wowie im back already :D and in under a month! very poggers very proud of myself for actually being motivated to work on this fic again lol. i probably shouldve spent more time editing this but i was too excited to not post it so here it is, i apologize for any errors. anyways this one's a lot of character interactions and not a lot of action so enjoy :)


XX.

parasitic (perəˈsidik)

[adjective]

infestation and exploitation at the expense of the host.


Knuckles had a lot of time to think, in this suffocating cell. A lot of that thinking was dedicated to figuring out ways to get the hell out of here, because dedicating it to anything else—to thinking about the people he missed—would only sour his situation.

He was fairly certain that Chaos was the key to his escape. When Infinite had him calm down Chaos, they formed a connection, they'd spoken in the Special Zone, and Knuckles felt like he had stood before the expanse of the entire universe with closed eyes; it was like the secret to everything was right in front of him, only cut off by his thin eyelids, his naïve humanity.

And he'd felt her presence—a shadowed promise of a future, one that she could uphold even without him. He needed to know she could uphold it, without him. There weren't any other options.

Sitting around in his cell, arms crossed over his chest, staring at dark walls for what felt like an undeterminable, but ceaselessly brutal, amount of time allowed him to run through all the possibilities of escape, and a lot of them involved Chaos. And ideally, the others, but he had no way of knowing where they were or what they were up to.

Except—when he'd connected briefly with Chaos a little while ago, and it seemed like everything he could ever conceive was just barely in his grasp—maybe he could use that.

Maybe he could send out some sort of signal.

Patience was a virtue. Chaos was significantly calmer after that day, reluctantly appeasing Knuckles' pleads to hold back, stand down, for just a little longer. It was a good thing, he had to remind himself, because at least now the god wouldn't overload itself and accidentally destroy everything within a ten mile radius. But its decrease in energy levels also meant that Knuckles didn't have an excuse to see it again, at least for a while until it eventually got too worked up.

Although, he supposed, he wouldn't have to wait too long. After all, they were both being held captive by a mad scientist and mass murderer trying to conquer the planet. He couldn't be sure how long it had been since his last visit with Chaos, but eventually, Metal Sonic reappeared and dragged him from his cell in energy-inhibiting handcuffs, back into the room Chaos was contained within.

The sight was unnerving, to say the least. Chaos hardly looked like itself anymore—trapped within the small cylinder of electricity, it practically looked like a sea of blood from the amount of Ruby distilled throughout it. Its eyes gleamed a flickering, unstable crimson, and large shards of the corruption clung to and spread over its disembodied brain.

Knuckles felt sick. Through the dampening effects of the god's cage, he could still feel the afterthought of its raw power, and it felt heavy and toxic. Through the clouded, blind rage in Chaos' eyes, he could catch a shimmer of fear, and pain. Anger. Lunacy.

"You guys are making a huge fucking mistake," he said.

Infinite casted him a remorseless look. "On the contrary, I'd say everything is going perfectly according to plan. My influence is winning the battle, and Chaos is growing weaker by the day."

"You're killing it," Knuckles snapped, baring his teeth in a furious craze. He wanted to tear off that damned mask and pummel that smug face in. "Don't you understand how this could upset the balance of—of everything?!" He looked desperately around for Eggman, of all people. Though he loathed the man, he knew he was still intelligent and maybe even had a heart beneath all that evil, and he needed that man to understand what he was saying.

Didn't any of them understand? The ramifications of an act this inhumane, this gruesomely power-hungry, would—

Infinite laughed, and it only served to stir up the Knuckles' rage even more. "Oh, silly echidna. That is precisely my goal."

Knuckles furrowed his brows. "You're going to destroy everything with this. I don't get how that could benefit you. How can you be an emperor when you're—the whole world is—gone?"

Quietly, the jackal studied him, before shaking his head dismissively. "I don't think I care enough or desire to disclose all my plans to you, especially when you're too foolish to comprehend my full power. But rest assured, you don't need to worry about me."

