Knuckles had expected to have to explain why he'd come after Sonic and Tails and knew he had no answer ready. But that question never came. They were surprised to see him because of the mechanics of the thing not by the fact he'd come at all. They seemed utterly unsurprised and unembarrassed by the idea he might have thought them in need of help. Utterly unsurprised by the fact he would try to bring it.

Tails was very quickly more interested in making sure their part of the ship had air than why Knuckles was aboard it, and once he'd made sure of that, then then he started quizzing him instead on the warp point. Killing time since they could go nowhere until the spacecraft reached an atmosphere again, Knuckles had started to answer before Sonic had interrupted.

"Thought that would have counted as super-secret Guardian stuff."

Knuckles stopped.

"Sonic!" Tails protested.

"What? Few days ago, it was all 'ask ye not about the Great and Terrible Emerald'." Sonic adopted a ridiculous sombre tone which Knuckles was certain sounded nothing like him. "Now you get the full science lecture?"

Sonic was grinning but even so Knuckles couldn't make out the point of the words. The hedgehog wasn't entirely wrong though.

"I shouldn't have said anything."

Sonic blinked.

"I didn't actually want to be agreed with that time, buddy. I'm only kidding. It's not like I'm wracked with disappointment that you don't think we're out to rob you this very second any more."

"Oh."

The hedgehog smiled again but there was something quieter about it this time.

"It's been a lot, huh?"

Knuckles stared at him. Somehow trying to make the past few days – the past few weeks fit into the tiny phrase 'a lot' didn't come close.

"If it bothers you that much, can't you just do whatever you did to get here backwards and bail? We'd be fine y'know? 'S kinda what we do."

Knuckles hesitated, ordering his racing thoughts a moment longer.

"It doesn't work like that," he said eventually. "And anyway I-" He stopped himself. The next words had almost been out of his mouth in a completely un-Guardian-like sentiment.

"I don't like unfinished business," he said instead. "Eggman is unfinished business. He's still a threat. I have responsibilities. He's made himself one of them."

"Mmmhmm," Sonic said, his eyes amused. Almost as if he knew, somehow, that had been Knuckles' second answer.

Knuckles would have challenged him on that amusement but before he could try, he found himself inexplicably in motion - sliding along the floor. Then when he pushed his heels hard against the floor to stop the slide he drifted into the air, barely stifling a startled yelp.

"We've stopped accelerating," Tails said, floating past him and looking – again -outrageously unsurprised. "We're in microgravity."

"Oh this is beyond cool!" Sonic launched himself across the compartment, limbs splayed out and tumbling tail over tip in a bizarre, off-axis cartwheel.

He hit the opposite wall spines first, scrambled ungracefully around and sprang into the centre of the compartment again, twisting as he jumped, pulling his arms in and pointing his toes and spinning like a top in mid air.

"So! Awesome!"

Tails laughed and back-flipped slow and lazy across the space while Knuckles groped for a handhold and missed.

"We're on a space-rocket, built by Eggman, on our way to chaos-knows-where. What part of this exactly, is the 'awesome' bit?" he asked.

Sonic shot him a series of glances in between rotations and then abruptly doubled up laughing.

"You for one!"

Tails twisted to look and also started laughing.

Knuckles scowled at the pair of them, folding his arms in irritation as he traversed the length of the place upside down at a little less than walking pace, helpless to prevent it.

"Oh if I had a camera!" Sonic was still laughing but Tails had pulled himself together.

"Really we should sit down you know. Wherever we're headed there's bound to be more than one burn to get there and then to decelerate again and we've no idea when they'll be."

"I guess." Sonic flip-flopped around the room a few more moments then sprang across to Knuckles and grabbed him by the ankle to send him drifting back in the right direction.

Knuckles batted at the hedgehog in annoyance at being pulled about which only sent them both into further tumbles.

"Just one somersault then. Come on, Knux, just go for it!" Sonic reached for him and Knuckles was sure for a moment that the hedgehog was going to spin him for sheer devilment but he stopped short. Grinning but pushing his luck no further than that.

