Sonic X: Back to Earth

by Tashasaurous

Set after the events of Sonic X-Season 3: The Metarex are gone, and life in both Sonic's world and Earth have returned to normal. But when Sonic begins to have dreams of a mysterious hedgehog, Eggman's latest scheme to return to Earth, old allies set to return, and an old enemy on said world plots something disastrous, everything is about to change forever.

15. Mutagen Saga 15: Welcome to the Bungle

Sonic X: Back To Earth.

Author's note: Thanks for the reviews everyone, and I have to admit, maybe the last chapter wasn't really as good as I hoped, but I'll try my best with the rest of the story as we are admittedly one step closer in nearing the conclusion of the Mutagen Saga of Sonic X: Back To Earth, but the story is not over yet as I have other plans for the rest of it.

To Void Reader: Sally and the Freedom Fighters don't exist in Sonic X or it's related comic series(despite the Archie Shadow appearing in issue 40 along with Metal Sonic) or any of my Sonic X stories or my other Sonic stories in fact. Just to let you know.

Anywho, happy reading!

I don't own Sonic the Hedgehog. The rights of the franchise and all Sonic characters and media belong to Sega, Sonic Team and other connected companies. I only own the OCs.

---

The Mutagen Saga.

Chapter 15: Welcome to the Bungle.

Area 51 was one of GUN's top prison facilities of the United Federation, and very high on security, not far from Area 99 where Cream and Cheese had been imprisoned for suspicion due to their species, but were saved by Sonic who sneaked in to rescue them and Tails who in turn helped them to get out to safety. That was a little over nine years ago in Earth time, whereas for the blue hedgehog and his friends, only a bit under one year. Yet now no one was certain as the fog had mixed up most of humanity's age, making them slowly lose their minds, and mutating animals as well as growing into cybog giants.

In one of the prison cells, Chuck, dressed in prisoner garments, sat alone as he wondered what was going on. Unlike jail-cells in Police Stations, prisoners were not permitted to speak with each other unless they shared a room. From what he could hear, to his dismay, even his own son, daughter-in-law, Tanaka, and Ella were imprisoned and was told that he wasn't allowed to share a room with his grandson of all things.

"Something's very wrong. I hope Sonic and the others will get to the bottom of this. If they don't, then Time will be destroyed as we know it." The elder Thorndyke muttered to himself, feeling even older despite having de-aged by nine years...though it wouldn't make much of a difference in his case since he will always be older than the rest of his family. "That fog...could it really be a design for Dr. Narasu? If so, then..."

His thoughts were cut off when he heard muffled voices from outside of his cell that seem to be pretty loud and strangely familiar. Raising an eyebrow in confusion, the door was then unlocked and then opened and the familiar voice became instantly clearer.

"You think you can get away with all of this craziness!?" Shouted a younger man who was none other than Sam Speed, Lindsey's brother and Chris' Uncle who like everybody else was also de-aged...and also arrested since the leader of the S-Team was also now wearing prisoner garments, being shoved into Chuck's cell by one of the prison guards. "Don't you have any idea who I am, bub!? I'm the leader of the S-Team!"

"Just shut up and get in there, Mr. Fair!" The guard ordered, pushing the man roughly inside.

"It's Sam Speed!" Sam shouted, attempting to run out of the room only to smack his face right into the door that was slammed shut and once again locked. He collided with the heavy metal and stumbled back, clutching his now broken nose with both hands, crying out in pain.

"Sam?" Chuck softly exclaimed in shock, unable to believe that even Sam was arrested now too.

Not hearing the older man behind him, Sam furiously growled and shouted at the door and began to punch and bang on it. "What's wrong with you people!? First you arrest my nephew, then my sister, brother-in-law, father-once-removed, then you arrest me, the world's fastest man besides my buddy Sonic who's back and trying to save the world!? What's that stupid GUN thinking!?"

"Sam, will you stop it!? They're not going to listen to you!" Chuck yelled out, finally having enough with the younger man's ranting since it was giving him a massive headache.

"Huh?" Blinking as he realized where he was and who was speaking to him, Sam turned around to see his sister's father-in-law and groaned in realization. "I was hoping to see Chris or the others. No offense."

"We're not allowed to even see Chris since GUN has come to an incorrect conclusion that he's the one behind this whole thing." The human scientist explained, before asking. "But why arrest you, Sam? You're the leader of the S-Team."

"That's what I said! I've been going on an investigation to find the punk who caused all of this and maybe help out Sonic! I even ran into Topaz a couple days ago who told me that something weird's happened with Commander Tower, she's been asked by the President to get to the bottom of the corruption, but when I went to GUN to meet with her after arresting the same loser who doesn't wear his seatbelt, I get shoved down to the floor, hands cuffed behind my back, arrested for being a relative of my nephew and then shoved right in here! So you know the rest!" The younger man yelled out in a tantrum.

"Agent Topaz and the President are investigating Commander Tower's corruption?" Chuck asked, shocked and surprised.

"Yeah. I saw her about to enter her car and when I asked if she knew anything, she pulled me into a secret place and told me what's going on." Sam explained, folding his arms in deep thought as his mind wandered back to that meeting. "This is going to sound crazy, but she noticed the Commander's eyes going all purple or something like that, his behavior off the charts, and reported to the President who sent her on a secret assignment to investigate. Wonder how that's doing?"

"So Sonic and Chris weren't the only ones seeing those eyes." The older man murmured in realization.

"Wait, what?" The younger man asked, before beginning to actually panic a little. "Don't tell me Sonic's been caught too!"

"Not that I know of, and while neither of us are certain if Sonic did see it, but when I was briefly in the cell not long after Sonic left, Chris told me that he visted the boy about what was going on, when Commander Tower came and threatened to hold Sonic prisoner, and then Chris saw the same glow that Topaz no doubt had also witnessed. It's clear that the unnatural fog has not only de-aged most of humanity including us, but is also corrupting some of the people's minds to express darker thoughts." The scientist explained grimly.

"Okay, so it wasn't her imagination then. This is just a new meaning of creepy." Sam admitted, now really concerned. "Topaz did mention that GUN think that Chris is with that stupid Narasu guy we've arrested and banned from ever doing anymore scientific stuff. But my gut says that old guy is behind everything."

"I agree. Tails, the others and I have investigated Chris' old lab and found that his porthole has been redesigned slightly and tampered with a vial of something, which I believe could contain liquid that was used to spread across our planet. If I'm right, Dr. Kai Narasu has lost his mind and is bent on getting revenge, and to make things worse, his original mutagen that was meant for Sonic but instead hit Vector the Crocodile, is showing signs of redeveloping in the latter's body." Chuck responded, folding his arms.

"Vector? That green detective guy who turned into a giant before Sonic turned him back to normal by a couple of aspirin?" The younger man asked, blinking as he took a seat next to the scientist.

"Yes, he was showing symptoms of feeling ill and also gaining a new ability which is very concerning. I have a feeling that the Mutagen inside his body and quite possibly the effects of the purple fog, which could be an upgraded version of Narasu's original Mutagen, is reforming and thus...Vector could once again turn into a giant and not even the normal medical pills will help this time." The older man nodded, giving out his theory.

Sam frowned worriedly at this before gazing at the floor. Chuck was right; if Narasu really is behind all of this, then the two worlds' only hope lies in Sonic's gloved hands once again.

"Let's hope Sonic's on the right track. But...what about Eggman?" The now former S-Team Leader muttered.

That, the elder man realized, was another source of the problem.

---

Cosmo let out a gasp of surprise the moment she and her friends had reached the entrance of the Frog Forest around five minutes or more after leaving Bingo Highway, racing through the remains of the Earth's canyon outside of Station Square which seemed small but still big enough, and now came here where the young Seedrian, five Mobians and one Chao stood at the sight.

As far as the eye could see, even if the forest was very dense and thick, everything was enormous! Vines were as thick as tree branches and roots, trees themselves as well as every single flower were ten times bigger, some of them might actually be the height of mountains...and the wildlife here...the frogs in the far distance were giants.

"Why is everything here so big?" Cosmo softly exclaimed, not sure if she should be amazed or afraid. "Is this the result of the fog as well?"

"It's just the way the Frog Forest is, Cosmo. Everything here is huge." Sonic explained while his friends were just as stunned at how gigantic everything in this area from their world is.

"Have you been here before, Sonic?" The young alien girl asked, startled that this was yet another area from her friends' home planet.

"Nah, but I have heard of it. Kinda had the appeal to check it out one day, but I guess I kept on forgetting it." The blue hedgehog shrugged.

"The Frog Forest is the home of those giant frogs and they can control the weather patterns. We have to careful on not being seen or else they'll croak and it'll start to rain." Tails explained knowingly as he too, while fully amazed, heard of this place.

"Do you think we'll find Dr. Eggman and the air fleet?" Cream wondered aloud. "They could be anywhere."

"Chao." Cheese muttered in agreement.

"I'm more about if we can find the real Eggman. Why in the world would he make a robot of himself if he wanted to make robot copies of Shadow? How did he do that?" Amy asked, still at loss over the disturbing discovery back in the cities.

"The real Eggman must be hiding somewhere and if I'm right, that fleet is huge. He could have a flying fortress up there somewhere. How he managed to accomplish this in one day, that's what we should be worried about." Knuckles frowned, his arms folded to his chest.

"Well then, I guess we'd better going." The teenage hedgehog declared, already dart off ahead.

"Where are you going?" Cosmo asked, startled.

"Following the air fleet, of course!" Sonic answered with an excited smirk despite the situation that's going on, leaping onto a vine and began to grind his way further into the jungle, cheering. "YAAA-HOOOOOO! Look out, Eggman! No way off the hook this time!"

"Wait for me, Sonic!" Amy cried out, hurrying over and despite that her landing on the vine was a bit clumsy as she wobbled to keep her balance while trying to copy her 'boyfriend's' movements, to her and everyone else's surprise she began to grind as well. Startled at first, she then smiled brightly and cheered. "Woo-hoo! This is really fun!"

"Wait for us, Amy!" Cream called out, as she, Cheese, Cosmo and Tails hurried by flight, which the two-tailed fox and young rabbit girl were carrying their Seedrian friend, and Knuckles quickly grinded on the vine as well.

Yet all seven of them unaware that they were being spied on by a pair of red, glowing and leering eyes through the thickness of the forest's bushes and giant flowers.

