//------------------------------// // Sweet Mountain and Planet Wisp, Part V // Story: Sonic Generations: Friendship is Timeless // by GreenS21 //------------------------------// They reappeared a second later on the deck of the galleon, the three of them looking around to see where they had ended up. They quickly figured it out when Marine hit the ground near them, the raccoon having been thrown on her back. She looked up a moment later and, upon seeing Sonic, said, “Oy, Sonic! You’re here too, mate?” The hedgehog answered, “I sure am, Marine, and so is Tails. We’ll catch up later, though. Where’s Blaze?” Marine pushed herself up and pointed, Sonic, Shining, and Twilight looking to see Blaze battling with Captain Jelly near the middle of the ship, the captain holding up his lollipop to defend himself. “First he throws Marine, now he’s using a stick to protect himself? He’s just a regular ball of sunshine, isn’t he?” Sonic commented. Twilight narrowed her eyes, “Get him?” Both Sonic and Shining nodded, “Get him.” With that, the three of them ran towards Blaze and Captain Jelly while Marine snuck off to the side of the ship. After using his lollipop to push Blaze backwards, the cat sliding back towards the port side railing and using her hands to stop herself before she hit it, Captain Jelly turned to see Sonic coming towards him. The robot swung his lollipop down at the hedgehog, but Sonic planted his feet on the deck and slid towards him, jumping up before the confectionary could hit him and landed on top of it. Captain Jelly panicked at the sight of the blue hedgehog on his lollipop and lifted it up with his hands, shaking it and trying to get the blue hedgehog to let go, Sonic hanging on by wrapping both hands around the stick. When Twilight and Shining Armor were a little closer, Sonic let go of the lollipop and leapt up onto the back of the ship, temporarily throwing Captain Jelly off-balance. Twilight then came to a stop and channeled her magic into her horn, wrapping it around the lollipop and trying to pull it towards her. Again, Captain Jelly wrapped his hands around the stick and tried to hold onto it. He was so focused on his lollipop he didn’t see Shining still coming and ended up taking the full hit when the stallion tackled him into the wall at the back of ship, Twilight releasing her magic grip on his lollipop. After Shining backed off, Captain Jelly floated away from the wall, only to be kicked from the side by Blaze towards the starboard side of the galleon. While he was still disoriented, Sonic leapt down from the back and delivered a Homing Attack, knocking the robot up against the starboard side railing. Shaking his head, Captain Jelly looked to see the four of them crowding around him, ready to attack him if he tried to move. Beyond them, it looked like one of their friends was forming a rainbow and another was flying towards his ship, most of his crewmates now scrap metal. The situation looked pretty grim for him… until Marine suddenly leapt from the starboard railing towards him, landing on his backside and grabbing onto the back of his head! “Gotcha now, ya shiny jerk! You’re finished now!” she cried as she started pounding her fists on his head, trying to ‘finish’ him off. “Get away from there, Marine!” Blaze yelled as she dashed forward, flames already curling around her right arm. Despite the annoying pounding, Captain Jelly was able to put Marine to good use, ducking his head when Blaze was closer and putting the raccoon directly in the way. While Blaze hesitated, Captain swung his head up and clobbered her with his lollipop, sending her crashing into Twilight, both of them ending up in a heap on the ship’s deck. Sonic and Shining Armor glared at Captain Jelly, both of them charging him. Again, though, the robot captain used Marine against them, putting her in their path as they were about to attack and forcing them to stop. “Marine, we’ve got to take this guy out!” Sonic exclaimed. Marine looked up at him and asked, “What do ya think I’m doing here, mate?!” Before either Sonic or Shining could respond, Captain Jelly engaged his rocket booster, shooting forward and causing Marine to let out a startled, “Crikey!” The robot bowled both of them over, Shining hitting the ground near the port side railing and Sonic crashing into a collection of barrels near the back of the ship. As the hedgehog recovered from the rough landing and hitting a few barrels, he noticed that the barrels were hiding something interesting… Out over the Chocolate Milk Sea, Tails was flying ahead towards the galleon while Rainbow and Silver worked together to make a bridge to it for all the non-flyers and Vector, Espio, and Applejack mopped up the last of Captain Jelly’s crew. As he got