Was it all over now? Their world had crumbled; was it together now once more? Restored? Was it all undone in that one bold instant when the titans collided, and the tower was stripped naked, stripped of its skin? Nothing was undone. Their home had been razed. Many had fallen casualty to this war of distance. And was it over now?
For the echidna, the recent events were just a meaningless blur. He had lost track of the answers to the riddles, the pieces of the puzzle. He had fallen away, given up hope of understanding or fathoming anything. He did not resist; he did as he was told. But it was all meaningless. He followed the commands but their resolution didn't inspire him; he felt nothing.
And in the midst of it all, he almost forgot the reason he was here. The emerald. He had to recover the emerald. He stood, gaping in awe at the ghost image of what had but moments ago been a cleaver of the sky. He felt a tug on his mind and let go; as he shifted his gaze back to his unstable reality, the clash of Titans – an ephemeron – seemed almost unbelievable.
Sally might have been euphoric had it truly sunk in.
"We did it." Uncle Chuck broke the thunderstruck silence.
"Mah stars."
Sally exhaled audibly.
"Alright, we did it!" shouted Sonic, lifting a crutch in the air. "We won!"
Bunnie and Tails joined him in his celebration.
Sally did not share their joy. They had not won. They had lost this war. Their home was no more. The Great Forest bore a crater. Many had died on the field of battle. What had Robotnik lost? Robots that could easily be replaced, and the power to destroy the world. And the latter was not really lost, she believed; it had not been taken, only disabled. And Robotnik could again gather that power and the next time there would be no delay, and there would be no open door to the satellite. And now, she realized, this calm would not last long; Robotnik had the emerald, and it would not be so long before he could again harness its power.
Sally looked around to find the echidna staring back at her. And she knew he too was thinking of the emerald. Her sad eyes flickered and welled as she stared into the forlorn eyes of the echidna. She saw him filled with emptiness, gasping for the air of answers. And her eyes shimmered with empathy. Right now she felt almost as lost as he did, or perhaps so she believed.
She almost didn't want to say anything to upset Sonic's celebration, to rain on their misplaced elation. But she had to.
"This mission isn't over yet."
The sparse commotion quieted, and Sonic replied: "Aw, c'mon, Sal; can't we enjoy the moment for a bit first?"
"No." Perhaps she truly meant this with the highest intentions of protecting everyone from Robotnik's inevitable counterattack… or perhaps she could not bear to see them so happy when she was so sad and tense. "We have to get the emerald. We can't let Robotnik hold onto it or this will all have been for naught."
"Fine, fine."
And so another trek to the tower began.
They stood once more before the tower that had threatened their world. It was monolithic, but dead. How could something so dead imperil so greatly? Of course, it was not truly this tower that had been the destroyer, but the power of the Chaos emerald. So thankfully it seemed Robotnik did not have the capacity to destroy the world just by building a machine. He required the power of Chaos. And now to stop him from reacquiring that capacity, they had to seize the power from him.
The tower was visibly ruined. In many places the metallic skin had fallen away, exposing the glass spine within. And apparently of all that remained, the electronic components were all shorted and dead, unusable.
Sally wondered how long Robotnik had been building this tower. It had been built outside of Robotropolis and evidence of it had not been published to the networks for Uncle Chuck to find. Logically she suspected it must have been long in the making, but she still feared, perhaps irrationally, that the immense damage done by the electrical shockwave would only set Robotnik back a week. She would consult Nicole later about that. Perhaps Nicole would be able to reassure her and make an accurate prediction. For now, Sally was convinced that seizing the emerald would far and away be more productive. After all, it was likely that Robotnik still had other ways to harness the emerald's power, and if not he could always build some other device that could make use of the emerald's power. Destroying the tower had destroyed the tower, but the emerald could be transferred to some other device. Destroying the tower only delayed Robotnik from unleashing that power. Taking the emerald would cripple him far heavier than destroying the tower had.
"Sonic, you know the way to the emerald, right?"
"Yeah. I'll lead."
It was even darker than he remembered at first. Upon reaching the second floor, however, the light poured in through a newly-created hole in the side of the tower. He and Sally were alone in the tower; the others were standing watch outside.
"Say, Sonic, how is it that you're able to face anything and never be worried or afraid or sad? You broke your leg but that didn't even stop you from giving your all and fighting."
"Hey, it's not all happy days for me, Sal. I just don't let it get to me. I get afraid. I get sad. But I'd do anything to bring this world back to where it should be. I think I learned it from you, Sal. We've been against such overwhelming odds but you didn't let that stop you."
"But you're so eager. I don't know. When Knothole burned, it seemed to… energize you. But for me it just reminds me every day of how I failed. And it makes everything else seem so impossible."
