#that one scene with eggman going 'i have an impeccable sense of taste' and shadow saying 'all you'll be tasting is dirt' | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

solalunar-eclipse · 2 years

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Sonic Boom - S3E6

Episode title: Roll With It

Word count: about 4200 words

AN: Thank you so much to everybody who’s left comments on this fic so far! Whether I’ve been able to respond to you or not, please know that your replies and tags fuel me and help me continue writing both this and my other stories :)

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Tails stalked back and forth across the living room of his house, both tails swishing wildly in agitation. “I can’t believe it!” he cried, turning to speed-walk back the other way once more. “Three times in one week already!”

Sonic sat (though the position he was in could only be called sitting with some significant stretching of the definition) upside-down on the couch, his feet thrown over the backrest as his eyes tracked his brother’s movement. “It’s not like they’ve actually taken anything yet, have they?”

“That’s not the point!” Tails insisted, whirling around to face Sonic. “The point is that someone is breaking into my workshop and moving things around! My workshop!”

“Maybe you oughta have a stakeout or something, then.” the hero suggested, his legs kicking idly.

“They’ll notice, since they’ve evaded my security systems this far.” Tails huffed, glowering irritably at the floor.

“Well….” Sonic said, swinging back to an upright (yet still lounging) position, “ooh, headrush.” He winced, lowering his head briefly.

“Anyway, what I was going to say was that since you’re so good at laying traps,” and here he leveled a distinctly flat stare at Tails, “maybe you could use that on this intruder.”

“You’re right!” the fox exclaimed, not even a hint of shame crossing his expression at the reference to his last attempt at trap-building. “I’ve gotta go do that right now!”

And so he sprinted off to the workshop, leaving Sonic still lounging on the sofa.

“This is gonna end well.” the hero muttered skeptically, looking directly into the camera.

[The same intro sequence plays as usual…with one minor change—all of Tails’s scenes are him interacting with Shadow in some form or another.

When Eggman’s villain reveal occurs, his background rapidly cycles through about ten different images (at least half of which are memes and one is a generic Windows XP wallpaper) before settling on a white background with a logo of two yellow tails. Eggman screams in rage before shutting off the camera.]

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

That night, Tails slept peacefully in his bed while Sonic lay on the hanging couch out front, his feet propped up on a foam pillow. (It had taken them ages to get that way, though, since the fox had been fully prepared to stay up and wait for the intruder to try again until Sonic was forced to make him settle down and go to sleep.)

[Camera cuts to the inside of the workshop, showing a sliver of light on the floor with a shadow slipping across it.]

Meanwhile, the mysterious person snuck into the building once again. Carefully, they avoided the various cameras, alarms, and casually scattered electronics, sneaking towards a single shelf in the back. Hidden in the darkness, they didn’t make a single sound as they stepped closer and closer to their target…

…but, entirely without realizing it, they accidentally stood on a minuscule wire laid across the floor.

Machinery began to move in absolute silence as the person continued to creep forward. Well-oiled cogs turned and wiring unspooled as the intruder reached out their hand. Yet suddenly, despite all of the sensory evidence suggesting their safety, they stopped. Their ears twitched, and they tilted their head as though they had noticed something.

A single click rang out as a switch flipped, and the intruder startled violently…

[Camera cuts to the outside of the workshop as a half-stifled cry rings out for a moment.]

[Slow fade to morning.]

“Sonic!” Tails yelled, racing out of his room and shaking the hanging couch wildly. “Sonic, I caught them! I caught them!”

The hero looked up from where he had been thrown to the floor, limbs sprawled in a tangle of blue and sports tape. “Huh?” he asked intelligibly.

“I said,” Tails repeated impatiently, waving his Miles Electric around, “I caught the person who’s been sneaking into my workshop! We gotta go see who it is!”

That seemed to wake Sonic up a bit more, as he began to stand up with some urgency. “Alright then, Tails, let’s go.” he sighed, privately expecting it to be an irate villager of some kind or another who clearly hadn’t thought their actions through well enough.

