"Aren't there a easier way to do this? Like, one that doesn't have me freezing my fur off?"

"Stop whining." The words came out a hiss that promised hell if the hedgehog didn't comply.

The gentle purring of the machinery eased Chris' nerves. Sonic sat besides him on a stood, eyes dropping, ears occasionally twitching as he fiddled around with the faded rings around his wrists, bored out of his mind. Small instruments clung to his body, slowly drinking in the Ether energy required to power the new portal. The Blue Blur looked mildly uncomfortable as his energy was siphoned off by the probes, but made no move to rip the tiny contraptions off and run halfway across the globe.

Overall, it didn't take much to power the machine; since they had ample amounts of Ether energy available, the only worry they had was if the portal could handle the tremendous power without collapsing. With Sonic's assistance, the two Thorndykes worked around the clock for the last two months to develop the technology capable of handling Ether energy, since there wasn't many options when it came to finding adequate source of power of the machine.

The notes on Chaos energy from Gerald Robotnick as well as the remains of Eggman's past creations -though the later had taken a while to claw out of GUN's vicious talons- had helped greatly when designing the current machine.

Chris had the sneakiest suspicion blackmail was involved when they had to handle the Guardians of the United Nations for the technology, but Chuck hadn't answered when he asked, merely shrugging nonchalantly before skipping his way to his laboratory, a grumbling blue hedgehog in tow.

"So far so good." Chris muttered under his breath as his eyes flickered over the screen, where all the information and data on the portal was slowly gathering. The machine was stable, only twitching a bit at the beginning as Sonic struggled to find a good pace to release Ether energy from the Life Plates.

Already the results were showing. The portal's gate, based off the one they had used to send the mobians home, was glowing a bright iridescent, with sapphire hues being the most dominant color. The small whirlwind of colors grew at a steady rate, to Chris and Chuck's excitement. Vicini was at the other side of the garden, staying away from the machine in case his natural energy would interfere with the delicate charging process.

"It's almost done! Chris, start with the coordinates!" Chuck shouted from the other side of the massive portal, which had been too big to place inside the garage, and was sitting outside until they had a better solution, as he fiddled with the cords connecting the machine to Sonic, checking them over incase they got damaged by the currently passive and docile Ether energy.

Knowing that once the machine fully charges it will be almost impossible to change the location of the fissure in time and space, Chris immediately began adjusting the portal, remembering the last time he had done it, when he was forced to send his friends back to their home world.

They had to go back in case our worlds merged. What a case of bullshit. With the uncovering of Christina Cooper's traitorous ways, there was a full-on investigation on everything she had done. During said investigation officials had discovered the documents on the supposed 'Planetary Fusion' the woman had foreseen. It turned out to be nothing but forged papers...in a few short words, nothing but a lie.

Sonic had been extremely pissed off by that.

Speaking of the said blue Holder, Chris watched as he ripped off the probes with a hiss of content, apparently more than happy to get them off. By now the portal was fully charged, and there was no need for anymore energy until, Chuck theorized, at least two to three months if they kept it working at all times.

"Is it done?" Sonic asked as he peaked at the screens his human friend was looking at. As much as he would like to dive into the now active portal, he didn't want to end up in the middle of nowhere by accident.

Chris gave another spare glance at the data displayed on the portal's monitor. "Yes. It's fully functional and ready to use." The duo shared a content smile at the knowledge they would finally met up with their friends. A disgruntled Vicini walked over the hedgehog and the human, but before he could speak Sonic was already bouncing towards the portal's luminous opening.

"Mobius, here we come~!"

"Idiot hedgehog." Vicini deadpanned with a irritated frown. Chris paid no mind to the apricot Element Spirit. He was excited to see the mobians again, and by the way his grandfather was happily skipping towards the portal in a fashion that was eerily similar to Sonic's, so was he.

As for Sonic, he was practically floating from joy. He hadn't seen his friends in two years, for the love of Chaos. While he had loved the three months spend here on Earth, working on the portal and learning new things about his human friends, he needed to see his brother and the rest of his friends.

