Chapter Text
"Is it done yet?"
"Nope. It needs a little more time to finish loading."
"How... 'bout... now!"
"Nope."
"Now?"
"Still loading."
Sonic huffed, flopping back onto the couch.
He was never that great at waiting. He was the action-guy! He did his best when he was moving around!
But right now all he could so was sit here while Tails tested his latest scanner.
Life had been a mess after the incident with the Eclipse Cannon. But things were finally calming down. Things were going back to normal... actually no, that was a lie.
As much as Sonic tried to ignore it, he couldn't hide from the truth.
Everything was different now.
Literally. Any time he looked up at the sky, the moon made certain he remembered. The bottom half irreversibly, cleanly cut through. Permanent scars from the eclipse cannon.
The cannon that would have completely destroyed all life on earth...
If it hadn't been for Shadow... and Eggman too.
Sonic wondered if things had been different, would Shadow still be here now? He only got to see a glimpse of who Shadow really was, when they got to talk on the moon, watching the sun slowly rise...
He wanted to beleive that Shadow was still out there. That somehow he managed to survive after saving everyone else. He at least deserved that much. Right?
Well, wherever Shadow was, Sonic hoped he was having a nice time. That at least made Sonic feel a little better with how things turned out.
For now he and his family were left to pick up all the other broken peices.
Like the Chaos Emeralds. After the Eclipse Cannon, they realized quickly that Sonic didn't have the emeralds. They had been left with Shadow, up in space.
But Knuckles didn't beleive that they had been destroyed. He had a deep connection to the gems, and could still feel their energy on earth. It was weak, and fractured. But still there.
Tails had then gone ahead and created some sort of device that should be capable of tracking the chaos-signal being directly emitted by the emeralds. If he was able to narrow down his readings, they could use the scanner to track them each down. And once they had all seven emeralds they could restore the Master Emerald.
But none of that could happen until Tails was able to get his scanner up and running. All the Wachowski's were together in the living room. Milling about while waiting to see what the scanner would say.
Even Knuckles was starting to get antsy, just watching the progress bar make a slow crawl across the computer screen.
"How much longer, Fox?"
"Come on you guys. I know I'm good, but it isn't that simple! My machine has to scan the entire planet. It's gonna take more than a couple minutes." Tails tried to argue.
All before his scanner gave a tiny PING!
"Oh wait, nevermind! I think we have our first reading!"
Immedietly everyone ran closer to see what the results might be. Though Tom had to guard his still-injured arm before it got jostled in all the commotion.
"What's it say, honey?" Maddie asked. Eyes quickly scanning over the chains of code flying across Tails's screen.
"It should tell us... right... now!"
Sure enough the code went away and a screen popped-up. It showed a cgi model of the earth, quickly rotating until it settled on a single point. Somewhere in Northwest America.
"It looks like my scanner was able to track a significant amount of chaos energy to this exact point." Tails explained, reading over his results. "The energy appears to be emitting from a small town in Oregon. It has to be a chaos emerald!"
Looking at the rest of his family, a smile came to Tom's face. One that quickly spread to Sonic too as he realized what this meant.
"Sounds like we're going on a roadtrip!"
While Sonic and Tails cheered, Knuckles just looked a little confused.
"A trip on the road... is that not the purpose of all roads?"
"Yeah, but roadtrips are extra fun!" Sonic went to explain, slinging an arm around his brother's shoulders. "Just you and your best-buds, out on the open road! Meeting new people! Seeing new things! It'll be great, you're gonna love it!"
Maddie pulled out her phone to check the distance with gps, frowning. "You boys sure? It's going to be a long trip. 15 hours."
"We can stop for the night once we get to Washington." Tom reasoned, "Come on, what's the worst that could happen?"
"Well for starters you could reagrivate your arm. Then there's G.U.N., plus anyone else who might be after these stones." Maddie pointed out.
"If they even know about them." Sonic said. "Tails here is the best of the best! I doubt anyone else even has scanner that could track these things!"
"And if there are, we promise to be super careful." Tails said.
"As warriors we made a solemn vow to protect the Master Emerald." Knuckles added. "And I shall see to it that any enemies we come across on this road-trip will be handled swiftly."
Tom leaned, over too, trying his best to make puppy-eyes. "Please? The Cheif won't let me back until I'm more healed-up. I got nothing else going on."
Maddie looked to all her boys before sighing, hands resting on her hips.
"... You're lucky I saved-up all my vacation-days at the clinic."
