Chapter 5: Snap
_________________
Mekion was curled in the fetal position in a hollow under the roots of a tree, safe from the reaches of daylight. His fright had left him feeling drained and inept. He planned to spend the day in hiding and only work on his objectives at night--perhaps photograph Sonic and Tails in their beds when they least suspected it. Sure, it was too easy, but he was in no mood to take any more risks.
Receiving transmission. Mekion's eyes opened. A transmission? He thought that radio silence was maintained during a mission. Curious, he opened his channel and received a message from his Master.
"Mecha-bot four is on his way with your destruction as his objective. Estimated arrival time: eight hours. Accomplish your objectives and reach the following coordinates before eight hours have elapsed."
Robo Knux. A survival test. At once Mekion was alert. If it were eight AM now, Robo Knux would arrive at 4 PM. Mekion had two objectives left, and had a 33% chance of completing them in time. He uncurled and lay in his lair for a moment, red eyes staring at nothing. He knew where Sonic and Tails slept, and he suspected they spent much of the day together. Therefore all he had to do was locate them. He did not want to be here when Robo Knux arrived.
For a second he wondered why his Master had warned him, when he did not receive warnings of survival tests. Then he brushed the detail aside. Had he possessed more experience, he might have realized that this was no mere survival test.
He crawled out of his shelter and set off for Chaotix Central, keeping to the trees whenever possible, his scans on full. The air was warmer today. Mekion didn't know what to make of it; his entire life had consisted of winter, and he took it for granted that the world was a cold, harsh place.
There were several life forms at Chaotix Central, but none of them were targets. Mekion hung around as long as he dared, then retreated into better cover up in the hills. The female squirrel in Knothole had said something about Knuckles making Sonic work. Therefore if he found Knuckles, he would find Sonic and Tails.
The downside to this reasoning was the sheer size of the Floating Island. Completely empty except for six year-round inhabitants, it had every kind of terrain and endless amounts of hiding places. Mekion wandered through the forests and hills for two hours without seeing a soul, eyes smarting in the sunlight.
By chance he picked up a fast-moving object on radar. He tracked it and realized it must be Sonic, because nothing else on the island ran so fast. "Except me," thought Mekion, then wondered where such a thought had come from. He ran after it, firing the jets in his feet to give himself extra speed. All the same he lost Sonic and did not catch up for three miles.
Mekion came upon Sonic at the entrance to a cave, and concealed himself behind some brush. Sonic was looking into the cave and panting ... no, hyperventilating. After a moment he sprinted into the cave, and Mekion followed him.
The tunnel walls were smooth flowstone, and Mekion hung back at first, realizing there was nowhere to hide if Sonic reversed directions. But Sonic proceeded in a straight line, following the main tunnel around bends and down flights of stairs. Tunnels and grottos opened on either side, some lit with green light, but Mekion had no time to investigate them. Sonic was traveling fast and Mekion was in danger of losing him.
After a mile of descending tunnels, Sonic entered a blue-lit gallery. Mekion crept to the edge of the entrance and peered in with his robot eye. The light came from crystals in the ceiling and walls, and he found it pleasant to his darkness-attuned eyes. Sonic was putting on goggles and a helmet. Mekion watched as Sonic walked to a low passage on the far wall and inhaled like a diver before entering deep water. Then he dropped to all fours and crawled into the passage.
Mekion remained where he was, wondering where the tunnel led and how he would follow Sonic now. In a tunnel that small he could not hide. He gazed around the interior of the cave and noticed buckets, hammers, shovels and pickaxes on the floor. There was also an ice chest in one corner. This cave was where the supplies were kept--therefore Sonic would return to it later.
He trained his audio sensors on the mineshaft and listened. He heard distant voices and the tapping of two hammers. Who else was in that shaft? Tails?
