Worthy of History

Knuckles decided to lead his guests underground. He'd meant to take a tour of the tunnels, view the murals and writings, maybe even add something of his own, and it didn't seem a bad place to start, because he had no idea what he was actually going to do with guests today. He was beginning to really appreciate their presence, but that didn't know he knew how to best deal with it.

He picked up a torch at the entrance, and Tails turned out to carry a flashlight. Sonic was handed the box with the paint bowls and brushes, which he frowned at, but to Knuckles' surprise he didn't comment.

They had gotten no further than a dozen steps down into the dark tunnel that opened behind a door hidden by a curtain of ivy when Tails gave a surprised, excited little shout. "You are glowing!"

Knuckles stopped, freshly lighted torch in hand and squinted at his own quills, or at least at the ones next to his face because those were the only ones he could see. As expected, here in the dim light, the body paint shone a soft green, pulsating gently in brightness with the ebb and flow of the Master Emerald's power through the island. "Yes?"

"You have glow in the dark body paint." Sonic was shaking his head, in disbelief or amusement or both, Knuckles wasn't sure.

"Yes. That a problem?"

Sonic shook his head. "No, it's cool. Stop being so sensitive."

"I'm not-"

Tails interrupted Knuckles' protest, pointing at his spines and waving his flashlight at him. "This isn't phosphorescent light. It's changing brightness. What is it?"

"Sure it changes; it glows in reaction to the Master Emerald's energy field."

Tails stared. Blinked. "You have... Chaos luminosity. In paint."

Knuckles shrugged. "Sure." He frowned at his friend. "You don't?" It wasn't unusual on the island; there were several murals painted with Chaos radiant paint, and the elements used in producing it lined the walls and ceiling of quite a few underground tunnels, lighting the eternal night in the island's underground zones. What did Tails think caused the light down there?

"No." Tails stretched out a finger as if to grab at Knuckles' spines, then thought better of it. "This is so cool. Can we get some, too? It'll be fun if all of us glow tonight when we're waiting for the Alignment outside."

It was still hard to wrap his mind around the idea that they wanted to stay into the night.

"Maybe he used up all his paint and feathers and we'll have to look like no-one invited us. Knux?" Sonic was grinning, the playful teasing grin that made Knuckles skip on pointing out truthfully that nobody had invited them indeed. He felt bad about that now, because they were making it very clear they wanted to be here and partake, and he had no idea how to deal with that.

But, Sonic was grinning that playful grin, and Knuckles kept his thoughts to himself. "I still have paint, and feathers," he said instead.

It was the right thing to say, because Tails smiled at hearing it and Sonic clapped Knuckles along the shoulder. "We're holding you up to that."

Still kind of dumbfounded, Knuckles nodded, and made a mental note to take them back to his house before sunset at least. But those were plans for a later time, and for now the echidna led his friends down into the labyrinth of catacombs and tunnels, not towards the Hidden Palace, but instead to a tract where various murals and writings could be found on the walls.

They passed the one with Sonic and Eggman and the Master Emerald, a couple murals showing historical events from long ago, in various shades of fade, then a somewhat abstract Perfect Chaos mural that Knuckles himself had only recognized as such after the whole catastrophe took place and he'd returned to the island. Like the Super Sonic mural, a prophesy wasn't necessarily useful when it came around, but was there to mock you with its insight in retrospective.

Tails had studied the murals with interest as they passed them, but remained mostly silent. It was Sonic who finally came back to asking Knuckles for his reasons to bring them down here, and his plans for what they should do now.

"Well, we could try and... paint something. That's one of the most lasting traditions surrounding the ending of a cycle and the beginning of a new one, but, I... I can't paint well." Knuckles shrugged. He'd been down this train of thought, but there was a different quality to it now that he had guests for the occasion.

But Sonic and Tails looked interested. "I can do fine blue prints," the little fox noticed.

Sonic elbowed him. "I kinda think that's not the art style favoured in murals."

"Style changed quite a bit over the centuries." Knuckles vaguely waved back down the corridor, where they'd just passed a handful of examples of that change in style throughout the centuries. "Some of the Old People's art is... abstract."

Sonic grinned. "We'll do whatever stickfigures we can manage and call it our style then."

