Tails had whirled back to the door panel before the dust had even settled from the hedgehog's lightning fast disappearance from sight but he was working one handed, the other scrubbing angrily at his face.
Knuckles had no reassurance to offer except the straightforward fact that letting Sonic go on alone was the only thing that even might work, and Tails clearly knew that already.
He stayed silent instead. Made himself breathe slowly, reaching out for whatever threads of emerald chaos lingered in this alien, ruby-touched place. For the chaos that wasn't the flickering fading touch of the rapidly receding emeralds themselves, but the wider, deeper steady beat of it that suffused the world, that pooled and centred and coiled around the Master Emerald.
Distant, still and cool.
"Heads up," Tails interrupted before had entirely found the soothing centre of it, and he opened his eyes. The fox was still strung tense as a bow, in total contrast to his usual demeanour, but he looked confident.
"This will open the door but the bots are almost certainly on our heels down there behind it."
Knuckles nodded. "I know. Open it."
The fox turned back to the panel. "Here we go."
The door opened. Knuckles flung himself forward and down as Tails shot up to the ceiling.
Laserfire filled the space where they had been and the bots poured in behind it in such numbers that for a moment Knuckles was more in danger of being trampled than attacked.
He surged back to his feet, scattering bots to left and right and swung for three at once in a desperate roundhouse to gain some breathing room.
Tails plummeted bodily onto another and planting a wild-looking, but accurate, kick into the targeting sight of another, sending it spinning and scything through at least half a dozen of its fellows.
Knuckles was almost wading through bots to make progress up the corridor but there were almost as many ahead as behind now.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Tails, airborne again, yank hard on the wires he'd pulled from the panel while meddling with the door and plant them firmly against the metal shell of the nearest bot. Sparks flew and the thing went motionless.
Knuckles fought his way forward, trusting to Tails to follow, and trying to split his attention between the immediate threat and the problem of where they went from here with no obvious end to the fight, or escape route in sight.
Hopefully at least the sheer numbers confronting them, meant Sonic was meeting less resistance up ahead.
Sonic had not paused to finish off any of the few bots he encountered. He ran with a headlong, urgency, skidding and spinning to knock any opposition aside. Sirens shrieked about his presence, their wail interrupted by the metallic crashing of doors slamming shut too late to stop him.
Until abruptly, the lights cut out and he was forced to skid to a stop to avoid crashing blindly into anything. The darkness lasted only a moment before being broken equally abruptly by the flaring of neon warning lights.
The was a grinding and gears and a crackle of energy and Sonic leapt clear, backflipping over a lashing metal tentacle that sparked with electricity.
"Enough, hedgehog!"
The voice projected from the tentacle's supporting pod was loud enough to hurt and Sonic backed away a few steps, telling himself it was the better to get a run-up. He twisted the ends of the fabric bundling up the emeralds into a knot, an adhoc knapsack he could slip over a shoulder and took a second to survey the pod.
Eggman glared out from inside it. Armoured but still ridiculously spindly arms and legs protruded from it as though it was an egg shaped suit of armour more than a ship.
"Nice look," Sonic gave him a grin chosen to irritate. "Did your deathegg have a cute little baby bot that you decided to crawl inside?"
In answer Eggman loosed a volley of homing missiles. Sonic smirked, lingered long enough for the targeting pings to fix on him, then dashed out of range and watched them hammer into the opposite side of the room.
"Still not fast enough, wherever you cobbled it together from." Sonic pointed at the ruby, embedded in the centre of the device. "Your robo-buddies let you have that back then? Sweet of them."
Eggman's eye flicked warily from one side of the room to the other. A shifty, nervous look suddenly on his face.
Sonic grinned. "Oh they didn't did they? They've decided they're all grown up and flown the coop, right?" Sonic dodged a lashing electric tentacle, enjoying the fury of Eggman's face. "Wish I could say the enemy of my enemy was my friend, but in this case I think I'll just smash them after I smash you."
He leapt at the body of the armour-pod.
A red flare washed out his vision and instead of the satisfying crunch of spines against metal there was a dull thump and he found himself flung backwards to slam into the floor. Chaos emeralds slipped from the makeshift pack and scattered across the floor. Sonic rolled over among them trying to catch his breath. He could almost hear Knuckles bellowing at him for bantering instead of getting on with the job and reached for the nearest of them, scrambling to his feet.
