Much to his chagrin Sonic was trailing along in Knuckles' footsteps through the lashing rain. He'd tried running over the rocky, broken water-slick terrain and for a while it had worked. Leaping every time he lost his balance, quick enough to get his feet back under him and kick off again. But every so often even he'd miss and it would only take one wrong fall here to be looking at a broken limb. Knuckles was sure-footed and seemed to have an instinct for the easiest route, picking his way up the steep sides of the mixture of rock and debris but he'd still needed to resort to his claws for purchase at times.
Thunder crashed and lighting shattered their night vision every few seconds. Tails was so close on Sonic's heels he was almost stepping on them, shivering from more than the freezing rain.
Sonic reached for his hand.
"Just in case I need a quick lift. Slippery by here y'know."
Tails clung on far tighter than needed for that particular task but nodded and his voice was gritted-teeth steady when he answered.
"You got it."
Lightning flashed again but Knuckles had been shading his eyes in anticipation and beckoned them onwards and up to the ridge he'd already scaled.
"The footing gets easier up here. It's…"
Sonic and Tails scrambled up beside him.
"A city?" Sonic stared down at neon lights, glittering reflection on every soaked surface.
"It's not a city." Tails had found something sufficiently intriguing to be distracted from the storm. "There's no people. It's a machine. A machine the size of a city."
Sonic stared. It was like an optical illusion. It could be mistaken for a city. You could read the towering components as skyscrapers, the giant straddling cable runs as bridges. If you ignored the flapping windswept flags hanging from the power conductors that sizzled and sparked in the rain.
It was harder to ignore the glowing balls of energy that drifted up to circle the looming robot - the size of which defied the eye to quite believe it. The thing they'd been traipsing towards for the past half an hour, certain by the size of it that they must be closer than they were.
Knuckles shook his head minutely and started down the slope towards the unreal city.
Sonic frowned at the back of his head.
"What?"
Knuckles looked round without stopping. He didn't seem surprised by the question.
"How do we fight that, Sonic?"
Sonic glared up up it then back at Knuckles.
"Same way we're fought everything else Eggman's chucked at us!"
"And everything has had something worse behind it."
Sonic watched him a moment.
"Can't helping noticing you're still heading towards it though."
"So are you."
Sonic shrugged. "S'what we do."
"It's the ruby that's the problem," Tails said. "We have to get our hands on that. If Knuckles was right that it took us back to the Floating Island because he so much as touched it while thinking about home, then it's what we need. If it made all this, it can undo it."
Sonic glanced at the fox. The challenge of that prospect seemed to have left him completed unfazed.
"Sounds like a plan. Plus we get a glowy wishing stone of our own and can conjure up a bunch of cool nonsense for ourselves, right? Giant floating hedgehog-ships, chilli-dogs the size of a house, that sort of thing?"
Tails laughed in spite of the surroundings and Sonic grinned.
Knuckles refrained from comment, though the doubt had not left his face and they headed on into what passed for streets, leading towards the towering robot.
The wind was broken by the structures and the rain slowed to a patter, clouds breaking above them to add moonlight to the purple glow that had replaced the lightning. The sudden quieting of the weather was only eerie for a moment before it was replaced by electronic targetting pings and Sonic grabbed both of the others and fled down the street. Behind them the spot where they'd been dissolved into smoke and flame.
Other robots were converging on their position and Sonic accelerated. They couldn't waste time down here. The monstrosity looking over them was the real target. They needed a way in and a way to stop it.
Gantries and lifts ran up and down the outside of it. They'd be guarded of course but so would everything here. Their presence suggested there was at least some work left to do on the thing. If they were to have any chance, it had to be before it was complete.
"We've got to get up there."
Peripherally he was aware of both Tails and Knuckles glancing up at it. Assessing the height, the flight, the climb.
"There's a lift," Tails said, the result of his assessment obvious.
"Yup," Sonic said, altering course towards it. "Hope you've both got a tip ready for the elevator attendant."
He didn't wait to discover if Knuckles even knew what an elevator attendant was before they piled into the dark compartment and Tails started pressing buttons.
For a moment nothing happened. Then a red light flicked on.