Suddenly he heard a whirring sound like a wheel on pavement. It grew louder, and Mekion ducked as Sonic exploded out of the mineshaft in a spindash. He hurtled through the blue cavern, out the entrance and struck the wall of the tunnel five feet from Mekion. Mekion flattened himself to the wall, but Sonic was blind with panic and tore up the tunnel, his ragged breathing echoing behind him.
"Sonic?" came a voice. "Sonic, are you okay?"
Mekion looked into the cavern and saw a fox wearing safety glasses peering out of the mine entrance. After a moment the fox crawled down the shaft again, and Mekion smiled. If the fox was alone in the tunnel and busy digging, then he could sneak up and photograph him.
He waited until he heard the distant tapping of Tails's hammer, then slipped forward and crawled into the tunnel, switching his robot eye to image capture mode. The warm darkness in the tunnel reminded him of home, somehow, and he liked it. But he disliked the noise his metal hand and knee made against the rock floor. It was the second complaint he had with his robot half, but he moved more gently and crawled on.
He saw light up ahead and paused to sweep the tunnel with radar. The fox was working in a small cavern with his back to the shaft. Perfect. Mekion crawled up to the edge of the cavern and peered in at Tails, who was hammering away at the wall. Mekion photographed him, timing the click of his shutter to the clink of Tails's blows. Then Mekion backed down the tunnel, pleased with the ease of his success. One objective left now: Sonic.
center* * */center
Zephyer was lying on the grass in the sun, reading a book. Below her ran a small stream, where Zinc, Chimera and Talon were playing with toy boats. The water was icy, but it did not stop them from playing in it and having imaginary adventures as their boats 'sailed the rapids'. Zephyer pretended to ignore them, but watched them now and then over her book--the lithe, thin anteater and the two fat, pudgy chao, who took turns being sea monsters that sank the boats.
After a while the three wandered downstream, following the current and their boats, and Zephyer was left alone with her book. It was a four hundred-page primer on Old Mobian that Knuckles had given her, and she was struggling through it. She should have brought her notebook to do the lessons, but she excused herself by thinking that she was only previewing the next chapter. She had to think so hard she felt like her brain was cramping, and it was a relief to look up when she heard approaching footsteps. To her surprise it was Knuckles, the Master Emerald miniature in one hand.
"There you are," he said. "Where're the chao?"
"Downstream with Talon," said Zephyer, sitting up and closing her book. "What are you doing here?"
Knuckles sat down beside her and held out the emerald, and she felt the island begin to move. "I can fly the island from wherever," he said. "Make any headway in the book?"
"Lesson five," said Zephyer. "I think my brain's melting."
"Hey, I read your little account about Diamonda," said Knuckles. "You owe me."
"You're going to have to read Tyther's History of Mobius to pay me for reading this," said Zephyer. "So what'd you want?"
Knuckles gazed at the emerald in his hand for a moment. "I have a dilemma."
Zephyer raised her eyebrows and waited for him to go on.
"I met our resident Mecha-bot last night," he said, indicating the bandages on his arms. "He's Shadow, but he doesn't know he's Shadow. Half of him is robot. I grabbed him by his real arm, and it scared me because it was alive."
Zephyer blinked. "So Shadow IS alive?"
"Yeah," said Knuckles heavily. "That's not even the bad part. This morning Sonic chased me down and asked me about my arms. You know how nosy he is. I told him there was a robot like a biotic on the loose. Get this. He wants to hunt it down and destroy it. I tried to tell him not to, but I couldn't give him a reason why." He looked at her. "So what do I do?"
Zephyer gazed at the stream, thinking. "We can't tell Sonic that it's Shadow because he'll go off the deep end. But we don't want Sonic going after Shadow, and we don't want to kill Shadow, either."
"Exactly," said Knuckles.
There was a moment of silence, and the echidnas watched the glowing Master Emerald in Knuckles's hand. "Well," said Zephyer slowly, "we either capture Shadow--or we tell Sonic." She looked at Knuckles. "What if Sonic went after him? If Shadow is a robot now, he'll look different."
"I recognized him, and I'd only seen him once," said Knuckles. "I'm sure Sonic would recognize him."
