Shadow wakes up in the morning first and he takes apart his pistol, he wipes the surface with a very soft cloth, uses a small amount of lubrication, and starts to slide all the pieces back together. Sonic wakes up, wipes his eyes, and looks at Shadow in surprise, then asks in confusion, "Wha- How did you get a gun? How do you always manage to find a gun?" Shadow shrugs, then he says, "Well, I lost the one I tried to shoot Nazo with, so it was fate that another one would fall into my hands." Silver then walks down the steps in a pink, fluffy robe, Shadow, and Sonic look at him then at each other. Silver then asks, "Hey, you guys brew some tea yet, I need some caffeine." Sonic sits up and stretches, then Sonic says, "Hey Silver, have you gotten comfortable, buddy?" Silver smiles stupidly and he says, "I cannot tell you how good of a host Fluttershy is, I told her that it was little chilly then she gave me an entire robe. She said this was one of her old ones, the one who made it was that one horse, uh…" Shadow then says, "They are ponies, for one, and it would've been Rarity who made it as she's fashion designer." Shadow says this while looking down the iron sights of his pistol, then Silver pours his tea in a comically small cup, then he says, "Here I am, scared you'd make fun of me for wearing pink, but no, Shadow the hedgehog, the dude with a gun in his hand, not only corrects me for saying 'horse' instead of pony," he takes seat in a chair, takes a sip of his tea, then continues, "You even know who specifically made this- Is this something you gained through reconnaissance or…?" Shadow bluntly says, "Silver, it doesn't take an agent of G.U.N to figure out that the pony that runs a boutique is a designer." Silver takes another sip, processing what Shadow's said, then Silver plainly says, "I don't know when you had the time to figure that out." Silver laughs to himself, as they all hear a knock at the door, they sit there for a second until the knock is hard and loud.

The three hedgehogs look at each other, Shadow walks toward the door, he looks back at everyone and mouths, 'Be Ready.' Sonic nods while Silver mouths 'What?'. Shadow rolls his eyes turns and opens the door. Suddenly they see a massive minotaur. Shadow clears his throat, "Can I help you?" Then Minotaur yells, "You can help me, brother! My name is Iron Will, I'm here to see…" He puts on reading glasses, lifts a clipboard, and reads from it, "a 'Fluttershy'? She signed up for my program a few days- err, uh, months ago! Then something blew a building up in town and I had to," He looks around, leans down, and speaks into Shadow's ear, "I'll level with you, my main man, I was one of the people running away yesterday, I cannot be in this town anymore, there is just way too much weird stuff happening," He hands Shadow everything he has, "just have her follow the regimen, it'll make her braver, more outspoken. You're getting this stuff for free, because I am out of here." The minotaur sprints away and was gone in a minute.

Silver points and then says, "Was that a minotaur? What's next a dragon?" Sonic then says, "Silver not only are there minotaurs on Mobius, but we also have dragons on Mobius. Remember Dulcy?" Silver looks at Sonic then argues, "Okay you got me with Dulcy, but if you're referring to every Bull on Mobius as a minotaur, that is actually racist." Sonic then says, "Terrence calls himself a minotaur." Silver shrugs, "I don't know who that is, I think you made him up."

Fluttershy groggily wonders her way down the steps, he sets all of the pamphlets and information out. Fluttershy reads over it with Shadow, and Shadow just says, "'When somebody tries to block, show them that you rock.'? This is all for assertiveness, hmph, I've seen school children with better methods. I can teach better assertiveness, Fluttershy come with me. Sonic, Silver I'll need your help." Shadow gets up and walks to the door, Shadow then yells, "Chop, Chop!"

