At some point Sonic realised the blur of colours was now only because he was spinning in the air and in the next second he had dropped onto his feet. He looked round quickly, fighting dizziness. Tails was beside him, looking queasy but unharmed. Knuckles was nowhere to be seen. The chunk of rock and dirt still swung from a claw and either his eyes were playing tricks or it had been glowing. The Egg Robos clustered around it.
No… Sonic realised. Not Egg Robos. These were robots he'd never seen before. Five different types and larger, faster. How had they been replaced so quickly? He frowned in confusion, which was only increased in the next second when he realised that although they still stood among trees and plants this wasn't the jungle of Angel Island but somewhere far closer to home.
By the time he processed this and looked back, the robots had taken off again. In their absence the sound of rushing water was the dominant sound.
"Where are we?" Tails asked, looking far too giddy to give chase at least for the next few seconds. "What happened to those robots? Where's Knuckles?"
"I don't know," Sonic admitted. "Maybe still up there on the Island? I'm sure he's fine."
He was in fact sure of no such thing but Knuckles had been recovering in the moment before they had been – what? - transported? The echidna was clearly used to looking after himself and anyway if the robots were here with them it meant they weren't wherever Knuckles was.
Unless they bumped into him wherever they'd just raced off to, Sonic admitted to himself.
"We'd better get after that lot," he said. "I don't know what they dug up but if it can send us halfway across the planet like this it can't be good news."
"Halfway across the planet?" Tails repeated.
"Yeah. This is Green Hill. I grew up here. It's the first zone Eggman tried to take over."
Tails looked around. "It's nice, "he said. "Pretty. All the waterfalls and things."
Sonic smiled. "Yep. It's awesome. But look." He pointed at a cluster of bots, currently ignoring them. "How can there be badniks here again?"
Tails shrugged in turn. "When was the last time you were here?"
"It's been a while," Sonic admitted. "Not long enough for Eggman to be back here in force though!"
Tails looked thoughtful. "How did we get here?"
Sonic almost laughed. "You're asking me what that crazy teleport thing was?"
Tails shrugged. "Just thinking. It felt instant. What if it wasn't?"
Sonic stared around as though the answer could be found in the landscape. It was an unpleasant thought that Eggman could have been merrily taking over here while they were… where? Nowhere?
He shook it off.
"Better make up for lost time just in case then!" He launched himself at the nearest badnik causing three more to turn on him, by which time Tails had leapt into the fight beside him, tugging one of them off its wheels to drop onto the carapace of the one next to it.
Sonic grinned up at Tails as he he finished taking out the rest. "Well these haven't gotten any better!"
Tails touched down lightly beside him.
"Nope!"
Sonic frowned at the remains, nudging them with his toe. They weren't any better. But the ones that had snatched the whatever-it-was had been. They'd been weird. And they changed. They'd still been carrying it, still been racing away when the whirling colours had cleared but they'd been different. Transformed.
"So what happened?" He asked the question aloud, hoping Tails would be able to at least offer some guesses. "To the robots we found digging. How could they change like that?"
Tails shrugged but he was smiling, pleased with the puzzle.
"And what did they dig up? It was what you were tracking right?"
Tails nodded, his curious grin only getting wider.
"I'm certain of it! Did you see what I did? I said it was a huge power source."
His face abruptly fell.
"We can't let them take it to Eggman!"
"Whatever it is," Sonic agreed. "Okay then. Ready to run?"
By way of answer of got a thumbs up and the whirl of displaced air as the fox span up his tails.
"You bet!"
Knuckles landed on his feet, staggering but managing to stay upright, in spite of the overwhelming temptation to sink to his knees and give into the roiling nausea and blinding headache. He closed his eyes to take some deep breaths but the absence of visual references only made the dizziness worse and he reached out blindly for support, finding a sturdy palm to steady himself against.
In the next second he had let go of it in horror, his eyes snapping back open. Wrong tree. Wrong type of tree. There were no palm trees in this part of the Island. He looked wildly around. No palm trees like this in the jungle and no caves like this anywhere on the Island. Mind-bogglingly huge caverns with such gaping fissures and entrance-ways that enough daylight spilled in for the plant-life to almost match that above ground.
He wasn't on the Floating Island. He wasn't on the Island and he'd missed it. For long seconds amid the pain and nausea he'd missed it. Failed to notice the abrupt absence of the constant ambient chaos energy running through the ground. He was on the surface and he was alone.
Alone.
Why should that be surprising?
He frowned. His memory was fragmented, disordered – he'd hit his head badly. No… He'd been hit. He'd attacked someone. Something? Intended to anyway. More than one of them. They'd… stolen something? Taken something from the Island...