Tails snatched his hand back from the controls.
"That wasn't me!"
Abruptly the chamber accelerated upwards with a crushing speed that made everyone stagger under the force of it.
Sonic lifted his head with difficulty and looked towards the brightening red light. Something was moving behind it. Some machine.
Or weapon.
"Look out!" he had time to warn before the pressure on them was abruptly released and Sonic's stomach turned upside down.
Tails shrieked in alarm and grabbed for the control panel, his feet leaving the floor as free-fall hit.
Knuckles had slammed his fists into the wall and was clinging on grimly.
Below them something whirled across the room like a cannonball.
Sonic flailed, seeking a wall or floor or roof to propel himself from before the machine attacked again. Before he'd managed it Knuckles leapt from his position and slammed into the thing with a metallic crunching.
A spray of energy pulses cascaded out in retaliation and the acceleration resumed. Sonic leapt clear anyway, the effort far more than it should have been. Tails ducked. Knuckles hit the floor beside him with a grunt before staggering back to his feet.
"Wait for it..." Sonic said. It was a guess but both of the others nodded.
Free-fall hit again but this time they were ready and in the instant the pressure eased they leapt, from three different directions, slamming into the malevolent eye of the machine together.
Knuckles raked both sets of claws across the metal and glass, shearing and gouging as Sonic and Tails hit it from both sides.
It fell to the floor, sparking and leaking glowing energy but ineffective.
Tails did something to the control panel.
"Maybe we'll just get out of here and make our own way?" he said shakily.
Sonic didn't protest and led the way out when the metal doors slid open.
In fact they nearly were at the top. Standing on the approximate shoulders of the giant construction.
Tails looked about. "I can't see a way in."
Knuckles also surveyed the metal facade. He drew a fist back.
"Where would you like one?"
Sonic grinned and let Tails select a spot which Knuckles promptly ripped open.
They stepped through.
And stopped.
The atmosphere inside was strangely calm. None of the clatter and whir of machinery which was normally a staple of an Eggman base. Instead it was quiet. Almost muffled. Oppressive. Coloured light spilled down on them from above and Sonic look up. Tinted glass shone even in the absence of actual daylight outside.
Softly glowing pink mist curled around the edges of the space they'd sliced their way into, thickening and brightening at the doorways.
It looked anything but inviting.
"I don't like it," Knuckles said.
Sonic glanced at him. The echidna was rigid with tension. Far more so that facing any of the lethal machinery they'd fought past.
"The ruby?" Sonic asked. "You think that's creating this mist?"
Knuckles rubbed his forehead. "It's… disruptive. Dangerous."
Sonic frowned. "Dangerous I get…?"
Tails was examining each doorway in turn.
"We could try to find another way in?" he said doubtfully.
They ducked back out of the hole Knuckles had made and followed him as he selected another spot a few levels up and on the other side of the construction.
Sonic poked his head through.
"Oooo...kay?"
The space was identical. Shape size, the curling mist. Even the designs overhead, shining like a twisted joke of stained glass windows – robots, and Eggman, Chaos Emeralds and over and over again and the ruby motif.
Tails pushed up close to look as well. He made a puzzled interested sound.
"Let's try further away?"
Knuckles shook his head, but headed down a good ten levels and carved them an entry at the back of the construct.
He looked inside.
"It's the same."
"It's not possible," Sonic said. "What is this ruby?"
Tails stared at the mist.
"I don't know. But we've been teleported by it before. This could be something similar. A stable portal instead of a pinpoint transient one. These doorways could really be doorways… Just not necessarily to the room next door."
"And we've no idea what's on the other side," Knuckles pointed out.
Sonic shrugged. "Well that bit's standard on an Eggman base. Never stopped us before."
He took a step towards the mist.
"No one else has to come," he said. "I'll just, y'know – pop through and check."
"No way!" Tails' voice was raised in protest almost before Sonic had finished. The fix instantly almost standing on his feet. "I'm coming!"
Sonic raised his hands. "Wouldn't dream of stopping you, little bro." He glanced back. "Knuckles?"
