Decided to write up a summary of TLSC since it's incomprehensible garbage:
M25YL ends with Sonic, Knuckles, Rotor, Cobar, and (unknown to them) Julie-Su traveling to the Badlands in order to use the Tachyon Chamber to send Sonic back in time. This ends badly, with Sonic potentially being erased from existence. Flynn handles this differently in his version of M25YL, where Sonic's disappearance 25 years ago allows Shadow to become the tyrant King of Mobius. Sonic reappears in 25YL with his old memories and ends up living on the streets since everyone thinks he's mad. Knuckles, Rotor, Cobar, Julie-Su, Tails, and Lien-Da retain their memories, and work together to defeat Shadow. The good guys win, and Sonic immediately re-marries (and re-impregnates!) Sally. All round a happy ending.
In the new ending, Sonic disappears for good, which causes spacetime to rupture, allowing OVERRIDE (Dr. Droid) to start his revenge on Knuckles (somehow). Sonic's erasure has caused a rippling effect through time that only Julie-Sue is aware of, leading into THE STORM, an alternate take on Sonic the Hedgehog #144. Panel 3 of page 5 (
>>4466) is where the rippling effect hits, transitioning from Sonic anthros to Penders aliens. Because Sonic doesn't exist, Geoffrey and Remington are now involved, and while the shuttle still leaves for the Badlands, this time it's only with Knuckles, Rotor (now the rhino Artemis), Cobar, and Julie-Su. There's a bunch of sci-fi babble, but essentially the are aware of the shift but not what's changed. They also lose contact with the shuttle at the end of the story.
SHATTERED TOMORROWS opens 37 chronons (let's say months) after the events of THE STORM, with Julie-Su reflecting on what happened and mourning the death of her father. Meanwhile, 6 chronons (months) later, Mykhal Taelor (Hollywood actor Antony Mackie) lands on the remains of Mobius, finding Lara-Su's home and watching a video of her narrating what happened. Yes, we have two simultaneously framing devices for the next part, which is why it's so difficult to follow. Essentially, the next part of the story is a video from 6 months ago being watched by Antony Mackie, where Julie-Su narrates her experience from 3 years prior about what happened on the shuttle. Got all that? Good!
Lara-Su has a flashback of her childhood (three framing devices!), but it's a mix of the old timeline (where everyone's Sonic anthros) and the current one (where everyone's Penders aliens). She snaps back to reality aboard the shuttle, where they're about to touch down in the Badlands. Knuckles, Rotor/Artemis and Cobar go out to fix the anomaly in the Tachyon Chamber, but something goes wrong as this time they don't have Sonic with them. Something bad happens, and Knuckles (apparently) dies off-screen. Rotor and Cobar are injured, but are able to make it back to the shuttle thanks to Knuckles' heroics. Julie-Su pilots the shuttle out of the Badlands, but sees a giant vision of her father and the story ends there. We still don't know what happened in the Tachyon Chamber this time.
Now we do get a 2 page preview. Here's what I could work out from it:
Knuckles is still missing 3 years later,
Julie-Su is now Guardian,
Mobius has blown up, with only Angel Island remaining within a force field,
Julie-Su and Rutan (Lien-Da's son) have a race to see who will be Guardian,
Lien-Da forces Julie-Su to make a choice between saving two people,
OVERRIDE is likely the one controlling that robot arm on the bottom right (
>>4521)
Be sure to check this thread in 12 years when I storytime the next volume
