Bridgeverses: Multiversal Mayhem (aka Blur makes several mistakes)

"Sugar? Hello?" The first round of knocks got no response. Neither did the second, or the third, each attempt getting more forceful until Blur was practically banging on the door. The cat huffed, annoyed, and crossed his arms as he gave the locked door a frustrated glare. 'Guess she's not home.' The thought didn't help his mood any. She'd been making a big deal at school that she'd done something cool, and she wanted to show it off, and then he comes all this way and she's not even answering the door.

Maybe he was early? She hadn't exactly given a timeframe beyond "today after school". Blur turned this possibility over in his head as he tapped his foot impatiently. If that was the case, then he might be stuck waiting here for a while. Not exactly the way he wanted to spend his afternoon... especially with how much this "secret project" of hers had gotten hyped up. If he was completely honest with himself, Blur wasn't sure he would be able to wait however long he might have to.

About five minutes passed before Blur made a decision. Breaking in to Sugar's workshop wasn't the easiest thing he'd done, but it wasn't like he'd broken a window or anything-- one was already open, and he just had to climb through without making too much noise. Blur's tail swished from side to side with rising excitement as he looked around the dark space for anything that looked important or interesting. Sugar had been rather cagey about what exactly was such a big deal, which only made the mystery something the cat desperately wanted to solve. She wouldn't mind, right? He was just gonna take a peek under the tarp, and...

Blur shuddered from head to tail as two robotic eyes lit up. The robot tossed the tarp previously covering it aside and looked around, contemplating; as Blur watched, they seemed almost confused as turned to head to the door. "Wait, no no no!" The only thing in Blur's mind was that Sugar was absolutely going to kill him for this. The robot paused as Blur grabbed them by the arm and turned their head to look at him over their shoulder, then yanked their arm away with hardly any effort. Panic rising, Blur grabbed on again. "Stop it! I don't think you're even supposed to be on right now, how do I turn you off--" Blur felt the robot jerk away in response, and before he could ask if he'd done anything wrong he was roughly shoved back.

"Okay, that's it!" As the robot forced the door open, obviously intent on leaving, Blur crouched and sprang to collide with them. The robot stumbled, but despite Blur's hopes stayed steady even with the added weight. "You're-- not-- going-- anywhere--!!"

In retrospect, it was quite impressive how Metal Scourge was able to get across the message of "just you try and stop me, then" without words.

What followed next was something that wouldn't be out of place with some narration of "Yeah, that's me, I bet you're wondering how I got into this situation," as the world around Blur accelerated into a mess of colour. He tightened his grip and shut his eyes, but that only made the sense of vertigo worse; if he'd kept them open, he would've seen the scenery around him transition to places he'd never seen before as the robot launched themself out from one reality and into another in a dizzying chain. All he could focus on, though, was not letting go under any circumstance... something which was becoming harder as the robot struggled to knock him off mid-transit.

With each jump, Blur felt his grip loosen. He yelled as, after one final breach, the robot was finally able to shake him off and he was knocked to the ground with a rather pathetic noise. Free of the cat's attempts to restrain them, his accidental-kidnapper swiftly vanished from sight. Disoriented, lost, and with no idea where he was, Blur curled up to wait for his head to stop spinning and hoped for the best.

The day had, initially, started just like any other. Jordan had been woken up by his sister, had breakfast, and taken off for his morning run in the desert. Sure, it had been a little weird being back in the desert at first, after the Doomsday fiasco with Metal Sonic had began out here, but that was three months ago now. While he'd been pretty sure he and his friends had taken the robot down for good, they still made sure to check out all the places he might have ended up hiding anyway, and by now he was pretty confident by this point that Metal Sonic was not going to just pop out of nowhere and run him over any time soon.

Which is why it was so startling when a green Metal Sonic popped out of nowhere and ran him over.

Before he even knew what was happening, everything was a blur. Colors rushed everywhere, as he tried to disentangle himself from the robot's limbs, who seemed none too happy with the present arrangement either. After what felt like an eternity, but was, in truth, only a few moments, everything came to a stop, as the robot (Green Metal Sonic?) managed to fling him to the decidedly-not-sand-from-the-desert ground and rush off.

Jordan just lay on the ground on his back for a moment, trying to process what had just happened in the last fifteen or so seconds - it had all been so fast. Could Metal Sonic really be back? Where did he come from? Why was he green now? Well, whatever the case, he wasn't going to figure anything out lying on the ground out here... wherever 'here' was. Probably best to go find out, so he can let his friends know what's going on, so they can hunt the rogue bot back down again before he can do any harm.

He sat up, and took stock of the local area. Looks like Metal had dumped him on the sidewalk in the city. Not too bad, he could probably figure out his way home from here, though it's pretty wild it got this far so fast and oh woah there's someone else here on the ground too.

Jordan looked over at the black cat curled up on the ground nearby. He figured Metal must've knocked him over or something as he plowed through. He quickly hopped over, and poked him a few times in the side.

"Hey, you ok? Metal Sonic didn't get you too bad, did he?"

Blur winced as something jabbed him in the side and weakly swatted at whatever it was. The accompanying voice got him to open his eyes, though, and he gave the strange hedgehog a confused look. "Metal... what?" It was a few moments before his brain started working at usual pace again. "You mean that robot? Uh." He sat up, then his fur fluffed out as realization struck him. "Oh, crap! D- Did you see where it went?!"