There was another long pause.
"Sonic will find out about him someday," said Zephyer. "What harm would it do?"
"And have Sonic deal with an amnesiac who is working for our enemies?" said Knuckles. "It'd devastate him. I saw what he went through over Twilight. I don't want him to get hurt again."
"Don't you think you're being overprotective?"
"Zeff, you don't understand. I had Shadow here in my hands, and it rattled me. Me! And I only saw him once! He's a monster now, and just seeing him is going to tear Sonic apart."
Zephyer rested her head in one hand, unconsciously copying Knuckles's hopeless gesture of the night before. "So what do we do?"
"I don't know," Knuckles sighed. "I wish I knew where Shadow was, so I could run him off before Sonic does."
center* * */center
Mekion emerged from underground to find it was noon and the hated sun was at its height. He wished he could crawl into the shade somewhere and sleep, but four of his eight hours had passed, and he had to locate Sonic before Robo Knux arrived. He could complete his mission if he missed the deadline, but it would be difficult with Robo Knux hunting him.
As he set off to of Chaotix Central in search of Sonic, another problem reared its head. He had not eaten in two days. He would have to raid the home of his targets to feed himself, and he would have to do it in daylight. He cringed. What if he met Knuckles again? What if he was unable to escape? His robot brain chided him for feeling fear, and assured him that all he had to do was kill Knuckles if the echidna threatened him. His organic mind recoiled in horror at this. He didn't think he could kill someone. Then he looked at the claws on his left hand, and realized that yes, he could.
He investigated Chaotix Central, and his scans revealed that everyone was inside, eating lunch. Everyone except Sonic. He swept the house with the most precise scanner he possessed. There were two echidnas, two chao, an anteater, a chameleon, a crocodile, an armadillo, and an oversized bee. No fox and no hedgehog. Tails was accounted for--so where was Sonic?
Mekion looked at the tree-clad hills and the mountains rising in the middle distance. Sonic could be anywhere. Disheartened, Mekion checked his odds of finding Sonic in the four hours left, and discovered his chances were one in ten thousand. But there was nothing for it--Mekion had to look for him. The black and white cyborg entered the trees and began to search, his scans set to their widest sweep.
An hour slipped by, then another. Mekion kept tabs on his internal clock as he roamed. He was running out of time.
At four in the afternoon he began checking for the signature trail of Robo Knux on his radar. To his surprise there was none. Five o' clock came and went. Then six. No sign of Sonic or Robo Knux. Mekion did not know that the Floating Island's movement had thrown off Metal Sonic's calculations, or that Robo Knux was pursuing the island and cursing the tailwind that was carrying it south.
At six thirty Mekion discovered Tails walking down from the mine, carrying a bucketful of rocks and whistling. Mekion followed him, hoping that Sonic would appear, but he did not. Mekion followed Tails all the way to Knuckles's house, then returned to searching, hating his hunger and his inability to locate his target.
center* * */center
Mekion wasn't the only one wondering about Sonic's whereabouts. As Tails helped himself to the fried vegetable-and-meat dish that Mighty and Espio had whipped up for dinner, he called, "Anybody seen Sonic?"
"Nope!" came a chorus of replies from throughout the house.
"All day?" said Tails, picking out the meat and eating it first.
"Not since this morning," said Knuckles, entering the room. "He wasn't with you?"
"He left this morning," said Tails. "I think--I think being underground freaked him out, because all of a sudden he took off without a word."
"Aw geez," said Knuckles, slapping his forehead. "The dope's probably claustrophobic and too proud to admit it. And he didn't come back?"
"No. Do you think he's okay?"
Knuckles gazed at the fox, thinking of Sonic wandering the island and perhaps bumping into Mekion. "He's probably okay, but if he's not here by nine then I'm going looking for him." Knuckles glanced into the next room and noticed Zephyer was watching him. At least one person shared this problem with him.
center* * */center
There were many places on the Floating Island that offered solitude, and Sonic had found one of them. High on the north end of the island was a series of broken, rocky cliffs riddled with caves and springs. Moss abounded, and so did ancient engravings by the echidna clan.