In time with the end of his sentence, the Phantom Ruby on Infinite's chest hummed a loud, venomous red, and it made Knuckles' entire body turn to ice.

Oh.

Infinite turned to face the writhing Chaos alongside Knuckles, sighing serenely as though they were two companions, watching a sunset over an accomplishing day. Knuckles wanted to strangle him.

"However," the madman continued, "we can't have any of that happening prematurely, now can we? I need you to calm it down again. The last few treatments of the Ruby have gotten more intense and Chaos isn't taking too well to them."

Metal walked him forward and that red ring from before was clipped onto his wrist again, so he could reach painlessly through the electric cage to tap into Chaos once more. It felt like boiling water and it soaked into him instantly, raking against his hand. He could sense an overbearing, intense, hot energy trying to grab onto him, take him over, and it was a terrifyingly disarming thing to experience. He hoped Chaos could hold off the corruption for just a little bit, so Knuckles could establish a connection and send out a signal.

When he shut his eyes, the Special Zone flickered before him yet again—but it was glaringly red, and it looked like there was blood pooling at his feet, slowly rising. In seconds it was already at his ankles and he knew he didn't have much time before the Ruby drowned him in its suffocating power.

Chaos, he cried out, and the void felt vacant of everything except the Ruby, as though it had wholly consumed it. He really hoped the god could still hear him, feel him. I know you're weak, but I need your help. If either of us have any chance of getting out of here, I just need something—I need to show my friends where we are.

In response, Knuckles received nothing. The liquid red was nearly up to his hips, and he'd lost sensation in his submerged legs. It only felt like endless burning.

He sucked in air, trembling. The air ran thin in here.

Everything was red.

Please, he whispered.

But, nothing.

He sank into the red, too weak, too tired, to do anything more but give in.

Something rang in his ears, then, and his fur began to stand on end. Knuckles cracked open his eyes, and a blue shimmer overcame the Special Zone, frosting over the rising red. When he inhaled, it felt like liquid gold dripping down his throat and instilling his innards with twinkling strength and hope.

Chaos. Chaos was here, it still had a chance, it—

White light pulsed around him, swelling, stabbing through his head in a potent flare of energy, before he fell completely and lost all sense of everything.


The sun had sunken far below the horizon by the time Amy made her way back into Sally's basement. She'd been roped into several long conversations with various resistance groups across Knothole, between Shadow trying to fill in everyone with intel on the Chemical Plant and how their mission went, and Silver returning with a squad of people after his second emerald expedition of the day—to Chun-nan. Tomorrow he'd search for the third at Red Mountain, and if Sonic's group got back soon, that'd bring their emerald count to a grand total of seven.

In the meantime, everyone required rest and a lot of them wanted to wait for Sonic's group to return before making any big decisions about how to proceed, anyways. After several meetings and a filling supper, Amy finally had a time to break away from the crowd and get back to practicing her meditations.

She tried to swallow the frustration itching the back of her throat, as she sat before the Master Emerald shards and hovered her palms over them. She could feel their dampened warmth radiating against her palms, and it was almost enough assurance to make her think they were still a vibrant green, thrumming with untapped power. Instead, when she cracked open her eyes again, she was met with dull, grayish fragments, contaminated in harsh red crystallization. The vacuum of Chaos Energy made it feel as though she were kneeling before a black hole.

With a sharp breath, Amy shut her eyes again and went back to concentrating, grasping on the thin strands of energy still lingering within the stone. She just needed something, anything, a sign to find Knuckles. Something to stop Infinite.

A tension coiled in her chest and she was met with an invisible wall, an empty cavern with nothing left within it but Phantom Ruby.

She felt like she was going to spit up fire, from how much her throat burned. How much her eyes burned, with overflowing tears she barely kept contained.

It wasn't enough.

Amy clenched and unclenched her fists, peeled open her eyes, slunk in her posture as she stared at the blank, drained gem.

