Content warnings: Series-standard slapstick/violence/peril.

Spoilers: Anything that's not Mania/Forces is fair game.

Universe: 99.9% gameverse, but picks up a few "habits" from other media such as Sonic X.

Continuity: A knowledge of Sonic 3 & Knuckles in particular would be helpful while reading this fic.

Also, this story follows (and makes gag references to) my previous adventure fic, Sonic and the Golden Journey. That said, knowledge of that story is not crucial.

Angel Island

If summer days on the ocean could be ranked, this one would have taken the Olympic Gold. The blue sky pierced the clouds, scattering the sunlight into a more manageable intensity as it reflected off the ocean's waves. The further diffraction left the whole scene with an ambient bright cheeriness. A mild smell of salt riding a light breeze punctuated the serenity of the day. It was perfect, and it was peaceful.

Or at least it would have been peaceful, if the scene wasn't messily bisected by a roaring, 90's era biplane.

"And you're sure those chili dogs weren't past their expiration date?"

And when said plane was occupied by a blue hedgehog and a twin-tailed fox, well, all bets on sanity were off.

Sonic the Hedgehog sighed at his sidekick, but when he realized the rushing wind was louder than his sigh, he made sure to roll his eyes too.

"Yes, Tails, I'm sure. Like I said, I was sucked into the story of Goldilocks, I was not hallucinating from indigestion, and I did not write and illustrate that book you found."

"I...alright. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on that."

"Oy. Thanks. So, what does the tracker say about Angel Island?"

Tails looked at his console. "We're pretty close to its current location. It should only be a few minutes now. Good thing Knuckles was able to reach me; it sounds like he got badly stuck in those traps of his."

"Ha! That's Knuckles for you."

"To be fair, you have to give him a little credit. He's been guarding the Master Emerald all of his life, and this is the first time his own traps have gotten him stuck like this."

"Sure ain't the first time he's done something stupid though...oh hey! There it is!"

Sure enough, as Sonic pointed, the tip of a mountain began to come into view. The marvel of the world's only levitating, traveling island, complete with its own climate and multiple seasons, was enough to render most people speechless. Sonic and Tails, though, had spent considerable time on the island, starting from their first meeting with Knuckles to several later visits.

Knuckles the Echidna was the last of his kind, the sole descendant of a proud warrior race whose civilization revolved around the Master Emerald. As its chosen guardian, Knuckles had lived his whole life alone on Angel Island, protecting the Master Emerald from any and all threats. The Emerald was an immensely powerful gem the size of a small car. By its power, the island floated nearly a mile above the ocean's surface, moving constantly as to be difficult to track.

Tails, however, had the benefit of being one of Knuckles' few friends, a fact he was thankful for when, after touching down on the island, he came upon its sole owner. For Knuckles, in addition to being unfamiliar with popular culture and somewhat gullible, also had a temper rivaling that of a dyspeptic insomniac honey badger following a particularly toxic breakup.

Knuckles was suspended above a deep pit, against a stone slab. His limbs were tangled up in too many vines to count. One leg was bent up at what must have been a very uncomfortable angle, for his shoe was pressing his nose sideways. The corner of one of his socks had been singed off.

The beads of sweat on the echidna's forehead, the vine stains on his normally-white gloves, the shredded brush everywhere surrounding him, pointed to a recent tantrum of brobdingnagian proportions. And while Tails was mostly glad he wasn't around for it, there was still a lingering morbid curiosity on the whole matter. By now, Knuckles had apparently gone from Mt. Vesuvius to smoldering lava, a picture aided by the bright red fur he sported. As Tails approached, he stared, still breathing heavily.

"Oh wow...Knuckles. I'm so glad you're wearing the communication watch I gave you. I can't imagine if you hadn't been able to contact me…"

Knuckles nodded gruffly, but Tails could see the deep relief in his eyes as he finally spoke. "Sonic doesn't know about this, I hope?"

The young fox said nothing, instead reaching backwards to twiddle one of his own tails. It was, unfortunately, a gesture Knuckles knew all too well.

"Oh no. Tell me you didn't."

Tails again said nothing, but the raucous laughter of one dreaded blue clown rendered the question moot.

