"So's where Robotnik holed up then? If we really are on the same side now you can start there," Sonic demanded.
The echidna raised his hands hopelessly. "I don't know. We travelled by ring. I've got no landmarks."
Sonic scoffed. "Great. Big help."
The echidna bristled at once. "According to you, you're the one supposed to be this great help!"
Sonic scowled back. "Don't make me regret it already."
"I can help," Tails raised his voice over both of them. "If these chaos emeralds Knuckles is talking about are conduits for the same sort of energy I tracked to find you both, then I can alter the filters again to find them."
Sonic shrugged. "Fine. Back to the house for the gear it is then." He eyed Knuckles. "Think you can use a door to my home without kicking it in?"
"What?"
The echidna looked genuinely baffled but the prickle of unsettled emotion like sparks in his spines made Sonic huff in frustration.
"Nothing. Come on then."
He led the way back across town at a run, welcoming even that much movement and pushing just hard enough that the echidna arrived breathless but still on his heels.
Tails raised his eyes at Sonic as he touched down a few seconds later.
"Same side..." he prompted.
"Yeah yeah." Sonic opened the front door. There was a clatter of movement from the next room and Maddie appeared through the doorway, a wary hand clutching a baseball bat. She put it down, leaning against the door-frame when she saw Sonic.
"Tom went on to the station. I came back here to start phoning round a few people. Check no one got caught up in it all."
"And you were going to cosh Robotnik with a bat if he turned up here?" Sonic asked, grinning.
Maddie shrugged. "Yes? I guess. So is there a plan?"
"Find him," Sonic said, the smile falling from his face. Tails was already heading to his improvised workspace. Maddie's gaze followed the little fox.
"So I don't get my kitchen back yet, huh? For some reason I'm not surprised."
Sonic ignored this, pacing the length of the kitchen back and forth, way slower than he wanted to be going. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the echidna, almost as restless, prowling around the edges of the room, peering through doorways and glancing up out of windows as though recce-ing the place for escape or attack.
Worry and curiosity and impatience shifted across his face as Sonic snuck another look. In the absence of the emotionless war-mask, decorated spines and weapons which he conspicuously didn't need, it would have almost been easy to forget he was an echidna. A hunter. A conqueror. Dangerous.
But he was. The long red spines swung around his face with every stalking step and he couldn't have looked more out of place in a suburban kitchen. Whatever else he was he was a fighter.
"You two need to sit down!" Tails' voice broke through Sonic's churning thoughts. "I'm trying to calibrate this thing and you're throwing the readings all over the place."
Knuckles looked startled, and dropped to the floor where he was in something Sonic would have called more crouching than sitting.
"Fine," Sonic said, pulling his attention away. "Gimme two secs to get a snack if this is going to take a wait."
Tails smiled in sympathy. "It's going to take a wait."
"We could probably all do with something to eat," Maddie said, opening a cupboard. Sonic ducked under her and snagged two large bags of chips.
"I'm not hungry-hungry. Just snacky." He tore open one packet and considered the other.
"Tails?"
The fox looked round.
"Superhot-spicy-chilli flavour?" he read aloud from the packet with exaggerated care. "Uh, no thanks."
"Your loss, buddy." Sonic turned to Knuckles and raised the packet as a question.
Knuckles eyed it. "It's food?"
"Uh." Sonic swallowed a huge mouthful trying not to choke on crumbs. "Well – it's a snack. 'Food' might be overselling it. It just tastes good really. I guess there's a stack of calories which gotta count for something."
He tossed the unopened packet into Knuckles' lap but Maddie had plucked it away again before he'd even got a hand to it.
"Sonic, no! That's completely inappropriate."
She looked back at Knuckles. "When was the last time you ate anything that wasn't mushroom?"
Knuckles' expression had turned beleaguered. As though he was more than half sure this must be a trick question. But his eyes hadn't left the bag.
"I don't… Sometimes there was wallwort?"
"Ooookay." Maddie sighed and crossed to the fruit-bowl and handed back a banana. "Have that for starters and we''ll try for some oatmeal."
Sonic made a face. "Seriously? That's supposed to be better?"
"I like oatmeal," Tails said mildly.
Maddy smiled. "I'll do enough."
Knuckles turned the banana over in his hands and sniffed it. Sonic was certain he'd never clapped eyes on one before and was about to chomp down on it skin and all. Ordinarily he'd even have found that funny, but the way the echidna's eyes had followed the food with such intensity had not been funny at all. He really was hungry. And if Maddie's assessment was right, had been for a long time.
"Hey, give them here a sec," Sonic said before realising what he was asking. "Actually, never mind." He sat down just outside of arms-reach. "Just – look you need to peel it." he mimed as he spoke.
Knuckles looked back down at the fruit and pressed his thumbs into the skin, splitting it open. He sniffed again and his eyes widened. He peeled the skin back and took a bite, teeth audibly clacking together as he misjudged the texture of the soft fruit.
