Chapter 6; Commanding Flight, Like a Hero
Why him? Why did it have to be him? All he ever wanted was to guard the master emerald in the peace and quiet of his island. He'd grown up in nature's solitude; never accompanied, yet never alone. The little feral creatures, mobini, were his friends. The wind and birds were his music, and his surroundings his television. He didn't even really know much about technology, beyond what he saw as his island drifted past the world below on a charted course through the sky, and that which the occasional thief brought along before he sent them packing. The island was his world; so much so that he barely wondered what existed beyond Angel island's edge.
Then Dr. Robotnik landed and turned his world upside down. He'd seemed so sincere at first; something he'd always hated about the fat human. Knuckles hadn't had any real conversations with other people before that, and still had trouble telling when someone was and wasn't acting. He'd bought the seemingly supportive offer of help against a great threat to his island- not helped one bit by the ancient mural the echidna had often powered over in his island's deep ruins. A hedgehog locked in battle with a strange person. The echidna clan had marked it as some type of great prophecy from their shamans, but it had no other context; destroyed by their own greed long ago. He'd never have guessed that the man before him was the thief, not the protector. From then on, that blue hedgehog just kept popping in and out of his life.
If Knuckles had gotten any say on the matter back then, he'd have never wanted to meet anyone. He wouldn't have chosen to meet Sonic. And he wouldn't have chosen to learn that there'd been one thing missing from his life, all this time. Friendship. Real friendship, with others like him. Now, he couldn't have it any other way. Curse that hedgehog and his seemingly endless list of acquaintances. Even if Sonic was as much his rival as his friend, they'd eventually clicked and formed a strong bond of trust… A trust that was tenuously balanced on whether the less experienced echidna could read another's intentions. "And I blamed you too much for that." Knuckles growled to himself quietly as he looked out the hoverjet's round window. Reckless, cocky, headstrong; Sonic was all of that and more. But he'd been right to battle Dr. Eggman so intensely; the man was evil. No one had seen an attack on this scale coming.
No one had expected the execution.
Which had led to the reason for this trip. For too long now, one of their best resources, and a close companion before this war, had been following in the lost hedgehog's shoes. It had worked at first, but now Knuckles really, really needed his expertise against a technological army he knew nothing about. "Land here." The red-furred commander ordered the pilot, stepping out of the small craft and looking over the refugee camp in front of him. This was his last known location, and if he didn't hurry the kid'd be gone before- "Tails!" The young fox's head swivelled at his name, then grimaced as he looked away. Tough luck kid; he'd been running from the truth long enough, and Knuckles wasn't going to let him run off to hide again. "Stop. We need to talk." The pure anger of the fox's face when he turned back was nearly enough to stop him in his tracks, but he'd faced far greater threats than an angry ally.
Tails growled as he spun to face the echidna, pointing a finger accusingly. "You want to talk?" The young fox snapped. "How about you focus on making a refugee camp that doesn't need to relocate every couple of days?" The stained, gloved finger jabbed at the red chest once the distance was closed, revealing in full how disheveled the orange fur was. "Heck, you're the commander of the resistance! How about you actually do your job and hold the front line for once?!" Yelling now, every word punctuated with a sharp jab of the digit into the echidna's chest, but it was the tears in the corners of Tails's eyes that finally made Knuckles reply to the tirade.
Strong mittens grasped the fox's shoulders, Tails struggling to jerk away until he was pulled against Knuckles chest in a surprisingly sudden hug. After another moment of struggling, the exhausted fox cub collapsed against the strong chest, sobbing. Chaos, how long had it been since he'd cried? Since he'd lost his brother? Knuckles though it more likely that he'd been holding it in since his death, trying to deal by keeping himself too busy to grieve. "What do you expect me to do, kid?" Knuckles answered in a soft tone. "Other than the Guardian Units and a couple of clans, most Mobians are pacifists. We never had much of an army to start with, and almost all my recruits are completely green." The echidna grimaced at that as he got the fox to sit next to him. You couldn't take a person with no prior fighting experience and make them a warrior within a week.
Tails knew, of course, that the resistance was giving it everything they had. People were fighting for their homes, their families, but when you put a green soldier up against battle ready robots all that happened was an injury or their eventual capture. So many had been captured or wounded over these last weeks that it was hard to keep the front line supplied; even GUN was running short on hands. Every Mobian with powers came forward, then, trying to help, and thank the stars for that, or their front line would've been retreating even faster than it already was. They were outnumbered, outgunned and outmaneuvered because of that, but the resistance wasn't about to give up yet.
It was when previously captured fighters began reappearing that their numbers truly began to suffer. Once again, no one had expected this turn of events, or that Dr. Eggman would go so far. The captured had joined the robotic army, with crude cybernetics fused into their bodies, eyes devoid of will and one forearm replaced with a laser cannon of some kind. Commanded alongside robots by the masked one, known only as Infinite, they stayed just far enough back that the resistance had only managed to capture two of them; before they appeared to detonate and disintegrate, leaving the heroes nothing for their efforts.
Knowing what fate awaited them, and knowing they'd be fighting people they knew to the death, many of the resistance either quit outright or simply went AWOL when they thought no one was looking. Knuckles couldn't blame them; shooting your loved ones when there might still be a chance to save them was the last thing anyone wanted to do. As a result of the Doctor's new tactic, whole towns and cities were now surrendering, not trusting the resistance to defend them. "We need you, Tails." The echidna finished explaining, now that he and the fox were seated in a hastily constructed tent. "The resistance needs you, and whatever edge you can give us."
Knuckles shook his head when the invite made the kid bristle. "Look, I know you're set on helping people escape, but unless we can figure out how to stop Eggman's armies you're fighting a loosing battle. You're not the only one helping people flee, but you're the only one we've got who can hack his way through that fat man's systems like wet paper." While it was true that they had other brains recruited through the resistance, none had that firsthand experience that Tails did.
Unfortunately that didn't seem to convince the fox, who avoided eye contact. "I know you've got a think tank. It's not that hard to hack Eggman." They could simply put their heads together if they hadn't figured it out yet. Or so he thought; Knuckles seemed to have an answer for everything. "Not from inside one of his bases. They're good, but most of them couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag, and we've already lost our best programmers in an enemy raid." Again, the truth, and Tails hated it. That particular team of techs had been near the front lines, working on a way to remotely control death egg sentinels. and Knuckles still had no idea how their camp got surrounded. That shouldn't have been possible, and their research was lost with them. "I know what you're doing, kid. Trying to become Sonic isn't going to help you feel better."
He expected the punch that followed, letting it and the next one connect while simply blocking, and knowing that he'd crossed a line that needed to be crossed for the kid's own sake. Tails needed to let out his grief and anger before he got himself captured or worse, and if he had to be a safe target, so be it. But it was after a few more hits that he did something that caught the fox cub off-guard, deftly seizing one fist in his glove and pulling Tails into what he suspected was a much-needed hug. He struggled in the strong grip before sagging into it, sobbing into the red fur. "I miss him too, kid." The fight over, onlookers began to turn away with a glare from Knuckles, leaving him free to awkwardly pat the fox's head. He wasn't Sonic. He could never replace him, or be the brother that the blue blur was, but he could at least take up the mantle of family in the lost hedgehog's place. "When this is over, if you want, you can join me on Angel Island. Going to be lonely without you know who popping in unannounced." Chaos, he hoped that came out right, and it seemed it did when Tails nodded, burrowing his face into his chest as he let out the rest of his grief.
They had a war to win, and needed to stick together.