Arriving in front of the entrance of the portal, a glowing maelstrom of bright lights, Sonic paused. How much had changed? It had been two years in the Ether, and he knew for a fact the dimension's time flowed far faster than Earth or Mobius, but he had never counted it. How long has it been since his supposed death? Days? Weeks? Months or years? He didn't know, and that lack of knowledge was making his stomach twist uncomfortably.

Well, pipped in a tiny voice inside his head, guess the only way he could to find answers was by going to Mobius.

Taking a deep breath, Sonic closed his eyes and stepped into the portal.

xxxxxxx

Well, this was one big downside of having Sonic dead.

Eggman was bored out of his brilliant, wonderful mind.

Taking over countries had lost its luster without the blue hedgehog trying to beat him down and ending up making him retreat with his metaphorical tail tucked between his legs. While most of Mobius' zones, like The Oil Zone, Apotos Zone or even Green Hills, where the brat had lived, were perfectly able to defend themselves from the egg-themed villain, and some would be near suicidal to take on, his favorite haunts wasn't as well defended as when Sonic was around.

He could easily overwhelm their military with sheer numbers by using all the robots he had at his disposal. As for the weaker Zones, Eggman was starting to believe he could poke them and they'll flop over like a dead fish.

Thus, the attempts at world-domination were half-hearted at best.

I feel like my beautiful brain is rotting away.

Hearing the familiar squeak of his preferred alarm, he glanced away from his boring 8-bit game. Eggman's eyes picked up a strange flutter in data on the computer screen reserved for energy reading. The obese man raised a thick eyebrow at that, before closing his current activity and focusing on the rather curious -well, he had nothing else to do- change in the incoming stream of information.

"What do we have here...?"

xxxxxx

Chris' calibration of the portal had been perfect: when the Blue Blur stepped through the whirlwind of colors, he found himself staring at a small hill with a nice cream house sitting on top of it. The house, which was the one he shared with Tails, looked exactly the same as he had left it.

Hopefully his friends were in a similar state.

"C'mon lets go!" Hearing the three other members of the little group arrive into his dimension, Sonic let out a excited shout and dashed forward, his powerful legs bringing him closer and closer to Tails' workshop.

Within moments he was standing at the entrance of the two-level house. He spotted with joy a two-tailed fox coming out of the massive garage doors, the familiar purple frame of the bi-plane known as the Tornado barely peaking out of it.

When Tails noticed the blue male, he stared blankly at him in a way that made Sonic think his brain had shut down. The two brothers were basically having a improvised staring contest with each other, which was broken when the vulpine genius's wide eyed stared turned flat.

"Please tell I'm not dreaming."

"No," The Blue Blur exclaimed with mirth as he winked at the younger Mobian. He grinned widely, happy to see the other again. After spending two years with an snarky Element Spirit and a enraged Metarex, this was a nice change of pace. "I'm too awesome to be nothing but a-"

Unexpectedly, Tails responded by dropping on the ground on a dead faint.

"...ops."

In his defense, Sonic had nothing more intelligent to say.

It was then that Cosmo emerged from the house, a plate of cookies in her hands, looking almost identical to last time Sonic had seen her. The dark lines under her eyes and the haunted look to them were gone however, and the blue hedgehog thought it was for the best. The Seedrian had suffered greatly during the Metarex War, having lost her entire family to the giant cyborgs. It was nice to see her finally looking happy and alive.

"Tails, dear what is -oh."

The young female paused, taking in the sight of a catatonic Tails and the group of misfits standing in front of the workshop. Sonic was surprised by the lack of screaming, but he figured that this was Cosmo, one of the most balanced and quirk-less member of the group.

"Hello Sonic, I didn't expect to see you again." The plant girl smiled sweetly at him. "It's good to see you. Please, come in. I just finished baking some food." She added to the last statement by pointing with her eyes the plate brimming of freshly made pastries she was holding.

Alright, it was just a bit unnerving, but it wasn't like Sonic was going to admit it.

"Tails, honey, you should get up. The floor is not a very comfortable place to sleep this time of year."

The fox just groaned.

