Kidnapped!
She should had seen it coming.
It all started when Eggman came back to the Restoration HQ, without Sonic. When the other asked why he came alone, Eggman replied that the base they had gone to was indeed unguarded aside from a couple Badniks, and that Sonic, being Sonic, told him to go back since he already knew how his machines worked and didn't need him.
However, having been in presence of Eggman for an entire month made Vallina aware of certain things that neither her daughter nor the Restoration didn't note when he came back.
First, 'Eggman' had an entirely different accent, instead of the one he adopted. It sounded similar, but it simply wasn't the same.
Second, his eyes, while still being a shade of blue, where utterly cold and lifeless as he talked to them them. That, and looked like they had a faint red hue on them.
Third, and most important of all, his left arm, the one he broke a week ago fighting Shadow, and despite 'Eggman' making sure to not move it, was completely fine. She would know, Cream had tried the inverse of trick to go with Sonic.
Which was why she wasn't caught completely unaware when 'Eggman' punched Knuckles with what was supposed to be a broken arm and with enough force behing the attack to send the echidna flying. She still could do nothing when he grabbed her and Cream and ran away with them, though. She was just a housewife, not a heroine!
What happened after, between their capture and their arrival to what she guessed was Angel Island, she didn't quite remember, only that in the middle of the way the fake Eggman turned back to its real form, a robotic, blue coloured hedgehog that she recognized inmetiadly.
Metal Sonic.
Eventually, the robot, which had ditched his Eggman disguise to fly away, arrived at it's destination, Angel Island.
Which currently was a storm-covered military base surrounded by a veritable armada of airships and protected by turrets, with an statue of Eggman when he was skinny, fat and evil on the center.
The rest the reader will now already.
"An impressive threat, typical of the great Eggman! Unfortunately, to do that, first you'll have to get to Angel Island... Doctor. Hahahahahaha!" Starline laughed before cutting off the transmission and turning to them. "As for you... I don't have to reintroduce myself, nor repeat why are you here. However, I feel compelled of telling you what I want to do."
"Let us go, you meanie!"
"Ah ah ah" Starline tutted. ", not before we get what we want."
"What, exactly, is what you want?" Vanilla said. If she had been able to, and in utter spite of her usually gentle nature, she would have loved to bash the platypus' head with a pan. Eggman was rubbing on her, but fortunately in a (relatively) good way.
"You see, despite what I told the poor adled-minded Eggman, I'm not just a fan of his, nor a mere scientist. I also have several doctorates in history, general science... and therapy, which if all goes well, will be used to heal Eggman from his condition."
"Why, to use the Master Emerald and a session of electroshock therapy to cure Eggman of his... condition, of course!" Starline said gleefully. "By using the Emerald, we would be able to channel even more electricity to Eggman's brain!"
"That would fry his brain!" Vanilla exclaimed, both angry and scared, not just of the possibility of Eggman being electrocuted to death or being rendered a vegetable, but also of the even smaller, yet still possible chance of him becoming evil again... or worse.
"That would be for a simple man, but Eggman, and by extension his magnificent head, is made of sterner stuff, as his many years fighting Sonic and surviving point-blank explosions, falls from several hundred feet, and being crushed under literal tons of metal can attest."
"And fighting Shadow, a biological weapon, to a standstill." Metal Sonic chimed in. "Even though that even more loathsome parody had inhibitors at the time, the doctor was not only able to break his hand, but also stay at nearly full fighting capacity, with only his left arm broken."
"And what if that fails?" Vanilla asked. "What if, even after all that, he refuses to become a villain again anyway?"
"Then we'll switch to Plan B: kill Doctor Eggman with enough firepower to destroy a town, and then use whatevers is left plus some... modifications, combined with the power of the Master Emerald, to bring him back to his genius, evil self." Starline replied, shrugging nonchalantly. "It would be a mercy, considering his current status as some muscle-headed buffoon that doesn't want to follow his dream of conquering the world... again."
"No!" Cream screamed. "You can't kill Eggman, or torture him! He's a good person now!"
"Hush, Cream." Vanilla told her daughter, even though she was horrified by what this platypus had planned for the reformed Eggman.
"Child, that's exactly the reason we would kill or torture him for, to bring him back to the, ironically, good path of villainy."
"I do not like the secondary plan either, but I would do anything to bring the Doctor back." Metal Sonic said. "Even if it involves killing him and then cloning him back by desecrating his corpse."
"If I may interrupt." Said a voice. It was a red, round robot with blue eyes, accompanied by a square-shaped one.
Just by looking (and in the case of the red hearing) both of them, Vanilla already knew that the red one was a butler of some sort the yellow machine was stupid, what with it wondering out loud if he had a ching to stroke. She thought Sonic had mentioned them before, Cubot and Orbot, Eggman's personal lackeys or something.
"Wouldn't cloning Eggman be a bit insulting to his image? I mean, sure, he could act like the evil genius we all know and love, but the clone wouldn't really be Eggman, just a, well clone."
"The clone guy might end up being good too!" Cubot pointed out, but only Vanilla and Cream paid attention to what he had said.
"That's a risk we're willing to make." Metal Sonic muttered, indeed not hearing what the square robot just said. "As long as it brings him... back..."
Vanilla, confused by the robot's silence and the way it stared through the nearby window, twisted her head to see what got it spooked... and her eyes widened.
There, through the large window in the room, they all could see, approaching the floating island slowly but surely...
... a giant, metallic spider with four pairs of large, vertical fans on its sides, and Eggman, Sonic, a silver hedgehog, and someone with a mask standing on its head-cabin. And even though the spider was still far away from the floating island, Vanilla could discern something on Eggman's face that looked like... rage.
She also saw what seemed to be the Restoration's airship (apparently a repurposed battleship from Eggman's old fleet, Tails had told her) on the distance, but she didn't pay much attention since it was so far away that she only knew it was there because it moved.
A plethora of questions invaded Vanilla's mind Just how did Eggman build that monster so fast? How fast had the machine it self to be to reach them so quickly? What were those rail-looking devices on its chin? And why was Eggman... aiming them at the island?
One of the ships hovering around the island approached the spider in an intercepting maneuver, while the spider, seeing it approaching, moved it's head away from it's original target and towards it.
"Well, looks like the boss is actually still bad and mean!" Exclaimed cheerily Cubot, too dumb to see that the others were shocked and confused by this turn of events. "I mean, who else would build a giant flying-"
BOOM!
Whatever weapon the spider had was powerful enough to not only utterly annihilate a ship bigger than it, but also shake the entire floating islan; the shot had gone through the ship and continued until it struck the floating mass.
"...spider with super powerful guns on it?"
Far away, with no one on the island knowing it but surrounded by soon-to-be partly deaf Mobians, a certain echidna screamed in pure rage when he saw his home being shot by an 80-foot tarantula.