She wasn't enough.

"Fuck," she hissed under her breath, digging her palms into her eyes. Everything around her burned. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!"

Amy sprung to her feet, glaring at the disassembled Master Emerald on the floor, her every nerve prickling at the insulting dampness of the basement, the chill of the miracle gem, the heat on her back.

Knuckles was going to die.

"Fucking—!" With a searing rage, unquenched, far too gone to reel in, Amy kicked at the shards and sent them tumbling across the floor. A spike of energy stung her toes through her boot and she groaned in pain, but it only went to add fuel to the fire. She dug her fingers into her quills, fury bounding across her body, a newly unearthed well of power threatening to combust, and she felt tears pour over her all at once.

Knuckles would die, because of her.

"Dammit!"

In agony, she threw her hands out, too incoherent to figure out how to deal with herself. She felt so tiny, incomparable, to the anger thrashing around inside her. How could such a frail body ever think to contain it all? It was going to drive her up the wall. She was going to fall apart.

Defeatedly, Amy fell back to the ground, crying to herself; passion alight within her, itching unbearably beneath her skin. Burning beneath her, kindling her flame.

It was so fucking hot in here.

After a few moments she brought herself to open her eyes again, past the blur of emotions clouding her vision, and her breath stuttered subconsciously. White, reddish energy, corporeal and ravenous, crackled at her fingertips.

And just like that, everything cooled down a bit. It was like she'd swallowed a bucket of water, and it was dousing the flames within, keeping them under control. The light sizzled steadily in her hands, and she exhaled evenly, feeling the Chaos Energy ebb and flow with her breathing.

Silently, Amy brought herself shakily to her feet and went around to gather all the emerald shards she had scattered in her fury into one spot again, before kneeling in front of them again to proceed with her meditations. This wasn't impossible, she knew. She was strong too, she had a grasp on Chaos, its latency in the universe, its essence.

She could do this.

With another breath, tears drying on her cheeks, she concentrated. She felt more open now, as though her outburst left behind a passage for the energy to overcome her mental block.

"The servers," she mumbled, "are the seven chaos. Chaos is power, power enriched by the heart."

Her pulse thumped tumultuously in her ears, relentless, a steady rhythm that the Chaos Energy around her chased after in an even gallop. She could feel the ghosts of the Master Emerald's power coming to life, breaching past the Phantom Ruby's control, reaching for her, her words.

"… The controller… is the one that unifies the—"

Past her closed eyes, she was blinded in a sudden flash of white. It felt like her head was split in two, a wave of unimaginable power towering over her before crashing down, drowning her, pulling her into the current, never permitting her even a hint of oxygen, too strong. It ate her alive, tore her apart, and her sense of stability was thrown out the window.

And next, the white whispered visions, blurred glimpses of someone else, someplace else. Red, lavender eyes, a god in a cage, a crumbling guardian. An airship, over a city, masked in the clouds.

When the white faded, Amy was laying on the floor, trembling uncontrollably, and coated in sweat. She felt like her soul had just been pulled from her and then was promptly shoved back in with no regard for her wellbeing. She wasn't sure how long she'd been knocked out.

It was still dark outside when she got herself up the stairs, clinging to the stair railing, and she leaned against walls as she stumbled to the front door to find everyone else. She was strings and cloth, a tattered puppet. Sticks and stones.

If she weren't so weighed down by a blanket of grief and terror, maybe she'd have the capacity to feel proud of the feat she'd just accomplished. Even though it had sucked so much out of her.

When she was outside, a calm breeze met her, rustled her quills, and she spotted a congregation of resistance members over at the pavilion, talking around a fire. Determinedly, she dragged her feet over to them.


The moon, anchored high up over them in the sky, full and foreboding, seemed to glower at them through the night as the Tornado finally glided into the sand of the beach, not a five minute walk from Knothole. As the engine's low rumble dissolved into nothing, the four passengers pulled themselves from their seats or slid off the wings; Tails make sure to throw the drape kept in the plane's storage compartment over the aircraft, to mask it from the elements and unforeseen foes.

