4:12 pm, The Fields outside Emeraldville, 19 days after the anomaly.

Sonic made it back in time to help the other heroes deal with the few robots that remained, which declared the battle officially over.

"Is that all of them?" Sonic asked, looking around him.

"Looks like it." Amy was looking around too, the chaos of the battle now reduced to an uneasy stillness that hung in the air.

"Yeah, it's over." Tangle concluded. "We did it guys!" She raised her fist into the air victoriously. A chorus of whooping and cheers filled the atmosphere as everyone celebrated their victory.

"Alright, everyone, come over here!" Jewel beckoned everyone over to her. Sonic, Amy, Van Gale, and the rest of the heroes all headed back towards Jewel and the soldiers.

"Now, settle down, people." Jewel waited for the raucous noise to die down a little bit so she could speak. "Now, I want to thank everyone for a job well done. We managed to prevent a repeat of the war and kept the HQ from falling into his hands. There's no telling what would have happened had the 500 of you not volunteered yourselves to defend our world once again, no discounting the effort of Sonic and his friends for all the help they provided." Jewel congratulated. "As for you Victoria, you are partly responsible for this mess, and your heroic actions today do not change that. I will see you in my office as soon as I can, and in the meantime, Lanolin will be keeping a close eye on you... when she gets back." Jewel rolled her eyes and picked up her radio.

"Lanolin, where are you?" Jewel sounded nonplussed.

"Just approaching the edge of the fields now. How are you guys holding up?"

"Battle's over. We won." Jewel replied.

"Aw dang, we missed it? Sorry about that. We had a few stragglers ourselves." Lanolin sheepishly admitted.

"We're debriefing, just get back as soon as you can." Jewel instructed.

"Copy. Lanolin out."

"Now, where were we?" Jewel put her radio away and got back to the main order of business.

"Lieutenant, can you report to me how many casualties we sustained? Jewel asked.

"Injuries: 12. Fatalities: 0, thankfully." The lieutenant reported.

"Good." Jewel smiled proudly, as Van Gale breathed a sigh of relief. "That leaves the question of Eggman. Sonic, I'm going to assume by your forlorn expression that he got away?"

"Yeah." Sonic sighed. "He did his usual ramble about how he'll be back with a planet sized army and then flew off into the sky. With Tails out of action, I couldn't get the height to knock him back down. Sorry about that."

"Nothing to be sorry for, Sonic. You did just save the day, after all." Jewel consoled him. "We just have to work out what he's up to."

"Van Gale and I may have a few ideas about that." Amy pointed to herself.

"I see. Perhaps you and your cohorts can join me when we have our meeting. As for the rest of you, you should get some well-earned rest while you can... especially you Sonic, I doubt you've had much sleep either."

"I don't think it's wise to sleep while Eggman is making his getaway, but whatever." Sonic argued.

"How will you find him if you don't know where he's going?" Jewel responded. "At least wait until we know that much."

"Okay, got it, thanks." Sonic relented, letting out a yawn.

Far away, out of the forest, Eggman was going full pelt in the direction of his old base, eulogising to himself about his loss.

"Van Gale proved to be a severe limitation in my plans, rather than a benefit. Now that she's gone however, I can put a new, better plan in motion! Now, to think. If I'm going to have the resources and might to take down Sonic, building up forces at one of my bases isn't going to be enough. I promised them a planetful of robots, and they will get a planetful of robots!

Of course, if I'm going to take over Van Gale's world, I will need at least some of my army, and, knowing how difficult it is to procure resources over there, I will need to bring some of my existing army with me. The only question is how? I certainly can't march them there myself, that would take far too long, and I'd be discovered much too easily. Hmmm." Eggman thought for a bit. "Aha! That will work perfectly! Computer, set a course for Egg Base Tau!" The computer plotted the shortest route to the base like a Satnav, and Eggman duly followed.

Back at the battlefield, Lanolin eventually arrived with her scouts in tow, a good ten minutes after being called.

"Hey, everyone. What did we miss?"

"Only our finest hour. Nothing big." One of the soldiers heckled.

"Yeah, yeah, I heard. Now what was is you needed me for, Jewel?" Lanolin asked.

"I'd like you to keep an eye on her for the time being whilst I prepare some questions for her."

"Is she a prisoner?" Lanolin asked.

