8:01am, Birchwood, Minnesota, 21 days after the anomaly.
"Linus?" Lucy hollered upstairs, trying to get her brother awake. "Liiinus?" she opened the door to his bedroom, and was surprised to find he wasn't in bed.
"Huh. He's not here. But if he's not in bed, and he's not up yet, then where is he?" Lucy glanced out of the window, as robots began to stream out from the portal in multiple directions. She froze in fear, unable to speak or even comprehend what was going on as her eyes were transfixed on the invasion happening in front of her.
"Lucy!" She heard a shout coming from upstairs and snapped out from her fugue.
"Coming, Rerun!" Lucy replied, dashing over to his room to check on him. "Are you ok?" She asked, as he also stared out the window, watching the robots tear their way through parked cars and stop signs, prompting some drivers to turn tail and head for the hills.
"I... I'm okay." Rerun stuttered.
"Have you seen Linus?" Lucy asked.
"No? Is he not in bed?" Rerun asked, puzzled.
"Nope, he's not here. I sure hope he isn't out in... whatever this is?" Lucy gestured at the chaos outside.
"Have you called Charlie Brown? Maybe he knows where Linus is." Rerun suggested.
"No, I'll do that now." Lucy replied, heading downstairs to the phone, whereupon she dialled Charlie Brown's number.
Over at Charlie Brown's house, Sally, completely oblivious, was lounging on the sofa looking forward to watching TV when the phone rang.
"Hello?" Sally picked up. "If you're looking for Charlie Brown, he's outside."
"He's outside?!" Lucy exclaimed in disbelief.
"What's wrong with being outside?" Sally asked, puzzled.
"Take a look out of the window." Lucy dared her. Sally drew back the curtains and saw what Lucy meant.
"Good Grief!" Lucy could hear Sally's voice echo.
"Is this something to do with that Egg guy who turned up yesterday?" Sally asked.
"Must be." Lucy deduced. "Look, have you seen my brother? Did you invite him over to your house?"
"Did I?" Sally retorted. "If only! Linus never even dignifies me with a response most of the time!" She huffed.
"I'll take that as a no." Lucy responded.
"Are you going to look for him? Sally asked. "You must be crazy, going out there!"
"He can't be far from here." Lucy replied. "Just stay safe, okay?"
"Wait! I should come with you. I can't bear to stay here when my sweetheart is..."
"I can't do that." Lucy denied her. "It's not safe out there."
"You're putting yourself in danger too!" Sally pointed out.
"I have to be responsible for my brother. You don't. Just stay there."
"Fine, but if he's hurt, then I won't forgive you." Sally hung up in frustration. Lucy sighed disappointedly as she heard the phone being clapped down, before she turned to face the window once again.
"How am I going to get past them?" Lucy wondered. "More to the point, where's Charlie Brown?" Lucy thought for a minute, before getting up and heading out the back door. Fetching herself a garden rake, she marched herself to the front garden and watched as the mass of robots blocked her path.
"Looks like I'll have to do this the hard way." Lucy grumbled, clambering over into the neighbour's front garden to get a better angle. With her rake raised up, she yelled, as she charged full pelt at the line, skewering one robot through the side as she ran through, and dumping it onto the ground as she made it past the line, seemingly unnoticed. The robot attempted to right itself, but Lucy brought her rake down on it, poking holes into its circuitry until it was unresponsive.
Lucy sighed to herself, rubbing away a bead of sweat from her forehead. It was only 1 robot in a convoy of thousands, but at least she could move around a bit more freely. Keeping a watchful eye on the advancing line, she continued walking until she got to Charlie Brown's house. Charlie Brown was standing on top of Snoopy's doghouse, baseball bat in hand, whilst his faithful dog was taking up his usual flying ace persona, and (supposedly) shooting down the enemy targets.
"Lucy? What are you doing out here? It's dangerous!" he warned.
"Yeah, I can see that, Charlie Brown." Lucy replied with her usual snark. "I'm looking for Linus, have you seen him?"
"Nope." Charlie Brown replied. "He's not here. Is he not at home?"
"No? I wouldn't be looking for him if he was." Lucy replied.
"Well, he's smart enough to avoid a mess like this most of the time." Charlie Brown thought aloud. "Perhaps he went through the portal to look for help?" he suggested.
"It's probably safer in there honestly." Lucy replied.
"Possibly, but if he's in there he could be literally anywhere. We wouldn't even know where to start. It's better if you don't get lost in there yourself." Charlie Brown advised. "Behind you!"
Lucy turned around and whacked the robot that approached her, beating it until it stopped moving.
