Kj: Thanks for the review :) No, this isn't my version of Sonic Heroes; like I told FriedBrickWall in the last chapter, it draws influences from several games and universes. Amy and Co...your guess is as good as mine ;) And besides, you don't want me to spoil it, do you:P
FriedBrickWall: (grins) Yeah, I remember the level too; one of my favourite ones :P The ending of the last chapter was pretty much what happened to me the first time I played it as well...after that I always used the flying character for rail-grinding. At least then I never missed a rail ;)
Guardian's Log no. 11460
Sonic's dead.
Even putting it down on paper doesn't make it any easier to believe, but it's only fitting that the record should show this. When we were rail-grinding, Sonic took a tumble. He fell just over three miles onto solid rock; there's no way he could have survived that.
Tails is in shock, not to mention extreme denial. To tell the truth, I don't think I'm much better. I never hero-worshipped Sonic like the kid did, but I guess something about his eternal cocky playfulness and optimism got to me after all; I can't believe someone as annoyingly perky as that is gone.
In all honesty, though, I'd be lying if I said I was wholly amazed. I'm shocked, sure, but not especially surprised. Given Sonic's cockiness, I've been half expecting him to come to grief sooner or later. Pride comes before a fall and all that. That said, I never expected anything like this. If I had to make a prediction, I'd have said that Sonic would have a too-close call – a little like when he fell off that Casino platform – and it would sober him up. I never expected him to actually die.
Whenever I try to remember Sonic, the image that always comes to mind is the memory of the three of us racing each other through the city, and flying through that window. It got too tense after that, in the power plant, and before it was Amy. Playing pinball and bingo was good too, but I still always remember that race through the city, and Sonic running backwards just to taunt me and Tails with that damn cocky grin on his face. Bridge Zone is best described as annoying (and humiliating for me), and the Casino Zones were a little too geared to individual activity, and the railtrack is too close to Sonic's death for comfort, but the race through the city...yeah. That was a good time.
--Knuckles the Echidna
Dear Diary
Sonic and Knuckles and I went rail-grinding today, only Sonic slipped off one of the rails and fell. He must be pretty badly hurt or he'd have come back to us by now. I gotta go look for him. He's probably lying injured down there on the ground somewhere and he needs my help.
--Tails
"Sonic!" Knuckles lunged, his fingers brushing the hedgehog's just long enough to allow him to hope before slipping off. Damn!
Glancing wildly around, Knuckles caught sight of Tails flying up ahead.
"Tails! Tails, get back here! I need you!"
The wind snatched his words away – he was already a hundred yards past where Sonic had fallen – and he twisted around, trying to accelerate and catch up with the fox.
He not only caught up with Tails, he almost flattened him as he blew past him and into a station.
"Tails! Go back!"
"Huh?" Tails drew level and stopped. "What d'you mean, go back? Where's Sonic?"
"He fell!" Knuckles answered tersely, bent double and gasping for breath; grinding was harder than it looked. "Go...get after him...you might be able to catch—"
Tails was already moving before Knuckles had finished the word 'Go'. Leaping over the edge, tails whirring frantically, he zoomed off under the rails and was soon lost to sight.
Knuckles looked around. He didn't think anyone would get to him here, but it never hurt to take precautions. Reaching out, he lifted one of the crates and balanced it on two others, then pushed three more behind it and crawled into his makeshift cave to wait for Tails' return. The kid was damn fast when he wanted to be; maybe he'd be in time. Maybe Sonic wouldn't have hit the ground yet, maybe Tails would reappear with the hedgehog dangling from his ankles.
He doubted it, but maybe.
"Knuckles! Knuckles!"
The echidna jerked awake.
"Was not!" he said reflexively, then attempted to straighten up and banged his head on the surrounding crates. "Ow!"
Rubbing his sore pate, he emerged, coming face to face with Tails.
"Is Sonic back yet?"
"Does it look like he's back?" Knuckles demanded, hunger and drowsiness making him more irritable than usual.
Tails chewed his bottom lip for a few minutes, then brightened up.
"He must've landed and gone looking for a good place to climb. I'll see if I can find him."
Before Knuckles could say another word, the fox had taken off again. The echidna sighed. He'd wait for Tails to get back; the last thing the kid needed was to be left completely alone. Sooner or later – and for the kid's sake, he hoped it was sooner, before decomposition got a hold – Tails would run across Sonic's body. Then maybe he could start dealing with it.
Knuckles settled down, back against the fence, and waited.
By the end of the third day, however, the echidna's patience – never his strongest suit at the best of times – was running increasingly thin. He was ravenous, he was bored and he was getting increasingly frustrated with Tails' obtuseness. The kid had been back once again and insisted that Sonic was still alive, that since he couldn't find him he must have got up and raced away. Knuckles supposed you'd say anything rather than face the truth in this situation.