closer, he could see Shining, Twilight, and Blaze recovering from being attacked and Marine still trying to hold onto Captain Jelly’s head as he hovered in place and tried to use his lollipop to force her off of him. Suddenly, Sonic leapt out of the barrels where he had landed, once again going for the captain. Unfortunately, Captain Jelly saw him coming and, upon noticing that Marine had stopped trying to hold on so tightly, gave a strong upwards jerk with his lollipop, sending the raccoon flying! She ended up hitting Sonic in midair, her back coming into contact with his legs and throwing his trajectory off. Marine fell to the deck shortly afterwards, but Sonic kept going, though it looked like had some trouble righting himself. Tails paused in midair, the rainbow bridge connecting with the ship as he watched what happened next. Captain Jelly launched himself towards Marine, but came to a stop halfway as Sonic went over his head and turned around, gripping his lollipop in both hands and swinging it like a baseball bat. The confectionary came into direct contact with Sonic and sent him flying over the starboard side of the ship! “Oh no, Sonic!” both Tails and Blaze exclaimed, the former hurriedly flying the rest of the way to the ship as the others started making their way over to it. As Tails reached the ship, Captain Jelly grabbed Marine, who had fallen on her face, and pulled her back towards him, wrapping his left arm around her to keep her close while he held his lollipop in front of him defensively, hovering above the group in front of the starboard side railing. Tails landed on the deck of the ship while Twilight, Blaze, and Shining Armor stood up. “We’ve got to help Sonic!” Blaze growled. “We’ve got to help Marine too!” Shining argued. Tails spoke, “We’ve got to help them both quick! Sonic can’t swim!” Twilight’s eyes widened and she looked at Tails, “He can’t WHAT?!” Before anyone could say anything else, Captain Jelly laughed, “THAT’S RIGHT, YOU LANDLUBBERS! THAT BLUE RAT IS MEETING HIS FATE AS WE SPEAK! NOW YOU’D BETTER STAND DOWN AND TELL YOUR CREW TO STAY OFF OF MY SHIP, OR SHE’LL BE NEXT!” He indicated Marine, the raccoon struggling to get free at that. Tails, Shining, Blaze, and Twilight gritted their teeth; behind them, their companions were getting closer to the galleon. Suddenly, there was a loud splash behind Captain Jelly as a jet of chocolate milk shot up into the air, hiding whatever caused it from view. As it began to settle, a familiar voice said, “Guess again, Captain ‘No Legs’!” Captain Jelly looked back over his shoulder to see, as the chocolate milk parted, Sonic shooting up out of the dairy! “IMPOSSIBLE! HOW?!” he exclaimed. As a Yellow Wisp popped out of his chest, Sonic grinned, “What, you jelly?” Captain Jelly glared at the hedgehog, but that ended up costing him, as Twilight and Shining Armor both fired a single magic shot at him, the former hitting his left arm and the latter managing to hit the side of his face. As he turned back to look at them, Sonic made his move, curling up into a ball and launching a Homing Attack at the captain’s back. He was so surprised that he let go of Marine and fell face first onto the deck, dropping his lollipop. Blaze quickly got under Marine and caught her in her arms. She looked down at the young raccoon, “Are you all right, Marine?” Marine nodded in confirmation; Blaze then looked at Sonic and asked, “Do you have a plan?” Sonic nodded, “Yep, but we’re going to need some heavy hitters to pull it off!” He pointed to the barrels near the back of the ship, “Tails, Twilight! Those barrels are hiding some Wisps! They should come in handy, right?” They nodded and hurried over to the barrels to find the Wisps. While they were doing that, Blaze set Marine down and said, “Marine, I want the cannons on the starboard set up! We’ll worry about aiming them later; just have them ready!” As she ran, Marine saluted, “Aye aye, Blaze!” It took Captain Jelly a minute to reboot after that surprise attack, but when he did, he looked up to see Sonic, Twilight, and most of their friends, including the princesses, gathered around him in a compact circle. Shining Armor spoke first, “It’s over for you, Captain Jelly. Your crew has been defeated and you’re heavily damaged. This is your one chance to surrender peacefully.” Captain Jelly was silent for a moment, but then he suddenly engaged his rocket and shot up, hovering just above the level of Celestia and Luna’s heads. “ARR, YE BE MISTAKEN IF YE THINK ME DEFEATED SO EASILY! A REAL PIRATE NEVER COMES QUIETLY, AND I WILL NEVER GO QUIETLY UNTIL I’VE SUNKEN THAT PESKY HEDGEHOG!” Before anyone could move or say anything, Jet suddenly shot above everyone’s heads, his Extreme Gear now looking like