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solalunar-eclipse · 3 months

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Sonic Boom - S3E16

Chapter title: Sinking Feeling

Summary: Finally, things seem to be going back to normal for our heroes. Unfortunately, for them, 'normal' involves dealing with Eggman's usual schemes…and this time is no exception. Simultaneously, Tails struggles to deal with the damage dealt to his plane during last episode's events. ((SO sorry this took me so long to upload!! As an apology, here's a double update for you all. Hope you enjoy!))

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[Camera opens on Tails’s workshop, before cutting to the interior.]

Tails groaned, banging his head lightly against the side of his beloved plane. “Soniiiiiiiic, why are none of my fixes working? She’s still not acting right!”

The blue hedgehog in question hopped up from his seat on the other side of the room, where he’d been lounging and goofing around on his brother’s computer. “Uh, Tails? You do remember that out of the two of us, I am very much not the engineer here, right?”

“I know, I know, I just need a fresh perspective, or—or something! Anything! I’ve been trying all sorts of ways to repair the internal wiring, and nothing’s helping!”

Sonic frowned, looking over the plane with a critical eye. “You said it got busted up just a couple ‘a days ago, right? When we took it up to Roboken to help out Shadow?”

“Yeah. I’d never really expected an occasion where I needed to use the plane’s vertical grappling system for that length of time, and when I took off the undercarriage covering, it was a little bent out of shape. But it wasn’t hooked up to many of the main systems, so it shouldn’t have damaged anything. Unless…” Tails froze suddenly, his eyes growing very wide.

“You thought of something, pal?” Sonic asked, once the fox had stared off into space for an amount of time he found suitably concerning.

“Yes, but—that just can’t be it! If I’m right, then that means the grappling system damaged the motor that runs the entire plane! How were we even able to fly down from Roboken if that was the case?!” Tails rushed back over to the underside of his plane, rooting around amongst the wires. “I didn’t even check this because it seemed downright impossible!”

After a moment or two of searching, he went still. “Well. Looks like we sure did find the problem.” the fox sighed, stepping out from under the plane. “I’d found a way to use the extra heat from the combustion chamber to power the winch that controls the grappler—basically, I turned an inefficient thing into a helpful thing.” He simplified his explanation quickly when Sonic’s eyes threatened to glaze over, remembering that he wasn’t talking to another engineer. “But, because the system was attached to the motor, when it got pulled out of place, it dragged the motor out of alignment along with it. We just got lucky that when the grappler snapped back into place, it kind of shoved the motor back in there—but that was only a temporary fix, and it’d be incredibly unsafe to rely on it any longer!”

“Soooo…long story short, the plane can’t fly anymore?” Sonic asked, raising one eyebrow.

“Yeah.” Tails said sadly. “The plane can’t fly anymore.”

[Sonic reaches out and pats Tails’s shoulder awkwardly, while the fox looks up at his plane with drooping ears.]

[Cue intro sequence…which goes off without a hitch, just like last episode! Everybody gets their own cool intro, as per usual, plus the team shot at the end.]

[Dr. Eggman does his old villain reveal, complete with the green screen malfunctioning. However, this time it’s caused by a small electrical mishap, which transforms comically quickly into a full-blown electrical fire. Eggman looks like he’s extremely tired and strongly considering just giving up on the reveal entirely.]

[The intro then continues on, before ending with the title of this week’s episode.]

Later that morning, Tails could be found pacing back and forth on the sandy beach outside Knuckles’s house, muttering to himself. While he thought and planned, Knuckles and Sticks had a splash fight in the water, Amy read a nice novel under an umbrella, and Sonic…Sonic was burying Shadow under the sand. He had let the blue hedgehog dig him a hole and cover him up completely, since he didn’t need to breathe, and was enjoying his respite from the sun. (He was technically a computer, after all, and computers were notoriously incompatible with hot weather. Why he’d been given black fur in spite of this fact, he never understood.)

After Amy had made it through two chapters of her book, only to still have Tails pacing back and forth out of the corner of her eye, she sighed and sat up. Placing a bookmark in her book and laying it off to the side, she got to her feet and called her friend’s name. “Tails? Why don’t you come over and sit with me for a while?”

The fox didn’t respond, too lost in his thoughts to hear her, so she tried again. “Tails! Are you alright?”

When he failed to respond yet again, Amy stepped right into his path, forcing him to notice her or walk directly into her. She folded her arms, waiting for him to look up.

…as she probably should have expected, he instead ran into her and nearly knocked both of them over.

“Oh no! I’m so sorry, Amy, I didn’t see you there!” the fox exclaimed, practically wringing his hands as he looked up at her.

