The Great Flood

Tails' eyes were wide, a nearly iridescent blue reflecting the bright beam of his flashlight. Scared and startled, but only for a handful of seconds. Then a frown dipped his brows, the large ears curving back, and it made him look no less young, but a lot less scared and a lot closer to hell-bent determined. "What can we do?!"

Knuckles bit his lip. It was an obvious question to ask. This was his home turf; it was his job to keep them safe here, and to find a way out of a situation like this.

In his mind, he flipped through the criss-cross of tunnels around here. There was not a single one he hadn't been in countless times; he knew the dark underground of the island as well as all the zones that saw daylight. He couldn't know how fast the water would rise where Sonic was, because that depended also on how much was flowing in and how fast, and how high it would go. But if Sonic was lying on the ground, a couple more centimeters might be enough to be fatal. They didn't have time, not for this slow shifting of rocks where they needed to watch their every breath lest it unsettle anything and bring more rocks down on them all.

Tails was still looking at him expectantly.

Knuckles grimly dropped the rock he'd lifted before Sonic's shout from the other side. "We don't have time for this. Sonic?!"

"Yeah?!" The trace of panic was still there in his friend's voice.

"Listen, we can't dig through here quickly enough without making more of it collapse! I know another way around; we'll come and get you! Might take a moment, but we're coming round to get you!"

Next to him, Tails gasped, but Sonic's answer was quicker than anything the little fox could've said. "'kay! Just, you know, hurry!"

Now Tails was quick enough to speak up. "We will! Hang in there!" The blue eyes narrowed back on Knuckles. "Lead the way."

There was nothing else to be said, so the Guardian just nodded. They scrambled across the rocks stewn about until the next sharp turn, then the floor was clear and Knuckles took off running. There was no need to worry Tails wouldn't be able to keep pace, because Tails was used to keeping pace with Sonic.

Knuckles took them pell-mell down the steep incline of the next corridor they came about, only able to slide around the sharp turns instead of smacking into the walls by grabbing the rock at the corners. He didn't bother to look over his shoulder at what Tails did to go round; the quick taptaptap of the fox's light feet, the whir of his tails and the bouncing shine of his torch always kept right behind him.

The wild chase down the dark pathway ended at a door that had them bursting into a lighter corridor lined with the greenish bricks of Hydrocity. Knuckles didn't slow his pace, took them alongside a noisy canal filled to the brim that was spilling water over its rim. The echidna almost slipped on the wet pavement several times, had to save himself with a quick glide and a scramble to regain his feet once when the path took a steep dive down. They raced across a wooden bridge that swayed wildly with the strain, then back up a round staircase. Knuckles took the old, worn treads two at a time; Tails didn't even bother with the stairs and took to the air entirely.

They emerged in another relatively well-lit tunnel with low ceiling and a sloshing, wild canal aside the walkway. "Is your flashlight - water-proof?!" Knuckles forced out the question between gasps for breath.

"Sure!" Even as breathless with the quick pace, Tails sounded indignant at the question.

Knuckles almost grinned and jumped into the canal at the end of the walkway. The current swept him along, dipping down into a slide, round and down through a couple narrow openings until it spat him out into the air. The water pummeled in a cascade towards a large pool below, but Knuckles caught himself in a glide, shaking water out of his spines and taking aim for a platform at the other side above the pool. Still wet and heavy, his glide dropped him short and instead of landing atop the platform, he could only snatch the ledge of it. When he pulled himself up, he found Tails already there, shaking water out of his pelt.

"Where to?"

Knuckles pointed up the wall. "There's a small entrance near the ceiling." He stepped up to the wall to climb.

Tails was already hovering above his head, both hands extended down to him. "I'm quicker. Hold on."

Knuckles didn't argue. It was neither the time nor the place for it, and when Tails' hands locked with his and he was pulled upwards at an astonishing speed, he had to admit that yes, this was faster.

Tails swung him into the dark tunnel opening before them and they were back to running through the near darkness, but not for long, then another narrow staircase led them up to join a wider and lighter corridor with brick walls and floor again. A long way down the corridor, blues and gold reflected their torchlight.

"There's the jewel picture down there," Tails realized, coming up to run at Knuckles' side. "Do you think the way we came is clear?!"

Knuckles shook his head. "I don't know, but it'll be safer to break through another blockage if one of us isn't right below it!"

"What if we're not fast enough! It's been minutes, we needed quite a while to get from here to where the cave-in happened, what if Sonic doesn't have that long?!"

