Author's note: I've got some amazing reviewers in 000Marie198, E-Rank, and Noonui. Thanks for the wonderful comments and continual motivation. :3 Y'all deserve free pizza and more.

Also, I'm probably gonna regret posting this late at night but, hey, that's what vacation is for!

Chapter 12: All's Fair in Friendship and War

The ARK

Three. Three more times, max.

Rounding another corner, all senses hyperaware, Knuckles calculated that he could probably manage three more hits of negative energy before it would become overpowering.

The Master Emerald was not whole, and could not be whole without her missing piece. He needed to repair her essence, but not with the Artificial Chaos attacking. He needed time.

A near-crippling pain shot through his side, and he hunched as he stumbled, trying his hardest to ignore it. Just a little more time.

Checking behind him, Knuckles sidestepped through a doorway, the sliding mechanism broken long ago and leaving the door partially ajar. He tried to physically pull it shut, but his flank protested at the rough movements.

Grunting, Knuckles gave up and leaned against the wall just inside of the abandoned room, keeping his ragged breathing to a minimum.

The Chaos Emeralds would help. Once Sonic had retrieved them, Knuckles would have the additional defense needed to repair the Master Emerald.

Bright white energy lit up the hallway he had just escaped from, creating a strobe-light effect across its length. The crackle of electricity echoed, followed in short order by its contact with whatever metal walls were obstructing its path. Knuckles held his breath and waited, but eventually the space darkened and silence resumed.

They had not found him yet.

Knuckles wheezed through another inhale, inadvertently hissing out his breath. His free hand went to his ribs, tenderly pressing the area he was pretty sure was bruised, if not fully broken. His breathing was becoming uneven, ineffective almost, and he worried whether his lung had been punctured.

It would certainly not be the first time, but perhaps not the best time to deal with this type of injury.

Ghostly glows flickered outside of Knuckles' hiding place again, but the accompanying blasts were distant. They had traveled farther away.

The brief feeling of relief from this realization was overshadowed with a worry Knuckles could not shake. Hiding had bought him time, but it did not buy Sonic time. If the creatures could not find Knuckles to attack, they would then hunt Sonic down, instead.

Steeling his resolve with a determined growl, the Guardian reentered the passage, slowly working his way back to the storage unit. If he could meet up with Sonic there, after he had retrieved the Chaos Emeralds, then perhaps they had a chance.

He traversed two intersections, carefully checking each new space before entering. It was eerily quiet and dark, a respite that only made the tension inside him grow.

Something pinged in his head—the Master Emerald—and he didn't have time to register why before another wave of negative energy barreled into him from behind.

He hollered, the shard in his hand glowing bright in defense. It deflected most of the energy, but not all of it.

Two more.

He fell to the floor on his knees, but did not rest. He crawled, then forced himself to his feet, stumbling dizzily into another run.

Just a little more time.

The Master Emerald called out, warning him, and Knuckles unerringly skidded feet-first to the floor, just as another bolt of searing white lightning shot centimeters above and beyond his head. Instead of sitting up, however, he rolled onto his stomach, his precious green sliver of stone held out in front of him.

Negative energy magnetized towards the positive aura of the emerald in Knuckles' possession, recoiling off its reflective surface and into the ceiling. A garbled shout escaped as the echidna found his entire prone form pushed back from the force. His free arm covered his eyes from the blinding light, while his other hand shook as it held the shard, white-hot and nearly smoking from the interaction of the two opposite currents.

As abruptly as the strike hit, it stopped. The returning silence was rigid with anticipation, but all Knuckles could hear was his worsening wheezing.

And then the Master Emerald pleaded with him to run.

One.

With energy he knew was no longer his own, Knuckles pulled himself to his feet, willing everything he had into fleeing. Time felt surreal and exceptionally slow with the upcoming junction lightyears away, but he soldiered on.

He could hear the sizzling of energy formation at his heels. The Artificial Chaos were doing everything within their abilities to quickly neutralize the Master Emerald's Guardian, to steal the shard and repair the gem for their own.

