Fanfic / erutcarF

Thanks to Sonic’s reckless actions, the Paradox Prism has shattered. Thankfully, Shadow and Silver are able to make it in time to stop the crystal from breaking completely. Unfortunately, their attempts at fixing it have unforeseen consequences, pulling together timelines that had long since splintered apart. People from multiple continuities have met, but those whose identities straddle them find themselves with a bit of an identity crisis. None more than Sonic himself....

erutcarF is a massive Intra-Franchise Crossover that takes elements from every Sonic the Hedgehog continuity. It is written by Sora Neki and can be found here, here, and here

erutcarF contains examples of:

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Phage was designed by her Eggman to consume and grow. She attempts to consume Sage to fulfill that directive and is perfectly confident that by taking over all of Sage’s essential functions will be enough to prevent Eggman from retaliating. Sage manages to fight Phage off but not before the latter manages to grab the access codes from Sage.
• All for Nothing: Aleena breaks down and states how leaving her children had been all for nothing due to the new merged reality throwing the prophecy off course in front of Sonic's other parents.
• An Arm and a Leg: Julie-Su eventually gets the idea to disconnect her cybernetic arm in order to huck it at Master Zik. While he manages to block it, it gives Shade the opening to knock him out.
• Apocalyptic Log: The sidestory, Note from the Zone Cops is one from Zonic written right before he was Ret Goned by the Super Genesis Wave. It also serves as a confession to the Sonic Prime of his continuity, revealing that real purpose of the Zone Cops was solely to prevent the reconstruction of the Paradox and to ensure that No-Zone could survive if someone did manage to reconstruct it, with actions such as refusing to go after Robo-Robotnik/Eggman being part of that plan.
• Banana Peel: Simpson the Cat trips up Blaze with one. He manages to trip up Mephiles using the peel’s shadow.
• Beyond the Impossible: When post-SGW!Amy recognises Mina Mongoose (who only existed prior to said Super Genesis Wave), she looks like she's seen a ghost and can't understand how they can be here. It should literally be impossible for them to even exist, but the Paradox Prism is somehow making it happen.
• Big Bad Ensemble: So far, Dr. Eggman and Mephiles The Dark
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • So far Sonic’s pulled it off a few times. When Scrouge, Fiona, Surge, and Kit are attacking the group Nicky transforms into Boom!Sonic to fight them off. Later when Sonia and Manic start glitching out of existence, Underground!Sonic appears to help Silver stabilize them.
  • When giant Zavok is about to punch Rouge out from behind while she's too busy trying to save Julie-Su from flying into the depths of the Special Zone to dodge, Blaze, Marine, the Downunda Freedom Fighters, Captain Plunder's crew, and their pirate ship pop in and slam into the back of his head.
• The Chain of Command: As nearly all of Dr. Eggman's forces under his various multiversal counterparts are now working under him and together with each other, there's a bit of confusion on exactly where everyone is on the hierarchy, besides of course Eggman himself being the head honcho. It's implied Sage has the overall role of second-in-command and top aide, while his various scientists and closest assistants (Snively, Grimer, Phantom!Starline, and Agent Stone) are next, followed by his army commanders (the Grandmasters, Egg Bosses, etc.), and the other grunts and technical workers all above the common footsoldiers and badniks. A confused Cassia at one point even asks Clove what the difference is between an Egg Boss and a Grandmaster.
• Christmas Episode: The Christmas sidestory, which also serves as A Day in the Limelight episode showing us what various side characters from across the franchise are doing during the crisis.
• Clark Kenting: Despite the obvious similarities, Shadow is the only one who can see that Nicky is an alternate Sonic. It’s partly justified in that not even Nicky knows he’s Sonic (due to Sonic being his future self).
• Combination Attack: Rogue, Shade, and Julie-Su engage in one to depower giant Zavok, with Rogue throwing the two echidnas with Thunder Shoot, Shade stabbing his wrist with her Leech Blades and causing him to instinctively open his hand, and Julie-Su slamming into his open palm like a cybernetic missile and knocking the gray Chaos Emerald out of his grip.
• Composite Character: When Rouge finally makes her appearance, it's established by Word of God that her Prime!self is a combination of the games, the IDW comic, and (of course) Sonic Prime; as such, this is the only one to have a different outfit.