"This is kinda tiring." Lucy complained. "How are we gonna get rid of these pests?
"By ourselves? I don't think we can do much." Charlie Brown replied. "But at least we can hold out until help arrives."
"Ha, as if the police have any experience dealing with something like this!" Lucy joked. Charlie Brown sighed, as a stray robot approached him and Snoopy, forcing him to bat it down.
The front-lines of the badniks were marching in different directions, but all of them had the same goal in mind, and that meant they were heading downtown. The rest of the peanuts gang wisely decided not to interfere as the robots marched past their houses, and none of them were especially capable of fighting. It wasn't long, however, before the robots reached the town centre, bringing with them chaos and noise galore as the local law enforcement feebly attempted to contain the invasion.
Standing on the side of a wooded hilltop overlooking the town, Shadow had been spending the past three weeks watching from afar, brooding about this hopeless planet he was stranded on, and how spineless its inhabitants were for accepting every hardship that came to them.
"Eggman would walk all over these people." he grumbled, while the sound of sirens and car alarms began to pierce the tranquil silence that Shadow was enjoying.
"And from the sounds of it, he already is. I should check on them." Shadow tutted, darting down the hill, disappearing into the cluster of buildings that lined the edge of town. As he predicted, Eggman's robots were already making mayhem downtown, ripping up any cars and infrastructure that stood in their way.
"These guys are pathetic." Shadow groaned, as he watched the police struggle to contend with the wave of badniks piling onto them. He had observed in the past weeks that the police were more focused on being able to put down crowds of people rather than serious, armed opposition, and their display against the robots was not proving him wrong. Shadow threw himself into the fray, rolling and smashing into a line of robots in full view of the police.
"What on earth is that?" A voice was heard shouting over the chaos. Shadow stopped and turned around.
"You talkin' about me?" He gruffed.
"Yeah, what are you?" Another police man raised his gun at him in fear.
"I'm your best hope of getting out of this alive, so I'll advise you to get that gun out of my face." Shadow hissed. "I can hold this horde back for now, you guys should focus on something more useful, like getting your civilians out of this battlefield."
"Battlefield?"
"You heard. Now move!" Shadow barked.
"Uh, yes... Sir?" The police captain queried.
"Whatever. Just go." Shadow sounded impatient. As the police began to take his advice, Shadow began to exert himself, bashing robots left, right and centre in any method he wished. He wouldn't admit it, but he was relishing being able to brute force his way past Eggman's army again, having suffered the humiliation of defeat at Sunset City back when the metal virus was still around.
Of course, despite making inroads on the line of badniks and pushing them all the way back to the intersection in only a few minutes, the line behind him was advancing, and Shadow turned around to see that his efforts were all for naught.
"Damn. Looks like I can't do this one alone either. I'll just have to hold on for now." He huffed, turning to push back the other line of robots approaching him.
Meanwhile, Sonic and Tails were quickly catching up to the portal, and with it the line of robots. The sun was pretty high in the sky by now, the light beaming down on the shining metal of Eggman's army.
"You sure we shouldn't take them out from the back?" Tails asked.
"Relax. Jewel, Rouge and the others can perfectly handle that themselves if something unexpected happens." Sonic assured him, as they sped off into the portal, taking the opportunity to roll clean through a few badniks as they entered it.
The two made an explosive entrance, sending robot pieces flying everywhere. Charlie Brown ducked as a slab of metal flew over him, eventually landing in a hedge.
"Good Grief!" He exclaimed as his life flashed briefly before his eyes. "Hey!" Charlie Brown called out as the dust settled, revealing Sonic and Tails' presence.
"What's up?" Sonic replied, turning to see Charlie Brown standing on top of the doghouse.
"A lot of things. I think you can see that for yourself. Who are you again?"
"I'm Sonic, and this is my best friend Tails!" The hedgehog replied, gesturing at his buddy.
"Oh, you're Sonic? Amy mentioned you a few times while you were here." Charlie Brown noted.
"She would." Sonic chuckled.
"Anyway, as you can see, the robots have been moving around in all directions, I think they 're all headed downtown, but obviously I don't have all the info from over here. If you can push them back, that would be great." Charlie Brown explained.
"Got it!" Sonic replied, as he and Tails took off. Lucy looked up at Charlie Brown, slightly annoyed.
"We could have done with the help here." She grumbled.
"Trust me." Charlie Brown replied. "The people downtown need more help than we do."
Sonic and Tails continued to speed past the lines of badniks until they reached the centre of town, where Shadow was struggling by himself to hold back both fronts.
"Hey, Shadow! Need a hand?" Sonic called out.
