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00:00 Issue 246.
00:03 Julie wonders what the cave paintings are, and Thrash tells them that they're proof of the rottenness of the Albion echidnas.
00:11 Weapons of mass destruction, failed experiment remains, and torture tools.
00:17 All used on him and others.
00:20 It'd actually have an impact if it was obvious what we were looking at, instead of it being completely vague.
00:28 I prefer if he said "destruction" instead of "weapons of mass death" because Shadow said weapons of mass destruction in SA2.
00:38 Wild Knuckles said that he never imagined the echidnas were capable of this when he always knew they had great technology.
00:46 And a society doesn't even need better than medieval technology to torture.
00:51 I hope that's a believable explanation for why Thrash was a victim of this.
00:55 That's all we've got is "because they lived near the echidnas" when that didn't happen to the dingoes.
01:02 Sonic and the others are surrounded by Thrash's dogs, so naturally LeonDud tells the Legionnaires to use lethal force.
01:10 Saffron stands in front of them to protect them, and Sonic demands LeonDud to hear her out.
01:16 She should have known Sonic and his friends wouldn't be okay with her killing them, and that with how bad Sonic is, he might have wanted to protect them.
01:24 But that could get him killed when she probably needs his protection right now.
01:29 Saffron says the devil dogs are actually smart, and if they're nice to them, they might listen to them.
01:34 Saffron pleads with them to move aside to let her and her friends pass.
01:39 She reminds me of Cream, but better because she's Charmy's girlfriend.
01:43 Predictably, her idea conveniently works, despite Thrash telling all of them to kill these guys.
01:49 And Lara Lee says she made an amazing discovery as Saffron pets the devil dog.
01:55 Remington tells everyone to show compassion to the devil dogs, and I'm glad LeonDud's written to say "I can't believe something so stupid managed to work."
02:06 After all, this could have easily not worked.
02:10 Dogs trained to guard stuff can't be petted into submission by strangers.
02:15 But to be fair, these dogs are used to being Thrash's pets, so it makes sense that they would prefer to go back to basics with people they have no grudge against if they always thought Thrash was being silly and were just humoring him.
02:28 They never acted like they thought he was being silly, 'cause they were just growling at them.
02:33 So they must have changed their minds later on.
02:36 How else was this plot supposed to get resolved in a kids' series?
02:40 So everyone gets to the little boats at the docks, with some people being in UFOs.
02:45 Remington wishes he could make sure Knuckles is safe, and naturally, Sonic says he has faith in him.
02:52 Saffron reassures him that they'll take care of things here, and Remington wishes them good luck.
02:58 Sonic has a charming line to his friends, "Let's play a game. Who can break the most legion equipment?"
03:04 And Tails says he's going down, playing along like a good friend. And Saffron realizes she can't call Julie and Knuckles.
03:11 And we see Thrash throw something metal at the cybernetic of Julie, which had been used to call people earlier.
03:18 Knuckles apologizes to Thrash for the problems his kind faced in the past, and surprisingly, Saffron reunites with them immediately.
03:27 Even though I thought she didn't know where they were. I guess she did see them fall in here, or was smart enough to have a tracking device in Julie.
03:36 I just can't take it seriously that she reunited with them that fast.
03:41 Knuckles tells her good work, and says he can't let Thrash escape with the bomb.
03:46 She volunteers to help, and Julie plans to shoot at him with her ray gun, with no one objecting.
03:53 Which could only make sense if it wasn't guaranteed to be lethal.
03:57 While Knuckles hits his fist.
03:59 Is it in character that Saffron isn't objecting to her trying to shoot at Thrash?
04:04 Then he uppercuts Thrash, and I see the impact, too! It'd be nice to see a lot more of that.
04:10 Well, I get why I'd rather reason with him than beat him up.
04:13 He's organic, so he doesn't want to kill him, and talking him out of doing this again is the only other way.
04:18 It's still a bit annoying, because Thrash seems hopeless.
04:22 Thrash admits that he met his match, after just one punch.
04:27 Did it skip past the whole fight scene?
04:30 I didn't know he gave up that fast, when he did it with Phinatibus.
04:35 But Knuckles' super strength would justify him immediately realizing that his punches aren't something to laugh off.
04:42 Knuckles tells Thrash that his people would atone for what the past Echidnas did.