"She defected to us. I'm still not entirely sure how to go about this so I need some time to think." Jewel clarified. "I trust you can handle things from here?"

"Of course." Lanolin agreed, as Jewel headed back to her office at the HQ.

"Does anyone have any further questions?" Lanolin asked. Nobody raised their hand, and many shook their heads.

"No? Okay then. If that's everything then you can go about your business as normal. If anything comes up, Jewel and I will surely let you know. Thank you for all that you've done today. We needed it." And with that, the group of veterans disbanded, heading off back to the homes in which they lived, while Sonic and the rest of the heroes headed back to HQ.

Tails wound up getting carried back to HQ by Gemerl, and was quite rudely awakened when Gemerl laid him down on one of the HQ's benches.

"Wha- what's happening?" Tails panicked a little.

"You fell asleep during the battle." Gemerl stated. "Fortunately, Amy was able to cover for your absence, and the battle was won. You should get some rest."

"I will." Tails promised." "I think I'll look for something more comfortable to lie on though, if you don't mind."

"Acknowledged." Gemerl replied. Whilst Tails looked for a better place to sleep, Jewel was sitting in her office. It took her the best part of an hour before her papers were in order and her questions were prepared, after which she invited Van Gale, Amy, Tangle, Whisper, and Belle inside.

After a lot of deliberation, Jewel and the others agreed that Van Gale would atone for her previous transgressions by serving time at Eggman's former factory, cleaning it up and working with Tails on anything either of them need help with. Van Gale happily agreed to this, and so the next item on the agenda would be Eggman's next move.

"Our best guess is that Eggman will attempt to take over Van Gale's home world, based on what he said when Victoria had turned on him." Amy was quick to suggest.

"Ah, I see. That does seem likely." Jewel replied. "As for what to do about that, my first instinct would be to shut off the portal, but Shadow's still not back, so we can't do that, for now. I expect Eggman will need a large army if he's aiming this big, so he's probably headed for one of his bases, I suspect. I'll map out which ones he's most likely to be at."

"Wouldn't it make more sense to wait at the portal and catch him there?" Van Gale suggested.

"And face another army? We're already tuckered out from the last fight. If we're going to bring him into custody, we have to do it before he has any kind of firepower at his disposal." Jewel countered.

"Fair point." Van Gale retracted.

"Good. If that's everything, I'll let Sonic know when I've mapped this out. You can go." Jewel promptly adjourned the meeting. It took another hour for Jewel to draw up the list of possible bases where they could have gone. Sonic, having had a good 2 hours of rest, was itching to get back out in the open, so Jewel presented him with the task of hunting Eggman down, and the list of likely bases he was at. Sonic wasted no time looking, but with so many places to check, it would take him a long time before he got through them all.

Eggman arrived at Egg Base Tau late in the evening, switching on the production line for a variety of robots, and putting his plan into action. At the highest point of the base, Eggman installed a large radio receiver, before clambering back down and taking an equally large radio transmitter with him into his Eggmobile, and taking off in the direction of the portal.

It was just after midnight by the time he arrived back at the portal, and the 4 locals who had been assigned to guard it had gone home for the night. Eggman considered attaching the transmitter there and then, but it was much too dark to see anything, much less install a large piece of machinery, so he decided to head through the portal and sleep for the night.

Upon exiting the portal, however, it became apparent that he was not in the Van Gale laboratory, nor was he anywhere that resembled the planet in which it resided. The ground looked significantly different. It felt different, too, as Eggman dipped a toe onto the soft soil. Eggman took a moment to observe what he could see of his surroundings. It was still very dark, but he could just make out the outlines of the circle of tents he was in the middle of.

"Interesting." Eggman murmured to himself as he sneaked away from the camp in his Eggmobile. Finding a small treehouse not far from the camp, he decided that that was an ideal place to spend the rest of the night, and promptly made himself comfortable, catching as many hours of sleep as he could.

Later that morning, after the sun had risen, Eggman peered out of the treehouse to get a first full look at the world he landed in. The thick, colourful forest contrasted deeply with that of both Van Gale's world and that of his own.

"Well, it's morning. Might as well get back to installing this transmitter of mine. Hopefully the portal will take me where I actually want to go." Eggman mused, as he stepped down the ladder and hopped back into his Eggmobile. At this hour, Eggman expected the campers to be up already, so he chose to try and sneak through the cam undetected.