They moved in silence as they pushed through the woods, just as they'd flown home almost entirely in silence. It was a shared fatigue, the ache in all their bones, that sloshed around viscously in their feet. Sonic did his best during the flight to transmute some Chaos Energy from their newly acquired emerald to his companions in an attempt to heal minor injuries, but Tails warned against stressing the emeralds out more than was already necessary, and so he mostly held back. He was never too good at that healing thing, anyway.

It saddened him, swelled into a heavy stone in his chest, for Sonic to enter Knothole and be swallowed in the poignant angst that gravitated across the town. He'd expected most people to be asleep by now, but there were several campfires set up, various resistance members milling around aimlessly, hunger and exhaustion drawn deep in their faces from the drastic shadows the flames casted onto them. Half the town had to be awake, which was a significant amount of people considering how many they'd had to cram in here after HQ was destroyed. Sonic felt guilt drive through him as he glanced across every face they passed, as though he were the cause for their displacement, their misery.

It also brought him a twinge of hope, however, a small scrap, to see many of these people turn and look at him and Tails and Bunnie and Vector with glimmers of hope, pieced together smiles, elated whispers. He could feel all their eyes on him, on the glowing magenta he held in his palm as they crossed over to the main pavilion, and the newfound excitement that swept over everyone was tangible, electrifying.

The growing ease, anticipation that seemed to fall over everyone in one fell swoop, caught onto Sonic too, and he worked up an anxious smile as they joined the group at the pavilion. Amy, Silver, Sally, Guntiver, Shadow, and Gadget all sat in a circle together, though they looked a little more than discouraged for some reason. Wretched distraught clung to Amy like a parasite; Sonic could feel it eroding off her in waves, like she was a weary cliffside being eaten at by a relentless, raging ocean.

Some relief seemed to trickle over them all as their attention drew to the returning group. Shadow and Sally even sprung up from their seats, the former greeting his fiancé in a hug and the latter moving to take hold of a limping Bunnie.

Sally eyed her friend's busted up robot leg with concern. "Are you okay?"

"Just fine," Bunnie assured, but something held her back. "Is 'Twan…?"

"He's okay, too. Resting."

Bunnie smiled thinly. "I'd like to go see him. And maybe rest too."

Sally nodded, and then looked at Guntiver, who sat mutely by the fire, staring at its dwindling flames distantly as though he were deep in thought. "Gunt? Can you help Bunnie and Vector to the medical wing so someone can do a quick checkup with them?"

The coyote looked to the mayor attentively and did as she asked, wrapping his arm around Vector to help support him, as he was still in much worse condition with his concussion. Bunnie was able to continue her pace with them at a steady limp. Everyone else watched the three depart before facing each other again.

Shadow still had his arms wrapped around Sonic, though he didn't protest. He was too tired to return the favor, but he quite enjoyed the feeling of being completely encircled by Shadow anyways, his whole body limp, entrusting all of his weight onto his love. It was sort of nice, to place it all in the hands someone else, all his pain, even for just a minute.

He felt Shadow's hand gently curl over his own, the one holding the emerald. "You got it?" Shadow uttered into his neck.

"Yeah," Sonic said.

They pulled away eventually. Sally and Tails had already taken a seat by the fire, and the two hedgehogs followed suit. Sonic scanned over the ghastly crowd with keen, but weary, eyes.

"How about the rest of you? Any luck?"

"We got our emerald too," Gadget said.

Silver nodded. "My squads got two of them. We're gonna head out to Red Mountain tomorrow for the final one, but for now I think it's best we all get some rest. It's been a long day."

Gadget sighed, slouching and dipping his head down. "You can say that again."