---

Unbeknownst to Sonic's group, Team Dark and the Chaotix, having spotted Eggman's wrecked Egg Albatross but not the evil doctor himself and came to a conclusion that he had managed to get away as usual, were at another entrance of Frog Forest and needless to say, they were quite stunned by the size of it. But what got to the three detectives was what their client was saying next.

"ARE YOU SERIOUS!?" Vector exclaimed to the walkie-talkie, while Shadow seemingly pretended to be uninterested and instead focused his sights on the forest up ahead, and the black hedgehog had to admit, he hadn't been expecting a forest to be this huge, or distant sights of giant frogs of the forest. "You want us to what!?"

The client sounded quite annoyed as he sighed in exasperation. "Your mission is to pass through the Frog Forest and not be seen by the giant frogs, because once they croak, it starts to rain. There are green frogs that produce rain that heal flowers and make them grow. Avoid in startling those frogs and sneak past them."

As the Chaotix stared on blankly when the call dropped, they shared a glance before Vector grumbled. "Just like that? What, is Eggman the controller of frogs or something?"

"He forgot to mention the mutant monsters all over the place. Maybe he wants us to watch out for giant mutant frogs too." Charmy shrugged.

"While I doubt the animals from our world have also been mutated, it is best to keep an eye out for the mutant animals as well. The mission is simple; to test our stealth and not contract anything or anyone." Espio agreed.

"Well, you boys go on ahead with that mission with Mr. Mystery Caller, we'll do our own thing." Rouge waved off, approaching Shadow before saying to him. "Though I think we should watch out for those frogs too."

Shadow on the other hand scoffed, folding his arms. "Frogs that can make rain of healing flowers? That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of."

"Not anymore ridiculous than a black hedgehog wearing hover shoes with chaos abilities or bumbling buffoon organic life-forms who claim to be detectives with the crocodile ill from the fusion of two types of the Mutagen, following orders from an unknown client whose voice is suspiciously familiar." Omega commented, earning sweat drops and deadpanned expressions from Shadow, Rouge, Vector, Espio and Charmy.

"Who asked you?" Vector grumbled, folding his arms.

"None of us did, that's for sure." Shadow looked very annoyed and dashed off. "You three do your mission, we're going after Dr. Eggman."

"Don't say I didn't warn you, Shadow." Rouge said teasingly as she flew to follow her ally, with Omega following with loud clanking.

The three detectives watched Team Dark go as Charmy said in annoyance. "I think that robot's gonna make the most noise with all the frogs around here and all that clanking he's making."

"Yeah, if anybody's gonna get all the giant frogs' attentions, it'd be him." Vector shrugged nonchalantly in agreement.

"Let's get moving. The sooner we pass through this forest, the better." Espio ordered, taking the lead once more, and despite that the green crocodile was the leader, even he knew that the purple chameleon was right.

But as they began to head further into the forest, Vector felt the agonized flow again with the two strains of the Mutagen again expanding and shrinking, but growing more quickly than ever. He groaned and placed a hand to his head, feeling even more dizzy that his vision began to go all blurry and even darkening, haunting thoughts and dark voices beginning to fill his mind which, in retrospect, began to scare him.

Unaware that another mutant monster, one that had a body of a lizard but with the head of a frog and a tail of a wolf, fur all over it's body, began to sneak up on the struggling crocodile who began to lose focus and seemingly about to pass out. Though it's growl got the attention of Charmy and Espio who, after noticing that their friend wasn't following them, turned around and gasped in horror to see him not only suffering another mutagen-strained episode, but also that the nearly unconscious Vector was about to get ambushed from behind.

"Vector, move!" Espio shouted, his and Charmy's eyes widened in horror.

"Behind you!" The young bee screamed frantically.

Just as the Wolf-Lizard leaped and beared it's mouth to extract it's frog-tongue at the crocodile detective, suddenly Vector's eyes snapped open but completely red with hints of purple as he stood up and to the shock of his friends, his body glowed once again with his left arm now enlarging itself like his tail did and punched the mutant monster right in the face, sending it flying backwards and right into the large tree branch above, before it fell and landed into a pond with a huge splash, instantly returning to it's original form of a normal lizard who emerged and, dazed, stunned and confused, waddled off wobbily.

Vector's arm in the meantime returned to normal and even more alarmingly, he began to growl darkly, clenching his teeth as he grew slightly. Both Espio and Charmy stood there with their mouths wide open as they could only stare in horrified silence, feeling a flash of deja-vu...Until the walkie-talkie buzzed to life, startling them and surprisingly snapped Vector out of his unusual possession, shrinking back to normal.

"AAH!" The crocodile yelped and, as though forgetting where he was or what was going on, he randomly held the device and yelled absently. "How many times do I have tell you? The check's in the mail!"

"...Is there something wrong?" The mysterious caller asked, sounding rather confused and even concerned.

Espio and Charmy hurried over before the former snatched the communicator out of the dazed Vector's hands, answering. "No, everything's under control. We'll call you back later." Then he hung up and turned to Vector who blinked in confusion.

"You okay, Vector?" Charmy asked, worriedly as he hovered in front of his friend.

"Ugh...Charmy? What just happened?" Vector groaned, rubbing his head again. "I feel like I've been on a roller-coaster at least fifteen times."

"We can explain later. Right now, we have to get moving. We don't have much time." Espio quickly told him, pulling both of his friends down towards the path, ignoring the young Bee's protests and the taller detective's concerned, bewildered and nervous expression.

From the looks of things, his condition was rapidly getting worse.

---

In another part of the forest after failing to find Sonic in Bingo Highway, Team Chris were swinging from branch to branch while managing to land safely before Chris whacked another mutant monster as well as one of Eggman's robots that appeared with the nun-chuck, twirling the weapon once before jumping as high as he could before smacking the robot's head off.

Danny in the meantime used his own hooks to swing across the trees and kicked another robot hard in the head which caused the machine to crash into another robot which both exploded upon impact and into pieces. Francies used her club to smack and whack as many robots as she could before jumping out of the way to avoid an incoming attack from another mutant monster who was chasing her but ended up stumbling nearly off the edge of a cliff and giant vine where they were high above another lake below...and where one giant green was sitting at on an over-sized lily-pad. The de-aged girl smirked smugly before going over to it's back and tapped it ever so slightly, causing it to lose it's balance and fall down below.

"See you next fall!" She mockingly called with a wave. But as she gazed over the edge, her eyes widened in shock and surprise, letting out a soft gasp of disbelief.

"Man, this is really getting on my nerve!" Chris grunted as he landed in a crouch on the ground. Once he and his friends were certain they were in the clear for now, he turned to Danny and asked. "Are we going the right way?"

"In a forest this huge that feels like we've entered the giant's land in Jack and the Beanstalk story? I'm not so sure, anymore." Danny admitted as he looked around warily.

"Mmmm..." The de-aged Thorndyke hummed, before looking around with an uneasy expression and felt like he shrank somehow, shivering a bit. "Yeah, come to think of it. This place is kind of giving me the creeps."

"That's not all that's really creepy." Francies called up, causing the two boys to turn to her as she pointed down below. "You should check this out, guys."

As Chris and Danny hurried over to see what their friend was pointing at, they peered down and let out soft gasps of disbelief with their eyes nearly comically popping out while the monster landed with a splash below, startling the giant green frog who immediately croaked.

"Whoa!" Both boys exclaimed, bewildered and dumbfounded.

"It's huge!" Chris gaped, dumbstruck.

"No wonder they call this place Frog Forest." Danny remarked with a sweat drop, just as seconds after the frog croaked, it started raining and the three de-aged children looked up to see it begin to pour down onto them.

The trio groaned while covering their heads as much as possible even though it wouldn't help since they didn't have umbrellas.

"Come on, let's find some shelter!" Chris cried out, quickly leading both of his childhood friends as they all ran to find cover to avoid in getting completely soaked.

---

Elsewhere in the Frog Forest, the other teams were also experiencing the rain and were all trying to hurry for places to stay dry as well. With Team Dark, Shadow and Omega ran along with Rouge since the weather wasn't helping with her wings...or her make-up.

"I still don't believe that the frogs of this forest are the cause of this change of weather!" Shadow grunted in irritation.

"This is illogical! But I can confirm that this is caused by green frogs." Omega shouted, complaining himself before he, the black hedgehog, and the white bat found shelter under a giant mushroom that was large enough to fit about 20 people for cover and waited as close to it's bud as possible while the rain poured like crazy.

"Ugh...Whoever has startled those frogs will pay for this. This weather's made me grounded and my make-up is ruined." Rouge whined, trying to dry herself out.

"We have more important things to worry about than your beauty treatment, Rouge." Shadow grunted in annoyance and impatiently. "The weather has slowed our progress and we need to get moving."

"Hmph! Fine! Cheer me up, why don't you?" The bat thief grunted sarcastically, folding her arms.

Before the argument could heat up and continue, Omega's scanners then beeped as the robot then scanned even through the giant fungy of the enormous mushroom they were currently taking shelter in. "Alert! GUN choppers approaching from the south, heading north-east of Frog Forest."

"What?" The Ultimate Life-form grunted, as he and Rouge snapped out of their almost fight and the black hedgehog was daring enough to risk in taking a peak. He slowly approached just close from their shelter and true to the robot's words, two helicopters belonging to the corrupted organization, one heading one way, another heading in an slight opposite direction were in the sky inspite of the weather, but neither one seem to be noticing him or his team.

While the thickness of the trees blocked most of the sight, Shadow wasn't taking any chances and ducked back under the giant mushroom, silently gesturing his team to remain silent until the ghost was clear. The sounds from the aircrafts' propellers made the frog(the one Team Chris accidentally startled) that caused the rain to croak again and miraculously enough, the rain stopped.

"Hmph...Persistant, aren't they? Those humans never give up." Shadow scoffed, ignoring the fact that it stopped raining even though he was glad that it did.

"I detect heavy symptoms of the Mutagen Fog within those helicopters. Only one organic life-form has minimal traces, which is the de-age process. Female; name-Agent Topaz of GUN...hand-cuffed." Omega managed to successfully scan through the helicopter even from down below and from their hiding place, only for the black hedgehog and Rouge, who was shocked to hear this, quickly tried to cover him to keep him silent.

---

Within one of the helicopters, four GUN agents were inside, two of them being the pilots as they scanned around the area for a place to land, unaware that they were passing Shadow's group who remained as silent and out of sight as possible.

"Mark 1, this is Mark 2. Any clearing?" One of the Pilots reported through the headsets.

