Chapter Text
August 15th <20XX>
7:30 - 8:30: get up and eat something. Otherwise Sonic gets mad at me
8:30 - 12:00: work on some things in my shop until Sonic gets here
12:00 - 2:00: follow Sonic to wherever he's taking me with Silver and Shadow. Spend the rest of the day with them
2:00: brush my teeth, clean up the shop, and go to bed
Lan stared at the schedule with squinted, sleep filled eyes as he held his mug of pineapple juice tightly in his hands. He slowly took a sip of his drink as he looked at the clock next to the list. 7:55, he had enough time to get dressed and make the house presentable before Sonic came rushing in, dragging whatever inside with him. He decided to work on his many unfinished projects, that would probably never get done, early after a few seconds of standing in his living room.
By the time Sonic zipped on over to Lan's house Lan was sitting by the small kitchen island, working on a small circular drone. The older hedgehog didn't bother looking up from what he was working on as Sonic walked past him to his fridge.
"Jeez Lan! Do you ever have anything in this thing or what?" Sonic joked as he looked around the mostly empty fridge.
"I do. just nothing you like." Lan mumbled as he fidgeted with one of the wings of the drone. A small smile graced his lips as he finished tweaking things on the small machine. Sonic leaned over the island, peering over Lan's shoulder, "What's that?" He asked as he reached over to poke. Lan lightly batted his hand away, "It's a record drone. It's meant to help capture footage for research. This is only a test one though since the code is slightly wonky."
Sonic listened closely as he gently took the drone out of Lan's hands, examining it from all sides. "Huh cool. Think it could keep up with me?" He asked as he handed it back to Lan. "That's what I'm going to be testing actually. If it's to record places and fights for research then it's gotta be fast in order to both capture the footage and well not get destroyed." Lan happily explained as he turned on the drone.
The drone whirred to life as it's purple eye glowed against the morning light. Lan gently tossed it up into the air watching carefully as the drone's wings quickly activated, steadying itself, and zipped around Sonic keeping it's camera pointed at him. The camera's focus shifted towards Lan as he walked over towards the couch, grabbing his sachel. "Right. I'll tell you how I built it later since I don't want to make Shadow and Silver wait any longer." He said as he walked towards the front door, Sonic following behind him.
Outside Shadow and Silver were waiting for Sonic and Lan. Shadow had a day off and heard that they were celebrating Lan's birthday. Shadow normally wouldn't have come but Amy said she was making a coffee cake for the party and he wasn't missing the chance to have some. Silver was here because there was something off about the future. No matter how far forward he traveled the same scene kept showing up. Blood on dead grass but no bodies to be found and the sound of screams and fighting echoing all around him. Something happened in the past for the future to be like that but as he watched, keeping a very close eye on Sonic, nothing happened and everything seemed okay.
Sonic and Lan dashed over to where Shadow and Silver was, Lan showing up a few seconds later than Sonic, and greeted the two with a wave from Lan and a hug from Sonic. Shadow huffed as he was hugged by Sonic, giving a nod to Lan in greeting. "Right. Now that everyone is here can we go? We'll be late if we take anymore time." Shadow gruffy spoke up as he started to walk away from the others. Sonic chuckled and walked over to shadow, circling the other as he spoke. "Oh come on! We won't be late because of some small talk, we can easily get there in a flash!" Shadow glared at his rival standing still as he continued to circle him with an irritating smile.
Lan and Silver watched the two, Silver watching them hoping they don't start fighting and Lan smiling knowingly as Shadow and Sonic started arguing while circling each other.
"Hey Lan Can I ask you something? It's about the future." Silver asked as the four of them ran, following Sonic. "Yeah is something wrong?" "Well," Silver sighed, trying to find the right words, "i don't really know how to explain it but there was lot of blood and screaming wherever I went to. Strange thing was no matter how far out I went I couldn't find anyone. Living or otherwise." Lan slowed a little at what Silver said, a nervous feeling swelling in his gut before he quickly shoved the feeling aside and caught up.