Sonic claimed one of these old rooms as his own and sat outside it in the sun, gazing at the horizon. Today he had snapped, and he didn't know if he could face his friends again. He had tried running hard before going underground. But as soon as he entered the main tunnel he felt as if he was smothering, and the feeling intensified the further he went. He had managed to ignore it until he was in the tiny shaft with Tails ... then he had started thinking about the millions of tons of rock above his head ... and suddenly he had to get out.
He hadn't stopped running until he had circled the island and reached the northern end, a harsh, lonely area. He spent the day exploring among the rocks, ignoring his stomach at lunch and dinner. He couldn't go back and admit he had chickened out. Not after Knuckles had been so kind, and Tails was finding good stuff. If Tails didn't mind being underground, why did he?
"You're getting old, Sonic," he told himself savagely. "Twenty-two is positively ancient compared to Tails." The four years difference in their ages seemed like a century.
When it came down to it Sonic had no excuse. He just had an irrational fear of closed-in spaces. They reminded him of a trap or a cave, neither of which he could tolerate. What he needed was a way to save the day, something to make them overlook his wimpiness. Like hunting down Mekion the biotic. He felt ready for a fight against a robot. He hadn't had one in ages. The nerve, a robot sneaking onto the island!
It was dark by this time, for the sun set at seven and it was nearly seven-thirty. Sonic sat on his ledge and stared at the horizon, plotting ways to heal his wounded pride, when he noticed a light against the ocean. He thought it was a boat until it became brighter and closer. He straightened. That light was moving too fast for a boat. Then he identified it and leaped to his feet with an oath. That was one of the Mecha-bots, and they were extremely dangerous. But dangerous or not, Sonic had discovered a way to salvage his self-image.
Sonic bounded off the rocks as Robo Knux arrived on the Floating Island.
_________________
Mekion was curled in the fetal position in a hollow under the roots of a tree, safe from the reaches of daylight. His fright had left him feeling drained and inept. He planned to spend the day in hiding and only work on his objectives at night--perhaps photograph Sonic and Tails in their beds when they least suspected it. Sure, it was too easy, but he was in no mood to take any more risks.
Receiving transmission. Mekion's eyes opened. A transmission? He thought that radio silence was maintained during a mission. Curious, he opened his channel and received a message from his Master.
"Mecha-bot four is on his way with your destruction as his objective. Estimated arrival time: eight hours. Accomplish your objectives and reach the following coordinates before eight hours have elapsed."
Robo Knux. A survival test. At once Mekion was alert. If it were eight AM now, Robo Knux would arrive at 4 PM. Mekion had two objectives left, and had a 33% chance of completing them in time. He uncurled and lay in his lair for a moment, red eyes staring at nothing. He knew where Sonic and Tails slept, and he suspected they spent much of the day together. Therefore all he had to do was locate them. He did not want to be here when Robo Knux arrived.
For a second he wondered why his Master had warned him, when he did not receive warnings of survival tests. Then he brushed the detail aside. Had he possessed more experience, he might have realized that this was no mere survival test.
He crawled out of his shelter and set off for Chaotix Central, keeping to the trees whenever possible, his scans on full. The air was warmer today. Mekion didn't know what to make of it; his entire life had consisted of winter, and he took it for granted that the world was a cold, harsh place.
There were several life forms at Chaotix Central, but none of them were targets. Mekion hung around as long as he dared, then retreated into better cover up in the hills. The female squirrel in Knothole had said something about Knuckles making Sonic work. Therefore if he found Knuckles, he would find Sonic and Tails.
The downside to this reasoning was the sheer size of the Floating Island. Completely empty except for six year-round inhabitants, it had every kind of terrain and endless amounts of hiding places. Mekion wandered through the forests and hills for two hours without seeing a soul, eyes smarting in the sunlight.