Tails pushed open the door cautiously, revealing a perfectly normal workshop…given that the mess of machinery and the smaller version of Domepocalypse attached to the ceiling qualified as relatively “normal” for his workshop, of course.

The fox frowned. “I don’t see anything in here! It better not have triggered by mistake.”

Sonic squinted. All he could see inside the force field was some sort of ball, which almost seemed to be—

Black and red…

“No way.” he said, a grin spreading across his face. “No way!”

“For the love of Chaos if you want to keep your nose attached to your face you will not say another word.” Shadow snarled, uncurling and glaring down at the two through the purple sphere.

Sonic burst into laughter, making the other hedgehog growl and slowly drag his claws against the walls of the trap. “Wait, wait!” Sonic cried. “I’m not laughing at you, I’m not, I swear! I’m just…this is so not what I expected.”

“And what did you expect then, hedgehog?” Shadow sneered, though the rage in his voice began to subside.

“A villager or somethin’, mostly.” he admitted, while Tails hurried to the other side of the building and started fiddling with something on his computer.

“What are you doing?!” Shadow barked, a faint note of panic pitching his voice slightly higher than usual. His eyes fixed on the keyboard as his fists tightened helplessly.

Tails said nothing, but the striped hedgehog got his answer a second later when the force field dropped from the ceiling entirely without warning. A yell exploded from Shadow’s mouth briefly before he discovered that somehow, the force field had prevented him from breaking anything in his fall.

The two brothers made eye contact for a moment, surprised at the display of emotion, before turning to face Shadow. He seemed to be irate, embarrassed, and defensive all at once, but when neither of the two actually asked any questions, his face settled into a mask of indifference.

“Congratulations, you’ve caught me.” he said sarcastically. “Now what?”

“Why were you in my workshop?” Tails replied, hands on his hips.

“None of your business.” Shadow grumbled.

“Uh, it’s literally his place, dude.” Sonic replied, smirking. “I think that makes it his business.”

“Shut. Up.” the striped hedgehog huffed, folding his arms and looking away.

“I’m just sayin’, man—”

“Why do you insist on using those words?” Shadow interrupted, looking genuinely bewildered as well as irritated now. “Do you ever call anyone by their actual name?”

“I could ask you the same thing, hedgehog.” Sonic said smugly.

“That is an epithet! Those are entirely different circumstances!”

“Suuuure.” the hero said, making Shadow scoff in disgust.

“Fine then. Tails, I was here because I wanted to see what kind of technology you were creating in order to modify my combat techniques accordingly. Now will you let me go?”

“You didn’t take anything, did you?” the fox asked, but in a way that suggested he already knew the answer.

“No.” Shadow replied flatly.

“Then…no.” Tails said.

“What?” the hedgehog barked. “I just told you—”

“I know you didn’t! And if you had taken something, I would’ve left you in there longer than I’m going to. But as it is, the only thing I’m gonna subject you to is…friendship.”

Shadow raised a brow suspiciously.

“You’re going to spend half a day stuck with all five of us.”

“Let me out!” he barked suddenly, slamming his fists on the force field with increasing power.

Sonic, who had been watching this exchange with increasing amusement, suddenly stepped forward, all humor gone from his expression. “Hey, listen, man. I get it if you’re…what’s it called…classphobic?” he asked, frowning in confusion.

“Claustrophobic.” Tails corrected him.

“Whatever! I’m just saying, if you need more space or something, I bet we can figure that out.”

“It’s not that!” Shadow growled. “I merely refuse to be forced to endure your inane activities.”

“Oh! Well then trust me, Shads, there’s no worries there. You’re gonna have plenty of fun.” Sonic said, grinning.

“What did you just call me—!”

…

[Scene re-opens on Shadow inside the now moving force field.]