Knuckles frowned, again unsure if he was being made fun of or if Sonic was trying to be friendly or if the hedgehog actually enjoyed his participation.

Tails interrupted Knuckles' train of thought before he could come to any meaningful conclusion. "So, where do we paint something?"

"It used to be customary to repaint a mural, often by drawing over an old one that was no longer relevant or symbolic for the new cycle."

Tails nodded thoughtfully. "To replace the old symbol with something new."

Knuckles nodded back. "Yes." He shot a look over at Sonic. "Sometimes a prophecy would be painted, but not always. Recent events, too, if they were the cause of change that was expected to last."

"The one with me as Super Sonic fighting Eggman over the Master Emerald, that was one of the prophetic ones?" Sonic's head was tilted in thought.

"Yes, painted about four thousand years ago."

Sonic shook his head. "It's kind of hard to believe..."

Knuckles frowned at him. "I didn't ask you to believe anything," he gave back, sharper than intended and surprised at the sudden feeling of having to defend himself.

But Sonic was smiling. "Hey, easy, I wasn't criticising, it just really is kind of... fascinating, that someone would know thousands of years ago that I would be here, and Eggman, and you, and what we would do."

"I wonder if your people were time travellers or something, if they maybe had seen the future," Tails put in, ears perked and tails twirling agitatedly as they did when he was thinking hard.

"There are legends of Chaos Sight," Knuckles noticed, temper calmed again as he thought back to what he'd read about the old times. "About clairvoyance using the Emerald powers of Life and Truth. It is said the Chaos Emeralds exist outside of time, in a way, and the legends say there used to be seers that could draw on this part of the Chaos forces as other Chaos Controllers could use them to sustain them in a fight, or how Chaos Healers used to be able to call them up to cure the sick and injured." He shook his head, pulled his thoughts back to the present. It was long gone. The past.

When he focused back on his friends, he found Tails looking at him with wide eyes, and even Sonic looked pensive.

"Do you think there still are people out there like this?", Tails asked quietly.

"There are several Chaos Controllers around after all," Sonic remarked.

"Chaos skills of any kind are rare." Knuckles shrugged. Strong, developed powers were even more so. Latent skills, never properly learned and used, probably more widespread. "Maybe. I know only of a handful of mentions since the beginning of the very first cycle."

Tails thoughtfully looked at him. "The first cycle? That was long ago?"

"Very. Legends say the first circle began with the beginning of time, with the Mysterious Beyond, which created the world as we know it."

"The Mysterious Beyond? I thought the Echidnas had several gods," Sonic threw in. Casually. Tone clearly as non-judgmental as he could do. Curious, perhaps.

"We do," Knuckles noticed. "Though how many probably depends on your definition of 'god'."

Sonic frowned. "There is a definition?"

Tails was studying Knuckles and Sonic, contemplative himself. "There isn't."

Knuckles smiled. It was unfamiliar to agree with Tails, on something conceptual. Whenever they agreed, it was usually over which mad stunt not to try out. Which Sonic tended to ignore completely.

"So," Sonic trailed. "Humour me?"

Knuckles' attention returned to his friends. "I don't know what exactly a god is, Sonic. Maybe no-one does, and it's harder to tell between languages or across times. The old people called Perfect Chaos a god. They would consider the Time Eater a god, I guess." Sonic raised a brow and Knuckles quickly continued before the hedgehog could think of interrupting him. "The old legends are full of gods. Many many gods. There are weather gods, seasonal gods, gods embodying forces of nature, gods of day and night, plants and animals, rain and sun. Some are made out to be powerful, devastatingly so. Others seem more like people. The same word, god, gets used for the force driving the lava flow in the volcano, for Perfect Chaos and for the creator of the entire world." Knuckles shrugged. He'd had a many long, solitary winter evenings to contemplate that sort of thing if nothing else came to attract his attention. "That pretty much makes the word meaningless. A god is something powerful. As such, the Master Emerald might be one, too. I don't know. I don't think it matters."

Sonic was frowning. "Huh. Do you, um, believe in them, then?"

It was a blunt question, like Sonic asked them, and one Knuckles had no answer to either. He knew Perfect Chaos to be real. What did that mean for other creatures out of tales of old? Nothing, perhaps. He shrugged and decided to just throw that question back at Sonic. Let him see how he dealt with it himself. "Do you?"