Between him and the others the flickering red energy roiled and curled and formed into a huge grasping hand. Sonic glanced at Eggman whose who own armour-encased hands grasped greedily at empty air.
Sonic darted away and impossibly, shockingly, failed to outrun it. The fist tightened around him, snatching him off the floor and solidified into a crushing rocklike grip. Sonic's head rolled sideways and his eyes fell on the fallen emeralds. Too late, too slow and his eyes slid shut.
And then opened again in the same split second as he dragged a frantic breath back into his lungs. The fist was gone but the traces of shimmering red now flickered around one of the wayward robots which unleashed a barrage of missiles.
Sonic ducked and took off from a crouch to avoid them.
"Okay, maybe not quite all the way gone then."
He skipped ahead of another round of projectiles. The robot seemed loathe to close with him, swooping and diving but well above head height. Sonic wondered if he should have worked harder to persuade Tails to come with him, but before he could think of something else to try, the glowing energy mist had descended again and the robot was gone.
No, Sonic realised in the next instant. Not gone. Replaced.
And this one, slicing toward him like a living buzzsaw, had no apparent reluctance to get up close. Sonic leapt wildly into the air to clear it. Flailing wildly to land in a tumbled heap. Before he could pick himself up those blades flashed out again. He curled into as tiny a ball as he could on the floor without nothing but luck to trust to, to avoid them.
He was lucky. But there was no visible means of attack. No opening. Lethal razor sharp blades circled the robot from every angle.
Out of nowhere, the third bot appeared, raising its arms in a magician's flourish then bringing them down. Tall domes slammed down with the gesture and Sonic found himself caught beneath one and slammed from side to side of it as it spun around the room.
Distantly he heard the sound of laser fire and with the next haze of red mist found himself falling, then stumbling as the ground sped beneath him. He tumbled back to his feet, breathless and confused and shook his head as he ran, struggling to back sense of his surroundings. He'd barely landed a blow, barely survived, had dropped the chaos emeralds, and was running for his life. Eggman, who'd been right there waiting to be defeated was nowhere in sight.
Knuckles summoned all his remaining energy and slammed both fists into the metal floor of the corridor making it buck and ripple. Tails ploughed into the staggering and off-balance bots and the pair tore on through them. Breathless and headlong but with a lead on the pursuing bots once again.
Any thought of catching up to Sonic was replaced with the all encompassing need to just survive the next few heartbeats of time.
Knuckles was running on the distant, flickering energy of the Master Emerald, clinging on through gritted teeth and had no idea at all what Tails was running on. The fox's fur was plastered to his body and his breaths coming in fast, frantic pants. Clearly he was approaching the end of his strength and Knuckles wasn't far enough behind him to feel particularly confident of getting them out alive.
"Wait," Tails gasped as they reach a fork in the corridor and Knuckles turned to either insist they couldn't stop, or to offer a tow. He'd carry the fox if that was what it took.
But a complaint wasn't why Tails had stopped. He was pointing at a low set vehicle sitting pointing off down the rightmost fork. Knuckles nodded assent at once. Even a few minutes' distance without exerting any further energy on running was extra minutes to work out how they were possibly getting out of this.
They clambered aboard, almost falling into the seats.
"Hold tight," Tails said, "It's-"
Knuckles could only guess that the last word was 'fast' because it was snatched away in the roar of rockets as he was slammed back against his seat, head yanked back and all breath pressed out of his body.
Objectively it had to be slower than being towed by Sonic, but the hedgehog had least had some regard for his 'passengers' tolerance for acceleration.
This thing did not and the deceleration was no better. Knuckles' stomach was still churning as he staggered back to his feet but they'd gained a considerable lead for very little effort so a little queasiness was worth it.
Tails was already examining a hatch.
"This is an exterior wall."
"Good." said Knuckles. "Can you open it or do I need to?"
Tails examined the panel and after a moment the hatch slid open.
Knuckles eyed the terrain outside. It was still deeply uninviting but he would be willing to gamble that two people on foot could cross it faster than a mob of robots could.
"If we circle around the outside and get back to the rocket can you get us home?"
Tails stared at him and the grim determination which had carried him this far faded into panicked misery.
"We can't go without Sonic!"