“Where did you even get those.” Shadow muttered, now resigned to his fate. He gestured towards the small machines attached to the bottom of Minidomepocalypse that kept it hovering an inch or two off the ground.

Tails looked back from where he was walking next to Sonic. The hero had attached a rope to one part of the force field and was now pulling it along with ease. “I reverse engineered it from old Ancient tech Amy found, actually!”

“Really.” Shadow muttered, one brow raised. “And how often, exactly, do you go searching for that kind of material?”

Tails shrugged. “Pretty often. Though I have to admit, we really did get lucky with Sonic’s mech.”

“Did you say you lot found an Ancient mech? Where?” Shadow asked, sitting up abruptly.

“Uh, just lying around in some cave—”

“Was it blue?”

“Maybe?” the fox said, wincing at Shadow’s tone.

“That was my cave, you know.” Shadow growled.

“Oops?” Tails smiled awkwardly.

“If you want, we can…we can give it back.” Sonic said reluctantly, clearly feeling a bit guilty now that he knew where it had come from.

Shadow frowned, thinking for a moment. “No. I’d have to actually find a place for it in my cave then. Just don’t blow anything up with it or I’ll take it away from you permanently.”

“Wow, bossy.” Sonic said, but it was punctuated with a wink and a quick smirk to show he meant no real harm.

Shadow merely rolled his eyes in response.

“Oh hey, look who’s over there!” Tails said wickedly, while Shadow groaned in despair.

“Ames! Knux! Sticks!” Sonic called, waving at them. “Check out who we got!”

Shadow leaned back against the force field with a sigh. (Leaning in exasperation was a carefully cultivated skill of his. There was an art to timing the movement and position just right.) “And yet, you still can’t use actual names.”

Amy’s eyes widened. “Shadow?! How did you guys get him in there?”

Sonic grinned. “It was all Tails, really. Turns out Shadow’s the one who’s been breaking into his workshop at night and moving stuff around.”

“Really?” she gasped.

Shadow frowned. “I left everything where I found it! How did you know anything had been moved?”

Tails’s eyes narrowed as he stepped up to the purple sphere. “I know where every single tool and every single piece of tech in my entire workshop is. It may not look like it, but all of the stuff in there has a very specific placement. If things are turned around or even on the wrong side, I know. Immediately.”

Shadow stood firmly in place despite the fox’s tirade, his arms folded protectively. “I believe that qualifies as overorganization.”

“Exactly!” Tails said proudly.

Shadow blinked twice, and then promptly gave up on trying to rationalize anything for the rest of the episode.

“So, what’re we doing today?” Sonic asked excitedly.

“What about the hunting game?” Sticks suggested, a dangerous glint in her eye.

“Uh…I’d do that, but I don’t think Shadow could follow us on his own.” the hero said.

“They hunt each other for sport. Why am I surprised….” Shadow mumbled in the background, his hands over his face.

“Let’s play soccer!” Knuckles suggested. “We haven’t done that in at least ten episodes, so it should be okay, right?”

All five were excited about that, so they started up a game—and nobody paid attention to Shadow’s grumbling in the background, of course. He remained on the sidelines while Sonic and Amy split the groups into ‘hedgehogs’ and ‘not hedgehogs’ teams, determined to prove that they could win against superior numbers.

By the time halftime came around, they were losing. Badly.

“Try kicking the ball at the goal more often.” Shadow said, his eyes glinting with amusement.

“You do it then, wise guy!” Sonic panted, hands on his knees.

“I would happily defeat you all in this paltry game, but as I’m sure you can see, I unfortunately cannot participate while inside this trap.”

Amy glared at him. “Are you mocking us?”

“Only a little.” Shadow replied archly.

“Well, at least he admitted it.” she sighed, turning to Sonic. “You ready for round two?”

“Yeah! Let’s do this!” he cheered, high fiving Amy.