When they had previously appeared on Angel Island, the Master Emerald had commanded Knuckles, telling him that the invaders brought nothing but destruction with their arrival.

The negative energy was palpable, a wave of unease that washed over the entire island. The Master Emerald feared the Artificial Chaos and their intent; she had urged Knuckles to call forth Chaos to protect them, and in a way only true Chaos could.

So he did. He had yielded to her request, despite everything in his heart telling him not to, and he purposely cracked the gem, its form barely held together by Chaos, the loyal Ancient Guardian.

Yet it still didn't feel right.

Could the invaders' energy deplete or—worse—transform the Master Emerald's powers? If they were only made of negative energy, then how could they even use true Chaos energy? Wouldn't it neutralize their own?

No. No. It did not matter. He was the Guardian of the Master Emerald, and he would submit regardless of his own volition.

"Knux!"

Like a rubber band snapping, the world around the echidna seemed to fall into the present seamlessly. Knuckles reached the end of the corridor and slammed into the wall on the far side of the intersection, mystified with how the endless journey had abruptly (and physically) halted.

Sonic was at one end of the new passage, hands full of Chaos Emeralds. He had cringed at Knuckles' rather ungraceful stop, but hurriedly caught up to him just as the echidna managed to reorient himself.

"You ain't lookin' so hot," the hedgehog observantly noted. Knuckles would have rolled his eyes had he the strength to do so.

"We need," Knuckles opted to say, then paused with struggling breath. Sonic took the time to shove the emeralds between his spines, before helping Knuckles pull away from the dented panel he was currently nestled into.

"We need to get to the Master Emerald," Knuckles finished.

Sonic had a smirk of snark about him, like he was about to chastise Knuckles for stating the obvious, but the hedgehog's eyes suddenly widened at what was lingering past the echidna. Before Knuckles knew it, he was flying down the corridor, his blue friend leading the way and keeping a firm grip on his wrist.

The Guardian groaned, both from the speed and the jostling his side was getting from the ordeal. He'd been lucky that Sonic had grabbed his right wrist, at least.

Craning his head to be the lookout—and realizing it was useless because they were going too fast—Knuckles attempted to follow the hedgehog's path ahead and found the same blurry predicament.

Where'd Sonic get this strength? Hadn't he been incapacitated by the negative energy? Multiple times?

Apparently Knuckles' confusion was written all over his face, because Sonic shot him a smug grin when he saw it.

"The Chaos Emeralds fixed me up!" he answered without even being questioned. "Dude, it's like an espresso, energy drink, and a jumbo slushie all rolled into one!"

"Do not compare—"

"Yeah, yeah, respect and all that jazz," the hedgehog interrupted, rounding a corner so fast they were perpendicular through most of the turn. "We're here!"

The sudden stop was jarring, thanks to a speed that Knuckles was positive he'd never get used to. His entire left side throbbed from the rough movements, but with concerned eyes gazing his direction, the echidna shrugged it off and carefully approached his broken jewel.

Sounds out in the hall caught their attentions, but Knuckles chose to ignore it and continued towards the Master Emerald. Sonic took a wary step back, enough to peer around what was left of the wall and check their immediate surroundings. "Uh, how long is this gonna take, Red?"

Knuckles did not answer. He reached the side of the giant gem, the shard in his hand glowing brightly with its other half. It wobbled in his firm grip, asking for permission.

"Uh, Knux..?"

Kneeling next to the large jewel's cracked form, the Guardian began his chant in the ancient echidna dialect, palms skyward and offering the shard to its keeper. Knuckles briefly glanced at a wide-eyed Sonic when he yipped, and the two watched as all seven of the Chaos Emeralds floated on their own accord, out of the hedgehog's spines.

Sonic was positively dumbfounded, while Knuckles waited expectantly, as all the smaller gems began encircling their larger controller. Slow at first, and then with increasing speed, they created a bright yellow, pulsing ring of energy.