But it was damned annoying, just the same!
"Knux?" That was Tails, sounding very weary. He came to hover over the platform and didn't land so much as collapse. "Knux, is he—"
"No, he's not, and I don't think he's likely to either," Knuckles said. Tails had shown an irritating tendency to bolt whenever the echidna started to suggest that Sonic might not have survived the fall, but Knuckles was determined he wasn't going to let Tails get away with that this time.
Tails drew in a deep breath.
"You're right."
Knuckles blinked. That had been a lot easier than he'd anticipated.
His relief was summarily shattered when Tails added, "I dunno if you can get up here without flying. And he might have gone to find food...maybe we should check the Casino Zones—" He took off, beating his tails with obvious effort.
"No, wait." Knuckles caught hold of Tails' ankle wth one hand and wrapped the other around a strut. The fox glowered at him.
"I can't wait! Sonic could be hurt! He needs me!"
"Sonic's waited three days for you to find him, kid. I think he'll wait a little longer." Knuckles hauled Tails down to eye level. "You and me, we gotta talk."
"If you're gonna ask me to take you back to your island so you can get back to guarding your beloved Mister Emerald—"
"Master!" Knuckles interrupted sharply; no matter how much Tails was hurting, he was damned if he'd let the kid get away with insulting his sacred duty. Tails continued, overriding him.
"—then sure! As soon as Sonic comes back, we can leave whenever you like."
Knuckles took a long, deep breath, wishing he didn't have to be the one to say it.
"Tails, listen to me."
Knuckles' use of his name was so rare and unexpected that Tails obeyed, coming back to the ground with a bump. Knuckles took another deep breath and went on.
"Sonic's...he's...well, he's not coming back."
"That's not true!"
"Yeah, it is. It's just not what you want to hear."
Tails shook his head stubbornly.
"I flew all around the canyons and things and I never found his body."
"Right..." Knuckles hesitated, wondering how best to phrase what was going through his mind at that precise moment; to wit, after a three mile drop onto solid rock, there probably wouldn't be much of a body left to find. And how come I have to be the damn voice of reason and maturity here? he wondered irritably.
"Sonic could be lying hurt somewhere. I have to find him."
Various options flashed through Knuckles' mind at this point and he picked the one he usually went for; near brutality.
"Sonic fell over three miles, kid. There's no way in hell he could have survived a fall like that; he can't fly like you or glide like me. He's dead." Somehow, saying those two words drove the point home and Knuckles' hand fell away from Tails. "He's dead," the echidna repeated quietly, more to himself than to the fox, then glanced up at him again. "You can fly around as much as you like; you will never – bring – him – back."
Tails, who had been shaking his head with increasing fervour during this dialogue, finally stopped to glare at Knuckles.
"You're lying!"
"I wish to the Master Emerald that I were!" Knuckles shook his head. "Tails, Sonic's gone. I don't know how else to say it!"
Tails stared hard at him, muscles so tense he was quivering all over.
"I hate you!"
Knuckles shrugged, for once taking no offence. Loss of a close friend or relative made people speak out of turn.
"Whatever." He didn't add what was obvious to him; that if Sonic hadn't been so cocky about showing off, he would have seen the end of that rail and most probably survived. "That won't bring Sonic back either. But if it makes you feel better, go ahead and hate me."
Tails looked away, frustrated by Knuckles' lack of emotion, then abruptly looked back at him.
"Knuckles? If-if Sonic really is...you know...what's gonna happen to the Chaos Emeralds? What's gonna happen to 'em? Can they be destroyed?"
"No. At least, not by something as trivial as being dropped."
"Great." Tails curled up into a fetal position, chewing on the ends of both tails, something he hadn't done since he'd been a very young cub. "So whoever comes along is gonna get all five emeralds. S'pose it's Robotnik?"
Knuckles shook his head.
"We don't need to worry about that. Whoever finds Sonic's b—well, whoever finds the emeralds won't get five of them. They'll get four Chaos Emeralds and one regular one." When Tails looked at him, bemused, Knuckles pulled out one of the Chaos Emeralds. "I took this from Sonic while he was sleeping, back in the Bridge Zone. I knew Robotnik would be looking for the rest of the emeralds, and if he thought Sonic had them all, there was a chance that I could hide this one somewhere on Angel Island."
"You didn't tell him?"
"I didn't want to take the chance that either of you might be captured and tortured," Knuckles said with almost frightening composure.
"You don't trust him. Even though he trusts you, you don't trust him."
