The Resistance HQ was exactly as underwhelming as Marcus had expected.
It was a repurposed factory complex on the outskirts of what had once been a manufacturing district—all corrugated metal walls, exposed ductwork, and the lingering industrial smell of machine oil and crushed dreams. Someone had made an effort to civilize it: there were makeshift barracks set up in what had been the assembly floor, a communications array cobbled together from salvaged Eggman tech and civilian radio equipment on the second level, and a command center in the old foreman's office that featured a table covered in maps, a whiteboard with tactical notations in Amy's handwriting, and a coffee maker that looked like it had been through the war personally and come out the other side with PTSD.
Post-war chic. Very utilitarian. Very "we saved the world six months ago and still haven't gotten around to proper interior decorating."
Sonic skidded to a halt in the factory's main courtyard, kicking up a rooster tail of dust that settled across several parked vehicles and one very annoyed-looking Flicky. Knuckles arrived seconds later, having taken an overland route that involved punching through at least two rock formations based on the debris still clinging to his fists. Rouge descended from above in a graceful spiral. Marcus materialized via Chaos Control, because he had discovered that teleportation was not only faster than running but also dramatically satisfying in a way that he, as a lifelong Shadow fan, felt duty-bound to indulge at every opportunity.
The White Wisp, still perched on his shoulder like a bioluminescent parrot, chirped its approval of the teleportation. It had, over the course of the journey, graduated from "grateful rescue" to "permanent fixture" with the quiet determination of a creature that had found its person and intended to stay.
Marcus had stopped arguing with it.
"Home sweet home!" Sonic announced, spreading his arms wide as though presenting a luxury resort and not a converted factory that smelled like diesel. "Well, home sweet temporary-operational-headquarters-that-we-really-should-upgrade-at-some-point. Doesn't have the same ring to it."
"It's functional," Marcus said, which was the nicest thing Shadow would say about anything and therefore the highest compliment available.
"Shadow said something isn't terrible!" Sonic stage-whispered to Knuckles. "Write that down. We need to document these."
"I don't have a pen," Knuckles said.
"It's a figure of—never mind."
The courtyard was busy. Resistance members—a mix of Mobians and the occasional human, all wearing the makeshift uniforms and exhausted expressions of people who had fought a war and were now fighting the arguably harder battle of peace—moved between buildings with purpose. Supply crates were being loaded onto trucks. Communication equipment was being tested. A pair of wolf mechanics were elbow-deep in the engine of a biplane that Marcus recognized as a variant of the Tornado, though this one looked like it had been rebuilt from spare parts at least three times.
It was organized chaos. Emphasis on chaos.
And then Marcus heard her.
"SONIC!"
The voice cut through the ambient noise of the base like a pink-colored artillery shell. It was bright and sharp and carried the specific frequency of a person who had been waiting for someone to arrive and had opinions about how long it had taken.
Amy Rose came around the corner of the main building at a pace that could generously be described as "determined march" and more accurately described as "adorable stampede."
And Marcus's brain—
Marcus's brain needed a moment.
Because he had thought Rouge was ridiculous. He had thought the village women were ridiculous. He had thought that the IDW universe's apparent commitment to giving every female character the proportions of a Renaissance fertility goddess was, while inexplicable, at least consistent in its ridiculousness.
He had been wrong.
Amy Rose was on another level.
Amy Rose was on a level that the other levels looked up at and said "How did you get up there?" and Amy's level said "I don't know but I can't get down and I'm not sure I want to."
She was—and Marcus's mind scrambled for adequate terminology, cycling through "thick," "thicc," "voluptuous," "Rubenesque," and "a clear and present danger to the structural integrity of any chair she sits in" before settling on the only word that truly captured the situation—she was preposterous.
Her red dress—the same red dress, the iconic Amy Rose dress that had been a staple of her design since Sonic Adventure—was performing a miracle of fabric engineering. It had always been a simple, cute outfit: a red dress with white trim, appropriate for an energetic teenage hedgehog who hit things with a hammer. But on this Amy, in this continuity, the dress was engaged in a Sisyphean struggle against physics itself. It stretched and strained and clung in ways that its original designer had never intended and could never have anticipated. Her hips—God, her hips—were wider than Rouge's. Marcus had not thought that was possible. He had assumed Rouge represented the upper boundary of IDW's apparent body-type inflation, the ceiling beyond which no further escalation could occur without breaking the universe's internal logic.