Panic leapt to the forefront of his foggy mind. Not the Master Emerald! He scrabbled for awareness, reaching out through the confusion. No. It was there. Distant and uneasy but safe. Something else was wrong.
And he hadn't been alone. He screwed his eyes shut again. The hedgehog. Sonic. Sonic had been there. Sonic and Tails. Leaning over him on the ground. It hadn't been them who'd hit him though, had it? He hadn't attacked them? He couldn't think of a good reason for either alternative, but then neither did he have a reason for his presence alone here on the surface, or a coherent memory of how he'd been injured so that didn't really get him any further.
He'd been resting, almost asleep, and then there were robots, and then there was Sonic and Tails.
He had to find them, but this time he'd make sure he was certain of his facts before he did any more than that.
He moved off slowly, noting with relief that this place, wherever it was, had both rings and water. Perhaps the gaps would fill themselves in as he recovered.
The dizziness and nausea abated quickly, and the headache followed when he picked up the first rings he saw, but the uncomfortable sense of displacement remained. Perhaps it was also a side effect, or the unfamiliarity of these strange huge caverns. He hoped that's all it was and that perhaps it would fade as well. He needed his mind on getting back, not on what was distressing about being here.
He'd picked a direction more or last at random, unsure what exactly he needed to do. Find the robots? Find Sonic and Tails? Find some means of transport that would get him back to the Island? Even if he chose a priority there was no way to equate that to a direction.
He settled for seeking out any rising path. Somewhere out of these caves, somewhere with a bit of height from where he could get a sense of where he was and make a more meaningful decision on direction. He headed upwards. Slopes, steps, terraces, even sheer cliffs, he pressed up and up at the same steady pace.
He stopped briefly the first time he was attacked. A robotic bat. He smashed it but then froze in horror as a piglet who couldn't have been more than five years old tumbled out of the wrecked casing and fled for his life before Knuckles could explain himself.
Knuckles stared at the remains of the casing. Living things as power sources. He had though they'd ended that, he and Sonic. Had thought they'd put a stop to it. Had thought they'd undone his own catastrophic mistake in not recognising that evil technology's creator for what he was.
Was it still happening down here on the surface? Happening to people not just wildlife?
He frowned and ran on, detouring now any time he saw one of the things. Breaking them open. Not all of them had prisoners but too many did. None of them could give him a coherent explanation as they staggered away and he couldn't bring himself to force any of those terrified people to stay and answer questions.
He pressed on, leaving the caves for higher ground and still running uphill. His thought chased themselves in circles in time with his running feet. How could this still be happening?
He hadn't seen the end of the fight between Sonic and Eggman, had been forced by the injuries his misjudgement of the situation had brought on him, to let Sonic go on ahead. Without him. But Sonic had said it was over. Had returned the Master Emerald when Knuckles would have had no way left in the world to prevent him from stealing it away. Had smiled and waved and left.
Had come back. Just in time to see Knuckles knocked senseless and both Island and surface overrun with robots.
Knuckles shook his head as he ran, trying to untangle suspicion from cause and effect and coincidence, unsure any more which was which.
Sonic skidded to a halt when the slope he'd been running up levelled off and abruptly dropped away completely. Ahead, a rather unstable looking precipice barred further progress. A small but lively spring cascaded over the edge and a wooden bridge crossed the growing stream and continued out as a walkway. Pinioned into the cliff and zigzagging its way down.
Sonic surveyed it doubtfully.
Tails flew down, following it. He returned, looking equally uncertain.
"It's not rotten," he said. "But the rock it's bedded into is pretty crumbly."
Sonic tapped his foot, mentally tallying how long it would take him to reach the bottom by that route versus the odds of it giving way, versus how able Tails would be to grab him if it did.
He'd just decided to go for it when Tails landed beside him and pointed back the way they'd come, grinning.
"Look!"
Sonic turned in time to see Knuckles loping up the hill towards them.
"Knuckles!" he called in relief. "You're all right!"
The echidna was moving easily enough but there was an odd look on his face, Sonic realised. A wary appraisal, and he stopped halfway up instead of joining them at the top.
"Are you all right?" Sonic asked.
Knuckles hesitated. "Tell me I wasn't wrong about being wrong about you, Sonic."
"Huh?" Sonic blinked at him. "You're babbling, Knuckles. Head still sore?"
"Who hit me, Sonic?" Knuckles' voice was level, but deadly serious.
"You don't remember?"
Knuckles shook his head, slowly, looking thoroughly reluctant to admit it.
Sonic made a face. "Well, you did get smacked in the head with basically a huge chunk of your island so I guess that's kind of understandable."