Just as the Artificial Chaos appeared through the damaged wall of the storage room, a translucent barrier of yellow mist exploded out from either side of the swirling Chaos Emeralds, shooting up and down like a shower of light, surrounding the Master Emerald, as well as Sonic and Knuckles.

A thick lightning strike of negative energy instantly struck the new partition, but—as with the Master Emerald shard—the bolt simply recoiled off the dam of Chaos energy, scattering into the unprotected ceiling and walls nearby.

"Neato!" Sonic called out with a thumbs-up, only slightly flinching as the shrapnel of aluminum and steel rained down and bounced off their newly-formed force field.

Knuckles' chanting briefly faltered, and he found himself holding his breath with anticipation as the Artificial Chaos had tried—and failed—to pierce through the wall of Chaos protection.

Ashamed at his concerns—and his intuition screaming at him to trust her—the echidna focused on the Master Emerald. He stood to offer his possession, bringing his arms high into the air. The movement did not agree with his ribs, however, and Knuckles' left knee buckled under the pain.

"Knux!" Sonic called worriedly, zipping up to the echidna. "What happened? Are you all right?"

Right hand still holding out his fragment, left hand on his chest, Knuckles wheezed and coughed, which unfortunately contradicted the weak nodding of his head.

"Yeah, sure," Sonic answered sarcastically. "You sound like a popped air balloon. Here," he said, reaching to grab the echidna's right arm to help.

The green mist of the Master Emerald, still exuding from its broken form, started twisting and collecting in front of the duo, even as Knuckles tried to swat the hedgehog off of him. Sonic ignored Knuckles' (admittedly poor) attempts at standing on his own, keeping a firm grip on his arm, but they did pause long enough to eye the animated energy skeptically. Neither resisted it, but both tensed as the Chaos essence condensed and twirled around Knuckles' body.

The energy somehow took ahold of its Guardian, forcing Sonic to release him. It seeped through Knuckles' fur, disappearing in a flash and leaving a faint green radiance in its wake. The Master Emerald's power slowly immersed Knuckles, her whispers calming his uncertainty, and pulled the echidna just far enough to be hovering centimeters off the floor.

Knuckles inhaled sharply, hollering at the sharp stab that traveled across his entire torso.

"Knux?! Can you hear me? What's going on? This can't be normal…"

Whatever other worried comments said by Sonic faded, far into the depths of Knuckles' mind. The Master Emerald took complete control, then, and Knuckles felt his breath escape him.

Even weightless and still, the constant ache in Knuckles' side steadily dissipated. Another inhale was finally permitted, and this time it was deeper. Each subsequent breath thereafter eased in pain, and eventually the wheezing stopped.

Words would never be enough, but Knuckles thanked the Master Emerald anyways. He wasn't sure whether he said it out loud or not, but he supposed it didn't matter. She knew. He released his first fully healed breath just as he felt his toes skim the ground.

Hands instantly gripped his arm for support, but Knuckles had no issues finding his own footing.

"Knux?"

"I'm fine, Sonic."

Dutifully, the green energy recoiled away before dispersing into the air around them.

"Whoa," Sonic said.

The pain in Knuckles' side (present company excluded) had entirely melted away, fading with the mist that mended him.

"Uh," Sonic added, "so that seemed new. Has it ever—?"

"Not like that."

With shoes firmly on the floor and arms with full range of movement, the echidna once again held his arms high up into the air, offering his emerald sliver with ease. Sonic stepped back as the vibrating shard rose out of Knuckles' hands, floating on its own accord, before rotating and finding its proper home on the giant jewel.

Bright green light shot out from all the cracks of the emerald, enough to drive Sonic and Knuckles to their knees, eyes clenched shut from the assault.

The flash abruptly ended, although neither Mobian recovered quickly. Knuckles did manage to see that the Chaos Emeralds still endlessly swirled above, keeping a defensive vortex around them. Good, no immediate danger.

The Guardian's head ached, but he shook it away. Checking the Master Emerald, he could also see that her cracks were thinner, but had not fully disappeared.

What he had not expected was Chaos 0, standing between himself and Sonic.