The hedgehog blinked, clearly not having expected to be asked in turn. "I don't know. It doesn't matter much, to me, I think."

Maybe that was right, anyway. Knuckles frowned. He'd meant to spend some time thinking on the important questions of existence, in honour of the occasion, but he'd not been in any way prepared to discuss them. Least of all with Sonic. Discussion of deep things was more Tails' forte, although this wasn't his topic either perhaps.

The echidna's eyes sought the little fox as the thought hit and Tails' double tails swooshed behind his back at the sudden attention.

"So, the first cycle was when the world was created?", Tails recounted Knuckles' words from a minute ago. "How long ago? The Alignment cycles don't all have the same length."

Knuckles grinned, secretly as glad for this awkward topic to end as the others. He was already growing tired of explaining things, too, but at the same time, it was nice, kind of. Nice that someone cared, someone other than him.

He nodded at Tails. "The first one started about 6000 years ago."

Tails smiled. "Well, I'm sure the actual universe is a couple billion years older than that, but we're talking legends, not physics. Maybe it's the time when the first Echidna society started?"

Knuckles shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe?" It was beginning to be frustrating how many things ended at some variation of 'don't know'. There were reasons why Knuckles wasn't always particularly fond of thinking too hard on things that just were and that you couldn't change anyway.

Feeling Sonic's eyes on him, Knuckles frowned and turned back around to face the hedgehog. "What."

Sonic's eyebrows went up comically fast. "Nothing. Really. Just... You never struck me as a philosophy on life type of guy, so, this is unexpected? Not necessarily bad unexpected, just, you know."

It felt odd to agree to Sonic's judgment of his basic character. "No. Yes. I mean, I'm not." He shook his head, started over, not the first time today. He was badly accustomed to talking, much less to anything other than the superficial, nonsensical talk that tended to fill most conversations, and he found he utterly failed at it. For a moment, he wished he could just go back to the simplicity of hitting Sonic for something he said. It was an option... Then again, he had promised himself to try and not repeat past mistakes, and there had been so many misunderstandings. He would cross that line, soon again, probably, but it didn't need to be today of all days. He sighed. "I, we, now, I suppose, are celebrating a new beginning, and an ending of this old cycle. It is traditionally a time for contemplation, of the important things. I was prepared to do that alone, by myself, but you wanted to partake, in, I quote, "whatever it is", so, I suppose, you get philosophy, too." His gaze flicked back to actually meet Sonic's eyes. "Anything else?"

The hedgehog obviously noticed the challenge not at all well hidden in the tone, but he smiled. "Nope, all good."

Knuckles nodded, and turned back to finally make the way down the corridor.

"You know a lot about all this history stuff," Tails noticed. Approval? Knuckles wasn't sure.

"I didn't always," he allowed, looking back towards the wall with the Perfect Chaos mural. "But it seemed important. I couldn't have anyone else know more about this place or the Master Emerald again. It's dangerous."

"That's what you say to avoid having us call you a history geek," Sonic said and earned an elbow from Tails for it.

"Not everyone is ignorant of the past, you know. There's a lot to be learned."

Sonic rubbed his side. It couldn't actually hurt, and he totally should have been fast enough to evade Tails' blow altogether. "I'm not ignorant," the hedgehog complained. "I know lots of history! Perfect Chaos and Dark Gaia and the whole ARK thing, for example."

Knuckles found himself grinning. "You mean you know the history that's been trying to kill us all."

Sonic nodded seriously. "Exactly! The important kind!" He stretched out an arm, pointing further back the corridor at the Perfect Chaos mural. "There, your folks made murals of it! Important!"

"Obviously." Tails laughed, then suddenly caught himself and turned back to Knuckles. "What are we going to draw?"

Hesitantly, the echidna shrugged. "I couldn't choose."

"Huh. We don't exactly have a prophet handy, so I suggest we do some actual event." Sonic had stopped protesting his history knowledge as well as pretending his ribs hurt.

Tails grinned. "Good starting point. But I totally see your problem, Knuckles; we've known each other for a few years only, and we've had dramatic battles and giant monsters aplenty."