Amy Rose had broken through that ceiling with her hammer, probably, and was now operating in the uncharted territory beyond it.
Her waist was tiny. Her legs were not. Her thighs tested the structural limits of her boots with every step. And her chest—which in every previous incarnation of Amy Rose had been modest, appropriate, age-suitable—had been upgraded to a specification that made Marcus genuinely concerned about the editorial oversight process at IDW Publishing.
She was also—and this was the detail that made Marcus's brain finally throw up its hands and file a formal complaint with whatever cosmic entity had designed this universe—she was bouncing.
With every step. Every single step. A full-body oscillation that started at her feet and propagated upward through her frame like a seismic wave through gelatin, affecting every region through which it traveled with an enthusiasm that bordered on the vindictive.
The Sonic franchise's most prominent female protagonist was crossing the courtyard toward them with the visual impact of a magnitude 7.0 earthquake wearing a red dress.
Sonic, to his credit or possibly his obliviousness, seemed entirely unaffected. "Hey, Amy! We're back! Saved some towns, freed some Wisps, Shadow had a personality transplant—big day all around!"
"You're LATE!" Amy stopped in front of them, planting her hands on her hips—her impossibly wide hips—and fixing Sonic with a glare that carried the weight of every unanswered call, every missed check-in, every moment she'd spent coordinating relief efforts while he was off being a blue wind metaphor. "I radioed you three hours ago! The northern patrols reported Badnik movement—organized movement, Shadow, not the random stragglers we've been dealing with. Someone is coordinating them."
She'd said that to Marcus.
She'd turned away from Sonic—turned away from Sonic—and directed the tactical briefing at Shadow.
And then she'd moved closer to him. Stepped right into his space. Looked up at him with those jade green eyes, wide and earnest and sparkling with an intensity that was... that was not...
That was not how Amy Rose looked at Shadow the Hedgehog.
That was how Amy Rose looked at Sonic.
"I'm glad you're here," Amy said, and her voice dropped half an octave into a register that Marcus had never heard Amy Rose use in any continuity, ever, in the entire history of the franchise. It was warm. It was intimate. It was the vocal equivalent of a hand placed on a chest over a heartbeat.
She reached out and touched his arm. Her gloved fingers rested on his forearm, just above the inhibitor ring, and the contact was light but lingering, and she was close, close enough that the truly staggering geography of her figure was entering his field of vision from angles he had no defense against—
What is happening.
What is HAPPENING.
Why is Amy Rose looking at me like that.
Amy Rose doesn't look at Shadow like that. Amy Rose looks at SONIC like that. That's her ENTIRE CHARACTER. She's been chasing Sonic since Sonic CD. She is THE Sonic fangirl. She defined the archetype. Her love for Sonic is a fundamental constant of the Sonic universe, as immutable as the speed of sound and the blueness of hedgehogs.
Why is she FAWNING over me?!
Marcus's red eyes darted to Sonic.
Sonic was watching this interaction with an expression that Marcus could not immediately categorize. It wasn't jealousy—or at least, it wasn't obvious jealousy. It was something more complicated. Something that flickered between confusion and resignation and a faint, almost imperceptible twinge of... longing?
As though this was normal.
As though Amy fawning over Shadow instead of Sonic was just... how things were in this universe.
This is wrong, Marcus thought, with the fervent conviction of a man watching someone put ketchup on a steak. This is fundamentally, cosmically, NARRATIVELY wrong. Amy Rose loves Sonic. That's who she IS. You can write her as having moved past the obsessive phase, you can mature her feelings into something more nuanced, you can even explore what happens when she realizes the chase might be more important than the catch—but you don't just SWAP THE TARGET. You don't just point Amy at a different hedgehog and say "same energy, different color." That's not character development. That's a palette swap.
IDW, what have you DONE?
"Amy," Marcus said carefully, gently disengaging his arm from her touch in a way that was firm but not unkind. "The tactical briefing. You said organized Badnik movement?"
