Earlier that night...
"Leader! Leader! Emergency! EMERGENCY!!" The lead scientist Palek exclaimed as he rolled out of the elevator.
"What is the meaning of all the sirens!?! Explain! EXPLAIN!" Alpha commanded.
"It is that gem we found! It somehow activated our self-destruct sequence and dead-locked it! We must evacuate immediately!!"
"You imbecile, you have doomed us! You are lucky I will allow you're escape," Alpha threatened.
"Leader! We have another problem," One of the Paleks from the escape pod level exclaimed.
"What is it now!?" Alpha shouted in crackly, robotic voice.
"The escape pods have been dead-bolted, we can not evacuate the ship!"
The leader Alpha looked from the Palek on the escape pod level to the scientist Palek, and then around at all of the other Paleks watching the commute. Alpha's eye-stalk lowered slightly and his whole body turned around and toward the main console aboard the ship. He then connected the part of his armor that looked like that of a toilet plunger to a special made port that was compatible for the item. After a few moments, the intercom activated.
"My fellow Paleks, as you know, we are the super-soldiers of the galaxy. Bread to feel no emotions whatsoever and fight until we fall. This may or may not be our final moments, but if I were not to survive like most of you won't, I wanted to say it was an honor to lead this pack of Paleks. This may be goodbye, but we are going out in a blaze of glory. If you were to survive the explosion, aim for the worthless inhabitants of the world below. Most of the debris will also be pulled towards the planet because it is the closest source of gravity. Ready yourselves my brothers, for our time is almost out," Alpha looked to the counter of the self-destruct countdown, 15 seconds remained. "Ex-ter-mi-nate," Alpha said in syllables.
The scientist Palek rolled forward, "Exterminate."
"Exterminate!" A random Palek exclaimed.
"Exterminate!!" Another random Palek shouted.
Soon the whole crew of Paleks were shouting one simple word as they awaited their most likely demise, Exterminate.
KABOOM!!!
o.0.o
Sonic and the others had decided to wait until morning to investigate the odd fires that fell from the sky for they had burned all night and some of them emitted a loud noise, almost as if they were screaming in pain. The Doctor, followed by everyone else, carefully approached one of the pits that the fiery debris had created. The Doctor looked over the edge and gasped at what he saw.
"Aaaah.... uuuuhhh," The Palek moaned in pain.
"It can't be," The Doctor whispered to himself.
The Palek's eye-stalk slowly blinked to life and looked up at the group above, noting one of the characters in particular. The Doctor's eyes widened and he took a step back as a half measure.
"Doc-toor," The Palek weakly said, "The Doctor!" The Palek moved its laser arm to aim at the Doctor, "Exterminate, Exterminate!"
"Everypony! Duck and cover!" The Doctor ordered, grabbing Derpy and Dinky and pulling them to the ground. Everyone followed his order and threw themselves to the ground, lying in wait. After a few moments, the Doctor cracked open one eye after nothing happened and slowly got up from the ground then peaked over the pit edge. Everyone followed after him with their curiosity piqued and looked at the Palek in the ground, who was dumbstruck at his laser canon malfunctioning. The Doctor smiled at this and began to laugh.
"Oh yes, Brilliant! You're absolutely powerless Palek. So tell me, what caused you to fall to Earth in a burst of flames," the Doctor asked.
"I do not answer to you, Doctor. You can not get me to talk," The Palek spat back.
The Doctor did not appreciate his attitude and growled slightly under his breath. He reached into his tie collar and pulled out his Sonic Horseshoe and pointed it at the Palek.
"I am not playing games you worthless Palek, either tell me what I want to know or I will get it out of you by force," he threatened.
"You do not frighten me Doctor, you and your family will be Exterminated!"
"Wrong answer...," the Doctor growled.
In an instant, he activated his Sonic Horseshoe and the Palek began to scream in agony. This went on for a few long moments before the Palek was able to scream out, "This is all that worthless gem's fault! I never should have discovered it!"
After hearing this, the Doctor deactivated his Sonic Horseshoe and lowered his hoof.
"What do you mean Palek? What gem are you talking about?" The Doctor asked.
"We- agh! Found a gem with a powerful energy stored within it while scouting. Something went wrong and our self-destruct sequence was activated, supposedly by that gem." The Palek responded.
"Doctor, you don't think that could be the-," Derpy began to ask before she was interrupted.
"Sonic! SONIC!" One of the townsponies shouted from a distance, "You might want to come see this."
Sonic looked from the pony to the Doctor and waited for a suggestion.
"Go on, I'll catch up," the Doctor commanded, "First I've got to swat a noisy fly," he said, looking to the Palek.
Sonic gave him an unsure look at first, but soon caved in and nodded; motioning for the rest to follow him. Soon the Doctor was left alone with the Palek. The Doctor made sure they were all gone before turning back to the Palek and slowly pointing his Sonic Horseshoe at it.
"Any last words, Palek," The Doctor spat.
The Palek gave him a blank stare for a few moments, not making a sound or noise. The Palek's head portion moved very slightly a couple seconds afterwards and locked eyes with him, putting on a serious tone.
"You would have made a good Palek," he said.
The Doctor was taken aback by this comment, but tried shaking it off long enough to finish the job. The Doctor re-aimed his Sonic Horseshoe, took a stable stance, and activated the most powerful setting on his Horseshoe.
o.0.o
"Check it out," A blue, silver maned pegasus stallion pony said, pointing at a small hole in the ground that was about a foot across.
With Sonic at the lead, the entire group slowly approached the hole and took a peek inside. They gasped as they looked upon the glorious prize the hole contained. Inside, shining as brightly as the sun itself, was the seventh and final chaos emerald. Sonic reached in slowly and picked it up, holding it to the sun, making shine even brighter. Sonic felt the excitement and energy of their long search over and felt he was about to explode.
