The future

A large truck that had fallen on its side was coated in a light blue aura and tossed to the side, clearing the half destroyed road. Pinkie and Silver had reached the edge of the city and were now headed to the more rural areas in search of another emerald. "You sure it's this way Pinkie? I'm not really familiar with the areas outside of the city and I'm pretty sure it's just fields of ash and rubble out here." Silver asked as he picked up a large rock with his power and shot it towards a flying creature made of fire, killing it and causing it to vanish in a puff of smoke.

Pinkie nodded and held out her own emerald. "My emerald is reacting to another emerald in this direction. And don't worry, we're headed into an area I'm familiar with...won't be pleasant to see my home in ashes but the sooner we get the emerald the sooner we can leave this horrible future behind and stop it from ever happening in the first place!" She responded with an unusual amount of optimism after such an emotional episode during their fight with Iblis.

Silver raised a brow and placed a hand on her back. "Are you doing ok? You seem really happy even though you just basically had an emotional breakdown about an hour ago."

"Hm? Oh, I'm just a generally happy pony, if I'm not happy, then the people around me aren't happy, so I have to. Plus there's no point in being a frowny pants when there's work to do." Pinkie replied with a smile as she happily trotted along, humming a soft tune as she went.

Silver was completely dumbfounded at the pink pony's sudden change in attitude. A small part of him was jealous, wishing that he could be that positive about anything, a larger part of him was just confused.

Shaking his head he began to follow after her. "This pony is going to be the end of me...at least with Blaze I knew what she was going to do or say...even if she was a bit of a tsundere at times. Wait, what the hell is a tsundere?" Silver sighed as he felt an oncoming migraine. "I've been hanging around this tiny horse too long, starting to go mad."

As Silver trudged along, leaving the city limits, a swirling vortex appeared on the rooftop of one of the large buildings that still stood strong. Two figures jumped out of the vortex, one being Scourge and the other being a figure that I'm going to reveal later. "Damn, this place looks like hell on its period." The alternate Sonic muttered as he took in his surroundings.

"Stay focused Scourge." Snively's voice spoke through the robotic figure at Scourge's side. "That annoying pony should be close by, don't screw this up."

"Relax boss, ain't nobody get the best of the king." Scourge replied confidently as he straightened his jacket. "Now, to find the little bug."

A series of beeps caught Scourge's attention, causing him to turn around and find the robot at the edge of the rooftop pointing downwards.

"What's up MP? You find something useful or are ya just short circuiting again?" He joked as he reached the robot, looking down at where it was pointing, seeing Silver and Pinkie walking towards the outskirts of Ruined Westopolis. "Heh, well I'll be damned." Adjusting the sunglasses on the top of his head, Scourge turned to his robot partner. "Well, lets go deal with Ponko and her little boyfriend then."

"Hey, Pinkie, think you could answer a question for me?" Silver asked.

"What's up?"

"You said we were headed to your home, did you live in Soleanna before the flames?"

"Huh? Oh, no, we were just vacationing there until some meanie started causing trouble, then our vacation turned into a mission." Pinkie answered while focusing on her emerald, trying not to look as they passed a ruined version of The Chaotix building.

"Wait, so are we even in Soleanna right now?"

"Nope, Soleanna has never had large cities like this, guess that guy that looked like a crappy recolour of my dad sent us to another location when sending us to the future."

"That seems like some lame excuse for some lazy plothole or something..."

"Yep!"

Silver rolled his eyes, just accepting whatever randomness came his way, already learning that questioning anything would just result in more headaches. "So, you lived around this area?"

"Mhm." Pinkie hummed as she pulled out of of her cubes and launched IOTA into the air. "Go look up ahead, see if the emerald is around my house." With the order given, IOTA zipped off into the distance.

"What was life like?" Silver asked with interest, spotting a flame creature and crushing it with his power.

Pinkie hummed for a moment as she hopped over some rubble and jumped across a gap in the road that led to another sea of fire. "Well life back home is great, aside from the occasional world ending disaster that needs dealing with and any emotional stuff, other than that everyone is usually happy and things are peaceful in certain ways. Although with my family there's always something weird and fun happening." She said with a slight giggle.

"I take it everyone in your family, bar your father, are as crazy as you?" Silver replied with a dry tone, not wanting to imagine a family full of different versions of Pinkie.

"Well most of my destructive and violent tendencies come from my nanny Omega, he's probably the most unhinged one in the family, other than me of course. Momma is calm most of the time, but she can get pretty angry sometimes, then she ends up being like a rabid wolverine high on coke. And my dad is pretty relaxed most of the time, but can get pretty moody, he's still dealing with a lot of stuff that I'm trying to help him with. I wonder if I can consider Sally family yet...eh question for after she and daddy get married." After this Pinkie began to ramble on about things she and her family had done during her life with them, to both entertain herself and Silver, but also to keep herself distracted from the ruined buildings that once housed her friends and family.

As they walked and talked Silver also shared some parts of his life that weren't filled with running from a huge lava demon that seemed to destroy everything and everyone. Yeah, there were very few stories without that.

Eventually the two came across IOTA perched on a fallen lamppost across the street from the run down Team Dark household.

Pinkie sighed at the sight of her ruined home and shook her head, holding her emerald up to the house and sensing a strong reaction. "The emerald is in there." She muttered as she began to slowly walk towards the building. Before she could get close, her Pinkie sense started acting up and she spun backwards to avoid an incoming green spinball.

Pinkie landed right beside Silver, both taking fighting stances while IOTA floated next to Pinkie protectively.

When the dust settled around where the spinball had hit, Scourge chuckled and dusted himself off. "Gotta give ya credit kid, you're fast."

"Who are you? Why'd you attack Pinkie?" Silver demanded, holding Scourge in place with his power, only for his hold to be broken as something struck him in the back, causing him to fall to his knees.

The robot jumped from behind Silver to Scourge's side, the design of which caused Pinkie's eyes to widen. "No way."

"Now then, Metal Pinkie, how about we make this quick?" Scourge asked the metallic pony as he took a fighting stance, the robot Pinkie Pie moving into an attack position and locking onto Pinkie.

Pinkie helped Silver to his feet, pulled out her other cubes and Party Bazooka while shaking her head. "What is with our world and robot clones?" She asked with slight annoyance.

Author's Notes:

Yep, Metal Pinkie. Why? Because I can, and if I can, I will.

Thanks for reading, please point out any mistakes you may have seen and let me know what you think in the comments.