His jaw worked as though he was chewing sticky toffee instead of banana but Sonic found himself smiling instead of laughing at the obvious enjoyment on the echidna's face.
"Go slow," Maddie said, but Knuckles did not seem to need the warning. Sonic, who bolted his own food if he was even slightly peckish supposed that said something for Knuckles' self control. It wasn't a feature that his mental image of echidnas as a group included in any form.
He mulled that over, watching Tails work at his equipment, and Maddie at the stove, until interrupted by Maddie speaking up.
"Right," she said. "Oatmeal's up."
Tails accepted a bowl and started eating without even looking round, though a murmur of appreciation did emerge from his general direction.
Knuckles took the bowl cautiously, blowing on it and stirring it around, watching the steam rise before taking a mouthful. He hesitated before swallowing.
"Okay?" Maddie asked. "Not too hot?"
Knuckles shook his head and swallowed.
"It's good. I think… we had this. Something like this. It tastes like-"
"Beige mush?" Sonic asked.
"Winter mornings," Knuckles finished over him in the same breath.
Tails, turned, smiling, spoon in one hand and a tiny screwdriver still in the other.
"Eat it all," he said.
Sonic glanced at him, startled, and finished in chorus. "It'll set you up for the day."
Knuckles looked between them, puzzled.
"Longclaw was a big believer in oatmeal for breakfast," Sonic said in explanation. "Clearly Tails agreed more than I did."
The echidna frowned and for a moment Sonic thought he'd forgotten the name, and felt new anger rise at the idea.
He spoke before Sonic did though. "She was your… foster-teacher?"
Puzzlement interrupted the anger and Sonic looked with curiosity at the echidna. "I'm not sure what you mean. She found me and looked after me when I was a kid. I didn't know my actual parents."
"But she knew about chaos energy?"
"I guess."
"She didn't teach you?"
"No," Sonic answered shortly, wanting out of the conversation. "She told me to hide it."
"It's dangerous to learn on your own." The echidna's voice was still low and thoughtful but Sonic was out of patience.
"It is when hordes of echidnas smash the doors down to drag you off for it!"
Sonic was back on his feet and Knuckles had risen too in reflex.
"Am I wrong then?" the echidna demanded. "Did you not blow up half the power for this whole zone? Are you in control of it right now? Were they so wrong to think you dangerous?"
"Hey!" Maddie said, stepping between them. "No fighting in my kitchen. No alien light shows. Either of you! You take it down a notch or you take it outside. But you both listen up first. I don't know anything about space-magic-super-powers, but the way I piece it together seems like you've both lost people because of this thing. You've both done the best you could to keep people safe from it. And now Robotnik has it and if you start knocking lumps out of each other right now he's the only one who benefits. So either sit down, or step out. Right now."
Sonic took a breath and deliberately relaxed his spines. The flickering blue light, that he hadn't even noticed begin, died away. Knuckles straightened from the fighter's crouch he'd slipped into. He nodded at Maggie.
"I apologise." He turned back to Sonic. "Do we need to go outside?"
Sonic struggled with himself for a moment.
"No," he said finally. "Not until Tails finds us a target and we've somewhere definite to go."
Tails raised a hand tentatively. "Kinda got that down while you two were… debating..."
"Really?" Sonic leapt in one bound to the stool beside Tails to peer at the flickering dot overlaid on the on-screen map.
He swivelled the stool round to grin at Knuckles. "Shall we head out then?"
The echidna did not return the smile but neither did he hesitate.
"Yes."
Sonic led, setting a pace he thought the others could match and still arrive in a fit state to fight. He came skidding to halt as something loomed on the skyline.
Knuckles was frozen to the spot, staring at the craft as it rose above the cluster of low, fortified bunkers that were the only feature which broke up the empty terrain on either side of the narrow road.
"I've seen that before."
"It's the ship from the mural, right?" Tails said.
Knuckles nodded, dismay all over his face. "How can he have built it so quickly?"
"He was already building this stuff," Sonic said. "Just didn't have a good enough power source. He thought he could get that from me but..."
"He has the chaos emeralds," Knuckles finished. "He has rings. He..." The alarm on his face turned to something approaching panic. "He knows I was hiding something. In the mural he has it. He has… He's going to..."
"Hey," Sonic stepped closer, "You're babbling. Try again. Use all the words. Explain."
Knuckles shook his head and took off at a run towards the ship.
Sonic glanced at Tails who was frowning in concentration, clearly closer to figuring out what Knuckles had been talking about than Sonic was, but he offered no explanation either.
"Okay, then," Sonic said. "Running it is."
He held out a hand for Tails who grabbed it, then accelerated after the echidna, caught and passed, him, grabbing his wrist in passing, over his protests, and accelerating further still.
Sonic dragged them all to a halt and into cover almost beneath the machine.
Tails frowned. "He almost certainly he knows we're here anyway. If I could detect you guys and the emeralds I bet he can too."