"This is Mark 2. There's one in the north-east. Same directions as the fleet of robots that have appeared this morning." The pilot from the other chopper responded. "We will continue the search for Shadow the Hedgehog as well as Sonic the Hedgehog, and the fugitive Christopher Thorndyke. They are reported to be all spotted within this unusual forest full of overgrown amphibians."

"Roger. We will place the traitor in the opened area and leave her there to rot. Over and out." The pilot in the chopper agreed.

"I hope you enjoy your early retirement, former agent. Think of it as a tropical getaway." One of the other GUN agents in the back grunted over their prisoner, who was none other than Topaz who, having recovered from the tranquilizer, just sat there with her hands cuffed as she was in the middle of the two agents.

The woman said nothing, remaining silent as she resigned her fate to rot and die, unable to do anything to help Sonic or Chris to solve this crisis, not with GUN beginning to take control while Dr. Eggman was out there, and so was the missing Narasu while the corrupted Commander Tower still wanted Sonic all for himself, the fog's corruption having taken over his mind to allow Time to be destroyed and the two worlds to permanently merged.

Her only hope now was for the blue hedgehog and his friends to restore everything back to normal, yet as she lowered her gaze to the floor in hopelessness, Topaz had a feeling that nothing was going to be the same again. Even if the fog is stopped and the true culprit is found and caught, there may be no more time to stop the merging between the two worlds and Time itself may permanently stop. Either way, Eggman was to blame for all of this.

---

Unaware that three of their targets were hiding, the two GUN choppers took off into the opposite directions, with Mark 1 going off into the direction further into Frog Forest while Mark 2 flew away and Shadow, Rouge and Omega, who was still restrained by the other two, waited silently and on edge until their pursuers were gone for now.

It wasn't until Rouge asked the robot of the group. "Omega, which one of those choppers had Topaz in it?"

"What?" Shadow demanded, narrowing his eyes in suspicion. What was the female bat thief talking about?

"GUN Chopper, known as Mark 1, with Agent Topaz, heading to North-East, exact direction of Dr. Eggman's fleet." Omega reported.

"Hmm...Whatever happened must be related to this foggy and sticky situation." Rouge frowned deeply, and while she wasn't that much one to open up to sympathy, she wasn't completely heartless. Plus despite their first meeting being edgy, she couldn't deny that Topaz was her friend and she had had to admit, she missed that Bossy-GUN Agent. "Those guys have a lot of a nerve to treat one of their own like dirt, let alone a lady."

"This Agent Topaz..." Shadow began questioningly. "Who is she to you, Rouge?"

"An old friend of mine, and partner when the President made me an agent to go up against Dr. Eggman when I was first brought here. You never met her, so it's no surprising that you wouldn't know. We go way back. Sure we had our moments, but there were times even she knew that I wasn't just a thief and she trusts Sonic enough to help out even when she isn't on the job." The white bat explained.

Shadow frowned, and while he didn't want to admit it, even his own close friendship with his dear Maria before her death at such a young age, and Sonic's close friendship with Chris, it was no surprise that even Rouge had a human friend, considering how she did have a heart towards humanity as well as her own kind. He secretly admired her loyalty, because she was nothing like Eggman and especially not like the Metarex.

"Then the corruptions of this fog has not taken over her mind like the rest of the GUN, meaning that to them, she must know something that labels her a traitor in their unfocused minds." The Ultimate Life-form deduced.

"Exactly what I was thinking, and if I were to guess, those guys are planning on dumping her here in a middle of the Frog Forest." Rouge agreed, as she began to resume the journey while saying. "You guys go on ahead to find Eggman. I'm going to rescue Topaz."

"Fine by me. Distractions only cause delays. Dr. Eggman must be annihilated!" Omega agreed as he began to head over to the same direction but to find the real Eggman.

"Wait, Topaz might know more on what is going on." Shadow spoke up, clasping Omega's firearm and lowering it, before dragging the robot closer to Rouge who paused and blinked in surprise. "As much as Dr. Eggman is our priority, it's also important to know more on what is going on, and your friend Topaz may provide some answers that we need. We will all go rescue her."

That stunned Rouge a little, before she remembered how Shadow did take a liking to that girl Molly, and how the black hedgehog wasn't completely heartless after all. He may dislike humanity, but he still lived up to his promise to Maria. Plus, like Shadow said, Topaz might know more about what was going on as she is a GUN Agent...or rather she was before this mess started up.

"Then I guess we'd better get moving then." The bat thief smirked, silently thanking her companion who she also considered as a friend.

Even though Omega was the only one to not like this idea, he had no choice but to go along as the direction they were heading to was still right on the mark anyway. So Team Dark nodded and hurried to follow the GUN chopper with a new mission of their own; to rescue Topaz.

---

Meanwhile, with the Chaotix who were still worrying about the increasing condition Vector was going through, he, Espio and Charmy were sneaking around while avoiding the frogs and while they haven't seen any yet, it ended up raining and they had to race in a hurry to try and find a place to stay dry.

"Whoever startled the frogs around here, it wasn't me!" Charmy quickly protested before the older detectives would accuse him for something he didn't do. "I bet it was Shadow, Rouge and that bad robot of Eggman's!"

"Or maybe it was Eggman himself and he's capturin' those giant frogs. Either way, it's not gonna be easy and this forest is huge." Vector grumbled as they took shelter under large leaves. As he and his friends sighed in relief, he groaned. "This is the worst week ever."

"Vector, I need to ask you something." Espio began, his mind more onto what he and their youngest friend had witnessed that scared them.

"What is it?" The taller detective asked, now confused and then quickly worried when he saw the concerned, if not slightly terrified, expression on his friend's face.

"Before our client called earlier, do you remember anything when you fought that mutant monster?" The purple chameleon questioned carefully.

"Whaddya mean?" The crocodile blinked.

"Your eyes were red with a hint of purple, and your arm enlarged itself when you fought against that monster that almost ambushed us. Do you remember any of that?" Espio explained.

Vector thought for a moment, scratching the top of his head before sadly shaking it. "Nope. I don't remember any of that at all. All I remember is, well...I'm not sure what I saw, but it really freaked me out."

"Like what?" Charmy asked, curiously.

The taller detective shuddered, thinking back to the strange feeling which made him incredibly nervous. "I dunno. My vision was all blurry like I was about to pass out, and then I had these really creepy dark thoughts and deep voices. Couldn't get what they were sayin', but it was almost as though...they wanted me to do something really bad and that's the creepiest part. I think it was like my brain was haunted with ghosts."

"That sounds like a nightmare if you ask me." The young bee commented, hovering over to his oldest friend and boss, gently patting him on the shoulder, before a terrifying thought came into his mind and he suggested worriedly. "Maybe that Mutagen stuff's makin' ya do like what happened to the other people that got sick with that icky fog."

Both Vector and Espio stared at their young protege in surprise over this claim and for once they thought that it made a terrifying kind of sense.

"You're right. If that is the case, then it's getting worse and unless we find the cure, Vector could very well become like what's happened to GUN's commander as Sonic has informed us, and what is happening with the animals on this planet, only it's mixing with the original Mutagen. Meaning that Vector will soon lose his mind entirely." Espio grimly concluded.

A long moment of pause of silence, apart from distant sounds of a frog croaking somewhere in the forest which caused the rain to stop.

"That's just great." Vector facepalmed himself, groaning. He then growled in anger as though his body was covered in flames. "When I get my hands on that Narasu, he's gonna regret in targeting Sonic and making our lives more dangerous and miserable and attempting to destroy both worlds! C'mon guys! Let's keep moving!"

Ignoring Espio's attempts to make him wait, Vector took off to continue the mission which made the purple chamelon and young bee groan before they reluctantly followed while hoping to find a solution to solve this problem as well as complete this mission and catch up with Eggman and Narasu.

"Well, on the bright side. At least it stopped raining." Charmy cheerfully remarked to try and lighten the mood.

But as soon as he said it, both Vector and Espio ended up slipping and fell through what they thought was the ground but was a giant leaf covered in moss and the two ended up falling and sliding down a giant vine and logs which made the two scream in panic and alarm until the latter quickly grabbed hold of the stem of a giant flower which, upon their falling and rapid speed of sliding, caused the flower to bloom and when Charmy flew around it to see if it can slow down their descending, it instead took off and carred the purple chameleon who shouted in bewilderment.

"Hey, hold up!" The green crocodile shouted, grabbing hold of Espio's legs but was carried along with his friend, making him sweat drop in dumbstruck confusion. "What the-!? What's going on here!?"

"Hey, that looks like fun! Wait up, guys!" The young bee called out excitedly, flying over to his friends and held onto Vector's tail, which made things more awkward as the Chaotix were now flying and stumbling out of control, making all three of them cry out in fear, or in Charmy's case, excitement.

"Espio, steer this thing!" Vector exclaimed in a panic as he held on for dear life.

"I'm trying, but it's difficult because you're too heavy!" Espio shouted, struggling to gain control over the flower that was carrying them above the Frog Forest.

No matter how hard Espio tried to steer the flower, the winds then picked up which blew them evern further along over more parts of the forest as they screamed, spinning around and starting to become dizzy and unknowingly knocking out flying Mutant animals who were attempting to attack them but were instead whacked by Vector's tail and Charmy's stinger, making them fall out and land on the ground below and turning back to normal unexpectedly, their eyes comically swirling around in daze.

---

Also unaware to the Chaotix, they were flying over where Chris, Danny and Francies, who were glad that the rain was over for now, were still racing through the forest to find Sonic when the three de-aged humans heard the detectives' screams, making them stop in their tracks in confusion.

"Hey, do you guys hear that?" Chris asked, puzzled.

"Sounds like somebody's screaming." Danny answered in agreement.

That was when Francies noticed above them and she pointed upward while crying out. "Hey, look!"

When the boys looked up, they gasped in shock as they saw the familiar detectives who were screaming as the winds made things impossible to steer the flying flower as they unknowingly passed the Team Chris.

"It's Vector, Espio and Charmy!" Chris exclaimed, bewildered as he and his two childhood friends sweat dropped at the sight they were seeing.

"Flying with a giant flower?" Francies added, dumbstruck.

"You don't see that every day." Danny remarked, briefly wondering if he was dreaming.

"But what are they doing here?" The de-aged girl wondered aloud.

The de-aged Thorndyke scratched the back of his head as he said thoughtfully. "Maybe they're trying to figure out who's responsible for this 'cause Sonic would've told them and everybody else that I was in jail. Or I was in this case."

"That makes sense since they're detectives and all." The other de-aged boy shrugged and Francies nodded in agreement.