Knuckles blinked in surprise, before scrambling to his feet and bowing. An ignorant Sonic groaned, mumbling something about the Master Emerald having mood swings, before he spotted the water deity and whooped.

"Ah Chaos, my main water Guardian!" he greeted excitedly. Chaos 0 barely turned its pointed head, blank gold eyes still somehow staring the hedgehog down.

"How, uh, how have you been, buddy?" he asked, his excitement waning at the piercing eye contact. "Pal?" The primordial creature took purposeful steps towards Sonic, making the hedgehog anxiously step back until he was against the Chaos force field.

"We're uh, we're friends; right?" he asked unsurely when Chaos 0 still advanced.

Knuckles stood from his kneeled position and frowned, unsure of how to intervene, if at all. He took one hesitant step forwards anyway.

A watery appendage snaked with growing length into the spinning ring overhead, pulling something out and shoving it into Sonic's chest with enough strength that the hedgehog nearly fell through the field of protection.

Instinct kicked in and Knuckles jumped forward to help, but he was shoved the other way with the opposite shapeshifting arm of liquid.

The echidna yanked himself away to break free, afraid of what Chaos 0 was planning, but stopped when both arms of the creature retracted to normal size. In front of him, Sonic was dumbfoundedly holding the yellow Chaos Emerald.

"Oh," he said, then glanced up with an arched brow. "Er, thanks?"

Chaos 0 nodded its head, then turned towards Knuckles. The Master Emerald pulsed, as if expressing the Ancient Guardian's will, and Knuckles understood that she needed his concentration.

He bowed again, returning to his kneeled position. In his periphery, Sonic was still appearing rather confused about it all.

"Get the others," Knuckles stated, before closing his eyes. The Master Emerald hummed in his heart and mind, and he chanted with it, willing her back to her original form.

"Oh! Yeah, right, gotcha."

Chaos 0 stood at the barrier to their energy-made enclosure, watching intently as the Artificial Chaos continually threw negative energy at the group. With pure Chaos energy swirling around them, however, every blast reflected into the ARK, destroying panels and pipes with each hit.

The storage unit was less of a room now, and more like the hollow outcropping of a dilapidated spaceship … which wasn't far off, reasonably.

Any further damage, though, could possibly lead to a breach in the hull of the station.

Chaos 0 seemed to understand Knuckles' fear, for he stepped through the field of Chaos energy, taking two Chaos Emeralds with him.

Absorbing them en route and morphing into Chaos 2, the creature's reinforced, bony arms immediately stretched forth and slammed into the three Artificial Chaos attacking them, sending them all colliding into one another before disappearing into the dark cavity of the ARK's corridor.

The four remaining Chaos Emeralds above still rotated endlessly, keeping Knuckles and Sonic safe within the proximity of the Master Emerald.

Just a little more time.

Sonic seemed to be glaring at his Chaos Emerald rather fiercely. Knuckles' chanting inexplicably faded, his own glower at the blue hedgehog making him lose focus. "What?" he prompted angrily.

The hedgehog gurgled an unintelligible response, his brow furrowing discouragingly as he continued to gaze at the yellow stone.

"Um," he said, then apologetically looked up and provided a sheepish smile. "So, there might be a problem."

"No kidding—you're still here!"

"I don't have anything to focus on!" Sonic whined, arms in the air with the yellow emerald flailing about with them. "That place was a solid white wall of NOTHING! No sights or sounds to remember and definitely no food—"

"Oh for crying out loud—"

"I need something to think about to get there, and nothing ISN'T working!" Sonic paced, which was rather ridiculous in itself considering his abnormally fast speed and the puny size of their current confined space. "Why doesn't focusing on Tails work?"

Knuckles let out a controlled, calming breath. "Chaos Control takes you to places, not others. Others bring about familiarity that confuses the location."

"UGH," Sonic responded annoyedly. Pausing, he glanced at his yellow emerald and to Knuckles hopefully. "Maybe Chaos can do it? Or what about you? It's a real emerald, now!" He eagerly held the jewel out to the echidna.