"Sonic?" Shadow's ears pricked up, prompting him to turn around. "Oh, and Tails too."
"Where have you been?" Tails asked, as he and Sonic joined in the fighting.
"I've been stuck out here. How did you get here?" Shadow replied.
"There's been a portal there for like, the past 3 days? Although I guess you wouldn't know that if you've been brooding alone, like usual." Sonic teased, rolling and bouncing into a few robots.
"So what if I like being alone?" Shadow protested, taking out a few bots of his own.
"Well, we might not be in this mess had you come back earlier. Jewel ruled out closing the portal 'cause you were still out here." Tails pointed out.
"How thoughtful." Shadow replied sarcastically. "Risking the lives of so many for my sake." He sounded bitter.
"Well, when you word it like that..." Tails tried to respond.
"You know that I'm right." Shadow argued.
"Somehow I doubt you'd have taken to abandonment that well, honestly." Sonic responded, as they continued their fight.
"Why would you think that? It's not like any of you bothered to come find me." Shadow complained.
"We didn't have time!" Sonic replied. "Eggman was already marching on HQ by the time we got out of... whatever world we were dropped in. Any later, and HQ would have fallen, and we'd be back to where we were during the war." He explained.
"That would have been less than ideal." Shadow admitted.
"At least you acknowledged that." Sonic emphasised on the 'that' with some exasperation.
"What's important is that you're back." Tails defused the situation. "Whatever issues you two have we can sort out afterwards, for now, we've got some eggs to crack."
"Right you are, Tails!" Sonic replied, rolling through another group of badniks. Shadow smiled for the first time in a while as Tails assisted him with his flank.
With Sonic and Tails to aid him, Shadow managed to push the robots back considerably, and after an hour or so, robot carcasses littered the roads from downtown all the way to the inner edge of the suburbs.
Meanwhile, in Birchwood, the neighbourhood was still being overrun, and Lucy was looking incredulously at the corpse of one Egg Robo, her fourth kill so far.
"These guys are strong." Lucy sounded tired.
"I hope Sonic and his friend are having a better time than we are." Charlie Brown replied.
"They've dealt with worse, and lived." Lucy reminded him, holding hope that this would be over soon. Looking out over the street, she almost missed the sound the portal made as some poor soul was spat out the other end.
"Good Grief, there's more of them!?" Linus shouted in alarm as he was quickly surrounded by a small legion of badniks.
"Linus!" Lucy shouted, as she threw herself into the fray. Charlie Brown jumped in after her, batting away any robots in his way.
"Help!" Linus called out, as his sister arrived with Charlie Brown in tow. The two of them battered the robots as best they could, distracting the robots for long enough to allow Linus to get free. He then began to assist them, tripping up a couple of robots with his blanket and letting Charlie Brown and Lucy finish them off.
"Huh, these robots are more vulnerable when you trip them up." Lucy observed, watching the sea of badniks continue to march in the direction of downtown.
"There's so many of them!" Linus exclaimed again, shellshocked.
"Hold on a minute. Did you know about this?" Lucy asked. "What have... where have you been?"
"Can we talk about this later?!" Linus suggested, frantically gesturing at the robots who were still nearby.
"You're right. Let's get somewhere less dangerous, then we can worry about what you've been up to." Charlie Brown opined. Leading the way, Charlie Brown batted his way back across the road and back to the doghouse, with Lucy and Linus following.
"So, you mind telling us what went on while you were gone?" Lucy asked, now that they were relatively safe.
"Well, after Eggman left here, I followed after him and wound up in some sort of workshop place. After he kicked me out, I ended up in some ruins, where some robots began to attack me. I went through the portal again to get away from them and found myself on top of some city wall, where a nice lady took me in and gave me shelter. After I woke up, the robots began to attack there too, so I went back through in the hope that it'd be safe." Linus explained briefly.
"Sounds like you had quite the ordeal." Charlie Brown responded, half-focusing on batting down another robot that was approaching.
By now it was about 11:30, and over in the world that inhabited Camp Campbell, Amy, Tangle, Whisper and Belle were finally making significant inroads on the line of badniks, pushing them back to the edge of camp while the exhausted group of campers watched on.
"And... There! That should be the last of them." Amy sighed, sounding rather proud of herself.
"Nice. Good one." Ered lazily raised a thumb up as she sat against a tent pole.
"Yeah, uh, thanks." Max echoed her sentiments, though he was in no position to stand either.
"Thank god." Gwen breathed a sigh of relief.
"You guys need any more help?" Belle asked.
"We'll clear the rest of this mess up, don't worry about us." David assured them.
