Last time we left off on this, Maria had been recovered by Sonic, Shadow and Tails after being put in stasis for 50 years.

Shadow went on to capture Eggman and make sure he wouldn't cause trouble for now.

Sonic and Tails had blackmailed the authorities into leaving Shadow and Maria alone, or else they would release all data on the coverup 50 years ago.

As a result, the events in Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog both ended quickly since Shadow never gained amnesia like in canon.

But we still have to deal with the events of a bad future approaching.

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06 Original Timeline

Due to Shadow and Maria being together and Eggman being put away for now, most of the stuff in the timeline has changed.

During Heroes, Eggman had been in prison while Metal pretended to be him in order to lure the heroes to him.

In Shadow the Hedgehog, Eggman remained locked up due to Shadow getting the drop on the Black Arms when they arrived.

So how would 06 even happen if Eggman didn't try to kidnap Elise and Mephiles never formed from Shadow's shadow?

Well Elise would still go through the festival with no one kidnapping her this time, though being the vessel for Iblis still means the beast was going to come out eventually, even if she died.

Rouge would still go undercover for G.U.N to recover artifacts since Eggman's forces were still running campaigns for him while he was in custody.

Metal Sonic may be just a robot, but he can still cause trouble on his own, he'd just have to find a way to command Eggman's robots in the doctor's stead until he can get a plan to release him.

The robot doppelgänger learned from Heroes that he was going to still need the doctor if he wanted to stay intact long enough to prove he was better than Sonic.

The reason Metal was leading robots to salvage artifacts was to find something to use as a power source and possibly use a new weapon to attack the facility holding Eggman.

The bat spy had no problem sneaking in and getting the relic they were after: the Scepter of Darkness.

She narrowly escapes, but the scepter is broken at the end of the chase, falling on Rouge's shadow.

Rouge watches in awe and shock as she sees her shadow form into replica of her, but a lot of stuff was off.

The doppelgänger gains her body and looks, but the colors are more grayed down and the pink on her outfit is replaced with a dull blue color.

But what really becomes unsettling is the eyes, which were green and slitted like a lizard.

Mephiles wasn't expecting to take on Rouge's form, but it would have to do for now until the villain reunited with Iblis.

The dark bat thanks Rouge for providing a body and offers to go searching for jewels with her, already figuring out her temptation for them and trying to trick her into helping get the Chaos Emeralds.

Rouge isn't that gullible, but decided to play along so she could see what Mephiles was up to and hopefully stop it, secretly having a way to contact Sonic.

After searching for the emeralds, Rouge eventually finds out from some of Soleanna's ruins that Mephiles is the intelligence of a deity called Solaris that was split in two.

When she tries to warn Sonic and Tails, Mephiles stops her and takes her down to prevent her from stopping the reunion.

Sonic hurries to the palace to stop Mephiles after getting a tip from Tails that the dark bat was targeting the vessel holding Solaris: Princess Elise.

Unfortunately, he arrives too late to stop Mephiles from killing Elise, releasing Iblis into the world.

Thinking quickly, Sonic grabs a Chaos Emerald and teleports away with it, ruining the reunion and leaving Mephiles unable to perform it properly.

Mephiles might be able to get it back no problem, but it would be too late to combine with Iblis by then because Iblis would've fully developed by then, making it impossible to work.

The dark bat curses that the plot was ruined, only able to watch as Iblis' power bursted out and started to destroy the world.

The world goes through a major apocalypse that saw every corner burned to ash, many of our heroes perishing from this disaster.

In order to keep her safe, Shadow put Maria into stasis again and hopes she would awaken in a better future.

Shadow stays behind with Sonic and friends to make a final stand against Mephiles...

...only to all fall at the dark bat's powers.

Around 200 years later, Maria awakens from stasis to find the world isn't any better, the flames still burning as Iblis occasionally pops up to add to everyone's misery.

She makes the most of the situation and tries to survive for now until she can find a way to fix this.

