With Nine victorious and Sonic's friends and allies seemingly defeated, Sonic tries one last desperate gamble as he confronts the rogue fox directly.
Tropes:
- 11th-Hour Superpower: Sonic finds the special power his prismatic energy-infused gloves and sneakers have in The Grim in this episode: the ability to generate hexagons of solid light that he can use to either walk on air or as an improvised shields. He still struggles, however, because he's deliberately holding back in attempt to reason with Nine.
- Big Badass Battle Sequence: The third and this time final part of the battle, which ends for good with Nine's army of robots destroyed.
- Bottle Episode: Like the previous two episodes, this one also takes place entirely in the Grim.
- Can't Kill You, Still Need You: By this point, everyone but Sonic is clearly okay with killing Nine if push comes to shove, and at one point the fox finds himself cowering inside a force-field at Renegade Knucks' mercy. But Sonic, apart from still caring about Nine, knows the fox is the only one who can stop the Shatterverse's decay and insists on getting through to him. Unfortunately, all he does is get in Knucks' way and enable Nine to retaliate; Sonic is eventually forced to body-slam the fox off the edge of the tower.
- Diabolus ex Machina: When Nine renews his army, the seemingly-downed Big the Cat robot powers up and rejoins the battle. Subverted when it starts attacking Nine's other robots instead, and then revealing that it's been hijacked by Sails and Mangey, who were alive all along.
- Free-Fall Fight: The episode ends with Sonic and Nine falling towards the depths of the fortress while exchanging blows.
- Head Desk: Mangey smacks his head against the controls when he and Sails begin button mashing to try to get the weapons to work again.
- Heel–Face Turn: This episode finally cements Knuckles the Dread on the Face side when he decides that his crew is more important than any treasure by forgoing the opportunity of stealing the Paradox Prism for himself for the sake of helping Black Rose when she was in danger.
- Hoist by His Own Petard:
- Sails and Mangey use Nine's own Big the Cat robot to decimate much of his army, most crucially Alpha Grim Birdie. Nine himself loses the upper-hand when the prismatic energy regulators he gave Sonic reveal his special power in The Grim, enabling the hedgehog to No-Sell Nine's attacks.
- Rusty Rose takes out Alpha Grim Amy by knocking her into the barrier with her own hammer (which becomes Rusty appropriates from thereon, to boot).
- In-Universe Catharsis: When Renegade Knucks managed to land one hell of a sucker punch on Nine, he claims that he had been waiting for a long time to do that, presumably since the first time Nine abandoned him and Rebel Rouge to their fates after Sonic disappeared.
- Keystone Army: When an Alpha Grim robot is destroyed, all the replicas vanish into thin air. The last one's destruction leaves Nine standing alone against two dozen other characters, to his horror and anger.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Alpha Grim Sonic's reaction before Shadow takes him out, complete with a "!" on his visor.
- Nine himself gets one when he finally stands alone against the Alliance of Alternates, and then another right before Sonic tackles him off a ledge.
- Pre-Mortem One-Liner:
- Rusty Rose's Badass Boast to Alpha Grim Amy before knocking her into the barrier and disintegrating her:Rusty Rose: I don't need this little bird for power. And this little bird needs to be free. The only thing I need...is me!
- Shadow also says this before destroying Alpha Grim Sonic, and with him, the last of Nine's army:Shadow: WE'RE NOT FINISHED!
- Rusty Rose's Badass Boast to Alpha Grim Amy before knocking her into the barrier and disintegrating her:
- Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Sails and Mangey are shown to have survived the explosion that made everybody believe it had killed them. Finding out earlier that they can fly, they went into hiding, waiting for the best opportunity to make their return.
- Shout-Out: Sails says that he "loves the smell of the Froggy bombs in the morning" while piloting the hijacked Big the Cat robot.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Zigzagged. We finally learn of Sonic's plan from the previous episode, which was to feign defeat in order to make Nine redirect energy fighting Sonic, weakening his robot army and giving Sonic's friends a good chance to counterattack. While the plan works at first, Nine simply renews his army for the umpteenth time...but then Sails and Mangey hijack his strongest robot.
- Villainous Breakdown: The already-Power High Nine starts flipping out as his Alpha Grim robots fall one by one and he himself gets tag-teamed by Sonic and Knucks, as evidenced by his Angrish, unkempt hairdo, and near-constant hyperventilation. It all culminates in a full-blown psychotic tantrum that continues into the next episode.
- What You Are in the Dark: One of Dread's old crewmates convinces him to steal the Paradox Prism while everybody else is distracted with the battle. While enticed by the idea at first, Dread hesitates when he sees Black Rose struggling against a Grim Amy, and eventually decides to abandon the idea to help her instead.
- You Are in Command Now: After saving Black Rose, Dread officially makes her the new captain of their crew, to her delight.
