FriedBrickWall: Thanks for the review :D I'm glad you're enjoying it so far, and as requested, I have indeed written more ;)
Guardian's Log no. 11459
So Sonic finally came clean with the kid about being responsible for Robotnik's existence. I have to admit, I was impressed; that took a hell of a lot of guts. Like I said at the time, I think I've been misjudging Sonic. I was wrong in what I said about him earlier as well; he does have something of a sense of responsibility.
And that thing...yeah. I got pretty frustrated at the time, but now I understand why Sonic just kept calling it a 'weird thing'. There are no other words to describe it. I don't know if Robotnik is behind it, but I don't know who else could be either. Still, I imagine we'll find out.
--Knuckles the Echidna
My Memoirs by Me
Good news: Tails and I seem to have made up! Bad news: we made up just in time for Knuckles to drag my skeleton kicking and screaming out of the closet. I still don't quite know how he found about about me and Robotnik, but I'm not sure I want to know either. Maybe once all this is over I'll ask him.
Knuckles got to see the weird thing as well. I think it freaked even him. I'm glad; it's good to know that guy can do something as normal as freak out.
I'm looking forward to rail-grinding; that stuff rocks! I can't wait to see what ol' Knucklehead makes of it! It's gonna be great!
--Sonic the Hedgehog
Dear Diary
Sonic made Robotnik. I just had to write that down. It's so weird I can't get my head around it yet. Neither of them ever said a word (though nobody chats to Robotnik!) and I think I kind of understand why Sonic kept quiet. If it was me I don't think I'd want other people to know either.
Sonic made Robotnik. But how did Knuckles find out? I mean, really? He'd never met either of us until that whole Master Emerald thing.
I'm glad I know though. I'm also glad me and Sonic made up; he's a nice guy really. Yeah. He's a nice guy and him and me and Knuckles are gonna take Robotnik down!
--Tails
"You do this for fun?" Knuckles grated.
"Sure we do!" Sonic said brightly. "Along with bot-smashing, chili-dog-eating and that ever popular one, Robotnik-butt-kicking!"
Knuckles shut his eyes, then snapped them open again. Anything was better than the blackness of his own lids.
They had been grinding – against Knuckles' extremely outspoken wishes – for about ten minutes now. The echidna had been quick enough to grasp the basics, and he had no trouble balancing.on the narrow rail. The problems had started as soon as they'd left the station and Knuckles had gotten his first glimpse of the canyons some three miles below. In the end, Tails had flown above him and offered his ankles for support, helping to keep the echidna from flying off the edge. They'd progressed quite smoothly after that, and Knuckles had even relaxed enough to appreciate the area, particularly as they rounded a corner.
"What a view." The words were out of the echidna's mouth before he could stop them, and then he thought what the hell. There was no oddsing it though; the view was incredible.
"You bet!" Sonic leapt neatly onto the rail just in front of Knuckles and turned to face him, grinding backwards with his arms folded across his chest and a broad grin on his face. "C'mon Tails, let go. Let ol' Knucklehead try it for a bit on his own."
Knuckles opened his mouth to protest, but Tails had already released Knuckles and landed behind the echidna to give him a shove, sending him flying along the rail and into a siding that was banked on either side by large platforms, both of which held several barrels filled to the brim with water. Somehow managing to draw the strength into his legs, Knuckles leapt sideways off the rails and onto the firm platform.
"Ther-r-re," Sonic said patronisingly as he drew level with the echidna and ground to a halt, "that wasn't too painful, was it?"
"Did we have to loop the loop?"
"You didn't mind doing that back in the city! And yeah, we did. There's a wasp nest down the other way. It was hanging off one of the girders."
Knuckles perked up slightly.
"Yeah? You didn't happen to see any termite mounds, did you? What?" he added in response to their looks. "I missed breakfast this morning."
Sonic just shook his head despairingly.
"Tell me, Knux, do you even have taste buds?"
"If by that you mean do I feel the urge to assault those taste buds with thermonuclear chili dogs, the answer is no."
"C'mon Knux; don't knock it 'til you've tried it."