"I don't care." Knuckles yanked his wrist free of Sonic's hand and was gone again. And was going to be too late because Sonic had already spotted the telltale glint of a ring, tumbling end of end in front of the craft and growing, looming open to that same musty gloom of the mushroom planet and what in any world could Robotnik want back there?
Knuckles knew whatever it was because he was moving with headlong desperation. Too fast for caution, too fast to stop when the chaos creature rose up out of nowhere, impossibly huge. Many times it's previous height and more lizard than echidna shaped.
A vast, dragonish claw scythed through the air. Sonic was already moving. Unsure even as he ran whether he was aiming for the creature or the ship. Unsure even as he ran, even as power lit his spines and lent near-flight to his feet, whether he'd reach either in time.
He had time, amid the flickering milliseconds of speed, to see Knuckles' eyes widen in alarm and close in resignation, and the decision was made without the exact millisecond of choice ever really registering and he barrelled into the echidna, rolling him off his feet as they went to take the brunt of the impact out of it.
The watery claw swept over their head with a sound like colliding icebergs.
"Up up up!" Sonic said, hauling the echidna back to his feet a split second after working out which way was up.
"Robotnik!" The echidna spun in that direction staggering but it was too late, all he was in time to see was the flicker as the ring snapped out. Knuckles staggered again, though nothing had touched him, and Sonic hauled at him once again, spinning him round to face the creature.
"More immediate problem. Right here."
At the moment the thing was preoccupied with Tails who was flitting about what Sonic supposed passed for its head but that couldn't last.
"It's got the chaos emeralds."
Knuckles' voice was shaky and Sonic glanced sideways at him unable to tell if it was injury, shock or fear. He pressed on anyway.
"Yeah. So…? What's that about? You said your Tikal person locked it up with those things – now it's what? Eating them? How's that work?"
Knuckles finally looked at him with a less dazed expression.
"Power is just power hedgehog. Without intent there is no control. Only harm. Only danger."
The creature howled like a rending glacier and Tails narrowly dodged a blow and came ploughing in for a landing just beyond them.
"I hope you two have been coming up with a plan down here because I'm about done," he panted.
Sonic glanced at Knuckles. "So, Mr Expert? Have we?"
Knuckles glared at him. "There's no plan, hedgehog. Just… get those chaos emeralds back."
The creature had finally realised that Tails had eluded its flailing and turned its attention back to the ground. Sonic stared up at it.
"Okay. Emeralds. I see six. Race you for them?"
Knuckles didn't rise to this.
"There are seven," he said instead.
"Robotnik still has one powering the ship," Tails concluded.
"Probably but..." knuckles shook his head as thought chasing off some unwanted thought, fighting for concentration in the here and now.
"What's wrong?" Sonic asked.
Knuckles looked at him and Sonic couldn't tell if it was a glare or entreaty.
"Nothing I can do anything about yet."
Knuckles swung back to face the creature and stumbled, going all the way to his knees. Sonic let out an exasperated yelp, and dived between him and the creature, dashing enough spray from the incoming blow that it crashed over them with no more than bruise-making force.
"Okay. Enough. Something's wrong and you can either tell me what it is or we can high-tail out of here until you're ready to explain!"
Sonic dashed clear once again from the next blow, probably leaving bruises of his own on the echidna's wrist.
"I can't fight this thing with one of my supposed allies lying to me about why he's in a heap on the dirt!"
Knuckles raised his eyes, but not to meet Sonic's – he looked past him, over his shoulder.
Sonic turned to follow his gaze, squinted against the flash of gold of the opening ring to see Robotnik's craft return. A giant green gemstone was clutched in an arm-like appendage at the front. It gleamed even brighter than the sunlight could account more, glittered with dancing energy that shifted like mist over its surface.
"That's what's wrong," Knuckles said. But in spite of the dull despair in his tone he was back on his feet. Not a scrap of his attention remained on the creature he'd seemed so horrified by at every encounter. It was all on Robotnik.
And for the moment so was the creature's.
Robotnik leaned out of the opening canopy and waved something which glittered red between his fingers before he launched it in a glittering arc towards the creature.
"Enjoy!" he called out "I'm afraid I have pressing research elsewhere investigating this magnificent new power source I just happened to find abandoned, so won't be staying to watch the inevitably messy and unpleasant end."
Sonic opened his mouth to dismiss this obvious taunt and warn Knuckles that's all it was, but the echidna had already flung himself towards Robotnik, and the man had clearly underestimated the echidna's remaining strength because he was flying far too low to prevent him from driving his claws into the craft and dragging himself up the side. Sparks flew with every tear he gouged into the machine.
Sonic took half a step in that direction to help, before Tails' panicky, "Sonic!" brought his focus back to the chaos creature which was growing by the second as the power of the last emerald spilled through it.
"Woah!" Sonic caught his breath and stumbled backwards as water rose with the pull of a lethally fast river around his knees. It was still rising and that was impossible surely with nothing to contain it.
It reached his waist, icy cold and there wasn't any more time to work out was was and wasn't possible.