• Déjà Vu: Brenda has this sensation when she first makes eye-contact with Aleena across the street, as if she just saw a long-lost relative again, and it's enough to compel her to offer Aleena a chance to come into her and Paulie's house. Aleena implicitly having a similar sensation is why she accepts the offer. Something similar plays out when Paulie first meets Aleena as well, and then again when Bernadette and Jules show up. It's indicated this feeling is due to them all recognizing on some level they're various dimensional counterparts of Sonic's parents, though only Aleena herself realizes this in their debut chapter.
• Determinator: A trait which all versions of Amy share is that they never give up. Unfortunately, right when Amy herself is declaring this, she shifts into Manga Amy, the one version of herself who isn’t an Action Girl.
• Doppelgänger Gets Same Sentiment: Characters who have multiple alternate versions run into this quite a bit when they meet people from universes who know said alternates while the current persona in control has no clue what's going on. Julie-Su for example doesn't like Rouge for her pre-SGW self's Adaptational Villainy and finds herself confused and blindsided whenever Rouge does something nice. Thankfully, this lessens when Rouge shows actual concern for her safety and risks her own neck saving her life.
• The Dreaded: Mephiles the Dark is this to Blaze. When he returns, the normally confident cat is left terrified and immediately orders everyone with her to retreat. They quickly follow her orders when he starts trying to kill them all. To be more precise, it is due to Blaze having an instinct to get away from Mephiles on sight because she doesn't want to risk Solaris returning, as she has Iblis inside her.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Sage tends to invoke this reaction from the villains with not only Dr. Eggman openly seeing her as his daughter (much to the surprise of several of his subordinates like Grimer, Snively, and Agent Stone) but also multiple bots like Orbot and Cubot seeing her as their sister as well as Scratch, Grounder, Decoe, and Becoe seeing her as their cousin. When Sage is in danger during her cyber battle with Phage, the latter six jump in to help by tearing up multiple servers to the Eggnet in order to cripple Phage while leaving the ones Sage is on alone while shouting for Sage to hold on.
  • For Anti-Villain examples, Clove and Cassia clearly love each other despite being Egg Bosses and Beauregard Rabbot despite being a Grandmaster still loves his niece Bunnie and his subordinate-and-effectively-foster-daughter Matilda. It's even implied Beauregard and Clove form a Commonality Connection over their genuine love for their family members plus being Forced into Evil.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • While Surge hates Sonic for what happened to her and Kit, she at least acknowledges he’s an Accomplice by Inaction rather than being directly responsible for her suffering. When she learns Scourge is an Evil Doppelgänger of Sonic, she immediately switches her focus to him, as she recognizes him as the kind of person who would’ve deliberately allowed her to suffer.
  • After what happened the last time it got free, Eggman refuses to allow the resurrected Metal Virus to run free and immediately works to contain it as soon as it is reported to him.
• Evil Versus Evil:
  • Surge The Tenrec vs Scourge when the latter boasts about breaking out of being Anti-Sonic. Surge goes after him as the various Sonics are currently trapped inside Nicky and Scourge is everything she hates about Sonic multiplied by ten!
  • A four-way battle is currently underway in space according to one of the Oracle of Delphius' prophecies, with the combatants being the Black Arms, the Metarex, the Xorda and the Drakon.
• Fish out of Water: Tom Wachowski is thrown for a loop when elements from Game!Sonic’s world start manifesting in Green Hills, like the random springs and loops, Wispons, and Rings.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Marine winds up needing to punch Blaze in the face when she starts losing herself the more she was reawakening Iblis inside of herself.
  "Ya all good now, or do I need to clock ya again?" Marine asked, frankly.
• Get Out!: After Shadow makes Nicky cry by insinuating he couldn't possibly be Sonic, Sonia has enough of his crap, and reads him the riot act before telling him he's free to leave. And it's upon seeing that Silver was siding with her that Shadow does.
• Godzilla Threshold: Trapped between the Zombot horde and incoming Eggfleet bombardment, Clove is forced to use a code to remove the limitations in Cassia’s prosthetic limbs. While it gets them all out of danger, it breaks all of Cassia’s limbs and overloads the rest of her cybernetics, nearly killing her.
• Gone Horribly Right:
  • Shadow and Silver’s attempt at fixing the Paradox Prism works too well, reversing the effects of a previous shattering and merging those various timelines together.