"He may have trusted me—" Knuckles stressed the preterite ever so slightly— "but I told you already; I'm not the trusting type. Besides, I don't believe he could have held out indefinitely if he was tortured."
"Torture?" Tails' body jerked. "You're not...you don't think..."
"I don't think any torture could make the least bit of difference to him. But just to be on the safe side, if you're gonna fly off on another wild goose chase looking for an imaginary sadist, any chance you could drop me off at a fast food stand on your way?" Knuckles said with acid sarcasm. "You're not the only one affected by this, you know."
"That's rich!" Tails shot the echidna a killing stare. "You didn't even like Sonic."
Knuckles sighed. They'd never covered situations like this in Guardian training!
"Wrong, kid. I did like the blue spikeball, although I understand why you might not believe that." It was, by and large, the truth. Even when they'd been arguing or fighting, Knuckles had never actually hated Sonic and certainly never wished him dead.
The fox planted both fists on his hips.
"You were the one he was talking to. You were the one he was looking at. It should've been you who went over that rail, not Sonic."
"Yeah? Well, sorry to disappoint you, kid. But I wasn't the one who insisted on firing us out of a giant cannon."
Tails glared at him so fiercely that even Knuckles was taken aback.
"What're you saying? That Sonic deserved to die?"
"I never said that, Tails, and I never will. But – grief aside – it wasn't my fault this happened. It wasn't my fault, it wasn't your fault and it wasn't Sonic's fault either, not really. It was an accident. A damn nasty one, but still just an accident." In a way it was almost ironic; after all the battles and traps Sonic had survived, he'd fallen at such an easy fence. "I'm glad it wasn't you, though," Knuckles added bluntly, "since Sonic and I'd never get out of this place without flying."
"So now you're saying that you're glad Sonic's hurt?"
"He's not hurt, kid, he's dead," Knuckles said, a little more sharply than he'd intended. "Get that through your thick skull; he is dead. Gone. Finished. He's eaten his last chili dog, ground his last rail, kicked his last butt—" Knuckles raised his voice as Tails shoved past him, hands clamped over his ears and took off, flying as hard as he could towards the area where Sonic had fallen. "Pick your cliché, kid; I got more!"
Tails was already out of earshot and didn't answer, at least, not that the echidna could hear. If the kid didn't come back in a few hours, then screw him. Knuckles would set off on his own; his hunger really was intense now.
It was considerably more than a few hours later when Tails eventually got back, landing and looking around.
"Knuckles? Knuckles?"
The echidna poked his head out of his cave.
"So you came back, huh?"
"Uh, yeah. I brought you a chili dog." Tails offered the food to Knuckles, who took it with an inward wince. Spicy food really wasn't his thing, although right at that moment he was too hungry to care. Besides, it wasn't the food so much as the gesture; Tails obviously wanted to make peace and so Knuckles bit into the food, wincing inwardly as it ignited his throat.
"I can't find him," Tails said suddenly. "I can't find him anywhere, Knuckles, and I've looked and looked."
Knuckles shook his head slowly. Something in the kid's appealing tones got to him; Tails was obviously hoping he'd say something along the lines of how he just wasn't looking in the right place, or that Sonic had probably gone on ahead.
Well, screw that. He'd give Tails all the leeway and allowance he needed to cope with his loss, but first the kid had to acknowledge that loss.
"You and I both know that you're not going to." In a way, the echidna was relieved; given the state Sonic was probably in by now, it was just as well the kid hadn't been able to find him. The scavengers would have found the remains by now; there'd be nothing left except possibly his sneakers. And the birds...they always went for the eyes first, didn't they?
Knuckles shivered; he was starting to creep himself out. Over the other side, Tails sat down hard, staring numbly into space, legs dangling over the edge of the platform. The echidna didn't push him to talk. He remembered when his mother had died; the then six-year-old Knuckles had woken up and she'd been lying stiff and cold next to him. He'd run out of their cave and into the Marble Garden Zone, where he'd burrowed into the long grass and lain face-down there for the entire day, not moving, not speaking.
"He could still be alive," Tails said, but not very hopefully.
"Tails..."
"He could!"
"Get. Real. There's no way he's still alive and the sooner you get that into your head the sooner we can decide what to do next!" Knuckles shook his head. "Jeez, kid, you think you're the only person who's ever lost someone?" When Tails continued looking away stubbornly, he continued. "Because you're damn well not! There are people out there in exactly the same position as you. There're probably people who have lost someone in the last five minutes. What's a normal day for one person is life-shattering for someone else." The echidna sighed. "Ah, screw it; I'm no good at this philosophy crap. I just know that you're not the only one who's felt like that."
"Oh, like you know." Tails twisted around to stare at Knuckles. "You don't feel anything except superior."