Knuckles hesitated, at a loss in the face of fox's despair. And then he drew a deep breath, forced a smile on his face as Sonic had done and reached out for Tails' shoulder.
"Yes we can. That's what he said, right? To watch out for each other. That means getting out of here safely."
Doubtfully, still staring at Knuckles, Tails let himself be guided outside.
"Sonic will be alright," Knuckles said. "He has the chaos emeralds."
And if he wasn't alright? If that wasn't enough to keep him safe, and if he couldn't in turn keep them safe? Then that would be Knuckles' own fault for handing them over.
He keep that fact to himself and kept his tone reassuring.
"There's nothing else we can do except what he's asked us to."
Tails looked up at him, muzzle twitching with the effort of holding back emotion.
"He meant you too," he said eventually, voice shaking. "He meant for me to watch out for you too." Some of the stubbornness was returning to the little fox's face. "No one's supposed to have to do everything by themselves."
Knuckles smiled again, certain even as he did it that he was falling short of the comfort he intended.
"Sometimes there isn't any choice."
Tails looked back at the giant mechanical structure and heaved a deep breath.
"Sonic will be okay."
Knuckles couldn't tell if it was request for confirmation or Tails was simply speaking it aloud to reassure himself, but he nodded anyway.
"Come on."
Tails didn't protest and they started moving as quickly as they could over the broken and distorted terrain.
Red mist swirled once again and Sonic hit the floor in darkness lit by flashing neon and a mechanical din accompanied by furious yelling. Before his dazed eyes, a red glimmer shone – not the fading mist this time, no ruby glow, but one of the chaos emeralds. How much time had passed then, for Eggman not to have scooped them up? Sonic dismissed the question from mind as unimportant right this second and reached for it.
"No no no!"
It took Sonic a moment to realise Eggman's bellows weren't directed at him.
"The hedgehog is mine! That ruby is mine!"
Sonic's hand closed around the emerald and his attention sharpened at once. He leapt back to his feet and tore across the room gathering the rest of them back up.
He spun back to face Eggman.
"Hate to break up the debate," he drawled. "But weren't we in the middle of something?"
"You!" Eggman whirled to glare at Sonic, then whirled back again as the moment's inattention was seized on by the nearest robot to snatch the ruby away.
"You!" Eggman bellowed in that direction instead and whirled away from Sonic again.
The twirl of ruby portal colours spun into existence again and the robots vanished through it.
Without hesitation, Sonic left Eggman to his shouting and dived after them.
The sensation of dizzy falling took him again but in spite of the disorientation and the unearthly purple sky and churning horizon he could all but feel the ground approaching – this was real height not just an artefact of the teleportation and his gliding and flying friends who might have saved him the fall were left far behind.
But there was one recourse left even so and his grip tightened without thought on the bundle of emeralds. His fingers slid over them as though they were frictionless, or as though something about the energy suffused their surface – like magnets resisting being brought together.
But it wasn't hard to overcome the resistance, not with the immediate threat right there before him in the shape of the robot, transforming even as he watched it. Or the drop below him, the unyielding ground racing closer.
He pushed through the resistance, twisting into it as he might slide past a badly aimed enemy attack, turning and rolling with the momentum to seize it for himself.
Energy flared and surged, dancing on the exhilarating edge of almost too much, like a hundred thousand rings all at once.
Sonic half laughed, half yelled in sheer exuberance and decided this was diving not falling. He swooped up out of it, and hurled himself at the robot.
There was an almighty crash and Sonic tumbled tail over tip in the air, breath knocked out of him as much by shock at being repelled, as by the impact itself. The robot was getting less recognisable by the moment. Crystalline protrusions grew from its metal surfaces. A glow surrounded it which only looked more ominous when filtered through the golden light of the emeralds' power.
Before Sonic could reconsider the best way to attack, a second Eggman craft howled over the unearthly purple horizon and slammed into the robot, reaching and tearing, grasping for the ruby embedded in its structure.
It tumbled free and Eggman's metallic grip brandished it in the air.
Sonic hurtled at that waving limb as quickly as he'd ever moved, knowing he had to land the blow before Eggman had the chance to draw on that power. He soared straight through the robotic craft's handling arm and both it and the ruby dropped towards the ground.
Sonic flung himself through a turn to dive for it, but the robot was closer. It let off a volley of glowing energy bolts. He avoid them all but it cost him more time.