Unfortunately for them, things were getting from bad to worse as they then heard dreadful and familiar sounds of propellers in the distance behind them. Chris, Danny and Francies softly gasped on shock and confusion as they turned around to see and saw to their dismay, a GUN chopper in a far distance but heading straight towards them, much to their horror.

"RUN!" Chris screamed as he and his friends quickly ran deeper into the Frog Forest and hoping that the corrupted organization's airforce wouldn't find and recapture them which would jeopardize their chances in finding and warning Sonic of the dangers the blue hedgehog would be facing.

---

Within the helicopter Mark 2, the two GUN agents scanned around the area to find both the fugitives as well as Sonic's group and Shadow's group.

"I can't believe this forest is full of giant frogs that aren't mutated, and what's with this on and off lousy weather today?" One of the GUN pilots sighed in irritation.

"At this rate, our targets will get further away from us." The second pilot grumbled, frustrated with the lack of sight of the heroes who were trying to save the world but the GUN Commander refused to actually let it happen, Tower still being strongly determined to have all of Sonic's friends arrested, Shadow destroyed and Sonic himself to be within his clutches to serve as a super-fast GUN soldier.

But to make things more complicated and dangerous, all of the sudden a giant mutant bird with a frog's head flew right in front of them, croaking a squawk with it's mouth wide open, terrifying the two men along with the other soldiers that were waiting in the back.

"A mutant monster!" The second pilot exclaimed in horror.

"Fire at will!" The first pilot shouted, already firing the chopper's shots at the monster, but it didn't seem to have any effect at all. If anything, it swallowed the shots and gulped them down before opening it's mouth again.

All men inside the vessel sweat dropped in horror, before the second pilot shouted into the communicator. "Sir, our fire power isn't having any effect and this monster's right up in our face!"

---

"Keep firing with everything you got!" Tower shouted the order, the corruption within his body accelerating quickly to the point that his eyes were now both glowing purple and not fading at all, thus the safety of his men no longer mattered to him. "Destroy that thing and find me Sonic and his friends, NOW!"

---

"SIR!?" The two pilots, while effected by the fog's de-aging process, were like Topaz and not effected by the corruption yet had no choice but to obey. But to hear their commander actually ordering them to keep going rather than fall back made them begin to think that perhaps their former agent was right and things were now even worse than before. Even the men in the back shared horrified glances over their leader's poor choices of decisions and orders.

Sharing a glance as Tower repeated his order, they all then screamed as the mutant monster then began to stuck them in. Left with no other choice, the first Pilot declared. "Sir, this is too dangerous! We're retreating! You can fire us if you want, but the fog's corrupted you too much! You're on your own! Over and out!"

Switching off the communication, the first and second pilots then struggled to pull the helicopter out of the winds of the mutant-Flying-Frog sucking them in. Unfortunately it succeeded in sucking the chopper and all of the men inside, realizing that this was the end of them, screamed and braced themselves as they were engulfed into the darkness of the monster's mouth which closed shut with them inside and swallowed it and everyone within it whole alive. Satisfied over it's meal, the Flying-Frog monster then flew away to the opposite direction to continue it's move...under which the ruby jewel on it's belly beneath it glowed and blinked which was under Narasu's command.

---

From where he was in a new monitor room, Narasu himself cackled evilly.

"That's it. Bring those fools to me and lock them up as well! Once they're within my grasp, they going to wish they were truly eaten to death!" The evil cyborg scientist laughed, patting Fulgar on the head. "Now to get rid of Sonic the Hedgehog and his cohorts and soon the two worlds will be mine!"

Things were coming along very nicely as there was only one and a half days left before the final curtain is lifted.

---

When Tower lost communication with Mark 2 as reported from Mark 1 who also lost contact, the corrupted Commander growled before yelling out in frustration before ordering Mark 1, "Make quick to toss the traitor out and then go find Sonic and his friends and bring that blue hedgehog to me!"

"Yes, sir!" The first GUN pilot of the Mark 1 helicopter reported before hanging up.

Left on his own once more, Tower hissed before clutching his phone so hard that it crashed in his hand and glared up at the monitors that viewed the merging worlds.

"You will not escape me, Sonic the Hedgehog. Soon your friends will be dead, and you will be under MY command! There is no running away from the authorities this time." The corrupted man grunted darkly, as more and more of his former self was being lost into the darkness of the corruption.

Yet a voice in his mind did manage to speak out, 'Sonic...please, hurry...You must...You must find...find Narasu...and I hope that...you will find it...within your pure heart...to destory him...the rest is...up to you...and if it's too late...to save me...I want you...to destroy me as well...'

Things were already getting from bad to worse in GUN.

---

At the same time, Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Cosmo, Cream and Cheese were still racing through the forest as they glanced around their surroundings which everything was all giant. The further they went into the forest, the more they felt like they really did shrink, passing by giant tree stumps and flowers and while it was an amazing place, some of the group began to feel a little bit uncomfortable.

"As pretty as this place is, I feel like we've somehow shrank." Amy remarked a little nervously, before pouting in annoyance. "And the rain didn't certainly help!"

"We haven't been near any of the frogs and it still rains!" Knuckled grunted in irritation. "On top of that, I think we're getting ourselves more lost than going on the right track."

"There's more than just one frog in this forest, Knuckles. It could be possible that something startled one somewhere here and croaked. It can easily happen even there are people here or not." Tails pointed out knowingly.

"Tails is right, and maybe it was one of Eggman's robots or one of those mutant animals that got caught up in that weird fog and showed up here." Sonic agreed, jumping and racing up onto a giant tree before landing and standing on a branch, keeping his eyes peeled on which way they were going. When he did, he frowned in concern. "It looks like the further we go, the darker it's gonna get. I think we might need some flight to find our way outta here."

As Cosmo looked around while listening to her friends' conversations, she noticed two giant flowers that looked like they could open up and bloom. Curiosity and sensing something with them getting to her, the young Seedrian approached and gently placed her hand onto one of the stem's and closed her eyes to focus, which caught Cream and Cheese's attentions.

"What are you doing, Cosmo?" Cream asked curiously, which caught everybody else's, including Sonic's, attentions and saw what their friend was doing.

"Chao, chao?" Cheese chirped in confusion.

"These flowers are no ordinary ones. Well, they are, but I can feel that they can do more than just bloom." Cosmo explained.

"What do you mean?" Tails asked as he approached, while Sonic leaped down and landed beside them.

"Yeah, what else can they do, Cosmo?" The blue hedgehog added curiously, one hand on his hip, while Amy and Knuckles also approached, wondering what was going on.

"When they bloom and with enough gust of powerful winds, they can lift off the ground and fly, like dandelions that are released into the air and fly away." Their alien friend explained which confused and amazed them as most of them were in awe by this description.

"Wow! That's amazing!" The young rabbit girl exclaimed with a beaming smile.

"If that's true, then maybe it'll save us for having to fly on our own for a little while." Tails suggested beamingly, prompting his older surrogate brother to whistle.

"Now that sounds like a cool idea." The cobalt teenager agreed, impressed. "Weird but cool."

"I'm not so sure about this, but I'm willing to give it a try." Amy said, a bit uneasily.

Knuckles on the other hand was the only one who found this whole thing far too silly. "Give a break. Giant flowers that bloom and fly like dandelions? That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of."

"Well, you never know unless we see it, right?" The blue hedgehog pointed out with a smirk.

"I can make them bloom and fly with my power. Don't worry, I'll be careful this time since it's not with the power of the Planet Egg." Cosmo offered, and while the group shared glances with a bit of sudden unease given the last time this happened in the Jungle Planet, it was as she said, that time of out of control power was due to the world's Planet Egg and that she was still inexperienced back then. Now she had full control of her due to her sacrifice and having coming back to life.

Deciding that it was possibly their best shot as the blue hedgehog said, "I think I'll do the steering with one of the flowers."

"I'll take the other!" The pink hedgehog held her hand up, volunteering.

"Go right ahead, Cosmo." Sonic encouraged their friend despite that Tails looked on worriedly, and Knuckles scoffed as the red echidna still found the whole thing ridiculous. The young Seedrian nodded and told her friends to stand back while stepping back herself, closing her eyes and focused on mentally requesting the flowers to help her and the others on their journey. Once they did so, she began to glow and bloom as did the flowers.

Just as Cosmo used her powers to control the giant flowers to bloom, to Sonic and the rest of the group's amazements, the huge daisies opened up and more surprisingly and astonishingly, they began to spin and repel like propellers of a helicopter or Tails using his twin appendages. So Sonic grabbed hold of one with Tails and Knuckles clinging onto him, and Amy holding the other with Cosmo, Cream and Cheese holding onto her.

"Ha ha ha! Yeah!" Sonic cheered as he and his friends were lifted high up into the sky, while the blue hedgehog and his self-proclaimed girlfriend began to steer their rides to avoid in hitting anything. "Even though this is one of the craziest things I've ever done in my whole life, you gotta admit this is fun!"

"I can't believe these flowers can fly!" Amy exclaimed.

"Wow, this is really fun!" Cream cheered excitedly.

"With the power from Cosmo and Sonic's speed, these flowers are able to withstand and withdraw gravity for a little while." Tails remarked, even though he and Knuckles didn't seem to keen on the ride with the Guardian of the Master Emerald's eyes widen in disbelief and worry, but Sonic, the girls and the Chao certainly were having the time of their lives.

"Yeah, except we'll be crashing into something or falling to end up splat like a pancake." Knuckles grumbled sarcastically.

The blue hedgehog chuckled as he stated. "Hey, in my experience, this is way better than that bubblegum thing attached to my back to keep me from running and floating out of control. I was so scared I thought I wouldn't get down. Not that I'm afraid of heights, but that wasn't my idea of flying."

"Why did that happen?" Cosmo asked, confused.

"It's a long story, which is something even I still don't have a clue on how or why it even happened. Let's just say that it all started after I saved Amy from Eggman's giant Chicken robot, then I had something in my ear that was driving me crazy and then all of the sudden I was running out of control that I even ended up running in my sleep for a few days." Sonic smiled sheepishly over the memory. "It took everybody including Chris and his grandfather to try and figure out what's wrong."

"Speaking of Chris and Chuck, I wonder how they're both doing?" Amy spoke up, remembering that their two human friends were in jail. "I just hope they're doing alright and we find the culprit soon, or else they'll never get out."

"Me too. It's so awful and it's not fair that they got caught just like how Sonic was arrested when he didn't do anything wrong." Cream muttered worriedly, with Cheese squeaking in grave concern.