a rocket or missile as he held a Bashōsen out to his side, smacking Captain Jelly with it and causing him to spin around. “Take a spin, you clown! The only one who gets to mess with Sonic the Hedgehog is me!” he called back. Captain Jelly slumped forward when he stopped spinning and Storm flew up to him, his Extreme Gear having transformed into a bike, and delivered a potent uppercut to the robot’s stomach, sending him skyward. When he stopped moving up, Captain Jelly hovered in place and shook his head, trying to get the Buzz Bombers to stop circling his head. He managed to do so, but it was too late; Wave flew by him, her board now looking like a hovercraft, and struck the side of his face with her wrench, spinning him around yet again. She nodded to herself, “I’d rather rip this chrome pirate apart myself, but this should be fun to watch.” While she flew back down towards the ship, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy flew up above the still-spinning Captain Jelly, a blue glow beginning to surround them. As Captain Jelly finally stopped spinning, both Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash unleashed the power of the Blue Wisps that the barrels had been hiding, both of them turning into cubes and falling straight down towards Captain Jelly. They pushed him straight down, causing him to hit the deck of his ship face first while the two pegasi turned back to normal and fluttered off to the side. Captain Jelly recovered faster than one might expect and immediately started looking to see who had landed on him. He didn’t look long, though, before he saw that Twilight and Rarity had stepped forward, both of them smirking and cyan glows surrounding both of them. Before he even had a chance to scream, they both fired cyan beams from their horns straight at him, sending the captain flying off the starboard side of his ship. Amazingly, he wasn’t destroyed by the twin Cyan Lasers and managed to catch himself in midair after the lasers had stopped, though it was a miracle he was holding together at all if his exposed circuits and heavily damaged body were any indication. “Man, he’s one tough son of a can opener, isn’t he?” Sonic grinned. Twilight turned to Blaze and courteously asked, “Princess Blaze, would you care to do the honors?” With a smirk, Blaze raised her left hand and snapped her fingers, “Of course, Lady Sparkle.” As she snapped her fingers, the fuses on all of the starboard side cannons suddenly lit, Silver using his psychokinesis to aim them directly at Captain Jelly. While leaning against one of the cannons, Marine saluted, “Nice knowin’ you, mate.” As the fuses reached their end, Marine called, “All cannons, fire!” As she said that, all the starboard side cannons fired on Captain Jelly, all of them hitting their target right where it hurt. And that did it; Captain Jelly was blown to pieces like his crewmates, the remains landing in the Chocolate Milk Sea and sinking to the bottom. SETTING AN EXAMPLE Marine immediately began to cheer, “Yahoo!!! That was ripper! Did you all see that?!” Her festive mood was reeled in slightly when she heard a throat clearing behind her. She turned around and saw Blaze standing there, a stern expression on her face and her arms crossed. “Oh! G’day, Blaze. H-How’s it going?” she asked. Blaze decided not to humor her friend, instead deciding to get straight to the point. “Marine, may I ask just what you were doing earlier?” she asked. Marine twiddled her index fingers together nervously, “Umm… no?” Blaze raised an eyebrow at that, clearly not pleased with that answer. Marine put her hands behind her back and grinned sheepishly up at Blaze, “I was just… doing my duty as captain! You know, taking charge of the ship and all that!” Blaze’s eyebrow lowered, but the look on her face didn’t change. “Marine…” she said. The raccoon’s grin dropped and she looked down at the deck of the ship, scuffing her right foot across it as she spoke, “O-Okay, so maybe that’s not the whole truth. I, uh…” Blaze interjected, “Why don’t you start with how you ended up on this ship in the first place?” Marine looked up at her and said, “Ah, roight. Well… I don’t really know. I was in my home a little while ago, back on Southern Island, making some repairs to the SS Super Marine. I heard a noise coming from outside and went to look, but then I was blinded by some white light! The next thing I knew, I was below the deck of this ship, being tied up by that pirate scoundrel! Well actually, I was already tied up, but you know what I mean! And there were these odd statues down there too.” Blaze asked, “Odd statues?” Marine nodded, “Uh-huh. One of them looked like a bumbly bee and the other two were, uh… horses, I think.” Silver noticed, out of the