  • Jack Rabbit decided to use a bunch of power rings to wish for a weapon even Eggman would be afraid of. He got the Metal Virus, and ended up infected by it.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: The personality swapping is particularly detrimental when it comes to Rouge, as her pre!SGW self only had her own interests in mind, and wasn't above manipulating things to her own end. This becomes dangerous when she's fighting Zeena... and this personality almost manages to let the Deadly Six make off with the Grey Chaos Emerald.
  No... Zeena thought, in somewhat of a daze. That's wrong. I could see it in your eyes...
  When you offered to sell out, you were serious.
• I Hate Past Me: In a roundabout manner: It doesn't take much for Julie-Su to see herself in Shade, to the point where she starts to question if she was ever as much of a Jerkass as her.
• Intra-Franchise Crossover: One that features nearly every Sonic continuity, including obscure ones like the french Sonic Adventures comic and the Virgin Books novels. The Spacebattles version of the story has a chart made by the author to keep track of who debuted in which canon. It's stated that this is because the Paradox Prism seen here itself is a fragment of the original Paradox Prism, whose prior shattering long ago created multiple different dimensions/continuities, but so much time has passed since that initial shattering that the dimensions have "grown out" and stabilized, hence why bringing them back together results in not a clean remerging but realities blending together violently and trying to force themselves out as the "dominant" one. To list:
  • Prime/IDW. The mainline games go here.
  • The Shogakukan manga
  • Pre and Post-SGW Archie, separated into two different canons.
  • Fleetway Sonic
  • One for each cartoon spinoff: Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM), Sonic Underground and Sonic X.
  • Virgin books.
  • Sonic Boom
  • The Paramount movies.
  • French Sonic Adventures comics.
• Lampshade Hanging: When meeting Main!Silver, Surge notes she and Kit haven't met him yet in her world. Which, at the time of writing, was true - IDW issue 67 (where Surge and Silver first meet) wouldn't be published until 11 months after that chapter.
• Logical Weakness: The Deadly Six have electromagnetic powers that allow them to manipulate machines. Julie-Su has cybernetic implants. Do the math.
• Mad Oracle: The messed up state of reality has reduced the Oracle of Delphius to one of these, leaving him constantly dazed and spouting off cryptic prophecies.
• Master of None: Zachary derides the gizoids for being this as while their Power Copying is impressive, without a way to increase their own power they’ll always lose to a stronger opponent. A fact he demonstrates by using one of his own robots to effortlessly crush one.
• Merged Reality:
  • The restored Paradox Prism is attempting to do this. Keyword being attempt, as the Sonic timelines have been separated for too long to properly remerge, resulting in the various worlds fighting for control.
  • Blaze is able to successfully to do this to the Sol Dimension, stabilizing it with the Jeweled Scepter to merge the pre-SGW, post-SGW and Game/IDW versions of the world together, which works due to there being little differences between the three versions. Unfortunately this starts to awaken Iblis, sealed into Blaze during Sonic the Hedgehog (2006).
• Mind Hive: Downplayed. The reformed Paradox Prism has fused various characters with their alternate counterparts, but they are incapable of communicating with each other and randomly glitch between themselves. Played straight with IDW/Game Eggman, who used the Phantom Ruby to make himself the domination persona and leave his alternate counterparts conscious in his head.
• My Significance Sense Is Tingling: When Shadow uses Chaos Control to fix the Paradox Prism we get several shots of various characters across the multiverse sensing or noticing its effects. These include Zonic, Tikal, Imperator Ix, the Keeper of the Time Stones, the Omni-Viewer, and Sticks.
• Near-Villain Victory: Of a sort: In the middle of Rouge's fight with Zeena, she winds up glitching into her pre-SGW persona... meaning the self-serving manipulator. As such, Zeena talks her into betraying the echindas she was helping out (specifically Julie-Su), and letting the Deadly Six make off with the Grey Chaos Emerald, in order to get Knuckles all to herself. They get as far as shaking hands... when Rouge glitches back into her main personality and tosses her into the wall.
• Oh, Crap!: Eggman's reaction to learning that the Metal Virus is around is to order all his forces to bombard its location.