Knuckles hung in the air, thinking about the sensation while the hedgehog smirked at him.

The lack of gravity was nothing like gliding. Neither was it much like the effortless lightness occasionally granted by full use of the Master Emerald which could, if circumstance required such extremes, grant a temporary sort of flight.

That was under his control. Not this indignity.

He twisted the right way up and glared at the grinning hedgehog.

Both Sonic and Tails stared back.

"How… are you doing that?" Tails asked.

Knuckles blinked, belatedly noticed that he was now longer floating at random.

"I'm not..." He broke off, concentrating instead. The Emerald was far below, but safe and unthreatened. He needed nothing from it beyond the background touch, had asked no power to lift him from the ground or propel him across an enemy-strewn sky. But here in the absence of gravity a touch was all it apparently needed.

Knuckles caught himself laughing, incredulous.

"One somersault?" He soared towards Sonic, grabbed him by both wrists and flipped them both through a full flip before releasing the hedgehog back towards Tails and sitting back down – maintaining himself in position with the faintest of inclinations.

"Done."

Sonic looked at him a moment longer open-mouthed, before recovering his usual smug poise.

"See? Told you it was awesome."

"Oof." Tails collided with the ceiling with a thump and abruptly they were all falling in that direction, grabbing for handholds to secure themselves once again.

"Deceleration burn," Tails said. "We're arriving."

Knuckles scowled. "Where?"

Sonic also made something of a face. "We think Little Planet."

Puzzlement turned Knuckles' scowl into a frown. "There were no rocket-ship bases there – we were there just days ago." The frown deepened. "And the Island. We weren't gone long enough. I'd have known if we were."

"Something's screwy," Sonic agreed. "We know."

"Teleportation," Tails said, thinking aloud. "Time travel. Time… distortion? Dilation? And some of this stuff we've seen is powered by that ruby as well."

"I don't like it," Knuckles found himself saying, abruptly.

Sonic blinked at him. "Not wild about Eggman having something like that in his back pocket myself, buddy."

Knuckles shook his head. "Not just Eggman having it. I don't like it. That ruby. It feels… wrong.

Sonic looked baffled. Tails curious.

"You're going to have to be a bit more specific, buddy. Wrong how? This more super-secret weirdness?"

In spite of the choice of words, Sonic didn't sound like he was joking and Knuckles explained anyway.

"I touched it. Just for a second when we were fighting that metal double of yours, Sonic. Just a scrabble of fingertips before he had it again but..."

He curled his hand into a fist, fingertips scrubbing against his palm at the sense-memory.

"And then we were in Hydrocity."

"You used it to teleport us?" Tails sounded baffled. "You didn't say?"

Knuckles shook his head. "Not on purpose. I didn't think about it then. We were getting sent here there and everywhere. It didn't occur to me it wasn't random. But, we were on another planet! I wanted to be home so b-"

He broke off, embarrassed. Recovered himself to continue.

"And then we were-"

"Falling into deep water?" Sonic sounded sceptical.

"We were back on the Island!" Knuckles said. "And I think… it got that from me."

Tails' bafflement had given way to thoughtfulness, but Sonic's doubt only looked more ingrained.

"So Eggman and/or Eggman's robots don't just have a freaky power source they have a magic wishing stone?"

"It's not just that though," Knuckles said, suddenly driven by wanting to get every single thing that was likely to be scoffed at out in the open in one go. "When we came back to the Island…" He stared at Tails since the look on Sonic's face did not at all invite the confession.

"To Lava Reef. I've had nightmares like that. The caves looking like that. Overrun. Robots coming again for the Master Emerald. Of turning around one day with no warning, no time and finding I'd…" He heaved a breath, sure Sonic and Tails must both think he'd slipped into hysteria. He forced his voice to stay level.

"I swear. I swear it's like it reached into my head and conjured a bad dream into something solid down there."

And finally Sonic looked as though he was thinking about it.

"The first place it teleported us was Green Hill," he said slowly. "And it was like nothing I'd ever done to stop Eggman had ever happened. Bots and traps and everything, they were all there like no time had passed. Like nothing I did helped."