On cue, explosions outside of their tiny realm interrupted. Chaos and Artificial Chaos were battling loudly, with lightning strikes followed by giant, bony water appendages slicing through their limited visibility beyond the mist of Chaos energy. Between the attacks darkness enveloped the station, as it appeared whatever limited backup lights existed had been destroyed.

Nevertheless, Knuckles could see the extent of the damage, and it was only getting worse. How much more could the ARK handle? And then where would they be?

Snarling at Sonic to get his attention, he dramatically motioned to the Master Emerald. "I need to repair her!"

That caught Sonic's attention, but for all the wrong reasons. "Her?" Knuckles mentally cursed to himself. "The Master Emerald is a … she?"

The echidna wondered if it was possible to pull locks out of his own head, just from sheer frustration. If anyone could make him, Sonic could. "Just—argh, just focus already!"

"ON WHAT?!"

There was a staunch pause, enough to where Knuckles' eye twitched with repressed rage. And then a thought came to mind; something he himself had experienced, and Sonic had concurred during their conversation within the staticky world of nothing.

Knuckles' lack of a response seemed to have worried Sonic, for he was suddenly tense, yellow Chaos Emerald in a death grip. The echidna considered his idea, warily glancing through the shower of Chaos energy.

"There is one way," he finally said.

Sonic's eyes followed, but he didn't catch on. He didn't get a chance to.

The Guardian approached Sonic threateningly, much in the same way Chaos 0 had done moments prior, and Sonic's suspicion morphed into fear as he—once again—found himself adjacent to the Chaos wall.

"Uh, what—Knux—"

The Master Emerald was agreeable with Knuckles' idea, so it seemed, as was the Ancient Guardian. How either of them knew what the echidna was planning completely outranked his scope of comprehension, but hey, who was he to question ancient powers?

"This makes us even," Knuckles said, and meant it.

It would not be a fun experience, and a part of Knuckles couldn't help the unease that settled inside, but his ancient friends assured him that Sonic would be safe in the possession of a true Chaos Emerald.

Knuckles supposed they didn't have much of a choice, anyways.

"What?" Sonic incredulously asked. The hedgehog was holding his hands up in defense, but did not actively react as Knuckles closed the distance. "Seriously, Knuckles, I'm trying, okay? Watch," he held the emerald to his face, "Chaos Control!"

The small jewel pulsed with its natural aura, but did not brighten from the hedgehog's words. He held it out accusingly to the echidna. "See? I have no idea—"

"Sorry, Sonic," Knuckles cut off, reaching for the hedgehog.

"Whoa, what are you—!"

Knuckles heftily picked Sonic up and threw him, this time through the Chaos wall and into the fray.

Chaos 2 closed the distance and reached Sonic, but did not help him up. Instead, he planted himself behind the hedgehog, sandwiching the hero between the two opposite forces of personified Chaos energy.

There was a moment of bated silence as Artificial Chaos, Sonic, and Chaos were stationary in a line, the former facing the latter two. Sonic was fast to jump up, shooting quite the look of betrayal at Knuckles, before Chaos 2 pushed Sonic forward a step.

Knuckles cringed, knowing what was about to happen. Sonic would be okay.

Hopefully.

Sonic finally appeared to understand the intent, however, and sighed out as he fully faced the negative energy fiends. He slipped the yellow Chaos Emerald into his quills and rotated his shoulders, like he was getting ready for a boxing match. "All right, let's get this over with."

The Artificial Chaos did not disappoint. Three streams of negative energy barreled into Sonic, zapping him out of this dimension in a blink of the eye. Chaos 2 returned to the offense and shot his bony arms forwards, while Knuckles returned to his Master Emerald's servitude, reciting the ancient dialect of his ancestors to close the numerous cracks lining her surface.

Sonic would be okay. The Chaos Emerald would protect him. And he'd get Tails and the rest out of that imprisonment.

And if Knuckles kept thinking it, maybe he'd eventually believe it.

Just. A little. More time.