Hey everyone, I'm back here with the seventh chapter of Joined Worlds. As I've said before, this is my first story, so comments are encouraged for my improvement. Anyways, that's all I have to say. On with the story!

Sonic's front lawn…

"Okay Sonic, its a few miles down the road to my lab. Once we're there, we can all hop into the Tornado to go off to Knothole. But do we even remember how to get there?" Tails asked.

"Wow, I hadn't thought about that Tails. Um, gee, its been so long since we've been there, I'm not sure" Sonic replied. "Is there anyone else around who might know?"

"I don't think so, Sonic. Amy, Cream, Vector, Big, Rouge, and all the others never even knew about Knothole. Man, I didn't know we were so reclusive with our past" Tails chuckled.

"You guys haven't explained yet, what exactly is this Knothole you keep mentioning?" Knuckles asked.

"Well, long story short, Eggman used to have a pretty good hold on a part of the world" Sonic began. "He had turned a beautiful city into a dark, industrial wasteland. All who opposed him, or whose presence disrupted him, were turned into robotic slaves with a machine he stole from my Uncle Chuck."

As he was talking about this, Sonic's mind went back all those years ago, to the long days, and the stealthy missions. The dark skies above Eggman's, "No, he was Robotnik back then" Sonic thought. He remembered the dark skies above Robotnik's 'Robotropolis.' Back then, he had thought he was the coolest thing around, invincible. Now, he realized how his immaturity had been a boon for him back then, allowing him to remain calm during his missions.

"Anyways, me, and a group of others set up a base in The Great Forest, which we called Knothole. We began trying to overthrow Eggman from Knothole, doing all we could to sabotage his plans. We called ourselves the Freedom Fighters, attempting to free everyone trapped in Robotropolis."

"We won eventually, and after that, I left to track down Eggman, because you guys know the countless times he's tried to take over the world since then. I wanted to make sure no one ever had to suffer through what he did to us, ever again" Sonic finished.

Tails had remained silent throughout Sonic's story, recalling the dark days spent in rebellion. Nowadays, he was more mature, and more capable. But back then, he may have been gifted, but living that life at such a young age, it had changed him. No kid should have to live through that.

Knuckles began to have a whole new respect for Sonic as he heard the story, awed by how he had handled everything that had happened to him in his early life. He looked back on long days guarding the Master Emerald as a picnic. It may have been lonely, and long, but hearing how the other two had their childhood ripped from them, not only did it give Knuckles a reason to lighten up on Sonic, but it filled him with a new rage towards Eggman.

"Wow, you guys sure have been through a bit huh?" Goku said. Goku himself had been protecting people from a young age, but his experience sounded quite different from the dark world Sonic described to them.

Sonic cleared the fog from his mind, and looked up at the others, putting on his classic, confident grin. "Anyways, if Knothole is still standing, we may be able to use it as our base of operations to figure everything out. And if we're lucky, we can still find a few of our friends hanging around Mobotropolis to lend us a hand" Sonic continued. Then he had an idea. He turned to Tails. "Buddy, that's it. Mobotropolis."

Tails was confused by this. "What do you mean, 'that's it,' Sonic?"

"Well, think about it. There are hundreds of forests around Mobius that could be the great forest. But if we look for Mobotropolis…" Sonic said.

"Great idea Sonic!" Tails exclaimed. "Mobotropolis is a huge city, much easier to find than The Great Forest. From there, it wouldn't take too long to find our way to Knothole!"

"Well, now we have a plan, so the next step is to put it into effect" Knuckles said.

"Hey guys, shouldn't we get going then? If this lab is a few miles away, we're going to want to get moving. I may be able to fly quickly, but not carrying all of us. It may be slow going" Goku said.

At this, Sonic chuckled rather loudly. "Huh?" Goku said.

"Sorry, you don't know how it sounds when someone tells me that it's going to be slow going" Sonic said. When Sonic said this, Tails and Knuckles grinned as well.

"Is there some inside joke I'm not a part of?" Goku asked.

"Heh heh, let's just say, my name isn't a coincidence" Sonic said. With that, he walked out onto the road, both members of his team standing at either side of him. "Ok guys, let's link arms" he said. Each of them clasped onto one of Sonic's arms.