"The spike-wall when we were fighting Metal Sonic," Tails said. "It was just there out of nowhere, and as high as I could fly no matter what."

"Okay." Sonic tapped his foot at a rat-a-tat pace as he spoke, apparently unaware of doing it. "It gives people what they want. Or what they very absolutely definitely don't want."

"No." Tails guessed. "What they want – What the wielder of it wants. And what Eggman and robo-cronies want is us in trouble..."

"Okay," Sonic nodded. "I can work with that as a theory. Good thing we're good at trouble right?" He winked a big, silly, grinning wink. "Open to ideas for fighting something that can chuck us halfway across the planet and summon up solid nightmares mind you. Knux?"

Knuckles startled.

"What?"

Sonic shrugged. "Well you're the one with the next weirdest glowy magic rock. Any ideas?"

Knuckles stared at him, too dumbfounded at hearing the Master Emerald described in such ridiculous terms to even answer. Not even sure what the question had been.

Sonic shrugged. "Well, think about it okay?"

They were floating again and a hefty clunky made Tails look round.

"We've docked."

Sonic glanced at the hatch and took a deep breath. "Here we go again..."

Knuckles frowned at him. "You know what's out there?"

Sonic looked over his shoulder. "Based on the conversation we've just had? Still Little Planet… Little Planet as if I'd never helped. Little Planet that Eggman won on."


Sonic didn't have any longer to dwell on that thought as the hatch opened a moment later and everyone moved at once because there could be nothing good behind it. Sonic barrelled into the first bot through the door and found himself snatched out of the air on the ricochet. He looked round in irritation to see Knuckles holding his arm, then back in the direction the echidna was still looking.

"Wow. Ouch."

There was a hellish grinding of chewed metal as the second bot through the door sliced through the remains of the first. More buzzsaw than robot itself.

"That'd have blunted a spine or two," Sonic tapped Knuckles' hand on his arm. "Thanks. Good spot. You can let go now."

Knuckles did without comment and they approached the remainder of the oncoming bots more cautiously.

To an even greater degree than those in the caves of Lava Reef these bots ignored them until actively attacked. This didn't help as much as Sonic would have expected since every single one of them was spiked or bladed or explosive. Dangerous to even be close to.

The landscape was no better. Half finished traps were everywhere and as dangerous as complete ones with the added complication of erratic unpredictable behaviour. Spinning into lethal slicing life or changing direction without warning or pattern, or appearing as though from nowhere in the same sick swirl of purple-red light.

All three of them found themselves with fur matted flat with sweat and sporting an assortment of singes and scratches before very long at all and Knuckles looked like he was severely regretting his decision to re-join them.

Sonic yelped and staggered as he kicked at a bot which had abandoned its cargo of spikes to clutch at his leg instead. He kicked it free and it flew into to the air to be smashed out of it again by Knuckles who glared at him.

"You're going to leave that trap there, Sonic? Really? You know we'll have to come back this way? You looking forward to getting skewered on the way out?"

Sonic glared back, knowing full well it was fatigue making them crabby but unable to prevent it.

"Keep your spines on. I was more interested in not leaving my leg there! I didn't see you dealing with it!"

Knuckles' fists clenched. "Oh, I'll deal with-"

Tails cut across them. "Shh."

Caught off guard by the abrupt demand they both obeyed, falling silent.

"What's that?" Tails asked.

A dull rhythmic thumping was audible even over the cacophony of metal-on-metal and mechanical background racket.

"Something waiting to pulp us into a smear of grease for this damned machine no doubt," Knuckles said sourly.

Sonic took a steadying breath and clapped both his companions on the shoulders.

"No doubt. Something waiting to make hedge-chinda-fox pancake if it gets the chance." He gave his silliest grin.

"It's not going to get it. Right?"

Tails grinned at once. Knuckles started at him as if trying to work out whether there was some sort of joke incoming. After a moment he stepped to one side and waved Sonic past him.

"You're the one who's supposed to be the expert, hedgehog. Feel free."