"yyyyyyYYYYYEEESSS!!" Sonic shouted out, jumping high into the air, "We did it! After all this time we finally found the last chaos emerald!"
"And it's all mine!" said a voice out of nowhere.
Everyone looked around to try and find where the voice originated from, but before any of them knew, something whisked by and snatched the emerald out of Sonic's hand. Reacting as quickly as he could, Sonic looked around the immediate area to try and find where it had gone, only for his search to be put to an end as he saw what had taken it. Looking up a bit into the air, he saw Eggman in his Egg Carrier with the chaos emerald being handed to him by a metallic claw attached to his machine.
Sonic stepped forward a bit and stared at Eggman with a mighty rage in his eyes.
"EGGMAN!!" Sonic shouted.
"You know, I must thank you for going through all this trouble to find the emerald for me. I suppose it is only fair if I," He paused, pressing a button on his console, "Return the favor!" A small, gun looking device attached to the front of his carrier began to charge up a beam, aiming directly for Sonic.
"Sonic, watch out!" Tails warned, "That is the Proton Cannon I told you about! Don't let him hit you with it!"
Sonic turned back to Eggman just in time for the cannon to fire a blast of energy. Using his quick reflexes, Sonic jumped out of the way just in time and caught on to the side of a building. After making sure he was lined up, Sonic shot off from the building and grazed by Eggman, sending him into a spin.
Sonic then caught on to another building on the other side of the street and took aim at Eggman again. He jumped towards Eggman and everything around him slowed down. While Sonic was lining up his shot, Eggman had begun to charge another blast and shot it off as Sonic jumped towards him. Sonic was barely able to dodge it by getting right over the blast and straightening out his body as much as possible. After he was sure that he had cleared the beam, Sonic focused on the fast approaching Egg Carrier and shot Eggman a "now I've got you" smile.
Sonic swung his right foot forward and connected with the bottom of Eggman's Carrier, punting him away and up into the air. After shaking it off, Eggman noticed that this made critical damage to his machine, realizing that the best course of action would be to return to base and make repairs, as well as strategize his next move.
"Grrr, FINE! I have some things to take care of anyway. I will be back though Sonic, Farewell!" Eggman then turned away and began to fly away in the other direction.
"Hey! That's not cool!" Rainbow Dash said, taking off after Eggman.
"Rainbow, No!" Her friends said.
"Hm?" Eggman questioned, looking over his shoulder to see the cyan, rainbow maned pegasus flying at him. Eggman was in no mood to deal with her. Turning quickly but still flying away, Eggman took aim and began charging up.
"Buzz off you pest!" He shouted, firing off his cannon at her.
"Guh!" She exclaimed, thanking her training and fast reflexes that she got out of the way just in time. Unfortunately she was unable to move quickly enough to avoid the entire blast and the upper part of her left wing was clipped by the energy. This alone was able to send her into a fast nose dive to the ground.
Sonic took off after her to try and reach the point of where she might impact the ground. He began to feel a touch of dread for the approached the ground faster than he anticipated. She was coming past the point to where she was passing by the roofs of the surrounding buildings.
"No!" Sonic yelled as he realized he would not reach her in time. All of a sudden, in a bright flash of yellow light, something passed by and grabbed Rainbow Dash's body then disappeared in the same flash of light. Sonic came to a sliding halt and scratched his head as he tried to piece together what had happened. Everyone in the group came running up behind him, out of breath, just in time for the same flash of light to appear and some entity to hit the ground and skid to a stop.
Sonic and the others looked on in shock and surprise at just what rescued Rainbow. Standing there, cradling Rainbow, was Shadow. He slowly knelt down and lied her gently on the ground. Sonic and the others walked up, all with the same question on their minds.
"Shadow, how-," Sonic began to ask.
"That doesn't matter," He replied in his dark voice, "She needs a hospital if you haven't noticed."
Sonic looked to her wing for a second then back to Shadow, nodding in understanding. Sonic came over and picked her up, everyone following after as they rushed to get her wing patched before a possible infection set in or worse.
o.0.o
The laboratory of Dr. Eggman was quiet. The Deadly Six sat around in silent boredom as they awaited the return of their strategic leader. Zor, Zeena, and Zomom sat in a circle, although it was more of a triangle. Master Zik and General Hewdraw were meditating on another side of the lab, Zazz was messing with some scientific doo-dad even though he was told countless times not to touch anything, and finally Zavok stood near the entrance with his arms crossed, waiting for anything to happen to break the silence.
All of a sudden, the portal sparked to life, causing most of them to open their eyes in surprise, while Zazz nearly jumped ten feet in the air. They all slowly approached the portal and waited, until they saw the front of Eggman's Egg Carrier poke through. Once he was all the way inside, the first thing they noticed was the wicked smile on his face. He then raised his hand up to show the spoils of his return, the seventh and final chaos emerald was now in their possession.
After showing off the emerald, he wasted no time in preparing for what was going to happen next. Eggman went over to a segment of his laboratory wall tapped on it, revealing a hand-scan identification module. After scanning his hand (with his glove still on, oddly enough) the module slid out of the way to reveal a key-pin combination lock. He then entered the four digit key, finally unlocking the real prize of all his hard work and patience. The wall shot out some steam and began to slowly raise up into the ceiling, making the others anticipate what lied on the other side.
"I have waited for long enough and have worked hard for this moment. And every agonizing second was worth it," he said. The wall had finally lifted up, everyone "oooing" and "aaawing" at the magnificent object. Eggman then began to cackle his trademark laugh.
"Heh heh heh, Ha Ha HA! GYAAAA HA HA HA!"