"Yeah, just make sure you beat that eggy fuck down before he attacks us again." Max replied.
"Noted." Whisper replied quietly.
"I guess this is goodbye, then." Tangle quickly moved on.
"Don't forget Nerris and Harrison!" Nikki piped up. "They're still not back yet."
"Don't worry we haven't forgotten them." Belle assured. "I'll fetch them once it's safe to bring them back."
"Good luck!" Space Kid wished them well.
"Thanks! Bye for now!" Tangle replied enthusiastically, as the four of them scrambled through the portal. Of course, awaiting them on the other side was the swarm of robots that had stopped walking through camp since 8, and recognised where they were.
"Hey, this is..."
"Hi Amy!" Lucy called out with a welcoming smile, from atop Snoopy's doghouse.
"Hi Lucy!" Amy replied, whacking a badnik away with her hammer. "Are you okay? This looks kinda bad!"
"We're okay! The robots are headed for the centre of town." Charlie Brown replied. "Sonic and his fox friend are already down there trying to take them down."
"Okay." Amy took in the information. "Belle, you stay here and make sure these guys stay safe." Amy commanded. Us three will go up and help Sonic and Tails."
"Thanks, Amy!" Lucy appreciated the help, as Amy hammered another couple of bots and led Tangle and Whisper downtown. Amy and co didn't have to travel too far to find Sonic, Tails and Shadow locked in battle with the legions that had gathered around them.
"Hey, Amy!" Tails waved briefly before trashing the robot facing him.
"How's it going?" Amy asked.
"We're winning for now, but we could always do with more help!" Sonic replied encouragingly.
"Gladly!" Tangle smiled, as the trio quickly got to work assisting Sonic and co. With 6 heroes now focused on them, the long line of robots began to fall back far more quickly, and with Belle assisting Charlie Brown and the others behind, less robots were making it to the front than before, which made their task considerably easier. After an hour, the robots had been pushed back to within a mile from Birchwood, and by 1pm, robots had stopped filing through the portal.
"Hey, they stopped." Lucy noticed, as the portal stood unobscured for the first time in hours.
"Good. We can rest now." Linus replied, laying down on the front lawn, exhausted.
The pushback, and the subsequent bottlenecking of the robots onto one road meant that the last part of the fight was a lot easier, with Sonic and the others rolling through badniks left and right, to the point where it only took half an hour for them to clear the rest of the robots as they approached the edge of Birchwood.
"Whew." Sonic sighed, wiping away some sweat. "That was some workout."
"You can say that again." Tails agreed.
Amy looked around. "Are we all the way back to the portal already? That was quick."
"There's no robots left, did they go into a different world again?" Tangle asked.
"It's only 1:30." Amy replied, as the heroes walked further into the neighbourhood. From what the campers told us, the robots came in at midnight and stopped coming in at 8, so logically the portal won't change destinations until 4."
"Huh." Tails overheard the conversation. "Well I remember Sonic and I disabled the production at Egg Base Tau just before sunrise, so maybe that's all of them gone?"
"I sure hope so." Sonic replied. "Come on, let's how Belle and the others are holding up." Sonic began to pick up the pace., beckoning the others to follow as he caught up with Charlie Brown and the others.
"Is it over?" Charlie Brown sat tiredly on top of Snoopy's doghouse, staring blankly at Sonic as his friends caught up to him.
"Yep! No more robots here!" Sonic smirked.
"Well, that makes once place that's robot free." Linus sighed.
"What makes you say that, Linus?" Amy asked, looking concerned. Linus then began to explain in more detail his actions the previous night while the others listened.
"So after you first saw the robots, what happened next?" Tangle asked.
"After the robots came, I went in through the other side of the portal and found myself on top of some large city wall. It was cold, and damp, but a nice lady working the night shift took me in and gave me a place to sleep. The next morning, Eggman was attacking the city from about 10am, and honestly, I wasn't much help, so I got out and ended up back home." Linus rambled, as he sheepishly looked up at the heroes.
"So you're saying Eggman's got a whole army of robots surrounding the city, and none of us can get inside? Damn. I hope Hilda and her friends can hold the fort until we arrive." Sonic sounded worried.
"Finally, someone's learning the language." Shadow smirked.
"Not the time, Shadow." Tails admonished.
"How long is it until the portal changes again?" Sonic asked.
"Judging by what we know, it should change at about 4pm." Belle answered. "But I can check for you, if you want proof."
"Please." Tails perked up, staring at the portal as Belle ran through it and back again.
"Yep, she's right." Sonic admitted. "We'll have to wait, for now." He huffed.