Writer: Ian Flynn
Pencils: Tracy Yardley
Colors: Jason Jensen
After surviving Knothole's destruction, Sonic returns to Freedom HQ at the outskirts of the carnage with Tails, just in time for Amy and Knuckles to have freed themselves from the rubble. They're horrified to hear that their homes have all been destroyed and the entire populace captured, but Sonic grimly tells them to stay put and try to fix the base up a little bit while he heads out to New Megaopolis to rescue everyone. They try to argue, saying they want to help, but he seems determined to do it himself, and this makes Tails snap.
This outburst ultimately puts Sonic in a pretty bad mood, but everyone is willing to listen to Nicole, serendipitously left behind in all the chaos. During the entire next scene, the bottom of every page is devoted to showing the heroes' progress - taking a hovercraft away from the ruins of Knothole, entering New Megaopolis, and fighting their way through various badniks to get to the Egg Vineyard. Within the Vineyard, Eggman theatrically greets everyone trapped within his Egg Grapes, as though merely inviting them to a fantastic play. He thanks them for their "entertaining resistance," mocking the monarchy and Elias' leadership, before deciding that he'll give everyone a little demonstration of exactly how his Egg Grapes work. He selects Charmy from one of the vines, horrifying Saffron, though Charmy tries to comfort her as his grape is pulled close to Eggman's catwalk.
Eggman merely sneers before directing Snively to press the button to activate the grape, and at the exact moment the grape starts up, Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy all burst in through the wall. Tails flies Nicole up to the controls of the vineyard, Knuckles and Amy begin smashing everyone free, and Sonic heads straight for Charmy's grape, which Eggman watches him smash open in horror, shocked that his evil speech from before didn't break Sonic's spirit. Just shows how much you actually know about your own adversary, huh, Eggman?
Down on the ground, Dr. Quack examines Charmy and determines that he seems stable and was rescued in time to avoid any serious damage. Sally leads everyone out of the building while Tails disconnects Nicole from the mainframe, confused at her comment that she'll be able to explain the full extent of her plan once they're "home."
Sally complains that running away isn't a feasible plan for anyone else besides Sonic, but Tails and Sonic cheerfully reassure her that it's Nicole's plan, much to her confusion. Tails tries briefly to apologize to Sonic for his harsh words back in Freedom HQ, but their conversation is cut short as Eggman appears in front of them, once again clad in his invincible battle suit. He begins zapping large portions of the fleeing crowd, and Sonic leads everyone down an alleyway which turns out to be a dead end. Snively starts trying to get Eggman's attention over the radio, but Eggman shushes him, zapping more and more of the populace away until only Sally, Sonic, and a couple others remain.
With that, everyone but Sonic disappears in another flash of light, and Eggman gloats down at Sonic, mocking him for losing a second time that day. Sonic seems unconcerned and refuses to put up a token resistance, instead happily allowing Eggman to zap him with one last beam of light. Eggman is triumphant, and tells Snively to get ready for his return to the Egg Vineyard, only for Snively to finally be allowed to say his peace - that the teleportation frequency was altered, and the reserve Egg Grapes are totally empty. Eggman is floored, before blasting off from the ground furiously, readying his fleet once more and ordering Snively to track where everyone was taken. Snively is stunned to find that the location seems to be… the nanite city. Only it looks significantly different from how we remember it…
Everyone turns around to find none other than Nicole, fully projected in her lynx form, walking toward them, welcoming them to New Mobotropolis. She's apparently been working on this little project for quite some time in secret, and though she wasn't completely finished with it, now is about the best time possible to reveal it to everyone.
Sally is amazed and grateful, thanking Nicole and the Freedom Fighters on their daring rescue of Knothole's entire populace without a single loss, but Nicole tells her to save her congratulations for later… as right now, they're still not out of the fire. The Egg Fleet is already looming on the horizon, and the next phase of their battle for freedom is about to begin…
So, the obvious thing for me to tackle here is: is this a deus ex machina? Losing their home, only to gain a new, better one back in an instant, with no effort? Well, yes, it is, but I don't think it's bad. I would argue that a long-form story like this is perhaps one of the only cases where such a convenient deus ex machina can actually work without seeming trite. Comics are made up of shorter stories and minor arcs within a much larger plot - even longer arcs, such as the "eras" I've been covering this comic through, aren't organized the way a season of a TV show or anime might be, but are themselves made up of smaller "chunks" of story. It's hard to gracefully change anything significant within just a few issues, but to simply stick to the status quo and not change anything would quickly get boring. I don't know how other comic series handle it - this is the only comic series I've ever read, after all - but the solution that the writers of this series hit upon was to shake things up majorly every fifty issues or so. At the beginning of this era, it involved sending Sonic to space for a convenient one-year time skip, allowing Knothole to be developed and changed significantly from how we remembered it - and now, at the end of the era, it involves shifting the setting from Knothole entirely. We've been based out of Knothole for almost two hundred and fifty goddamn issues, and this is a convenient way to change things up without having to devote a huge chunk of the story to everyone having to find and/or build a new home. Remember, while we're currently reading through these at a rate of one issue per day, these were designed to come out at a rate of one per month. An arc like that would quickly start to feel like it dragged on for far too long when the real appeal of this series is watching Sonic and his allies fight the good fight against Eggman. So ultimately, while this is a very sudden change with no prior foreshadowing, I think it's a good one, considering the type of story we're dealing with. Goodbye, Knothole, and hello New Mobotropolis!
