4:20pm, Ruins of Egg Port Factory Alpha, Mobius, 15 days after the anomaly.
Cream and Rouge were an odd partnership, all things considered. One, innocent and polite, and friend to all living things, who abides by a strict moral code. The other, adult and surly, to whom the rules were merely an inconvenience. They could not be more different.
Nevertheless, the two of them, along with Charmy, were the only people standing in front of the portal at this point in time. Jewel was still working out how to solve the conundrum of sending someone out and managing to get them back. Predictably, progress on that had stalled somewhat, and she had instructed everyone not to use it until she had finished working it out.
Rouge knew this was a fallacy in itself, since logically, no one would be able to get back until Sonic and Tails made their own, which would defeat the point of sending someone through to look for them in the first place.
Cream was the first to notice something about the portal had changed. While it had previously been showing visions of blue skies on the other side, it was now showing the interior of a building, with red wooden walls. This was swiftly followed by the appearance of a crude looking Egg Pawn marching through.
"Rouge!" Cream called out to attract her attention, as she adopted a fighting stance. Rouge looked over at Cream and saw the robot she was pointing at.
"Charmy, catch!" Rouge tossed her radio at the bee, who barely caught it as he tried to process what was going on.
"Contact Jewel. Tell her we need reinforcements. Eggman's here." Rouge ordered.
"Yes ma'am!" Charmy saluted, before buzzing away to a safe distance.
Rouge and Cream barely had a chance to confront the first Necrobot before Eggman and Van Gale appeared, with a legion of Necrobots massing behind them.
"Well well well, what have we here?" Eggman eyed the diminutive rabbit and her partner in crime.
"Can it, Egghead." Rouge retorted.
"Yeah, we're not going to let you destroy our world, and I'm not going to let you hurt my friends!" Cream pouted defiantly.
"What friends, dear?" Van Gale leaned forward. "I don't see anyone else here, other than that bat lady next to you. Surely if they were really your friends, they would fight by your side?"
"I fight so that my friends don't have to!" Cream rebuked.
"Oh! You look so cute when you're angry." Van Gale felt a jump in her heart as Cream continued to stand up to her.
"What about 'her' What is she fighting for?"
"Why don't you ask your boss?" Rouge replied smugly. "Or has he not told you about his previous endeavours? My name's Rouge, by the way."
"He's told me about the times he's tried to build a theme park that you keep tearing down." Van Gale replied.
"Funnily enough, every time he's tried that, it's always a front for something more sinister, like taking over the world, or turning people into robots, The Metal Virus, you name it. I can tell from the confused look on your face how little you know him. Do you even know how he makes robots, what a flicky is, has he even told you his full plan? Rouge batted questions at the meteorologist.
"Enough talking." Eggman shut them up, banging his fist on the console of his eggmobile. "Victoria, let's show these losers what we've got in store from them." He gestured at the portal, which the Necrobots were already marching through at a steady pace.
"Necrobots, attack!" He ordered. Rouge glanced at the portal and gritted her teeth in frustration, as Eggman's trash talk had allowed him to tip the numbers in his favour.
"Cream, we need to push back as many of these as we can." Rouge urged. Cream nodded with a look of determination, executing a spindash on one of the robots. This knocked it stumbling backwards, but despite sustaining noticeable damage, it got back up again.
"You're going to have to try a little harder than that." Van Gale chuckled as she watched from above.
"What, you mean like this?" Rouge gave one a roundhouse kick in the head, lopping its head off and causing the robot to lose any executive function.
"Hmm, I guess that would do the trick, good luck getting through the other 837. Toodles!" Van Gale watched as a circle of twelve Necrobots surrounded Rouge and Cream, while the rest of the robots simply walked around them.
Charmy hid himself beneath a rock as Eggman, Victoria and their Necrobot army marched out of the ruins. When the two were out of earshot Charmy took the radio and began to speak into it.
"Jewel! Jewel are you there?"
"Charmy?! What's going on? You sound panicked." Jewel picked up, sitting comfortably in her office chair.
"Eggman's here! And he brought an army of robots with him too!" Charmy replied urgently.
"Ah, Fudgesticks!" Jewel growled in frustration, before taking a moment to compose herself. "Has Sonic or anyone else made it back through the portal yet?"
"No. It's just me, Cream and Rouge here right now. Rouge said we need reinforcements pronto!"
"I got that." Jewel replied. "What's your situation, at present. I need numbers and directions, and any casualties I need to know about." she explained.
"Cream and Rouge are currently surrounded by about 12 of them. We can beat them, but there's another 800 more coming your way. We can't stop them all like this." Charmy responded.
"Roger that. I'll do what I can." Jewel promised. "Did Eggman take any of the Emeralds?"
"No. He left the portal as is so he could let his army through." Charmy answered.
"Understood. Stay safe, Charmy. Jewel out."
Charmy put the radio away and joined back up with Rouge and Cream. Having spent the last couple of minutes fighting 2v12, Rouge and Cream were beginning to look tired. They hadn't taken any major hits, but Rouge wasn't able to use her full strength when confined to a small circle such as the one they were penned in, and thus none of the robots had been downed either.
"Yo!" Charmy came charging in, kicking a robot square in the face, knocking it off balance and allowing Rouge to kick its head off from behind.
"Nice one." Rouge remarked, as she wiped some sweat from her brow.
"Thanks Charmy replied, as he quickly became preoccupied with fighting the other robots. Their constant attacking gave the trio little time to think, so it was a couple of minutes before Cream came up with an idea.
