One weekend without writing, and I feel about ready to explode. I have been itching to start a new chapter for so long.

Well, homecoming was good. Didn't have a date (go figure) but I met up with some friends and we all danced together. Well, you know us girls. We have to dance at least once even if we're alone. xD We had a good time. Especially when Cha-Cha Slide came on. I 3 that dance...

Well, I know some of you have been waiting for my new chapter. So here it is!

--Salvation--

Chapter 8:
Stumbling on a Discovery

--Salvation--

"Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on somethings, perhaps when you are least
expecting it."
-Charles Franklin Kettering

Sonic and Knuckles stood staring at the ruins of the towers. Metal was buried somewhere inside, and Sonic wondered if this time, the robot would not come back. A chill went up his spine. He doubted that. Something told him that the robot would always be after him, no matter how Sonic tried to kill him.

The sun was setting behind them, and night would soon fall over the ruins. Sonic's mind raced. Two emerald pieces were found, and only the final piece remained. His eyes flashed toward the bag of emeralds, holding 9 in all. The blue and green shards stood out against the other Chaos Emeralds, shining brightly through the fabric of the knapsack. He turned his eyes back to the ruins, watching them for a single moment longer, his thoughts resting on where the red shard could be hidden. Then, he turned around, facing the setting sun. Knuckles continued to watch the ruins, watching for any sign of Metal tearing through the rock.

The setting sun sent lines of crimson and dark violet rays through the sky. The clouds seemed to be split in half by the mixture of the wonderful colors twirling around them. The sunsets here were brillant, bright, and not hardly forgotten by anyone. Sonic watched the sun sink below the trees in th distance, watched as the colors spilting the air slowly faded into a midnight blue, until the sky was sparkling with stars. The entire time, all Sonic heard was silence.

Just as the stars began appearing overhead, Sonic turned around, his green eyes shining in the darkness landing on the still form of Knuckles, who was still staring at the ruins. His violet gaze was distant and thoughtful, but when Sonic moved slightly, they immediatly came into focus again, and the red echidna turned to face him. Knuckles still didn't speak, and Sonic crossed his arms, shifting his weight to his left leg. His wounds from the laser gun fired by Metal still burned slightly, but the bleeding had stopped long ago, leaving only two small cuts.

"Any ideas?" Sonic asked, blinking in the darkness. Knuckles took a moments paused after his words before he shook his head, crossing his own arms, and sighing.

"None," he said, shaking his head again. His violet eyes closed a moment before they reopened and glowed in the darkness, staring intently at Sonic. They were focused and thoughtful, concentrating. "But think. A shard of a red emerald...Where would they had put it?"

Sonic let his mind wander a moment, thinking of the diagram in the bag, of the paper with the words "Metal lies the last piece of the puzzle" written on it. But like Knuckles, he sighed, shaking his head.

"I have no idea..." he said, feeling suddenly hopeless. They were so close, so close to saving Tails, only a single gem shard away, and they had no idea where it was. But more than hopeless, he felt angry. He growled under his breath, bawling his hands into fists. "But we have to find it. It has to be somewhere."

Knuckles said nothing, but Sonic saw him nod in the darkness. The hedgehog turned away, closing his eyes as his head began to pound. So many questions, and not enough answers. So many things to do, but not enough known to be able to do them. It was all so very stressful, and Sonic simply wanted to give up.

But then he saw Tails's smiling face, looking up at him from a faded photograph...

He opened his eyes, and knew he couldn't give up. The little fox had died just to save him. Now it was time for him to bring him back, or die trying.

He turned back to Knuckles, who was still staring at the sky, his eyes unfocused as he drifted in thought. Sonic blinked in the darkness, his green eyes glowing.

"We need to go back," he said simply, and Knuckles's eyes suddenly regained focus, and eyed the blue hedgehog. Confusion sparkled in their depths, but Sonic only blinked.

"And why?" Knuckles asked simply, uncrossing his arms and letting them hang at his sides. Sonic turned away from him, facing the forest.

"There may be more information. There may be something we're missing, something we're not getting." He paused, looking at Knuckles from over his shoulder. "We need to do more research before we look for the final shard, or else we might spend too much time searching." Knuckles said nothing, but nodded, and Sonic nodded as well. "Now, lets get going." He reached for the echidna, grabbing his arm, and in the blink of an eye, they disappeared from the clearing, racing through the forest, down the hill, and finally up the mountain to the house.

They stopped in front of the door, with Sonic releasing Knuckles's arm and walking up the steps. Knuckles was close behind him, watching the horizon as he walked slowly up the steps. Sonic walked through the door, not bothering to flick on the light, and walked to the back of the house, toward the bedroom and Tails's workshop. He stopped at the door, hesitating, staring at the wood seperating him from his bedroom. The familar pain of losing Tails was always throbbing inside him, but at certain moments, it would burst to live, beating and pounding painfully against his heart, jerking and pulling at it. And this was one of those moments. He winced in pain, remembering how the small kitsune would spend hours working in here, remembering how, sometimes, late at night, the two would simply talk from across the room, laughing at the stupidest things, remembering how, every night before he would go to sleep, Tails would sometimes beg for Sonic to tell him a story, any kind of story, and how at most of those times, he would grudgingly agree, and by the end of the story be laughing so hard he could hardly stand sitting up straight. All these memories brung bittersweet feelings to Sonic, and as he reached up to open the door, he gritted his teeth.

He wanted to be able to do all that again, to laugh and talk with his best friend.

With a blink of his emerald eyes, Sonic turned the doorknob and slowly opened the door. After a moments pause in the doorway, Sonic flicked the switch on the wall, bringing the lights on the ceiling to life. The room was just the way it had been two months ago, and Sonic cringed, stepping inside, heading toward the desk in the back where Tails usually did his research. It was also the same as it had been two months ago, just the way Tails had left it before he...Sonic swallowed, putting his hand on the wooden desk.