"I guess that's just because I'm stupid. I don't see the big picture. I just focus on whatever's right in front of me at the moment. When I'm fighting a SWATbot, I'm fighting a SWATbot, not clearing the way for the destruction of one of Robotnik's factories. But, you know…"
Sonic paused, and turned to face Sally. Awkwardly, he placed his hands on her shoulders. "If you ever need a friend, I'm here for ya, Sal." He half-smiled. "We'll get through this."
"Thanks, Sonic."
A faint rumbling sound could be heard from above.
Bunnie armed her pulse cannon and, taking aim, unleashed a blast at the sky. But it was too late. The ship had already swooped past her mark, and had descended into the top of the tower.
Robotnik had arrived.
"What was that?"
"I don't know. Let's check it out."
Robotnik's classic hovercraft descended onto the platform. As its engine came to a halt, Robotnik put his hand on the side of the frame and hopped out onto the catwalk. He trudged down the catwalk and into the tunnel, through the door and into the control room. A few taps at the terminal later, the glass column had opened itself to him. Reaching inside, he took the emerald in his hands. With a slight smile, he turned back towards the catwalk. Chaos in hand, he plodded back down the tunnel.
Sonic pulled himself up the stairs. One more stairwell and they'd be within the halo. Sally came up the stairs behind him as he crossed over to the other side of the platform. As he ascended the stairwell, something caught his eye on the next floor. Robotnik's hovercraft.
"Shit!"
"What, Sonic?"
Sonic frantically tried to climb the stairwell, jerking his crutches back and forth as he pulled himself upward. "Robotnik!"
And then he saw Robotnik himself on the catwalk. Robotnik heard him and as he caught sight of Sonic, he hurried his pace. Sally rushed up the stairs in front of Sonic and after taking a moment to get her bearings, raced after Robotnik.
But she could not beat him to his hovercraft. The craft lifted off the ground within seconds and Robotnik was out of reach; Sally found herself in the ship's shadow as she looked up at its black underside.
"Robotnik!!" Sonic shook his fist in the air.
"Sorry to disappoint you, hedgehog, but it seems as if I've won this race. It's a pity that you couldn't even beat me in your area of expertise." Robotnik looked down at Sonic's crutches. "But maybe it shows how pathetic you really are without your speed," Robotnik snarled.
Sonic discreetly reached to his back as he shouted out, "I'm nothing without my speed? Ha, you just think that, Robuttnik!"
Robotnik laughed. Sally noticed what Sonic was doing; she observed that he was reaching back to a radio she didn't know he had; he was tapping at the call button. Sending a signal to someone, she supposed?
"It's true, you miscreant! You're nothing without your speed! You're worthless!"
"We've beat you, Robuttnik. Even without my speed I still beat you."
"You may have won this battle, hedgehog, but I will win the war. You may have been able to stop this tower from unleashing its wrath upon you now, but the time will come when this tower again stands mighty."
"Whatever you build, we'll tear it down. Whatever you throw at us, we'll take it on. We will destroy you."
"I doubt that, hedgehog. It doesn't matter how many battles you win, for I shall still win the war."
"If you say so," smirked Sonic, and in the same instant as he finished his sentence, he quickly heaved one of his crutches up at the side of the tower with great force. The point of impact crumbled and was overencumbered by the metal above it, which broke away from the tower and crashed down upon Robotnik's hovercraft, grounding it warily on the catwalk. It was on such unsure balance that it might have fallen, were the pressure from the fallen rubble not pinning it to the edge of the catwalk.
"Gah!" Robotnik shouted, quickly pulling himself out of the hovercraft and onto the catwalk. He was several feet away from Sonic and stood between Sonic and the hub.
"If you think you've beaten me, you're sorely mistaken!" laughed Robotnik.
"Sure looks like you're beaten to me, 'Buttnik!"
"Without your speed you have no hope of catching me, and if you think I don't have another means of escape, you're just disillusioning yourself."
Sonic hopped forward on his one remaining crutch. Robotnik took a step backward to maintain the distance.
"You might be able to escape, but you won't leave here with the emerald!"
"I won't leave here with the emerald?" Robotnik held out the emerald in his left hand. "It looks to me like I've got the emerald, doesn't it?"
Suddenly Robotnik felt something lunge at his arm from behind. Turning, he found Tails clamped onto his wrist. Tails swatted at the emerald and managed to pry it loose from Robotnik's fingers before Robotnik clubbed him with his right hand. Tails and the emerald both were sent reeling away. The emerald landed back in Robotnik's hovercraft, and Tails was sent backwards onto the catwalk behind Robotnik.
Sonic shouted into his radio: "Now!"