She sighed, smiling wanly down at him. “Tails, it’s perfectly alright…just please take a break from all your pacing and stressing. The beach is a place to relax, not to worry yourself more!”

He sighed, biting his lip with one of his small fangs. “I know, I just feel so bad that my baby can’t fly! She’s grounded, and there’s nothing I can think of to fix her.”

“Well, I’ve actually read that not consciously thinking about a problem can help your brain figure it out faster.” Amy said brightly, always eager to provide her friends with helpful advice. “It’s something about shifting the issue out of your conscious mind that helps people work out what’s wrong.”

“Wait, really? That’s kinda cool, honestly! I guess it couldn’t hurt to give it a try, especially if it means that I’ll get things fixed faster…” Tails conceded.

Right as he admitted that, Knuckles and Sticks came rushing out of the ocean, violently startling everyone else with the way they were shrieking their lungs out. “C-c-c-COLD!!” the badger wailed, diving onto the hot sand and splaying their limbs out. Knuckles followed suit, sighing in relief.

“Aw, don’t tell me you guys are scared of the water now!” Sonic complained. “I need all of you to keep an eye out for me when we’re dealing with that, not getting freaked out too!”

“First of all, Sticks said ‘cold’, not ‘aaaaah’, so we can safely presume that neither they nor Knuckles are frightened.” Shadow corrected him dryly, having sat up at all the noise. His usual smug behavior was slightly offset by all the sand still in his quills, though. “Second—you’re scared of water?”

Sonic froze up abruptly, his smile far too wide and strained. “Ahahaha, well, you see…”

“That’s not important right now.” Amy cut them off before they could start bantering and derail the situation entirely. “The ocean always feels cold compared to the sand, what’s so different about it now? Surely it can’t be that bad!” she insisted, walking over and dipping a toe in—only to pull it back with a yelp.

“That’s not cold, that’s practically freezing! What’s going on here?” she wondered aloud.

Moments later, her question was at least partly answered…when the ocean froze over entirely.

The entire team stared out at the ocean in disbelief, hardly able to process the sight of their beloved blue water now transformed into a mass of cold white ice. Sonic was perhaps the only one who wasn’t utterly horrified, muttering “I’m not sure if that’s better or worse…” to himself instead.

“Tails, can you analyze the frozen water?” Shadow asked after a moment, snapping everyone else out of their stupor. “We need to learn what caused this as quickly as possible.”

“Ah! Yes, right away!” The fox eagerly pulled out his multi-purpose device, shifting it into scanning mode and waving it over some of the ice. “Huh…this says the water has strangely high concentrations of liquid nitrogen. No wonder it froze over so fast, liquid nitrogen can freeze almost anything!”

“Now all we need to know is who did this and how to fix it, and we can get our beach back!” Amy said, punching a fist into her other hand.

Tails sighed. “To do that, we’re going to need to track the source of this nitrogen. And since we can’t see what’s causing it from here, we’re going to need to cross the ice.”

“We’re not gonna be walking out on that, right?” Sticks asked warily. “‘Cause we don’t know how thick that ice is, and I’m not about ta have it break under me and wind up back in there!”

“Yeah, sounds like we definitely, absolutely shouldn’t go out there. Like, ever.” Sonic blurted out quickly, clearly very eager not to risk his safety on anything even remotely water-related.

Tails’s ears drooped. “If my plane was working, we could just fly out and see what was the matter, but now, we won’t be able to search at all!”

Knuckles frowned, thinking hard. “What’s wrong with it again anyway?”

“The engine is completely busted. It’s unusable, and without it, nothing else will work!” Tails cried, frustrated. “It’s not exactly easy to find plane engines out here, and I set the Build-It Box to update before I knew I’d need it, so I can’t even use that!”

“What about your other plane?” Shadow asked. “I figured you just liked this one best, surely the other one is still functional at least?”

Everyone turned to stare at him. “His what now?” Sticks said, voicing what the entire team was thinking.

“The…the other plane.” Shadow said hesitantly, shifting his stance and crossing his arms tightly in response to all the eyes on him. “The purple one, the Tornado. I saw you using it while we fought L—that idiot snake.”

“Oh yeah!” Tails’s eyes widened in recognition. “It’s sad, but that one crashed and sank in the lake. It’s basically unrecoverable, unfortunately. We’d need to do some relatively delicate work to get the engine out, and we can’t pull that off while wearing our diving suits.”

Shadow raised an eyebrow at that. “And? I don’t need a diving suit.”

