staring at the black-furred stranger who had just single-handedly driven off the attackers without throwing a single punch.
A large kangaroo — the settlement's apparent leader — approached cautiously.
"Crikey," the kangaroo said, because of course he said "crikey," because this was Downunda and everyone talked like a Crocodile Hunter impression done by someone who had never actually met an Australian. "That was... somethin' else, mate. Who ARE you?"
Marcus took a deep breath. He could feel the words building. He tried to redirect them. He thought of the most normal, most boring, most un-edgy response possible. He visualized the words "just a traveler passing through" forming in his mouth, rehearsed them mentally, felt them sitting on his tongue like ammunition in a chamber—
"I am no one. I am nothing. I am the wind that passes through the outback and is forgotten by morning. Do not remember me. Do not seek me. Do not speak my name, for names are anchors, and I am meant to drift."
The kangaroo stared at him for a long moment.
"Right," the kangaroo said slowly. "Well, Mr. No One, can I at least get you a drink? We've got some bonzer lemonade."
"...Liquid sustenance would be... acceptable."
LIQUID SUSTENANCE. I CALLED LEMONADE "LIQUID SUSTENANCE." THIS IS ROCK BOTTOM. THIS IS BELOW ROCK BOTTOM. I HAVE DUG THROUGH ROCK BOTTOM AND DISCOVERED A NEW BOTTOM THAT IS SOMEHOW WORSE AND I AM FALLING THROUGH THAT ONE TOO.
Marcus spent the next two hours in the Downunda settlement, drinking lemonade (which was excellent, not that he could say so without turning the compliment into a philosophical treatise on the ephemeral nature of refreshment), and trying very hard to be invisible.
He failed at being invisible.
The settlement's inhabitants were fascinated by him. Children followed him at a safe distance, whispering to each other. Adults kept finding excuses to walk past wherever he was sitting. An elderly wombat asked him for life advice and he accidentally delivered a seventeen-minute monologue about "the courage to exist in a world that did not ask for your existence" that left the wombat in tears and three bystanders reconsidering their career choices.
By the time he decided to leave, he had accidentally become a folk hero.
Vacation: ruined. Anonymity: destroyed. Edgy reputation: now international. Fantastic.
He opened a Phantom Ruby portal — the dramatic rift in spacetime kind, because the Ruby didn't offer the normal kind — and stepped through before anyone could ask him for another speech about the nature of existence.
He emerged back in Knothole just as the sun was setting, painting the forest in shades of gold and amber that were too perfect to be real, because nothing in this universe was real, because it was a comic book, because Marcus's life was a joke being told by a comedian with questionable taste.
And he walked directly into Geoffrey St. John.
Literally. Physically. He stepped out of the portal and collided with the skunk, who had apparently been walking through this exact patch of forest at this exact moment because the universe had decided that Marcus had not suffered enough today.
Geoffrey St. John.
Marcus knew this character. Every Sonic fan knew this character, and most of them had opinions about him that could not be expressed in polite company.
Geoffrey was a skunk. A military skunk. A skunk who styled himself as a soldier and a spy and a loyal servant of the Acorn Kingdom, complete with the attitude of someone who believed himself to be the most competent person in any room he entered. He was arrogant, confrontational, and had a habit of butting heads with Sonic at every opportunity.
He was also, as Marcus knew from having read the comics, secretly working with Ixis Naugus.
Ixis Naugus. The crystalline sorcerer. The wizard imprisoned in the Zone of Silence. The manipulator who had spent years pulling Geoffrey's strings, grooming the skunk as his agent within the kingdom's power structure.
Geoffrey didn't know he was being manipulated — or maybe he did and had rationalized it. The comics had been somewhat ambiguous on that point. But the fact remained: Geoffrey St. John, loyal soldier, patriotic defender of the crown, was compromised. He was a mole. A puppet. A tool of one of the most dangerous villains in the Archie Sonic canon.
And Marcus had just body-checked him in the middle of the forest.