The echidna ground his teeth. He'd been thinking the same thing, all the way down here. It didn't even matter this time that Sonic couldn't swim, if he was pinned down, he'd drown as soon as the water level rose to his face. "Damnit, Tails, I don't – There's no quicker way!"

His gaze flashed to his friend, but it was the bright green and blue and gold twinkles that caught his eye on the wall behind Tails, and he skidded to a stop from his run. "Or maybe there is." He stared at the jewel picture. Water was running down the wall from creaks around its edges, lots of tiny waterfalls adding to the illusion of the rivers and lakes depicted actually moving.

Tails had realized he wasn't running with him anymore and had doubled back. "What's wrong?! Knuckles!"

"There's water behind there." The Guardian traced a fingertip along the creaks the spilled water down the ancient wall art.

Tails came up beside him, frowning. "That means it's flooded behind there! You said it connects to the tunnel where Sonic is?"

Knuckles nodded.

"We shouldn't be here," Tails continued. "We have to get to Sonic, and this looks like it'll burst. We don't want to be here when it happens!"

"But maybe we do." The echidna stared at the wall, transfixed with a sudden idea. "Sacrifice something of worth, because the values of things change, or you discover new items of value as the world changes with the passage of time", he mumbled.

Tails blinked at him, obviously devoid of understanding. "What?"

"It's something that's written down. Some of the philosophy I mentioned. Ancient words about... adjusting your values to a new time, to a change in the world." He looked at the mural in crystal and gold. "We're going to break that down and make a way through to Sonic." It felt strange saying the thought aloud. Final.

The little fox stared. "But... You said yourself that there isn't much like it left!"

Knuckles nodded. "Yeah." He studied the wall, the delicately arranged gems and glitter. "It is also the lowest part of this tunnel. There is water in there. It has nowhere to go. If we don't provide a way for it to flow off, it will soon have risen to Sonic's level, long before we can get there."

Tails bit his lip. "Can we even break it? It's holding all this water, at least so far."

The echidna felt a crooked smile ghost over his face. "No doubt about it."

There wasn't. Doubt, that is. If this was a sacrifice, he didn't feel its gravity yet. There wasn't time for doubts and regrets.

"I need you to hurry back some of the way we came, until after that corner with the statues Sonic waved at, someway up that last hill."

Tails still stared at him. "What about you? If it's full of water behind there, it'll come rushing this way if you break through the wall!"

Knuckles nodded. "I know. Don't worry about me. I'm not drowning in my own tunnels on an ancient holiday. Nobody will drown here today. But I know only to keep myself safe."

Tails was frowning, a serious expression set unfamiliarly deeply into his brow. But he was fighting to conjure up a smile, too. A stern one at that. "Okay. I'm going. But I'm coming back soon as it looks clear, and if I find out you drowned, you'll be sorry."

The Guardian grinned in spite of himself. "Just go."

"Be back in a minute. Good luck."

Knuckles nodded his thanks even as Tails turned and flew off.

The Guardian took a moment to close his eyes, try and still his racing heart. He counted to twenty to give Tails time to get clear, focused on the thrum of the Master Emerald's energy in the ground under his feet, like the island's heartbeat. Safe, steady, unfazed.

Then he reached out to that same energy, to its strength, to fiery, chaotic green, felt it tingle along his nerves, an electric shiver as he clenched his right into a firm fist. He didn't doubt he could break through this wall, but he'd have but one moment to find something, anything to hold on to and avoid being swept along. He took a last, deep breath, drew back and channeled all of his strength and some of that lend by the Great Emerald into his punch.

For a brief instant as his knuckles made contact, the stones gave way under his blow and for that triumphant second, he thought he could punch straight through. Then all the water that was behind the wall pushed back. The rock and gold and gems between his fist and the water crumbled and then it was like the whole world was falling apart around him. Rock and water broke over him and he realized how drastically he'd miscalculated the sheer force of it.

There was no chance to hold on to anything. There was nothing to hold on to. It was a swirling, gushing tide that flooded over him, around him, swept him along, head over heels, completely out of control. What breath he'd held was smacked right out of his chest and he fought not to gasp in water instead of it. He flung out his arms in hopes of being able to grab something, anything as it rushed past, but the flood just carried him along and didn't let go.