Sonic gave a cheerful sweeping bow and stuck out both hands.

"I will! Coming?"

But there was only time for a fleeting acceleration before an abrupt absence of apparent hazards and noise brought Sonic to a wary stop.

"Well, hello," rang out a voice which had Sonic halfway to a spindash before suspicion kicked back in.

"Eggman," he said aloud instead. "Wish I could say it was a nice place you got here."

"It's not really ready for visitors, true." Eggman smirked across at them from the other side of a wide and almost featureless chamber. "But it's always such a pleasure to have you join me in one of my facilities, Sonic." His tone changed abruptly. "And by 'pleasure' I obviously mean an infernal, time-consuming, costly nuisance!"

"I do my best," Sonic grinned.

Eggman ignored him, the same faux-politeness back in his voice instead.

"And Knuckles, my poor, dear erstwhile ally. I wasn't expecting to see you again so soon. Aren't you rather far from home? Don't I recall there's something you should be keeping an eye on somewhere else?"

And this was so obviously a provocation into a trap that Sonic turned to Knuckles to laugh about it, only to find the echidna two steps past him and all the way into the room, heading for Eggman, fists raised.

"Dammit!" Sonic flung himself at Knuckles as something huge pounded down from the ceiling. He bowled them both clear of the first one but then they were in the middle of the chamber and the pounding crash of the pistons and second by second reactions needed to keep from being in their path took every scrap of focus.

Sonic had lost sight of Tails and hoped he'd had the sense to stay clear. Somewhere Eggman was laughing. Knuckles' look of horrified realisation had given way to furious concentration, eyes everywhere.

Sonic flashed around the chamber, half his attention on where the next threat was coming from, half on Knuckles who was escaping flattening by a spine's width.

Tails was shouting something that sounded important. It could even have been a plan because Eggman was shrieking back at him in protest, but none of it was audible in the belly of the machine and Sonic wasn't sure the he had any capacity to do more than dodge right now even if he knew what Tails thought would work. Electricity flared and sparked, the pistons slammed up and down and there was too much noise and light and motion to properly process.

A flash of red whisked past his eyeline and he realised Knuckles had grabbed one of the pistons as it slammed past. It snatched him up to the ceiling where he was forced to let go or lose fingers as it crashed back flush with the ceiling surface. Sonic dodged another and seized a split second to land a spindash on a third but with little effect.

Knuckles grabbed at another up-going piston and swung himself violently along with it so he was clinging upside down. His feet hit the ceiling with a thump and his knees buckled. He fell back to the floor again.

Sonic yanked him clear of the piston on the return descent.

"Now's not the time for gymnastics, Knux."

"If you've got a way out, now very definitely is the time, hedgehog!"

Knuckles was moving again before Sonic could reply, and this time he hit his mark squarely, flinging himself through a full 180 to ride the piston up and planting his feet into the ceiling, crouching there with his hands and claws buried into the lip of the piston's inner edge.

Impossibly, as Sonic flitted from one momentarily safe spot to another with his attention still frantically divided, the echidna straightened his back. Heaved at the column of metal. Forced the piston back in its tracks, with a grinding, ripping shriek of tearing, twisting metal. It plunged down again but falling, not driven, not powered. It slammed into the floor and toppled. Two of the pistons next to it shrieked as they slammed into the fallen one, buckling both it and themselves in the process.

The machine spasmed and shrieked. Broken parts shifted dangerously around them and somewhere in the walls or ceiling some connecting element howled and let go.

A creaking silence fell.

"Costly huh?" Sonic yelled in the general direction of where Eggman had been. "What's the price-tag on that little lot then?"

There was no answer.

"He's made a run for it," Sonic said.

Tails' head appeared cautiously from the far end of the pile of wreckage. Sonic for once couldn't tell if the fox was alarmed or impressed. Knuckles was standing although his breath was coming in huge slow pants and he looked considerably less sure-footed than he had five minutes ago – eyes glued to his feet as he picked his way over the wreckage to them.

"Eggman ran for it," Sonic said. "We need to get after him. You okay?"

Knuckles raised his eyes to meet Sonic's.