Amy blinked. A flicker of something—surprise? confusion? the faintest echo of a characterization that should have been there but wasn't?—crossed her face. Then she snapped back to business mode with the efficiency of someone who had been running a post-war resistance operation and didn't have time for emotional processing, even if the emotional processing involved a hedgehog she was apparently attracted to for reasons that defied thirty years of franchise canon.
"Right! Yes. The briefing." She stepped back—and Marcus breathed—and produced a data tablet from somewhere that her dress should not have been able to conceal but apparently had. "We've been tracking Badnik activity across the region for the past two weeks. Standard post-war pattern—scattered units, degraded programming, no coordination. But starting three days ago, the pattern changed."
She tapped the tablet, and a holographic map flickered to life above its surface. Points of light dotted the landscape—red for Badnik activity, blue for Resistance positions, green for liberated settlements.
"The attacks became coordinated. Squads of twenty to thirty units hitting specific targets in specific sequences. Supply lines. Communication relays. Defensive positions." Amy traced a line across the map with her finger, connecting the red dots. "They're not random anymore. Someone is giving them orders."
Marcus studied the map.
He already knew who was giving the orders.
Neo Metal Sonic.
The thought landed in his mind with the weight of foreknowledge and the frustration of a man who had lived through this storyline once in comic form and had not enjoyed it the first time.
Neo Metal Sonic. Because of course IDW had brought back Neo Metal Sonic.
Metal Sonic was, in Marcus's estimation, one of the greatest rivals in gaming history. The original, the classic, the robot doppelganger—a mirror of Sonic built by Eggman to defeat him, and one of the few creations that had ever come close to succeeding. Metal Sonic was brilliant because he was simple: he was Sonic, but metal. Fast, ruthless, relentless, and driven by a singular obsessive need to prove himself superior to the organic original. He didn't need a tragic backstory or a complex motivation. He was a dark reflection, and the best dark reflections worked because of their simplicity.
Sonic Heroes had muddied this somewhat by giving Metal Sonic the "Neo" upgrade—shapeshifting abilities, the power to copy other characters' bio-data, a transformation into Metal Overlord that was admittedly rad as hell even if the path to get there involved Metal Sonic disguising himself as Eggman for the entire game, which was... a choice.
And IDW had taken Neo Metal Sonic and done what IDW always did: recycled a game concept without understanding what made it work, stripped it of its original context, and repurposed it into a storyline that felt less like a natural continuation of the franchise and more like fan fiction with a publishing deal.
In the IDW version, Neo Metal Sonic had taken over Eggman's forces during the doctor's amnesia period, launched a campaign to conquer the world, fought Sonic on an airship, let Sonic escape because apparently Neo Metal Sonic in IDW was playing the long game instead of doing the one thing Metal Sonic was designed to do (which was fight Sonic at maximum capacity until one of them stopped working)—
And then—and then—Neo Metal Sonic had obtained the Master Emerald.
Because Knuckles wasn't there.
Because Knuckles had left Angel Island to help with the ground war.
Because no one had thought to leave anyone guarding the single most powerful artifact on the planet.
Because everyone in IDW had apparently forgotten every single time the Master Emerald had been stolen before, which was at least four times, and Knuckles himself had been tricked into leaving it unguarded on at least three of those occasions by villains far less competent than Neo Metal Sonic.
The collective amnesia. The universal stupidity. The way IDW systematically de-skilled every established character so that its plot could function. It was all right there, crystallized in the single fact that no one guarded the Master Emerald.
In the games, this would have been addressed. In Sonic Adventure, when Eggman shattered the Master Emerald, Knuckles immediately dropped everything to recover the pieces. In Sonic Adventure 2, the entire Knuckles subplot revolved around the Master Emerald. It was Knuckles's thing. His duty. His purpose. The one responsibility he prioritized above all others, sometimes to the detriment of his friendships and his own wellbeing.
IDW Knuckles just... left.
And nobody said "Hey, maybe we should have someone watch the reality-warping gemstone."
And Neo Metal Sonic just... took it.
And then he got a super form.
Because of course he did.
Marcus was going to prevent that.
He was going to prevent all of it.
"It's Metal Sonic," Marcus said.
The room went quiet.