corner of his eye, Espio and Vector heading for the door leading inside at the back of the ship at the raccoon’s words. Marine continued, “For some reason, it felt like they were alive… somehow. And… well, I managed to get free when it felt like they were calling for help. Since I was free, that meant I had to do something about that pirate and… well, you know the rest. Strewth, I promise!” Blaze regarded the raccoon, her stern look having eased off. After a moment, she spoke, “Marine… need I remind you of the last time you did something like this?” Marine flinched, “N-No…” Blaze said, “You were putting yourself in danger then, and you put yourself in danger here too. You’re fortunate that we could hear you from the shore, or we wouldn’t have known you were here. When I got over here, even with your… power, you were having trouble with taking that robot down. Are you aware of how many things could have gone wrong had I not shown up to help you?” After a moment, she let her arms drop to her sides and she closed her eyes before saying, “However… you did distract him and open up his defenses. You allowed us to divide and conquer to take him and his crew down. And while your attempt to defeat him yourself was unsuccessful, it did reveal that there were Wisps being held captive on this ship.” Marine looked up at her curiously, “What are you saying, Blaze?” Blaze opened her eyes, glancing in Sonic’s direction and saying, “I suppose I’m saying what Sonic said then: what counts is it all worked out fine.” She looked back at Marine, “And I’d rather not sound like a broken record, so instead, I’ll simply thank you for the help and ask that you try to be more careful in the future.” Marine perked up at that, “Aw, Blaze! You’re a princess, you know that?!” Blaze raised a hand to her forehead, but she couldn’t help but give a small smile at Marine’s words. Back with the rest of the group, Applejack looked at Rarity and said, “Uh, Ah don’t know about you, Rarity, but after seein’ Blaze talk to that Marine just now… Ah feel kinda silly fer gettin’ angry earlier.” Rarity looked at her a moment before sighing, “I suppose I concur, Applejack. Sweetie Belle and her friends may have gone against what we said, but I shouldn’t have been so unladylike or acted so angrily towards her. I should be glad they were responsible enough to stay safe while they were following us.” Both mares then walked over to their sisters and hugged them, apologizing for getting angry earlier and reminding them to not be so reckless in the future. Scootaloo stood off to the side awkwardly until Rainbow Dash came over and discreetly wrapped a wing around her. Soarin looked over at Spitfire and asked, “So, uh, Spitfire? Since everypony seems to be in a forgiving mood today, I don’t suppose you can let the fact that I let my desire for pie mess up my real priorities go?” Spitfire glanced at him and said, “Oh, I don’t think so, Soarin. You are NOT getting off that easy for abandoning your captain in an unknown location.” Soarin looked down at that, but he looked back up when Spitfire smiled, “However, I will hold off on your punishment until we manage to get out of here and resolve whatever’s happening in Equestria that’s so big that even the princesses are involved in stopping it. THEN we can sit down and talk about it.” Soarin gave a small grin at that. He knew he was still in trouble, but at least Spitfire was being fair, like he knew her to be. Behind them, Storm grinned nervously at Jet, hoping he would say something similar, but neither the hawk nor Wave even turned their heads to glare at him. Noticing Sonic standing nearby, Shining Armor walked over to him, the hedgehog turning to look up at him as he spoke, “Hey, Sonic? Listen, uh… I’m sorry about that whole thing earlier. You know…” Sonic nonchalantly waved a hand, “Yeah, yeah. No biggie, man.” Shining looked down at him with a confused look on his face, “I’m being serious here…” Sonic replied, “So am I. Look, dude, you’re not the first one I haven’t exactly gotten off on the right foot with for one reason or another, and I seriously doubt you’ll be the last. What can I say? I roll my own way!” Shining smiled as Cadance walked up alongside him, “So I’ve seen. And now that I know that, I think I would like to see where you and Twily go from here.” Sonic raised an eyebrow, “Huh?” Cadance smiled happily while Shining said, “You don’t have to keep up that act anymore. You know what I’m talking about.” Sonic looked up at him for a moment before shrugging, “No I don’t, actually.” Twilight trotted over and asked, “What’s going on?” Cadance turned to her and said, “Oh Twilight, I’m so happy for you!” Twilight cocked her head to the side, “Huh?” Cadance went on, “I see now why I