They did lose in the end, but only barely, managing to scrape by with a score of 4-3. However, as the game had progressed, Shadow ended up beginning to participate as the referee solely out of frustration.

At first, he just called out a couple of times when the ball went out of bounds and it seemed like they were going to ignore it. As time went on, though, and the rules were not so much bent as twisted into a Möbius loop, he ended up shouting about the rules at every single one of them nearly all the time.

After they finished, he found himself yelling, “Do you always cheat this much?!”

(The resounding “YES!” he received in response did not improve his opinion of the team much.)

…

The team then dragged him along to the park, Sonic’s reasoning—paired with a particularly wicked grin—being that “Shadow could use some chill time in nature after that soccer game.”

The hedgehog in question had buried his face in his hands yet again and mumbled something about his sanity slowly draining away. Amy laughed.

“That tends to happen after a while.” she said, smiling sympathetically at him.

Shadow struggled to maintain his cool slouch against the walls of the force field in the face of his frustration, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes briefly before standing back upright. He scanned his surroundings in a desperate attempt to find some form of retaliation, and came to a rapid conclusion—evidently one he liked, too, given by his sudden smirk.

Suddenly, without warning, he curled into a ball and revved up a spindash, cycling around the sphere as fast as he could.

The rope attached to the force field tore out of Sonic’s hands and spun around so quickly it smacked him in the arm twice before he could even figure out what was happening. Shadow bounced back to his feet proudly, having switched directions halfway through to stop the rotation of Domepocalypse just as quickly as it had started.

“Hey!” Sonic pouted. “What was that for?”

“If you dare to mock me, you had better be prepared to face the consequences.” Shadow scoffed, looking down on the hero. “Even if I cannot move much inside this enclosure, I can still deal with you easily.”

“Man, you really need to calm down. Good thing we’re at the park already, huh?” Sonic shot back.

Shadow looked out over the crowd of shouting kids (and adults) currently occupying the space of grass within the confines of the village. Instantly, he turned his back on the scene, leaned forward until his head pressed against the force field, and sighed loudly in irritation.

Sonic then burst out laughing and remained that way for a good five minutes, at least.

…

“Okay, and that’s the town hall, where Mayor Fink does his work….” Amy said brightly. It had been her idea to take Shadow on a tour of the town, even if most of the others had grown rather bored by this point.

(“He’s never been here while not fighting before! This is a fantastic opportunity!” she’d insisted. “Yeah, an opportunity to make him want to burn the whole thing to the ground even more.” Sonic had said.)

“Your government is both corrupted and fails to perform its most vital duties. Excuse me if I am less than impressed.” Shadow replied drily.

Sticks gasped. “Finally! Somebody else with some sense about what really goes on behind closed doors! What kind of conspiracies do you think they’re planning?”

“Only ones that constitute a benefit for themselves and nobody else.” the striped hedgehog replied.

“Exactly!” the badger cried, instantly prepared to launch a single-person attack on the town hall. “We have to stop them!”

“Sticks, no!” Amy called, dragging them back to the group. “Nobody is destroying the town hall today!”

Sticks grumbled irritably in response.

“Anyway, over there is the library…” she continued hurriedly, only to receive another flat remark from Shadow.

“Yes, the library, whose librarian is both an active impediment to the distribution of knowledge and a failure of a pedant.”

Tails laughed at that. “He is, though! He keeps giving people looks if they say ‘who’ instead of ‘whom’, and I can’t even count the number of times he’s told me the ‘grown-up books’ are off limits.”

He turned away, muttering, “Actually, I can. It’s been at least fourteen.

“I just hide them in between some comic books and that works most of the time.” Tails added, shrugging it off. “At least those are fun to read too!”

“That is either incredibly clever or your librarian is incredibly idiotic.”

“Probably both, to be honest.”

“Aw, come on guys, I like the library!” Amy insisted, seeming disappointed.

“And you’re the only one who does.” Sonic replied smoothly, leaning on her shoulder.