The echidna was staring up at the designs in the coloured glass, fists curling and uncurling at his side, his weight poised forwards on the balls of his feet in unmistakeable fight or flight tension.
Sonic smiled "No pressure," he said and meant it. "You've helped more than you had to already."
He turned the smile to Tails without waiting for reaction. "Ready?"
He got a familiar fierce, stubborn grin back and with Tails a bare half pace behind, stepped forward into the mist.
Instantly they were falling, tumbling end over end. Sonic felt Tails' hands close around his wrist, could hear the whisking propeller whirl as the fox tugged at him but it was making no difference they were both tumbling clinging on to each other's wrists until then landed with a thump on a narrow walkway. Pink mist still swirled beneath them. Crackling balls of energy, the purpose entirely mysterious, moved above them, obstructing any way back.
"Knuckles?" Tails looked round. If he'd come through at all he hadn't landed on the walkway.
"He'll be fine," Sonic said. "We got this." He led off down the walkway, resisting the urge to wait or look back.
Knuckles watched the spot where the hedgehog had disappeared, tension curling in every nerve. The urge to follow pulled at him, revulsion at the touch of the ruby's influence pushed back. The coloured light from the emerald designs overhead spilled down and he looked up once again. It was a lie, that light, pretty glass and nothing more and yet…
They needed something more than blindly pressing on. He'd spoken no more than the truth to Sonic when he'd said that everything they'd fought had just led them to another and worse confrontation while they themselves just got more and more weary. How long could it go on before they failed?
He was certain the hedgehog had no idea how that felt. To know you'd done everything you could and had nothing left to fight with, to have make such an unrecoverable mistake. There'd been no question of whether Sonic would go on, go through that mist to face whatever was to come. Knuckles couldn't afford such optimism.
But neither could he afford despair. Neither could he leave the hedgehog to go on without his help.
He turned his back on the eerie space and ducked back out through the ad hoc entrance he'd torn in the wall.
He looked out across the not-city below. So far from home. So far from everything his heart and head and blood and bone and soul told him was important, and even so…
He closed his eyes. Even this little distance from the uneasy, unsettling, unnatural ruby mist it was clearer. Green not red, distant yes but clear and bright, a soft radiance that illuminated other patterns. Chaotic, yes, but not the crazed distortion of the ruby.
Once, not long ago he'd taken the Chaos Emeralds from Sonic. He'd thought he could keep them safe and when he'd found to his cost that he could not, he'd cast them away to somewhere he'd believed safe. Had that been a mistake too? If he failed to recover them now he'd know it had been.
He followed the patterns. Chaos was everywhere if it was anywhere, even this alien, metallic landscape but some places still made the focus of it more likely. He gathered his attention, choose his direction and launched himself into a glide from the towering construction. Somewhere close and soon a dimension ring would be forming.
Sonic ducked a hurled explosive and sprang from the crouch into the bot that had launched it. The surroundings and how they'd arrived there might be strange but the methods were the same old Eggman nonsense.
Above him, Tails had struck a control thruster of one of the flying bots and sent it shrieking off out of control.
With the way clear they ran on until forced to a halt, not by more bots but another wall of the mist.
Sonic shrugged, glanced at Tails to check he had no reservations and then jumped ahead into it.
"Huh," he said as they emerged.
"We're back here?" Tails looked around at the same entranceway they'd started from. "Do we try another one?"
Sonic stared at each doorway in turn, trying to identify any reason to pick one route over another.
"Yeah," he said. "We keep trying."
Tails approached the nearest mist-wreathed doorway.
"Knuckles isn't here. Do you think he really went back?"
Sonic joined Tails at his doorway. "I don't know."
"He might have tried to come after us. This place is so weird he might just not have ended up at the same place. He might be in trouble."
Sonic watched Tails for a second.
"Might be causing the right kind of trouble somewhere too!"
Tails looked up at him. "I guess."
Sonic hesitated. He'd never admit it, but he was surprised to not have found Knuckles at their heels. Or here waiting and watchful. He'd seemed as determined as either of them to stop this latest Eggman scheme.
He'd seemed daunted by the scale of the task and troubled by something about the ruby than was more than its obvious power, but neither of those things seemed, to Sonic convincing reasons to simply quit.
