Behind The Barrier

"Gotcha!" Tails triumphantly shook a fist at the computer sceen. Last firewall down… Alright.

Grin wiped away by serious concentration, he started searching Eggman's databanks. Current projects… There were two, as it seemed… And one of them was being activated right at this moment.

A few orders typed into the keyboard opened several windows, one supplying Tails with general data on the experiment. The fox frowned. What did Eggman need equations on tunnel effects and a long list of various chaos parameters for?

Shaking his head, Tails moved over to the other windows.

One of them showed surveillance camera images from the lab, and apparently Sonic and Knuckles were already there, in a busy quarrel with a bunch of guard robots. Tails smiled, as far as he could tell from the looks of it, the two of them were doing pretty good. Robots were flying to all sides…

One, hurtled especially far after an impact with a spinballing Sonic tumbled dozens of meters through the air before smashing into what Tails considered some sort of generator supplying the experiment with energy. Obviously upset about the harsh contact, electric sizzles ran over the device, sparks flying. Tails' eyes widened, watching Sonic and Knuckles stare for a second before the hedgehog gestured wildly, pushing the echidna along, both of them taking flight. As they left, the entire image filled with white-hot light.

It took almost ten seconds until the image was back, static-disturbed, but clear enough to see the lab again. To Tails' huge surprise, nothing really seemed damaged… other than Eggman's experimental machine, which was smoking, the majority of its parts reduced to a charring chunk. Sonic and Knuckles were nowhere to be seen.

Worriedly Tails activated his wristlet-computer. Had they made it out? He should be able to find them… Sonic's watch contained a communicator and any traceiver could be located.

When the result of the search turned up on his screen, Tails shook his head. This didn't make any sense. If he was to believe his readings, and the strength of the signal, Sonic was thousands of kilometres away. Minimum.

There was a flash of white light accompanied by an odd, painfully tingling feeling tearing through his body. It lasted for just a few seconds, then Knuckles was suddenly falling freely.

The fall wasn't long; by the time the echidna realized he was indeed falling and considered trying a glide in spite of seeing nothing but whiteness and having not the slightest idea which way was up, he landed full length on his belly with a loud thud.

Knuckles grunted, concluding just from the renewed pain the landing had caused and the cold, hard and slightly wet way it felt underneath him that he'd crashed on some sort of rock. He blinked, getting up on his hands and knees, shaking his head in an attempt to chase off the headache that still hung heavily over his senses. The guardian wasn't sure if it actually was the shaking doing it or if it happened in its own, but the dizziness faded after a moment.

It didn't take the disorientation however. Knuckles carefully got to his feet, slowly turning once on the spot, trying to make some sense of his surroundings and of what had just happened.

The ground beneath his feet was cobbled; dark grey, rectangular pieces of rock in tidy lines. To his left, a wall from the same material stood up to about twice his height, its right end showing other walls had been attached to it, but everything left of them was a crumbled pile of small stones. In one of the spots having once been corners of the room he stood in, a sandal bobbed gently up and down in a puddle of muddy water.

"Where in the world am I?", Knuckles mumbled, crawling over one of the mounts of wreckage. He froze when he reached the top of it. "And what the heck happened here?"

The sight before him was a picture of destruction. Knuckles found himself overlooking the ruins of a city. Some houses stood in a half that was mostly unharmed, and then the second half looked as if it had been cut off by a giant sword striking from above, leaving the second half just another heap of stones and wood. Some buildings had fallen completely, here and there a single wall sticking out of the chaos, stubbornly having withstood whatever had come upon this town. In between the destruction, puddles from the size of a foot up to small lakes mirrored a muddy reflection of the ruins.

Knuckles could only stand and gape. To say he was shocked was an understatement. He couldn't believe what he saw. Whatever had happened here… if this was what was left of this town… what happened to the people living here before? A shudder ran down his spine and he briefly turned over his shoulder, glancing back at the sandal in the puddle, but he quickly turned away when his stomach made him feel like it wanted to throw up.

Slowly the echidna climbed down the heap of rocks, aimlessly following what had once probably been a street. Reaching the next corner of it, he found a small group of candles sitting next to the remains of a house, almost fully burned down, but the flames still alive.

Forcing himself to concentrate on his breathing and keep walking, Knuckles reached the end of the ruins and found himself on what apparently had once been a field of some sort. Secretly glad to be out of this dead city, the echidna walked another minute and then dropped down on the stem of a fallen, lone tree.

His head was spinning. Pushing past the shock and confusion, Knuckles tried to make some sense of this. Of everything that happened.

