Dr. Eggman, the most brilliant and handsome evil genius to ever set his sights on conquering the world, sat on his couch in his island lair, a pen held in his outstretched right hand. In his left hand was the daily newspaper, which he was holding up close to his face, a determined look on his face. An outside observer might not see it as such, but this was important work he was doing; his entire evil career was currently hanging in the balance.
“Hmm… An eight-letter word meaning ‘disaster’…” he mused as he glanced at the clue on the side. It seemed like such a simple word, so obvious an answer for his great intellect… and yet the answer wasn’t coming to him. He kept staring at the boxes, trying to mentally produce the word that was meant to fit in them.
Suddenly the door to his right slid open and Orbot and Cubot came floating in, Cubot’s arms swinging around in a panic. “Emergency!” the yellow bot cried.
“That doesn’t fit,” Eggman replied absently, not taking his eyes off the paper as his assistants came to a stop in front of his coffee table, both of them hovering in place.
“Red alert, Boss!” Orbot exclaimed.
“That’s two words!” Eggman growled, already starting to get annoyed by their intrusion.
“No, Boss! This is really important!” Orbot insisted.
Eggman finally moved the paper to the side to look at the two as he spoke, “Don’t you think I know that?! These crosswords can’t solve themselves, unfortunately! Give me some real answers if you want to help that badly!”
He started to look back at the paper when Orbot tried one more time, “Boss, we have a real situation! You have to see this!”
Eggman stopped and glared at the red-topped robot for a second before he let out an irritated sigh and set the paper and his pen down. “This had better be good!” he scowled as he stood up and made his way to the door, Orbot and Cubot following close behind.
Eggman stepped into his main control and walked over to the computer terminal, looking up at the monitors on the wall in front of it. The screens were showing surveillance footage of a familiar robot factory, which was fully operational and producing new robots. Eggman stared up at the screens for a few moments before he asked, “What is all this?”
Orbot spoke, “It’s the Ancient robot factory, Boss! The one you took over, remember?”
Eggman looked back at him with an odd expression before Orbot’s words clicked and his expression changed as he said, “Oh yes, that place! …I haven’t used that place in so long. No wonder I couldn’t place it.”
Cubot piped up, “Well, you must’ve kept everything you set up there active, Boss, because the systems picked up an intruder!”
Eggman turned back to the terminal and began typing on his keyboard as he asked, “Well, who is it? Sonic, I assume? That hedgehog always has to break and enter and touch my things, so…” He was brought to a surprising stop when the footage on the screen showed a familiar, armored snake as the perpetrator. Eggman quickly paused the footage as he exclaimed, “Lyric?!”
Cubot spoke up, “That’s the name I was trying to remember! I knew he looked familiar, but I couldn’t think of his name, we haven’t seen him in so long!”
Orbot asked, “Why is he back now, Boss? How is he back? I thought you said he was finished?”
Eggman replied, “He should’ve been! He fell out of his airship, when it was above the clouds!” He glared at the snake on the screen, “That old armor must be tougher than I thought.”
Cubot asked, “So what’s he doing in the factory?”
Eggman snorted, “Well, obviously, he doesn’t know it belongs to me now, so he’s taking it back and using it without my permission to create an army! Once he has that, well…” He paused and looked down, holding his left hand up near his mouth as he murmured, “What is the next thing he’d do? Come after me? Go after Sonic?” He thought for a few seconds before his eyes widened behind his sunglasses. “The Crystal of Power!” he exclaimed.
Orbot asked, “You mean the Meroke Crystal?”
Eggman turned his head to look at his assistants, “Not that crystal! The one Sonic and his friends were collecting the pieces of while they were following Lyric! That snake was after that crystal the entire time, and since Sonic conveniently decided to leave it behind on his airship, he’ll get it this time!”
Cubot turned to Orbot and asked, “They just left it behind?”
Orbot replied, “Apparently. Isn’t it just amazing how some people make a big deal out of leaving trash lying around and then they leave something so important behind the same way?”