Within moments, the tower shook violently as a loud blast struck the side of the tower. The rubble that had fallen onto Robotnik's hovercraft was shaken free and plummeted down into the depths of the tower. The hovercraft, now free, took off of its own accord, surely malfunctioning after the damage it had received. It jettisoned upward and then moved uncontrollably and erratically as it circled around the tower and then was rocketed out through the tower's open top.
"You fools really think you've gotten the best of me, don't you?! Well, I'll be right behind that hovercraft. There's no way in hell you can beat me to it! With only one crutch you're damn near immobilized!"
Robotnik hurriedly turned and fled toward the tunnel to the hub. "I'll be right behind it!" he shouted again.
Tails, who had landed on the catwalk between Robotnik and the tunnel, now lunged again at Robotnik, hampering his pace.
"Get off of me, you cretin!" Robotnik batted at the fox for several seconds before he finally got himself free of the kitsune's grasp, clubbing him again and sending him reeling into the tower's void. Robotnik hurried his pace, quickly reaching the mouth of the tunnel. Tails set his tails into motion, breaking his fall, and landing back on the catwalk. Robotnik, though, had already entered the hub and closed the diamond-glass bars. "Ta-ta!" His voice echoed about the tunnel, and then he made his departure.
Sonic quickly hit the call button on his radio again. "Uncle Chuck! Robotnik's hovercraft took off with the emerald, but 'Buttnik's not in it! Can Robotnik track the hovercraft?"
"Of course."
"Then I need you to change the coordinates of it; put in false ones. We can't let Robotnik find it before we do."
"I'll get right on it."
Sally approached Sonic. "How did you do that?"
"Do what?"
"The tower shaking on your command?"
"That was Bunnie. She fired her pulse cannon. I told Tails and Bunnie to be ready for my signal, just in case Robotnik showed up."
"But how could you… how could you think of it all?"
"Ha, well, when my feet aren't moving so fast, my mind has to compensate." Sonic smirked.
"I've got the coordinates of the location of the hovercraft at the time I input the false data. The hovercraft was still airborne, so it's moved since then, and it was moving very erratically and unpredictably, but the coordinates should give us a general idea of where it might be. The coordinates accessible to Robotnik should place him in the opposite direction," said Uncle Chuck.
"And Sonic thought of this?"
"What, you don't think I've got the brains?"
"No, it's just… well, maybe."
"It's alright, Sal. I even surprise myself sometimes."
"We should send out a visible, false search party to the area of the false coordinates, to mislead Robotnik while we send out a much smaller party, which will hopefully be unnoticed, to search the correct vicinity. We want to bait Robotnik away from the emerald so we can find it first, but we don't want him to notice us when we look in the right area."
"What if Robotnik does find the emerald?"
"Robotnik does not have anything else nearly on the scale of the tower's capacity. Of course he could still use the emerald, but certainly not in the magnitude the tower was capable of. You may think the Emerald was the real weapon, but the Emerald by itself is nothing. Its infinite power can be used for good or for evil, and it is the thing that harnesses its power that determines what Chaos will do. The tower was the weapon. It depended on the emerald's power but it was the tower that was able to harness it in such a way to create such destructive energy. Robotnik has nothing else like the tower at this moment. It will take him a long time before he is capable of harnessing Chaos in the way the tower did. It could be a full year or more before something on the scale of the tower can be rebuilt. When you disabled the tower's guns in that one assault, you only delayed its potency. But this last attack has completely quelled it. At this point, Robotnik would be able to do little with the emerald and it will be long before he can."
Uncle Chuck continued: "But at this point, Robotnik should have no way of knowing at all where the emerald is, and most likely he will have a false sense of security that he in fact does. I programmed the system such that the hovercraft will appear to have been disabled, its beacon shut off. The false coordinates Robotnik has will appear to be the last-known coordinates, not the current ones. He could be searching in the area for a long time before he realizes it's not there. Plus, if he buys into our big search party, he'll be even more convinced that the hovercraft is in that area. There should be a long Calm now. You have much time of calm now. Send out the false search team and then after a while, recall them. It should both give Robotnik a false sense of hope in finding the hovercraft and being alone in search of it, and also allow the party to return home. Meanwhile, what I'd recommend is that you take a break. Sonic should rest, and you have time now to start the reconstruction of Knothole."
The reconstruction of Knothole.
Sally remembered her promise, and realized that now was the time to keep it. They could keep on fighting Robotnik without cease and never have a home again, or they could take this calm and put it to use in undoing the razing Robotnik had done. And to have a home again. To lift that immense burden from her shoulders, to know that it could be done; to know that Robotnik couldn't destroy them that easily. To live again.
"It appears that Julian and Entropy have been averted for now."
"Yes. But Julian will surely raise Entropy's flag once more."
"And I am unsure if the City can land before the jewel is returned to its place. But at least Entropy has been averted. There is time now."