“Ohmygosh, you’re right!” Tails gasped, visibly perking up. “Does that mean you could get the engine out of the Tornado for us?”

“Indeed it does.” Shadow inclined his head slightly, a proud smile on his face.

“Well then, what are you guys waiting for?” Sticks asked. “Let’s get that thing so we can have our beach day back!”

[cut to commercials]

When the show returned, all six heroes were standing at the edge of the lake, looking down into its depths. Sonic was much farther back than everyone else, still having vivid memories of nearly drowning in this particular body of water.

Tails pointed down into the lake. “This is the side we climbed out on after the plane crashed, which means it must be closer to this end of the lake. How long can you stay underwater before things start to…go wrong?” he asked hesitantly.

“I’ve never tested it to that extent, but in theory, I can stay down for an indefinite period of time. The only issue would be if I sustain an injury deep enough to expose my wiring.” Shadow explained, weighing the screwdriver that Tails had given him in his hands.

“So just be careful down there, and everything should be fine, right?” Amy said, telegraphing her movements as she gently placed a hand on Shadow’s shoulder.

“Exactly.” Shadow said, smiling faintly at her concern. “Now then, I should probably get going before the ice grows any thicker.” And with that, he dove into the water. Sonic flinched and his eyes widened, standing on tip-toe in an effort to see better into the lake without actually having to get any closer.

Beneath the lake’s surface, Shadow swam deeper and deeper towards the bottom. The lake was strangely shaped—it was almost akin to a massive well, perfectly circular but also extremely deep. It took Shadow nearly a minute and a half of swimming just to make it to where the plane was mired in sand at the bottom. (Thankfully, the show was able to represent this in a carefully edited sequence of less than five seconds, otherwise precious airtime would have been wasted.)

He quickly managed to unscrew the paneling near the front of the plane, pulling it aside with ease to reveal the water-filled inner workings of the Tornado. And then, with slow, careful movements, he began to remove the engine from its housing.

Meanwhile, above the water, Sonic had already begun to pace back and forth on the sand.

“You know he’s going to be fine, right?” Amy asked. “He doesn’t even need to breathe down there.”

“Sure, he doesn’t have to breathe, but so many other things could go wrong! What if he gets zapped by the Tornado and shuts down? Or if he gets stuck in the wires and can’t swim back up? What if there’s quicksand and he’s sinking under it right now?!?” Sonic cried, his voice pitching higher and his steps getting faster with each new nightmare scenario.

Suddenly, Knuckles stepped in front of him and held the hedgehog’s upper arms lightly, effectively stopping him in his tracks. “Then we’ll go rescue him! The five of us together can get him out of any problem for sure.”

Sonic sighed, looking away. “I sure hope you’re right about that, Knux…”

Suddenly, his ears pricked up at a call from Tails. “Guys, look! I can see Shadow swimming back up now!”

Moments later, Shadow burst out of the lake, the jets from his skates vaporizing its surface into an impressive cloud of steam. Landing with a roll, he stood and presented one perfectly intact biplane engine to Tails with a self-satisfied grin.

“Woo-hoo!” the fox cheered. “I’ll install this right away, and then we can get to fixing the ocean!”

“Yay…more water…” Sonic muttered to himself, his smile shaky.

[cut to commercials again]

Once Tails had fixed up his plane, the team all climbed onto it, having to struggle only a little to all fit. Sonic was seated securely in the back seat, Amy and Knuckles took the wings, and Shadow and Sticks clung to the landing struts as the yellow biplane soared over the massive sheets of ice. “Do you see anything yet?” Tails shouted. “I can’t look for the machine, I have to focus on flying!”

Amy held a miniature pair of binoculars up to her eyes, squinting out at the horizon. Sticks did the same with her hands, while Shadow simply shook his head and increased the zoom on his sight slightly. Despite his advantages, however, it turned out to be Amy who found it first. “Tails, turn left! It’s out that way!” she cried, pointing off into the distance.

The fox fiddled with some settings on his plane, trying to scan for any strange electromagnetic readings…and suddenly, his scanner began to beep loudly. “Thanks, Amy! I’m definitely picking something strong up in that direction!”

As the team drew closer, Shadow frowned in an effort to make something out—and then rolled his eyes, pressing a palm to his forehead. “It’s the doctor.” he announced, rubbing at the space between his eyes in exasperation.

“I mean, who else would it really be?” Sonic quipped, smirking. His expression abruptly fell, however, when Tails dipped the plane lower, making as though he was coming in for a landing. “Uh, Tails? We’re supposed to be staying up here in the air where it’s safe, right? Thin ice and all?”