He'd been with Sonic and Tails in Eggman's base, trying to stop this experiment. There had been an explosion, Sonic had told him to run and -

Sonic.

Where was Sonic? Where was Eggman's base, his machines…? Where was he?

Knuckles groaned, forcefully shaking his head again. Okay Knuckles, calm down and think clearly… He remembered the explosion. He remembered Sonic running. And then… then there was that bright light and the headache and this destroyed town and he was here and…

The echidna drew a slow breath. Bright light. Headache. Mysterious change of location.

Chaos Control.

A Chaos teleport, to be precise.

It was the only thing that fit something like what he was experiencing. Knuckles had never tried it. He knew the Master Emerald held the capabilities to do it. He didn't know if he could do it, and he'd never been in any situation that made him feel an experiment with unknown outcome on the Master Emerald, the most powerful thing on the planet and subject of his destined duty, would be justified.

Sonic however… Knuckles had seen him use Chaos Control on the space colony Ark. The hedgehog didn't use it often; as far as Knuckles was concerned it was a complicated and straining thing to him, so he preferred relying on his speed when fighting.

Had Sonic used Chaos Control to get them out of Eggman's exploding whatsoever? Generally Knuckles wouldn't mind being saved that way, but the way things looked now… Sonic had used something he was everything but good at on him, and he'd ended up at some random fricking place lying in ruins.

The echidna ground his teeth, the confusion and disorientation and shock about what he'd seen slowly melting into anger. Anger directed at the person responsible for this mess. A person that never thought about what he did and risked his own life as much as that of people around him.

Knuckles' hands fisted. He'd find Sonic, and he'd make sure the hedgehog would never forget the points Knuckles would make on why you don't use something you hardly manage for yourself on random bystanders…

"You're so going to get it, hedgehog," he shouted out, agitated enough to not just grumble it to himself, but he hadn't expected an answer.

"Knuckles? That you? Help!"

The red echidna started storming towards the voice of the current subject of his rage, but the message that lay much more in the tone of Sonic's call than the words got through even to the enraged guardian. And it made him all the more confused.

Knuckles blinked, his temper not knowing how to deal with this new notion, and he struggled to make sense of it. Sonic was calling for help. Sonic. Sonic the Hedgehog called for help. Help. Sonic never did anything like that. And now he did it with a desperation in his tone… Knuckles knew only two things that had ever made Sonic scream for help. The first was the pink hedgehog girl Amy Rose and the giant hammer she used to make Sonic realize his feelings for her. The second was a certain wet liquid when it came in bigger compounds…

"Hey! Anybody hear me?!"

The anew call brought Knuckles back to his senses and he pushed the tirade of thoughts and feelings in his head aside for now. "I'm coming, Sonic!"

Running towards the direction of the hedgehog's calls, it didn't take Knuckles long to find him. He stopped at the edge of a rectangular hole in the ground, with its six by six meters rather big. Its walls were made of the same sort of stones the buildings in the city had been constructed of. Knuckles couldn't guess how deep it was, at the moment it was filled up to two meters below him with water.

"That's a reservoir for the fields," the echidna realized. "A well… or some sort of rain storage…"

"Knuckles!"

The shaky call of his name made the echidna finally focus his attention on the middle of the pool. Clinging to a piece of wood for dear life, Sonic stared up at him, and the miserable look the hedgehog gave was enough to let Knuckles almost forget the plans of murder he'd made just a minute ago. The hedgehog's large green eyes were screaming despair, his triangular ears folded against his head so tightly it nearly seemed as if he didn't have any ears.

Knuckles called over to him. "How in the world did you get yourself there?!"

"Dunno! One moment I'm at Eggman's base and the next I'm here! Help me, Knuckles! I don't wanna die!" Sonic was pleading, actually pleading, and now hugged the poor piece of wood keeping him from drowning even tighter.

"Okay, okay, relax. You're not gonna die," Knuckles spoke calmingly, aware that while in a state of panic like this he wouldn't get anything out of Sonic anyway. Plus, the water most likely wasn't really warm, so first things first. Get Sonic out of the water, let him calm down, then beat him up for getting you into this mess. This masterplan formed, Knuckles looked around trying to find something he could use to fish the hedgehog out of the huge well.

"Knuckles! I guess I'm sinking!"

Watching the emerald eyes fill with even more blind panic, Knuckles idly wondered why he would be sinking now if the branch held him for quite some time before. From what Knuckles could see, the piece of wood was still swimming as neatly as it had a minute ago when he'd come here, so probably Sonic's panicked mind was just playing tricks on him.