04:47 Saffron says she lost her people, too, but she somehow insists that she doesn't seek revenge, because she'd be no better than Eggman,
04:54 even though she fights Eggman's forces, which he would see as revenge.
04:58 So it's blatantly obvious that she's doing that to seek revenge anyways.
05:02 She does want to make the world better, but that's just one reason.
05:05 And it's not good logic of her to think that wanting to make Eggman pay for his crimes
05:10 would make someone just as bad as someone who turns people into mindless robots.
05:15 I guess the reason the heroes aren't calling her out on this out-of-nowhere idiocy
05:20 is because it wouldn't be the best timing when Thrash is here.
05:23 And so you'd think it'd be obvious to everyone here that
05:26 Julie is probably getting back at the Dark Legion. That doesn't make her as bad as Eggman.
05:32 And I'm sure Knuckles wants to get back at Eggman, too, and that doesn't make him as bad as Eggman.
05:38 Julie says the people here today aren't responsible for the actions of the people in the past, no duh.
05:44 Thrash's death is not that simple. I don't see how.
05:48 It's not really the best to do nothing to have him explain himself here and get interrupted.
05:53 I don't think there's any chance of any of the audience siding with Thrash,
05:58 since you'd have to be an actual Archie fan to read this in the first place.
06:03 Knuckles says that if he stands down and tells them where the bomb is,
06:07 he'll help restore the Tasmanian Devil race.
06:10 Thrash is stunned, and then hits the ground, embarrassed that he's so desperate for that that he'll rely on an echidna.
06:17 So he agrees to Knuckles' demand, and I hope the writers will keep this going.
06:22 And honestly, I would forgive him by just seeing him as a different person than the earlier him.
06:27 It's no wonder a character got improved. These are good writers.
06:31 I'm looking forward to what they'll do with him after this.
06:34 He says he hooked the bombs to an underground power station and says he'll go on ahead.
06:39 Then finally we see Furnitivus again, and I'm completely confused that he says he's disarmed the bomb for him.
06:47 Huh? But he wants destruction.
06:50 It never occurred to me that he was here at all because the people of Albion 1 am arrested and put down,
06:55 so he hadn't come back here for a reason.
06:58 So I never thought he'd ever come back here.
07:01 He calls Thrash an idiot and is impressed that he not only found his lab,
07:05 but put together something so complicated.
07:09 So he's only an idiot by being a bit rational.
07:12 Otherwise he's a genius, apparently.
07:15 He threatens Furnitivus and jumps through a warp ring that connects to just above some lava in Red Mountain.
07:21 Knuckles saves him by gliding and grabbing him.
07:24 Furnitivus lampshades the lack of gratitude from the suspicious Julie and says he only came back to take what's his.
07:31 He uses the warp ring to escape with the bomb,
07:34 and I shake my head in disapproval with Julie because she could've shot him to death and avoided his next plan.
07:41 Even if it isn't lethal on the first hit, she could keep shooting.
07:45 But to be fair, Saffron would've witnessed it.
07:48 So while it was a stupid mistake of her to spare him when it was obvious he would leave any second,
07:53 it's at least believable that she didn't want to traumatize Saffron any further by killing him,
07:58 when not only would that get her to be mad at her, but she'd go on to tell the rest of her friends.
08:03 She could at least injure him so that he couldn't escape,
08:07 'cause she probably is able to just set it on stun if she tried to shoot it thrash in front of Saffron in the first place.
08:14 Story could've been even more frustrating on the first read if they had pointed that out.
08:19 So this means that the entire reason the Furnitivus arc happens after this is that Saffron was here.
08:25 I have more reason than ever to be annoyed that she reunited with Knuckles.
08:30 She did absolutely nothing of value, so she didn't need to somehow do that.
08:35 I hope it's explained that Julia is against killing no matter who it is,
08:39 and also explained that she thinks if she tried to just shoot at him to injure him,
08:45 there could be a pretty high risk of him dying from the injury anyways,
08:50 and getting Saffron turned against her anyways.
08:53 Because that'd have her inaction be more believable and justify things.
08:57 As stupid as it'd be, especially for a former Legionnaire,
09:01 who might've killed before in self-defense.
09:04 She didn't know a sentence of his before he warped away that he was going to do it.