couldn’t feel it before! You were worried about everypony’s reactions! Well, don’t worry, Twilight! Shining has warmed up to the idea, and I just know the rest of your friends will too!” Twilight stared at Cadance in absolute bafflement. She looked at Sonic and asked, “I’m sorry, did I miss something?” Sonic just shrugged. Shining spoke, “Come on, you two, you don’t need to do this anymore.” Cadance nodded, “We’re talking about you two, and what you have between you.” Sonic and Twilight looked at each other for a moment, a moment Cadance hoped felt like an eternity. All too soon, they turned to look back at the Princess of Love and Shining Armor and Sonic shrugged, “I still don’t get it, but as long as we’re cool, I guess that’s what’s important.” Shining and Cadance frowned and looked at each other in confusion. “Are we really being too subtle for them? Or was I wrong about them?” Shining wondered. Before either of them could attempt the direct approach, Rarity came over and said, “Darlings, that Wisp power was amazing! Not only did we take care of that ruffian pirate, but I think that power actually made my hair look all nice! Alas, I don’t believe I’ll try to do the same with magic like you do, Twilight. I’ll leave knowing powerful spells to a magic expert like you.” Twilight smiled, “All the same, Rarity, you certainly controlled that laser really well for your first time using it.” Sonic nodded, “Yeah!” He held up his right fist, “Top shelf, ladies!” Both Twilight and Rarity raised a hoof, bumping with him. GOODBYE SWEET MOUNTAIN, HELLO BAD SEED Shortly afterwards, the door at the back of the ship swung open and Vector stepped out, carrying something under his arms. He had a familiar bumblebee under his left arm and a pegasus under his right arm. After taking a few steps onto the deck, he spoke, “Okay, so we found Charmy. Does anybody recognize this pony?” He set the pegasus mare down on her hooves as he finished, letting her stand on her own. “Yeah… that’s Derpy, Ponyville’s local mailmare,” Rainbow said. Marine spoke up, “Oy, there were two horses down there! Where’s th’ other one?!” Before Vector could respond, Espio spoke up from behind him, “I have her.” He stepped around Vector and set the pony in his hands down, the little filly having no cutie mark and freckles on the sides of her face. “Babs!” Apple Bloom gasped, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle’s eyes going wide at the sight of her. Espio stood up and backed off as the Cutie Mark Crusaders rushed over to the frozen filly. While the fillies crowded around Babs Seed, Twilight brought out her checklist and a quill and started making adjustments to it. Espio then looked over at Tails and said, “I suppose we’re just one Warp Ring away from having a happy reunion.” Tails nodded and reached into his namesakes, pulling out the Warp Ring. “I’ll get it set up so we can get going!” Before he could toss it, however, Jet finally broke his silence, “Hold it right there!” Tails nearly dropped the ring because of the loud shout, but he managed to hold onto it and looked over at Jet in confusion. Jet raged, “I had to sit through a boring explanation and all this mushy talk just for Sonic to turn tail and run away?! I don’t think so! I said we were going to settle this, and I mean it!” He glared at Sonic and said, “You’d better hope your legs can carry you over the water, Sonic the Hedgehog, because we’re…” Wave angrily interrupted him, “NO! No more! We are done here, Jet!” She looked at Tails and said, “Shorty, you get that ring up and running because we are leaving! And you’d better set it for someplace quiet!” Tails quickly nodded and complied, tossing the ring up and, after it expanded, running to its side and setting it for Ponyville. Jet looked at Wave as she stacked the Rogues’ Extreme Gear in Storm’s arms and said, “Hey, I’m the boss here! I’m the one who- OW!” In the middle of his ranting, Wave grabbed him by the feathers on the back of his head, cutting him off. As she dragged the hawk towards the Warp Ring, Storm obediently following without saying a word, Wave yelled, “Do you know how long it’s going to take to fix the Extreme Gear?! Not only did Storm get pie on his, but you two treated them like shields during that battle, especially when that explosion happened! You think it’s easy maintaining them when you lunk-heads use them so roughly?! AND ANOTHER THING…!” The others didn’t get to hear what else she had to say due to her walking through the Warp Ring, still dragging Jet by his feathers while Storm quietly followed behind. A moment of silence followed on the deck of the galleon; Soarin then commented, “Man… I’m glad you’re my boss and not her, Spitfire.” The gold pegasus smirked at him at that. Marine