"I am very tired of this, Sonic."

Sonic smiled, encouragingly, hoping for the moment that Knuckles had forgotten who had set the thing off in the first place – he looked like he had enough on his plate physically without second guessing himself.

"I know, buddy" Sonic said. "I know. We're getting there. Getting close."

Knuckles sighed and closed his eyes, dropping his head back.

"Woah," Sonic said. "Okay? You alright there? Knuckles! Did you hit your head? You feel dizzy? Sick? You need to sit down?"

Knuckles flicked Sonic's hand off his shoulder.

"Be quiet, Sonic! Please. Just… Just give me a second. Please."

Sonic shrugged, too surprised by the 'pleases' to argue.

"Seconds are easy. Take two if you want them."

In fact Knuckles opened his eyes again after closer to ten seconds, but when he did he at least no longer looked like the very next step would spill him onto the floor.

"Better?" Sonic asked. He pointed in the intended direction of travel intending to make some quip about sallying onwards if he was and instead found himself wincing.

His hand went to his side, where now that the immediate adrenaline was fading he realised he was going to have a nasty burn from something or other in midst of the collapsing machine that had caught him.

"You got any of those magic seconds going free?"

Knuckles frowned.

"Is it bad?"

Tails leaned in anxiously to look as well.

Sonic brushed his fingers over it. Scorched but not blistered. "No. Just sore. Maybe we'll find some rings in a minute. It'll be fine. Come on. Let's at least start in the right direction even if we have to go slow." He drawled the word in mock horror.

They walked three abreast, still recovering their breath. Sonic was sure the other two like him were trying to assess how much they had left, how much was still to do.

"So what was that?" He asked Knuckles, part to pass the time, part real curiosity. "Your 'seconds'? If it's not supersecret-and-all-that."

Knuckles glanced at him then back at their route. There was a long pause before he answered.

"Eggman said there was something else I should be looking after."

Sonic frowned. "He was just trying to get to you."

"I know. He meant it to hurt. That doesn't make it untrue."

Another few seconds silence while Sonic tried to work out how this was in any way an answer to what he'd asked and whether he should try and find something reassuring to say.

Before he'd managed either, Knuckles spoke again.

"But that goes both ways."

This time it was Sonic silent in thought before answering.

"You look after shiny rock – shiny rock looks after you kinda thing?"

Irritation flooded back onto Knuckles' face.

"If you want to put it quite like that."

Tails had been listening with interest but now his ears flicked back again.

"Guys, I hate to do this again, but… What's that noise?"

They all stopped and in the silence of still footsteps from the corridors behind them came a new mechanical clatter and whine.

"Bots," Sonic said.

Tails nodded. "Think so. We gonna fight them here or go on after Eggman?"

Sonic glanced at Knuckles, trying to guess what his answer would be, but didn't wait before giving his own.

"We go after Eggman. We can outrun them."

Sonic hid a wince as he reached out a hand for the tow this time and Knuckles sighed before taking it, but they locked wrist regardless, Tails taking the other side and they were running again.

They got further before skidding to a stop this time. Sonic sliding wildly to a stop as they rounded a corner to see the way blocked by a shimmering curtain of light.

The momentum was too much though and Tails and Knuckles skidded past him even as Sonic tried to yank them back, tried to back-pedal, knew it was already too late.

"No!" Sonic yelled in helpless alarm as both of the others slid and flew forward into the light.

"Oh." The yell died away into hysterical giggly relief. "Oh no. Uh, guys…"

Staring back at him from the other side of the curtain of light Tails and Knuckles were unharmed but…

"Sonic." Knuckles voice was controlled but absolutely simmering. "What. Is. This."

Sonic tugged at an ear, pinching himself, trying desperately not to laugh as Knuckles stared at him. Up at him, because the echidna now stood barely a third of Sonic's own height.

Tails, equally tiny, looked open mouthed from Knuckles to Sonic and back again.

"It's okay!" Sonic hastened to reassure. "Super-weird but okay honest. I've seen this before. It's works the other way too. We just need to find the other beam thingy. I think it's for y'know bots to work in little spaces or something."