He was spun up and down and around, then smashed into something head-first. Black sparks exploded in front of his eyes, washing out the blurry blue of the water. Somewhere distant, the Emerald cried out in alarm, but he didn't have the capacity to focus on it. His head pounded, his lungs burned a fiery ache with the need to breathe and the current was still tearing at his limbs, but he didn't feel like he was moving anymore.

There was something solid in front of and below him and he clumsily grappled for purchase on it. He'd thought it was a wall, but it was kind of round. A pillar maybe. The flood was pulling him against it, and he struggled to get his feet under him. Maybe he'd be able to climb free of the current?

The stone was slick with water and his grip failing with the grey darkness creeping into his vision from lack of air. He flung out a shaking hand in hopes of finding anything to hold onto and met a ledge and the bubbling, splashing sound of his hand breaking the water surface, but his quivering arms didn't have the strength to pull up his weight. The world swam and flickered and dimmed, his fingers slipped off the ledge again and he was sinking back under and –

Something closed around his wrist, near painfully tight and something that wasn't the water was tearing at his body, up and over that ledge and out of the water to his waist. He coughed and desperately gasped for air, dimly aware of more pulling and tearing and something repeatedly smacking him against the back before rolling him over. There were hands on his chest and at his neck, and there was shouting. "Knuckles!"

He blinked, vision clearing only slowly. Tails was leaning over him, blue eyes wide, ears flat. At seeing Knuckles' eyes open, the fox's face cycled near comically fast from worried over relieved to an utterly furious expression that Knuckles had rarely ever seen on him.

"You stupid, stupid idiot! Is that what you consider "keeping yourself safe", huh? HUH?!"

Knuckles tried to force his muscles to stop shaking. "I… miscalculated?"

"Miscalculated?! You almost got yourself killed!" Tails was still outright glaring at him.

There was no denying that, so Knuckles said nothing, instead attempted to sit up. In spite of his obvious anger, Tails lend a steadying hand when dizziness swept over the echidna once he was vertical.

"Thanks," he mumbled as his head cleared, and hoped Tails understood that covered everything from pulling him out of the water to helping him up.

Tails just nodded, but his expression was back to being more worry than anger. "I think you hit your head."

Knuckles swiped a hand over the ache on his forehead, finding a rather impressive goose egg and a cut that put a red stain on his glove as he pulled back. "I've had worse," he noticed, taking his first actual look around. "Oh."

What he'd thought was a pillar wasn't a pillar. It was a statue of an echidna, one of the tallest ones on the island, standing to six or seven times his own height. What he'd taken for a ledge wasn't the corner or a platform or anything of the sort, but the statue's giant, flat hand. It stood with both hands stretched out in front of it, palms up, in a receiving prayer pose, and Tails and him were sitting in the right of the giant statue's hands.

The fox had followed Knuckles' astonished look. "I think you can thank your ancestors for not being dead," he said.

"Yeah. Them, and you." He pulled his gaze back down from the stern face of the stone echidna above to his friend still crouched at his side, Tails' hand still a light weight on his shoulder, and the statue's large palm safely holding them up over the current still noisily rushing past below. If he'd had the time and less of a headache, he'd maybe have wanted to consider the symbolism of this weird turn of events, but they absolutely didn't have the time.

"We need to go," he said, chancing a look down from their little island. The water level was clearly falling and was now only to the statue's knees when it must've been at least to its hips or probably its stomach when Tails pulled him up here. But that still meant it was higher than Knuckles was tall. No way he could run down there without being swept back under. "Do you think you can carry me?"

Tails nodded tersely. "Sure." He stepped up to the edge of the giant stone palm, balancing near the index finger. "When I went after you, the water was still so high I could barely fly between ceiling and water surface up there, and it was all the way to the ceiling when you smashed the wall in. I had to wait for it to fall some." He gestured vaguely up the corridor. "But I didn't think I'd have more time to wait. I almost didn't find you."

Knuckles grimaced. "Sorry. Thanks."

His young friend raised a brow at him. "Third time's the charm," he said, and somehow sounded almost exactly like Sonic for that moment. Then his twin tails lifted him up, Knuckles took hold of his wrists and was pulled along again.

He'd not even realized how far the flood had born him, but even with Tails' rather high speed, it was a minute until they were back at the smashed in wall. It was a nasty scar in the rocks now, water still bleeding through at slightly more than waist height.