shrugged, “Well, she’ll be apples.” Pinkie Pie suddenly grinned at that, “Ooh, speaking of apples, I wonder if there are any candy apples around here! I’d love to get some candy apples and then come back here for some more chocolate milk!” She began bouncing towards the port side of the ship while saying, “Come on, everypony! We’ve still got a lot of Sweet Mountain to see!” Rainbow Dash spread her wings and flew around Pinkie, turning back and catching her in mid-bounce. “No, Pinkie, no more! We’re done for today!” she grunted as she set the party pony back on the deck of the galleon. Twilight placed her checklist and quill back in her saddlebags and said, “Rainbow’s right, Pinkie. It’s time to go back to Ponyville.” Pinkie looked at her with wide eyes, “Ponyville?” She looked down and then towards the shore before turning back to the bookworm and smiling, “Aw, don’t be silly, Twilight! It’s too early to go back to Ponyville! Nopony wants to leave just yet, right?” She looked around the boat, but she didn’t see anyone who looked like they readily agreed with her. A few were rubbing the back of their heads while others just looked at her. Even Celestia and Soarin didn’t look like they wanted to stay, which confused the pink pony. Surprisingly, it was Fluttershy who stepped forward and spoke, as meek as ever, “Pinkie… Sweet Mountain really is a wonderful a-and fun place. Despite everything that’s happened, um, it was a lot of fun, and Planet Wisp was really beautiful. But… it was built by a bad human who wanted to put Sonic and Tails’ world under mind control by stealing the life force of innocent little aliens. I don’t really want to stay in a place that was built by somepony like that. B-Besides, sooner or later, we… we really should go home.” Pinkie looked down, “Aw…” She then had a thought and looked up happily, “Ooh! Maybe you all could go back and I could stay a little longer!” Sonic spoke, “But if you’re still here when we fix this mess, you’re going to be stuck here forever, Pinkie, with nothing but aliens you can’t understand and killer robots for company. Sounds like a party of one for the rest of your life to me.” Pinkie gasped, “I hadn’t thought about that! What a super duper scary thought!” She placed her hooves on her head and sunk to the floor, seemingly thinking. After a minute, she sat up and said, “I guess you guys are right. I should be over this kind of thing by now, especially after that whole magic pond thing.” As she stood up, she added, “But you know, this place really was a lot of fun!” Tails came up behind her and patted her on the back, “It sure was, Pinkie.” About a minute later, just about everyone had gone through the Warp Ring and was headed back to Ponyville. Only Sonic and Pinkie Pie were left, and the blue hedgehog went first, following behind Luna. Pinkie then started towards the Warp Ring, but before she took the last step, she turned around to get one last look at Sweet Mountain. As she looked, she noticed something in the sky. She squinted, “Is that…?” After a moment, she grinned, “It is! Sonic was such a silly! There really are- whoa!” She was cut off mid-sentence when (part of) said hedgehog reached through the Warp Ring and grabbed the pink pony with his arms, pulling her through it with him. Once they were both through it, the ring shrunk down and vanished into thin air. ________________________________________ The entire group stood in front of the Ponyville hospital, watching as the building regained its color and all the ponies inside came back to life, all of them wondering what happened. Being a hospital, though, the staff, after making sure that nothing had happened to the building, got back to work, the doctors and nurses running their rounds. Outside, the group watched as their friends were brought back. The first to recover was the mailmare, Derpy, the gray pegasus’ eyes both pointing straight ahead. A single blink of both eyes, however, was all it took for one to point in a different direction than the other. The wall-eyed mare then gave a happy smile and spread her wings, leaping up and almost hitting her head before her wings slowed her ascent. As she hovered in the air, she said, “That was very scary! But being with all of you makes me feel better! I just don’t know what happened!” The next to recover was Babs Seed, the little filly blinking several times before looking around and then exhaling, blowing the side of her mane. “Babs!” Apple Bloom exclaimed. Babs looked surprised for a moment, but then she smiled, “Cuz’!” The two fillies rushed over to each other and hugged, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo trotting over and joining in, all of them glad to see each other again. Scootaloo leaned back after a