It wasn't impossible that he'd thought, in the face of a potential Eggman victory, that he ought to be on the Floating Island, preparing to face an attempt upon the Master Emerald there. Had he thought Sonic would try to argue against that?
Or was he working some other plan of his own that he also didn't care to explain?
Sonic had no idea, even after days in his company and fairly certain they were on the same side he didn't really know anything at all about what actually went through his head.
So Sonic just smiled at Tails instead.
"I'm sure we'll find out. Ready?"
Brightness spilled into the mimicry of a street, filling it with the golden yellow of the sunlight between storms.
Knuckles came to a stop to take it the sight of the gently turning giant ring blooming to full size. They were common enough everywhere, but he'd still had doubts about whether the malign influence of the ruby would make one hard to find here.
He moved forward after only a second's glance – they were common but fleeting. Fleeting enough that the otherwhere they led to had long been considered a secure hiding place for the Emeralds. Short of outlandish fluke, there was no accessing it unless you knew in advance where they would form, or – like the hedgehog were so beyond-belief fast that you could spot one of them form and still reach it in time.
Knuckles had to close his eyes against the brightness as he stepped forward and then the chaos took him.
His feet hit something solid and he was thrown forward, breaking into a run out of sheer reflex to keep his feet under him against the momentum. He opened his eyes and almost regretted it because the sky spun with delirious half familiar images.
Sky that wasn't sky at all, that rippled like water. Fish flew through it and birds swam beneath his feet.
Clouds boiled around him. The Death Egg rose from them and faded away again. An archway he'd once sat under in Hydrocity drifted past like a soap bubble in mid-air, complete to the last detail of the streaks his touch had left on the algaed marble.
And then his attention was not just drawn but snapped round, a sharp breath-stealing yank that felt physical in every way but actual fact.
He was still running and he hadn't intended to be still running but now there was something to run after because before him, mere inches too far away to reach was a Chaos Emerald that hadn't been there a moment before. It retreated like a mirage, clutched in the grip of a robot he knew was no more real than the arches or birds. That was nothing more than an image plucked from a tumble of memories to put a shape to some process too chaotic for his mind to properly process.
It didn't matter that the robot wasn't real, that the running wasn't real. He was chasing a metaphor but that didn't matter because intention was what mattered. He was Guardian and chaos would translate intention into effect for him – here even more than most places.
If his intent was strong enough – if his will and control were strong enough - then this chase would end with his holding the Chaos Emeralds.
If not, then… Knuckles shook his head, took deeper breathes of what probably wasn't really air, and ran.
If not, then he'd be in trouble.
"Oh come on!" Sonic threw up his hands. "Is this even real?"
They were back in the same chamber once again.
Tails walked away from the doorways which Sonic was increasingly coming to loathe and Sonic turned to look.
"Tails?"
"Just… checking..." Tails said. He poked his head outside for a moment.
"You thought we might be trapped here altogether?"
"Yeah. But there's still a way out."
Sonic tipped his head to the side and Tails laughed.
"Oh I'm not suggesting we take it. Not yet. But it's interesting that it was left as an option don't you think?"
Sonic grinned. "I think it means we've got Eggman worried. I think it means he's not confident he can stop us and would like us to run away! Up for the next one?"
"You bet."
Tails picked the doorway this time and they leapt through, ready to fall, hands locked around each other's wrists. Ready to fall, or fly, or run or fight.
Knuckles was thoroughly done with running and was running anyway. Running even though it didn't even feel possible to run any more. It certainly didn't seem possibly to run faster. He wasn't even sure if the six Emeralds he's already managed to collect were helping or hindering his efforts to reach the seventh.
He was certain the power flowing through them and this place was the only reason he was still moving at all, but their energy at this range made a tumbled mess of his perception of the chaotic environment around him. They challenged his focus, the steady link with the Master Emerald which should have offered the control and strength he needed to reach the end of this nightmare landscape.
It was there but so hard to concentrate on, so hard to access.
Twice already he'd caught himself distracted, his eyes following some familiar piece of terrain that wasn't really there at all.
