The sphere of light encompassing the entire planet rapidly shrunk down; in its wake, everything had been repaired, and those killed by Nightmare’s forces or the hazards of the dimensional distortion found themselves resurrected. On the planet where Sonic and his group had come from, the exact same thing played out. But though damage was fixed and people revived, everybody remembered what had happened. And everyone knew who had saved them all.
On Equestria, the sphere of light shrunk into nothingness just outside Ponyville, depositing many unconscious figures. Within a minute, they all regained consciousness. Rainbow Dash was a little upset that her second pair of wings went away when her Super Form did, and Pinkie was similarly moping about no longer being able to fly. But the elation at having taken down a daemon lord and saved two worlds from devastation more than made up for it. After sorting themselves out and waking themselves up, the group got up and headed for town. No sooner had they reached the town square than a near-deafening cheer rang out from the waiting crowd (Fluttershy hit behind Vector, but didn’t run away, surprisingly). The three princesses were there, as was Twilight’s family, Shining Armor decked out in freshly-polished Guard Captain armor and sticking close to Cadence. The Crusaders all but tackled their respective sister-figures, while Velvet Sparkle hugged her daughter so hard that it was a little hard for Twilight to breathe.
After Celestia personally congratulated and honored the group for their heroism in saving both this world and the neighboring one, it didn’t take long for Pinkie to set in motion “the biggest party in Ponyville history”.
Three days later, everyone gathered in the basement of Twilight’s house/library. Celestia and Tails stood in one corner, everyone else watching them as Tails finished fine-tuning an impressive-looking magitech device.
“Got it!” he said. “It’s all finished. All it needs now is a little of your power, Your Majesty.”
Celestia nodded and touched her horn to the large machine. A spark of golden light flowed from her horn into the machine, and the device sprang to life, a glowing portal spiraling into life in the center.
“This portal is linked to the one in Tails’ workshop” Celestia explained. “With the two, you all can go to & from one world and the other whenever you wish. Furthermore, Nightmare’s death has somehow stabilized the flow of time, making it flow at an equal rate between the worlds rather than a week in this realm equaling two days in the other one.”
Everyone looked quite excited at this, praising Tails for his ingenuity and thanking Celestia for being the power source.
“We’d better get moving” Sonic said. “Who knows when Eggman might try something? Plus, there’s that ‘Dark Gaia’ that Princess Luna mentioned; I’d better be prepared for that one, too. You guys wanna come visit our world for, like, a day or so? We can show you around!”
The ponies (and Spike) enthusiastically agreed to.
“Just be sure not to be gone too long, Twilight” Celestia said with a grin. “Remember, you’re the maid-of-honor for Cadence & your brother’s wedding in a week.”
“Of course, Princess” the purple unicorn replied. “We’ll probably be there for only about three days at most. Ready, everyone?”
With that, the entire group filed one by one through the portal, the ponies & dragon to explore a new world, and Sonic & crew to finally go home.
END