Sonic Boom
The purple lights on one of the machines aboard Lyric’s airship flickered for a second before they went off, the green armor-wearing snake using the hands on his suit to drag himself towards the machine as it died. He groaned and muttered, “I’m glad reptiles can regenerate their parts” as he continued his crawl. Behind him stood Sonic and his friends, the blue hedgehog having managed to hold the mad snake off long enough to set his friends free, at which point they all finished dishing out a beatdown.
Seeing Lyric seemingly defeated, they all relaxed and Sonic looked around at everyone as he said, “Great work, guys! We beat him!”
Knuckles flexed his muscles and pointed to himself with his left thumb as he remarked, “Yes! Yes, I did!”
Their reverie was cut short when Lyric spoke up, “FOOLS!” Facing forward, they realized he had raised himself up, the full length of his body outside of his armor laid out across the floor to his right. “I haven’t survived all the eons to be defeated by inferiors like you!” As he was speaking, he revealed a small red button in his left hand and pressed it with his right center finger. Immediately, a two-armed cannon rose up from the floor behind him, Sonic and his friends tensing up as both guns opened up and pointed at them, their ‘fingers’ spinning. Lyric gestured at it and said, “After this weapon turns you meddlers into abstract art, I’ll gather the crystal fragments and build my empire!”
The cannon suddenly shook and everyone heard a familiar voice say, “Lyric!” The snake looked up and saw Shadow standing on top of the cannon with a set of wires in the palm of his left hand. With a grunt and a little bit of effort, he ripped them from the weapon and it immediately powered down, its arms falling at its sides. “I said I’d find you,” Shadow said before dropping the wires and jumping towards Lyric, flipping over before he reached him and kicked him in the face (or rather the glass dome protecting his face).
The kick sent Lyric flying and Sonic turned and ran over to a hatch behind him, stopping next to a lever and casually pulling it back. The hatch opened, revealing the clouds below. Lyric looked back at the hatch and realized where this was going. “Ahhhhhhhhhhh!!! Noooooooooo!!” he yelled as he fell through the opening and disappeared beneath the clouds.
Amy rolled her eyes and said, “Man, I wanted to do that.”
Sonic shrugged, “Does it matter who did it as long as it’s done?”
Sticks put a hand on her friend’s shoulder, “We all couldn’t kick him off the airship, Amy. And you know why?”
Amy sighed and asked, “No. Why?”
Sticks stepped forward and stood in the center of everyone, moving around as she exclaimed, “Because we’re a team! We got beaten to the punch, or in this case, the kick as a team. We can raise our heads proudly, knowing that we traveled all this way just to watch somebody else finish the job. When we walk down the streets and people whisper ‘Those are the ones who couldn’t quite save the day, almost, but not quite,’ we’ll smile together because we didn’t do it as a team! I finally understand teamwork… and it’s beautiful.”
Shadow crossed his arms and rolled his eyes with a huff. “That was pathetic,” he stated.
Sonic remarked, “Sticks may have taken the long way to get to the point, but she’s right. We beat Lyric together. As a team!”
Shadow simply huffed in reply, “And I’m leaving ALONE. As your superior.” With that, he turned and walked away.
Sonic looked down and shook his head slightly. “Too bad that guy’s such a hardcase. He’d be a great addition to Team Sonic.”
As he started to walk away, Knuckles fell into stride beside him and spoke, “You mean Team Knuckles.”
Sonic corrected him, “Team SONIC.”
Knuckles insisted, “Team KNUCKLES.”
Tails, following behind the two, started, “Uh… guys?”
Amy and Sticks started to follow the boys as Sonic coughed and quickly said, “Team Sonic.”
Half an hour later…
The members of Team Sonic looked relieved as their home island got closer and closer with every moment, Sonic especially. They were all currently standing on top of the Ancient plane they’d found in the volcano to escape and continue pursuing Lyric. The crash landing had rendered it unable to fly, but it was in good enough shape to float, so they decided to use it as a boat to get home, using metal beams taken from Lyric’s airship, which they’d crashed out in the ocean with the Crystal of Power, as paddles.
“We’re almost home. Can’t wait to stretch my legs,” Sonic commented.
“I can’t wait to get this thing back to my workshop. Once I get it fixed, it’ll be great for traveling and fighting off Eggman. I’m gonna have this plane for a long time, I just know it,” Tails said.
Amy spoke, “Come on, guys, we’re just getting home and already you want to take off? I mean, we only just defeated the last living Ancient and kept him from getting his cold hands on the crystal. We should go to my house and celebrate first.”
Knuckles asked, “You really think it was a good idea to leave that crystal on that ship?”
Amy replied, “I wouldn’t worry about it. Considering how high up we were, I’m sure he didn’t have a soft landing. I don’t think we’ll have to worry about him coming back for it.”
Sticks looked at her friend and sincerely said, “I’m sorry we didn’t get you those snakeskin boots you wanted, Amy.”
Amy smiled back at her, “Oh well. Maybe we’ll have another chance some other time, Sticks. I’m just happy you understand teamwork… a little better after all this. Do you think you’d be interested in having more adventures like this?” Sticks stopped paddling, a perturbed look appearing on her face as she seriously considered what Amy was suggesting.
Meanwhile, in the robot factory below the Ancient Ruins…
Dr. Eggman stepped through the factory entrance and looked up and around at all of the machinery as he walked. The factory was still producing Ancient robots, which came off the line in an inactive state. “I must admit, those Ancients really were advanced for their time. To think that they built such a large robot factory… and now it belongs to me!”
A red-and-black orb and a yellow-and-black cube bounced up behind him and opened up to reveal Orbot and Cubot. “Yours? How exactly does it belong to you now?” Orbot asked.