By chance he picked up a fast-moving object on radar. He tracked it and realized it must be Sonic, because nothing else on the island ran so fast. "Except me," thought Mekion, then wondered where such a thought had come from. He ran after it, firing the jets in his feet to give himself extra speed. All the same he lost Sonic and did not catch up for three miles.
Mekion came upon Sonic at the entrance to a cave, and concealed himself behind some brush. Sonic was looking into the cave and panting ... no, hyperventilating. After a moment he sprinted into the cave, and Mekion followed him.
The tunnel walls were smooth flowstone, and Mekion hung back at first, realizing there was nowhere to hide if Sonic reversed directions. But Sonic proceeded in a straight line, following the main tunnel around bends and down flights of stairs. Tunnels and grottos opened on either side, some lit with green light, but Mekion had no time to investigate them. Sonic was traveling fast and Mekion was in danger of losing him.
After a mile of descending tunnels, Sonic entered a blue-lit gallery. Mekion crept to the edge of the entrance and peered in with his robot eye. The light came from crystals in the ceiling and walls, and he found it pleasant to his darkness-attuned eyes. Sonic was putting on goggles and a helmet. Mekion watched as Sonic walked to a low passage on the far wall and inhaled like a diver before entering deep water. Then he dropped to all fours and crawled into the passage.
Mekion remained where he was, wondering where the tunnel led and how he would follow Sonic now. In a tunnel that small he could not hide. He gazed around the interior of the cave and noticed buckets, hammers, shovels and pickaxes on the floor. There was also an ice chest in one corner. This cave was where the supplies were kept--therefore Sonic would return to it later.
He trained his audio sensors on the mineshaft and listened. He heard distant voices and the tapping of two hammers. Who else was in that shaft? Tails?
Suddenly he heard a whirring sound like a wheel on pavement. It grew louder, and Mekion ducked as Sonic exploded out of the mineshaft in a spindash. He hurtled through the blue cavern, out the entrance and struck the wall of the tunnel five feet from Mekion. Mekion flattened himself to the wall, but Sonic was blind with panic and tore up the tunnel, his ragged breathing echoing behind him.
"Sonic?" came a voice. "Sonic, are you okay?"
Mekion looked into the cavern and saw a fox wearing safety glasses peering out of the mine entrance. After a moment the fox crawled down the shaft again, and Mekion smiled. If the fox was alone in the tunnel and busy digging, then he could sneak up and photograph him.
He waited until he heard the distant tapping of Tails's hammer, then slipped forward and crawled into the tunnel, switching his robot eye to image capture mode. The warm darkness in the tunnel reminded him of home, somehow, and he liked it. But he disliked the noise his metal hand and knee made against the rock floor. It was the second complaint he had with his robot half, but he moved more gently and crawled on.
He saw light up ahead and paused to sweep the tunnel with radar. The fox was working in a small cavern with his back to the shaft. Perfect. Mekion crawled up to the edge of the cavern and peered in at Tails, who was hammering away at the wall. Mekion photographed him, timing the click of his shutter to the clink of Tails's blows. Then Mekion backed down the tunnel, pleased with the ease of his success. One objective left now: Sonic.
center* * */center
Zephyer was lying on the grass in the sun, reading a book. Below her ran a small stream, where Zinc, Chimera and Talon were playing with toy boats. The water was icy, but it did not stop them from playing in it and having imaginary adventures as their boats 'sailed the rapids'. Zephyer pretended to ignore them, but watched them now and then over her book--the lithe, thin anteater and the two fat, pudgy chao, who took turns being sea monsters that sank the boats.
After a while the three wandered downstream, following the current and their boats, and Zephyer was left alone with her book. It was a four hundred-page primer on Old Mobian that Knuckles had given her, and she was struggling through it. She should have brought her notebook to do the lessons, but she excused herself by thinking that she was only previewing the next chapter. She had to think so hard she felt like her brain was cramping, and it was a relief to look up when she heard approaching footsteps. To her surprise it was Knuckles, the Master Emerald miniature in one hand.