"Try picking me up and dropping me." Cream suggested, parrying a swipe from one of the Necrobots.
"Why?" Charmy asked.
"I think if we do it that way, I can get enough speed to damage these robots a bit more."
"And eventually bring them down. Good thinking, Cream." Rouge complimented the rabbit on her ingenuity. "I'll cover you. Charmy, can you do the lifting?"
"I can lift both Vector and Espio at the same time. Lifting Cream will be easy." Charmy boasted brashly. He held Cream up by the arms and carried her into the air, while Rouge held the Necrobots off.
"Now!" Cream instructed, as Charmy duly complied. Cream somersaulted into a spin, dashing directly into the head of one of the Necrobots and severing it.
"Okay, that works. Good. Can you guys keep that up?" Rouge asked.
"We'll try." Cream and Charmy promised, smiling despite the circumstances. One by one, the trio whittled them down until there were no bots left around them, but by that point, the rest of Eggman's Necrobot army had already marched through. Charmy and Cream were both bruised and exhausted, and Rouge knew that they were not fit to keep on fighting. Hell, they should never have been on the battlefield in the first place.
"Come on. Let's get you guys home." Rouge picked Cream up and carried her.
"What about Eggman, and all those other robots?" Cream asked.
"Jewel will deal with them. And Gemerl, if you talk to him." Rouge replied. "You've done enough." she assured her, as she flew in the direction of Cream's house, while Charmy followed.
Eggman and Van Gale had made plenty of ground whilst Rouge and Co were preoccupied, and were steamrolling through settlement No. 3 on the way to Eggman's nearest base, Land Factory Theta. Van Gale, however, couldn't help but observe Eggman was leaving behind a small cohort of robots at each town.
"Why are we leaving these robots behind? We already defeated what meagre defences they had. Surely we'll need them for the next town we run into?"
"Oh, I'm just leaving them to make sure everyone knows who's the boss around here." Eggman answered with a grin. "It's only a few miles before we reach the base anyway. We can afford to leave a few of them behind; I can't be everywhere you know."
"I guess not." Van Gale doubted herself. When Rouge had tried to tell her about Eggman's history she'd initially dismissed it as baseless slander, but Eggman's general attitude seemed off for someone so invested in science like herself. Her sullen look didn't stay around for long, though, as the ribbon of urban infrastructure gave way to a sprawling field with rolling hills and a lone mountain that stood out amongst the rushing grasses and rustling, leafy trees. Van Gale couldn't help but smile as Eggman headed towards the mountain.
"This place is beautiful!" Victoria remarked, while Eggman accelerated, forcing the Necrobots to go faster in order to keep up.
"Good enough to rival even your home world?" Eggman enquired.
"If the rest of this world looks like this, I'd say it'd be even better."
"Well, you're in luck. You see that mountain over there, in the distance? That's where we're headed." Eggman confirmed. "One of my bases is in there."
"You have more than one base?" Van Gale asked.
"Oh, I have them dotted all over the place. Some of them are even operational. But there are none as well hidden as this." the duo approached the entrance of the base, securely locked by a large circular steel door. Eggman punched in the code and the doors opened up to them and their cohort of Necrobots, revealing a vast warehouse full of machines, parts, cables and more robots.
"Does this place take up the whole mountain?" Van Gale asked.
"As much as I could take without collapsing it." Eggman replied. "These pillars do a lot of heavy lifting." he pointed out, grasping at one of the many steel scaffolds that ran up to the top of the mountain.
"I can see that." Van Gale perked up. "You clearly seem to have a lot of resources at your disposal." She observed the assembly line of robots full of metal and electrical parts, and half-built egg pawns complete with painted colour scheme, giving her an eye for what Eggman wanted with their Necrobot design.
"Of course. Building 838 robots here would take merely an hour, rather than entire days."
"Speaking of robots, do you mind if I do a few experiments? I want to find out if my conjuring abilities work in this world as well as they do in mine."
"Of course. I don't mind. There are living quarters up at the top if you need it. Just take the elevator. I'll stick around here and make sure these machines still work." He stated.
"This way, right?" Van Gale asked as she began to walk towards the elevator.
"Yes, that way." Eggman replied with a hint of exasperation, as he turned his attention back to his machinery. Van Gale took the elevator up to the top of the base, and walked out into a thin white corridor, with rooms either side of it. On her left, two bedrooms and a kitchen. On her right, an office and a drawing room. Van Gale entered the drawing room expecting it to look as barren and skeletal as the rest of the base, but what she got was completely the opposite. Stacks of notebooks and folders lined the side walls, which Van Gale assumed were full of Eggman's previous designs (of which she made a mental note to read later).
On the wall opposite, a window lining the length of the wall boasted a stunning view of the valley below, filled with a forest of trees, a river and rolling hills. There were scarcely any animals that could be seen in the distance though, but Van Gale thought nothing of it, as she sat down at a desk and began to brainstorm.
Meanwhile, at Restoration HQ, Jewel had been scrambling to call everyone and everyone that could help, including Vector, Espio, Vanilla and Gemerl, and letting them know that Eggman was back and to be prepared for whatever he might have planned. Additionally, she had managed to assemble a 50-strong scouting part from members at the HQ, led by Lanolin, and every city within the vicinity of the ruined base had been notified by the end of the day. Without Sonic and the others to help, though, Jewel felt like she was short on options, and slumped in her chair exhaustedly as She chugged down the last of her cup of coffee.
"This is going to be a long week."