Hearing the two girls mention that made the rest of the group realize that they still had to figure out how to clear the Thorndykes' names to which Sonic lowered his gaze, still worried sick about his human best friend. He felt guilty for taking too long to get him out of prison and the blue hedgehog was more increasingly concerned that Tower might've done something horrible to the de-aged boy and his grandfather.

Not to mention on what Tower had warned him about days ago.

---

"I am in charge of this operation. This is your final warning, Sonic. Stay out of this, or you will be locked up in this cell where I will keep you as long as I want. If you ever interfere with our mission or attempt to aid this traitor, you are mine."

---

"Your visit is over, Sonic. Next time if you go near the boy again, you are mine. Even then, you may never leave freely ever again. You are not Shadow as he is dead, but even though you're a hero, you're close enough."

---

"Tower had better not hurt them." Sonic whispered to himself, narrowing his eyes. While he was still terrified with the idea of Commander Tower wanting to capture him and force the young hero to obey him as a new soldier of GUN, the blue hedgehog knew he had to solve this crisis fast as well as stop whatever plan Eggman has up his sleeve, and find the actual scientist, wherever he was.

And figure out how to stop the merge and restore everything back to normal.

But the moment Sonic thought of the last part in his mind, suddenly he heard the same voice from before in the Ocean Palace.

"To fix everything and save both the Mobian and Human kind, a difficult choice must be made. Choose carefully. Beware of the return of the being of great negative energy, reborn in a different form and vessel." The Monotone voice echoed in air, making the blue hedgehog softly gasp and his eyes widened.

"Hey, did you guys hear that?" Amy asked all of the sudden, surprising Sonic who looked to see that his friends were looking around, their expressions of confusion, suspicion and growing fear.

"Wait, you heard it too?" The blue hedgehog asked, blinking. "I thought it was just me!"

"It's the same voice we heard back in the Ocean Palace!" Tails exclaimed as he and Knuckles' eyes were also wide as they and Sonic somehow recognized it.

"You mean the one you told us about?" Cosmo asked, shocked.

"Yeah, it told us in order to fix everything up, the Chaos Emeralds need to be found." The two-tailed fox added.

"That's weird. It kind of sounds like what Cosmo told us last night..." Sonic muttered, feeling uneasy in his stomach. If what his friend and now that voice said was true, would that mean...something awful was about to happen to make things worse? Could it be Rusca's doing? He hoped it wasn't as he still didn't trust that mysterious red hedgehog in his dreams or in the murals.

"Chao!" Cheese exclaimed as he noticed something up ahead, which made Cream look up and she gasped in shock.

"Oh no! Sonic, Amy! Watch out for that giant mushroom!" The six year old rabbit girl screamed out, making the two hedgehogs and the others look and they all flinched in fright as they were heading straight towards a giant mushroom that was as big as a three story building which made Team Sonic and Team Rose yelp a bit at the sight before Sonic and Amy steered the flowers over.

Everyone flew over it with the difficulty of the wing blowing them further up and into the jungle as the two teams continued to at least in the right direction before sighing in relief at the close call.

"Man, that was close!" The blue hedgehog remarked with a small sweat drop. "A few more seconds and we would've crashed into that thing!"

"Wow! I've never seen a mushroom that big before!" Tails exclaimed in awe.

"Those mushrooms are bigger than the ones back on Angel Island!" Knuckles remarked in disbelief.

"Thanks, Cream and Cheese. You saved us." Amy smiled at her best friends who giggled while saying 'you're welcome'.

"Look!" Cosmo then cried out after a soft gasp, leading the group to look up ahead again and saw that they were heading straight towards a swamp which at the other side to where they needed to get to. "There's the way out!"

"Alright!" Tails cheered.

"We're almost out of the Frog Forest already!" Cream exclaimed cheerfully with her beloved Chao cheering on.

"Pretty soon we'll catch up to Eggman's fleet!" Amy said.

"Finally. I'm sick of this crazy jungle." Knuckles sighed, before noticing that Sonic, who also noticed, or mainly the huge body of water in the swamp, began to quiver like a leaf, his teeth chittering, making the slightly older teen groan. "Really, Sonic? I thought you said you weren't scared of water anymore."

"Why does it always have to be water? Why can't it be a sand dune or something?" Sonic complained as he was still trying to get over the nightmares as well as what happened at the Ocean Palace. "I really hate getting wet."

"I'm sure we can fly over it since these flowers are still keeping us high up in the air." Amy attempted to reassure her 'boyfriend'.

Sadly just as those words left her lips, nearby another frog croaked which set off another downpour of rain which began to soak the two teams and to make things worse their flowers began to stop spinning which slowed them down and to the group's horror, they began to fall.

"Well...they were keeping us up in the air..." The pink hedgehog nervously corrected herself.

Sonic then looked down and nearly screamed in fear as he realized exactly where they stopped flying, panicking. "And we're right over the lake!"

When his friends saw this despite that giant lily pads that were floating on the water, they all began to panic themselves and a mere second later all seven of them began to fall despite that Cheese quickly flew and made to go after his friends. Everyone screamed as they fell straight towards the water and to make things worse a huge crocodile that wasn't like Vector but was like one on Earth but not mutated, seeing new, delicious prey descend towards it's territory, snarled before rising out of the water with a huge amount of water splashing everywhere, it's jaws snapping and then made wide open to engulf the team who saw this and screamed louder in fear.

Both Tails and Cream quickly took flight with the former grabbing Knuckles's wrists while the latter took hold of Amy and Cosmos who held onto the pink hedgehog's legs for dear life. But Sonic was too far out of reach as he continued to fall and scream.

"SONIC!" Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Cosmo, Cream and Cheese screamed out in horror.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" The blue hedgehog screamed as he was about to either face another watery landing or land right into the waiting jaws of a rather giant crocodile who was very intent on making the teenage hero be really comfortable and permanently trapped inside it's stomach.

In that instant when Sonic saw he was reaching for the later, he gasped in horror and complete fear, his eyes widening while his emerald green pupils shrinking, his mind flashing back to Dark Oak's giant dragon form swallowing him whole and how he felt the same fear in both the nightmare and the time when he thought that sea monster that saved his life afterwards was going to eat him.

"NOOOOOOOOOO!" Sonic screamed, squeezing his eyes shut while bracing himself to be gulped down into the horrible belly of the monster below him.

But before Sonic was about to pass the lips of the crocodile, Tails came flying in as fast as he could with Knuckles holding on with one hand and swooped in while grabbing hold of the younger teen by the waist with his right arm.

"I gotcha, Sonic!" The red echidna shouted, holding onto the trembling blue hedgehog who, realizing that he was still alive, immediately wrapped both arms around his friend's shoulder and waist, looking petrified. "You okay?"

"Uh-huh...Just barely." Sonic replied weakly, his voice shaking slightly.

"Uh, guys? We're not out of the woods just yet...!" Tails squeaked in fear as he looked over his shoulder and had noticed that the crocodile, frustrated in missing it's meal, began to quickly swim after the trio violently.

"Guys, hurry!" Cosmo screamed out worriedly as Cream carried her and Amy a much more higher and safer distance in the air as they were already nearing the exit at the same pace as their friends.

"We're trying! We're trying!" Sonic and Tails both screamed out as the later, in desperation as he didn't want to tire himself out, quickly grabbed hold of vines and began to swing himself, his adoptive brother and their friend upward, the blue hedgehog screaming as he was swung forward while lifting his legs up just in case, and the crocodile's lips just slightly brushing against the hero's heels but kept on missing them, much to it's fury and increasing hunger.

"Hey, you leave them alone!" Amy shouted angrily, while fearing for the lives of both her 'boyfriend' and two of their friends who were repeating the same process while the reptile was smashing logs and splashing water all over the place.

"Tails, step on it!" The blue hedgehog exclaimed.

"I'm going as fast as I can! That crocodile's almost as fast as the X Tornado!" The two-tailed fox shouted back, panicking.

"I'm thinking more about the same speed as that plane of yours!" Knuckles stated while holding onto the young kit's leg and Sonic at the same time, which the younger teenager's screaming and shaking wasn't helping at all.

"THIS IS A NIGHTMARE!" Sonic wailed, almost choking the older teenager. "I want land! I want dry land right now!"

"We're almost there, guys! Hang on!" Tails shouted, as Cosmo, seeing the vine he was about to grab was too short, focused on her powers again to extend it and make it to towards her friend which he and the others noticed before grabbing it and then they were pulled up and wrisked higher and straight towards the cliff on the other side, too high for the crocodile to snap at them.

"Thanks, Cosmo!" Team Sonic acknowledged in relief, beaming relieved smiles at their Seedrain friend who nodded while Cream hurried to join them at the safer ground above the cliff.

Amy in the meantime risked in letting go with one hand and summoned her Piko Piko Hammer before tossing it hard towards the feral animal who tried to rise up higher to get Team Sonic, as she shouted. "Get lost, you overgrown lizard! Nobody eats my Sonic!"

The hammer hit it's mark as it smacked the crocodile right onto the head and causing it to lose concentration before it accidentally crashed snout first into the cliffside's wall and was seeing stars before sinking back into the water in humiliating defeat, while both Tails and Cream carried their passengers safely away from the swamp and finally into the clearing of a field, exiting the Frog Forest before the two youngsters gently dropped their friends onto the ground and landed a few seconds later. Team Sonic then breathed hard with Tails rubbing his arms, Knuckles panting and Sonic on his hands and knees, his heart beating wildly.

"I'm beginning to not like this adventure anymore." Sonic panted, still traumatized from the near-watery-and-digestive-experience.

"Sonic! Sonic, are you alright?" Amy exclaimed frantically as she and the others hurried over to the blue hedgehog, the pink hedgehog kneeling next to her 'boyfriend' and threw her arms around him which startled him.

"Yeah, I'm alright. Thanks to you guys for saving me." The teenage hero smiled a little, for once not willing to push his self-proclaimed girlfriend off of him and was more than relieved that he and everybody else were still alive...and away from the water as well as the giant crocodile.

"You sure screamed out a whole lot during that venture, Sonic." Knuckles commented casually, which made the girls and Chao glare at him angrily over the insult towards their heroic friend who almost died today.

But Sonic, beginning to recover from the ordeal already, shook his head and said. "You probably would've done the same thing if it happened to you. But man, I thought we were gonna be reptile food for a while there, but it's a good thing our teamwork really pays off and it never let us down."

