9:15 am, Birchwood, Minnesota, 20 days after the anomaly
Charlie Brown was still standing at the edge of the baseball field, and an awkward silence dropped as Charlie Brown waited for Eggman to move, when clearly, the good Dr had no intention of doing so.
"Why aren't you leaving?"
"I need to practice." Charlie Brown stood firm. "If we're going to win our next match, I need to be at the top of my game." He asserted, tossing a ball up into the air and catching it as he was speaking.
"You ever win any games?" Eggman asked.
"No, not really. Not when I've played, anyway. But I'm never gonna quit, no matter how much I lose."
"Ah, stubborn, much like myself! If it's any consolation, I don't tend to win a lot either." Eggman tried to sympathise.
"And it's a good thing you don't! I captain a little league baseball team. You want to take over the world, possibly even this one. We are not the same." Charlie Brown pointed at him sternly.
"Bold of you to defy me so openly when you know what I am capable of." Eggman complimented.
"Amy did give me a few pointers as to what you were like. Lucy gets nightmares about your metal virus thing every day, even though she doesn't want to admit it. I can see you're clearly plotting our demise even as I speak, but don't think I'll let you run us over without a fight."
"What hope do you have?" Eggman asked. "You said yourself that violence was futile against me."
"It's not like you're giving me a choice." Charlie Brown countered. "You're threatening our way of life, and you seek to ruin our dream of a free and fair society, and it appears no amount of diplomacy is going to stop you."
"You assume correctly. Perhaps you should focus your next 24 hours on how you plan to stop me, instead practicing for a game that isn't going to happen." Eggman warned.
"Point taken." Charlie Brown turned his back on Eggman in disgust, and headed off back home to think.
"Finally, some Peace!" Eggman sighed, as he continued scrawling down his plans.
Back in Sonic's world, Sonic had been spending the day running from base to base trying to find Eggman, but despite the fact all the factories were seemingly fully functional, there was no sign of Eggman anywhere. Sonic returned to Jewel's office late that afternoon, looking rather spent. Minimal sleep over the past couple of days was now starting to take its toll.
"Did you find him?" Jewel got straight to the point.
"No. The bases are running overtime, so he's definitely plotting something, but none of his robots are marching anywhere, and he doesn't appear to be at any of them." Sonic answered.
"Perhaps he's trying to lay low for a while? Pretty easy to hide when you have three whole planets to disappear to." Jewel suggested.
"More like three planets to conquer. I'm sure he'll announce his intentions soon enough. He always does." Sonic replied.
"And you need to be ready for when that happens. Get some sleep, I can see the bags under your eyes already. If Eggman makes his move before you wake up, I'll let you know." Jewel assured.
"Probably for the best." Sonic yawned, as he left the room and crashed onto the nearest sofa.
A whole world away, Eggman had been left to his own devices for several hours by now, and according to his calculations, the portal would now lead him back to the Van Gale laboratory. Charlie Brown had thought about destroying the portal, but decided not to risk blowing himself up in the process and thus, the portal was free for Eggman to enter, as Linus watched him from his window.
As predicted, Eggman found himself back within the comfort of the Van Gale laboratory, and immediately got to work on affixing the transmitter to the portal, which took him only a few minutes, and after hooking it up to a microphone, Eggman decided to test it out.
"Attention all combat robots at Egg Base Tau, march in the direction of my voice! Destroy anyone that stands in your way!" Eggman would have to wait until about 11:30pm before he would find out whether his system worked, but that didn't matter to him too much, as he figured it would be unlikely Sonic and co would find him in the next 8 hours.
Back in Birchwood, at around 9pm, as the last few rays of sun disappeared from the sky, Linus found that he could not sleep, knowing that Eggman could invade at any moment. Getting re-dressed into his clothes, he snuck out of his room and headed quietly out into the front garden, disappearing into the portal in the dead of night, blanket in hand.
With little to do but plot out his attack plan, Eggman was deep in thought, and greatly surprised when his thinking time was rudely interrupted by the sound of little steps clanking on the metal flooring.
"Ah you're one of the kids from the baseball field, what was your name?" Eggman looked up from his desk.