The robot seized the ruby once again. Power shrieked and shrilled through the air. Sonic could feel his grip on the chaos emeralds' own power wavering. Less secure by the second. The edges of the tiredness they'd so completely wiped out starting to creep back in. Time was not on his side.
He touched down for a split second, caught a breath and leapt back into the attack. The robot could be damaged. Nine times out of ten the flickering leaping red energy sent him tumbling back but even landing one in every ten blows, was enough.
This time when he flung himself bodily against the bot, the housing of the ruby cracked clear down the centre. Sonic, the robot, and the ruby were flung in three different directions by the force of the impact and Eggman tore up between them and grabbed it once again.
Only half sure which way was up, Sonic soared at him anyway and was swatted into the ground for his misjudgement, though it cost the craft another limb.
He rolled back to his hands and knees, the unnatural metal and crystal ground beneath him lit in glimmering light that he himself was casting.
He stood up.
Eggman was retreating at speed but that, at least was not a problem. Sonic broke into a run beneath him, then leapt. Not curled into the attack to bring the ship down but hand outstretched, eyes on his target.
His fingers closed on the ruby with a sensation like freezing water. Dimly he was aware of the chaos emeralds spiralling away from him, of falling. He hung onto the ridiculous thought 'magic wishing stone'.
What did he want?
He wanted out of here, Tails and Knuckles out of here, the ruby gone safely somewhere – anywhere - else. Got rid of.
Red mist and swirling purple darkness swallowed him.
Knuckles hauled Tails back to his feet.
"We're almost there."
Tails raised his head heavily to the rocket, still a hundred paces away, then stumbled back to the ground as it shook beneath them.
Knuckles whirled round to look back the way they'd come, in time to see the second explosion rip through the structure looming over the city and the subsequent ones that tore through the surrounding constructions like wildfire.
"Sonic…" Tails said, faintly.
Knuckles found himself not wanting to work out if the fox was asking whether his friend had succeeded or whether he'd survived.
The emeralds were… he let his attention drift to them… not together… so not with Sonic.
"Look!"
Knuckles attention snapped back to their immediate surrounded and Tails' urgent voice.
Something floated overhead, light and airy above the destruction and glittering in fading magenta.
"Giant floaty hedgehog nonsense," Tails quoted happily. "He made it."
The shape blinked out and some snag on Knuckles' attention went with it. Some uneasiness in the fabric of the world fading away. The last of the ruby distortion.
Tails was frowning again though.
"So where is he?"
Knuckles shook his head. "I don't know."
They stood until they were both shivering in the desolate, damp wind. Until it was Tails who had to break the silence.
"He's not coming, is he?"
Knuckles worked hard to keep anything from his voice that would give the little fox reason for either despair or false hope.
"Maybe not."
"But the ruby teleported stuff, we know that, right? He could be on the surface. He could be home right now already."
"Maybe."
Tails spun on his heel and marched to the rocket.
"So we'll go find out."
Sonic wasn't at the place Tails declared to Knuckles as home when they reached it and they didn't stay long at the little combination workshop and house, nestled in the jungle.
He wasn't at any of the places they'd visited in this careening, confusing week, and where Tails led them once again to check.
He wasn't at the Tornado where Blacktail and Penvelyn offered sympathy, and help to repair it.
He wasn't on the Floating Island when Tails used the proving flight after the repairs to take Knuckles home.
Knuckles had no helpful words to offer. Nothing to draw on to give comfort except what Tails already knew. That Sonic's choices had been his own and that he'd done what he set out to.
That Knuckles' mere proximity did appear to be providing comfort was something he couldn't account for, or bring himself to withdraw. So he followed Tails on the surface while he searched and let Tails follow him on the Island as he attempted to resume what passed for a normal routine.
In spite of the fox's presence, time resumed its normal, vague pace with nothing but the slow drawing of the season to mark it and Knuckles wasn't sure how long exactly they'd been back when Tails looked up from the fire one evening.
"Do you miss the other echidnas?"
Startled by the suddenness of the question, Knuckles nearly dropped the pan he was positioning over the embers, before recovering himself.
"I… don't really remember them."
"Do you wonder if they might not be… gone…? If they might come back?"
Knuckles paid attention to not dislodging the pan again.
"Yes."
"Do you really think they might?"