"I have tried it, Sonic, and so I'll knock it whenever I damn well please. I don't know what you're complaining about anyway; if I don't touch it, then it's all the more for you and the kid, isn't it?"
Sonic considered this, then shrugged with a grin.
"True, I guess. Ooch over, Knux; some of us have important business to attend to."
"You really should have thought of that before we left."
"No! Not that kind of important business, the other kind!"
"I wasn't aware that there was one," Knuckles said as delicately as he could. Sonic shook his head pityingly.
"Knux, Knux, Knux. I kinda get the whole idea that you don't go much on fun, but haven't you heard of relaxation?"
"Like what?"
"Sunbathing, my dreadlocked buddy!"
"These are not dreadlocks; they're spines."
"Whatever!" Sonic lay down, stretching out on his back, hands laced behind his head. "We're in a desert, not a cloud in sight. I'm gonna catch me some serious rays."
There was a long pause.
"Hey kid," Knuckles said in an undertone to Tails, "I wanna ask you something."
Tails shifted slightly.
"Uh...sure."
"We're a little over three miles above the ground and any stores, right?"
"Yeah."
"And we've been going constantly since leaving the Casino Zones, and Sonic didn't take anything from there?"
"Right."
"So can someone please explain to me where the hell he got those sunglasses!"
"Hidden talent, Knux-ol'-buddy-ol'-pal," Sonic said from underneath the sunglasses in question. "Never go anywhere without a pair of shades, 'cause you never know when you might end up on a platform suspended by railings three miles above a desert floor." He smirked. "And on that subject, are you just gonna stand around all day?"
Knuckles stared hard at him.
"That's rich coming from someone who's likely to spend the entire morning sunbathing!"
"On the contrary, my oh-so-sensitive scarlet sidekick; I am not sunbathing. I am extremely busy collecting and storing vast amounts of solar energy so that in the unlikely event of a power failure, we can use me as a hedgehog battery."
There was a long silence. Then Knuckles said, "That's gotta be the worst excuse you've ever come up with."
"So sue me." Sonic waved a lazy hand as though brushing away an insect (no such luck, much to Knuckles' disgust) and stretched out, rolling over to tan his back. "Or be a buddy and go find me a chili dog."
Knuckles snorted.
"How you can eat those things in this weather..."
"I need the heat from the chili to ignite the solar energy. A lot of heat. Better make it about half a dozen chili dogs' worth, Knux-ol'-buddy-ol'-pal. And a couple ice creams to freeze the rest of the energy until we need it. And maybe a soda as well, to keep me from overheating. Yeah, a soda'd be good. Nothing diet, though; gotta keep my sugar levels up."
"What did your last slave die of, Sonic?" Knuckles said coldly.
"Happiness," Sonic answered without missing a beat, not opening his eyes. "Now go fetch the snacks like the nice buddy I know you really are underneath your hard and crusty exterior."
He grinned to himself as he heard the echidna walking away, mouth already watering at the thought of food.
"Knuckles, what are you doing?" Sonic heard Tails ask. "Knuckles, are you gonna—NO!"
"Huh?" Sonic started to sit up. "What?"
What felt like half a ton of water crashed down on the hedgehog, submerging him completely and drenching him from head to foot. Spluttering, Sonic pulled himself to his feet and glowered at Knuckles, who had now thrown the water drum away and was doing his best to look innocent.
"Oh man, I'm soaked!" Sonic complained.
"You don't say," Knuckles remarked. Sonic glared at him.
"I'm gonna kill you, Knucklehead!"
"Not with words, that's for sure." Knuckles shook his head, fixing the hedgehog with his best pitying look. "That name is so old it's lost its effect."
"Hm." Sonic cupped his jaw in one hand in an attitude of exaggerated thinking, an attitude belied by the smirk on his face. "You may be right, Knux. Hey Tails! Think you can come up with a nickname for this grumpy guardian? One that's not related to his own name?"
"Alliteration isn't the key, Sonic," Knuckles said, realising too late what he'd just let himself in for.