Eggman didn’t hear the two, instead muttering to himself, “Lyric’s going to go after the crystal next. He had a number of plans for it in the files I recovered from the factory. If it’s as powerful as the Meroke Crystal or even stronger…”
Eggman mused quietly to himself for several moments before Cubot asked, “Uh, Boss? What are we gonna do?”
Eggman nodded a moment later, then turned to his assistants and said, “We’re going to do the unthinkable! We… are going to save the world!”
Both Orbot and Cubot looked shocked by this. “We are?” Orbot asked.
Eggman nodded, “Of course! Sonic may not have been able to know that Lyric wasn’t finished yet, but his reassembling of the Crystal of Power is going to endanger us all if Lyric gets his hands on it! Someone needs to get to that crystal before that molted old snake, and since we’re the first ones to know he’s back…”
Orbot finished, “It falls to us?” Eggman turned back to the terminal and began typing rapidly, prompting Orbot to ask, “What are you doing, Boss?”
Eggman replied without breaking his concentration, “I’m figuring out where Lyric’s airship crash-landed, getting the modified Eggmobile, and bringing back the Shark Bots. We’re going on an underwater safari!”
Cubot spoke, “Sweet! I’ll go pack the underwater safari gear!”
Later…
Sonic grunted as he struck a Destruction Trooper with a Homing Attack, the robot exploding after it fell out of the air and hit the ground while the blue hedgehog uncurled and landed on his feet. He immediately got back into an offensive stance as several ground-based troopers approached him. Behind him, Knuckles was giving his fists quite the workout taking out a group of ground-based Destruction Troopers while several closed in on Sonic, the blue hedgehog getting into an offensive stance at their approach.
After less than a minute, all the troopers were reduced to Ancient scrap metal and the two had a chance to pause and look around for more. “No more left? Well, looks like I win this round, Sonic!” Knuckles gloated after a moment.
The blue hedgehog shrugged, “Sure, you go ahead and believe that, Knuckles.” He then raised his right arm and clicked on his wrist communicator, saying after a moment, “Hey Tails, we’ve taken care of this group of robots. How are things looking now?”
At his workshop, Tails was looking at the screen of his laptop as he answered via his headset, “Uh, a little better, I guess. Amy and Sticks are busy in the middle of dealing with some of them right now, and I’m picking up signs of more across the island.”
Sonic asked, “What’s Eggman up to this time? It’s not like him to launch a robot attack without making an announcement beforehand, especially when it’s something new like this.”
Tails replied, “Well, that’s part of the reason I don’t think it’s him behind this, plus the Destruction Troopers aren’t exactly new for us.”
Sonic looked confused. “The what?” he asked.
“You know, the Ancient robots,” Tails replied. After a moment without any sort of response, he went on, “From thousands of years ago? The time of the Ancients? Their robotic soldiers?”
Sonic shrugged, “Oh. I didn’t realize they actually had a name.”
Tails continued, “We haven’t seen Ancient robots for quite a while, so this is really weird. The only place I can think that they could’ve come from is the robot factory we went through when we were trying to rescue Amy, but I could’ve sworn we shut that down. Did it get reactivated? And if it did, who’s behind it?”
Knuckles spoke up, “We could ask Eggman. There he is right now.” He pointed and Sonic followed his finger to see Eggman’s Eggmobile off in the distance. They were too far away to call out to him, but they were able to see the craft’s crane dangling underneath it with something in its grasp.
“Looks like he caught himself a prize. Some kind of big purple crystal. Kind of reminds me of the Meroke Crystal,” Sonic remarked.
While Knuckles expressed a bit of confusion about the Meroke Crystal, Tails was processing what Sonic said and was trying to put a name to it. “Big… Purple… Like the Meroke Crystal…” he murmured. His eyes widened suddenly and he exclaimed, “That must be the Lost Crystal of Power!”
Sonic looked up at Knuckles when the echidna asked, “Uh, what?”
Tails said, “The Lost Crystal of Power! You know, the one Lyric was looking for?”
Knuckles asked, “Who?”
Sonic, having recognized the name, said, “You know, Lyric! Big snake guy wearing armor?”