The quiet that followed was almost tangibly uncomfortable. Sonic locked eyes with Tails and could tell that he sensed it too. What exactly had they all been talking about, before he and the others showed up?

Amy, seeming to catch onto Sonic and Tails' unease, finally willed up the courage to say something. She still wavered on her words momentarily, trying to find her voice. "I—I had a vision, tonight. I think I know where Knuckles is."

Sonic's heart panged. "Oh."

More silence, before she continued, voice shaking. "He's near Westopolis. In some airship. I think it must have cloaking technology, or else our scouts out there would've notified us already."

"Do you think Chaos is there as well?" Tails asked.

"Definitely." Amy swallowed thickly. "I—they're—we need to help them. They're hurting them, both of them. We need to do something before…" her gaze lingered on Sonic's arm, and he felt resentment nip at his heartstrings, a revulsion for Infinite, Eggman, Metal, himself, for his own robotic arm. "Before they do something permanent. Go too far with Knuckles, or—or to Chaos even. If they—if Chaos loses control…"

Shadow scrunched his eyes closed, looking deeply conflicted and deeply frustrated. "I'm sorry, Rose, I really am, but we need to pursue that tomorrow. After we have all seven emeralds."

It became clear to Sonic, right then, that this was a continuation of an earlier conversation that they had interrupted with their arrival.

"But—I feel like, like I saw that vision for a reason," Amy persisted. "I think every second we waste not saving them is a liability. More than just saving our friend, we need to stop them from destroying all of reality as we know it. They have a god in the palm of their hands and they're going to exploit that. Don't play dumb."

"I'm not," Shadow snapped, leaning forward in his seat, his eyes searing. "Don't think I don't know what's at stake. But we're no use to the echidna, the rest of the world, if we're all dead. We need all the help we can get, and it's too much of a risk to go in without all the emeralds."

"I think Shadow's right," Silver said. "Going into unknown territory…? Their territory? You said they have cloaking technology, so they could totally use that to their advantage. And we're all exhausted, anyway."

"You don't think Knuckles is exhausted?" Amy spat, and Sonic could catch tears in her eyes when the lighting of the campfire blossomed across her just right. "Stop being fucking selfish. It doesn't matter if we're tired, or we're one emerald short, or we're going into unknown territory. We've been at a disadvantage this entire goddamn war, so what's stopping us now?"

"Because tomorrow," Shadow said, "might be different. Tomorrow, for just once, we could have an advantage over them. We could—we—"

"Stop with the hypotheticals," she demanded, her voice low. "We need to focus on what we know, what we have right now. And what I know is the location where they've been keeping our friend hostage. Running experiments on Chaos. What I know is that we have the means to save them both, right now. What I know is that it doesn't matter whether we find the last emerald tomorrow or not if he's already dead and the world's falling apart when we find them."

Her only response, for several seconds, was nothing but the uneven, smoldering crackle of the dying flame, and the ever-growing darkness accompanying it as it reached its demise. Sonic stared quietly into the charred wood, the blackened fuel, at the base of the firepit.

"You're all fucking useless," Amy hissed, and she stood up abruptly from her seat and stormed off towards the houses down the street. An aching regret, universally unspoken confliction, lingered behind in her wake, among all of them.

Sonic's ears twitched at the restless clicking and snapping of Gadget's contraption—he thought maybe it was some sort of grappling hook—on his wrist. The wolf was thoughtlessly fiddling with it, like it was jammed or something. It was the only thing breaking the silence between them all for a while.

Sonic wanted to withdraw into himself and go to sleep. He held his face in his hands and rubbed at his temples, but it did nothing to quell the sharp buzz in his head, the disquiet of his scattered thoughts that tumbled restlessly around his mind.

"Is it broken?" he heard Tails murmur.

There was no verbal response, though maybe Gadget nodded. Sonic peeked through his fingers and caught sight of Gadget's tight-lipped expression, the anger rumbling behind his bright eyes. He looked cagey.