Knuckles demanded Tails put him down as soon as the ground below seemed vaguely walkable. The fox didn't protest, at least not aloud. He was panting with the effort of carrying Knuckles for this distance, but even then he shot Knuckles a critical look like he was expecting him to not stay on his feet when put down. Knuckles ignored him. He wasn't a 100 percent, but he was certainly functional, and he didn't have time to consider a minor injury while just a few minutes' run from here now, Sonic could be drowning.

The water was often still knee-high, but no longer as fast a current, and it splashed around them as they ran further uphill. Slowing them down, when every second could still count. They'd lost far too much time already. What if – Knuckles clenched his fist, willing the thought away. Not today. Please not today, not one of his best friends, who'd come to do him a favour. Who'd come not to lend hand in a fight against a common enemy, but just for the sake of friendship. Please no.

Their path merged into the tunnel they'd taken together, all three of them, before this happened. It dipped slightly downhill, and the water soon reached Knuckles' chest. He struggled to keep his pace against the resistance, rowing his arms in a half swim. Tails lost his patience with this turn of events, spinning tails pulling him up and hands snatching at Knuckles' left hand to drag him along, still half in the water, like some weird water sport.

Knuckles regained his feet stumbling when the tunnel curved back up, the water falling back to just below his knee. Still too high. Still way too high.

If Tails was thinking the same thing, he didn't say anything. Part running, part flying, he'd overtaken Knuckles by now, spurred on by that same desperate fear for their friend's life.

They squeezed past a spot where a smaller cave-in had covered half the width of the tunnel, waded through the small lake that had built up behind the blockage, out the other side, picking a weaving path around the rocks that now lay randomly stewn about the ground.

Then the beam of Tails' flashlight caught on what had to be the wall of fallen rocks that had necessitated this entire darn detour, swept down along the water covered ground from there, caught at the bright red of a sneaker between rocks and muddy water.

"Sonic! Sonic!"

The reply to Tails' frantic shout was a gurgled gasp and a splash.

Just a step behind Tails, Knuckles rounded a large, flat rock and found himself staring into Sonic's wide, panicked eyes. The hedgehog had wrestled an arm free and was struggling to lift and turn his head far enough aside to keep his nose above the water surface, shaking with the effort of it, every higher wave washing right over his nose and mouth.

Tails' gasp of "Sonic!" fell right along with Knuckles' "Chaos!". Ever quick of thinking, Tails dropped to his knees next to Sonic, splashing water all around them, both hands reaching to help hold Sonic's head up.

That wouldn't be enough. They needed to get him out of there, and quick. Knuckles dropped to inspect the rock that pinned Sonic down. It wasn't a whole heap of rocks as Sonic had guessed. It was a large, mostly flat thing that had fallen halfway on top of another, smaller one. In a way that was luck, because it would have flattened Sonic, not just pinned him down if it had directly fallen on top of him. From the way Sonic was still struggling, there had to actually be a little bit of space beneath the rock for him, just not enough to slip out.

Knuckles stumbled through the water to one end of the flat rock. "Tails!"

The fox's head snapped up.

"I'm going to lift this up. You'll have to pull him out and clear, no matter what happens, keep pulling, got it?!"

Tails nodded sharply, one hand still supporting Sonic's head, the other getting a good grip on his free arm.

Some small voice in the back of his mind clamoured that it would be dangerous to pull at Sonic, not knowing for sure if or how badly he was injured, but that went ignored, because they hardly had any choices here.

Knuckles brushed his hands along the edges of the rock, hooking his fingers under it. Slick with water as anything else around here right now. But it came even as his grip slipped up and he needed to readjust to get a grip beneath it. With a grunt of effort, Knuckles managed to yank it to knee height. His head gave a sharp pound of protest. Tails yelled something. There were lots of splashing noises and a strangled gasp of pain that was probably Sonic, and Knuckles finally managed to toss the slippery rock somewhat to the side, away from his friends, to where it caused another big wave before behind swallowed up by the water.

The echidna span round towards the others fast enough to send his head back into a dizzy spin. Tails was sitting in the water, both arms wrapped around Sonic who was shaking and gasping, clinging to Tails for dear life. Distantly Knuckles thought they should be checking him for injury, but for the time being all he managed was stumble to his friends' side and heavily drop down to sit next to them, water lapping around their waists. As if this was some casual sitting in a pool to cool down on a hot day. It felt absurd.