• One True Love: Discussed and slightly Decon-Recon Switch in terms of the 'Soul Touched'. When Julie-Sue felt shocked that she had that connection with Shade via said 'Soul Touched' (due to being sort of the same person), and attempted to bring it up with Lara-Le. The latter (thinking she wondering about her and Locke) points out a few things
  Lara-Le: If you're asking about what happened between Locke and I –
  Julie-Su: Um, no, actually I meant –
  Lara-Le:– the answer to your question is 'No it isn't… at the time'. That last bit of nuance often escapes young lovebirds. I know this will be hard to believe, Julie, but Locke and I really did love each other once. The soultouch didn't lie – our souls fit together perfectly. We were very happy.
  Julie-Su: What changed?
  Lara-Le: We did. Both of us. People change, Julie, and their souls change with them. I became more confident, more assertive. Locke started spending more time with the other guardians, and less with me. He became more controlling, listening to me less and less. Things we used to agree on without fuss suddenly became dreadful arguments. What he did to Knuckles, to our baby boy…! Well, that was the last straw. The soultouch is a head start, dear, but it isn't the end of the journey. Real, genuine love takes effort. And if either person doesn't put in that effort…"
• Paradox Person: According to Mephiles, Blaze is the exact same Blaze that appeared in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), the cat having avoided being erased by the Reset Button Ending of that game, and the entire Sol Dimension is a byproduct of her survival.
• Party Scattering: The reconstruction of the Paradox Prism did this on a global scale, scattering people all across the world. Some people even wound up in the wrong dimension.
• Post-Mortem Comeback: Starline reappears as a phantom created by Infinite.
• Reality Is Out to Lunch: The merging of worlds is clearly has some adverse effects on reality. Locations and people are glitching out and constantly cycling through different versions of themselves(The Avatar is especially hit hard by this, changing identities every minute or so), and some people are in danger of ceasing to exist entirely.
• A Shared Suffering: Beauregard and Clove are quick to bond over how they're both Trapped in Villainy and talking about the cruelty of their respective Eggmans.
• Seers: Quite problematic due to the effect of the paradox prism, the Oracle of Delphius is suffering profusely from the effects with even Pyjama suffering from it, only avoiding the worst of it as her visions 'comes and go'.
• Ship Tease: Julie-Su/Shade, via the implied soul touch. Note that the former is not against the idea as she more shocked with the implication of it.
• Shout-Out: Alucion claims she got her bouncing powers from falling into a cauldron of bouncing potion as a child.
• Sky Pirate: In the form of Captain Plunder, Filch and Simpson The Cat. It can be surmised that the rest of the crew were scattered.
• Unflinching Walk: Amy, Tania, and Mina do the "leaping out of the exploding building" version when Bokkun drops off one of his exploding Eggman TV messages. That said, Amy is the one who pulls it off the best since she knew what to expect from it, while the other two have a brief Oh, Crap! as they run after her when she nonchalantly tells them about the bomb.
• Vomit Discretion Shot: Barby Koala throws up on the side of the ship when she learns from Blaze and Walt Wallaby that Tails is at least eight in one continuity and in her own was twelve at the oldest. Meaning she unknowingly had a crush and hit on a literal child.
• Wham Line:
  • In Chapter 11, as Blaze is stabilizing the Sol Dimension, it's revealed that the process had created some "leftover energy" that she didn't know what to do with... before deciding to absorb it into herself. The narration specifically mentions that this caused a sensation that was akin to a hole being filled in within herself. But, if you needed any definitive clarification that this was referring to Iblis, then consider the following:
  She could see, now, beyond the boundaries of her own tiny world. Even once she finished merging her world with itself and itself, there remained nine voids. Nine empty spaces where her world should have been, but wasn't.
  But that was alright.
  She just had to burn away all those unnecessary bits, and everything would be fine.
• Wise Old Folk Façade: Zachary pretends to be a helpless old man when captured by the Dark Legion in order to gather information.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Sonia and Manic tell Nicky this after he breaks down over how he couldn’t possibly be Sonic because of how much cooler he is than him, telling him that he can’t keep comparing himself to someone else and needs to focus on what he can do.
• You Keep Using That Word: Turns out the reason that the Omni-Viewer keeps introducing himself as "Omnipotent" is because he was misinformed on the word’s definition. When he questions why no one informed earlier, Porker admits they just thought he was just that full of himself.

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