Pitifully.

xxxxxxx

To his credit, Tails didn't start screaming like a lunatic when he realized this really was his supposedly dead brother standing in front of him while smiling like a loon would after escaping a mental institution.

He simply had a panic attack, which was an entirely different thing.

A half-hour later, inside the two-tailed fox's workshop, the said owner of the fine establishment was sitting on his couch, nursing a cup of his favorite coffee as he stared at the blue and the orange hedgehogs sitting in front of him. The duo had just finished explaining what had happened during the final moments of their battle against Dark Oak, and what Sonic had been holding inside of him, leaving the fox thoughtful.

"...so when you disintegrated on the Blue Typhoon, you actually teleported?" Telling the whole thing to Tails hadn't been as easy as explaining it to Chris, since Tails was a being of proof and logic like the human but took it to another level. It was only when Sonic showed him the Plates, and both he and Vicini transformed, that the young kit began believing them.

And by believing them, it meant tackling the Blue Blur to the ground.

"Grhaaa! Tails!"

"You stupid, bumbling fool!" The fox exclaimed, ignoring the other's yelps as he practically choked him with his hug. His bright azure eyes barely contained the tears of relief and anger. "Months of bullshit, just to find out that you were alive after all! Next time you die, I'm not going to mourn you!" By the end of the genius' small speech, Sonic had given up on trying to escape his grasp, and awkwardly patted the boy's back.

"Uh...yeah. I'll sent you a memo next time instead of waiting to come here personally." He had never been good at this kind of thing. Nevertheless, this was his friend, and more importantly his brother. Sonic would do anything to get him cheered up.

Speaking of friends...

"Tails..." The fox looked down at the pinned hedgehog and blinked. "...do we have to call everyone?"

Tails blinked. He hadn't expected that. "Yes, everyone. Why?" He stared in confusion as the azure speedster groaned and left his head fall back against the wooden floor of the living room, quills and ears dropping limply.

"...even Amy...?" Oh. That explains it. Especially with that long, pained whine. He knew that whine. The fox kit also knew what the pink, hammer-wielding female could do, and was pretty sympathetic to the cause.

Well, as sympathetic as one could get without getting involved with the situation, because there was no way in the name of Chaos Tails was getting within a ten foot pole of the obnoxious fanatic that was Amy when she was in the mood for a Sonic Hunt. The young genius couldn't remember how many times those chases ended badly, and could count with one hand which ended peacefully.

Now that Tails thought about it, he would only need a single finger for that.

"Yes, even Amy."

"...but..." The blue Holder looked down at him, trying his best to make his eyes as big and as innocent as possible...but the fact was that Sonic had always been terrible at making the puppy face. Vicini was holding back his laughter by placing a hand over his mouth, and Chris seemed to be in a similar dilemma.

"Look at it this way; at least you won't have the danger of accidentally bumping into her when out for a walk and having to drag her to her house because she passed out."

"...still."

And it was then the ever so helpful Vicini. "Do want to be stuck with Amy or you want to go back to Dark Oak?" The Element Spirit gave him a coy smirk. "I can get you to the Aether in a jiffy." The drawling voice had an undertone of amusement in it, one that made the other inhabitants of the room smile -that is, save the disgruntled blue hero.

Sonic cringed and made a disgusted face, leaning back as if he was trying to get away from a invisible attacker. "At least Dark Oak doesn't try to kiss me all the time."

"..." Tails looked truly mortified, and he wasn't the only one making the expression.

"What?"

"Bad mental image." Both Cosmo and Vicini muttered dryly as if part of a chorus. The other occupants of the room who had meet the leader of the Metarex winced at the image, and Sonic made a face of disgust as he realized what his companions were getting to.

xxxxxxxx

Most of the reactions, well, Sonic had expected.

Amy, quite understandingly, had screamed loudly his ears at the sight of him -even minutes after her cries were silenced by Vicini's glare...and the fireball he was tossing about. Afterwards the girl had stayed quiet in fear of invoking the wrath of the fire-type spirit, but exchanged her yells with simply clinging to a very irritated azure Holder.