Tails added, “The last living Ancient?” When he didn’t hear any sound of recognition from Knuckles, he sighed and explained, “Okay, it was a while ago, but we came into conflict with Lyric after he was freed from the imprisonment his fellow Ancients had put him in thousands of years ago. He was searching for the shards of the Lost Crystal of Power and he kidnapped Amy to figure out where they were hidden. We found all the shards first and left the crystal on Lyric’s airship after he went overboard and we crashed it in the ocean.”
Knuckles’ face lit up, “Oh yeah, that’s right! I rem-” He stopped mid-sentence and his expression became blank. “…No, wait. I thought I had it.” He raised an eyebrow, “Can we start from the beginning again?”
Sonic let out a groan and spoke to Tails, “Let’s meet up with Amy and Sticks. Eggman must’ve reactivated the Ancient robots to keep us busy while he got the crystal. We’d better get it back from him.” He then switched off his communicator and started heading back towards Hedgehog Village with Knuckles in tow.
The two weren’t the only ones to spot Eggman and the crystal, however. Deep in the jungle, Lyric was overseeing an excavation several of his Destruction Troopers were conducting to find the crystal with his hands behind his back when another trooper approached him and whispered to him. Lyric turned to it afterwards and asked, “Really?” The trooper nodded, so Lyric said, “Then I suppose we need to pay this man a visit.” He turned back to the other Destruction Troopers and commanded, “That’s enough digging! The crystal’s been sighted heading for a nearby island. That is our destination now.” The troopers immediately stopped working at his words and obediently followed after him as he began to slither away, unaware of a pair of familiar red eyes watching him from afar.
Soon, at Dr. Eggman’s Lair
Dr. Eggman placed the Lost Crystal of Power standing up in one of his cages and stepped back before he used his wrist controller to activate the lasers. “There. That should keep it safe,” he said. He turned around to see Orbot and Cubot coming in with a dolly, both of them bringing it to a stop in front of him. “All right, you two, get this down to the storage room! It’ll be safe there” he ordered while pointing at the cage.
“Why can’t you do it, Boss?” Orbot asked.
“Because I’m making you two do it, that’s why! Now get to work, you lazy bolt brains!” Eggman yelled. The two robots started to move towards the cage, but they didn’t get far before an alarm started coming from one of the monitors in the living room and caught everyone’s attention. Eggman walked over to it and saw Team Sonic on the screen, the team of five making their way up to his lair from their landing point where they had left a parasail behind. They’d be at the front door soon; it was easy to guess considering how often it happened.
Eggman grimaced and looked back at his two assistants, saying, “I’ll deal with them. Get that crystal away from my coffee table!” While the two struggled to lift the cage up and put it on the dolly, Eggman exited the room and went to his main computer. He began fiddling with the controls, making the front door open for Team Sonic so they could enter and immediately locking it shut behind them. He then moved on from the door controls to continue his fiddling elsewhere.
He was just finishing adjusting the parameters programmed into his Badniks when he heard the door behind him sliding open. He stopped and turned around; Sonic and his friends were standing in the doorway, all of them glaring at him. “The jig’s up, Eggman! Give back the crystal you took!” Sonic said as they all took several steps forward.
Eggman coolly replied, “Why should I? So that you can drop it in the water again or in a hole somewhere and not even remember it the next time someone comes looking for it? This is actually a bit insulting, Sonic; I shouldn’t have to be doing your job for you!”
Sonic looked at him in confusion, “What are you talking about?”
Eggman went on, ignoring Sonic’s question, “Personally, I don’t know why you wouldn’t keep it around to use to crush your enemies like the vermin they are with it, but seriously? Just leaving it behind like that? What were you thinking?!”
Amy decided it was time for her to intervene. “Eggman, what are you trying to say?” Almost as soon as she finished speaking, the lair shook with the sound of something hitting it from outside. “What was that?!” Amy exclaimed as she and the rest of Team Sonic looked around in confusion.
Eggman turned to look at his computer screens with a grim expression. “He’s here,” he grunted.