They all walk outside and walk to a tree, Shadow then says, "Sonic, Silver stand next to each other and face Fluttershy, don't let her pass." They both do as they are told, then Shadow says, in a softer tone, "Fluttershy, try to walk around them." She tries to walk around them and Sonic and Silver block her way, "Excuse me." She says in the kindest tone, Sonic and Silver almost break composure, then Shadow barks at them, "You two are an obstacle now. Obstacles can't understand language!" they both immediately stiffen up, then Shadow says in his softer voice, "Alright, you can't talk to them, how do you solve the problem?" Fluttershy then says, shyly, "tip-toe around?" Shadow crosses his arms and says, "No." then she says, "Go home and try again tomorrow?" Shadow says, "No. allow me to show you." Shadow walks up to the 'obstacles', "Alright Silver, get ready." Shadow gets in a combat stance, and mimes punching Silver in the stomach. "You see, on bipedal enemies you want to aim for the diaphragm, and for ponies in this scenario I'd recommend going for the head." Fluttershy shakes her head, "I-I can't do that, I don't fight..." Shadow then stops in place, "Oh, that's different," he stands up straight, he rubs his chins and thinks, muttering aloud, "assertive, assertive. Hm, that may work…" Shadow walks up to Fluttershy, and says, "Repeat after me: Move out of the damn way!" Fluttershy builds up her courage and then says, "Move out of the… darn way!" Shadow then says "No, it's: damn. Let's start there actually; say damn." Fluttershy then responds, "D-D-Darn!" Shadow ponders for but a moment, "We need to put you in a simulated experience, so we can get past this roadblock…" Shadow then turns toward Fluttershy's house, and he charges a Chaos Spear. He looks like he's about to lunge it into her house. "Mister Sh-Shadow, what are you doing?" Shadow blankly responds, "I'm going to blow up your house, obviously. If you can't even say damn, what chance do you have at protecting a house?" Fluttershy then frantically says, "Wait, you can't do that!" Shadow cruelly stares at Fluttershy, "What could you even do about it to stop me?" Fluttershy scowls, flies up, spins and kicks Shadow in the gut as hard as she can, and Shadow, discharges the energy, then falls to one knee to catch his breath. "Don't touch my fucking house!" Fluttershy screams. Shadow then says, "Is this how it felt to train people in the Freedom Fighters, Sonic?" He stands up and looks toward Fluttershy with a bit of pride. Fluttershy turning red in the face, "Oh I'm so sorry, I didn't mean it, I- I- don't know what- ", Shadow interrupts her, "No, never apologize, channel whatever feeling you had before and say fuck again." She then bolsters her courage, and then she manages to squeak out, "Fuck!" she smiles brightly, "I did it! Thank you, so, so much Mister Shadow!" Shadow nods, "Just don't get carried away, use 'fuck' sparingly, it's a very strong word and if you want to learn more combat techniques, I can help train you in Mobian hand-to-hand. I'll have to adapt it for you of course." Fluttershy nods in understanding, in a brighter happier, and with a sprout of more confidence in her new state of mind. Sonic and Silver look toward the Everfree Forest, "Hey guys, you might want to take a look at this," Silver says in urgency, Sonic was just silent, Fluttershy and Shadow stare forward to see a spire of light and electricity.

It dissipates, and something marches out of the tree-line. It has a clean, silver color. It's a Badnik with Sonic's form except taller, easily the height of a human, its design is sleek, and aerodynamic. The differences between Sonic and this thing become more apparent as one looks at its quills, which are medusa-like tendrils with syringe tips, it has a long tail with a larger needle on the end, it has an engine in its chest reminiscent of other members of the metal series, but a large difference is that the quills it has on its back to mimic Sonic's own quills, are designed to alleviate air resistance. It looks up at its four adversaries, as its almost hundreds of syringes started plugging themselves into trees, and ensnaring small animals, then they watched in horror as all the life-force was drained from these lifeforms. The animals fought for a moment as they withered to bone, the machine dropped the skeletons of birds, squirrels, rabbits and even field mice. The trees withered to a dark gray and crumbled, as a thick, dark green irradiates from this new machine. Fluttershy scowls and says, "How dare that monster!" her wings stretch outward. Silver glows with energy, Shadow gets into a combat stance and Sonic gets ready to run at it.

It's two digital eyes, blinking to life, both of them glowing a soulless red. Slowly the engine in its chest starts to spin, and electricity sparks around it. It uses its syringes to root itself into the ground and drain the ground of life. Its arms lazily hang by its waist as this energy charges, the ground slowly becomes darker as the grass dies. Then the engine slows as its syringes flow behind its head once again, then as swift as the wind. It makes a sprint up the hill toward the gang, as it reaches them it makes a dead stop and looms over the four of them, it tilts its head as it scans them. They all are waiting for it to attack first, but it doesn't even move, now that it's closer they see how clean it is, it looks like it's brand new.

