Elsewhere, the lone figure continued to monitor his device, as if he was waiting for something to happen. After a few seconds, however, the device began to activate, opening a portal just like the one that had swallowed the four Skylanders earlier. And as this portal opened, it quickly launched out those very same heroes, each of them crashing onto the floor in a rather sudden and ungraceful manner.
"Ugh... What just happened...?" asked a dazed Shard, slowly getting up along with Silver. As the two went over to help Marine and Von Schlemmer up, though, a voice unknown to the Skylanders was suddenly heard. "Oh, I can answer that!" the voice replied, coming from the figure hovering nearby. "What just happened was you getting brought to another dimension, courtesy of yours truly. Though I've gotta admit, I didn't expect to pick up so many of you..."
Von Sclemmer looked up to see the hovering figure in person; a somewhat small, oddly plastic-looking robot. "Und you are...?" he asked the figure, who then proceeded to hover towards the quartet of heroes to respond. "Oh, right. I probably should've started with that," he replied, seemingly chuckling as he did so. "My name's X-PO. That stands for 'Experimental Portal Operator'. And unless my data-banks are seriously messed up..." X-PO then pointed towards Silver and continued. "...You're Silver the Hedgehog. Right?"
"Uh, yeah. That's me," a confused Silver replied, before asking X-PO some questions of his own. "But... how do you know me? And what's going on here, anyway?!"
Luckily, X-PO was quick to respond. "Right, let's cut to the chase then! Simply put, I need your help to deal with those so-called Genesis Portals," he explained to Silver, as a projection suddenly appeared behind the group, showing the same portals X-PO had been watching earlier. "See, normally I'd have no problem opening and closing rifts between dimensions. But... well, not only do these things just not like to stay shut, they're now starting to become a real danger again. Like, 'end-of-all-reality' kind of danger!"
This revelation shook Silver to the core! The very issue he was beginning to worry about, was actually coming to fruition. In that moment, the poor hedgehog was at a loss for words...
It was then that Shard spoke up. "So that's why you dragged us all here?" he asked X-PO, who quickly replied, "Well, yes and no. It's why I 'dragged' Silver here, but you three..." He then glanced at Marine and the Professor before continuing. "...Not so much. That was just bad timing on my part." This caused Marine started to jump up and down in anger, exclaiming, "WHAT?! What's that supposed to mean?!" No doubt, she was feeling left out of whatever was going on here.
"It means, little miss 'public nuisance', that you shouldn't actually be here right now," X-PO bluntly told Marine, which only annoyed the raccoon even more. Seeing this, however, the robot came up with a suggestion. "...Buuut since you are all here, I guess you might be able to help out too," he said to the group. "I mean, there's bound to be some people out there who'd want to keep these portals open, for one crazy reason or another. You know, the kind that you Skylanders tend to stop on a daily basis."
This certainly caught the attention of Shard, Marine and Von Schlemmer, who each turned to Silver, wanting to hear what he had to say about all of this. The psychic hedgehog was still rather quiet, however, so Von Schlemmer walked over to him, hoping to comfort him.
"Mein friend, I am sure zis is a lot to take in all at once. Even I vas not expecting it to get zis bad so quickly!" the Professor said to Silver. "But do not zink of zis as us failing to stop zem. Vy, zis could be our greatest chance to finally stop ze Genesis Portals once und for all!"
"I'll help too!" Shard added, as he and Marine approached Silver. He gave Silver a thumbs-up and said, "No way am I gonna let ya deal with this alone! Someone's gotta watch your back out there, so count me in." Even Marine, despite not fully understanding what was going on, wanted to help in some way. "Yeah! We'll kick all those portals' butts together, mates!" she exclaimed enthusiastically, before quiety pondering to herself, "...Wait, do portals have butts to kick?"
Hearing his friends' determination to assist him, Silver turned to face them. Though he wasn't entirely comfortable with all of them sharing the responsibility of stopping the Genesis Portals, he also realised that the urgency of the situation may not leave them with much of a choice. After a brief sigh, Silver smiled and nodded to the others, acknowledging their offer to help, before asking X-PO one final question.
"...Alright, then. Where do we start?"