Of our Emeralds cast into Yellow Night Chapter 5: Where did everybody go?, a sonic the hedgehog fanfic

Ugh...well, despite the COMPLETE LACK OF INTEREST, I'm too tired from school starting to not post this up. Hey, maybe you'll be tired too, and come read, and become happy from reading this fic, or something...dammit I need sleep.

Disclaimer: I do not own Sonic

"We're almost there!" called Tails as he fiddled with the controls of the Tornado, "How are you guys doing back there?"

"I'm okay," Sonic called back over the sound of rushing wind, "But Shadow still looks a little green around the gills to me."

"Shut up," growled the black hedgehog.

"Seriously, if you throw up again, try not to hit the plane, okay? Tails just waxed it."

"Hah. And hah," Shadow replied, "Oh, and did I mention: hah."

Tails sighed at their bickering. Though Shadow had been looking a little airsick, and though Sonic was just pestering the other to get Shadow's mind off his queasiness, the urge to slap some sense into the two of them got almost irresistible sometimes.

"I wonder what could have happened, anyway," Tails said, thinking out loud.

"Maybe this is part of some plot by Egg-head," Sonic mused, "Though I wonder what he could have done to do something like this. Did you remember to bring the Chaos Emerald, Tails?"

"Yeah, I got it right here," Tails said, holding up a metal box.

Sonic took the box from his fox friend and lifted the lid. Inside was the dark blue Chaos Emerald - or at least what used to be the dark blue Chaos Emerald. After that really weird and horrible thing, whatever it was, happened, the Emerald had begun acting funny.

It was glowing with a slow, steady pulse, and the Emerald seemed to be almost out of focus. It looked less solid, more like a oblong-shaped dark-blue lump of light, and despite Chaos Control being the fastest way to their destination Sonic didn't dare to use the Emerald's power until they figured out what was wrong with it.

Shadow, with whom Sonic was sharing the back seat of the Tornado's biplane mode with, gritted his jaw and shivered violently when the Chaos Emerald was brought into view.

"Please put that thing away," the Ultimate Life Form muttered between tightly clenched teeth.

Sonic latched the lid of the box back down.

"Aren't you getting any better, Shadow?" Sonic asked.

Despite his earlier comments, he was worried about Shadow. Sonic had recovered from whatever-the-hell-it-had-been fairly quickly, but the black one seemed to be getting worse - especially when the mutated Chaos Emerald was near him.

"I would get better if you didn't keep flaunting that thing around me," Shadow snapped.

"You're really that sensitive to it, huh," Sonic said as he eyed the box in his hands.

"I was designed to be able to harness and handle that energy," Shadow agreed as he was finally able to open his eyes and relax a little bit, "Now that it's…I don't know, corrupted like this, I can't go near it at all. Don't you feel anything from it?"

"Sort of, I guess…but I didn't throw up. That was you. And into Amy's flowerbed, ho boy! You are totally dead and roasted in her books, Faker!"

"Faker yourself," Shadow snapped, but there was no real anger in his voice.

Tails sighed good-naturedly, before the instruments in front of him began beeping.

"Okay you guys, Angel Island should be right on the other side of this cloud bank," Tails reported.

"Unless Knuckles decided to move it somewhere else," Sonic said, "It would be just like him, too."

The plane passed through the cloud bank and came out on the other side. There was nothing but open air waiting for them.

"Aw, man. Knux DID move it! Now where are we gonna find him!"

"Uh, Sonic?" Shadow said, "I don't think we have to search very hard. Look down."

Down below was an island, complete with mountains and jungle, where no such island was supposed to be.

"Angel Island fell! This is like the fifth time already!"

"I think it's just the third," Tails said as he banked the plane, dropping altitude and looking for a place to land near the island's edge.

The landing was a little awkward, and when the three of them stepped outside the plane they realized why. Angel Island had landed crookedly, and there was a slight yet disconcerting slant to the ground now.

"Angel Island must have landed on top of some sort of underwater ridge," Tails said, "Otherwise it probably would have sunk: the ocean is very deep here. But the island didn't land too well, I guess."

"Think Knux is still around?" Sonic asked as he lead the way to the shrine, "If the island's down here, then something must have broken the Master Emerald. He usually bolts right after the pieces."

"I think he might still be here," Shadow said, looking ahead.

There were several wrecked machines on the ground in front of the Master Emerald's shrine. The whole area looked like a war zone, and the Master Emerald was conspicuously absent. But the shrine itself was smoldering and smoking in a way that had nothing to do with a sudden crash landing in the ocean.

"Was there some kind of invasion here? These aren't Egg-head's bots," Sonic said as he kicked at a nearby robot.

"Let's look around for clues," Tails suggested.

The three of them split up, hunting around for any sort of explanation to this strange event, and also for any sign of Knuckles, if he was still on the island for some reason.

Shadow was the one that found him, but only with a lucky glance in the right direction.

"What in the name of - Tails! I need you!" he yelled.

The fox bolted right over, and gasped when he saw what Shadow had found.

Here was Knuckles, all right: unconscious and hanging limply from a tree branch. It was where he had been tossed during the island's fall. Tails floated up and dislodged the Echidna as gently as he could, and Shadow caught Knuckles when he fell.

"What could have taken out Knuckles, I wonder?" Tails asked worriedly as they carefully laid the unconscious guardian on the grass in the sunlight, "Whatever happened…that was yesterday. Remember? I had to spend all of last night rewiring the Cyclone to work without the Chaos Emerald."