"Rad Red, maybe," Tails said thoughtfully, a gleam in his eyes that said he considered this fair payback for Knuckles' forcing Sonic to reveal his secret about Robotnik. "Or Crimson Storm."
"Can you two take the piss out of me after we're done here?" Knuckles said tersely. Sonic's smirk broadened into a huge grin.
"Jeez, Knux, I thought you'd never ask!"
Knuckles turned away rather rapidly in an effort to hide his twitching lips.
Man, did I walk into that one.
"We're not going to get done here at all if we don't leave now," he said aloud, in an effort to cover up his momentary lapse.
"Yeah. Hey, why don't we ride separately this time?" Sonic suggested. Knuckles shook his head.
"Forget it! The way things are playing out, without Tails' guidance I'll wind up going completely off the rails!"
There was a very long, very careful silence.
"I really set myself up for a zinger there, didn't I?" Knuckles said eventually.
Sonic and Tails both nodded in unison, their identical grins so wide that for a long moment they couldn't speak.
"Fine." Glad that his red complexion covered his embarrassed flush, Knuckles pushed past both of them and leapt onto the right hand rail, spinning around to generate the friction needed to accelerate and grinding away from the station.
"Hey!" Sonic followed him, jumping onto the rail next to the echidna's and accelerating to catch up. "Hey, c'mon Knux, admit it; it was funny!"
Knuckles half turned – he didn't dare risk grinding backwards yet – and stared hard at the hedgehog.
"No. It wasn't."
"You'd be laughing if I'd been the one who said it."
"You wouldn't be."
"I would," Sonic answered, still grinning. "C'mon, Knucklehead, you know me. I don't mind a joke at my expense, just so long as it's a good one."
"Whatever." Knuckles started to grind faster, but at that moment something large and black blew past him with the force of a small tornado and he staggered, the wind knocking him off balance and off the rail.
"Knuckles!" Faster than thought, Sonic lunged, grabbing the echidna's wrist. The sudden jerk of Knuckles' weight almost yanked him off the rail, but Tails seized the hedgehog's other arm and pulled hard, managing to right them both and tug them along the rail, one underneath the other until they reached the next platform. Although this one had the obligatory water barrels, it was slightly different in structure, having apparently been constructed around the mountain, allowing for entrance to the large caves within.
"Knuckles?" Sonic said lightly.
"What?"
"You mind taking your spikes out of my arm now?"
Knuckles blinked down to where blood was oozing out past the spikes in question. He didn't even remember digging them in; he supposed he must have done it instinctively when Sonic had seized him.
"Damn!" He wrenched the spikes out as if Sonic's arm had turned red-hot, eliciting a yelp from the hedgehog. "Jeez, Sonic, I'm sorry; I never intended to."
"I should damn well hope not!" Sonic said fervently and then, seeing that the echidna looked genuinely remorseful, shook his head. "Forget it, Knux. I like a few scars to impress the girls, you know? Drives 'em wild."
"You hurt Sonic?" Tails said, turning an accusing look on Knuckles.
"Chill, li'l bro," Sonic said, from where he was currently attempting to staunch the flow from his now profusely bleeding arm on his other glove. "I'm okay." He glanced at the echidna. "Y'know, I take back my earlier remark; your spikes really aren't just there for decoration."
Knuckles stripped off his gloves to expose the spikes in question, dumping the gloves into a water barrel in an effort to wash Sonic's blood off them.
"Which remark would that be, Sonic?"
"You know," Sonic said lazily, coming over to join the echidna and wash his arm in the water. "Hope nobody's planning to drink this stuff," he added, glancing at the swirls of red in the clear liquid and reluctantly going up another notch in Knuckles' estimation; anyone who could keep up such a light-hearted and cocky outlook in the midst of what must be considerable pain was worth at least a little respect.
"If I knew, would I have asked you?"
"I'm talking about that time I said to you that your spikes were probably no use as anything except intimidation, like big feathers on a bird, and...and..." Sonic caught sight of the echidna's look and his voice trailed off. "Ah. That wasn't you I said that to, was it?"
"No."
"Ah. Right. Yeah. Uh, how 'bout we forget I ever mentioned it?" Sonic fixed Knuckles with his best appealing look.