Knuckles' hard magenta eyes had softened at the sight of him, and despite his attempts at staying aloof, the blue hedgehog had seen through it and swept him in a old-fashioned hug...that is, right after he partially transformed, slowing down the liquefying and reconstructing parts of his morphing ability long enough to practically melt out of Amy's arms. The young girl had been severely grossed out by it and expressed it greatly, but Sonic paid no mind. She would learn to not hang off him at every possible opportunity.

As for Shadow and Rouge, well...the black hedgehog had acknowledged he could see he was there -and alive- with a grunt, while the white bat ruffled the top of his head, congratulating him in being, well, alive and breathing and began telling him of everything that had happened since his absence. While not much had occurred, it still made Sonic grateful towards the snow-furred bat.

The Chaotix's reaction was...well...chaotic. Vector, Charmy would have killed him by crushing and suffocating the poor hedgehog to the ground -well the crocodile did, since the little bee didn't weight more than Cream- if Espio hadn't pulled them off before giving the purple-face Blue Blur a friendly handshake. Sonic had eyed the extended hand for a moment before taking it, apprehensive that the violet chameleon would put him in a similar predicament his two sheepish companions had.

Explaining his powers had gone well enough. Knuckles, being the descendant of a tribe of echidna that practically worshiped the Emeralds and Shadow, having been created for the sole purpose of wielding Chaos energy to bring hell to the battlefields, had been a bit skeptic at first. That is, until Sonic had grown irritated and practically shoved the Life Plates into their faces.

Amy hadn't cared much, only saying that the iridescent shade of Ether energy was prettier than Chaos -and receiving a facepalm from most of the room's occupants, and Cream hadn't even noticed the floating Plates, more intent on hugging the young azure male. The Chaotix had been hysterical, since they had never even heard of such a thing and began curling up in a corner, wailing that they weren't good enough detectives as such. It had taken a while to calm them down, and Sonic had reassure them that it was normal, since Ether wasn't as known as Chaos, and it was harder to find it in the ambient air without a Holder or Spirit nearby to rouse the dormant energy.

So at the end, Sonic was very happy but tired hedgehog when everything was said and done. The drain of energy he had suffered after powering the Ether Portal was getting to him.

The roof was just as comfortable as he remembered, laying there staring up at the skies. The stars gleamed softly in the night sky, familiar and comforting. For a moment, he expected the unnatural auroral borealis he had been used to seeing the last two years to paint the sky with their bright colors. Being made out of excess Ether energy, they were beautiful and at the rare occasions Dark Oak wasn't watching Vicini's tower like a hawk, he would transform and fly high, letting the energy that made up every cell of his body seep into his pores and energize him.

Even as beautiful as they are, I wouldn't trade the stars of Mobius for them.

"Sonic!"

Snapped out of his musing, the said male crawled and peered down from the edge of the roof. Tails was standing at the front door, looking up at him. "Cosmo and I are just about to settle down and go to sleep. Do you need anything?"

"No worries!" He called out at the boy, who was smiling up at him. "I'm just fine -hey!" He was faintly aware of frantic yelling coming from the house, but what truly caught his attention was the cold metallic object wrapping itself around his waist and lifting him off the house.

The blue hedgehog wiggled around, trying to get away as the metal claw brought him to what looked like a very large, very mechanical red ship with a familiar face painted on it's side. He couldn't help but stare. How the hell did this hunk of metal sneak up on him?

Sonic blankly gazed into the oversized gatling gun that was suddenly aimed at his face.

Ops. He had a feeling that he was forgetting someone.

I did, before the rewrite, ship Cosmo x Tails ship, but I realized Tails was way too young to have a relationship. Anyhow, it may happen in future episodes, but not now.

A Gatling Gun is a type of large, heavy machine gun that fires from multiple barrels. Check Google if you want to know more about it. Too bad there isn't something like that in the Monster Hunter games. Farming monsters would be so much easier. Oh well.

*sighs and picks up her DS for another round against Shagaru Magala*

I'm not the only one that is frustrated when you have to keep spamming a quest or dungeon for the one item you're missing, right?