Amy stared at him. Sonic stared at him. Knuckles stared at him. Rouge, who had been examining the tactical display with professional interest, raised one elegant eyebrow. The White Wisp on Marcus's shoulder puffed up with the reflected gravitas of its chosen person making a dramatic pronouncement.
"What?" Sonic said.
"The coordinated attacks. The strategic targeting. The systematic dismantling of our defensive infrastructure." Marcus uncrossed his arms and pointed at the map—a deliberate, purposeful point, nothing like the idiotic rooftop pose from his first moments in this body. "It's Metal Sonic. Specifically, Neo Metal Sonic. He's taken control of Eggman's forces in Eggman's absence, and he's executing a long-term strategy to consolidate power."
"How do you know that?" Amy asked, her data tablet lowering as she stared at him with a mixture of suspicion and something that was, again, entirely too admiring for what should have been a professional exchange between colleagues.
Because I read the comic, Marcus didn't say.
"Pattern analysis," Marcus said instead, because Shadow was the Ultimate Lifeform and the Ultimate Lifeform could get away with claiming virtually any competency without being questioned. "The attack sequences follow Eggman's tactical doctrine, but the target selection is different. Eggman targets infrastructure—power plants, factories, population centers. These attacks are targeting information. Communication relays. Patrol routes. Defensive positions. Someone is gathering intelligence, not causing destruction. That's not Eggman's style. Eggman destroys first and strategizes second. This is the opposite."
"And you think it's Metal Sonic because...?" Sonic prompted.
"Because Metal Sonic is the only entity in Eggman's arsenal with the intelligence, autonomy, and motivation to assume command independently. He's also the only one with a reason to gather bio-data on us specifically. The attack patterns aren't just intelligence gathering—they're testing. Probing our response times, our tactics, our capabilities. He's building a profile."
Marcus watched the implications ripple across their faces. Amy's tactical mind was already working—he could see it in the way her eyes flickered across the map, connecting dots, reassessing assumptions. Sonic's expression had shifted from his default state of performative nonchalance to something sharper, more focused—the Sonic who had fought Metal Sonic on Stardust Speedway, the Sonic who understood what his mechanical double was capable of.
Knuckles looked like someone had just told him the Master Emerald was in danger, which, as far as Marcus was concerned, it was.
"Knuckles," Marcus said.
"What?"
"Go home."
"What?"
"Go back to Angel Island. Guard the Master Emerald."
Knuckles bristled—literally bristled, his quills flaring outward in the echidna threat display that Marcus found simultaneously impressive and ridiculous. "You can't just order me to—"
"I'm not ordering you. I'm advising you. If Metal Sonic is gathering bio-data and consolidating power, the Master Emerald is the most valuable strategic asset on the planet. It is the force multiplier. Whoever controls it controls the balance of power. And right now, it's sitting on a floating island with no one guarding it."
"It has natural defenses—"
"Which have failed every single time a serious threat has targeted them. Knuckles." Marcus held the echidna's gaze with the steady, unblinking intensity that Shadow did better than anyone. "You know I'm right. You've lost it before. You've always lost it when you weren't there to protect it. Go home. Guard the Emerald. We'll handle Metal Sonic."
Knuckles's fists clenched. His jaw worked. The internal battle between his pride (which wanted to stay and fight), his duty (which knew Marcus was right), and his stubbornness (which objected to being told anything by anyone, ever, on principle) played out across his face like weather patterns across a mountain.
"...Fine," he growled. "But if you're wrong about this, I'm coming back and punching you."
"If I'm wrong about this, I'll let you punch me."
Knuckles blinked. Then he snorted—the echidna equivalent of a laugh—and turned toward the exit. "Don't die while I'm gone. Any of you. I don't want to deal with the paperwork."
"There's no paperwork," Sonic said.
"There's ALWAYS paperwork," Knuckles called over his shoulder, and then he was gone, sprinting toward the coast where Angel Island presumably floated somewhere offshore like a geographical anxiety disorder.
Marcus watched him go and felt a quiet satisfaction settle over him.
That's one catastrophe prevented. Neo Metal Sonic will NOT be getting the Master Emerald. Not this time. Not while I have anything to say about it.