Just as he rested his left hand onto the soil of the ground, suddenly he felt the familiar radiance and power of Chaos Energy right at his palm and finger tips. Blinking in confusion on why the ground felt strangely familiar and feeling something a bit hard beneath the dirt, the cobalt hedgehog looked down curiously to see as he lifted his hand to check. To his surprise, a slight glow of light blue shone which caught the attention of the rest of his friends as they all gathered around in confusion and growing hope.

"What the?" Sonic muttered, wondering if this was too good to be true.

"Could it be...?" The red echidna murmured, his eyes widening in disbelief.

"Is that what I think it is?" Amy wondered.

"Only one way to find out." The blue hedgehog declared, quickly digging into the ground which he only had to do so for about fifteen seconds until the shone grew brighter and true to everyone's prediction, it was a cyan Chaos Emerald shining and sensing his presence.

"Whoa! It is! It's...it's...!" Tails trailed off.

"Another Chaos Emerald..." Sonic finished for his little brother, blinking in awe before picking it up and holding it in his hand, sensing it's power which made him relax as he sighed in relief. "Yep, no doubt about it. This is another real deal. Talk about pure luck."

"Wow! It was never this easy to find the Chaos Emeralds before! Now we only have to find three more of them." Cream exclaimed happily.

"This is wonderful! I can't believe how lucky we are." Cosmo said happily with her hands clasped together.

"You can say that again..." Knuckles remarked in agreement, bewildered at the pure luck that they were having regards to the Emeralds. "We have four while Eggman either has none or he has one already."

It was then that Tails realized something and said. "Hmmm...You know what's really strange? It was a lot easier to find the Chaos Emeralds and by coincidence we have four while we haven't seen him or heard him find any at all."

The others blinked before realizing the fox cub was right as Sonic and Amy stood up, the blue hedgehog frowning. "Yeah, this seems to be way to fishy to me. First he rants at us at the Ocean Palace not long after we've beaten him up in Station Square, then we find that the Egghead we've been following was a robot, and we've found four Chaos Emeralds and he hasn't shown his ugly mug yet to steal it from us and he launches an attack when he wanted to create robotic clones of Shadow which is why he came here in the first place? That sort of thing isn't his style."

"Also, whenever Eggman launches another attack, he at least recovers after a day or two or even much longer and not only that, even though he did admit to Chris that ruling a world without time was temping, even he didn't want that to happen and chose to help us find a way back home. But to recover hours after his previous attack and then launch another attack when he wanted to go up to the ARK? He couldn't have come up with a new plan straight away even if he is an evil genius." Tails added scientifically.

Sonic folded his arms in concern while still holding the Chaos Emerald, thinking about the situation for once before coming up with his own theory. "What if it's Rusca who's behind all of this? First I get weird dreams about that guy, then Chris gets framed with the purple fog by who we think is Narasu, then everything else's we've been through and the fact that Shadow-look-alike faker wants me to merge the two worlds and stop time? Something's really up about this and I don't like it one bit."

While the others didn't like it either, before they could continued this debate there was a loud rumble which nearly startled them along with three familiar screams that filled the air, startling them and looked up to their left and saw yet another large mutant monster, this time looking like a lion with a geko's body, no tails and towering over three figures in the distance as they had just emerged from the Frog Forest as well.

"Trouble!" Teams Sonic and Rose exclaimed, before they noticed something familiar about the figures.

"But why do those people look awfully familiar?" Cream wondered worriedly with Cheese chirping in concerned agreement.

"I can tell that they're human, but they're too far to see from here." Knuckles stated, until he noticed something very striking and he, along with the rest of the group, but none more so than Sonic who began to pale like a ghost, all gasped in shock as they recognized the out. "Could it be...?"

"I don't believe it! It is!" Tails cried out.

"But how?" Cosmo asked in disbelief.

Sonic felt faint as he saw the three humans who were only children, or rather adults trapped in children bodies, but the middle one who was impressively trying to whack and kick at the large monster that was threatening to kill the trio, he knew almost instantly who that was; the outfit, the ginger hair...and those blue eyes!

"CHRIS!" Sonic screamed out, quickly placing the Chaos Emerald in his quills before speeding off in a blue blur to rescue the three de-aged humans from the monster.

"Sonic, wait up!" Tails cried out as he and the others, knowing that they had to rescue who they thought were their friends despite wondering what was going on and that they were on a time-limit, hurried to catch up to the cobalt hedgehog.

---

Meanwhile, the Chaotix had, surprisingly managed to avoid all of the frogs during their unpleasant flight before crashing into the forest in an embarrassing way, comical bandages on them, and finally making out out of the Frog Forest, Vector, Espio and Charmy were more than ready to simply to the next phase of their mission.

"Well, the flying flower was fun while it lasted." Charmy dryly commented as he flew beside his friends who looked worse for wear.

"It was one of the most embarrassing things I've ever experienced in my entire life." Espio groaned.

"But at least we managed to complete the mission, flying flowers aside. Sure was pretty close but we managed." Vector declared, smirking despite that even he felt humiliated over what just happened, not to mention still traumatized over his own condition that seemed to be getting worse by the day.

Just then the walkie-talkie rang to life again and as Vector answered it, their mysterious client was told that they succeed before the caller praised. "Good job, boys! You didn't even get detected once! Absolutely amazing!"

"Well yeah, it hadn't been easy but thanks to Espio's stealth and being silent in the most parts, we managed to pull through." Vector stated as he clapped his aforementioned friend's back.

"Yeah, nobody can do stealth and being quiet like he can!" Charmy added with a beaming look.

The purple chameleon smiled a little. "Glad to be of assistance."

"Your next mission is bringing you closer to the truth. I have faith in all three of you to succeed." The client spoke once more, which left the Chaotix share a glance once more. "Know that Dr. Narasu is more insane than Dr. Eggman, but you still have to stop both of them. Follow that Egg Fleet and you will know soon."

With that, the client hung up.

"Follow the Egg Fleet, huh? Well then, we'd better get moving right away!" Vector declared as he took a step forward to continue the goal...only to accidentally trip onto something with a yelp and landed face first on the ground.

"Move right away? I think you mistraced your step, Vector." Espio remarked in a very rare moment of him teasing.

The green crocodile groaned before pushing himself up and spat out the clumps of dirt out of his mouth, and grumbled. "Very funny, Espio! I just didn't see that rock. A slight mistake on my part."

"You mean this purple rock?" Charmy spoke up as he picked up the stone which glowed in Chaos Energy as he gazed it. "I don't know about you guys, but it looks like a Chaos Emerald to me."

When the two older detectives looked to see what their young ward was talking about, their eyes almost popped out of their eyes as they instantly recognized the gem in the young bee's hands.

"That's because it IS a Chaos Emerald, Charmy!" Vector exclaimed, snatching the gem right out of Charmy's hands.

"Hey!" The youngest detective protested, but was ignored.

"How much lucky can we get than this? This is the best thing that's happened to us since we got here!" The leader of the Chaotix remarked.

"It may certainly give us an advantage against Eggman and if we find Sonic and the others, they should know of this as well." Espio agreed, unable to believe their luck.

"Took the words right out of my mouth, Espio. We're now ahead of Eggman! Let's keep moving!" Vector agreed, handing the chameleon ninja the Emerald for safe keeping before taking the lead once more, with Espio and Charmy, who was pouting that he couldn't carry the Emerald, following.

Yet they were both unaware that the green crocodile's eyes were once again flashing red and purple for a moment and a sinister smirk forming on his snout with dark thoughts forming in his mind...but only for a brief moment before he snapped out of it.

---

The moment the Mark 1 helicopter landed, the corrupted GUN agents wasted no time in hurling the still tied up Topaz out of the chopper and dragged her out of the opened door before simply pushing and shoving her to the ground where she cried out and grunted upon landing hard. She squeezed her eyes shut, hissing while attempting to ignore the pain.

"Now that you're out of the way, you can stay here until those monsters get you." One of the GUN agents declared darkly.

"Pity that Mark 2 isn't here, having failed to find the targets and died because of their weaknesses." A second GUN soldier scoffed sarcastically, which was all from the corruption of the Mutagen fog's effects that completely covered and blackened his mind.

"What are you saying!? Those are some of our men that died because of these monsters! How could you call them weak when the fire power had no effect against the one that destroyed them!?" Topaz demanded, glaring up at her former fellow soldiers in anger and horror.

"Shut up, you traitor! This is about obeying the law, and the strong and the fittest survive!" The first GUN soldier snapped.

"This isn't the Dark Ages, you know!" The former GUN agent argued.

To her horror, the men just laughed as the third one declared sinisterly. "No, but this is what Commander Tower calls the Neo Dark Ages, only it's a permanent age where Time is to stop forever and Sonic will soon be his alone while Shadow is put to the death sentence."

"You don't understand! It's the fog that's corrupting you as well as Commander Tower! You need to snap out of it now!" The young woman exclaimed, struggling against her binds as her hands were still cuffed behind her back.

"We don't need to, Topaz. It's you who needs to learn your place!" The second soldier declared, holding up a rifle. "To prove it, how about I make you wish you'd want an eye-patch!"

Topaz's eyes widened, her heart stopping for a brief moment as hopelessness, fear and defeat came crashing down onto her.

"Don't you DARE!" A familiar female voice barked furiously, causing the female former Agent who had just about to squeeze her eyes shut, and the other agents to look to the left(right in the men's point of view) just as Rouge came using her drill kick to kick the rifle out of the man's hand before she smacked the soldier as well as two others on the head, knocking them out cold.

"Chaos Control!" A familiar deep voice chanted, and just like that, the GUN soldiers and the two pilots who, getting a signal and were about to inform the men, were briefly stuck frozen in time as Shadow and an annoyed Omega who had been ordered to not open fire, quickly approached and worked to quickly chain and tie up the men with everything the helicopter had to make sure they wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon.

"That's no way to treat a lady, let alone a tough old bird who's one of your own." Rouge continued as she landed in front of her former partner who couldn't believe her eyes or ears, at the sight of the familiar bat thief and former GUN agent.

"Rouge!" Topaz exclaimed in relief, admitting to herself how much she missed her former annoying, thieving but trust-worthy and noble ally and friend. "You really are here too!"

Rouge smirked as she turned to face her old friend, relieved that she and her companions had made it in time. "Here there, Topaz. Long time you see. You don't look any different from the last time I saw ya', besides the ragged clothes which really don't suit you or your style and old lady beauty."

Topaz grunted in annoyance, before sighing and smiled back. "I'll just let that one go, since I am nine years older than the last time we met. You haven't changed one bit either."