"There you are," he said. "Where're the chao?"
"Downstream with Talon," said Zephyer, sitting up and closing her book. "What are you doing here?"
Knuckles sat down beside her and held out the emerald, and she felt the island begin to move. "I can fly the island from wherever," he said. "Make any headway in the book?"
"Lesson five," said Zephyer. "I think my brain's melting."
"Hey, I read your little account about Diamonda," said Knuckles. "You owe me."
"You're going to have to read Tyther's History of Mobius to pay me for reading this," said Zephyer. "So what'd you want?"
Knuckles gazed at the emerald in his hand for a moment. "I have a dilemma."
Zephyer raised her eyebrows and waited for him to go on.
"I met our resident Mecha-bot last night," he said, indicating the bandages on his arms. "He's Shadow, but he doesn't know he's Shadow. Half of him is robot. I grabbed him by his real arm, and it scared me because it was alive."
Zephyer blinked. "So Shadow IS alive?"
"Yeah," said Knuckles heavily. "That's not even the bad part. This morning Sonic chased me down and asked me about my arms. You know how nosy he is. I told him there was a robot like a biotic on the loose. Get this. He wants to hunt it down and destroy it. I tried to tell him not to, but I couldn't give him a reason why." He looked at her. "So what do I do?"
Zephyer gazed at the stream, thinking. "We can't tell Sonic that it's Shadow because he'll go off the deep end. But we don't want Sonic going after Shadow, and we don't want to kill Shadow, either."
"Exactly," said Knuckles.
There was a moment of silence, and the echidnas watched the glowing Master Emerald in Knuckles's hand. "Well," said Zephyer slowly, "we either capture Shadow--or we tell Sonic." She looked at Knuckles. "What if Sonic went after him? If Shadow is a robot now, he'll look different."
"I recognized him, and I'd only seen him once," said Knuckles. "I'm sure Sonic would recognize him."
There was another long pause.
"Sonic will find out about him someday," said Zephyer. "What harm would it do?"
"And have Sonic deal with an amnesiac who is working for our enemies?" said Knuckles. "It'd devastate him. I saw what he went through over Twilight. I don't want him to get hurt again."
"Don't you think you're being overprotective?"
"Zeff, you don't understand. I had Shadow here in my hands, and it rattled me. Me! And I only saw him once! He's a monster now, and just seeing him is going to tear Sonic apart."
Zephyer rested her head in one hand, unconsciously copying Knuckles's hopeless gesture of the night before. "So what do we do?"
"I don't know," Knuckles sighed. "I wish I knew where Shadow was, so I could run him off before Sonic does."
center* * */center
Mekion emerged from underground to find it was noon and the hated sun was at its height. He wished he could crawl into the shade somewhere and sleep, but four of his eight hours had passed, and he had to locate Sonic before Robo Knux arrived. He could complete his mission if he missed the deadline, but it would be difficult with Robo Knux hunting him.
As he set off to of Chaotix Central in search of Sonic, another problem reared its head. He had not eaten in two days. He would have to raid the home of his targets to feed himself, and he would have to do it in daylight. He cringed. What if he met Knuckles again? What if he was unable to escape? His robot brain chided him for feeling fear, and assured him that all he had to do was kill Knuckles if the echidna threatened him. His organic mind recoiled in horror at this. He didn't think he could kill someone. Then he looked at the claws on his left hand, and realized that yes, he could.
He investigated Chaotix Central, and his scans revealed that everyone was inside, eating lunch. Everyone except Sonic. He swept the house with the most precise scanner he possessed. There were two echidnas, two chao, an anteater, a chameleon, a crocodile, an armadillo, and an oversized bee. No fox and no hedgehog. Tails was accounted for--so where was Sonic?