"Knuckles! Man, you look awesome! Why didn't you tell me you wanted to hang out?"

The echidna glared at the fox. "This is exactly why I told you to come alone."

"I...I'm really sorry! I just, um, I've seen your traps before and I knew I would need help. Sonic will be on his best behavior though!"

"'course I will! Hey Tails, can I borrow the Miles Electric for a sec?"

"Sonic, if you even think of photo-documenting this, I'll free my own self and then throw you in the ocean."

"Ha! You can't break out of that…" Sonic began, before looking back at the infinitely vast ocean, blanching, and then taking a step back. He turned to Tails. "...can he?"

"Honestly? I wouldn't push it. You've seen the kind of feats he can accomplish when angry."

"I'm already angry!"

"Maybe we should just leave him here until he cools off?"

Tails shrugged. "Okay."

Sonic did a double-take. "Wait, really?"

"Sure, I'll just tell him a story while he waits. So Knuckles, about Sonic's latest 'adventure'..."

"Whh-okay! Let's free him."

Knuckles raised an eye ridge. "Suddenly, I would almost rather hear this."

"No no, there's no time to waste!"

Sonic and Knuckles boasted a collective thirty-one years as opposed to Tails' eight. But sometimes, the fox wondered if the opposite was true.

He glanced at his handheld. "Alright, judging by the tension on each of these vines, you're going to have to remove the one wrapped on his left thumb first, but watch out for-"

Sonic leapt over the pit, hooking his legs to hang upside-down on some vines above Knuckles. A hole in the wall immediately spewed fire in Sonic's direction, and he reacted by curling his body upwards. The fire blasted under his back, missing by a narrow margin.

"That was close!" he hooted, "Talk about toasted buns!"

Tails cringed. "..the traps, Sonic. Please watch out for the traps."

"Toasted buns," Sonic repeated mid-snicker, "get it?"

"Sonic…" Knuckles began in a threatening tone, "would you pull your comedy-suicide act when I'm not stuck next do you?"

Sonic grinned widely as he pulled the first vine off. "Right, right. Sorry, ol' buddy!"

Tails scanned his handheld again. "There's a wall of spikes that's configured to snap down if you remove any more vines. Knuckles, you need to pull your arms together to keep that set taut."

Knuckles pulled, in the process separating a gap between two large rocks and revealing some machinery.

"OK Sonic, I'm going to disable those electronics, but I need you to be Knuckles' lookout. I bet there's a failsafe in here that could cause the spikes to come down when I tamper with it."

"Sure!" said a chipper Sonic. "I was enjoying the faces he was making anyway."

Tails set down the Miles Electric and flew over to the gap with his multi-tool. He spent a few moments murmuring to himself and rearranging groups of wires.

A low hissing began to sound. By the time Tails saw the jet of fire headed for him, Sonic had already yanked him to safety.

"O-oh, it, uh..." said Tails, trying hard to keep his voice steady, "I guess it had multiple failsafes. Thanks..."

"Any day! Now what?"

"Well, I was trying to do this the slow and safe way, but it now seems there isn't one…"

Sonic laughed. "That's what I've been saying my whole life!"

Knuckles groaned.

"So what we need to do is cut all the vines at once and just avoid the spikes. Knuckles, do you think you can pull them in a straight line?"

Knuckles nodded and contorted himself into a position more suitable for the Twister Enthusiast Club that met on Tuesday nights in Station Square. The vines lined up.

Tails flew underneath Knuckles, held his arms out, and also nodded.

They both looked at Sonic, who hadn't moved an inch.

"...well?!" grunted Knuckles.

"Actually," mused Sonic, "the face you're making right now is even better..."

"Will you just get on with it already?!"

"What's the magic wo-o-o-ord?"

"...please."

Tails knew better than to assume the strangled edge in Knuckles' voice had resulted from the innumerable vines presently giving him a group hug.

Sonic swung himself onto solid ground, then broke into a sprint and leapt across the pit with a spin attack that sliced all the vines in a row. Still immobilized, Knuckles dropped right before a jaw of spikes swung from the top and smashed into the rock wall. For good measure, several blasts of fire and some flying hammers also filled the air.