Knuckles stared at him. "A chunk of…"
"Yeah, the Egg Robos were digging for something. Guess they were a bit too impatient to dig it all the way out. Or we interrupted them. Or both."
Sonic fidgeted and rubbed between his quills. "Actually, I think we kinda mighta chased them onto you. Sorry?"
Knuckles ignored this. "What were you doing on the Island in the first place?"
"I picked up a weird power reading," Tails chimed in. "We couldn't think of many things that would be flying around up there, so thought it might be from your island. We thought Eggman might go looking for it and we ought to warn you."
His ears drooped. "Guess that bit didn't work out so well."
"No," Knuckles agreed, but his expression had relaxed into a wary smile. "Sonic was too slow to catch that one was he?"
Sonic bristled at once. "Oh you think? Well for Mr I-Can-Punch-Through-Walls, it was a swing and a miss that time wasn't it? What were you trying to do, stop that rock with your face?"
Tails looked from one to the other. "Uh, guys? Now?"
But the argument was already over because Knuckles wore a look of such comical confusion.
"I don't remember." He looked astonished to hear himself saying it.
Sonic's spines settled back down and he chuckled. "Oh yeah. You said. Honestly, you're probably doing well to remember your own name. You were out cold. I guess we're actually lucky you're so thickheaded."
Sonic was smirking this time but Knuckles wouldn't be drawn.
"What did they dig up?" he asked instead.
Sonic made a face. "We don't know," he admitted. "It glowed and it seems to have sent us here. That's all we got."
Tails rolled his eyes at the hedgehog. "No it's not!" He ticked points off on his fingers. "It showed up to my energy detectors but the readings weren't anything like a Chaos Emerald."
Knuckles nodded. "I wouldn't have missed it if it was. A Chaos Emerald back here?" He blinked suddenly, looking confused. "Back… there. Back on the Island. Buried in the ground? I wouldn't have missed that. They're still scattered."
"Okay." Tails nodded "So, it showed up all of a sudden. Eggman obviously detected it too and thought it was good for something or other. When we interrupted them digging it up, something happened to it."
"Glowed!" Sonic put in. "Told 'ya."
"Yes," Tails allowed, smiling. "It glowed. There was a weird noise and we were here. And so were the robots. We think. Only they were different."
"Different how?" Knuckles asked.
Sonic shrugged and answered instead of Tails. "Just different. Bigger, faster, less… robot-ish. Could the Chaos Emeralds do that? Change them?" He looked from Tails to Knuckles. "Could the Master Emerald?"
"It wasn't a Chaos Emerald!" Knuckles insisted.
Sonic waved this off. "If you say so, but could they?"
"Just in theory…?" Tails suggested.
Knuckles frowned. "Like a robotic version of a super-transformation? With the Chaos Emeralds? I don't know. Maybe. Chaos Emeralds are… chaotic." He hesitated as if expecting to be picked up on stating the obvious but went on when no one argued. "Almost anything's possible but some things are more unlikely. I don't think so. And it wasn't a Chaos Emerald. There were no Chaos Emeralds here." He winced visibly and corrected himself again. "There."
Sonic ignored the repeat protest. "And with the Master Emerald?" he prompted instead.
"No."
Sonic and Tails both stared at him, but it was Sonic who spoke. "Any more detail coming?"
Knuckles crossed his arms. "No."
Sonic sighed. "Look, Knux, I don't want to stick a stick in a sore spot or anything but we know Eggman has used the Master Emerald's power before. And so has Metal Sonic."
"No they haven't."
Sonic threw up his hands. "I've only just got all my fur back after getting toasted by the thing! You'd think I'd remember!"
Knuckles did not uncross his arms. "Metal Sonic was able to charge himself from the excess energy that leaks into the immediate vicinity. Eggman only used it as an amplifier for an existing weapon. That's not the same as being able to use its own power. Only a Guardian can do that."
"Fine! We're playing the 'let's take everything Sonic says way too literally' game? So could a Guardian use it to do that? Change up a robot like that?"
"There are no other Guardians."
"Gah! Knuckles! Could you do it?"
There was a pause and Sonic couldn't decide if that was because Knuckles was considering whether or not to answer or considering whether or not it was possible.
After a moment he said, "I didn't."
Sonic could have yelled in frustration, but before he could either do so, or spin at Knuckles out of sheer irritation, Tails had spoken up.
"Look it was miles away from the Master Emerald, Knuckles was right there with us, whatever was dug up was small anyway, and presumably no one else was anywhere near it that we didn't know about about. I think we can leave the Master Emerald out of the options anyway.
"Yes. You should," Knuckles agreed.
The was a moment's uncomfortable silence. Then Sonic shrugged.
"Fine. So are you coming with us to find out what it was then?"