"Suits me." Knuckles pulled out his gloves, decided they were clean enough and drew them back on. In any other circumstances, he would have attempted to match the insult Sonic had just given him, but he had just gouged out four chunks of flesh out of the hedgehog's arm. That alone was enough to make him swallow his pride in this case...not to mention the little fact that he now happened to owe Sonic his life. Speaking of which...
"Thanks."
Sonic looked astounded.
"For what? Insulting you?"
"No! For...back there, on the rails."
"What? Oh, that." Sonic waved a hand, grinning. "All in a day's work, Knucklehead. You can return the favour some time." He withdrew his arm, examining it critically. The bleeding had slowed, but not stopped entirely. It would have to do. Sonic didn't have time to stand around and wait. "C'mon, let's go."
"What?" Knuckles stared at him.
"You don't really wanna stand around all day, do you? This place is newly-built, it reeks of oil and metal...in short, it has Robotnik all over it."
"Your arm—"
"Nuts to my arm, Knux," Sonic said breezily. "I wanna see what's inside this place." He broke into a slow run, keeping just ahead of the other two as they rounded the corner together, then skidded to a stop as they caught sight of the robots beyond.
"Whoah!" Sonic stared openly at the closest robot, one that looked a little like an oversized pair of headphones. "What the hell is that?"
"I dunno," Knuckles said, edging away slightly, "but I don't like it."
Tails looked from one to the other.
"Aw, c'mon guys; it's just another robot." Without waiting for a response, he launched himself towards it, tails spinning furiously.
"Wait!" Sonic started forward, but it was too late. The robot, which had been hovering so peacefully up until then, struck, enveloping Tails in a force field too strong to get out of.
"Tails!" Sonic lunged forward, but Knuckles seized his arm, digging his heels in as hard as he could.
"Don't be an idiot!" he yelled. "It'll just take you too!"
"Let go of me!" Sonic all but shrieked, writhing furiously in the echidna's hold, oblivious to the other robots that were now pointing their weapons at the pair.
"No, I need you to cover me! I'll get the kid. You try and stop anything sneaking up behind!" Without waiting for a response, Knuckles let go of Sonic and raced for the robot, leaping to grab Tails' wrist and hang on, dangling from the fox's limbs helplessly, unable to pull him free. It was so rare for the echidna's strength to be inadequate that for a few minutes Knuckles had no idea how to handle it.
One of the robots that Sonic apparently hadn't gotten around to smashing yet seized Knuckles' ankles at that point and pulled, dragging him and Tails out of the force field and back to ground level.
"Thanks," Knuckles told it, then smashed both fists into its head. The robot dropped them immediately, short-circuiting, and above it the echidna was dimly aware of Sonic attacking the robot that had dared to lay a finger on Tails, with such extreme prejudice that what finally crashed to the ground no longer bore any resemblance to a robot.
"Shaa!" Knuckles stared at the wreckage, then at Sonic. "I'm impressed." He got to his feet, Tails not far behind.
"You okay, li'l buddy?" Sonic said. Tails nodded.
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay."
"Cool." Sonic looked around. "What is this place?"
Knuckles crossed the floor to stand on the very edge of one of the giant holes in the centre.
"This sounds weird, but I think it's some kind of gun."
"Gun?" A mischievous gleam crept into Sonic's eyes. "Hey, maybe we should shoot off a round."
"NO!" Knuckles all but yelled.
"C'mon, it'll be fun."
"That's what you've been saying all along! So far all I've had is a load of damn bots and things trying to kill me!"
"What, you don't call that fun?" Sonic asked, his tones a little too innocent.
"We don't have any ammo, anyway," Knuckles said, in the manner of a drowning man seizing a rope.
"Oh yes we do." Grinning, Sonic leapt into one of the huge mouths, dragging Tails and Knuckles after him.
The echidna closed his eyes tightly. It had turned out that the drowning man's rope was tied to an anchor.
"Don't do it, Sonic!"
Sonic snorted.
"C'mon; you rode the tables, didn't you? They had holes in them. Most of them shot you off the edge, or you got fired out of a cannon onto one table or another."