“Sorry, Sonic, but I’ve checked this area on the radar. All the ice is thick enough to support our weight and the plane’s. We need to get in closer if we’re gonna disable this machine!” his little brother called out.

“Why did I ever decide to become a hero again?” Sonic lamented, trying his best not to look down as the plane slowed and landed a cautious distance away from the machine and the Eggmobile hovering near it.

The rest of the team hopped off the plane, wobbling a little but generally managing to find their balance. Sonic, however, stayed safely inside, unwilling to even so much as touch the ice.

“Oh ho! I see you’ve discovered my latest nefarious scheme!” Eggman declared proudly. “May I introduce to you…the Mean Freeze Machine!” He bowed with a flourish, gesturing to an odd tank with tubes feeding from it into the ocean. “As you can see, this particular creation of mine is rapidly covering the ocean in ice, making everyone’s beach days just a little extra cool.” He allowed himself a smug smile at that particular pun, despite the fact that it even pushed past Sonic’s hydrophobia to get him groaning. (At least it didn’t take more than a quick glower at Orbot to get him praising Eggman’s wit. Cubot’s remark of “I don’t get it?”, on the other hand, very nearly earned him a one-way ticket over the side of the vehicle.) “With this machine, I can hold everyone’s beach days hostage, effectively ruining what little appeal this island has! They’ll have to hand the village over to me if they want their precious ocean back!”

“You…you want to ruin people’s beach days?! That’s not cool AT ALL!” Sticks shrieked, launching themselves directly at the Eggmobile. Eggman promptly screamed and pulled up on the controls, but this didn’t deter the badger—they simply switched to attacking with a bow and arrow instead of teeth and claws.

“Tails, can you reverse the effects of the machine?” Shadow asked quickly.

“Yeah, I can, but you’re gonna need to buy me some time!” the fox replied, already flying over to the device and pulling out some of his tools.

“Oh no you don’t!” Eggman yelled, still dodging Sticks’s arrows. “Robots, attaaaaaaack!”

Shadow, Amy and Knuckles all sprung into action, dispatching any badniks that dared to approach Tails with ease. Sonic, however, found himself slipping and sliding every which way across the ice as he finally leapt out of the plane and attempted to run, not having Amy’s balance, Shadow’s skates, or Knuckles’s…well, knuckles…to use to ground himself.

While Sticks took a brief moment to reload, Eggman gloated at the sight of his archnemesis struggling to stay out of the robots’ way. “Having an ice time down there, Sonic?” he called.

The blue hedgehog growled to himself through gritted teeth, his ears flicking back briefly in frustration. He was making an embarrassment of himself in front of all his friends!

Before anyone could look his way, he was thankfully spared that indignity when Tails cried, “I got it! Now we’ve just gotta keep Eggman away until most of the ice reverses itself!”

“Nice work, pal!” Sonic cheered. “That can’t be too—” He was abruptly cut off by a loud creaking sound, as though a giant had just stepped on a loose floorboard.

And then…slowly but surely…the ice began to break apart.

“Oh, shiiiiiAAAAH!” Sonic screamed, abruptly dropping to all fours as his particular section of ice began to wobble in the rapidly melting water. “No no no no no, not again! Don’t tilt, just please don’t tilt…” he chanted under his breath, splaying himself out like a starfish in a desperate attempt to maintain his balance.

Tails jumped up, getting airborne as quickly as possible in an attempt to save his brother—but then, his attention was drawn away by Orbot and Cubot bickering as they attempted to sabotage his plane, having just been dropped off there by a nearby Eggman (“Be useful for once and don’t let them get away!” he was yelling) while the doctor continued to dodge Sticks’s furious attacks. Frantically, he looked back and forth, uncertain of what to do.

“Tails!” Shadow barked, dropping into a defensive stance. “You defend the plane! Rose, Knuckles, guard the machine. I’ll get Sonic.”

The fox hesitated briefly. “Promise?”

“Of course.” Shadow assured him.

And with that, Tails flew off and began to shoo Orbot and Cubot away from his plane, rapidly running some pre-flight checks and ensuring that they hadn’t dealt any significant damage even as the ice floe shrank around him. Meanwhile, Shadow used his skates to leap across the various pieces of ice, resorting to Chaos Snap when the distance was too great.

Before long, he’d landed on Sonic’s patch of ice—and abruptly regretted it when his weight made the surface wobble and the blue hedgehog proceeded to scream loudly enough to overload even his audio processors. “Sonic, you’re not dying!” he exclaimed, cautiously making his way over to the terrified hero.