Tails was the first to ask, “Who’s here?” He got his answer a moment later when the feed from a security camera outside the front door appeared on one of the computer screens, which showed Lyric trying to break the front door down. “Lyric?! He’s…?!” Tails exclaimed.
Eggman turned back around and finished, “Still alive? Yes. Even I thought he shouldn’t be trying to show me up anymore, but he somehow survived you dropping him out of the sky.”
Sonic stared up at the snake on the screen as he asked, “Why is he just now coming back?”
Eggman spoke, “Good question, but hardly one that matters now. Do you see why I took the crystal now? Someone had to get to it before he did, and clearly you simpletons weren’t doing anything about it! Since I was the only one who remembered the crystal, it was clearly my responsibility to make sure he couldn’t get it!”
Sticks pointed her boomerang at Eggman as she countered, “We came straight here ‘cause Sonic and Knuckles saw you taking the crystal here! Lyric probably saw you doin’ it too… by tappin’ into the government’s secret network of eyes!”
Knuckles almost immediately believed the badger’s words and he glared at Eggman as he said, “Not cool, Eggman! You made it easy for Lyric to find the crystal!”
Eggman held out his arms in exasperation, “Hey, evil robots are my thing, not saving the world! You can’t put all the blame on me!” An explosion rocked the lair before the argument could continue and they saw that Lyric had destroyed the front door and was making his way inside. “And now I can’t initiate a lockdown or use the exterior defenses. Thank you all for distracting me!” Eggman growled.
The door behind Team Sonic slid open a second later and everyone turned to see Lyric on the other side of it, a wide, toothy grin spreading across his face as he looked at everyone. “Oh, this is just too perfect,” he remarked.
“Lyric! Back for another shot at being good, or rather, bad, huh?” Sonic growled.
Lyric glared at Sonic, “You almost did manage to finish me off, Sonic. Even with landing in the water, my body and my armor were both badly damaged from that fall. I was in great pain; when I entered stasis, I wasn’t sure if it would be enough to keep me alive while I healed.” He clutched his right hand into a fist as he smirked, “Clearly I was meant to claim what’s mine, however! I was suddenly awoken to find that my injuries had healed and my suit had regained its power!” He continued to smirk as he looked at them all again, “And now that I’m back, I’ve come for what’s mine!”
Eggman spoke up, “Not anymore! The Crystal of Power is now a symbol of MY evil career! I stole it and you can’t have it~!”
Lyric’s eyes shifted to look up at the man, finally acknowledging his presence. “Ah, you. The one who thought he could take my robot factory and now my crystal from me,” he stated in a condescending tone.
Eggman yelled, “Your time is past, Lyric! You should’ve just stayed on the ocean floor and joined your fellow Ancients! My robots are far better than yours; you’ll never take the crystal from me!”
A smirk once again spread across Lyric’s face. “Oh? Then you shouldn’t have left it unattended,” he replied.
Eggman looked confused, “What? I didn’t…” A beeping from his wrist controller cut him off and he raised it and clicked it on, an irritated look on his face. “What?” he asked.
They all heard Cubot say, “Uh, Boss? We’ve kind of run into a little bit of… trouble. Uh, you see…” He suddenly let out a scream and they could hear Orbot screaming as well before the connection went dead.
“Cubot? Orbot?! Come in!” Eggman exclaimed, tapping his controller and sounding a bit frantic.
Everyone looked at Lyric when he let out a chuckle. “Do you really think I came here on my own without a plan in mind, Doctor? You have an entire network of tunnels below, tunnels you really should have thought about putting security countermeasures in. My Destruction Troopers might have had a little difficulty getting in if you had.”
Sonic growled, “You slithering creep!”
The door to the living room opened suddenly and everyone looked to see four floating Destruction Troops enter, two of them holding Orbot and Cubot by their necks and the other two holding up the cage containing the Lost Crystal of Power. Eggman looked at his two assistants before looking back at Lyric when the snake spoke, “You see, Doctor? You don’t deserve to have the crystal any more than these fools do; your failure to plan is proof of that. You can’t possibly defeat me with your inferior machines.”