At some point, Maria comes across a young white hedgehog that lived alone in this future, taking the hedgehog to her home to feed him and clean him from his time out there.

She finds out this boy was abandoned by his parents for unknown reasons, feeling compassion for him by adopting the hedgehog as her son.

Maria names the hedgehog Silver since the color matches his looks like Shadow's black fur matches the name.

As she looks for a way to go back in time to fix whatever caused this, Maria and Silver eventually come across Blaze and team up with her against Iblis for a while.

As for how Blaze got to the future, let me know if you want me to come up with some theories on how that happened.

As Silver and Blaze constantly kept Iblis down, Maria worked for years to get a successful time machine up and working.

Maria may not have had genius level IQ like Tails and Eggman when she survived the Ark, but her free time with Shadow before the disaster gave her enough time to study some, even practicing with Tails.

By the time Silver turned 14, Maria surprised him and Blaze with the news that the time machine was ready for them to go back to the past and undo what happened.

When asked by Silver on when they should go to in order to prevent doomsday, she suggested going back a month prior to whenever Mephiles was released.

The reason is to give them all plenty of time to get info on where to end Iblis at it's weakest so they can travel to that date and end it.

Unknown to them......a dark figure with wings was watching them....knowing this was it's best second chance to get it right.

The trio went through the portal to the date set....but so did their stalker too.

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06 New Timeline

Maria, Silver and Blaze all arrive a month prior to Mephiles being released, planning to search throughout Soleanna to find info on what could end Iblis.

The trio stick together and find out there's a secret lab that was hidden from public knowledge with some kind of experiment.

When they reached the lab, Maria hacks into all files and data to find that Iblis was the powerful side of Solaris, whereas Mephiles was the other half they didn't encounter in the future.

The fact that they haven't seen Mephiles yet sends a chill down Maria's spine, realizing Mephiles could've been watching them......or even follo-

BOOM!

An energy blast hits the systems Maria was looking at, Silver narrowly getting her away in time.

The three heroes look to see a dark clone of Rouge approach them with purple energy blazing between it's fingers.

Mephiles had apparently followed them through the time machine in order to stop them, and then help the present version in this time reunite with Iblis.

Silver uses his powers to make every single object crash into Mephiles while Blaze sets the pile Mephiles was in on fire.

Mephiles merely appears out of the rubble and taunts the flames as cheap imitation of Iblis' power....power that the being would be one with again.

Maria thinks quickly and gives Silver a Chaos Emerald she discovered in the future, telling him to use Chaos Control like they practiced to get them all out of there.

Silver narrowly teleports himself, Blaze and Maria out of the place before Mephiles could get them.....but not completely unharmed.

Upon arriving outside of the kingdom, Maria discovered she had a wound in her side from Mephiles blowing up the systems, shrapnel now in her torso.

Maria uses a special item Tails made for her called a Chaos Flare, which had a bit of energy made to shine like a light, but it was made to contact one person: Shadow.

30 minutes later, Shadow arrives, having been confused to feel the flare go off if present Maria was standing next to him and went to go investigate.

He doesn't know about Silver, but he recognizes Blaze from what Sonic told him about her, though it's the biggest surprise when he sees Maria all grown up......and bleeding a lot.

Shadow picks future Maria up and takes her to a hospital, with Silver and Blaze following him.

When the rest of the heroes arrive to see this adult Maria, she explains to them why she's here from the past.

Everything was going according to Maria's plan, and Mephiles just put her in the spot she needed to be.

While she didn't plan on Mephiles following them, she knew she also needed extra time to call the heroes together to help her.

Mephiles basically just played right into Maria's trap!

With the knowledge of Solaris' existence and the heroes all together, all that was needed was a plan on what to do.

They figured the best thing they could do was go to the time Solaris was just a mere flame and blow it out, ending the deity's existence entirely.