Mekion looked at the tree-clad hills and the mountains rising in the middle distance. Sonic could be anywhere. Disheartened, Mekion checked his odds of finding Sonic in the four hours left, and discovered his chances were one in ten thousand. But there was nothing for it--Mekion had to look for him. The black and white cyborg entered the trees and began to search, his scans set to their widest sweep.
An hour slipped by, then another. Mekion kept tabs on his internal clock as he roamed. He was running out of time.
At four in the afternoon he began checking for the signature trail of Robo Knux on his radar. To his surprise there was none. Five o' clock came and went. Then six. No sign of Sonic or Robo Knux. Mekion did not know that the Floating Island's movement had thrown off Metal Sonic's calculations, or that Robo Knux was pursuing the island and cursing the tailwind that was carrying it south.
At six thirty Mekion discovered Tails walking down from the mine, carrying a bucketful of rocks and whistling. Mekion followed him, hoping that Sonic would appear, but he did not. Mekion followed Tails all the way to Knuckles's house, then returned to searching, hating his hunger and his inability to locate his target.
center* * */center
Mekion wasn't the only one wondering about Sonic's whereabouts. As Tails helped himself to the fried vegetable-and-meat dish that Mighty and Espio had whipped up for dinner, he called, "Anybody seen Sonic?"
"Nope!" came a chorus of replies from throughout the house.
"All day?" said Tails, picking out the meat and eating it first.
"Not since this morning," said Knuckles, entering the room. "He wasn't with you?"
"He left this morning," said Tails. "I think--I think being underground freaked him out, because all of a sudden he took off without a word."
"Aw geez," said Knuckles, slapping his forehead. "The dope's probably claustrophobic and too proud to admit it. And he didn't come back?"
"No. Do you think he's okay?"
Knuckles gazed at the fox, thinking of Sonic wandering the island and perhaps bumping into Mekion. "He's probably okay, but if he's not here by nine then I'm going looking for him." Knuckles glanced into the next room and noticed Zephyer was watching him. At least one person shared this problem with him.
center* * */center
There were many places on the Floating Island that offered solitude, and Sonic had found one of them. High on the north end of the island was a series of broken, rocky cliffs riddled with caves and springs. Moss abounded, and so did ancient engravings by the echidna clan.
Sonic claimed one of these old rooms as his own and sat outside it in the sun, gazing at the horizon. Today he had snapped, and he didn't know if he could face his friends again. He had tried running hard before going underground. But as soon as he entered the main tunnel he felt as if he was smothering, and the feeling intensified the further he went. He had managed to ignore it until he was in the tiny shaft with Tails ... then he had started thinking about the millions of tons of rock above his head ... and suddenly he had to get out.
He hadn't stopped running until he had circled the island and reached the northern end, a harsh, lonely area. He spent the day exploring among the rocks, ignoring his stomach at lunch and dinner. He couldn't go back and admit he had chickened out. Not after Knuckles had been so kind, and Tails was finding good stuff. If Tails didn't mind being underground, why did he?
"You're getting old, Sonic," he told himself savagely. "Twenty-two is positively ancient compared to Tails." The four years difference in their ages seemed like a century.
When it came down to it Sonic had no excuse. He just had an irrational fear of closed-in spaces. They reminded him of a trap or a cave, neither of which he could tolerate. What he needed was a way to save the day, something to make them overlook his wimpiness. Like hunting down Mekion the biotic. He felt ready for a fight against a robot. He hadn't had one in ages. The nerve, a robot sneaking onto the island!
It was dark by this time, for the sun set at seven and it was nearly seven-thirty. Sonic sat on his ledge and stared at the horizon, plotting ways to heal his wounded pride, when he noticed a light against the ocean. He thought it was a boat until it became brighter and closer. He straightened. That light was moving too fast for a boat. Then he identified it and leaped to his feet with an oath. That was one of the Mecha-bots, and they were extremely dangerous. But dangerous or not, Sonic had discovered a way to salvage his self-image.
Sonic bounded off the rocks as Robo Knux arrived on the Floating Island.