Knuckles bit back a reflex 'no' – you had to live in the world as it was after all – and sighed. Tails deserved more honesty and more empathy than that.
"Sometimes I do. But I have things which are important besides waiting."
Tails stared at him intently, firelight reflecting as a glitter in his eyes.
"Do you miss Sonic?"
Knuckles let go of the pan and put his hands back on his lap. He was sure Tails thought that was a more simple question than it was, given Knuckles was still working out the definition. If it was true that he didn't 'miss' the absent echidnas because he didn't remember them, then it was certainly also true that there were specific things about the hedgehog he would have been glad to be able to see again.
The gleam of challenge in his eyes, inviting a fight even when everything else about his body language said he was much more amused than angry. The ease with which he shrugged off setbacks, the unabashed curiosity about things no one else would even dare to think about asking. Even the ridiculous amount of chatter would have been welcome any number of times since they'd returned without him.
By that definition, he missed the hedgehog.
"Yes," he told Tails. "I miss him."
Tails nodded. "So do I."
And that seemed to be all he had to say about it for the evening. By the time the meal was ready he was talking instead about the work he planned to do on the Tornado in the morning.
Being reasonably on top of all the various other Island tasks that needed doing and monitoring on a day to day basis, Knuckles followed him to the lakeshore at his request when the daylight came.
"I need an extra pair of hands for just this one thing," Tails had promised.
An explanation followed but Knuckles wasn't really paying attention to it. He didn't know most the terminology and his focus was already half on the afternoon's requirements and half still on the previous night' conversation.
And as Tails continued to narrate what he was doing, both topics were abruptly shoved from the forefront of Knuckles' mind as something sizzled up his spine, snapping all of his attention around to the treeline.
Tails stopped talking. Then mildly, said, "Please don't throw my tools at whatever wild animals you've got up here? What's wrong?"
Knuckles hadn't even realised he'd raised the heavy wrench he'd been about to hand over.
He didn't lower it or take his eyes off the direction the shiver of warning had come from though.
"There's something…"
He didn't get to finish.
A blur passed him in a shower of sand and wind, and Tails shrieked, and Knuckles spun round and very nearly did let fly before realising that it was a shriek not of fear but utter elation.
"Sonic!"
Tails was sobbing harder with the hedgehog there in front of him than at any point in his absence and Knuckles could only gape.
Sonic looked up from patting Tails on the back as the fox clung to him and grinned at the tool in his hand.
"Were you going to chuck that at my head then?"
"Yes," Knuckles was far too dumbfounded to moderate his answer with polite denial.
Sonic blinked at him. "Really?"
Knuckles' shock left unexpected anger in its wake as it faded.
"Yes! Where have you been? It's been…"
Sonic looked around, apparently for the first time and his eyes snagged on the Tornado and widened.
His face fell and his arms tightened around Tails.
"Oh no. I thought… I didn't think… I don't know how this works."
Knuckles glared at him.
"Start making sense, hedgehog!"
Sonic shook his head.
"In a minute."
He patted Tails on the back and loosened his grip slightly.
"C'mon. It's okay. I'm right here. I'm safe, I'm not going anywhere." Another strange look came over his face as he said it, as if he'd alarmed even himself by it somehow. Knuckles could make no sense of it at all.
Tails hiccoughed himself to silence and then spoke up.
"What happened?"
Sonic hesitated then took a deep breath and blew it out between his teeth.
"Where do I even start? Okay… I guess the short version is: if you make a wish on a magic glowy evil wishy stone and that wish is to get rid of it, just bear in mind that the getting rid might take longer than you thought."
Tails pulled away far enough to look up curiously.
Knuckles frowned. "But it is gone?"
Sonic nodded. "It will be."
"Explain, Sonic," Knuckles demanded.
"You sure?" Sonic asked. "It's quite a long story. Sure you don't want just want us off your island right now rah rah rah and so on?"
Knuckles glared at him and then stopped because of the grin on his face, that challenging light in his eye just daring Knuckles to push back.
Knuckles tossed the tool he was still holding, lightly underhand to land back in Tails' workbag and sat down on the sand.
"I have all the time in the world, hedgehog. Feel free to astonish me with your planet-saving prowess."
He had the satisfaction of seeing Sonic stiffen in indignation and Tails burst into giggles, before they both joined him on the warm sand under the late morning sunshine and Sonic began his tale.
