“I’m not gonna come any closer,” Sonic reassured, turning fully to face the Eggman-creature and holding both his hands above his head in the universal gesture for surrender. He no longer had a hand placating Nine now, but he had to trust that his fox friend would not intervene. The Eggman-type looked like a cornered snake, coiled and poised to strike at the first sign of an attack. He kept looking past Sonic at Nine – probably because Nine looked like the bigger threat, with his badass mechanical tails. “Total accident,” Sonic answered before Nine could jump in, trying to draw the man’s attention back to him. “We’re just looking to get home.”

The blue hedgehog lowered his hands an inch, hopeful that he could talk them out of trouble and into a new friendship. Even Eggmen-types had to have friends, right? Unfortunately, whether the Eggman-person really would have caved and made friends was something Sonic and Nine would come to disagree over in the far future, since they never had a chance to find out. The front door flung open and a cannon wheeled into the doorframe. Nine started to yell something, but couldn’t finish the word before the air seemed to ripple toward them and a humming noise blasted from the barrel. The Eggman-type sank to the ground, clutching his stomach and groaning. Nine yelped and grabbed his own head with both hands, grinding his teeth, his mechanical tails twitching.

Sonic shivered, feeling like his bones were vibrating. He rolled himself into a ball, spun on the spot for a second and then launched himself at the cannon. It cracked on impact under his first spindash and splintered into pieces on the second. Sonic bounced to a stop on top of the rubble in the open doorway, clearly visible from both sides, and gave himself a little shake to get rid of the weird feeling the cannon noise had given him.

“Sonic!” Nine’s voice barked from behind him. Sonic glanced over his shoulder at his friend, who was up in the air and as far away from the door as possible, his organic tails spinning swiftly. “Get away from there!”

Unfortunately for Nine, turning had reminded Sonic about the Eggman-type. The latter was curled on the floor, retching. Sonic regarded him with concern while Nine smashed a back window with one of his still-twitching mechanical tails.

“Hey buddy,” Sonic called over to the man, “you okay?”