09:09 But it's still obvious he would've left with a bomb any second,
09:13 because he'd be all over that, and had nothing to do here when he was outnumbered and faced with someone with a gun anyways.
09:20 So while she expected him to plan on fighting her instead, or talking for longer,
09:25 that was silly when the warping bomb were there.
09:28 I wish there was at least one arc in Archie Sonic that couldn't've been easily avoided,
09:32 because it's been forever.
09:34 Thrash thanks Knuckles, who says he wasn't gonna let him off the hook that easily.
09:39 If only Flynn thought that in issue 50, because that's a good point.
09:44 He sees an open warp ring beside him, which lets him and Thrash get back.
09:49 So, she used her warp ring.
09:52 I wish I saw her activate it.
09:54 So the heroes let Thrash leave in a warp ring,
09:57 with me being sad that I'm not told where he's going to go and what he'll do next.
10:02 I assume he'll be fighting Eggman's forces.
10:05 Julie reassures Knuckles that she and his friends know he's ready to face them.
10:09 Knuckles' mom hugs him, saying she's glad he's alright,
10:13 and Remington says he knew he'd take care of things.
10:16 Knuckles self-destructively decides to tell them he was Energetic,
10:20 because he's tired of keeping it from them since he felt guilty about it for a long time.
10:24 So of course the guilt would make him want to get punished for it,
10:27 because he thought he didn't deserve for them not to know.
10:30 And as for why he didn't simply drop a note over Albion explaining that
10:34 while he was gliding over it way earlier,
10:37 he couldn't've brought himself to do that for the same reason anyone else wouldn't have.
10:41 And now he's in front of them, so he can't take it anymore.
10:45 At least he tells them he had been brainwashed by Phonatibus.
10:48 But he didn't have to dig himself deeper by saying that he thought he was doing the right thing,
10:52 even if they called it idiotic.
10:55 Taking away the Legion's cybernetics was short-sighted,
10:58 seeming to be smart at first, when it was obvious they'd just re-cyberguise anyways.
11:03 Although it still delayed them, making them harmless for a bit,
11:08 which could save lives, so the only reason it was stupid instead of brilliant was that
11:13 somehow Lee and Doug got Eggman to re-cyberguise them.
11:18 And no one could've predicted that.
11:21 There was no excuse for destroying the Dingos' civilization because it was a kidnapolis,
11:25 when it could've just turned it back into a kidnapolis, undone all the changes the Dingos did to it.
11:31 On the surface, without these things being explained, though,
11:34 it seems annoying that he calls it idiotic that he thought he was right,
11:38 when even the audience might read what he said here and think they're good ideas.
11:42 Because it isn't explained why it's stupid.
11:45 He says he can't ask for their forgiveness, and his mother hugs him and forgives him.
11:50 Remington also forgives him and relates to him that his ideals were also corrupted by Phonatibus.
11:56 Not that he'll elaborate on that, finally.
11:58 I always assumed he was basically the same person when he was leading the Frost Legion,
12:02 running it the same way he would've otherwise.
12:05 Only one person here looks annoyed with Knuckles,
12:08 and he could be annoyed with Phonatibus for all we know.
12:11 Everyone else is smiling, because of good writing that can be trusted.
12:15 Knuckles thanks them, and Sonic says he destroyed all the weapons of the Legion.
12:20 I kinda wish we saw that, because that's important.
12:24 He doesn't have to say that right in front of the Legionnaires right now, does he?
12:28 Everyone would've learned that with time, anyways.
12:31 This just risks them all getting mad and wanting to beat up the heroes with a fist they've still got to fight with,
12:36 which they might think is worth attempting, because it outnumbered them.
12:40 Lando tells him when Eggman finds out he destroyed their weapons,
12:44 he'll destroy the city and kill everyone here.
12:47 Remington says cruelly that she deserves it.
12:50 I wasn't told that most of the time she's a cruel or incompetent leader, though.
12:55 The only thing giving that impression is when she had someone beaten when she first appeared,
12:59 and that was it for showing her mistreating her employees.
13:03 She's done bad things, but at this point she's forced into doing everything she does thanks to Eggman.
13:09 Tails says that if the Dark Legion sends a staged transmission where it seems like they captured Albion,
13:16 Eggman will leave it alone for now.