"Hey, as I've been told, Earth time runs faster than my world's time." The white bat shrugged, before looking over her shoulder and asked. "Hey, guys. Think you can find me the keys to her cuffs for me?"

Shadow nodded and searched for the keys before finding them while Omega grumbled, "It would have been better to eliminite these corrupted soldiers and put them out of their misery."

"That's you opinion. But these corrupted people are victims to the mysterious Mutagen fog that has caused chaos upon Earth and it's people; both humans and animals that are not like myself, or Rouge or everyone else in her world." The black hedgehog scoffed as he tossed the keys to the albino bat who caught them swiftly and began to work on freeing Topaz who, upon seeing the two, was stunned with confusion, nervousness and suspicion.

"I figured that Shadow was still alive, but why are you with him and this Eggman robot, Rouge?" Topaz questioned.

"Relax, hun. They're on our side." Rouge reassured nonchalantly, freeing her old friend. "Omega here actually wants payback against Eggman for locking him up in a closet back in his base, and Shadow, well, his business is his alone, but don't worry. It's not to end the world this time. He's helping out to try and save it, like the last time and how he saved Sonic when we were fighting bad aliens back in our dimension."

Now freed and rubbing her wrists, Topaz sighed as despite she was still uncertain about this, she then spoke to Rouge's companions. "Well, to be fair, Shadow did redeem himself by helping Sonic to stop the ARK from crashing into the planet, but you, Omega, was it, want to actually fight against Dr. Eggman for locking you up?"

"Affirmative. Dr. Eggman must be annihilated! I am the last of the E-series: E-123 Omega, who stands by comrade Rouge and comrade Shadow." The robot confirmed. "I also take responsibility for inadvertently causing Rouge, Sonic and their allies to be transported back here when they failed to stop Dr. Eggman from returning here."

"Wow, I never knew a robot would go rogue against their own creator." Topaz admitted, before asking Rouge. "But why did Eggman want to come back here?"

"To make robotic clones of me." Shadow answered before Rouge had the chance, stepping forward. "That pathetic fool wanted to use documents of Professor Gerald Robotnik's blueprints he used to create me long ago, to make an army in an effort to take over Sonic's world and destroy the blue faker."

"Now he's also sent out that Egg Fleet to cause more problems and on top of that, we haven't seen Sonic or the others since I got here. I found out about Eggman's plans and warned the guys about it. Tails and I were going to shut down the Porthole while Sonic and Knuckie went to fight him, but, well...he released Omega who immediately turned against the old guy and yeah, things got messed up." Rouge continued.

"That explains something. But that still doesn't explain the mysterious fog, or the fact Dr. Narasu has gone missing." Topaz sighed.

"Yeah, the Chaotix guys told us everything, including the fact that Chris is in jail for something he didn't do." Rouge nodded in agreement, folding her arms.

It was then that the former human Agent sighed before she admitted. "Actually, Chris is not in jail right now. I let him go free."

"Huh?" Team Dark's eyes widened in shock and disbelief.

"I knew the moment Commander Tower started to act more arrogant and selfish because of this fog, I had to do something. So I made the decision and did what Sonic would do; to do the right thing, I asked Chris's old friends Danny and Francies to help me to get Chris out of the city so that he could warn Sonic while I secretly informed the President on the situation. But I was found out and caught for treason and to make things worse, the President has been put under arrest as well. Everyone who had been badly affected by the fog have lost their minds." Topaz explained grimly.

"Okay, that's definitely worrisome." Rouge admitted, feeling uneasy about this. "You did do the right thing by freeing that kid, I think you should get a promotion for figuring out what's going on."

The former GUN agent shrugged with a sad smile. "Well, I'm no longer a GUN Agent, so any expectations for a promotion has been thrown right out of the window. I'm more concerned about the worlds merging and Time coming to a stop."

She then frowned worriedly. "To make things worse, Tower knows that Shadow is still alive and on top of that he wants to capture Sonic and make him his super fast soldier to obey the new law the Commander attempts to unleash across the world."

"Like Sonic will be willing to obey the Commander's demands. Our previous enemies already tried that with him and they were all destroyed by their own greed and lust for power. Unless this fog is lifted and the true culprit is destroyed, the same thing that happened to the Metarex could happen to GUN." Shadow scoffed, folding his arms.

"Metarex?"

"Long story." Rouge quickly said, before smirking. "Just wish I could see the look on Sonic's face when he finds out that his best human buddy is freed and out of jail."

Just then, there was a loud roar from the short distance and as the four of them quickly looked up, they saw near the clearing and outside of the Frog Forest was the Lion-Geko monster that was causing problems yet was getting into a battle against a familiar blue ball of blur.

"Analyzation complete: Mutant monster effected by Mutagen-Fog, facing Sonic the Hedgehog! Other individuals, Christopher Thorndyke, Daniel, Francies, Amy Rose, Cream the Rabbit, Miles "Tails" Prower, Knuckles the Echidna, and Cosmo the Seedrian, also detected. They also now have four Chaos Emeralds." Omega informed.

"Four Chaos Emeralds?" Rouge, Shadow and Topaz repeated in surprise.

"That was fast, and we only have one." Rouge remarked, annoyed and disappointed over the fact that she and her team only had the green emerald in hand.

"So the two teams have already met, they possess four of the seven Chaos Emeralds and now they are already with Chris and his other friends." Shadow stated, before deciding. "Perhaps it's time to make my presence known."

Before the others could stop him, the black hedgehog immediately skated off in high-speed to meet with Team Sonic, Team Rose and Team Chris.

"Shadow's rather...strange than from what I've heard of him." Topaz remarked after a moment.

"That's the way he is. He's not that bad once you try and get to know him and after having a really bad past which is said and tragic, you'd get the idea." Rouge shrugged, before hoisting Topaz up and took flight. "So, you wanna join our team to help save the world?"

Topaz thought about it for a moment before sighing as she allowed her friend to carry her and smiled. "I'm not with GUN anymore, but I'm still a soldier. So, you can count me in."

"In that case, welcome to the team, Topaz." The female bat declared, smirking and her old friend returned it.

"New comrade in arms, Agent Topaz. Time to move out." Omega announced as he followed the two women to follow Shadow to catch up to Sonic's group.

---

"Keep running!" Chris exclaimed as he used his grapple hooks to swing himself over a log while hurriedly kicking another robot in the face before landing and ran alongside Danny and Francies.

"Are they still following us?" Francies asked, panting as she and her friends ran.

"Not sure, the trees are too thick to see." Danny replied as he looked over his shoulder before looking up ahead. "But I think we see an exit up ahead."

"We're almost there!" Chris agreed, hoping against hope that they would find Sonic and warn him soon before it really was too late.

Unfortunately just as they emerged and made it into the clearing before stopping to rest while panting, when Francies looked up to see where they were now, she let out a horrified gasp and screamed out. "Chris, Danny, look out!"

When the two de-aged boys looked up, they gasped in fright and horror as they saw the Lion-Geko monster that just began to emerge from the ground, about being at least 25 feet tall and towered over the three de-aged children who were frozen in their tracks, shivering in fright at the monster before them as it then roared.

"This just keeps getting worse." Chris groaned in dismay, taking out his club while Danny and Francies brought out both more clubs as well as the nun-chucks despite knowing that this was going to be a losing battle.

"This is gonna hurt." Danny added.

"Well, hurt or not, this time we can't just run away from monsters that are bigger than us! We made it this far, so we're mentally not kids anymore!" Francies declared, attempting to force her fear down even though she was scared.

Even thought the de-aged Thorndyke was terrified himself, he remembered in almost an instant that he fought alongside Sonic and the others against the Metarex, helped to defeat the evil aliens, and even joined forces to fight some to rescue Tails and Cosmo one time. Plus he and his two childhood friends did fight alongside each other to fight off Eggman's robots and monsters during their journey and made good marks for it.

"You're right, Francies. We can't give up now! Everybody's counting on us and Sonic and the others!" Chris narrowed his eyes, standing ready as he fought down his fears and glared up at the large monster. "Let's do this!"

"Yeah!" Danny, feeling the same thing, agreed.

The Lion-Geko roared before launching a punch at the trio who jumped back to narrowly avoid it before they charged and attacked it's arm as hard as they could. Their opponent roared in agony and anger before rearing back, but then it stomped at them, which forced the de-aged children to try and dodge again and then Chris tried another idea.

"You guys hit it while I distract that thing!" Chris ordered his friends, before firing his grapple hook at it's chest, yanking him upward and ignoring their protests over his crazy idea. With a battle yell, the de-aged boy used Tanaka's lessons and flipped upward before landing a kick at it's jaw, causing the monster to stumble a bit while he held on tight, yelping as he almost lost his grip.

Despite the crazy idea, Danny and Francies did as they were told before charging at the monster's legs and hit it as hard as they could with everything they got, yet they were then kicked away and caused both of them to scream painfully before landing hard on the ground, much to Chris' horror. As he cried out his friends' names, this distracted him enough to be grabbed by the monster and then being tossed to the ground as well, landing right on top of his team who grunted in pain upon impact.

"Ow!" Danny grunted.

"Chris! Next time, come up with a better idea!" Francies complained.

"Sorry, it was pretty dumb." Chris apologetically replied, as he made to stand up and getting off of his friends.

The Lion-Geko in the meantime, having slight injuries over the attacks, stomped forward to attack the trio again, but the de-aged Thorndyke hissed, before he took hold of the nun-chuck and with careful arm, he tossed it like a boomerang right at the mutant-monster's eyes, causing it to roar in agony but shocking it opened up an eye on it's chest which glared down at the group who gasped in horrified shock.

"No way!" Chris, Danny and Francies exclaimed, dumbfounded.

Despite the pain it was going through, the monster made to attack again when all of the sudden a familiar blue blur in a Spin Attack form came whooshing from the right and hit the monster right on the side and head, causing it to stumble even as it then stretched it's arms out to grab the three humans. But the ball uncurled to reveal Sonic who glared at it and the blue hedgehog, angered and annoyed by the beast attacking his human friends, punched and kicked at them easily, much to the trio's shock. The monster roared in frustration and agony as Sonic landed in front of the trio while glaring at the mutant-monster.

"Is that...?" Francies trailed off in stunned awe.

"Could it be...?" Danny added, unable to believe what he was seeing.

Chris, his eyes widened in disbelief and huge relief that he and his team had finally found his blue hedgehog best friend...or rather the hero had found them and saved them once again, just like old times.

"Sonic! You're here!" Chris exclaimed happily.