"Do you wanna go to Bunnie's?" Tails pressed, and his voice sounded so lifeless, and he looked so drained of everything. A husk of himself. The kid needed some sleep, and a long break from this hell. Sonic regretted letting him grow up so fast. "I can try to fix it."

"Okay," was all Gadget said. Nothing happened for a second, before they both slowly rose to their feet, as though unsure whether it was allowed, before they took their exit.

Sonic lifted his head back up and leaned back in his chair. Now it was just himself, Shadow, Silver, and Sally. The fire between them all coughed out its last sparks before vanishing entirely, and nobody made a move to rekindle it. They simply watched the ghost of its smoke twirl up into the night sky.

He felt Shadow reach over to squeeze his hand. "You should get some sleep, too."

Unable to procure a response, Sally spoke up instead. "All of us should. Sounds like tomorrow is going to be a big day."

And with that, the four all stood up, looking each over other one last time, before dispersing and heading back to their respective sleeping places. Houses, homes, weren't really the right words for it. There were too many resistance members packed into this town that one was lucky if they didn't have to share a bed, or share a room with five other people sprawled across sofas and blankets and pillows.

In the dark, Sonic and Shadow found each other's hands and linked them as they ambled down the dirt road together. Their path was dimly illuminated by the few lights that were still on, through the curtained windows of various buildings.

However, they stopped at the door, something holding Sonic back. Shadow looked at him questioningly.

"You go in," Sonic told him. "I'll find you soon. Just wanna—clear my head for a bit."

Shadow frowned. "You really should rest. You look like a mess."

"Thanks, love you too. I won't be long, really."

Though he looked reluctant, Shadow relinquished his hand and disappeared inside without any more fight. Sonic stared at the closed door before him, and it almost felt like his ears were ringing, but he ignored it. He took a few steps backward instead, and launched upward in a spindash to boost onto the roof, before he settled down against its sloped surface so he could stare up at the sky.

Everything was quiet, almost maddeningly, and he tried to concentrate on counting all the stars up above. Out here, completely sheltered from industry and true civilization, it was so much clearer out.

It was almost too quiet. In a way, he ached to be back on the battlefield already. Tearing through badniks. Throwing himself with no regard for his survival at the Egg Cerberus. Feeling the heat of its inner machinations scalding him as he cut through its leg. He missed the noise, the storm it brewed within himself.

He would take anything over the voices in his head that wouldn't keep quiet right now. Seeing the contorted pain on Amy's face reawakened the crippling guilt he'd grappled with, back in the ruins of HQ. The terrible, terrible feeling that consumed him, sunk its teeth in, as he recycled the same words through his head, over and over.

It should've been you. It should've been you.

Because if Knuckles died, it was on him. Completely. They all had to know that.

It should've been you.

Infinite, Eggman, they'd already broken Sonic anyways. Months ago. He should have let them take him instead. He'd already digested the trauma of his captivity. It did nobody any good to let someone else go through that, too.

He wondered, amongst the rampaging cyclone ramming against his skull, if they were using Knuckles as a punching bag just as they had once used Sonic. He wondered if they were sticking all sorts of needles in him, how roughly they threw him into his decrypt cell at the end of each monstrous day after they got bored of the torture.

Had they torn off one of his limbs yet? Was Knuckles already a mutilated disgrace like himself? Were there long, jagged scars along his body, too? A memento of the control Infinite held over his—their—heads?

A quiet sob broke through the deafening silence. Footsteps, down below. Sonic sat up, desperate to get out of his own head, and his eyes landed on the murky silhouette of Amy treading along the pathway. He ran a hand over his face and slid down the roof to land not far behind her, and she turned to look at him as he did.

Something glowed green in her hand. An emerald?

"Where are you going, Ames?"

She stared back, firm, bitter, unrelenting. "Are you going to stop me?"

"It depends where you're going."

"I can't wait any longer," she gasped out, "I can't stand the thought of him dying on my watch. When we could do something, right now."

