"Hrmf," grunted Coop, "we're too close to," he kicked a metal arm, which rolled over with a tunk, "to this pile of crap."

"How long did it take us to get over here: five, six minutes? Well, if they noticed all these stupid emergency signals, Eggman's robots'll only be another five or six minutes out. That's not enough time to hide. 'Less we go underground," he looked dubiously at a nearby ruin, a stanchioned skeleton of a crypt-like structure that framed a descending stone stairway. The air above the stairway entrance wavered with heat.

"…or… fly outta here really fast," he resumed, turning slowly back to the group, "fly through a, a pass or something, between the mountains, to avoid landing radar detection. Keep flying through mountain passes until we find a deep, hot valley where we can park this thing. All these robots are gonna have heat vision and if we stay near lava, they won't be able to use their heat vision to find the ship without blowing their eyes out."

The far side of the clearing suddenly shuddered with activity; a cluster of bushes rustled, and a small throng of Rickys and Pockys scampered out, scattering simultaneous to a flock of Flickies taking startled flight from the tree tops. Something else was coming -- quickly.

And she leapt from the dense cover of the forest, tagging the shrub with the toe of her shoe as she hurdled over it, and came to an abrupt, yet controlled stop. There, upon taking a quick glance around, her flustered expression turned to mild alarm.

"Why on earth are you all still here?" exclaimed the cat to the group at large through heavy, but not labored breaths. "They'll be back any minute, you need to move!"

The sandy-furred feline cast a perturbed look at the smoking magma, which peered hungrily up at the world (but mostly at the Lagrange) through its new skylight, and added, "I mean, for other less obvious reasons."

"They're leaving now," Midian assured her, hand raised in a "settle" gesture.

While survivors continued to bail out of the ship, leaping to safety on dry ground, there was a rising chorus of haste and confusion. It seemed most of the crowd of people were just following whoever seemed like they knew where they were going, and Coop's idea had given some direction. As such, there was a mass exodus to the other ship.

"Mind if we come with?" the jackal added in query, mostly to Coop. While he had spotted Leon's comparable forwardness (see: robo-clubbing), he had also noticed prior to the fight that the lion was also just another bystander, and that Coop seemed to be the resident man-in-charge. That said, it was clear that the already-loaded-down convoy was likely picking up yet more passengers with one less ship, and Midian didn't want to assume there was room, even if they had just helped out.

Coop looked at the cat, leery. He looked over at the newcomers—fish-thing, dog, lion—trying to figure out their relation to the even newercomer.

"Wh—"

"Nevermind," he said, then, "uh."

He looked back at the Nocturnus ship.

"I... does anyone know how many people we can pack into that thing?" he addressed his surrounding company, waving a hand at the exotically-formed spacecraft.

"I mean," he turned back to their rescuers' spokesperson, "don't get me wrong—sure you can come if you want—don't you have somewhere else you'd rather be, though?"

"Or," he added, "wait. I guess whereever you were camping—probably too close to this mess. Yeah, sure," he finished, "whatever, come on."

The jackal glanced uneasily back at the cat, then back to the eagle, but just set off after him. "Explanations later," he agreed, huffing with haste, pounding boots for the ship.

***


Some harrowing ten or fifteen minutes later of searching, nail-biting, and hoping nothing noticed them, the ship settled down on solid ground (and you had better believe they made sure it was solid this time), much as according to Coop's plan. A hot'n'smelly sulfurous stream ran just by the port side, emanating vivid orange glow and dark smoke, while the starboard side rested as closely against a dark, stony cliff face as its Gizoid pilot could make possible. There they decided the ship blended sufficiently with the dark-colored rock of the Marble Mountains, and so there it was left to rest.

...

Outside, silence. Nothing here, nope—nothing but the burbling and blopping of scorching lava flows, the swish of pine trees swaying in the wind, and the raw panic of a ship full of people. For how few actors there were—actors in this sense meaning those actually acting, and making things happen—there were more than enough nervous, scared survivors who had no concept of what was going on, what would happen to them, or what to do. Many had already decided to set off on their own before the ship ever took off again, unwilling to go back into the air with all the chaos, so at least their numbers had been reduced from over a hundred to somewhere closer to fifty, but it was still a hectic and stressful wall of talking, murmuring, and sometimes even shouting on-board the unnamed Nocturnus ship.

For that reason, and probably that reason alone, some of the bolder members had already exited the ship for a little peace and quiet out amongst the grass, stones, trees, and ruin. It was a good moment to actually collect themselves, patch up, figure out what was going on, and just what they were going to do about it.

"You have such varied terrain on this planet."

Omnis, the Gizoid pilot who had led the Nocturnus ship to safer ground (hopefully somewhere beyond where Eggman's forces could seek them out), had finally managed to take his first steps out onto the world that was completely alien to him. He moved slowly as he emerged from the ship, having left behind the controls to whomever wanted to watch over them, though it seemed pointless now. They didn't seem ready to be off and going once more.

A questioning tone laced his voice as he spoke to no one in peculiar. "Can I assume that this... Eggman did not have such control here before you left?"

The quilled member of the group, meanwhile, was wandering outside the ship himself, idly kicking a loose rock or two into the flow of lava nearby. His eyes followed the stone as it plopped right into the surface of the glowing mess of melted rock, thinking over the events that had led them to this location. Out of the frying pan and into the fire could be an easy saying to describe the last few days.

Returning to a closer position near the ship, he immediately sought out a person who hadn't been present on their return trip before landing in the mountains: Tabitha.

"Hey," he began simply, trying to gain her attention. Geoff took a moment to let the growing question turn over in his mind before continuing. "You've been around. On Earth, I mean. And... well, we exactly haven't. Long story and all that... but, I'm just going to be blunt. What the heck happened when we were gone?" Another beat of silence as he collected himself again. "I mean, I'm not exactly seeing how this all went down in like... what? Two days? Before we went through some wormhole-thing, everything was fine and dandy down here. And now we find him greeting us the minute we get back."

"Space travel is funny?" Said Coop.

"Space travel is friggin' hilarious," he spat, "we were turned upside-down and shoved head-first down through SPACE TIME, get it? Not just space, space TIME. Did you know," he went on, "that if you move a clock further away from a planet, time will go faster on the clock because gravity isn't stretching out all the space-time," he said in increasing agitation, enunciating the words 'space-time' with debilitating scorn, "now imagine being pulled through three hundred billion lightyears of space-time, and it's getting all stretched up around your head like you're trying to squeeze through the neck-hole of a sweater that's too small for you, and then pop, you get your head all the way through, but that sweater won't ever be the same."

He kicked a rock with sudden and focused violence, "we missed days of time here—weeks," he said, "we just missed entire weeks."

"Who knows how many hours it took Eggman to get his slimy fingers into this island," he grumbled, staring angrily at the ground, "and we've been gone for who knows how long."

"…and where's Sonic at," he added, flatly. He looked up, "what happened to the hero, huh?"