"That's," he paused, "well pretty ominous. I'm sure we'll be able to figure it out though. You, Shadow, and Sonic tend to have a knack for saving the world no matter the challenge or hardship." He said with a small smile, nervous but encouraging. Silver frowned and thought over Lan's words before nodding, giving a tight smile to the other. "You're right. who knows, maybe I went to far into the future or to far into the past. It could happen, I think."
Both Lan and Silver stumbled into an abrupt stop as Shadow and Sonic stood over a ledge looking over at something. Silver helped Lan up, who had fallen after stumbling over his feet trying to stop, and glanced over Shadow's shoulder to see what they were looking at. At the bottom of the ledge was a couple of badniks digging around looking for something, most likely a chaos emerald. Lan crouched down at the edge, getting a better view of the situation and mentally counted how many there were. 20 badniks. Nothing that would be a problem for him or the other three.
Lan frowned as he watched the badniks work, scanning the ground then digging to find nothing before moving on to the next patch of dirt. He looked for an easy path to the furthest ones in the back without getting crushed or hit. By the time Lan got up Sonic and Shadow were already stretching while Silver used his psychokenesis to warm up. "Right. I'll see you lot down there." Was all Lan said to the others before twisting his body and falling backwards off the ledge.
Silver stared at where Lan was and looked over to Sonic and Shadow as Shadow teleported down to fight with Lan. Sonic, unfazed by what Lan did, shrugged at Silver and spin dashed down the ledge, leaving a confused Silver behind. Silver sighed and flew down, taking a few Boulder's with him, throwing them down as Sonic and Shadow zipped around them taking out badniks while Lan dealt with the larger badniks in the back. Sonic and Shadow spin dashed into the badniks, Sonic drop dashing on any that didn't go down in one hit and Shadow using chaos spear for the ones far away from him. Silver was throwing rocks and spare badnik parts at the other robot's, sometimes dropping down to stun a large group for Sonic and Shadow to take out.
Shadow kicked a badnik on the head, knocking it into the ground, he stomped on its back using the jets of his shoes to melt a hole into the armor of the badnik. Sonic was busy running around the robots and cracking jokes as he spun through them with minimal effort. Silver picked up Sonic in the middle of his spin dash and used him to destroy the remaining badniks along with using his orb to block any blows that would've hit the others. Lan was weaving through the legs of the larger badniks, tripping some and stabbing through their back and into their core. Lan dropped down one of his wrist blades, turning it into a rope dart, and threw it at a lone badnik far away. He pulled the robot back to him once the blade lodged itself into the metal of the badnik, lodging his other blade into it's head.
Lan huffed as he roughly pulled his wrist blade out of the back of the badnik after a bit of resistance. He walked over to the others, relaxing his hands so the blades would go back into their sheath. Shadow was complaining about something as he pulled bits of metal and wire out of Sonic's quill, the other messing around to make it slightly more difficult for Shadow. Silver, tired of hearing Shadows increasing annoyance just picked up Sonic and shook him up and down, dislodging anything in the blue hedgehogs quills. Lan chuckled as he finally made it to the other three, holding in his laugh as Sonic stumbled looking a bit green. "Alright. So no injuries I'm assuming?" Lan asked the others, placing his hands on his hips. "Nope. Maybe a lil sick thanks to silver." "Got shot by a few badniks but nothing I can't shake off." "Hmph. I'm fine." All three responded as Lan helped Sonic stabilize himself.
Seeing how far the sun has gone down in the sky they all decided to take the quickest route and portal over the meet up area. A large tree stood tall on the top of a hill with large checkered blanket laid out underneath the shade. A loud 'Happy Birthday Lan!' rang out as everyone stood in the shade with a coffee cake held tightly in the hands of a familiar pink hedgehog.