Then as it finishes scanning, it stiffens its back and looks past all of them toward Ponyville. Then before anyone could stop it, it sweeps everyone's legs with its tail. As everyone is falling in the air, it vanishes. Shadow, thinking in the moment grabs Fluttershy and immediately warps after it, while in mid-air. The appear in town as it just stands on the top of town hall, looking down. Shadow gets up, and helps Fluttershy stand, they both look up at it. "Are you willing to fight this thing?" Shadow asks without breaking eye-contact with this new Badnik. Fluttershy looks forward with her new confidence turned to fury. "Yes. Yes, I am." Her wings stretch open as she gets ready to charge, and both of Shadow's hands glow blue. "Fluttershy, charge it and then I'm going to barrage it with Chaos Arrows. Aim your attacks at its chest, you might get hurt if you aren't careful, so aim right for the middle." Fluttershy nods while staring forward intensely. "Now!" Fluttershy takes off at an impressive speed, as Shadow focuses a barrage perfectly curving around her. It looks down, and then just backhands Fluttershy so hard, she crashes into a house. Then the arrows hit it, and it falls from its perch, then it uses its tendril to wrap around the flagpole, and it lunges itself forward toward Shadow, Shadow fires a chaos-charged bullet right at its head, and the force of the bullet makes it loosen its grip on the flagpole and as it free-falls, Fluttershy rockets out of the rubble. As she gets close, she spins in the air and spin-kicks the machine into the cobblestone. It hits the road with a loud clank, then she drops her full weight on it, making it convulse. Then it pushes itself up, flips itself over as Fluttershy tries to ground-pound, but it kicks her in the chin as it does a handstand, on the follow through, it slams her face into the ground, and it stands up straight.

It looks down at Fluttershy as it prepares to pierce her with every syringe it has, then a rock hits it in the head. Its syringes retract as it looks behind it to see an angry mob. "Hey! Get out of- ", before the orange unicorn at the head of the mob could speak, six syringes pierce his face and he screams as blood gushes from his wounds, then the mob watches as he slowly shrivels, and pleads for help, then in his last moments, he collapses and turns into a bloody skeletal form, the syringes retract revealing a bunch of small holes in the skull. The mob runs away, screaming in mortal terror. The metal medusa suddenly pulses with orange energy, and with a low humming noise. Its tail starts glowing orange brightly, Fluttershy then tries to stand up, shaking. Shadow runs over to her, until he is suddenly unable to move as if he's being held in place. The machine looks directly at Shadow, and Shadow then notices that the aura holding him in place is magic, "Fluttershy! Hurry! run!" before Fluttershy could stand, and before a flurry of syringes absorbed her essence, a bolt of purple energy smashes into and it is launched through the whole of Town Hall, Shadow falls to one knee and pants, as Twilight runs toward Fluttershy. "Fluttershy! Are you okay!?" Fluttershy stands up, only a little wobbly, and wipes a small amount of blood from her nose. "Yes, I am, thank you, Twilight." Shadow limps forward with a fire in his eyes and walks past the two ponies as red static spans his body. "Twilight," Shadow snarls "you should stand back." Shadows limiters pop off, and his pupils disappear, then his entire body turns a glowing red, the air shimmering around him, as he continues to walk, the Aluminum Sonic walks toward him through the hole he made, and as he maintains eye contact, screams are heard inside the building as its tendrils stretch from its scalp. The energy around its body becomes multi-colored.

Shadow warps toward it as soon as the machine begins to absorb people, but the dead was already done. Then with it in his grasp, he warps to a mountain in his line of sight, with it in tow. As they land, Shadow feels the searing pain of dozens of needles piercing his back, however he yells, "Fine! Take as much as you can stomach, because you're going straight to hell!" then he explodes with pure-red energy, snapping every needle, while they are still in his back, he then screams, "Chaos," the gravity of the area increases ten-fold, as the pressure craters them both scores of feet inside the ground, "Blast!" with an exponentially denser explosion compared to the one used to blow up the satellite, it rattles the ground all the way in Ponyville, the wind blasting the trees back for miles. While it doesn't upheave the ground, it was visible from Canterlot.

Shadow warps back to town, falling face first on the ground, holding the machine's burnt head. As he lays there, he takes deep breaths putting his restraint rings on his wrists. Twilight and Fluttershy help him up, and Shadow takes the head to Silver and Sonic at Fluttershy's cottage. The Mane 6 stand at attention in the building, along with Shadow. They have the head on the table and stared at it.