13:18 But he'd find out the truth as soon as he visited to reshape his image,
13:22 and you'd think that'd be very soon since it's got the excitement of a recently taken over city.
13:27 I'm sure in a world as advanced as this, Albion would have social media as well as regular media,
13:34 which would make it obvious it wasn't taken over by the Legion with one Google search.
13:39 I don't care that the architecture makes it kind of look outdated and old-fashioned.
13:44 That doesn't mean they wouldn't be able to buy cell phones and have the internet in a cell phone tower.
13:50 Somehow, Remington is too short-sighted to think of this,
13:53 and says they'll agree to it if the Legion stops causing trouble for now.
13:58 Linda says that Eggman wouldn't be tricked so easily, but the writer makes her a straw man by not letting her explain what I just did.
14:05 That it'd be very temporary for a solution and guarantee Eggman killing them for lying to him,
14:10 when maybe he wouldn't have done that otherwise.
14:13 Why would she say she won't let them get away with that as if she's actually morally opposed to lying to Eggman,
14:18 who told her he doesn't care about her people?
14:21 Remington asks if they should start fighting again to the last man,
14:25 and her people clearly don't look like they're okay with fighting.
14:29 So she shakes hands with him, humoring him, and everyone cheers.
14:34 With nobody smart enough to realize how easily Eggman could find out the Legion didn't take over this place.
14:40 Them being in a good mood would be justified if Albion's force field had been restored to actually keep Eggman and his forces out.
14:48 Or, I wonder if it'd be possible for someone like Tails and Rotor to wirelessly transmit the energy from Robotropolis to here,
14:57 and give them a working force field generator too.
15:00 Crystal says she has old bones, even though she doesn't look old, so she wouldn't say that.
15:07 She then whispers to Remington's girlfriend her real age, and is surprisingly unwilling to say she was roboticized earlier.
15:16 Which is confusing because she chuckles at the start, rather than acting like she's embarrassed of what happened to her,
15:22 or somehow paranoid that she'd hate old former Robians.
15:27 Julie goes to talk to Leia, unnecessarily revealing to her that Dimitri is alive.
15:33 I guess just to rub it in her face, but why get her to try to finish the job?
15:38 She says Knuckles thought she should get one last chance to get her act together.
15:43 Sure, just get Nicole to remove the bomb center that Eggman has, specifically to force her to keep being loyal to him.
15:49 She and Remington need to tell her that's possible to avoid looking silly and being called out.
15:55 Once they all know they're all on a ticking time limit, and Eggman could press a button to kill them any second,
16:02 which he'd do the moment he tried to take advantage of Leia and Dudge just to not get humored,
16:07 so they can't really at peace with the Dark Legion until after they get the bombs taken out.
16:11 To be fair, it'd be more likely that he assumed she died, and that's why he couldn't get her help.
16:17 Because why would he think she'd ever betray him when she has bombs in her?
16:22 Maybe they're all assuming Eggman wanted to destroy the Legion for ignoring him because of this.
16:27 But even if he assumes every Legionnaire in Albion was killed, he could still blow them up to spite the people that might be around them.
16:36 Even if he thinks Albion is a graveyard, he would still be okay with it because the explosion would scare people.
16:43 Remington says the echidnas don't need to be legionized because it should be good enough that they're echidnas.
16:48 And Julie says that between Leia Dunne, Lara Lee, and Remington, they could all figure out what to do about Eggman.
16:54 But how? Why believe her?
16:57 She should have said "Eggman's bombs."
17:00 She assumes they're planning to bring back the Democratic Council and is annoyed that they didn't ask her.
17:07 Julie tells her to hand over that control chip of hers, and threatens her at gunpoint into taking it out of her head so Remington could crush it effortlessly.
17:16 Because apparently, he has super-strengths too.
17:19 I wonder if it makes sense that this didn't injure his hand from the pieces of the crushed chip going through his glove.
17:26 Julie tells Leia Dunne that she can still lead the Legion without brainwashing, and she doesn't believe her.
17:32 Her people would hate her without being brainwashed, but they would still have to obey her if she's on the council with Remington.
17:39 So she's stupid.
17:41 Remington says she shouldn't claim to know what leadership is like.
17:45 He says she thinks being a leader is only about getting power no matter what, when any real leader would know how to maintain order without going to extremes,
17:54 and would know how to solve the strife between their people.