“Yes I am!” Sonic cried, shaking violently and pressing himself a little more flat against the ice as Shadow reached for him, refusing to be moved for fear it would tip him into the ocean.

Shadow sighed, getting down on one knee next to him. “Do you really think I’m going to let anything happen to you?”

“I dunno.” Sonic muttered petulantly. “Can you defeat all the water?”

“I don’t need to do that. What I can do is dive as deep as necessary, Chaos Spear any creature, and swim without surfacing for hours. I will keep you safe, I promise. Just please let me get you out of here.” Shadow insisted, his voice surprisingly gentle.

“…you really mean it?” Sonic asked, looking worriedly up at Shadow, his ears pinned back and everything.

“Of course I do.” Shadow said. Then, without any warning whatsoever, he picked up Sonic in a princess carry, before skating and teleporting them back across the ice to where Tails had just finished warming up his plane.

As Shadow set Sonic down in the back seat of the biplane, the blue hedgehog turned slightly green and clamped a hand over his mouth, groaning in discomfort. “Unless it’s to get me outta the water, never teleport me like that again…I don’t know how you handle it.”

Shadow shook his head, snickering at Sonic’s plight. “Hmph. Are you finally admitting that I’m more skilled than you?”

“No!” he yelped, leaping to his feet (but notably staying inside the plane). “I just…don’t need that dumb teleportation stuff to get around, so I never bothered with it!”

Shadow was about to retort when Tails cut in. “Uh, guys? Maybe we should focus on actually getting in the air so we can pick everyone else up? Preferably before the rest of the ice melts?”

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right, Tails, that’s a great idea. Let’s do that right now.” Sonic said quickly, sitting down again.

The fox revved up his plane, taking off into the air, while Shadow teleported up to one of the landing struts, where he could reach down to help pull the others aboard. Amy and Knuckles resumed their prior positions atop the wings quickly, but Sticks complained bitterly about not getting to properly wreak vengeance upon Eggman for ruining her beach day and for making those terrible puns.

“At least his machine’s busted now, I guess.” she muttered, watching it sink to the bottom of the ocean as the last of the ice melted away.

“No! My Mean Freeze Machine!” Eggman wailed. “I put so much work into that! You’ll pay for this!”

“But I can’t! I don’t even have any money!” Knuckles called over his shoulder, as the team flew away.

“I didn’t mean it literally!” the doctor yelled after them, even though they were long out of earshot.

“I knew that, Boss!” Orbot said hopefully.

Eggman folded his arms and huffed. “Well, I wasn’t talking to you.”

Orbot drooped sadly, electing not to say anything else to his incensed creator.

…

Now that the day was saved, the six heroes were back on the beach, and most of them were having fun once again. Sticks and Tails were building a terrifyingly well-constructed sand fortress, while Amy and Shadow inspected and identified the various fish that could be found in the shallows around the area.

Sonic, meanwhile, was lying under an umbrella and trying (read: failing) not to cringe every time the sound of the waves crashing on the shore reached his ears. Knuckles, who had been neatly organizing some shells he’d found, paused when he noticed this, coming over to sit next to his friend.

“Sonic?” he began, prompting the hedgehog to sit up in a flash and shoot him a too-big smile.

“Hey, Knux! I’m doing fine, a hundred percent a-okay! How ‘bout you?” he said, his tone falsely chipper.

“You remember what I said earlier, when Shadow was in the lake? About how he’d be fine, ‘cause we were all there to rescue him if he needed it?”

“Uh, yeah, that was just an hour ago. What about it?” Sonic asked, confused.

Knuckles smiled at his friend. “He’s not the only one we’re all here to rescue. You know that, right?”

Sonic looked up at the echidna for a moment, then over at his friends. There was Tails, who had pulled him from that very same lake, and Amy, who had honestly done her best to help him by finding him swimming lessons. Sticks had insane survival skills, Shadow could hold his breath forever, and Knuckles…Knuckles would be there to ground him and remind him of everything his friends could do when they really put their minds to it.

The hero smiled, lying back again on his towel, but without any of the tension from before.

“Yeah. I do.”

#sonic boom #sonic the hedgehog #shadow the hedgehog #miles tails prower #knuckles the echidna #amy rose #sticks the badger #sonic boom: ancient secrets #sol's fanfiction #the main reason this took so long to upload was because...#i've finally finished drafting all the chapters!!#i just need to edit them now #but also as you may have noticed i am part of the sth big bang now :D #so further work on this will have to be interspersed with making sure i meet the deadline for that #but hopefully i'll be able to finish this fic soon!! at last!

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