Mephiles then attacked the hospital, trying to end the heroes before they can go back in time, though it tried to avoid Rouge for a reason they couldn't find out.

The heroes tried to move the fight into areas nearby the hospital, but Mephiles just took each hit and swiftly killed them before going back to the place.

Knuckles, Amy and Blaze were all dead in this fight, leaving a smaller version of the team left.

Sonic, Shadow and Silver all team up against Mephiles, blasting the bat with everything they had, but the being kept appearing back after they had destroyed the body, as if Mephiles was respawning in a video game.

Maria revealed that since Solaris exists across time, every Mephiles they destroyed is from a different point in the timeline, making this feel like an infinite fight.

The bat thief soon realizes why Mephiles was going easy on her during this fight and makes an ultimate sacrifice.

To the shock of everyone, and to Shadow, Maria and Mephiles' horror...

...Rouge stabbed herself with a blade and fell down.

Shadow hurries over to Rouge and holds her body, demanding to know why she did this.

Rouge tells Shadow that since Mephiles gained a form from her shadow, killing herself early before the event means Mephiles never gets freed in the future.

She tells Shadow not to worry about her, that secretly all she cared about was a gem she wouldn't want destroyed: Shadow.

The bat thief dies in Shadow's arms as the hedgehog cries at the death of the only other girl besides Maria that he cared about.

Mephiles sees the form it had slowly weaken, realizing Rouge's death created a paradox where this body shouldn't exist.

Sonic and Silver see the opening and try to finish the job, but Mephiles starts to flee away and try to find any way to preserve existence, hoping to get to the scepter and break itself free.

Tails reminds all that's left that someone has to go to the past and blow out the flames in order to end both parts for good.

Maria suggested herself, Silver and Elise go to the past to blow it out, figuring the princess should have the right to stop the thing that killed her father.

Shadow volunteers to stay behind and end Mephiles himself to prevent it's form from existing in other timelines, ordering Sonic to get all patients and medical staff out of the hospital.

Silver carries Maria far away as they see a blue blur rushing people outside of the hospital while a small red light glows inside the building.

Mephiles begs and pleads with Shadow to spare it, trying to tug at his heart strings to get any openings to escape, even changing the voice and sounding exactly like Rouge.

But it was all in vain, Shadow was determined to avenge Rouge, even if it costed his own body to do it.

Mephiles reminds Shadow in Rouge's voice that even if he does succeed and live out the rest of his life with Maria, the girl will eventually die and leave him alone to live out immortality with no one to love him.

Shadow then tells it the final words Mephiles will ever hear.

"She is immortal. As long as I care for her and remember her, Maria and Rouge are more eternal then you ever will be."

CHAOS.......................BLAST!!!!!

The hospital is engulfed in a massive explosion of Chaos energy, destroying the entire building and Mephiles remains with it.

Mephiles' Rouge form is gone for good....at the cost of most of the heroes.

Silver and Maria reach Elise and quickly explain the situation before offering to take her to the flame, which the princess gladly accepted.

The two and the princess go back in time to Solaris at it's weakest form, the princess grabbing what the flame stood on and prepared to blow it out.

Silver and Maria decide to enjoy their last minutes together before the old timeline and the one they made were wiped out.

The hedgehog tells Maria he will miss having her as his mom, knowing she was the only one that cared for him in a future where everyone was for themselves to survive.

Maria tells him it may not be goodbye forever, since whoever his ancestors were in her time would still meet, meaning Silver will still exist to probably know about her from the future.

The two embraced and gave each other a final "I love you" as Elise blew out the flame.

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After both timelines were erased, a new one was formed where Solaris never existed, meaning all of the bad future and the deaths never happened either.

Unfortunately, this doesn't mean Maria will stay out of the action for long.

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That's it for this part!

Next time, we explore Maria's role in Unleashed and onwards.

Let me know what you think of this in the comments below.

Maybe you could even come up with some important "What ifs" too that I might think about doing.

I'll see you later! Bye!