Once he'd forgotten why he was running, had thought he was running towards home, towards a more familiar light than the flickering red of the Chaos Emerald retreating before his blurred vision.
He cut a corner, skirting dangerously close to the edge of the swirling abyss where the illusions twisted and changed. His foot came down on the edge and for a moment his centre of gravity wavered madly over the drop sending adrenaline shooting through him.
Desperately he sought to turn that moment of clarity into a half second of extra pace, driving his aching, shaking legs and exhausted mind to what absolutely had to be the last possible effort.
He reached out and abruptly as though a silent wind has switched direction, he was borne forward and his hand closed on the last of the scattered Emeralds.
His eyes slid shut and his last thought, the very uttermost last effort was to resist the urge to demand to be home and at once. There was somewhere else he needed to be first. Loyalties that were so new they needed such effort to insist upon.
Chaos folded in around him.
"I am really, really bored of this now," Sonic stood, brushing soot and exhaust char out of his fur and glaring at the most recent doorway that had dumped them back where they started.
"I'm bored of glowing sticky energy ball nonsense. I'm bored of huge giant crushing cogs right where you're supposed to try and move. I'm bored of stairs that disappear or tip over and collapse. I'm bored of being catapulted about like a crash test dummy. I'm bored of mist. I'm bored of this room!"
"I'm bored of this recitation."
Sonic spun round, glaring. Knuckles was ducking his head through the ad-hoc doorway he'd created what felt like hours ago.
"Knuckles!" Tails looked delighted but Sonic was looking more closely at the echidna. In spite of the now-familiar dry amusement in his tone, he looked on the brink of collapse.
"Add a little interest and excitement to my day then," Sonic suggested. "What to share with the group what you've been up to?"
"No particularly."
Sonic narrowed his eyes. "Let's guess then. Your fur's been sodden and you're breathing like a steam train, you've been running but you haven't managed to collect any new singes and scratches so you've either been lucky or you haven't been fighting. Which makes you think you haven't been the way we've been but either way you're back. Why?"
He frowned and looked at the fabric wrapped bundle, almost a knapsack that Knuckles was carrying, improvised out of the ugly banners outside.
"And you've been… what... Collecting souvenirs?"
Knuckles glanced at him.
"No." He walked towards the nearest doorway.
Sonic shook his head. "Been trying that for a boring amount of time now."
Knuckles looked over his shoulder.
"Then let's try again."
Sonic shrugged but it was as easy to let Knuckles see the place looping back on itself as it was to explain and Tails was already headed for the doorway as well.
And then, impossibly the mist was curling away. Like something alive, recoiling from the bundle in Knuckles' arms.
Sonic stared at the back of his head, then over his shoulder at the dark metallic corridor beyond.
"You going to let us in on what you got there at some point?"
Knuckles sighed.
"At some point."
"Good enough." Sonic grinned and they were running again. At nothing near top speed, he knew. They were tired, all of them, clumsy with fatigue. Even so he spotted the warning signs when a doorway ahead of them started to slide closed in the same moment as a panel behind slid open and bots poured out in uncountable numbers.
Sonic grabbed Tails, missed Knuckles, bellowed a warning in the very moment of accelerating and heard the door they'd entered through crash closed. Knuckles was pounding alongside having dredged up some spurt of energy from somewhere but now it was a race because the door ahead was starting to close, and the one after that.
They fled and they were through all but one and from behind him he heard the array of doors slamming shut behind them one after the other. They made it. He was certain they made it and then Knuckles gave a pained yell that was so shrilly unlike any sound Sonic had ever heard the echidna make that he skidded to a stop at once and was back at his side in an instant.
Knuckles was breathing noisily through clenched teeth, his head hanging low on his chest. "Tail!" he ground out and Sonic cringed, tucking his own tail between his legs in involuntary sympathy because now he could see that Knuckles had been just a single step too slow through the closing door. It had slammed shut on the last handspan of his tail and there he was stuck.
"Can you force the door?" Sonic asked, sure of the answer by the time he'd finished the question. Knuckles would have tried that already if he could.
