"So, you guys going to be okay up here?"
Sonic's shoes sank into the snow of the frozen factory zone, the chill wind that was never far away here on the Lost Hex blowing through his spines.
"Who do you think you're asking?" Shadow snapped, arms crossed in front of him. He'd apparently managed to source a fresh pair of inhibitor rings over the last few hours.
"We'll be just fine, boys." Rouge brushed gloved fingers through her fur, a sealed metal canister gripped in her fist. "Once we've dropped this off on the peak we'll go help offload the Zeti before they finish waking up."
"Sounds good!" Sonic nodded. The endless spray of green goo from Tails' portal would drain to the rest of the Hex naturally from this zone, and then down onto the ground below, clearing away the corruption just as it had in the Mystic Ruins. "Now I'd better get going myself!" He jerked a thumb with a grin to the crimson echidna who stood fidgeting a short distance away, mitts clamped firmly around his shoulders. "Before Knucklehead decides to go without me. You know he's a bit cranky right now."
"You bet I'm cranky!" Knuckles snapped through gritted teeth. "Eggman's on my island!"
"And Tails and Amy…" Sonic raised an eyebrow.
"They're on my island too!" Knuckles shifted again, no sign of his recent corruption left before he burst into a run down the snowy slope.
"Knux! Wait up!" Sonic rolled his eyes, waving with two fingers before bursting off at a sprint down after his friend. "Catch you guys later!"
Rouge, at least, waved him off.
This was more like it. Fighting Egghead and saving his friends. There were even a few rings appearing here and there. Things were getting back to normal at last.
Sonic caught up with Knuckles and slowed to keep pace as they charged past yetis towards the edge of the zone. The hex had shifted relative to Angel Island so this was more or less the closest point right now. The pair raced towards the edge without stopping, Knuckles leaping up into a glide that would carry him across the massive gulf between the two floating landmasses.
Sonic just grinned, accelerating into a jump at the very last moment.
To land squarely on Knuckles' back.
"Hey!"
"Thanks for the lift, good buddy!" Sonic gave a thumbs up, settling his feet as if he was surfing on the soaring echidna.
"I ought to drop you!"
"Come on, Knux, it's not like it's the first time we-" Sonic leapt as a salvo of bullets streaked across the sky at them, landing back on the complaining echidna's back a moment later. "Looks like the doc knows we're here!"
"You think?!"
A hand reached up, grabbing Sonic by the ankle before hurling him bodily across the sky towards the floating island, smashing the cannon into scrap on impact. Knuckles dropped onto the island moments later, sniggering as Sonic gave him a dark look.
"Why hello, Sonic. So nice of you to drop in." A crackling mechanical voice preempted their argument, a floating screen with a close up of Eggman's smug face popping up in front of the two of them. "But I'm afraid you're already far too late to interfere with my plans this time or save your puny friends."
The screen pulled back, revealing Amy and Tails bound to pillars on either side of Eggman's throne atop the Master Emerald, their figures limp and still as Eggman let out a reverberating laugh. The screen pulled out further still to show the seven Chaos Emeralds, each arranged atop their own separate altars, radiating energy even across the video link.
"No! He's used the Master Emerald to hypercharge the Chaos Emeralds!" Knuckles shook his fist at the screen.
"You see, while you've been bumbling around looking for that twin-tailed sidekick of yours, I have been using my supreme intellect to communicate with powers beyond your feeble imaginations!"
Eggman's gloating grin broadened as he raised a stone disc in his hand, some alien horror carved into its surface, tentacles spreading out from a many-eyed face with empty hollows for eyes and one on each of the four sides of the stone sigil.
"And now it's time to call them to dinner." Eggman held the disc over his head, energy crackling around him in all the colours of the rainbow. "Hastur, Hastur, Hastur!"
The sky rippled above them as the stone sigil ascended from the doctor's hands unaided. The chaos emeralds lifted from their altars, swirling around each other as they hurtled towards the sigil one after the other, shrinking as they approached almost as if they were travelling a great distance away from them, each one lodging itself into a hollow on the sigil's surface until the entire stone pulsed with chaos energy. Sonic swore he saw tentacles writhe across the stone for a moment and then… The stone vanished, emeralds and all. The sky returned to normal.
There was a brief period of silence as Eggman stared at the place the sigil used to be. Sonic and Knuckles glanced at one another and then back at the screen.
"Uh… Was that meant to happen?" Sonic raised an eyebrow.
"I- Shut up! I still have your friends! I don't need any help beating you!" The fat man lunged forward, his thumb covering half the screen as he pulled the camera close to his reddening face. "Come and face your doom, rodents!"
"Yeah, just like all the other times you've beaten Sonic in a fair fight, boss!" Cubot's voice sounded from off-camera.
"Shut up, shut up, shut-" Eggman's angry tirade cut off midstream. The screen went dark, detonating into shrapnel a moment later, sending the pair of mobians ducking for cover.
"I can't believe he just disintegrated the chaos emeralds!" Knuckles shook his head as he popped out from behind an oversized mushroom stalk..
"We'll deal with that later! We've gotta save Tails and Amy!" Sonic didn't wait, blasting off at the speed of sound towards the hidden palace, ignoring Knuckles' cry of protest as it dopplered behind him. Swarms of badniks patrolling the island threw themselves at him one after the other as he kept accelerating, a curious sense of impending doom growing in the pit of his stomach for reasons he couldn't put his finger on as he smashed through metal and snatched up rings with well honed practise.
Was it the loss of the emeralds?
Probably not. It was a bit anticlimactic but honestly that was the most benign outcome to come from Eggman's villainous schemes pretty much... ever. Sure, he wasn't sure what they'd do to get his Tails back - or his buddy's past self back home - but surely they'd figure something out once he'd beaten Eggman and saved the day.
Space rippled around him as he ran, a subtle wrongness as everything, himself included, warped in on itself, the world twisting into angles until, once more, everything went back to normal. Sonic shook off his vertigo, accelerating once more up the trunk of a giant tree to scale a cliff.
There, the entrance to the Hidden Palace, though not particularly hidden anymore, a technological citadel had been built over it, emblazoned with the symbol of Eggman himself, a replica in miniature of Eggman's Metropolis Zone base.
"About time you showed up." Knuckles snapped at him, already stood before the oversized gate into the citadel, the wreckage of defence turrets and badniks scattered around him.
"Whoa! How'd you get here so fast?" Sonic skidded to a halt.
"I took the shortcut." Knuckles harumphed. "As you'd have known if you'd listened to me." The echidna turned, punching a mobian sized hole in the gate with a blazing fist. "Now let's get in there and stop Eggman before he breaks my emerald as well."
And then the world tore in two. Sonic grabbed his head as a blinding light exploded behind his eyes even as a black rift tore open above the citadel. Two hands gripped the side, pulling it wider and wider until a tentacled head - the same five eyed monstrosity as the stone emblem before - pushed its way through, a legless torso with ribs and vertebrae exposed below its over muscled chest.
The monster let out a triumphant roar, spreading its arms wide as it descended to dominate the sky above them, staring through Sonic's very soul with five eyes each a different colour, two more eyes on its hands opening up to reveal all the colours of the rainbow.
"What the-" Knuckles raised a mitt, jaw hanging open. "Look there, on its chest!"
"Huh?" Sonic squinted up. There, in the centre of the creature's chest, embedded at the end of fleshy green veins that protruded from its glowing yellow skin, were the seven chaos emeralds, flooding it with power. Sonic grimaced, clenching his fists as the tentacle-faced monster let out another roar, rumbling the very foundations of the world.
Eggman's summoning had succeeded after all.