Sonic again indicated the mural they'd already passed. "The Perfect Chaos incident is out; it doesn't deserve two murals."

"True." Tails nodded. "And it has to be something involving Knuckles." At Sonic's questioning look, Tails shrugged. "It's an Echidna tradition, on an Echidna island. All the murals here have something to do with the island's people. Right now that means Knuckles. So."

Sonic nodded. "Makes sense. Sorry Dark Gaia." He grinned.

Right, Knuckles thought. He'd sat Dark Gaia out, waiting, worrying, wondering, listening to the disturbed echoes of Chaos in the Master's energy, but he'd let them fight their battles alone when maybe he could've been of help. Perhaps that was something he ought to change, too. Stop getting involved only when he basically stumbled into it. Maybe he should actually go down and see what he could do, next time something terrible happened on the surface. To his friends.

Unaware of the echidna's thoughts, Sonic still wore a grin as he went on. "Dark Gaia was ugly anyway; we're not drawing that."

"That requirement drastically shrinks down our options." Tails laughed.

Knuckles was following the exchange between his friends with growing bafflement. He'd not been prepared for a discussion on it, even if he was going to do a mural, and he was entirely unprepared for the motivation and vigor his guests showed for their participation.

Unfortunately Sonic had caught up with Knuckles' silence and decided to round on him now. "Hey, it's your celebration." It didn't seem much like that right now, Knuckles thought. "Any suggestions? You thought about it, didn't you?"

He had, that was true, in a way just now again, but now that he was asked, he felt self-conscious about the idea.

"Aww, come on!"

"I... I was thinking when we fought Metal Sonic?" There was a second of silence and he scrambled to explain the choice. "It's... The murals show changes, important events that signified a swing, a change of direction, a change of philosophy or beliefs even. We have the one that shows you and me and Eggman fighting over the Master Emerald. We're enemies on this one."

"We were not when we fought Chaos, or when we all went to space." Sonic had a way of just completely ignoring Knuckles' past mistakes that was more astounding than he'd ever dare tell the hedgehog.

"No, but although we ended up there together, we didn't go for the same cause exactly. I went for the Master Emerald."

Sonic folded his arms, head tilted slightly at Knuckles in a way that spoke of doubt and an air of 'you have a wrong picture of what happened'. "You also came for Eggman, and we'd have been in real trouble without you and your shiny rock. Shadow and I could only use the Emeralds because you'd gotten them out of the Eclipse Cannon and all."

Knuckles shook his head. "Yes. No. Yes, I ended up on your side, but not actually by choice. It was circumstance."

Sonic looked ready to launch into an explanation on why that was wrong, but Tails stopped him by raising his hand. "I get it," he said. "You were in Station Square and on ARK as Guardian of the Master Emerald first, and anything else second."

Knuckles nodded silently.

Tails smiled. "But you weren't coming after what we thought was Eggman and turned out to be Metal Sonic to protect the Emerald."

That was closer to the gist of it, but not entirely true. "I was protecting the Emerald. On a larger scale, you could say. If Eggman conquered the world, he'd not stop at my borders, would he?"

Sonic looked like he'd made some startling realisation right now, but wasn't protesting anymore. "You figured that?"

Knuckles glared at him. "Do you think I'm dumb?" A grin spread on Sonic's face, and the Guardian groaned. "Wait, don't answer that." He took a breath, trying for the right words. "I can't always... I need to... weigh my options. I need to have priorities, and they're not the same as yours. They can't be. I need to be careful in ways you don't, but I was wrong when I thought this is your fight and I can look away as long as it doesn't directly involve me. Because in the end, it will involve all of us."

Sonic nodded, and the teasing grin had faded from his expression for the moment. "Yeah." He studied Knuckles briefly. "Good choice, I'm game." A sudden grin was back on his face. "I hope one of you can draw somewhat decent clouds."

Knuckles blinked. "Oh."

Speedy's note: While we see only the mural with Eggman and Super Sonic in Sonic 3&K, and a large Perfect Chaos mural in Sonic Adventure, I take the liberty to assume if murals are a typical cultural thing, there'd be more than one on Angel Island. We blast through its zones so quickly in game, there have to be lots of unseen nooks and crannies.