"But none to waste. Should your dear Kouken-san not continue in pursuit of the jewel? The sooner it can rest, the sooner I too can rest."
"The world is unthreatened for now. If he chooses to answer his calling of his own volition, then so be it, but should he really be forced back so soon?"
"While Entropy may have been averted, the jewel is still in the open, and it is not safe from Julian. I cannot rest easy until it is restored. And neither should you."
"Alas, fine. But I shall let him choose his own path for a few days before reminding him of who he is."
"How can you be so calm?"
"The others too realize the importance of keeping Julian from the jewel. They are not acting now because it is not yet necessary. I would rest easier if the jewel was snatched tonight. But you and I both know that is not possible. A few days of rest will do no harm, and regardless, I think it would be best if Kouken-san pursued the jewel of his own accord. He must internalize his duty. He must feel driven out of necessity; he needs to feel compelled."
"What does it matter?"
"A thing is always done best when it is internalized."
"So you intend to do nothing then?"
"No. But I want to simply remind him of who he is. I believe his drive will return if he is but just reminded. All of the struggles of these past days have overwhelmed him; he has forgotten who he is. With a semblance of normality returned, I believe all he needs is a push in the back of the mind for his call to duty to come back to the front…
"You asked me how I could be so calm. Now I ask you how you can not feel relieved? The jewel may not be in its place but nonetheless I felt an immense burden lift from me this day."
"I do feel relief. But I suppose I lack your sense of confidence in the boy."
"I think with time your confidence will be renewed. Or perhaps you expect too much of him?"
"I may indeed expect too much of him, but it's hard not to when you entrust him alone to save the world."
"Save the world? I expect nothing of the sort from him. That is the task of the world itself. The world itself must unite to save itself. Yet I have little concern in the fate of the world. I care about the jewel and the City, and have we not always, since the beginning, entrusted Koukennin to protect those? You lack not faith in him or in me, but faith in the system we have created to minimize Entropy."
"But this time he is alone."
"Relatively speaking."
"You know what I mean."
"Yes. But all shall rest for a short while, and then I will awaken Kouken-san, that the system we have created might serve us as we created it to. That he whose duty it is might fulfill that duty."
"Snively, is the factory online?"
"Within the hour, sir."
"Good. I want a hundred constructed and I want them all to report directly to me. They should begin construction of the new plans as soon as I have completed their design. They will not report to anyone but me. I want no trace of their activities to be recorded. I don't want the Freedom Fighters to learn of what they're doing."
"Yes sir."
"And what of the Freedom Fighter search squad?"
"We are following them closely, sir. You will be notified immediately if they find anything or if they make significant movement."
"Good, Snively. I must get back to work on the plans."
"As you wish, sir."
Now that the Freedom Fighters were returning home to rebuild Knothole, Knuckles was freed of his obligations to them. He had no intention of living with them, and with their joint venture concluded, it was time for him to move on. He had fought for them at first to find his friends, and now he had; and then because they shared his goal of retrieving the emerald. But now that the battalions were disbanded, and he was reunited with his friends, he could go home. Robotnik's armies had abandoned the Island, and his friends had been restored to him.
And so now he began the journey home, with Espio, Mighty, Vector, and Charmy all in company.
"Alright, we're there!"
Sally rounded the corner to meet the workers. As she peered up into the ceiling, she could see the roots hanging down. With a smile, she reached up and pushed until the blue sky peeked through the canopies. She pulled herself up and out and stood upon the soil. She looked down through the treestump to see Rand's face looking back at her. With joyous laughter she leaped back through the stump and threw her arms around an unexpecting Rand. "Thank you so much," she smiled.
Knothole II had been reached; a new tree stump had been hollowed. And now they could finally build anew.
"Hey, guys; we've made it!" shouted Sally.
Sonic appeared within moments.
"Alright!" he exclaimed, pulling himself out through the hollowed stump. He pulled himself to his feet. "This is great! We have plenty of room here!"
Tails soon arrived airborne, and Sally pulled herself up again behind him.
Soon everyone would gather here to appreciate the work that had been done. And soon thereafter, the beginning of much more work would arrive, but it would be done in earnest, and with great dedication, for this work was the most important of the hour, and finishing it would award them with the greatest thing they could hope to find.
Sally took her place beside Sonic, and, putting her arm around his shoulder, simply smiled as she looked first at him, and then ahead at the place that would soon be home.
"I told you we'd make it, Sal." He put his right arm around her waist, returning her friendly embrace. "I told you Robotnik couldn't keep Knothole snuffed."
"I know, Sonic." But she said so much more with her graceful smile than she said with her words.
Knothole would be reborn. A new era would begin.
Sonic and Sally stood there in silence, arms warmly around one another, as they stared together at what would be. And they smiled.