"Hey!" Knuckles rapped out sharply. When Tails continued to stare at him angrily, the echidna levelled a finger at him, eyes narrowed in cold anger. "Don't you dare tell me I don't feel, kid, or that I don't know what it's like to lose someone. Because I had to bury my own mother when I was younger than you are now, so as far as I'm concerned I've done more than my fair share of feeling, as you put it."
Tails continued staring at him, but the gaze had changed, become less angry and more curious.
"What happened?"
Knuckles shrugged.
"She'd been carrying some kind of disease for a long time. One morning in the middle of winter, I woke up next to her dead body. I spent that whole day lying face-down in the Marble Garden Zone, and I couldn't go back into the mountains for about six months. By that time, there was nothing left but the bones. I took them and buried them in Sandopolis. Like I said, I was only six years old at the time."
Tails tried to imagine a six-year-old Knuckles and found he couldn't. His imagination rebelled.
"At least Sonic went out with a bang," Knuckles added, then saw the half anguished, half murderous look that Tails turned on him and held up both hands, palm outwards. "Sorry. Sorry. Bad choice of words."
Tails jumped up and grabbed Knuckles' hand tightly, drawing a startled look from the echidna.
"Knuckles, we gotta get to Robotnik. We gotta stop him like S...we gotta stop him. And you gotta help me! Knuckles, swear you'll help me and won't go home until Robotnik's finished!"
Knuckles' look sharpened, but Tails didn't let go. He'd always been slightly in awe of the echidna, not because of any great achievements, but because of his toughness. Tails had never quite been able to figure out why – when Sonic had been in countless battles against Robotnik – Knuckles was the one who had the air of a war veteran.
"Swear to me!" Tails repeated fervently. There was a gleam in the fox's eyes that Knuckles seriously didn't like the look of.
Why should I bother? I've already neglected my duty for far too long. I should get back home, back to the Master Emerald.
Knowledge and a desire to return to his duty surged up in Knuckles, where they met the memory of how Sonic had saved his life coming the other way and so the echidna said to Tails, "I swear."
Tails pounded small fists against the echidna's chest.
"That's not good enough!"
"No?" The blows hurt, but they weren't dangerous and so Knuckles let Tails carry on. "Why not?"
"You never keep your word!" Even though it was the pain talking, Knuckles still had to quiet a sudden urge to slap the kid for those words; such an accusation was close to killing talk in echidna society. "Swear to me! Make some kind of weird echidna promise that you can't break no matter what!"
"There's no such thing as a weird echidna promise," Knuckles informed him calmly. "We don't need them; an echidna's word is his or her bond. That's all."
"That's not good enough!" Tails repeated. Knuckles spread his hands in surrender.
"Okay. Fine. What do you want me to swear by?"
"I don't know! Anything!"
Knuckles shook his head.
"Kid, be rational about this. If I pick some random intangible object, you won't be any happier than you are now."
"I don't know what echidnas usually swear by!" Tails fell back from the echidna, exhausted and panting for breath. An idea occurred to him, and he looked up at Knuckles. "Swear it...swear by the Master Emerald."
Knuckles smiled quietly. Clever, clever little fox.
"Fine. I swear by the Master Emerald that I won't rest until Robotnik is taken down once and for all, and that I'll help you as much as I can until then."
Tails stared hard into Knuckles' eyes, searching for some hint of deceit. The echidna looked back impassively.
"He'll go down, right? He'll go down hard."
"Yeah. Yeah, Tails, he will. I swear."
Tails fell back, relief obvious in his face. Knuckles considered his words, then gave an inward shrug. If the kid thought revenge would make him feel better, well, he was wrong, but taking down Robotnik wouldn't be a bad thing for any reason.
"You promise, right?"
"Yes, Tails, I promise that Robotnik will go down and go down hard!" Knuckles leaned back against the wall. "Go on. Get some sleep. I'll watch."
"Sorry Knux," Tails mumbled. The echidna blinked.
"For what?"
"Looks like you're gonna wind up with a little brother after all, least until we're done with Robotnik."
Knuckles rolled his eyes.
"Kid, you're half delirious with exhaustion. You don't know what you're saying. Get some sleep. We'll tackle Robotnik in the morning. We'll find his hideout, find him, and then take him down."
Looking over at Tails, he saw that the kid was already asleep. Knuckles nodded slightly, then leaned back against the wall, arms folded across his chest.
Now make it happen, he thought grimly.
And for all those people who have been able to take ten minutes to read and not two minutes to review, may your internet connection be devoured by a herd of angry beavers (just kidding ;)) Seriously though, please do review. I really would like to know that I'm not putting all this effort in for nothing ;)