It did not work. The campers were all waiting for the mess hall to open so they could have breakfast, so when they heard the faint whirring of the eggmobile approaching, they all immediately turned round to look at him.

"Hey look, it's Egghead." Max pointed at him.

"And? What gives? A man can be bald in this day and age without your petty remarks. Who are you anyway? Do I know you?" Eggman retorted.

"You don't know us, but we definitely know you!" Nikki responded defiantly.

"You were looking for the Chaos Emeralds, right?" Ered crossed her arms and stared at him sternly.

"Yeah, Nikki took down one of your robots with only a rock and some string." Max chuckled.

"Did she now? Perhaps I should teach you a lesson about respecting your elders." Eggman grinned threateningly.

"Nah. One of your robots tossed our friend Neil into a concrete block. We're not fucking forgiving you for that." Max asserted. "Just fuck off. We don't want you here."

"I was already planning on leaving, thank you very much!" Eggman huffed, before he moved off in his Eggmobile and headed back through the portal.

Awaiting him on the other side was another surprise for him. Instead of the lab, or the ruined base of his own world like he expected, he emerged in what looked like a suburban neighbourhood, that again looked unmistakably different to the worlds previous.

Eggman checked his watch. 8:01am. Eggman immediately began to ponder its significance, but after looking around and noticing he was on somebody's front lawn, he decided to find somewhere more private to think. Finding an empty baseball field, he thought aloud to himself at the possibilities presented to him.

"So, having left that camp at 8:01, I was transported here, before that I arrived at the camp just after midnight, and when I left Van Gale's world to re-enter my own, it was early evening. Additionally of the seven miscreants that caused the anomaly in the first place, both Sonic and Tails landed in Van Gale's world with me which means that logically, there shouldn't be more than 3 worlds that are accessible, and moreover, the destination of the portal changes every 8 hours!" Eggman realised. "Which gives me plenty of time to plot how to conquer all of them!" He grinned.

Eggman was brimming with ideas, so to keep track, he took out a pen and some paper and began to scribble down notes at a furious rate. It wasn't long, however, before Charlie Brown and most of his friends approached the field for a practice game.

"Who's he?" Sally blurted, as the group all stood around waiting.

"I dunno, but he's got a head as round as yours, Charlie Brown!" Frieda joked.

"Funny." Charlie Brown sounded unimpressed.

"Take it from me, kid." Eggman briefly looked up from his notes. "You could have it a lot worse."

"I don't mean to be rude, but I think his face looks more egg shaped than round." Rerun pointed out.

"Dr Eggman!" Something clicked in Lucy's brain, and before anyone knew it, she looked fit to explode in a ball of rage. "I oughta pound you!" She attempted to run up and punch him, only to be stopped when Charlie Brown grabbed her by the stomach and held her back.

"Hey! Let go of me!" Lucy tried to wrestle herself free from Charlie Brown's grasp.

"Lucy. Eggman is 6 feet tall. He will crush you." Charlie Brown warned her.

"You don't know what he did!" Lucy shouted back at him.

"No, I don't, you're right. But punching him isn't going to help any of us, nor will it hurt him." Charlie Brown explained.

"I guess not." Lucy relented, as Charlie Brown let go of her.

"What are you doing here?" Linus asked.

"I'm thinking about what I should do next, if you must know." Eggman answered.

"Oh, so you're scheming?" Lucy challenged. "Not planning to attack us with robot zombies, are you?"

"If you want it that badly, that can be arranged." Eggman threatened coldly, as Lucy, Charlie Brown and the others felt a chill down their spine.

"Wow, Lucy, you really dropped us in it this time, didn't you?" Schroeder teased. Lucy couldn't come up with a response.

"We should probably go." Shermy suggested. "Somehow I doubt Eggman or whatever his name is is going to let us play."

"Yeah, guess not. We weren't going to win our next game, anyway." Linus replied.

"We can still win, but you're right. We should postpone practice until tomorrow." Charlie Brown agreed.

"Alright with us!" Frieda responded, a little too enthusiastically. "See you tomorrow!"

"See you, I guess." Charlie Brown watched on as most of his teammates headed on back home. Turning to look at Eggman, Charlie Brown was looking like he was about to have a few choice words with him.