moment and said, “It’s good to see you again, Babs!” Apple Bloom also leaned back, adding, “We got to meet up again before the next reunion after all!” Babs smiled, “Well, yeah, obviously!” She then looked around worriedly and asked, “But what’s goin’ on here? I was at home a minute ago; how’d I end up in Ponyville?” Sweetie Belle said, “It’s kind of a long story, Babs…” Before anything else could be said, Charmy, who had just been restored and had done a somersault to celebrate, looked at the group and spoke, “I was scared because somebody took me, but now I’m free!” Derpy hovered down next to him and asked, “You’re free?” Charmy nodded, “Yeah, I’m a free bee!” Everyone looked on as the two of them happily started chanting, “Free bee, free bee, free bee… whee!” They both fluttered up and came back down, smiling at each other. Sonic and Rainbow Dash glanced at each other, both of them raising an eyebrow while everyone else, save for Vector, Espio, Celestia, Luna, and Cadance, looked at them awkwardly. Twilight regained her composure and summoned her checklist and quill from her saddlebags, checking off the last few boxes on the list corresponding to the ones the group had just rescued, including the newly added box for Babs. She then spoke, “It looks like we’ve managed to find everyone. All that leaves is…” She stopped short when a red light and a pink light shone from the side of the hospital, everyone turning to look. THE SONIC BOOST “Look, there’s the Chaos Emerald and the Element of Magic!” Tails pointed. As they watched, the red Chaos Emerald and the Element of Magic crown quickly regained their color, shining as though they’d just been polished. Almost immediately, however, they began to float away from the group. “Where are they going?” Cadance wondered. Suddenly, a dark void opened up behind the Chaos Emerald and Element of Magic, the mystery creature emerging from it! The Cutie Mark Crusaders were frightened by it, and both Shining Armor and Princess Cadance looked at in shock, both of them reminded of King Sombra. And it wasn’t a bad comparison, either; the monster simply hovered in place with its hands open while looking at the group. It didn’t take them long to realize it was letting the Element of Magic and the Chaos Emerald come to it! Immediately, Blaze, Silver, Vector, and Espio leapt into action, Silver focusing his psychokinesis on the creature, Blaze unleashing flames from her hands, and Vector breathing fire from his mouth. All this only pushed the creature back a little bit; now it was moving forward to grab the crown and the Chaos Emerald. After throwing an exploding throwing star at the creature, Espio looked back and said, “We’ll hold it back! Just get the Chaos Emerald and the crown!” Sonic, Rainbow, Spitfire, and Soarin nodded, the four of them running past them to retrieve the objects. As they spread their wings, Rainbow, Soarin, and Spitfire looked at Sonic as he came to a stop just a little ahead of them and leapt straight up. Spike noticed the way he jumped and excitedly asked, “Oh man, is he gonna do it?!” Watching Sonic as he spun in midair, Scootaloo smiled, “I think he is, Spike!” Before anyone could ask what they were talking about, Soarin, Rainbow, and Spitfire came to a stop as Sonic suddenly shot forward, an aura surrounding him and a nearly invisible ring spreading out from where he was a second ago. In less than a second, he caught up with the Chaos Emerald and grabbed it with his right hand! “What in tarnation?!” Applejack exclaimed as Sonic flipped over and pressed against the palm of the monster’s right hand feet first before turning and boosting towards its left hand. As Sonic retrieved the Element of Magic in his left hand as the creature was about to grab it, Twilight smiled, “It’s the Sonic Boost, Applejack!” Sonic leapt out of the creature’s hand before it could close its fingers around him, going straight up and performing one last trick in the air as it tried to grab him with both hands, the combination of his trick and his friends’ helping causing it to miss. As Sonic went down, the creature growled and disappeared back through the void, which closed up immediately after it went through, Silver, Blaze, Vector, and Espio stopping their attacks after it was gone. Spitfire, Soarin, and Rainbow Dash stared at Sonic in amazement as he landed, the hedgehog standing up straight and flipping the Chaos Emerald up, catching it behind the Element of Magic in his left hand as he asked, “Pretty slick move, huh?” Soarin gave him an excited grin in answer to his question while Spitfire nodded in approval, one of her eyebrows raised. Rainbow continued to stare at him in shock for a moment before she closed her mouth and grinned, “That. Was. AWESOME!”