“I never said I disliked the library, just the librarian.” Shadow replied, leaning sideways (since it was important to cross-train with different types of leaning) against the force field once more.

“You like the library? Lame.” Sonic shot back.

“I never said I liked it, either.”

Knuckles frowned, confused. “Wait…so you don’t like the library, but you also do like the library?”

“Exactly.” Shadow said, a distinct smugness in his voice.

Sonic and Amy both let out long-suffering sighs while Tails and Sticks fought back laughter. The fox in particular was surprised that Shadow was actually funnier than he had expected, and could in fact hold his own when faced with the combined chaotic energy of the group.

[Since it is impossible to properly convey what happened next through text, please imagine a really cool exploding noise here.]

Suddenly, an explosion scattered the five and sent Shadow’s force field flying. A maniacal laugh boomed across the street as the smoke cleared to reveal…

…Eggman, with bass-boosted speakers attached to his Eggmobile for the sole purpose of making his laugh sound more menacing.

Sonic snickered. “Speakers, Egghead? I think that counts as cheating.”

“Oh, shut it, you!” the doctor snapped. “I think they add a certain gravitas to my persona.”

“Oh wow, that’s a cool sound system!” Knuckles said, having missed the previous exchange entirely (although this time it wasn’t entirely his fault, as the explosion had left his…well, presumably he had ears that could have been ringing).

“Well thank you! At least someone appreciates my sense of taste.” Eggman said, still rather indignant.

“What taste?” Shadow scowled, stepping forward…minus any kind of purple shielding. “The only thing you’ll be tasting in a minute is the dirt, Eggman.”

“Wait—how did you break out of Domepocalypse?!” Tails cried. “I designed it to be indestructible!”

“It’s never held me before, Tails.” Shadow shot back, rolling his eyes. “Now then, doctor…” he cracked his knuckles. “…this is for trying to blow me up.”

He smacked the Eggmobile with a roundhouse kick that nearly sent it flying. (Which meant, apparently, that cracking his knuckles had been entirely for effect.) Inside, Eggman ground his teeth before roaring, “Robots! ATTACK!”

Amy sprinted into battle with a shout, swinging her hammer with forceful precision. Knuckles punched flying bee-bots out of the air while Sticks wielded her bo staff, fending off the ones on the ground. Tails took to the skies, defending the team from the robots nobody else could reach, while Sonic bounced around, spin-dashing badniks left and right.

Meanwhile, Shadow was…helping? Surprisingly enough, he actually seemed to be fighting Eggman as well, even if he abjectly refused to actively work with any of the members of the team. He mostly teleported around and used spindashes or kicks, but seemed to avoid performing any attacks like the Chaos Blast he’d used when angered earlier on in the season.

Whirling into another dash, Shadow ricocheted off a wall and nearly missed his mark—but then Sonic took it out instead.

Shadow was about to stalk over and yell at him when he noticed something odd: Sonic had left his own targets free for the other hedgehog to destroy in exchange. He attacked them entirely on instinct, but found that he couldn’t quite manage to work out what had just happened, somehow.

The striped hedgehog hardly had a moment to be confused, though, because soon enough, the battle had ended.

“Ugh! You just got lucky because Shadow was on your side this once!” Eggman barked. “Next time, I’ll win for sure!”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever you say, Egghead!” Sonic taunted, grinning.

“When will he ever learn?” Amy asked, shaking her head in disbelief.

Tails smirked. “Probably never, honestly.”

As the others celebrated, Knuckles awkwardly inched over next to Shadow. “Hey, thanks for helping us out today.” he said, clearly torn between his usual friendly demeanor and his wariness at getting too close to the guy who’d knocked him—sorry, pummeled him—into a wall.

Shadow blinked, confused. “Oh. Uh. Whatever. I only did it because Eggman tried to blow me up, anyway.” he muttered halfheartedly.

“Yeah, it was great fighting with you instead of against you today, man!” Sonic called. “We should do it more often!”