"Watch where you're GOING!" Geoffrey snapped, stumbling backward and immediately dropping into a defensive stance, one hand going to the crossbow holstered at his hip. His eyes swept over Infinite — the mask, the armor, the coat (billowing), the Phantom Ruby (pulsing) — and his expression shifted from anger to suspicion to aggressive hostility in about half a second.
"Who the hell are you?" Geoffrey demanded. "This is restricted territory. Knothole Village is—"
"He's with us, Geoffrey."
Sally's voice came from behind Marcus. He turned — his body turned, pivoting smoothly on one heel like a dancer or a villain in a cutscene — and saw Sally approaching through the trees, NICOLE in hand, her expression carrying that particular combination of analytical intensity and carefully controlled suspicion that had become her default look whenever Infinite was involved.
And tucked under her arm, Marcus noticed with a sinking feeling, was her notebook.
"With you?" Geoffrey repeated, his tone making it very clear what he thought about that. His eyes hadn't left Infinite. "Since when do the Freedom Fighters recruit... whatever this is?"
"Whatever this is," Infinite repeated, and his voice turned the phrase into something that sounded like a veiled threat even though it was literally just Geoffrey's own words reflected back at him. "An interesting way to address someone who could unmake you with a thought, skunk."
I DID NOT MEAN TO THREATEN HIM. I WAS GOING TO SAY "I'M INFINITE, NICE TO MEET YOU." INSTEAD I TOLD HIM I COULD UNMAKE HIM WITH A THOUGHT. WHICH IS TECHNICALLY TRUE BECAUSE THE PHANTOM RUBY PROBABLY COULD DO THAT BUT IT'S NOT SOMETHING YOU SAY TO SOMEONE IN A FIRST MEETING. OR EVER. YOU NEVER SAY THAT.
Geoffrey's hand tightened on his crossbow. His jaw clenched. Marcus could see the military training warring with the common sense — Geoffrey wanted to respond to the threat, wanted to assert dominance, wanted to prove that he wasn't intimidated.
But something in Infinite's voice — or more accurately, something in the Phantom Ruby's ambient energy field, which had a tendency to make the air feel slightly wrong around Marcus, like reality itself was holding its breath — gave him pause.
"Is that a threat?" Geoffrey asked, his voice low and controlled.
Marcus wanted to say no. He wanted to say "I'm sorry, I have a condition, I don't actually talk like this, please don't take anything I say seriously."
"I don't make threats, soldier. Threats imply uncertainty. I make statements of fact, and the universe arranges itself accordingly."
THE UNIVERSE DOES NOT ARRANGE ITSELF ACCORDING TO MY STATEMENTS. THE UNIVERSE IS 13.8 BILLION YEARS OLD AND DOES NOT CARE ABOUT MY OPINIONS. I AM NOT COSMICALLY IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO REARRANGE UNIVERSAL CONSTANTS THROUGH VERBAL DECLARATIONS.
Geoffrey's eye twitched. "Sally, I don't know where you found this guy, but—"
"He's proven himself, Geoffrey," Sally said, and there was something in her voice — a weight, a significance — that made Geoffrey look at her sharply. "Multiple times. He's a valuable member of the team."
"Valuable?" Geoffrey scoffed. "He sounds like a fortune cookie written by a lunatic."
HE'S RIGHT. HE'S ABSOLUTELY RIGHT. THAT IS THE MOST ACCURATE DESCRIPTION OF MY SPEECH PATTERNS THAT ANYONE HAS EVER MADE. GEOFFREY ST. JOHN, SECRET TRAITOR AND GENERAL JERK, HAS JUST DESCRIBED ME MORE ACCURATELY THAN I HAVE EVER BEEN ABLE TO DESCRIBE MYSELF.