Tails caught Knuckles below the trap zone and flew him to solid ground, where he began the arduous task of pulling the severed vines off his limbs.

Sonic finished ribbon dancing with a loose vine, then took a bow. "And that, my friends, is the real super power of teamwork!"

The echidna groaned. "I thought we agreed to never speak of that again."

"Aw come on, ya wet blanket. We made a great team."

"I don't work with lunatics if I can help it," Knuckles mumbled as he continued to detangle himself.

Sonic smirked. "Oh I forgot, you only work with evil dictators."

Knuckles' head snapped up.

Tails' eyes widened. "Umm, Sonic? You probably shouldn't—"

Sonic held up a hand. "Right, right, my bad…"

He shortened his vine using the quills on his back, and then held it up to his nose as a makeshift mustache. Clearing his throat, he put on the gruffest voice he could manage:

"...so you must trust me now, huh?"

"That DOES IT!" roared Knuckles. He made a dive for Sonic, who calmly sidestepped.

The hedgehog turned to his sidekick. "I mean, can you believe this guy? We save him, and then he- woah!"

Knuckles yanked a vine near Sonic's feet, causing him to fall on his face. Before the hedgehog could recover, he found himself on the business end of a flying tackle.

Tails chased the screaming, flailing ecosystem of arms, feet and vines as it bounded around like a possessed ball of yarn.

"Guys! Please don't fight here! It's not saf-yaah!"

The loop of one such vine caught Tails by the foot, and he too became a valuable part of the ecosystem.

A few moments later, the ball rolled to a stop at the very edge of the pit. Its three mammalian members, hopelessly entangled by now, watched a few pebbles fall into the seemingly-endless darkness.

"Okay, okay, don't panic," panted Tails, "we just have to figure out how to shift our weight to roll away from the edge."

From the top of the rock wall, a burst of confetti shot into the air. Sonic raised an eye ridge.

"Uhh..."

A single flake of confetti fluttered down to land on the hero-vine ball. Six eyes trailed it warily.

The ball slowly tilted towards the pit, wobbled, then settled back where it was. Six lungs deflated in relief.

The confetti exploded. Six vocal chords put on their best performance.

XXX

Elsewhere on the planet, two sentient robots rested in a dark lair, each silently staring the other down. After a few tense moments, one spoke.

"Do you have any two-thirds?"

"Go fish."

"Aw, bolts. Avocado Constants?"

"It's Avogadro. Go fish again."

The yellow robot threw his cards down. "You're cheating, Orbot!"

The other, red-painted robot, shook his head. "Cubot, how could I possibly be cheating? If I had either of those cards in hand, you would know."

Cubot tilted his head. "How?"

"Well," Orbot began, raising a pointer finger, "Avogadro's Constant is a twenty-four-digit number, so the card is three feet long. And two-thirds is expressed in decimal form, so it had to be printed on a möbius strip."

Cubot's head had tilted so far, it was upside-down.

"And anyway," Orbot continued, "you obviously don't have those cards either."

"...I don't? How can you tell?"

"Never you mind, friend. If Dr. Eggman ever returns, I'll ask him to provide us with a more typical deck."

"Maybe he can install me some reading software too..."

As if on cue, the doors to the lair burst open and its owner barged in. On most days, it would have been fairly obvious from the man's commanding presence that he was the boss of this lab, but today, he seemed...off.

Orbot dropped his cards and hovered up. "Doctor! We haven't seen you in forever! Where have you been?"

"I don't want to talk about it," Eggman replied tersely.

"Why are you covered in dirt and sweat?" asked Cubot.

"And where's your hoverpod?" continued Orbot.

"I walked. And I don't want to talk about it."

Eggman shoved his robot lackeys aside as he stormed further into his lab.

Orbot nodded. "Alright, Doctor, we can respect that..."

"Thank you," grumbled Eggman.

"...after all, you're more precious than gold to us."

Eggman made a strangled noise and halted in his tracks. Orbot had intended to continue, but suddenly felt the urge to stifle it. He retracted his declarative finger.

"You know what else is golden, Orbot?" asked a dangerously low voice, "Silence."