As all the boys went to cheer, Maddie put her hands up, making them pause.
"But if anything doesn't feel right, or someone gets hurt, then we are going straight home. Agree?"
A small round of "Agreed!" And "Yes, Ma'am!" 's went around the room.
"...alright then. We'll head out tommorow." She pointed to Sonic and his brothers beforw turning to Tom. "You boys go get some bags packed. Tom and I have to make some phone calls, let everyone know we'll be out."
While Maddie went outside, cellphone in hand, Tom followed, teasing. "You sure I need to call anyone? Wade won't even let me handle the phones..."
Meanwhile Sonic, Knuckles and Tails all ran upstairs to pack their bags.
Pulling out a backpack, Sonic went to grab several jackets, hats and scarfs.
"Are you expecting a cold-front?" Tails asked.
"No, but these make quick disguises." Sonic explained. "By now everyone knows what we look like. But we can bring these. You know, just in case we freak anyone out."
Knuckles scoffed, crossing his arms. "If any humans find themselves disturbed by my physical appearance, that's their problem. Not mine."
"Fair enough." Sonic decided, quickly jumping to a new subject. Zipping back and forth between the bookshelf and some boxes stacked in the corner, tossing in all sorts books, cd's and cards games into his bag. "Gonna bring these! And these! And definetly these! Can't have a proper roadtrip without some good mixtapes!"
Knuckles watched him, raising an eyebrow. "Brother? I beleive you may be... overpacking. This journey is only going to take two days."
"Trust me, when you drive through the mountains and the internet gets spotty, you're gonna want something to do!" Sonic replied. "Plus who knows what- uhhh, where are we going again?"
"Gravity Falls?" Tails replied.
"Heh, that's cute. But who knows what sort of reception they got in Gravity Falls! They might not even have electricity!"
"Really?" Tails said, a little shocked.
"You'd be suprised." Sonic said. "Good news is our Team always travels in style!"
"I don't care how we travel." Knuckles countered, his own bag already packed and ready to-go. "All that matters is re-acquiring the emeralds."
"Don't worry, we'll get them!" Sonic replied.
"Are you sure?" Tails worried. "The entire planet saw what happened with the Eclipse Cannon. Who knows how many other people are looking for those emeralds now?"
"Well good news is, we have the smartest little brother in the world!" Sonic said, going in to ruffle Tail's hair. "You'd have to be a super-genius to trace those chaos-signals!"
That made Tails laugh, if only a little. "You really think that?"
"Think it? I know it!" Sonic boasted, "We got this in the bag! How hard could it be?"
Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away, out on the open sea, a pair of brothers were carefully watching a scanner of their own.
"There it is again!" Dr. Stanford Pines gasped, pointing to the radar. "Right there!"
His brother, Stanley, just rolled his eyes with a huff. "Yeah, yeah. It beeped when it should have booped. So what?"
"This scanner is designed to polarize weirdness-emissions from across the globe." Ford explained.
"Yeah, and Gravity Falls is the weirdest place on the planet? That's like saying water's wet."
"And that's precisely why I calibrated this system to disregard the current-emissions emitting from that town." Ford argued. "The only reason it would be going up that dramatically is if... if something happened!"
Finally, the weight of Ford's words sunk in for Stan. "Ok. How bad is it? Bad enough to cancel on the siren-convention?"
The steely look Ford sent Stan's way said it all.
Sighing, Stan went back towards the steering wheel. Slowly turning the ship completley around.
"Sirens aren't even that neat. They're just bird-ladies who sing. And hey, look on the bright side! Now we get to see the kids a whole lot sooner!"
Ford could admit that, even while his nerves were still on high-alert. "Yes. It will be nice to see Mabel and Dipper again. I wonder how they faired with their first year of high school."
"Probably faired a whole lot better than us." Stan said with a chuckle. "Beats having to save the world all the time, right?"
Ford frowned, eyes glance up toward the sky for a single moment. After the U.S. government blew a chunk of the Moon, he wasn't sure when the world might be in need of saving next. And who should be responsible.
"Well, some people tend to do that better than others..." Ford muttered quietly.
Still, despite it being a lot sooner than either of them expected, Ford found himself releived to be sailing back home. He looked forwards to seeing all his family and friends.
And he looked forwards to tackling this latest mystery head-on.
Stan stepped over to Ford, slugging an arm across his shoulder and giving him a quick hug.
"Next stop, Gravity Falls!"