"Relax. Deep breaths, okay? I'm getting you out of there."

No reply other than a shaky nod.

Knuckles' search for appropriate fishing equipment ended fruitlessly; there was nothing he could use to pull Sonic over to the edge of the pool and then up. What left only one thing…

"I'll add this to the long list of things that are your fault, hedgehog," Knuckles muttered as he reluctantly pulled off his gloves, shoes and socks.

He slipped into the water with a quick header, resurfaced spitting out the stale, muddy brew and swam up to Sonic. "Let go of your branch and hold on to me, 'kay?"

Sonic merely nodded, but Knuckles took the fact he adapted a steel grip on him as enough of an answer. With a shivering, but elsewise unmoving hedgehog clinging to his back, Knuckles slowly swam back to the nearest wall. Another time in his life he was glad he had been born with sharp spikes on his hands… Sonic wouldn't have gotten out of this thing even if he could swim.

Knuckles climbed carefully; he didn't want to risk dropping his load. It would mean jumping back into the rather cold water and dive after him, and the echidna wasn't too fond of either.

Back up on solid and dry ground, Knuckles found himself caught in a death hug. "Huh?"

Sonic squeezed him even tighter. "Thank you, Knux, you're the best," he mumbled.

In spite of feeling rather intimidated, and the numerous plans for hedgehog execution he'd made up not long ago still somewhat in mind, Knuckles suddenly realized he totally couldn't be mad at him like this. "S'okay, Sonic. Now let go."

"Oh. Uh… sure." The hedgehog stumbled a few steps backwards; the distraught look giving way to one of embarrassment. "I just…"

"I know."

Knuckles could have kicked himself for the soft smile tugging on his lips. But it was true; he'd seen Sonic's inexplicable panic in face of water numerous times, and he knew whatever had caused it, Sonic just couldn't overcome it. Knuckles wasn't anything like a psychologist, but whatever problem Sonic had with water, it was something deeply rooted. And, for once, it couldn't really be Sonic's fault.

Still… "What were you thinking?!"

"What?" Now the hedgehog looked puzzled, one of his still flattened ears tipping up, and his head tilted.

"You damn know what I'm talking about!" Slowly Knuckles could feel the anger coming back to him as the awkwardness left him. "What did you think you were doing teleporting us… wherever we are here?!"

Sonic stared. "Hey, I didn't –"

"Of course you did! You used Chaos Control to get us out of there! And while I generally don't mind not being killed by Eggman's explosions, I do mind ending up on some random apocalyptic field!"

"Apo- what?" Sonic's face was blank confusion. For a moment Knuckles seriously wondered if he could act that well or if his brain was still stuck at 'HolychaosI'mdrowning!'.

The echidna stabbed the index finger of his still ungloved hand at Sonic's chest. "You. Used. Chaos. Control!"

The blue hedgehog vigorously shook his head, drops of water flying from his drenched fur and quills. "Did not!"

"Sure you did! Admit it already!" Knuckles closed the distance between them, glaring into the green eyes.

"No!" Sonic still wasn't returning the glare; he just looked totally confused. "Do you really think I'd chaos control myself into the middle of a pool?!"

"Well, you screwed it up!" Knuckles gripped Sonic by the throat. "You screwed it up and now we're both lost, hedgehog, and this is all your fault!" He shook him. "Just admit it already!"

Sonic coughed. "I can't admit anything I didn't do!"

Knuckled let go of him. Suddenly he didn't know what he should think anymore. Even if Sonic was reckless, did things without using his brains and stuff like that… he'd never lied to him. Knuckles thought he did a couple of times, but in the end it always turned out someone else had been lying to him, not Sonic.

"We'll speak about this later," he decided, turning his back on the hedgehog and walking over to where he'd dropped his clothing.

"Just where in the world are we?", Sonic queried from behind him.

Knuckles finished pulling on his gloves and whirled around. "I don't know!", he snapped, and Sonic just stared back at him, arms folded on his chest.

"Stop looking at me as if I'd just stolen your Emerald, Knucklehead!", he shouted back, apparently starting to get mad as well now. "I didn't do anything!"

Knuckles grumbled. "We'll see about that."

Speedy's note: Sorry for the wait, hope you're enjoying yourself reading anyway. Replies to reviews might take a while longer than they usually do; I was skillful enough to injure my right thumb yesterday and at the moment it hurts enough to leave me stuck at typing single-handedly, trying not to move my hand too much. I'm a klutz with left... Luckily this chapter was already finished. :)