"Fortune cookies contain wisdom that the arrogant dismiss and the wise internalize," Infinite said, because his mouth had apparently decided that the best response to being compared to a fortune cookie was to DEFEND fortune cookies with philosophical gravitas. "Perhaps you should pay closer attention to the messages the universe places in your path, St. John. You might discover that the truths you need most are the ones you're most eager to ignore."
He said this casually. Conversationally. The way someone might comment on the weather.
But the words landed like a cruise missile.
Marcus saw it happen. He saw Geoffrey's face change — a microexpression, lasting less than a second, a flash of something that looked very much like guilt crossed with fear crossed with the sudden, sickening realization that someone might know something they shouldn't.
Because "the truths you're most eager to ignore" — while intended by Marcus as generic edgy nonsense, the verbal equivalent of a motivational poster in a dentist's office — hit Geoffrey St. John in a very specific, very personal, very SECRET place.
The truth Geoffrey was most eager to ignore was that he was working with Ixis Naugus. That he had compromised his loyalty to the crown. That the patriotic soldier was serving a master who wanted to rule the kingdom through manipulation and dark magic.
And Infinite had just told him — in his mysterious, all-knowing, reality-warping way — to stop ignoring that truth.
To Geoffrey, this could only mean one thing.
Infinite knew.
Marcus saw the realization hit. He saw Geoffrey's eyes widen fractionally, saw his posture shift from confrontational to defensive, saw the blood drain from beneath his fur. It lasted less than two seconds, and then Geoffrey's training kicked in and his expression locked down into neutral, but the damage was done.
And Marcus, for his part, was completely oblivious to the impact of what he'd said.
He didn't notice Geoffrey's microexpression. He didn't notice the shift in posture. He didn't connect his generic edgy statement to Geoffrey's specific secret. He was too busy internally screaming about the fortune cookie comment to pay attention to the subtle interpersonal dynamics unfolding in front of him.
But Sally noticed.
Sally noticed EVERYTHING.
She had been watching Geoffrey's face when Infinite spoke, because Sally was always watching, always analyzing, always looking for the tells and the patterns and the hidden meanings. And she saw what Marcus missed — the flash of guilt, the moment of fear, the defensive lockdown.
She filed it away. She would process it later. She would add it to the board.
The board that was already too big for one wall.
"Well," Geoffrey said, his voice carefully controlled, "I'm sure you've all had a very productive day. If you'll excuse me, I have duties to attend to."
He turned and walked away. Briskly. Not running — running would have looked suspicious — but walking with the purposeful speed of someone who very much wanted to be somewhere else.
Marcus watched him go and felt a vague sense of unease that he couldn't quite place.
Something about that interaction felt... off. He seemed nervous at the end. Did I say something weird? Well, everything I say is weird, but weirder than usual? I don't think so. It was just standard edgy nonsense. Fortune cookies and truths. Nothing specific.
He shrugged internally and turned to Sally, who was writing in her notebook with the intensity of someone transcribing the Rosetta Stone.
"So," Sally said, not looking up from her writing, "how was your trip?"
Marcus blinked. "You know about my trip?"
"You left a note."
He winced. "What did it say?"
"It said you were 'walking the paths that others fear to tread, seeking truths that hide in the spaces between worlds.' It was signed 'The Void Remembers.'"
Oh no. Oh no. The first note. I threw away the first note. I definitely threw it away. I crumpled it up and threw it in the corner and wrote a new, normal note that said "Out. Back later. Don't worry." How did—
"There was also a second note that said 'Out, back later, don't worry,' but honestly, the first one felt more authentic."
SHE READ BOTH NOTES. SHE FOUND THE CRUMPLED NOTE IN THE CORNER AND SHE READ IT AND SHE DECIDED THAT THE UNHINGED EDGY ONE WAS THE "AUTHENTIC" ONE. BECAUSE OF COURSE SHE DID. BECAUSE IN SALLY'S MIND, THE REAL INFINITE IS THE EDGY ONE AND THE NORMAL ONE IS THE DISGUISE.
