Oooooooooooooooh. *squeals* my first sonic story. I apologise in advance for the badness. I don't own Sonic the Hedgehog or any of the characters. Sega does.

Knuckles sat in front of the Master Emerald.

He sat cross legged, one eye open, the other eye closed, rocking slowly in the wind.

It was peaceful on Angel Island. It was a beautiful day, although it was rarely not.

The sun beat down on Knuckles, but the gentle breeze that flowed through the skies cooled him.

The Master Emerald glowed, a steady glow and Knuckles could feel it like it was his own pulse.

All was calm.

And Knuckles was bored.

Still, he dared not move from his post, he couldn't move from his post.

He had to stay here, as guardian and as the last of his race.

This was his duty.

Knuckles looked at the glowing emerald he had devoted his life to protecting. He remembered all the times he had lost it, or it had got broken, all the times somebody (Namely Eggman) had tried to steal it.

He wasn't really a great guardian was he? Still it didn't matter, as the emerald was here now. It was here now and it was safe.

Still, Knuckles got the weird feeling that the Master Emerald was mocking him. The reason that Knuckles was bound to the island, a prisoner as much as he was a resident was because of the master emerald.

He couldn't leave it, physically. Unless it was broken or there was some crisis with the chaos emeralds, Knuckles couldn't leave the island. He would walk up to the edge, staring down below and just... Stop. He couldn't do it. It was like there was some kind of force field stopping him from going. This meant that when Sonic and the others wanted to visit him they had to come up to the island, as he couldn't go down. He didn't mention this to them however, they would think him insane if they didn't already.

Knuckles didn't mind them coming to the island to visit him, at least it meant he could watch over the emerald.

Sonic often mentioned how overprotective Knuckles was of the emerald, how Knuckles was spending the best time of his life guarding it from nothing.

The echidna always got mad at Sonic for that. Knuckles chuckled as he remembered the fights he had had with his friend/rival and that dulled the boredom slightly. Sonic had a point of course, he was maybe spending the majority of his life doing nothing. But Knuckles had been chosen by the echidnas and he wasn't about to let them down, no matter what he had to do to keep the emerald safe. It wasn't so bad normally. Normally the gentle breezes and blue skies kept him at ease.

But right at that very moment, the boredom was mind numbing.

Glancing once more at the emerald, Knuckles got to his feet. He hadn't seen Sonic and the others in a while. Knuckles didn't want to go down to Tail's workshop and confess that he was feeling bored and lonely, but it was the middle of the week and Eggman had to have hatched some stupid scheme that Knuckles could use as an excuse for coming down to the surface.

Slowly Knuckles walked to the edge of the island, the wind blowing a warning in his face.

All he needed to do was jump off and glide to safety, away from the emerald that had imprisoned him and made his spent every waking moment of his time watching it on this floating island.

Knuckles put one of his feet on air.

And paused.

The echidna glanced back at the emerald which glowed twice.

Sighing, Knuckles walked back towards the shrine where the gleaming emerald lay.

Yup. Definitely mocking him.