The timeline was changing. The dominoes were falling differently. And if Marcus had anything to say about it—and he had a lot to say about it, twenty-six years of opinions and frustrations and this is not how you write these characters worth of things to say—the IDW Sonic storyline was going to unfold very, very differently from here on out.
"We need to find Metal Sonic," Marcus said, turning back to the group. "Before he finishes gathering data. Before he makes his move. We need to be proactive, not reactive."
"Music to my ears," Sonic said, and there it was again—the real grin, the game grin, the grin of a hedgehog who had just been given a clear objective and a dangerous enemy and couldn't be happier about it. "Any idea where Chrome Dome is hiding?"
"If I were Neo Metal Sonic," Marcus said slowly, "I'd be somewhere with access to Eggman's data network. A command hub. Somewhere I could coordinate forces, process bio-data, and prepare for a power play without being detected."
"The Egg Fleet," Amy said suddenly, her tactical mind clicking into gear with visible excitement. She pulled up the holographic map and zoomed out, revealing the broader geography of the region. "There's a section of the Egg Fleet that went down during the war—crashed in the badlands east of the capital. We assumed it was derelict, but if Metal Sonic needed a mobile command center with existing infrastructure..."
"Then that's where he is," Marcus finished.
"Road trip!" Sonic pumped his fist. "Shadow, you in?"
"Obviously."
"Rouge?"
"Wouldn't miss it, Blue." Rouge had materialized at Marcus's side again—of course she had—and was standing close enough that her arm pressed against his, warm and present and there, always there. Her eyes were on the tactical display, but her body was oriented toward Marcus with a gravitational certainty that went beyond professional partnership.
"I'm coming too," Amy said.
And then she stepped forward.
Toward Marcus.
Not toward Sonic. Not toward the mission briefing. Not toward the tactical display. Toward Marcus specifically, closing the distance between them with a purposeful stride that made her entire frame undergo that devastating oscillation again—every step sending cascading waves through regions of her anatomy that should not have been capable of independent motion but were enthusiastically demonstrating otherwise.
She stopped directly in front of him. Directly in front of him. Close enough that Marcus had to tilt his head down to meet her eyes because Amy was shorter than Shadow by several inches, which meant that his natural downward line of sight passed through a zone of extreme visual danger before reaching her face.
Marcus kept his eyes locked on hers. It required concentration. It required effort. It required the kind of ironclad willpower that the Ultimate Lifeform was supposed to possess and that Marcus was discovering he needed every ounce of.
"I'll coordinate logistics from the mobile command unit," Amy said, her voice carrying that same half-octave-too-low warmth that she kept directing at him instead of at Sonic, where it belonged. "But I want to be in the field for the final engagement. Metal Sonic is too dangerous for a small team."
She reached out—again—and this time her hand didn't just rest on his arm. Her gloved fingers traced up his forearm, over the inhibitor ring, and came to rest on his bicep with a squeeze that was either encouraging or flirtatious or both, and Marcus felt chaos energy spike involuntarily in his veins like his own body was betraying him.
"We make a good team," Amy said. "Don't you think?"
NO, Marcus screamed internally. NO, WE DO NOT MAKE A GOOD TEAM. YOU AND SONIC MAKE A GOOD TEAM. YOU AND SONIC HAVE ALWAYS MADE A GOOD TEAM. YOU LOVE SONIC. YOU HAVE LOVED SONIC SINCE 1993. YOUR LOVE FOR SONIC IS OLDER THAN MOST OF THE PEOPLE READING THIS COMIC. PLEASE STOP TOUCHING MY ARM AND GO CHASE THE BLUE HEDGEHOG WHO IS STANDING RIGHT THERE LOOKING LIKE A KICKED PUPPY.
He glanced at Sonic.
Sonic was, indeed, standing right there. He was trying to look casual about it. He was failing. His ears were slightly flattened—a Mobian body language cue that Marcus instinctively understood meant discomfort—and his eyes kept darting between Amy's hand on Marcus's arm and the middle distance, as though he couldn't decide whether to watch or look away and had compromised on a kind of tortured oscillation between the two.
He doesn't even realize he's jealous, Marcus thought with a pang of something that felt dangerously close to sympathy. Or he realizes and he won't admit it because IDW wrote him as emotionally stunted. Either way, this is WRONG. Amy should be doing this to HIM. HE should be the one awkwardly dodging her advances while secretly being flattered. That's the DYNAMIC. That's how it WORKS.
What is this universe?
"Amy," Marcus said, gently but firmly extracting his arm from her grip for the second time. "Your tactical skills are invaluable, and I want you in the field. But right now, I need you to coordinate with the Resistance teams at the outlying settlements. If we're hitting the Egg Fleet, we need to make sure the civilian populations are protected in case Metal Sonic has contingency plans."
Amy's jade eyes searched his face. She was looking for something—warmth, reciprocation, some acknowledgment of the thing she was projecting at him so intensely that it was practically visible to the naked eye.
She didn't find it.
What she found instead was respect. Professional, genuine, unambiguous respect—the look of someone who valued her abilities, trusted her judgment, and viewed her as a competent equal rather than a romantic interest.
Something shifted in her expression. Subtle. Almost imperceptible. A flicker of... confusion? Recalibration? The faintest tremor of a characterization that had been wrong trying to find its way back to right?
"I... right," Amy said, and for just a moment, her voice returned to its normal register—bright, determined, the Amy Rose who led with her heart and her hammer in equal measure. "Right. Civilian protection. I'll set up checkpoints at the three main access roads and have the reserve units on standby."
"Good," Marcus said. "And Amy?"
"Yes?"
He glanced at Sonic. Then back at Amy. His expression remained neutral—Shadow's face, Shadow's control—but he put just enough emphasis on his next words to plant a seed.
"Make sure Sonic has a communication link this time. He has a habit of running off without telling anyone where he's going, and I'd rather not lose track of our fastest asset because he forgot to check in."
Amy blinked.
Looked at Sonic.
Sonic, caught in her gaze like a deer in headlights, scratched the back of his head and offered a sheepish grin that was—for the first time since Marcus had arrived in this universe—directed entirely at Amy.
"Yeah," Sonic said. "I, uh. I can do that. Check in. With Amy. Regularly. That's... yeah. Good plan."
Something sparked between them. A look. A moment. A microsecond of connection that had the texture and weight of thirty years of franchise history trying to reassert itself through the fog of bad writing.
Amy's cheeks flushed pink.
Sonic's ears perked up.
And Marcus, standing between them like the world's most tactically minded wingman, allowed himself the faintest ghost of a satisfied smile before crossing his arms and looking away.
There, he thought. THAT'S the dynamic. That's how it's supposed to work. Now stay that way.
Rouge appeared at his shoulder. Because she was always at his shoulder. Because the universe had apparently decided that his personal space belonged to her and she had accepted the arrangement with enthusiasm.
"Matchmaker," she murmured, low enough that only his enhanced hearing could catch it.
"Tactician," he corrected.
"Matchmaker," she repeated, and her breath was warm against his ear, and her body was warm against his side, and the combined sensory input was making his chaos energy do things that chaos energy should not do in a professional setting.
"We have a Metal Sonic to stop," Marcus said, stepping forward and away from the gravitational pull of Rouge's proximity. "Let's move."
He strode toward the base's exit with purpose, Shadow's hover shoes clicking against the concrete floor, the White Wisp trilling on his shoulder, his arms crossed, his expression set, his mind already racing through tactical scenarios for the confrontation ahead.
Behind him, he heard Sonic say something to Amy. Quiet. Almost shy.
He heard Amy laugh. Bright. Surprised. Real.
He didn't look back.
But the corners of his mouth twitched upward, just slightly, in a way that Shadow almost never allowed.
One relationship course-corrected. One existential threat to preempt. One continuity to fix.
And approximately nine thousand instances of inexplicable thiccness to somehow not acknowledge.
The hover shoes ignited.
Shadow the Hedgehog—the real Shadow, the one who remembered Maria, the one who chose—rocketed into the sky toward the fallen Egg Fleet and the chrome-plated nemesis waiting within.
Rouge followed, because Rouge always followed, because some constants held even in broken continuities.
The White Wisp held on tight and chirped with the fearless joy of a creature too small and too luminous to understand danger.
And the story continued.
Different, now. Better.
One chapter at a time.
END OF CHAPTER 4