"Yeah, Sonic, but when that happened, I knew that I'd just drop ten or fifteen feet and land on a hard surface."
"So? What's so different about that to this?"
"The ten or fifteen feet part! We don't know what's at the other end! We don't even know which way the cannon's facing."
Sonic seemed, as far as Knuckles could tell in the dark, dejected.
"Yeah, you're right. We've no idea where we could end up."
"Exactly." Knuckles relaxed slightly, a relaxation that lasted right up until Sonic said, "Let's find out," and hit the fire button.
The explosion was like nothing Knuckles had ever experienced, accelerating them out of the gun mouth faster than even Sonic could run, the resultant g-force almost blacking the trio out. The pressure closed in around the echidna's lungs, making it almost impossible to draw breath, and he offered up a silent plea to the Master Emerald, telling it that he'd be the most devoted guardian in echidna history if it would just help him get through this in one piece.
A loud "WHOO-HOO!" from next to him pulled him back to the present and Knuckles forced his eyes open, squinting heavily against the rushing wind.
"Tails, grab Sonic and fly him over here so I can punch him!"
"It's okay!" Tails yelled back. "Sonic'd never let us get hurt; he's the greatest hedgehog on all Mobius!"
Which was all very well, Knuckles thought sourly, until you considered the fact that the greatest hedgehog on all Mobius was currently spinning himself over and over in midair like some crazy drill bit and yodelling like a lunatic.
"Was this part of your master plan to get Robotnik?" Knuckles shouted at Sonic.
"Yeah!"
"So what's the next part? Because in case you haven't noticed, we're currently heading for a sheer cliff!"
Sonic stopped spinning and shrieking for a few minutes.
"What's the point of blowing up a sheer cliff? There'll be something there from the last thing the gun fired, a hole or something!" He rolled onto his back, grinning broadly at Knuckles and lacing his hands behind his head as though he was lying on the beach.
"Sonic!" That was Tails. "Sonic, look!"
"Huh?" Sonic rolled onto his side to follow Tails' pointing finger and saw the narrow blackness of a pass. "Oh, right." He looked back at Knuckles. "See, Knux? Everything works out in the end, huh?"
"Sonic, you—" The wind snatched the echidna's words away, which probably wasn't such a bad thing given the circumstances, and the next thing Sonic heard was "—and throw you in!"
Sonic feigned an injured look.
"Nice! I get you off your stuffy little island, take you out for a bit of real fun and this is how you thank me! Next time Tails and I'll just go have fun on our own!"
"Promises, promises!" Knuckles shouted back.
"Have I got you killed or injured yet, Knux?" Sonic said in an equally injured tone. "C'mon, just trust me!"
Knuckles rolled his eyes.
"We have had this conversation at least twice before, and we are not going to have it a third time; I'm not the trusting type!"
"Your loss, buddy!" Sonic turned back to face the pass, which was almost on them. "You see?" he called back as the three of them flew in, missing the rock wall by the barest fraction of an inch. "No sweat!"
How they survived, Knuckles never knew. Somehow, they did. Somehow, the three of them flew through that impossibly narrow pass, somehow they avoided the beams and props that lined their way and somehow they managed to land squarely on the rails beyond, one to each of them, and accelerate away.
"If we survive this insanity, remind me to kill you!" Knuckles shouted over the wind. On the middle rail, Sonic spun around, grinding backwards and grinning broadly.
"C'mon, admit it; that was one hell of a wild trip!" he yelled back.
"Wild being the word! I think my heart stopped!"
"Like I keep telling you, Knux, you really gotta live a little."
Knuckles made a gesture at Sonic that was probably incomprehensible to a non-echidna but which nevertheless made him feel a lot better. Shaking his head, Sonic laughed, giddy with exhilaration.
"Sonic?" Knuckles' eyes suddenly widened in an almost comical fashion and he pointed. "Sonic, behind you!"
"Oh c'mo-on, you really expect me to fall for that?" Sonic laughed again.
He was still laughing when the rail he was grinding abruptly came to an end, sending him flying into open air.
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