"Alright," Shadow starts off, "We have a massive issue, if the head on the table and the scores of casualties in town aren't evidence enough, what I'm saying is: we are being watched by someone." Shadow looks around the room as he says this, then Rarity says, "Darling, if I may interject," She looks at Shadow, "I'm always one for helping to solve the various issues of Ponyville, believe me," Then her expression changes and shifts to concern, "but, I think is speak for the mares in the room when I say, we are not capable of stopping these things on a constant basis," Applejack scrunches her face at this, as Rarity continues, "we, and I'm using that loosely, can fight things that are stronger than most, but not every day," She looks around, "my suggestion, is that we go to Canterlot, and get help from the Princess." Twilight then sits up quickly, "I forgot! Sonic, Silver, Shadow! Princess Celestia is coming here!" Shadow squints at Twilight and Sonic excitedly asks, "Oh, yeah? When?" Then Fluttershy's door swings open and standing there is a tall white equine, with multi-color hair, she emanates royalty. All the ponies kneel, and the hedgehogs look at each other, then they kneel as well.

"Rise, all." As everyone gets up, Celestia walks into the building and shuts the door behind her with magic, then uses the same magic to close every curtain at once. "Greetings, newcomers. I am Princess Celestia, ruler of Equestria, and of sunlight. I assume you three are from the world of Mobius, correct?" she looks around the room, "Why have you made a sudden appearance, princess?" Twilight asks, still surprised, Celestia says, "Well, I noticed your letter, Twilight, and it was eerie to say the least, massive machines made in another world, and three creatures from that world…" Then Shadow leaned against the wall, and says, "With all due respect, princess, I have a question," Celestia looks at Shadow standing against the wall, "what is Equestria's connection to Mobius? How did G.U.N. tech get here?"

Celestia looks to Sonic and Silver, "This is knowledge only I am aware of; around twenty-five years ago, a strange machine appeared in the orbit of this very world. It was small, but I could sense it. Before I could teleport to them, they sent me a message, a little automaton came from the sky and to my bedchamber, I thought it was some type of apparition or something to be banished to Tartarus. Before I could do anything to it, it spoke with something else's voice. Whatever was speaking was not of pony-kind, it said was from the Planet Mobius and doing research. The voice said it meant no harm, thusly I allowed it to stay in the sky, and they promised to stay from sight. I forgot about the strange sphere in the sky, but when Twilight told me that a strange sphere, what you called a satellite, appeared in Sweet Apple Acres, I got curious. I was even more curious when I was told about the machines coming out the ground and some of them looking like our very own Rainbow Dash. Suffice it to say, I do have information that can help you, something I have sensed recently. A portal did open a few miles near Cloudsdale, I would recommend heading there."

Sonic bows his head, then looks up with a glint in his eye, "Thanks a million your majesty, we owe you one!"

As Celestia smiles, her eyes open wide, and she becomes wracked with worry quickly.

"What?! What just happened to Cloudsdale?!" Celestia yells, as Sonic, Shadow and Silver feel an all too familiar sensation of dread.

-Meanwhile mere moments ago on the ground near Cloudsdale-

a blue-metal figure breaks the tree line, two red robotic eyes stare up at an evening sky, with Cloudsdale in the foreground. "This city is the only line of aerial defense for Equestria, if it is destroyed, his goals will be far easier to complete."

The robot puts its hands together and its hands begin to transform, combine, and enlarge to become a massive railgun, two braces shoot out of the robot and anchor it to the ground to lessen recoil and it begins to charge up, four lights begin to blink green as it charges,

1

2

3

Ignite

As the weapon booms, the trees flatten with the force of the recoil. Windows are shattered miles away and anyone looking toward Cloudsdale could see a bright flash as a crater forms on the bottom of the floating city, and the crater expands violently, the clouds dissipate that once held it aloft, and the city proper erupts into a fireball, as the football sized projectile pierces out of the opposite side of the cloud at a million miles an hour. Cloudsdale is completely destroyed. Anyone in the city was killed almost instantly.

His hands retract back into their normal size, and he holds a hand to his head and speaks out loud, "Kilo, Fist, its Lix, we can begin the hunt just as we were instructed."