An angry look crossed Eggman’s face. “Really? Well, I’ve got news for YOU, Lyric: you just made a very big mistake! This is my lair you’re invading!” As he was speaking, he brought up his wrist controller and pressed down on it as he finished. In response, laser turrets suddenly came out of the wall across from the living room and opened fire on the Destruction Troops, hitting the two holding Orbot and Cubot in the head before they could react and damaging the other two, forcing them to drop the cage before they fell on the floor.
Lyric’s eyes widened, “What?!” Eggman pressed his controller two more times, the first causing two more turrets to come out of the walls behind Lyric and open fire on him while the second caused a net that was electrified to fall from the ceiling at him. The turrets firing at him were not enough to completely distract him, however, and he was able to notice the net falling and move back before it landed on him. He then turned and fired a pair of missiles at the turrets, destroying them.
At this, Tails said, “Uh-oh! He’s going to go for the crystal now!”
Eggman began repeatedly tapping on his controller, “Not yet, he won’t!” As Lyric turned around to face everyone again, Motobugs, Bee Bots, Crab Bots, and the rest of the Badniks Eggman had available began flooding into the room. Team Sonic tensed up as the robots came in, but to their surprise, they all moved in front of them and faced Lyric. “I made some adjustments earlier,” Eggman shrugged when they looked at him.
Lyric looked at the Badniks and let out a chuckle before asking, “You really think your toys can stop me, Doctor?” He brought his right hand close to his chest and let out a hissing sound. Seconds later, a horde of Destruction Troops came up behind him, filling the hallway.
Despite the number of robots behind Lyric, Eggman gloated, “Ha! Your robots are all flash and lights! They’re nothing compared to my new, sleek designs!”
Lyric just smirked, “Come at me, then! I’ll destroy you all!”
Tails pulled out his blaster, “I’m glad I brought this with me!”
Amy brought out her hammer, “I’m going to get you for kidnapping me, Lyric!”
Sticks pointed her boomerang at the snake, “Amy’s getting those new boots this time!”
Eggman pointed and commanded, “Get that snake and his cronies, you metallic dunderheads!” Lyric pointed as well and the robots on both sides launched forward, Amy and Sticks leaping into the middle of the fracas.
Sonic didn’t immediately jump in; instead, he stopped Knuckles from joining and told him, “Knuckles, Orbot and Cubot could probably use some help with that crystal! Help them move it!”
Knuckles looked down at him in surprise. “What?! But… that’s no fun! And what about our contest?!” he asked.
Sonic answered, “Contest was over as soon as Lyric showed up! It’s time to knuckle down!” before he turned and shot forward, hitting a Destruction Troop with a Homing Attack.
Knuckles didn’t look convinced, so Tails, while shooting at Troops with his blaster, said, “Knuckles, we can’t let Lyric get his hands on that crystal! If he gets away with it, we all lose!”
Eggman added, “Help them, Knuckles! Look at me! I’m begging you! To the best of my ability!” Knuckles turned to look at him and saw that he had his hands close together and was bending forward slightly, a not-angry look on his face.
At this, Knuckles relented, “All right.” He ran over to Orbot and Cubot, who were trying to pick the cage up again, and said, “Allow me!” The two robots backed off and he squatted down, getting his hands underneath the cage and lifting it up with a little effort. He held it up in front of him as he asked, “Okay, now what?!”
Orbot replied, “This way! Follow us!” He and Cubot then began leading Knuckles to storage room, the echidna running after them to the best of his ability.
Lyric managed to force his way into the room after a minute and, after taking out the turrets on the wall, swept his eyes around, looking for the crystal. Upon not seeing it, he shot towards the door leading to the living room. Tails and Eggman turned and fired at him, their shots doing little to slow him down. “Sonic, it’s Lyric!” Tails called, the blue hedgehog stopping and taking off after the large serpent after a moment.
Lyric could see the crystal at the other end of the hall and was starting to fly after it when something suddenly hit him in the back and forced him down onto the ground. He looked up to see Sonic landing after coming out of his Homing Attack. “Where you going, Lyric? The party’s not over yet!” he said as he stood up.