"Hey Goku, try to keep up!" Sonic called over.

And with that, Sonic took off down the road, going several times fast than Olympic Athletes while barely putting any effort into it, dragging his two friends behind him.

Goku could barely believe what he had just seen. He wasn't even flying, yet his speed was tied with his own flight.

Then he snapped out of it. "I'm gonna lose them if I don't get moving" he thought. And with that, he took off at full speed after them,

Inside Capsule Corps' Gravity Training Chamber…

"Huh, huh, huh" panted the man inside a room where gravity was 500x stronger that earth's average.

Vegeta was doing his best to train himself up. Kakarot may have ascended to the level of a god, but he wasn't going to give up his dream of conquering him.

"Heh, Kakarot, you must be feeling pretty high and mighty right now. But the Prince will reclaim his throne, someday" he said, only half believing it. He knew deep down he would never suppress him, but that didn't mean he wasn't going to try. He was in denial, not oblivious to the power gap.

Suddenly a voice crackled to life on the intercom. "Vegeta, there you are. I need you our here now!" the voice said.

"Wha-" Vegeta stumbled, also getting hit by the training bot. He looked over to the wall, where the screen revealed his wife Bulma looking down at him.

"What do you want woman?" he spat at her. "This had better be good for her to have interrupted my training for" he added in his head.

"Just come out here Vegeta, we've got an emergency out here in the 'real world'" she said, and then hung up.

Vegeta glared at the spot on the wall where his wife's image had appeared. "Well, let's go see what has her acting even odder than usual" he thought.

"What is it?" he asked forcefully.

"Listen here Vegeta, you can act all proud and foolish as you wish, but here this" she said as she slapped her test results down on the table.

Vegeta picked up a few of the papers on the table, but couldn't make heads or tails of them. "What's this?" he asked.

"Listen Vegeta, because I don't want to have to explain this twice."

Bulma began to explain what she had found out through her tests.

"First off, I don't know if you noticed what went on this morning, but somehow, the barrier between two dimensions was weakened. Later this morning, the barriers failed completely, and they combined" she said.

"What?" Vegeta asked.

"I'm not done yet, don't interrupt" she commanded.

"Pfft" Vegeta said, but he didn't interrupt anymore.

"Anyways, I ran tests for the last few hours to determine what happened, and the full extent of the damage done. The results I found were, well unique."

"I ran these tests several times to make sure of the results, and there's no mistake now. The two worlds have merged."

"What do you mean, 'merged'?" he asked.

Bulma sighed. "That's what I was getting to, Vegeta. Take a look at these" she said as she took two papers out of the pile. Both appeared to be overhead images of large areas. One picture showed West City, and a large amount of land surrounding the city.

"This was a picture of the area from 2 weeks ago" she explained. "And this one is another picture, same frame of area, but from today."

Vegeta took a look at the picture, and was immediately shocked. "This is impossible, your instruments must me malfunctioning" he said.

"I'm telling you Vegeta, I double, triple, quadruple, and pen tuple checked everything. This, is, REAL!" she said, putting force behind the last word.

Vegeta looked down at the picture. The first picture showed West City, and the surrounding, empty area for 100 miles. The most recent picture, showed West City as well.

But the surrounding area, was no longer as barren. A mere 30 miles from them, a massive forest spanned from there, almost to the edge of the paper. Then, at the corner of the image, on the other side of the forest, an entirely new city had popped up.

"Vegeta, do you understand how serious the situation is now?" Bulma asked Vegeta. "Because now I have a job for you."

Vegeta jerked his head up to look at her. "What is it?"

Bulma sighed as she got ready to ask, because she knew Vegeta hated help. But they needed it now more than ever.

"Vegeta, gather everyone. ALL of the Z-Fighters. Even-" Bulma paused as she prepared for this next part. "Even Goku."

Out in the wilderness…

Shadow stood there, confronting someone who he shouldn't remember, who shouldn't exist anymore. But he couldn't just stay surprised. He stood up and looked him full in the face.

"Silver, how are you still here?" he asked.

Silver gave him a serious look before answering with, "Look, I don't pretend to understand it myself, so no need to sound so accusatory."