17:57 He calls her childish, apparently giving up on being civil.
18:01 And Julie tells her that her being power-hungry is probably why their father loved Julie more.
18:07 It's cruel of her to throw that in her face, but it'll be worth it if it leads to something good,
18:12 and hopefully that's why she resorted to that, that she wants to get her act together.
18:17 The problem is, her father would have only known she only cared about power if she was constantly whining about not being in charge of the Legion yet.
18:25 Otherwise it doesn't make sense that she'd say this when we thought her father was oblivious to her power-hunger.
18:32 She wasn't shown whining about not being in power when Luger was alive.
18:37 So now I have to assume she was.
18:40 Sonic reassures Amy when she wishes they could save Sally,
18:43 and Coboer thanks Tails and his friends, shaking his hand, and makes the unnecessary effort of telling him where Eggman went.
18:50 Sonic affectionately grabs Knuckles' hand, he tells Sonic good luck, and makes me wish we did get to see Sonic punch Eggman in the face.
18:58 That should happen nearly every time he's in a scene with the heroes, because it's an action series full of slapstick anyways.
19:05 It's nice to see everyone wave goodbye as the heroes get away from the place on the bioplane.
19:10 Knuckles' mom ruffles his hair as he hugs her and promises to keep in touch from now on.
19:15 She says his family loves him, and he thanks her.
19:18 He thanks Remington for stating the obvious, and he says Albion's in good hands with him, and he's flattered.
19:25 Saffron hugs someone, and Knuckles says he'll see them again soon.
19:29 Winn has time around his wife as Knuckles leaves with the Warp Ring.
19:33 Then Commissar Gaina reports to Eggman to tell him that the Legion has subdued all of Albion and is awaiting orders.
19:40 She says the legionization equipment was destroyed in the battle.
19:44 I wonder if she had to tell him that.
19:46 He says he's too busy with the Death Egg for hearing the details, and would rather call back later.
19:52 You'd think telling him that would just make him check on this place faster to try to help with the legionization.
19:59 The writer leaves Reister to say she doesn't know how long she could hold Eggman off, and that he's bonded for now,
20:06 so maybe we aren't expected to be short-sighted.
20:09 It's weird for her to ask Lando if she's alright and offer to get her anything.
20:13 It comes as a complete surprise that she cares about her.
20:17 It's nice that she has a good-looking other eye that she replaced her former cyborg eye with,
20:23 but it makes no sense that she would choose one that isn't presenting the same eye color as her organic eye.
20:28 Lando gets offered something to drink, and is told that rather than seeing this alliance as a bad thing,
20:35 she should think of it as an opportunity for the legion to see what kind of grandmaster she can be.
20:39 She admits she's right, but is still drawn to look menacing with electricity coming out of one of her eyes,
20:45 and she hopes she'll prove Julie wrong by playing by her rules.
20:48 So are we supposed to think she'll be a villain or not?
20:52 Knuckles is thankful that Dimitri didn't mess up guarding the Master Emerald,
20:57 and understands that he can be trusted to watch it.
21:00 The Chaotix come out of the Warp Ring.
21:03 Julie cares enough to ask Mighty if he found his sister,
21:06 and Knuckles says he's glad to hear the good news and have Rain hand back.
21:11 Vector is thankful that Knuckles is in such a good mood again.
21:15 It's satisfying to see Knuckles say he has closure.
21:18 He says they have to do research on the Tasmanian experiments and disable the legion's bombs.
21:25 I don't know why Knuckles is talking like his group alone is gonna focus on trying to figure out these things,
21:31 when there aren't any geniuses among them besides Dimitri.
21:35 And if he was able to do it, he would've figured out how to do it a long time ago.
21:41 So it's obvious he'll need Tails and Rotor too to speed it up.
21:45 And Nicole's nanopowers are obviously the only solution for disabling the legion's bombs,
21:50 so why doesn't he know that already?
21:52 Of course sending tiny things into the body to go after other tiny things through any little crack in the cybernetics leading to them
21:59 would be the only way to disable those tiny things.
22:03 Why that or a wizard with a convenient spell to do that,
22:07 but I wouldn't take that seriously because it'd come out of nowhere.
22:10 Unless there could be another Energek that did that.
22:14 He also says he wants to find Chime's people.