"He won't—" Sonic combed his fingers through his quills. "You can't put this all on yourself. And we are going to do something, we just—"

"I know you agree. I know you want to go, too. Don't you?"

Sonic let out a long breath, ragged, crumbling, hot on his tongue. "I do. But I also know that Shadow's right. That—that this is too important for us to fuck up."

"How else can we fuck this up than by letting him die? Letting them use Chaos for a single second longer?" Amy stepped closer, so he could make out her face more clearly. Tears streamed down her face, but her eyes burned passionately through the dark, spiteful of the sorrow washing over her. "What does it matter, how many emeralds we have, if we're too late?"

Sonic chewed the inside of his cheek, and after a pause, shook his head. "No, Amy, we can't."

"I can be quiet," she insisted. "If it's just me, then I can sneak in. They won't even know I'm there."

"Just stop."

Amy glared at him, and then turned on her heel to leave anyway. Rage curled in his chest and he snatched her hand, yanking the emerald from her grasp. Its heat scorched his hand.

"Have you ever even Chaos Controlled on your own?" he snarled. "Hundreds of miles away? Not to mention how much security that airship must have. And Infinite, he'll surely sense the energy."

"I don't care—"

"Chaos, Amy, do you have a death wish?!" he cried, and he felt hot tears rushing down his cheeks, his hands trembling as he clutched onto the emerald. They looked at each other, and then he started forward and wrapped her in his arms, squeezing her even harder, burying his face against her forehead. He felt her shake against him. "Please. Just stop. Think."

She seemed to almost melt against him, come undone entirely, but she barely kept herself together. "I can't do this without him," she muttered, her voice torn apart. "I need him."

"But he's not here right now," Sonic said. His own words stabbed right through him, stringing him up like worthless shreds of cloth and button eyes. "He's not here right now."

He pulled away from their embrace, capturing her gaze intensely despite the wateriness clouding both of their vision.

Sonic gripped Amy's shoulders, and let himself relish in the peace for just a moment longer, and said to her, "You have me, though."

She seemed to contemplate his words, like she wasn't quite sure what to make of them, how she was supposed to interpret them, but Sonic decided they didn't have the time for that. He grabbed her hand and pulled her along. They stopped at Sally's house to drop off the emerald, which they did wordlessly, without waking anyone up, before stepping outside and continuing down the path. Away from the settlement. Out the gate. Into the forest.

"Sonic—"

They continued until soil gave way to sand, and the gentle snore of the sea met them, as it slid against the shoreline in tired waves. Sonic located the Tornado, further up the beach by some foliage and covered in its tarp, and removed the covering. He climbed up towards the cockpit and began messing with the control panel while Amy watched him impassively.

"Sonic, what are you doing?"

He ignored her until his memory cleared up enough for him to get the engine sputtering to life. It had been a long time since he last flew the Tornado. But as the motor entered a calm purr, he settled more comfortably into the pilot's seat and looked to Amy expectantly. She remained frozen on the ground.

Sonic considered his words. "I know I won't be able to convince you to stay. So I'm going with you."

Almost as though she didn't believe him, Amy looked him over, before a small smile reached her features. She climbed in and sat behind him, told him, "Thank you," and he hoped he was doing the right thing.

Not making any more room for regret, though, Sonic steered the plane down the beach until they picked up enough momentum to take off into the night. He swallowed the doubts swirling in his mind as they did, and thought only of his debt to the guardian of the Master Emerald.


hoo boy this chapter is JAM-PACKED with foreshadowing sdjfhgklhgafasdj

also... we are very close to the end. like. the climax of the story begins after the next update. im anticipating this to be roughly 25 chapters long in total, including an epilogue of sorts, so thats swag

thanks again for sticking around this long if u have :) i appreciate u guys

(p.s. i think im gonna start cross-posting this on ao3, albeit slowly, so if u guys wanna read it there my account is ssolaris)