Knuckles did not look in the slightest soothed by this and Sonic had to look away from his furious, mini-sized indignation before risking laughter.

Tails was still wide eyed.

"This is Eggman's technology?"

Sonic thought about it. "I guess? – I've only ever seen him use it here."

Tails tipped his head to the size. "Whatever power source he's using, it's something inherent to Little Planet. It's too useful to not reproduce elsewhere if he could. If he hasn't, there's a reason."

Knuckles frowned. "This is the same planet we found the night-time village? And the city with the fireworks?"

"Yeah." Tails nodded and Knuckles' frown deepened.

"Where are the people? It was full of people."

Sonic's sense of being on the edge of laughter died abruptly.

"Some of them were guarding whatever power this world has," Knuckles finished.

"We'll fix it," Sonic said. "If that ruby did all this then if we get hold of it we can undo it. Come on."

The others just looked at him. Tails made a sweeping gesture of invitation.

"I think it's you needs to join us on this side of the beam to go on..." He grinned. "Come on. Let's see mini-Sonic..."

"Oh yeah." Sonic shrugged then jumped into it. There was a sensation like falling downhill – as though something stranger than the space-flight loss of gravity had happened to his sense of up and down and then he landed asprawl beside the others.

He sprang to his feet and gave a twirl. Tails laughed and Sonic grinned back at him.

"Hey, it's just all the awesome jammed down into a smaller package right? Like concentrated awesomeness!"

Knuckles was ignoring the pair of them and examining a maintenance conduit.

"Useful for getting in small spaces, you said? Maybe we have a shortcut."

A now disproportionately huge buzzsaw wielding bot approached at ground level.

Sonic leapt to the attack automatically. First at the wall then springing at the bot from its rear quarter to miss the lethal blade.

Tails dodged the flying remains of the bot then tipped his head to the side.

"It's as if you've still got as much momentum though."

"See. Told you. Concentrated awesome."

Tails smiled, but shook his head. "Concentrated mass. But that means this thing alters the—"

Knuckles cut across him. "This is a deathtrap not a classroom. Can we move on?"

Tails looked abashed. "Sorry. But I really really wish I had time to properly find out what this thing is actually doing down at the quantum level."

Knuckles looked from the fox to Sonic who shrugged.

"I find it easiest not to ask," he said. "Come on. Let's go."

The maintenance paths weren't entirely bot free but did at least offer something of a bottle neck in terms of directions from which they would be attacked and they made faster progress. In the absence of a better steer for directions they headed to where most of the bots seems to be coming from. If Eggman was going to flee anywhere it would be to somewhere from where he could launch his badnik attackers at them.

"Something big out there up ahead," Tails said, eventually.

"Big big, or big-to-us-right-now?" Sonic grinned

Tails laughed. "Good point."

"Wanna go see?"

Knuckles answered before Tails could.

"Not particularly, but it seems the likeliest next lead."

"Great!" Sonic decided to treat that as an enthusiastic 'yes' anyway and kicked vigorously at the nearest hatch.

There was a large hovering robot on the other side, but despite the fact that Eggman was aboard and had swung round to glare at them, it still looked more like a cargo mover than a weapon.

"Hey!" Sonic shouted up, in the general direction of what passed for a cockpit. "Still here! You're gonna need something more exciting that this thing!"

Eggman glanced down dismissively.

"And you're going to need a stepladder to do it any damage, it would seem. Forgive me if I don't immediately flee in terror."

Sonic opened his mouth to retort, turning to look at the others to catch the best reaction to a snappy comeback, only to find Knuckles shaking his head in disbelief that looked almost amused.

"You'd actually forgotten, Sonic, hadn't you? There really is nothing that could shrink your big mouth."

Sonic laughed unabashed. "Hey, who's side are you on here?"

Tails would have laughed.

Knuckles flinched.

Only for a moment. Barely more than a movement of his eyes. Just instant disappearance of all amusement and a split second averted gaze, but enough for Sonic to know that his words had not landed as a joke.