"Yeah, Doc!" chattered an oblivious Cubot, "So if you don't want to tell us why you look so rattled, we'll just have to grin and bear it!"

For no reason Orbot could discern, Eggman launched into a fit of hysterical screaming.

Cubot blinked. "Was it something I said?"

Orbot shrugged, and then ducked as Eggman kicked Cubot across the room and into a pile of equipment.

"BLASTING BLAST ALL THE BLASTWORTHY BLASTABLE BLASTED—"

As Cubot got back up, several cardboard boxes fell, knocking some switches on a control panel that had long been hidden by newer inventions. A nearby monitor flickered to life.

Overtaken by curiosity, Eggman stopped shrieking and walked over to have a look.

"I...had forgotten about this contraption. Does it really still work?" he mused.

Cubot edged himself away from Eggman's feet.

Meanwhile, Orbot recognized a valuable chance to change the subject. He collapsed into a compact sphere and rolled towards the doctor. "What is it?"

"This machine is...quite old. See, years before I built you two, the first Death Egg had crashed on Angel Island, where that idiot echidna lives. I managed to fool him by telling him that Sonic and Tails, whom he hadn't yet met, were out to steal his Master Emerald.

"This accomplished two things: one, he antagonized them at every turn, slowing their progress greatly. Two, he gave me permission to install all manner of defense systems on his island while a larger base there served as a rebuilding station and launching pad for the Death Egg. Eventually, I stole the Master Emerald while Knuckles and Sonic were trading blows, and re-launched the Death Egg."

"And then what happened?"

Eggman's expression soured again. "And then the three of them banded together and foiled me anyway. I hate them so much."

Orbot flinched. "Er, so what does this machine do, again?"

"...right. I used it to monitor the defense systems I built all over the island. Considering this was years ago and Knuckles hates me now, I doubt any of that is still in place. But let's try it anyway."

Eggman flicked a few more dusty switches. The gridlined CRT screen lit up like a Minesweeper game-over. He raised an eyebrow.

"There's that much left? How very interesting."

"And plot-relevant," Orbot added.

"Indeed, although this primitive thing doesn't tell me nearly as much as I'd like…" Eggman observed before noticing his other robot far across the room. "Cubot, get over here!"

Cubot collapsed into his compact form. A few moments of silence passed before he popped out again, sweating oil bullets.

"Doctor! There's something wrong! I can't roll!"

"Of course you can't roll."

"But Orbot rolls!"

"Yes, Orbot is an orb. You, Cubot, are a cube."

Cubot gasped, an impossible action considering his distinct lack of lungs. "I am!?"

"GET OVER HERE, NOW."

Cubot pressed his index fingers together and skulked over to Eggman. The doctor shoved a few items off a nearby desk and connected a wire from the older machinery into a port on Cubot's back. Grabbing a keyboard, he spent a minute typing commands. Cubot's head rotated back and his eyes projected a holographic screen in the air, showing a far more detailed map of the island with the same areas as before lit up in green blips.

A red blip appeared next to one such green.

Eggman broke into a chortle. "Knuckles got himself caught in one of my traps! My day just got a little better."

Two more blips appeared: one blue, and a smaller, orange-brown one.

Eggman stiffened in surprise. "That's…!"

The green blip expanded, engulfing the three foreigners. A descending whistle played.

Eggman leaned forward, entranced. "And then they all fell."

"That's gotta hurt!" Cubot announced to the ceiling.

Eggman paced in a slow circle, stroking his disheveled mustache.

"So...considering the path they fell down, they should take a while to get back out. And then considering recent events...if I then...I could..." he paused, a wicked grin spreading across his face. "Ohh ho ho, this is rich..."

Eggman cracked his knuckles and typed a flurry of keys on the console. The sound echoed like machine-gun fire.

Orbot's head rotated as he watched a series of plans begin to cluster on the screen. "I didn't know you were planning to steal the Master Emerald."

Eggman adjusted his glasses, somehow reflecting a glint of light even though the lair was dark.

"Neither did I, Orbot. Neither did I. But there's nothing more delicious than the chance for revenge."

Author's Note: Fear not; there's a lot of Angel Island here, but this isn't going to be a generic re-telling of S3&K.