For a moment, all he could do was sit and breathe, pulse hammering in his ears in tune with the headache. He shook his head to clear it, firmly focusing on Sonic. What he could see of Sonic's back was bruised and scratched up, his quills tousled and bent all out of shape, sticking up in spite of dripping heavily with water. Tails' left hand was working on brushing them back down, mumbling some iteration of "it's okay, I got you, it's okay", over and over and over again, while his right arm was slung tightly around Sonic's shoulders. The hedgehog's face was practically buried into the narrow crook of Tails' neck. He was still shaking all over.

Hesitantly Knuckles reached out a hand for his friend's back, heaving with gasps or sobs or both. He lightly brushed a flat hand down from Sonic's shoulders, first left, then right, feeling along ribs and spine for any obvious damage and thankfully finding no broken bones or anything. He didn't know how to comfort, that would have to be Tails' job, but he awkwardly rested his flat hand lightly across Sonic's shoulder blade spines nevertheless. Sonic was a tactile person and for the moment even Knuckles, who really wasn't a tactile person by any definition, appreciated feeling the lively stir of breaths under his fingers.

It took a minute until he realized some of the shake in his hand was his own and not just Sonic's. His mind had decided imagining what the last few minutes of Sonic's waiting for them to come to his rescue must've been like, barely able to keep his nose out of the water. Knuckles wasn't afraid of water, but he'd near drowned not just once before, too, not just today, the panic of that was universal for every breathing thing, and the thought made his stomach turn worse than the angry pound of the headache.

Tails had by now succeeded in mostly smoothing Sonic's quills somewhat back into shape, which Knuckles assumed was more comforting touch than anything to do with appearance, and Sonic's fingers no longer shook with the strain of clawing into Tails' fur. He was having some success catching his breath now, too, even though he was still quivering with what had to be coming down from the mother of all panic attacks.

And yet, Sonic was the first to speak again, voice muffled in Tails' embrace. "This party sure is one of a kind," he said. "Never a dull moment."

Tails chocked on a disbelieving snort of a laugh.

Knuckles stared. "I'm sorry." This was his fault. Somehow. Certainly.

Sonic stirred, pulling his head off Tails' shoulder to sit up enough to squint back at Knuckles. "You're an idiot, Knux."

He probably deserved being called worse, but Knuckles just gaped at him, because surely he couldn't be smiling? Weird and crooked and painful, but smiling nonetheless? "I – How can you -?"

Sonic's face twitched, and now it was clearly a weird smile. "It's called a joke, Knux. Some of us make them as coping mechanisms?"

And he got that, but that didn't help, because his brain had decided to stop interacting with his mouth.

Sonic was minutely shaking his head. "Tails? Tell him this whole thing isn't his fault, because he's got that guilty look written all over him again?"

Also Tails was smiling weirdly. "This whole thing isn't your fault," he parroted, looked at Knuckles for a moment, sighed. "Really, this kinda thing is called an accident."

"I'm okay; I'm kinda used to near dying." Sonic was sitting mostly by himself now, although Tails' arm remained around his shoulder. "It's fine."

Knuckles wanted to say something about how insane that was, and how it shouldn't be okay, how the whole last half an hour had been terrible and how it had only happened because Sonic and Tails had wanted to be nice to him, how all of them, Sonic in particular, had almost died here because they wanted to be nice to him, and how that so wasn't okay, that was really very far from okay and what could he ever do to make up for this, but somehow, when he opened his mouth what made it out was "My head hurts."

Sonic blinked. "Yeah, that's a bit of a unicorn look you got going there. Very festive. How'd that happen?"

"He decided to punch in a wall and try to drown himself," Tails threw in, and Knuckles was unsure if he was still cross with him or not or if he had ever actually been angry or if it was worry and fear or whatever.

"Sounds fun, a shame I missed that."

"You're insane."

Sonic grinned, an actual, wide grin, although it didn't reach his eyes. "Yeah, so I've been told." He looked up and around and shook himself. "I'm gonna get out of here now, and there's no way you can stop me, so lend me a hand."

Somewhat expectedly, Tails was the first to be back on his feet. "I'm all over that plan." He helped Sonic stiffly climb back to his feet and stretch, but it really seemed the hedgehog was mostly in one piece, if still a little pale and shaky.

Turned out Knuckles' knees also held a slight wobble. He was unsure whether to blame the head injury or the adrenaline or both.

Tails was standing between him and Sonic, looking like he was unsure which one of them wouldn't stay on his feet, but at least he didn't say anything. "Okay, which way?"

"Please tell me you got a quick way without water out of here? