The world seemed strange now. His house was gone, Eggman was gone, but nobody knew. Maybe it was his existence. The fact that he was a hedgehog from 2016 and everything else was from 2018. People respond to him like they would from 2016, but the events are the events that happened after 2016. It was weird and hard to understand. Was it all just a test? It had to be. He had to be in one of Tails' crazy science experiments!

"What am I even doing...? If I'm going to solve anything, I've got to find them... Who's good at finding things...?" Shadow asked himself.

There was Knuckles who was a treasure hunter. He could find them. However, they were on bad terms. Knuckles never really liked him. They fight all the time. Nope. Knuckles wouldn't help. Tails could build something to help him find the Drayans. However, he doesn't even think they exist. There was one other person. Probably the only person who could help him. Rouge. He knew where to go instantly. He found himself bolting with a strange confidence that came from nowhere. A hope.

Rouge sat down on a stool. She looked at the bartender in the eye. He looked away awkwardly. Rouge went there every day ever since Shadow blew up. The funny thing was that she didn't remember how it happened. Eggman recreated him, but that was the 2.0 version. She was talking about the original. Her friend was probably gone forever.

"Listen, Rouge, if you're gonna buy something, you can't tell me what you want by looking at me. I'm sorry about your friend, but I've got a business to run," the guy across the counter told her. She only sighed.

The door swung open. Time ripples came closing in on them everywhere. Shadow walked into the place. Time rewrote itself instantly. Rouge found herself forgetting many of the events that had happened. Her good mood returned in seconds. She closed her eyes and focussed on the memory that was being yanked from her head. She grasped her head and resisted as much as she could. Someone grabbed her hand and brought her out of it. It was Shadow.

"Sh-Shadow?" asked Rouge in astonishment.

"Leave the room. Follow me," was all he could say. He could see time rewriting itself. He begins to pull her away from the room. She doesn't hesitate. They manage to make it out of the door with all memories intact. Well, most of them.

"Shadow, how are you back?! I thought-" Rouge started. Shadow shushed her quickly and looked around.

"Listen, I have no idea what's going on and I don't exist! That's why I'm trying to find a lost race called the Drayans who can fix everything and give me some answers!" Shadow explained hastily.

"The Drayans? Hm... Sounds faintly familiar...," Rouge said.

Relief flooded every one of his senses. Even if the word sounded familiar in any way, that was enough to give him some reassurance. "In what way? Have you seen one?!"

"Uh... It's a little fuzzy in my brain... I can't remember... All I can remember is that you disappeared, Eggman got banished, you're back, nobody can remember anything... It's a mess. I'm afraid that's the most I can do...," Rouge answered.

"Nope! You're going to help me fix this mess!" Shadow corrected.

"What? How?"

"You're going to help me find the Drayans," Shadow answered.

Rouge was dumbfounded for a moment. She didn't say anything. Shadow waited patiently for her answer. Rouge thought about almost everything that could happen in almost twenty seconds. Her mind raced without a stop at Sonic speed. She finally just smacked herself in the face to knock some sense into herself and nodded. Shadow wasn't sure if the face-slap was really necessary, but he didn't question it.

"Alright, where do we start? What do you remember about them?" asked Rouge.

"I remember they had wings, long hair, bright eyes that can reveal emotions, and they have some sort of power. Magic, I think," Shadow explained.

"Sounds like an alien race to me. Do they live in outer space?" asked Rouge.

"No. They're an advanced race. Why would they drift through outer space? They live on a planet thousands of lightyears away."

"We'll never make it by our modern rockets. We'll have to use your chaos control," Rouge explained.

"That's the problem. I don't know where the planet is. However, I have thought up a different solution," Shadow explained.

"What's that?"

"Time-travel. You see, if we go back in time to a point where we saw a Drayan, we might be able to warn them about the future so they can fix it for us," Shadow answered.

"What's the catch?" asked Rouge crossing her arms.

"We need to hedgehogs and two emeralds. I'm only one hedgehog with no chaos emeralds."

Rouge nods and thinks to herself. "Sonic stole a chaos emerald from me recently. He should have, at least, one."

The two of them nod and make their way, at a really fast pace, to Sonic's house. Once they got there, Shadow huffed with annoyance and wanted to scream. Sonic's house was reduced to rubble that lies on the ground before them. It didn't even look like a house anymore. Shadow didn't know how their house could've been destroyed so easily. He looked over his shoulder and a large explosion bursts overhead. Rouge and Shadow yell in alarm. A white hedgehog swoops to the sky and contains the explosion. He drifts back to the ground when the flames from the explosion eventually flicker out. Shadow would recognize this hedgehog anywhere. Silver.

"What's Silver doing here?!" asked Rouge.

"That would be my question to you!! What are you two doing two hundred years after your time?!" Silver demanded.

"Two hundred years? Silver, you'd better get down here and explain to us what's going on!" Shadow yelled.

Silver glided towards them with a curious expression. He then looked around and sighed. "Okay, time is getting a little unstable. Things from your time are getting sucked into my time! I think it's you who should be explaining! Wait a sec, what time are you from?" asked Silver looking at Shadow.

"2016."

"What? How's that possible? You're dead!" Silver exclaims.

"Oh, whatever! Everything's going crazy! My existence is probably distorting time and causing for random things to be dragged into random times. There's only one race who'll save us! The Drayans."

"The Drayans? Sorry. Don't recall," Silver said shaking his head.

"Well, we need to go back in time to a point where we were talking to a Drayan so that they can fix this! I'll explain the rest of the details later! Do you have the chaos emeralds?!" demanded Shadow.

"Um... I don't have them. However, we might be able to make a substitution," Silver explained.

"A substitution?" asked Rouge.

"You remember Blaze, don't you? She may have something that'll work," Silver told them.

Shadow and Rouge looked at each other. Anything would work if it could get the timeline fixed.