"The authentic and the performed are merely two faces of the same mask, princess. Both reveal. Both conceal. The question is not which is real, but which truth the observer is prepared to accept."
STOP TALKING. STOP TALKING ABOUT MASKS AND TRUTHS AND OBSERVERS. EVERY TIME I OPEN MY MOUTH I ADD ANOTHER LAYER TO SALLY'S CONSPIRACY THEORY. I AM FEEDING THE BEAST. I AM THE BEAST'S FAVORITE FOOD SOURCE AND I CANNOT STOP DELIVERING MYSELF TO ITS DOORSTEP.
Sally wrote something in her notebook.
"Interesting," she said.
That single word — "interesting" — contained more analytical energy than most people's entire vocabularies. It was an "interesting" that meant "I have catalogued this data point and cross-referenced it with forty-seven previous data points and the pattern is becoming clearer and I will not rest until I have decoded your entire existence."
Marcus excused himself — or rather, his body delivered a dramatic exit line about "the shadows calling to their keeper" which was even worse than just walking away without saying anything — and retreated to his tree hollow.
He lay in his hammock. He stared at the ceiling. The Phantom Ruby pulsed on his chest.
Through the wall of his tree, he could hear, very faintly, the sound of paper rustling and pen scratching from the direction of Sally's hut.
She was updating the board.
Marcus closed his eyes.
Okay. Let's take stock.
Day one: Saved Sally, joined Freedom Fighters, fought Sonic. Edgy reputation: established.
Day four: Strategy meeting Aizen incident. Sally becomes conspiracy theorist. Edgy reputation: legendary.
Day five: Destroyed Robotnik's SWATbot army while quoting Sephiroth. Terrified Robotnik himself. Edgy reputation: transcendent.
Day eight: Went to Downunda for a vacation. Fought Nack, Bean, and Bomb. Gave a eulogy for some bombs. Became a folk hero in Australia. Came back and accidentally implied to Geoffrey St. John that I know his biggest secret, which I DO know but didn't MEAN to reveal because I was just doing my usual edgy nonsense. Also fed Sally's conspiracy theory with approximately seventeen more data points.
And now Sally thinks I'm a mastermind, Geoffrey thinks I'm a threat to his cover, Robotnik thinks I'm an existential danger, Sonic thinks I'm "kinda cool," Tails thinks I'm the greatest person alive, Bean the Dynamite is apparently in love with me, and the population of Downunda probably thinks I'm some kind of wandering demigod.
I have been on Mobius for eight days.
This is going SO well.
He rolled over in his hammock and buried his face in his pillow.
Outside, the night was quiet.
His coat, draped over a branch by the entrance to his hollow, billowed gently in the nonexistent breeze.
And in her hut, Sally Acorn pinned a new string to her board — connecting "Infinite's comment about truths to Geoffrey" to a node labeled "GEOFFREY — HIDING SOMETHING?" — and sat back, staring at the growing web with the satisfied intensity of someone who was getting closer to the answer.
She was.
She just didn't know that the answer was "he choked on a mozzarella stick."
Far away, in a crystalline void between dimensions, Ixis Naugus sat in his prison and felt something he had not felt in a very long time.
Unease.
Something had shifted on Mobius. Something new. A power that didn't belong, wielded by a being that shouldn't exist, whispering truths that it shouldn't know.
The crystal walls of his prison flickered with images — fragmented, unclear, but enough. A black jackal. A crimson gem. A voice that spoke of inevitability.
Naugus narrowed his eyes.
"Interesting," he said.
It was a different "interesting" than Sally's. Sally's "interesting" was analytical, curious, searching. Naugus's "interesting" was predatory, calculating, hungry.
Two of the smartest minds on Mobius, both saying the same word, both meaning very different things, both focused on the same masked jackal who was currently lying face-down in a hammock trying to suffocate himself with a pillow because he had given a motivational speech to some explosives.
The Phantom Ruby pulsed in the dark.
Marcus groaned.
Somewhere, a coat billowed.
To be continued.