Lyric raised himself up as he spoke, “Sonic the Hedgehog… I’d love to exact my revenge on you right now, but I have a crystal to reclaim. Now get out of my way!”
Sonic got into a battle stance, “Not gonna happen, snake breath!” He then shot forward and jumped, curling up to attack again. Lyric was prepared this time and maneuvered his tail around, managing to hit him with the end of it and knock him back. Sonic managed to land on his feet, but as soon as he did, Lyric brought his tail back behind him and fired his lasers, forcing Sonic to back up to avoid getting hit. They kept this up, Lyric deflecting Sonic’s attacks as best he could while the hedgehog tried to keep him from going after the crystal.
Eggman soon joined the two in his Eggmobile and their fighting ended up moving near the laboratory. They didn’t go inside, but after they moved past the door leading to it, it suddenly opened and a familiar voice caught their attention, “Lyric!” All three of them stopped fighting and they saw Shadow standing in front of the door.
“Shadow!” Lyric growled.
“Shadow?! Isn’t it too early to see you?” Sonic asked.
“Shadow! Oh, this must be my lucky day! I have to win today, or at the very least Lyric has to lose!” Eggman exclaimed.
Shadow ignored Sonic and Eggman, focusing only on Lyric. “You can’t get away from me this time!” he snarled before leaping forward, Lyric twisting his body around to avoid him. Eggman stopped fighting Lyric and started talking about how lucky he was while Sonic and Shadow fought the snake, though it was clear they weren’t working together since Shadow had no problem colliding with Sonic several times.
Soon…
Knuckles sighed as he set the cage down in Eggman’s storage room, stepping back afterwards. “There we go. It’ll be perfectly safe in here,” he remarked as he dusted his hands.
“Absolutely. There’s no safer place here than in the room containing all the things the Boss has ever used for his evil schemes,” Orbot agreed.
“Yeah, we might not even need the cage now!” Cubot added.
Knuckles flexed his arms and grinned, “All right, I got my workout in for today. Now it’s time to go smash some Lyric robots!” He turned and stepped out of the storage room, only to stop when Lyric suddenly came crashing down through the ceiling into the basement. The snake quickly looked up after landing and darted to the side to avoid Shadow smashing into him from above. “Wha? Shadow?” Knuckles asked confusedly. The black and red hedgehog ignored him, still focused on Lyric.
Sonic dropped down through the hole a few seconds later, followed closely by Eggman. “Oh Shadow, please try to be careful with your fighting! I mean, you should do whatever it takes to defeat Lyric of course, but try not to destroy my lair as well!” Eggman said, his words falling on deaf ears. Orbot and Cubot watched the fight through the storage room door, seeing Amy, Tails, and Sticks join the fray soon afterwards.
A turning point came when Amy tried to throw her hammer at Lyric, the snake dodging out of the way as it spun end over end towards the storage room door. Orbot and Cubot yelped and moved to the sides as the hammer flew into the room and ended up hitting the top of the cage, damaging it and causing the lasers to shut off. With the door wide open, Lyric was able to clearly see the crystal unprotected when he turned around. He grinned to himself, “Ah, my crystal…”
Before he could attempt to claim his prize, he heard Shadow let out a shout and whirled back around, seeing the black hedgehog roughly knock Amy to the side (though she was thankfully caught by Sonic) before he leapt up and threw a bolt of energy at the snake. Lyric once again moved to the side to avoid being hit and it ended up hitting the crystal, causing it to shatter.
Well, it mostly shattered. A little more than a quarter of the crystal held together while the rest broke off in shards that went flying around the storage room, bouncing off of anything they hit. One shard in particular ended up bouncing off the side of one of the new additions to the storage room: one of Eggman’s old Doomsday Devices.
Almost immediately after the shard hit the floor, the screen on the Doomsday Device suddenly lit up as did the rest of the machine. As everyone watched, it began to charge up a sphere full of unstable energy, the machine shaking as if it was trying to contain the sudden power surge. “No! My Doomsday Device! We have to stop it!” Eggman exclaimed.