"Uh, Linus." He uttered, shaking in fear as if encountering a dragon in its lair.
"Trying to get the jump on me?" Eggman surmised what he was up to. "As if I would give away my plans that easily. Now Scram! Before I throw you out myself!"
"Not before I grab this first!" Linus cracked his blanket like a whip, reaching for Eggman's papers and dragging them towards him.
"Oh no you don't!" Eggman grabbed hold of the blanket and pulled Linus towards him, before grabbing the boy's shirt and tossing him out through the portal like he was a paperweight.
"Hmph. Good riddance." Eggman twirled his moustache, before reaching down and picking his papers up and getting back to his work.
Linus landed in a heap on the other side of the portal, and although slightly grazed, he got up and dusted himself off, only to find he definitely hadn't been sent back home.
"Oh, Good Grief! What in... where am I? This isn't where I should be! I should be home!" Linus exclaimed, as his sounds of panic whistled through the empty expanse of the ruins and drifted slowly into nothingness.
There was no answer back. Nobody was here, and eminently, no one was coming to help, especially not at this hour. Going back inside was not an option either; Eggman would just throw him out again.
With nothing else to do, and with nowhere in the distance he could reasonably reach, he decided to sit on a block of concrete and wrap himself up in his blanket. At least now he would be warm. Linus didn't have the luxury of sleep though, given the hard surface, so he sat and kept watch over the horizon.
By 11:30, Linus was finding it hard to stay awake, but pretty soon, he was alerted to the sound of clanking metal joints getting louder and louder, as a legion of robots approached.
"Uh oh." Linus' eyes widened as he realised the robots were heading directly for the portal. Ducking behind the concrete block, Linus watched as the robots filed through the portal one by one. They didn't seem that interested in him, but even so, he wasn't going to risk heading out into the open just like that. With the line of robots not likely to end, Linus decided to fall back, and hope the robots wouldn't see him. Turning back to look at the portal, Linus noticed that the face of it looked different to that of the other side, as if there were two different portals.
With no better options, Linus decided to try his luck and run through it. Luckily enough, he ended up somewhere completely different. Looking around, he noticed he was atop some sort of city wall, surrounded by the city on one side and a vast wilderness outside it. It was dark atop the wall, save for the faint glow of the portal and the light of a bell tower nearby. Still feeling about the situation, Linus rushed over the bell tower and began to knock frenetically.
"Hello?" A small woman with large glasses opened the door. "Oh, you poor thing! You must be freezing! Come in." The lady let Linus in, sat him down on a chair and closed the door behind them.
"Now, what are you doing on the wall this late?"
"I... I... I came in through the portal." Linus stammered. "There was... there were robots and, and I had to hide from them, and there was this Eggman guy who's controlling them and honestly I'm scared they're gonna..." Linus rambled.
"Okay, calm down." The woman crouched down to Linus's level and laid an arm on his shoulder. "Sounds like you had quite a nightmare."
"It's not a nightmare, it's real! Please listen to me!" Linus urged.
"Okay. Can I ask you a few things first?" the woman asked. Linus nodded meekly. "Firstly, what's your name?"
"Linus."
"Okay. Do you know where your parents are?"
"They're at home. I snuck out of the house at around bedtime and I can't get back. They don't live around here." Linus answered tearily.
"So where do you live?" She asked.
"Somewhere on the other side of that portal. I've tried going through it but it won't let me go back home."
"That sounds serious. I'm not really sure how that portal works. My son David knows the person who built it, so maybe he can help, but he should be sleeping right now. My shift ends in a few minutes, why don't you come with me and I'll find you a warm place to sleep and then in the morning we can ask David what he knows about this portal business. Does that sound alright with you?"
Linus nodded, wiping his tears with his blanket and puckering up slightly, while David's mum started packing her work things away.
Over at the Van Gale laboratory, Eggman was brimming with glee as he watched robot after robot file in from the portal and arranged them in a tight formation. As midnight broke, robots stopped filing in and Eggman realised where they were now heading.
"Marvellous!" Eggman rubbed his hands together, counting through the roughly 1000 robots he had on hand. "We'll attack at dawn."