It was so amazing how hard life still was without him, even after two months...

After a few moments pause, Sonic began shifting the papers around on the desk, being careful to not mess them up. He scanned over them, and when they didn't prove useful to his quest, he stacked them into the corner, which was where almost all of them went. Only two papers remained on the table after a few minutes, and Sonic was beginning to feel less hopeful. And when those papers proved to be no help as the others ones had, Sonic threw his hands up, cursing under his breath. He brung his fist down on the table, and when he did so, the wood rattled beneath it, making a thudding noise against the ground, and something fell, making a louder thud against the ground. Startled, Sonic looked under the desk to see a plank of wood lying against the floor. His eyes narrowed in thought, and he bent down, reaching for it.

Sonic pulled the plank from under the desk, and examined it, finding no interesting qualities at all. He placed the plank on the ground and crawled under the desk, looking up toward the underside of it, and gasped at what he saw.

The bottom of the desk had a slightly large square hole in the dead center of it, about the same size as the wooden plank Sonic had pulled from underneath it. It was just right for his hand to fit through, and when Sonic reached into it, he immediatly, felt his fingers brush against something. His heart suddenly feeling ready to burst, Sonic grabbed the object with his fingers, and pulled it out. It was a piece of paper, folded neatly. Immediatly, he unfolded it, his heart pumping harder and faster in his chest. The words seemed to not come to his eyes fast enough, and when they did, he read them, there underneath the wooden desk.

"Tornado Compartment 01 Code (Located under sign) : (Age)-(Age)-(Infinity)"

His hope leaped into action again, and he quickly scrambled from under the desk, flying toward the Tornado. The paper was still clutched in his hands, and his emerald eyes were wild, focused only on the plane sitting in the corner. The wings were gathering dust, and it looked like an old plane that hadn't been used in years. But Sonic knew this plane was just as it had been two months ago; the best damn plane he had ever had, built by his best friend.

He examined the plane, looking for any kind of 'sign' Tails might've meant. And when he saw the emblem of the Tornado - two tails with S O N I C written in the middle - he ran his fingers along it, hardly able to breath. It felt hollow, like a sticker would over a hole, and Sonic clawed at it, desperate to pull it away. And his heart leaped into his throat when it did pull away. It was simply a sticker, and Sonic swallowed hopefully, adrenaline pumping in his veins. There was a keypad against a metal door, with numbers and signs on it. Sonic stared at it, but his concentration was broken suddenly by Knuckles's voice.

"Sonic?"

"Knuckles!" he said, turnign around to watched the echidna as he entered the room. Knuckles blinked at him, and Sonic motioned him over. "Look what I found! Look at this!" Knuckles immediatly hurried over, his violet eyes scanning the compartment door, and he smiled, his violet eyes burning with hope.

"Well, what're you waiting for? Open it!" Sonic nodded, fiddling with the paper, and looked at it. "(Age)-(Age)-(Infinity)". What kind of a hint is that? Sonic wondered, trying to decipher what it meant.

"Ages," he muttered, thinking. He reached up and pushed in a 1 and then a 0. There was a click on the other side of the door as Sonic finished the kitsunes age. His heart leaped again, and he chuckled. "His age. It figures. I'll need to tell him to make a better combination." He thought some more, pondering on ages. He looked at his hands, wondering what other ages Tails could've put.

"Maybe your age?" Knuckles offered, and Sonic looked at him, then back at the keypad. Well, it was worth a shot. He pushed in 1 and 5, and there was another clicking inside the door. He looked back down at the paper, suddenly lightheaded from the excitement. "(Infinity)". He scanned the keypad, looking for the 'sideways 8' that Tails had tried to explain to him was the infinity sign. Sonic remembered as if it were only days ago that Tails was trying to tell him the 'sideways 8', as Sonic had called it, was actually the sign for infinity. He had become annoyed everytime Sonic said that instead of the 'actual term'.

He found it near the bottom, and pressed it, and at once, the door of the compartment slid open, and Sonic gasped in utter shock and surprise at what he saw. There, inside a small dark hole in the side of the Tornado was a brillantly shining crimson jem, sparklin even though no sunlight reflected off of it.

The sight of the single remaining shard nearly made Sonic pass out.

This was what they had needed, what they had been searching for, and it had been in Tails's workshop the entire time. Sonic, his hands shaking, took the gem from the compartment, staring at it with shock etched across his face.

"Thats...theres...I can't..." Sonic could hardly hear the stutterings of Knuckles as his own eyes took in the gem. He only heard his voice rising above Knuckles's.

"We've found it!" he nearly shouted, tearing his gaze away from the jewel to look at the echidna. "This is...this is the Stone of Change...This is the final piece!"

Knuckles nodded, taking the small shard from Sonic, and gazing at it thoughtfully. "I can't believe we actually did it," he whispered, his eyes glittering. Sonic closed his eyes, letting the relief and happiness wash over him like a wave.

We did it, Tails... he thought with a smile. We're coming...

But neither Knuckles nor Sonic noticed the single small sheet of paper remaining inside the compartment, the paper that had shared the space with the gem. It was forgotten in the darkened opening, and neither Sonic nor Knuckles ever saw it...

--End of Chapter--

Meh, pretty good chapter, I guess. Can't wait for the ending. I already know what the last line in the last chapter of the final story will be. Mwaha. So there. ;) And it's already almost time to head on to the final story. Strange, eh? Amazing how fast it takes to write a story when you love to do it, huh? Well, about another chapter or two, and the final book will be out in a few weeks.

Well, review everyone! I may have a chance to update tomorrow!

Aiko-Chan SoT