22:17 I thought they would've given up by now because of that story with Espio and Nicole.
22:21 I thought that meant Chime and Safrin were now the last of their kind.
22:25 It'd be easy to google bee people and demographic statistics on other countries
22:30 to find out which ones got a sudden influx of bee refugees.
22:35 So that could've been what happened, or Knuckles would've already found Chime's people a long time ago.
22:41 Apparently they've always assumed that they went into hiding altogether in a place that's such a good hiding place,
22:46 no one ever found it, even though they did.
22:49 So they had an emergency knothole too.
22:52 Then we see Thrash visit someone who's in bed, and the story ends with them being sad.
22:57 So I guess this means he's officially the last of his kind.
23:01 That's a waste of a page.
23:03 He already got punched for his punishment, and this would've happened anyways.
23:08 This was written by TheShadowImperator, Dr. Z, and Gentleman X.
23:13 This story was surprisingly idealistic, but I take that over it being dark.
23:18 It had the Legion agree to stand down because Remington threatens Lea and Doug with losing the rest of her soldiers,
23:25 and Lea and Doug get threatened into losing her control chip.
23:29 And where it becomes idealistic is not only did Knuckles talk Thrash out of it,
23:34 but it had Saffron tell Sonic and his allies to just pet the devil dogs into submission
23:40 because she befriended them and found out they're intelligent.
23:44 Which can make sense if you think about it because they're used to being just pets.
23:48 But because they were growling at them earlier, that should've been explained because it could've easily gone wrong.
23:55 But it's worth it for being creative.
23:57 While it is disappointing that Thrash only took two punches without caring about the first one
24:02 when you'd expect a fight scene for a karmatic climax,
24:06 on top of the fact that it always shows the impact,
24:09 and it's justified that Knuckles would rather focus on talking him out of this because he wouldn't want to kill an organic being,
24:16 and made him look smart because promising to restore his kind was an offer he couldn't refuse.
24:21 So of course it calmed down.
24:23 But again, this could've easily not worked because Knuckles didn't tell him how he would achieve this promise.
24:30 I have to assume Thrash assumed that he meant he'd get the help of his genius friends and their technology,
24:36 which he should've thought of earlier.
24:39 Without the audience assuming that he knew that and Knuckles knew he'd know that,
24:43 it seems too convenient at first that he humored him when he was portrayed as just a genocidal monster before.
24:49 But now he's a good guy, so I look forward to him fighting Eggman's forces from now on.
24:53 It was disappointing that Phonatavous disarmed the bomb instead of him
24:57 because I'd rather see Thrash do something to redeem himself in this story.
25:01 I don't know why he even disarmed the bomb because he wanted to hear it was dead and took it away so he could use it later.
25:07 And Knuckles was in the room with Thrash,
25:09 so wouldn't he have just warped away with the bomb right away and then warped the bomb to him after setting his time limit to just a few seconds left to zero?
25:16 I have to assume he can't do that with the yet,
25:18 so he only disarmed it so he could save himself because he just assumed it wouldn't go off to kill Knuckles if he didn't disarm it,
25:26 because Knuckles was already on his way there.
25:28 He must have spied on Knuckles and Thrash on his way to the bomb to know that.
25:32 I never had the impression he knew they were on the way to it.
25:35 It was a well-written story, but not an amazingly written one,
25:39 because it ends on convenient solutions I'm thankful for,
25:43 most of which could have easily failed.
25:45 And one frustration,
25:47 that Julie could have shot Phonatavous repeatedly until he was dead
25:51 or at least injured enough that they had to take him to the hospital
25:55 instead of wasting time asking him what he's doing there when any idiot could figure it out instantly.
26:00 And it's not like it had to be too dark, because she could have simply injured him,
26:04 and that shouldn't have been something Saffron was opposed to because she was fine with her shooting at Thrash.
26:10 But at least this time it's kind of believable and justified,
26:13 because she wouldn't have wanted to risk killing him in front of Saffron.
26:17 But it'd be better if she was written to explain that a Ray Gun's out of energy,
26:21 or she would have never wanted to risk killing him,
26:24 so that it wouldn't blame his plan on Saffron's useless unnecessary presence,
26:28 where she somehow reunited with Knuckles at light speed when she didn't know where he was.
26:33 (upbeat music)