“Yeah, don’t you need to have one of those fancy signed papers that says you own it?” Cubot added.
Eggman kept walking as he glanced back at his robotic underlings and said in an annoyed tone, “I don’t need to go through all that legal mumbo-jumbo! This factory has been abandoned for thousands of years! It was free for the taking for whoever managed to find it first, and now that that fossilized snake is out of the way, it’s back to being that way!”
Orbot asked, “Out of the way? You mean…” Before he could finish, they all heard the sound of metallic footsteps behind them and came to a stop. Looking back, they saw Metal Sonic walking towards them, his red-purple eyes glowing brightly. “Ah! Metal Sonic!” he said.
Eggman nodded, “Exactly! I saw Sonic and his friends running around looking for that snake Lyric and sent Metal Sonic to ensure things would be in my favor when they stumbled across this factory!”
Cubot asked, “How?”
Eggman replied, “Simple! Metal Sonic lured them away from the factory and into a volcano to keep them from destroying the factory, and once they were away, things could only work out in my favor. Either they wouldn’t make it out of the volcano… or they’d keep going and defeat Lyric for me! And judging from that airship that crashed in the ocean, I’d say the second option occurred, as I was hoping it would!”
Orbot commended, “A truly ingenious plan, sir!”
Cubot added, “Yeah, you’re all kinds of super smart!”
Eggman snorted, “What, are you two trying to earn my favor, get yourselves a little promotion? When I want my feet licked, I’ll let you know!” Orbot and Cubot looked at each other with disturbed expressions, neither one liking the… sound of that statement. By this time, Metal Sonic had reached them and walked alongside Eggman as he started walking again, Orbot and Cubot hovering after them after a few moments.
Eggman soon reached one of the factory’s computer terminals and began typing on its keyboard, using the access code he’d used to get into the factory’s systems earlier. It took the code and brought up a menu with options to give the robots various commands and what looked like files containing Lyric’s plans. “Interesting. It would seem Lyric kept all sorts of information stored down here when he took control of the factory,” he commented after a few moments.
“Perhaps it contains information on what he planned to do,” Orbot suggested.
Eggman shrugged, “Yes, I suppose it would be interesting to find that out, but more importantly, I now have control of the factory! I can keep producing his robots or use the parts in here and the factory to increase the production of my own!” He grinned wickedly, “With this sort of setup… I can REALLY cheat on my taxes now!”
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Equestria Girls
Adagio, Aria, and Sonata finally came to a stop, all three girls leaning forward as they tried to catch their breath. After their humiliating attempt to sway the Canterlot High student body away from the Rainbooms and back to them had been answered with boos and thrown food, self-preservation had taken over and they’d fled the stage as quickly as they could, leaving behind the shattered pieces of their pendants. While their victorious foes contemplated about the pendants and where their band was going to go, the Dazzlings now had to face a new low point in their time banished from Equestria.
“What… What happened back there? What happened to our voices?” Sonata gasped, still trying to get her breath back.
Aria’s breathing returned to normal after a moment and she stood up straight, putting her hands on her hips as she looked at Sonata and spoke, “Isn’t it obvious?! The Rainbooms ruined everything for us!” She looked at Adagio, “I thought we took all the magic they had, Adagio!”
Adagio, her curly hair now a bit frizzy at the ends, wobbled a bit as she straightened up. “I never said we did! That’s obviously why I thought we stopped feeding off of them while they were under the stage, but it wasn’t the only one! Even if we didn’t get all their magic, there’s no way they should’ve had enough to be able to do… that!” she exclaimed.
Aria pointed at Adagio and yelled, “This is all your fault, Adagio! As soon as we got a little bit of Equestrian magic back, you had to get all high and mighty and go straight to the place where it came from, and now look! Not only did we actually lose at what we’re the best at, but we lost our pendants too! We’re worse off than we were when we first got here!”
Adagio shot back, “Hey, you’re the one who complained about not getting enough to eat! I was trying to fix that, and we didn’t go straight to the high school! I made sure we worked our way there so we would be strong enough when we found the source of the magic!”
Aria said, “For all the good that did us! We should’ve just filled up and moved on like we used to, but nooooo! You had to dig in and try to suck every little bit of magic you could get from that school! So much for you being smart!”
Adagio growled, “Well, if it was such a DUMB idea, why did either of you agree to it?! Oh, I’m sorry; for a moment, I forgot I was in the company of IDIOTS!”
Aria walked over and got right up in Adagio’s face, “You’d better watch what you say! I don’t know why I’m telling you that; clearly, you can’t make a single decent decision anymore!”
Adagio snarled, “And how many decisions have you made that ever contributed to our success?!”
Sonata looked back and forth between the two arguing sirens-turned-humans nervously. They’d argued plenty in the past, but it had never gotten this bad. She finally steeled herself and walked up to them, trying to push them apart as she exclaimed, “Adagio, Aria, stop it!” She managed to push them a few feet away from each other, but they immediately turned their glares on her. She shrunk a bit, but said, “For realsies, this is not a good time for this! W-We gotta figure out what we’re going to do now! We gotta eat and stuff!” She clutched her stomach, “I’m getting hungry just thinking about all this…”
Aria snorted, “That sounds about right. You’re always hungry, Sonata.”
Adagio muttered, “I think you mean yourself, Aria.” The other girl turned and glared at her, but she didn’t look away. “At least she has a point once in a while,” she shrugged. She then faced forward and said, “I suppose we should figure out where we are. We can figure out what our next move is afterwards.” She started forward, walking towards the other end of the alley. Sonata looked at Aria, the other girl glaring daggers at Adagio’s back even as she begrudgingly followed after her a moment later. Sonata followed after them carefully, feeling uncharacteristically worried about what the future held for them now.