Knuckles was quiet a moment longer and his voice was still low when he finally did speak.
"I don't know what else to do. I shouldn't be here."
Sonic gave him a quizzical look. "You okay?"
Knuckles shook his head and the honesty of the admission made Sonic, on impulse, reach out in intended reassurance. Knuckles jumped and stared at the hedgehog's hand on his shoulder.
"You're worried about what might be happening back on your island?" Sonic asked.
Knuckles nodded slowly.
"I suppose. It doesn't feel like just worry though."
He shook his head abruptly and brushed Sonic's hand away. "It's stupid. Leave it. Let's just… Do whatever. Find those robots. Something they did brought us here so whatever it was it can take me back."
"And us!" Tails put in. "The Tornado's still up there!"
Sonic shrugged. "He's right."
Knuckles looked uncertainly between them.
"All right," he said after a moment. "Us."
Sonic grinned. "New word?"
"Don't push your luck, hedgehog." Knuckles voice was brusque again but at least he looked more composed. Sonic smiled and cast about for a direction that didn't involve an extremely dubious walkway.
"Okay. How about we… Uh oh."
Everyone turned at once in the same direction Sonic was looking.
"Wow," said Tails. "That's… Is that another Death Egg robot?"
Sonic stared at it for a split second longer, then grinned back at Tails in encouragement. "Don't know, don't care. It's going down either way!"
Tails whooped. "You bet!"
Sonic offered a high five before turning back around. "What'd'you say, Knu-" He stopped. Blinked.
"He started without us."
A few yards downslope Knuckles leapt into the air, twisted into an updraft and curved back around to position himself above the robot.
"Rude!" said Sonic, sticking out a hand for Tails, and accelerating instantly to whisk them both into the fray. He hurtled in at what, for the robot, was ankle height, releasing Tails as he approached to launch him into the air. Tails grabbed a metal arm and hauled at the same moment as Sonic cannoned upwards, striking the robot in its armoured shins.
It reeled backwards, and Knuckles, who'd dived down at the same moment, missed entirely. He landed in a roll, turning the momentum of the crash landing into a ricocheting leap andd colliding fists-first with the robot's back as it staggered. Sparks flew and Sonic ducked to avoid a whirling fragment of broken metal which would have shortened all his spines.
The robot pitched forward instead of backwards now and Tails narrowly missed being swatted from the sky by a flailing arm. He recovered his balance in the air and dodged around behind it to kick it solidly in the back of the head. Sonic followed up on the same spot and more sparks flew. Below him, Knuckles still had one clawed fist embedded in the backplate of the thing and was hacking through plating and wiring with the other, the robot's movement becoming more erratic with every blow. Something shorted out with a bang and a blue arc of electricity and Knuckles was thrown off, jerking violently as he fell. Tails snatched hold of one arm before the echidna could hit the ground but let go abruptly when Knuckles swung blindly for him instead.
The bladed arm shot out again and Sonic flung himself away from the robot to tackle Tails out of the way. They tumbled onto the ground, Sonic trying to keep track of everything that was going on around them.
The robot was out of control now, stamping around almost at random. Knuckles had ended up somewhere under its feet, narrowly avoiding getting trodden on, as much by luck as judgement as far as Sonic could tell.
"Sonic!" Tails looked like he wanted to close his eyes. "He's going to be flattened!"
"I'll get him," Sonic assured him, darting forward, eyes everywhere at once. It was easy enough to him to dodge but however Knuckles was managing it without even having made it back to his feet couldn't last.
Sonic put on a spurt as one boot came down squarely above the echidna
And then skidded to a stop because, impossibly, Knuckles had caught it. Flat on his back and face turned away from the shower of sparks raining down from the damaged leg, he was holding off the descending metal boot with both hands. Sonic caught himself spectating and leapt back to it, ducking underneath and rocketing upwards in a spin, taking off the leg at the knee. The robot hopped once, looking entirely ridiculous and then went tumbling back down the slope.
Sonic landed beside Knuckles who was still holding a large section of robot leg as though he were ever so slightly surprised to find the rest of it missing.
"You can probably get rid of that now," Sonic suggested.
Knuckles looked from the limb to Sonic and back again then heaved it away towards the rest of the wreckage. The bang that followed was out of all proportion and the ground shook hard enough to send Tails into the air and Sonic onto his backside.
"What the?" But they were already falling and Sonic had thrown up his hands instinctively and Tails had grabbed them but there was barely any time to slow down and all three of them landed in a heap halfway down the crevice that had opened up.
Somewhere even further down, the robot still sparked and they could hear Eggman shouting, from inside it, but Sonic's ears still rang too much to catch what he was saying.
And then the world was spinning again.