"Hey there, Chris! Don't know what's going on but boy am I glad you're out of jail! But let's catch up later and beat this guy, shall we?" Sonic greeted just as happily, looking over his shoulder with a casual wave, while deep down he was so happy and relieved to see his human best friend alive and out of prison despite getting injured during this fight, but he would worry about questioning him later.

"Yeah, you bet." The human boy nodded in agreement, just as the monster, who was knocked down, got back up and the four glared up at it as it roared loudly.

"Hey, keep your roar down, Leo the Geko-Lion!" Sonic grunted with a taunting annoyance. "Why don't you just go get yourself a haircut?"

The Lion-Geko roared once more and extended it's claws, which made Sonic and his friends sweat drop nervously before they were forced to dodge as it made to scratch at them but it did manage to claw the ground and made small fissures that were deep and it grinned evilly when it did this.

"Okay, so we'd better watch out for those sharp fingernails of his...!" The blue hedgehog remarked with wide eyes, admittedly terrified by this kind of attack.

While Danny and Francies nodded in agreement, they, Chris and Sonic were forced to dodge again before repeating the attacks only to be smacked away and nearly hit the ground hard. But Sonic quickly caught Chris in his arms before landing and ran around to create a small whirlwind which slowed the other two de-aged human's fall until they both dropped gently on their feet and he slowed to a stop as well while carefully placing the young Thorndyke onto the ground.

"This guy's really tough!" Danny exclaimed.

"We need to come up with a plan, quick!" Francies added.

"I'm open for any suggestions." Sonic stated impatiently.

"Open...Wait, that's it!" Chris realized, remembering the eye on the chest of the monster which closed and the main eyes opened once more, and quickly came up with a plan. "If we hit the eyes on the head, Sonic can attack the eye on the chest to slow it down! That should do the trick."

Realizing what the de-aged boy was talking about, the blue hedgehog smirked as he had also noticed and gave his human best friend a thumbs up. "Sounds good to me! Let's do it!"

The group nodded in agreement as Sonic knew that it would take a bit longer before Tails and the others would catch up, before the four glared up at the monster who made to attack again and they quickly once again leaped back to avoid it.

"Hey, you! Here I am!" Chris called out tauntingly, holding out his nun-chucks to make his move.

The Lion-Geko monster roared, only for Francies to yank herself up with her grapple hook which she used to strike at it before whacking it's head with her club, while Danny dodge-rolled to avoid it's claws and tossed his own club at it's legs, distracting it enough for Chris to toss his weapon right at the two eyes on the head, making it even more agonized before it's eye in the chest opened up again.

"Sonic, now!" The former twenty-one year old signaled.

"Okay!" Sonic saluted with a smirk, before charging and used his Spin Attack to hit the chest-eye so hard that the monster roared in pure agony before he repeated the process while Francies jumped and landed on the ground safely before she and Danny hurried to the safe distance.

Now unable to see with all three eyes damaged, the mutant-monster was vulnerable as Sonic then leaped up into the air before delivering a final blow by using his attack once more and hit it so hard that it roared and crashed onto the ground with a thud in a small quake, gazed and defeated before it shrank back into it's original form of a normal geko, just as Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Cosmo, Cream and Cheese finally made it and saw that the battle was already over and that Sonic had saved Team Chris. The girls and Tails cheered while Knuckles, seeing that the fight was finished, grumbled before folding his arms.

"Battle-hog." The red echidna muttered under his breath.

Sonic in the meantime landed on the ground as Chris came over happily and the two shared smiles before sharing a high-five, cheering with success. "Yes!"

"You guys alright?" Sonic then asked immediately.

"Yeah, we are now. Thanks, Sonic." Chris replied as he knelt down on one knee, and, relief and other waves of emotions washing over him with tears in his eyes, the de-aged boy, so happy to finally see his friend again after being locked up in jail, immediately hugged the blue hedgehog tightly which surprised the latter at first. "Oh, Sonic...! I've looked everywhere for you...!"

"Chris..." Sonic whispered, now feeling guilty for having taken too long and hugged his human friend back while closing his eyes as he too fought back tears, his heart sinking over for not being able to free Chris like he promised. "I'm sorry for taking too long...So many crazy things have been going on, I just...I'm really deeply sorry. I was really worried about you, because of what...what GUN were trying to do."

The de-aged boy sniffled, his tears falling freely. "It's not your fault...if I hadn't...if I hadn't forced you to stay before letting you go, none of this would've happened."

"Yeah, but it's all my fault for not stopping Eggman twice in a row which put both your world and mine in grave danger. I've put you in danger, and sure you were really cool in fighting that monster along with Danny and Francies, and I'm so proud of you buddy, I'd...I'd never forgive myself if anything happened to you, or Tails, or Amy, or everybody else...for that, I'm really sorry." The blue hedgehog pointed out, holding onto his friend more tightly which he did the same as the teenager fought back his own tears, feeling the lump in his throat that formed.

Finally having agonizing days of being hunted down by GUN and the nightmare everybody was going through, Sonic and Chris were at long last reunited, while the rest of their friends, now all together, felt emotional for the two friends' touching reunion that the girls and even Tails had tears in their eyes. Even Knuckles and Danny couldn't help but feel touched by this scene before them and feeling sorry for the blue hedgehog and the de-aged Thorndyke.

After another moment of their embrace, Sonic and Chris reluctantly let go and smiled at each other before the former gently wiped away the latter's tears. "Come on, Chris. No tears."

"Sorry. Guess some things haven't changed." The de-aged boy smiled apologetically, wiping away the rest.

The cobalt speedster smiled, before asking in confusion. "But, how did you get out of jail? Surely Danny and Francies couldn't have done it on their own 'cause I couldn't convince GUN to let you go free."

"Well, they didn't, but Topaz asked them to help me get away to find you after she disobeyed the order to take me to Area 51 and let us escape. Even she could tell that something was wrong with Commander Tower." Chris explained.

"So that's it. That's why GUN was after us. They found out that you escaped and thought I did it, so they're after all of us now, because Topaz did the right thing to get you out." Sonic realized as did the rest of Team Sonic and Team Rose who all shared shocked glances, before he smiled at the thought of the female agent. "I really owe her one when I see her again."

"That gratitude is gonna have to wait, Sonic." Knuckles spoke up, getting Sonic and Chris' attentions as the red echidna continued. "We still have to stop Eggman and his stupid fleet before they come tomorrow night."

"And we have to find the remaining three Chaos Emeralds to save Time and both worlds." Cosmo added.

"Yeah, good point." Sonic nodded firmly in agreement as Chris stood up. "Plus, we still gotta figure out how to stop this fog, and figure out if that Rusca creep is behind this or not, but I don't trust him to save my life."

"Rusca?" Team Chris asked, confused.

"Who's Rusca?" Francies asked.

"He's the red hedgehog I've been seeing in my nightmares, the one who looks like Shadow I told Chris about. Turns out, that guy was real, 'cause there were paintings of that guy in the Ocean Palace we've been into." The blue hedgehog explained.

"Really? We didn't see anything like that and we were in there too." Danny replied as he and the other two humans gasped in shock.

"What!?" Sonic exclaimed.

"You guys were there too!?" Tails exclaimed in disbelief.

"We were in there too, but we met up with Sonic, Tails and Knuckles after we all left when those mean GUN people were after us." Cream explained.

"We left to find the Chaos Emeralds and so far we've found four as well as to find Sonic. Things are getting more and more crazy." Amy added worriedly.

"Also, there is a prophecy I fear that may be coming true which involves Sonic and this Rusca, because time is running short for both the human world and Sonic's world as well." Cosmo added gravely.

Team Chris shared concerned glances over this new information they were hearing, before they turned back to Sonic with Chris saying. "Sonic, I think you should be more careful with the red hedgehog guy you mentioned. Like extremely careful. Remember what happened when you almost turned competely dark?"

"Uh, yeah...that's something that always scares me." Sonic nodded, shuddering over the memory of that time again. "I'm just glad it didn't create a monster like what happened in the past, or else we'd be in real big trouble."

Just before the conversation could continue, Sonic's group noticed something quickly approach before the black blur which everyone soon heard the whoosh and quickly turned to see what it was, only to gasp in shock and disbelief, just as to add to the surprise, Rouge, Topaz and Omega arrived moments later, saw a familiar black hedgehog no one even expected to see again, especially Sonic as the blue hedgehog had been the last to have seen the Ultimate Life-form to sacrifice himself for his safety.

"N-No way...!" Amy muttered in disbelief, as she and Cosmo both covered their mouths with their hands.

"It's...!" Cream trailed off.

"Hey, isn't that-!" Knuckles cut himself off, unable to believe to not only see Rouge as well as Topaz and the stupid robot that got them into this mess, but also the hedgehog that framed the teenage hero.

"Sonic! It's...!" Tails squeaked, his eyes nearly popping out out of their sockets.

"...S-Shadow!?" Chris exclaimed, feeling faint as confusion and relief washed over him.

Sonic's mouth was agape at first, memories of when his bitter rival had punched him away from the explosion to save his life while sacrificing his own to save the galaxy washed over him, and even his sacrifice to save Earth before that returned. Relief and happiness filled his heart, the gap and hole in his heart that were left open when both Cosmo and Shadow were both claimed to be gone forever now filling up and restoring it. No longer would he have to live in the guilt of failing to save them, but had the chance to prevent himself to repeat those mistakes now. As much as felt like crying, he wasn't the kind of guy to be all mushy and he wasn't that close to his black double.

"Huh..." The blue hedgehog muttered instead, before smirking in relief but seemingly calm at the same time. "Talk about stubborn and full of surprises."

Shadow in return smirked at Sonic, while Rouge held a sly smile which was also relief to see almost everyone else here, Omega and Topaz just stood as did the rest of teh blue hedgehog's friends who didn't know what else to do or say about this sudden return.

While the Chaotix were still investigating and were unknowingly meet up with the rest of the group, Sonic and his friends were about to learn more about each other's situations and knowledge as this was a very tensing reunion.

What would happen next is anyone's guess.

---

A/N: After a long delay to continue this story and struggling to finish this chapter, at last almost all of the teams are together and I promise you that the Chaotix will meet up with Team Sonic, Team Rose, Team Chris and Team Dark who now have added Topaz into their team, and with six Chaos Emeralds found, they only have one more to find, but the fight towards Dr. Narasu and Dr. Eggman is nearing...or is it? And who is the red-eyed being watching over Sonic's team?

Only time will tell, and the revelation of that may be revealed in the next chapter or the chapter or two after that. We'll see what happens.

See you later!