He hastened to pretend he hadn't seen it, clapped Knuckles on the shoulder, returned to the matter of scale.

"Aw c'mon. Like size matters. Bet you've smashed bigger."

If Knuckles recognised the implied compliment as a hasty patch up he didn't show it, but he returned his attention to Eggman without comment.

"Sonic might need a ladder to climb. I don't."

He sprang away from the machine, planting a first set of spiked fists into a wall and going up land over hand to launch himself into the attack.

Sonic nodded, playing commentator for a moment because, even weary as they were, compared to being almost mashed to pieces inside a giant engine this was playtime.

"He makes a good point, Eggy. I'm not much of a climber." He ducked as the machine careened off course towards him and Knuckles struck it before straightening to continue. "Don't much need to be."

He glanced at Tails.

"Yeah?"

Tails was already moving.

"Yeah!"

Tails was soaring upwards in the second his hands met Sonic's, already accelerating, already turning. He swept Sonic up and into the air and around. He launched him at the machine like a stone from a slingshot.

Sparks flew. Eggman cursed, yanked hard on a lever inside and spun the machine. Tiny robots scattered into the air and Sonic yelled involuntarily as one impacted with his scorched side. Tails doubled back in the air and snatched his arm again before he hit the floor.

"Ouch." Sonic regained his feet and looked around for Knuckles in the now extremely crowded corridor.

He was easy to spot. He'd grabbed one of the miniaturised robots and swung it like a bat the next nearest.

"Do you know what would have helped, hedgehog?" he asked, throwing down the remains and stalking back towards Sonic.

Sonic leapt aside from an incoming high pitched whirling driller bot and back-flipped onto it to pound it into the deck.

"Not releasing all this lot?" he suggested and almost laughed at how railroaded this ready admission left Knuckles looking.

And then that moment of hesitation was too dangerous to spare and Sonic dived at Knuckles, bowling him clear of a fire-spewing egg-o-matic.

Sonic shook soot out of his spines from the near miss.

"I guess we had better mop them up."

"Oh, you think so?" Knuckles shoved Sonic off him and stood up.

Sonic wondered if he'd really annoyed him too much this time but in the next second Knuckles had reached down and hoisted him back to his own feet.

Tails touched down lightly beside them. He pointed.

"Look."

Sonic followed the direction indicated and grinned. He remembered the look of that light.

"Good spot. Let's go big!"

He bounded across the room, leapt into a pretend swan-dive through the beam, rolling on landing to stand up again with a flourish.

Tails and Knuckles jumped through with, Sonic considered, rather less panache, but were quick enough to turn and face Eggman's damaged machine and the wave of tiny bots.

"How long d'you reckon to clear the junk out of the way?" Sonic called to Eggman, rhetorically. "Want to just give it up and hand over that ruby now?"

Eggman was already backing off.

"No," he said even so. "I don't think so on the whole. But I will see you soon."

His hand came down on something in the cockpit and the light vanished. By the residual lights on the bots they could see fading into the distance, Eggman was indeed fleeing in the remains of his machine, the tiny flotilla of miniatures in escort beside him. The was a metallic crash and another deeper rumble accompanied by a crack of light by which they could see the wall had been blown out entirely to facilitate this getaway.

A third crash and now it was clearly thunder outside replacing the mechanical crashing and banging and the lightning made them all close their eyes a moment.

Tails jumped violently, colliding with Sonic who put his arms around his shoulders.

"It's okay. We've got this," Sonic said.

The next roll of thunder brought lightning so dawn out of forked across the sky there were two full seconds of near-daylight brightness.

In the unearthly blue-white glow, something huge and vaguely man-shaped loomed out of the darkness.

"What… is that?" Tails sounded torn between terror and curiosity and Sonic tightened his grip on the fox's shoulders.

"Something that we're not going to let do whatever Eggman wants it to do," he said firmly. "Right?"

There was a moment's longer than usual pause because Tails spoke, but he did.

"Right."

Knuckles stepped up on on the fox's other side. Not reaching out, but right up with them, shoulder to shoulder.

"Right."