Shadow’s eyes widened. He stared at the team as it slowly dawned on him that all of them felt this way. “W-well, of course it was easier to defeat him! Since I can best all of you in single combat.” he insisted, ignoring the slight stammer at the beginning of his words.

He quickly teleported away after that, heading back to his cave (to preferably spend the next half hour curled up as tightly as possible in shame).

“Aw man, he left already?” Tails said, frowning.

“I guess so.” Sonic shrugged. “He probably just couldn’t handle our combined awesomeness for such a long time.”

“Does this mean he’s part of the team now?” Sticks asked, confused.

Amy opened her mouth to speak, but then paused. “Actually, Sticks, I don’t really know.”

“If he isn’t now, then he will be soon!” Knuckles exclaimed.

“You know what?” Sonic said, looking off into the distance for a moment. “I think you might just be right about that.”

…

The next day, Tails marched into the library and started pulling not one, not even two, but five different engineering manuals off the shelves of the adult nonfiction section. Stacking them all in his arms, he walked boldly up to the front desk and dropped them in the checkout area.

“Only thirteen-year-olds and up can borrow books from the adult section.” Fastidious Beaver announced flatly.

“I may be ten, but I have an IQ higher than you could ever hope for!” the fox snapped. “I’m borrowing these books whether you like it or not.”

“Such language!” he cried. “You take after your brother in that, of all things?”

“Hey!” Tails barked. “I’m proud to call Sonic my brother, and you know what? If you’re not going to scan those books for me, then I’ll just do it myself!”

Suddenly, he snatched the barcode scanner from the desk and checked out all five books, a determined look on his face.

“That, young man, is against the rules!” the beaver shouted, but he seemed too nervous to actually do anything about it.

“I only follow rules if they make sense.” Tails replied smugly, pausing at the open door. “Otherwise…” and suddenly, he developed a wicked smile that struck terror into the librarian’s heart, “…anything’s fair game for me.”

And then he rushed out of the library and flew all the way back home, cheering excitedly as he went.

Before Tails would sit down to read his hard-won treasure, though, he headed for his workshop. Inside, he walked over to a machine that was analyzing Domepocalypse’s main power source.

On the readout nearby was a list of dates and times, and the fox studied them for a moment before frowning at the display, refreshing the screen, and reading them again.

“That doesn’t make any sense.” he muttered to himself. “This says he could’ve broken out at least an hour before the fight!”

Sonic burst into the workshop at that moment, skidding to a stop at the workstation. “Hey Tails, I heard you come back! What’s up?”

“I was just looking over some of this data from Domepocalypse. It says that Shadow figured out how to escape ages before he actually did!” the fox explained. “But if that’s right, why didn’t he leave sooner?”

Sonic grinned. “Aw, c’mon, you telling me you don’t think it was my winning personality?”

Tails swiped at his arm, snickering. “It was not!”

“Oh, I see how it is!” the hero cried. “Betrayed by my own brother, huh? Is that right?”

But he was smiling too much for even a complete stranger to think he was truly angry.

[Freeze-frame on the two standing together and laughing, followed by a fade to black.]

[roll credits]

#sonic boom #sonic boom: ancient secrets #sonic the hedgehog #miles tails prower #knuckles the echidna #amy rose #sticks the badger #shadow the hedgehog #dr eggman #sol's fanfiction #wow that's a lot of character tags #anyway!#i just had to say:#that one scene with eggman going 'i have an impeccable sense of taste' and shadow saying 'all you'll be tasting is dirt'#i don't know what happened when i wrote that but whatever it is i hope it happens again #because that was awesome #also it is so weird to be posting this when i'm right in the middle of working on something completely unrelated #like i'm trying to wrangle this complicated plot into working #and then it's like 'oh right time for me to post 4k words of humor'#but anyway!#if you came this far then thank you so much for looking at my ramblings #and thank you as always for reading!!

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