"I was a little incapacitated at the time," Shadow said.

"What was all that yelling about?" Sonic asked as he walked up, holding something in one hand, "Hey, you found Knux!"

"Brilliant deduction, Faker," Shadow drawled.

"Very funny," Sonic said, "But I actually over here to see if we have another of those boxes for carrying freaked-over Chaos Emeralds in."

"You found another Chaos Emerald?" Tails asked.

"Its behind a tree, that way," the blue hedgehog said with a shake of his head in the proper direction, "I think it was the pink one - either that, or there's a giant, mutated pink firefly over there. I would have brought it back myself, but it gave me a serious case of the willies when I tried to pick it up!"

"I think I have another box in the Tornado, I'll go get it," Tails said, jumping into the air and spinning his tails to fly back to the plane.

Not a minute later, Knuckles began stirring. Sonic, not wanted to miss the opportunity, leaned over the Echidna.

"Wakey wakey, Knux! This isn't the time to be sleeping in, lazy-butt!" the blue hedgehog laughed.

Knuckles responded without waiting to sit up or open his eyes.

"When I can move again, remind me to beat you senseless."

With some assistance, the Echidna was able to sit upright. He tried to stand up, but his legs refused to hold him and he landed on his rear. Sonic was almost falling over with laughter, safely out of arm's reach of the now very-ticked-off Knuckles. The blue hedgehog stopped laughing when he was discretely pushed over by Shadow, a sight that seemed to both calm and amuse the Echidna.

Knuckles glanced towards the Master Emerald's platform and instantly all traces of good humor were wiped away.

"And here I was hoping that it was a nightmare…" he muttered, attempting to get his legs straightened so that he could try standing again.

Tails came out of the trees holding another box. Inside the box was what had previously been the pink Chaos Emerald, now in the same state as the dark blue Chaos Emerald. Shadow took a dozen less-than-discrete steps away from the Emerald, and even Sonic looked a little disturbed.

"What is that?" Knuckles asked, confused and suddenly extremely uncomfortable.

"It used to be a Chaos Emerald," Tails said, closing and sealing the lid of the box, "The same thing happened to ours, and probably to the other five as well. It must be a reaction to whatever happened to the Master Emerald…"

"So, spill it," Sonic said, "What happened!"

The Echidna took another look at the empty platform, and sighed.

"It was this crazy scientist that happened. He used some kind of black energy…kept talking about how it was going to make him famous…"

He paused, clearly reluctant to relive the experience, even as a memory.

"What did the black energy do to the Master Emerald?" Tails asked.

"I think this might be what it did," Shadow said as he slowly and carefully walked back over.

In his hands was a piece of dirty-looking crystal. It might have been green at some point - it still had a greenish cast to it - but now it was mostly gray-white. It was a sliver only a little bit smaller than the hedgehog's hands, and Knuckles took it with a mute, stricken expression.

"Is that the Master Emerald?" Tails asked.

"A piece of it," Sonic said, "It looks kinda…dead. No energy."

"But…even when broken into pieces, all the pieces of the Master Emerald have energy!" Tails protested, "And it had unlimited energy - where's the energy, if its not in the Master Emerald's pieces."

"The power core," Knuckles murmured.

"Pardon?"

"That's what that - scientist - was after," Knuckles said, making the word 'scientist' sound like a curse word, "He wanted the source of the Master Emerald's energy. The…middle piece."

"Then we need to get it back!" Sonic said, but hesitated when the Echidna shook his head.

"Doesn't he have it?"

"No. It's safe. A friend of mine is hiding it."

There was a hesitant silence, before Sonic broke it.

"Since when do you let anyone else guard even a single piece of YOUR Emerald!" Sonic asked, incredulous, "You're, like, obsessed with not letting even a stray leaf landing less than an inch away!"

"Shut up," Knuckles growled, "Just because I don't trust YOU to guard my Emerald doesn't mean -"

"Aha! I understand everything now!" Tails cried suddenly, getting everyone's attention.

"That's why the Chaos Emeralds started acting so weird!"

To further prove his story, Tails pulled out the second box - the one with the blue Emerald in it - and placed it next to the one holding the pink Emerald. Shadow took a wary step back as the pink Emerald was revealed again.

"The Master Emerald controls the powers of the seven Chaos Emeralds," Tails explained, "The effect increases due to proximity, depending on the number of Emeralds in each location…but without the Master Emerald's full presence the chaotic energies begin to lose focus…and if all seven Chaos Emeralds lose control of their energy at the same rate - it could mean the end of the world!"

"It only 'could' mean the end of the world?" Sonic asked sarcastically, "Well then, I guess it could be worse…"

"Are you sure all the Chaos Emeralds are decaying at the same rate?" Knuckles asked.

In response, Tails held up both boxes, one in each hand, with their lids open. Except for color, they were identical in shape and timing of their pulsing light.

All of a sudden, the two boxes quivered in Tails' hands, before both Chaos Emeralds actually leaped out at each other. They collided midair and seemed to melt into each other, turning into some kind of jewel that was half dark blue and half pink, glowing with a faster pulse than either had before.

At the same time, Tails shivered, Knuckles and Sonic both went rigid, and from behind the group there was a soft 'thump' noise as Shadow fainted.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," Knuckles said after another couple of minutes had passed, "But I think things just got worse."