Sonic looked back at him with an angry look, “You said it didn’t have an ‘OFF’ switch, Eggman!”
Eggman cried, “It doesn’t! Smash it or something! I’m not using it, so I don’t want it on!”
Knuckles ran forward, yelling, “My pleasure!”
Amy ran forward and grabbed her hammer as Knuckles started pummeling it with his fists, bringing it up over her head as she said, “Let me get a swing in too!” She smashed her hammer into the side of the machine as Knuckles’ fist broke the screen. For a second, it looked like the machine was starting to power down.
Then suddenly, it lit up again and without warning fired the overloaded sphere between its two prongs straight up, the energy from the sphere discharging as it broke through the floors above and doing more damage to the lair. When it finally got outside, the sphere broke and formed a vortex in the sky over the lair, although it looked different from the black hole that the two Doomsday Devices had created before.
There wasn’t much time to look, however, before the vortex began to rotate and form a vacuum. The suction from the vortex quickly became strong and started to suck up anything loose. Old machines and robots, components of old schemes, crystal shards, Badniks, Destruction Troops… It even began sucking up Sonic and the others. As soon as they felt the pull, they all tried to grab onto something, hoping it would burn itself out soon.
It was no use, however. Although it remained confined to the island, the suction began to get stronger and stronger. Eventually, Lyric was the first to lose his grip, the large snake screaming as he was pulled up towards the vortex. Shadow was the next to lose his grip, although he didn’t seem too bothered by it; after all, he was going wherever Lyric was going. Orbot and Cubot lost their grip soon after, but Eggman flew up after them and managed to grab them when they were outside the lair. He then immediately turned his Eggmobile around and set it on full power as he yelled, “Hold on!” Both Orbot and Cubot held on tightly as he tried to fly back to the lair.
After a few seconds, Orbot yelled, “Boss, we’re not moving!”
Cubot piped up, “Yeah we are! We’re moving backwards!”
Eggman growled, “Shut up, both of you! We’re going to be fine! Just let me…” He stopped short when he saw Sonic flying up towards him, the hedgehog trying to reach for him as he went past. Eggman managed to move out of his reach, letting him fly up towards the vortex, and did the same as Tails, Amy, Knuckles, and Sticks were carried up past him. Eggman breathed a sigh of relief afterwards; they were still being pulled up, but it looked like they might outlast the vortex. Unfortunately, he noticed Sticks’ boomerang coming up towards him too late, the projectile hitting him in the face and causing the Eggmobile to slow down. That ended their escape attempt, the vortex almost immediately pulling them the rest of the way afterwards. “NOOO! MY PANINI PRESS!” Eggman cried before they were pulled in completely, the vortex closing shortly afterwards.
________________________________________
It was a beautiful night in Canterlot, the sky clear of clouds and dotted with stars. It was a perfect night for stargazing and seeing how deep into the depths of space one could see. It was also late, so only a handful of souls were currently awake to see the beautiful spectacle. They were definitely lucky, but not just for that reason; they were also about to be the only ones to bear witness to a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle.
All of a sudden, the quiet beauty of the night was disrupted by what appeared to be a black hole opening up and blocking out part of the sky. It wasn’t gigantic, but it was large enough that anyone who happened to be looking up at the time would’ve definitely noticed it. It wasn’t open long, maybe a couple of seconds at most, then it expanded slightly and gave one last swirl before it vanished as quickly as it appeared. Those who were watching the sky noticed a number of mysterious purple stars falling from the sky afterwards.
One such star shot down towards one of Canterlot’s residential areas, falling at an angle. It was interrupted in its flight by a set of power lines. It wasn’t going fast enough to break through them, but it did cause them to loosen and sag a bit under its weight. Suddenly the power lines began to spark, electricity coming from the ends of the cables. As the lines shook, the star was thrown off and landed on a nearby slanted roof, the star clattering as it rolled down and fell into someone’s backyard, landing next to the back of the house.
Inside the house, a dog’s barking could be heard, a purple-haired girl fumbling for her glasses in the dark as she groggily groaned, “What’s going on?”