"Fine, then at least try to explain how you're even back in existence"

Silver looked straight at him. "For you information, I was never actually erased. A new timeline may have been made, but my world could not be lost so easily. After our fight with Solaris, I was returned to the world that Iblis had turned into one massive Hell."

"You and Sonic were then transferred to a world where Solaris had never been a threat in. All your memories of the other timeline had been erased. However, my timeline persisted, and as it was still intact, I was sent back to it."

"Well, I can accept that as the truth, maybe" Shadow said. "But what I can't understand is how you are back here, and how just seeing you somehow reminded us of our fight against Solaris."

"Like I said, I don't pretend to understand how I came back, or anything that entails. All I want is to go back to my world."

This shocked Shadow. "Why would you want to go back to that inferno city? You said yourself that it was 'a massive Hell'."

"That may be, but I'm not a part of this world Shadow" Silver replied, then turned away from Shadow. "I don't belong here, and I shouldn't stay."

Shadow gave Silver a look that he had never made before. Empathy. "Listen Silver, I know as well as anyone the feeling of not belonging to a world. But even if you feel that way, there's always a way to fit in."

Silver turned back to Shadow. "Listen Shadow, I appreciate the pep talk, and it must have been hard to do, as the 'perfect weapon,' or whatever your title is, but when I came here, I set a goal. I have another reason for going back to my world. You wouldn't understand…" he said, his voice trailing off.

Shadow planted his feet in the ground, and responded with "Try me."

"Never mind Shadow. The only thing you could help me with is finding Sonic. Do you know where he is?"

"Please tell me you're joking Silver" Shadow said. At this point, he wasn't even sure Sonic was alive or in this dimension anymore. "I can try, but first things first, I need a source of Chaos energy to get around with."

"Thanks Shadow, that'll be our first move."

At Tails' Workshop…

"Aw man, I barely got warmed up on that jog" Sonic complained. "I wonder where Goku ended up though."

"Right, here" Goku huffed as he landed in front of them. "Geez, I guess you weren't kidding when you said your name wasn't a coincidence."

Sonic had ran at a nice fast pace, about as fast as a racecar, forcing Goku to fly as fast as he could to keep up.

"Well, not to brag, but people often call me 'The Fastest Thing Alive'" Sonic bragged.

"Yeah, I can see why. I've also got a pretty keen eye here Sonic, and something tells me you weren't going nearly as fast as you could've gone" Goku predicted.

"Heh, well, let's just say, trust your keen eye there" Sonic responded smugly. He was very proud of his speed, to say the least.

"Ok guys, it's all set" Tails called from the other room.

The three of them walked into Tails' hanger room, and found him stuffing a few blueprints into a shoulder bag.

"Hey guys, I'm just grabbing a few things to help us out. Some plans for inventions I've had, some supplies, and a few other random things" Tails said.

"Well, let's get set up guys. Goku, do you think you can keep up with a plane?" Sonic asked.

"Well, I can fly pretty fast, but I guess I won't know for sure until I see what kind of speed it has."

"Okay guys, that's everything. Hope in you two" Tails said, already in the pilot's seat. Knuckles had climbed in behind him.

"Okay, let's do this guys!" Sonic cheered, proceeding to hop onto the wings of the plane.

"Initiating start-up" Tails said, pushing a button on his dashboard. At this, the mini-jets on the back of the Tornado fired up, and the plane began to move down the runway.

Sonic looked behind him to see Goku bent over fixing his boots. "Hey, you're going to get left behind if you don't get moving Goku!" Sonic called back.

"Oh, sorry! Here I come!" Goku shouted. He sprinted across the ground, then jumped into the air, flying after the plane.

"Ok, I've installed an electronic map system into the Tornado, so it'll be easier to find our way to Mobotropolis. You ready for this guys?" Tails called out to the others.

"YEAH!" everyone shouted.

"Then let's do this!" Tails cried as they flew off into the sky. "Let's find Knothole!"

And there you have it. Team Sonic and Goku have made their move to find a base in Knothole, but if Goku goes to a hidden base deep in a forest, how will Vegeta be able to round Goku up with the rest of the Z-Fighters? Also, how is Silver back in their world? How are those 2 to find Sonic taking refuge with Goku? Although everyone is close to getting a foothold in this situation, how is everything going to work out if everyone stays separate? Find out more answers (and more questions) to be given in the next chapter!