"No. Can't get the angle." Knuckles pressed a hand against his closed eyes. "Stupid," he muttered, looking at least as much humiliated as hurt. "What a stupid, stupid way to get caught. Just go, Sonic. The bots will open the door when they catch up and I can-"
"Not happening," Sonic didn't even wait for the rest of the sentence. "Stay there." He pulled a face, realising what he'd said. "Sorry." He found the panel on the wall where the door controls were.
"Tails, what can you do with this?"
The fox was running both his tails through his hands in an anxious hand-over-hand motion but let go and came to Sonic's side to examine the panel.
"It was triggered remotely. I can't reset it from here. I don't think. Maybe.."
Tails' voice dropped to a mutter Sonic couldn't follow and he went back to Knuckles.
"If it was remotely triggered then it's because Eggman know exactly where we are, and if he knows that then those robots aren't going to just open this this up for you to ambush them. They'll be coming another way around, and there's too many of them."
"Yes," Knuckles agreed, his voice low. "There's too many."
Sonic frowned, suspicious of this unexpected agreement, but before he could question it Knuckles had pushed the fabric-wrapped bundle into his hands. Something rattled and chimed inside and Sonic jumped as though it had been carrying an electric charge.
"Knuckles, what have you..."
"I can't be captured with them. They can't be captured. You have to take them and go. Use them to stop this."
Sonic stared at the bundle, them, already realising what he'd find, he unwrapped it just enough to see the glimmer. He hastily covered it again.
"Knuckles, where did you… how… Never mind. We've got to get this door open. Tails!"
Tails didn't even look round. "Trying."
"Go!" Knuckles pushed Sonic hard enough to stagger him.
"I'm not going anywhere leaving you jammed in a door! We don't do that!"
Knuckles made a furious frustrated noise.
"You left me in Sky Sanctuary!"
"Yeah and I hated it and I didn't even know you yet! I don't leave my friends behind, Knuckles!"
Knuckles threw his weight forward, struggling until his eyes rolled back in his head in pain.
"You still don't know me! You need to hear we're not friends? Then we're not. You're just an annoying, irritating, ignorant, stupid hedgehog! You don't know me! If you knew anything about me – if we were friends - you wouldn't make me watch while you risk those Emeralds. Now go!"
Sonic glared back. "Stupid hedgehof I may be. Not so stupid I don't know when someone's just trying to rile me up to get their own way though."
"Sonic, please! Please go."
Sonic could feel another furious protest rising his throat but the desperate entreaty in Knuckles' voice choked it off.
With desperation of his own Sonic turned away.
"Tails?"
"Still trying." The response was almost snapped out, Tails too engrossed in the urgency of the task for patience or his usual amiability.
"Tails," Sonic said more loudly, fighting to keep his voice calm. "Knuckles is right. We need to go."
Tails spun round, sheer shock on his face that was almost painful to see. He looked from Sonic to Knuckles and back again, the motion turning into a disbelieving head shake.
Sonic stepped forward and caught hold of the his arm gently, raising the bundle of Emeralds with the other.
"Look."
The fabric slid away and impossibly Tails' eyes widened still further.
Then his expression changed entirely and he stepped away, his back straightening, his tails stilling behind him.
"If that's the plan then you have to go. I can stay. I can get this open and me and Knuckles can get out some other way."
Sonic almost staggered as though he'd received another push. If he'd been unwillingly to leave Knuckles behind, then he was utterly unprepared to leave Tails.
"I-"
Tails had already finished and answered the statement almost before Sonic had opened his mouth.
"Yes you can. You're the only one who can. And anyway," Tails smiled as though he had no doubt in the world. "Magic glowy wishing stone remember – second you get it off Eggman you just unconjure all this and everything's fine right?"
Sonic closed his eyes, sure he couldn't do this. Sure there must be another way but finding none. He opened them again. Hoped he could keep all signs of doubt out of them.
"Right!" He pulled Tails into a tight hug for everything words were inadequate for. He looked over the fox's head at Knuckles who gave him a firm, unsmiling nod of recognition.
Sonic took a deep breath. "You two watch out for each other." He plastered his airiest, most carefree grin on his face.
"This won't take long."