Without even waiting for a proper response, Blur sprung to his feet and stumbled around as he scanned the area. Some of the passerbys milling around were giving him odd looks, but that was the last thing on Blur's mind. "I'm gonna be in so much trouble..."

Where was he, anyway? None of the nearby landmarks looked familiar at all, much to his dismay. Maybe he could flag someone down to ask, or... Well, it's not like he would have to look far, seeing as he was already talking to somebody. "Um, stupid question, but where are we?" He'd just have to explain to Sugar what happened, or more likely make up some sort of story about how it definitely wasn't his fault, but... getting home was step one of that plan.

Jordan gave the cat a smile. "This is Central City! Or at least, I assume it is, anyway. I was actually just in the Mirage Desert, on the outskirts of town? But hey, Metal Sonic is Metal Sonic, after all, so makes sense he'd be fast enough to plow me into town."

He stopped for a minute, and his smiled faltered.

"Not really sure what part of town this is, though! Or why he was green... Well, whatever! Shouldn't be too hard to find something familiar from here. I pretty much grew up in this city!"

He waved the cat over, and started walking off in a random direction, not even taking a moment to consider the implications of why the cat had even asked, or checking that he was even following.

"Er..." Blur did his best to keep up with the stranger's train of thought, although it was somewhat difficult. He half-considered correcting him on the mistaken identity part-- although the idea of there being multiple super-fast hedgehog robots to get mixed up was somewhat worrying-- but by the time he got a syllable out he was already walking off and in danger of leaving him behind. Blur hurried to keep pace.

He found that he couldn't really share the hedgehog's casual confidence. Blur couldn't quite place it, but everything around him felt slightly off, a feeling not helped when several minutes of wandering failed to get him anywhere. "Are you sure you know where you're going?" he piped up after squinting at a street sign. It wasn't like he was intending to be rude, but his doubt was clear and audible. "Because I think we've already gone around this block..."

Blur trailed off. This really wasn't the best situation to be in, and while he was trying to hide it he was starting to get somewhat anxious. "Maybe we can find a library or something?" he offered after some thought. "Those have maps, right?"

It was quickly beginning to dawn on Jordan that he had absolutely no idea where to find anything familiar at this point. He didn't recognize any landmarks in this city, no many how many times he circled around to double check, and it was dawning on him that even the style of street signs wasn't the same as the ones he was used to in town.

"...ok, yeah, maybe finding a map would be good. I'm not really sure why we haven't run into anything familiar yet, but I guess getting our bearings like that couldn't hurt. I didn't see any libraries, so why don't you lead the way?"

As he hopped behind the cat, again without waiting for confirmation, he furrowed his brow in thought. This... was weird. This had to be Central City, right? Sure, Metal was fast, but it was already pretty wild that he could have dragged Jordan to the nearest city that quickly - there's no way this could be anywhere else. But nothing was adding up. He'd explored most of this city before, there should have at least been a familiar street name by now, but instead it just became less and less familiar by the minute. Why?

He was so deep down this line of thought that he completely failed to notice the cat's reaction to his proposal at all.

Blur gave the other a startled look as the hedgehog fell into step behind him. Well, looks like he was the one in charge of things now, like it or not. "S-Sure..?" Having confirmation that they were both completely lost wasn't great for his nerves, but he could work with this! ...he hoped. How hard could it be?

As it turned out, pretty hard. Blur groaned and dropped to sit down on the sidewalk after more fruitless wandering yielded zero results. If anything, he felt like he'd managed to get more lost than before, which was definitely some sort of accomplishment. 'Getting lost for 15 minutes' wasn't the most glamorous follow-up to being kidnapped by a robot, but it could have also gone a lot worse... Still, he would rather be home right now.

"Uh, excuse me..." A voice nearby said, somewhat awkward. Blur jumped a little as he was addressed and looked up. The stranger was rather tall, with messy hair in contrast to neat clothes, and looking the two of them over with concern evident on his face. He was also not a species Blur had ever seen before. The cat stared, bewildered. It wasn't until the stranger cleared his throat and spoke up louder-- "Do you need help?" --that Blur realized he'd been asking him a question.

"Er, well," Blur stammered, "We're... a bit lost? I'm Blur, and this is--" He gestured to the hedgehog, and then realized he never asked his name. The stranger looked somewhat amused at his awkward silence.

"Huh?" said Jordan, intelligently, as he too was snapped out of his bewilderment at the stranger's appearance. "Oh, uh, I'm Jordan! Jordan the Hedgehog. I thought I knew my way around Central City but, ah, I guess not as much as I thought?"

He laughed, nervously, still not really sure what was going on, where they might have ended up, or what this person was, but surely at least now he might start getting some answers. Right?

The stranger laughed a little as Blur stood up and dusted himself off. "I'm Chris," he introduced himself with a small nod. He paused as he looked Jordan over, his gaze lingering on the hedgehog's bizarre pants for a moment; he raised an eyebrow, then shook his head and steered himself back on topic. "No shame in getting lost, Central City's huge and it doesn't help that it keeps getting blown up and rebuilt every few years." His casual tone took Blur aback, but before he could ask Chris was already continuing. "Where are you two headed? I can show you around, I'm not really doing anything right now."

"Um..." Where were they going? Blur realized that he'd just been following Jordan's lead in hopes of finding something the hedgehog found familiar, but the cat himself had no idea what he was doing. "Well, I'm new here," he explained sheepishly, "and... any sort of direction would be nice, actually." He glanced at Jordan, waiting for the other to chime in with... hopefully more of an idea than he had.