At Tails's Lab

Tails was working on another one of his projects, a specially designed sonar for chaos energy, (if he ever needed to find Sonic or Shadow in a crisis) when an alert came through his Miles Electric. Tails took a quick glance away from his newest project to look over at the device, before suddenly dropping everything to sprint over at what it said.

WARNING: EGGMAN SIGNATURE DETECTED

Tails started running to the doorway of his lab to see what was alerting his Miles Electric, before he was able to spot Metal Sonic stealing the Chaos Emerald that Tails was using to power another one of his projects. Tails attempted to stop metal Sonic, but the machine was gone almost as quickly as it arrived, its prize secured.

Tails looked over at the mess Metal Sonic made of the room that housed the emerald. Shockingly, besides a hole in the roof and the mangled body of the project that once housed the emerald, almost no damage was done to the room.

Okaaaay, that was sudden. What could have Metal Sonic in such a hurry that he didn't even bother to trash the room? Tails thought to himself.

I mean, obviously he was after the Chaos Emerald, which is a problem, but I've never seen Metal move that fast in collecting the Emeralds. Usually mine or GUN's emerald would be last, and by that point Metal would be more than happy to just destroy my house to reach it. He isn't that patient. Tails finished in his head. Something was weird here.

First things first though, Tails immediately went to call Sonic, who last he heard was hanging out with the Neo Diamond Cutters on what Tangle ironically described as a 'work vacation'. In actuality, they were investigating some rumors of disturbances by someone who fit the description of Mimic in a town fairly close to Spiral Hill.

After a couple of seconds of static, Sonic's face appeared on the Miles Electric, looking pleasantly surprised.

"How's it going little bro? Man these new communicators you designed really do show video feed! Pretty sweet-" Sonic started, before getting cut off by Tails. "You can be impressed by me later, right now we have a situation." Tails said urgently.

Sonic's face slowly changed from his normal relaxed smile to something sharper. "A situation? What's going on buddy? Hey actually hold on a moment. Yo Lanolin! Can you get the rest of the Diamond Cutters over here?" Sonic shouted, looking away from presumably his communicator.

A moment later, the rest of the Neo Diamond Cutters were in frame of the communicator's video feed, Tangle bouncing and looking excited, Lanolin looking like she wasn't happy about whatever the news was going to be, and Whisper almost hiding in the background with a neutral expression.

"Ok, go ahead bro." Sonic said.

"Metal Sonic stole my Chaos Emerald" Tails said, with a near deadpan expression.

For a moment the Neo Diamond Cutters were stunned. Even Tangle had stopped bouncing around for a moment. Sonic on the other hand looked positively bored, almost rolling his eyes.

"What else is new? Don't worry buddy, whatever plan Egg-head is cooking up this time, we'll stop it, no problem. Let me guess, recently you got some alerts that the other emeralds were stolen as well, right?" Sonic said, his relaxed smile returning to his face.

"That's the thing, I haven't heard anything about any other emeralds being stolen. I'm starting to think that my emerald was Metal's first. Which, based on previous experiences, definitely isn't normal." Tails said, a worried look appearing on his face.

Despite Tails's concern, Sonic's smile never wavered for even a moment.

"Look bro, I bet that just means either Metal's trying a new approach or Eggman's on some kind of time crunch. All we need to do is stop him, like always. Can you track the emerald?" Sonic said, an eyeridge slowly rising.

Tails took a deep breath and smiled, realizing that despite the abnormal encounter, this kind of thing happened all the time. Sonic was right, tails was just being overly cautious on something that wasn't even that out of the ordinary.

Tails quickly typed some commands on his Miles Electric. The video feed shrank unto the corner of the screen, while the rest was covered with measurements and elevation statistics of where the Chaos Emerald was.

"Well, Metal was quick this time. I don't think we've ever been to this area before, so I'll need to do some research on similar topography to hopefully find out where Eggman is situated. In the meantime, do you think you could come over so we could prepare?" Tails asked, already writing down the measurements for the area.

"Sure thing bud." Sonic said cheerfully. He then turned to the rest of the Diamond Cutters. "Say, want to help us take down whatever Egg-head is up to?" Sonic asked.

"Do you even need to ask!?" Tangle said, back to bouncing around excitedly.

Lanolin and Whisper both looked at eachother, coming to some kind of silent agreement.

"Well, this place is a dead end anyway. We'll help stop Eggman's latest scheme." Lanolin sighed, thinking about the paperwork she was gonna have to do after the problem was sorted.

After saying their goodbyes, the video feed cut out. Sonic and Tangle took the lead in leaving the town, with the rest of the Diamond Cutters following not as energetically. Unbeknownst to any of the heroes, a green dog islander seemed to quietly follow behind them, before slipping into an alleyway.

A moment later, the dog islander slowly transformed into an octopus islander with a dark grin.

"Some new scheme of Eggman's? I probably shouldn't get involved… But, perhaps in all the inevitable confusion, I can finally catch that wolf off-guard and finish what I started…" Mimic muttered to himself. After what seemed like a moment of silent deliberation, his smile grew even wider before transforming into a red wolf. After he finished his transformation, he quietly started following the Diamond Cutters, using a hidden hoverbike to follow behind them after they started moving faster.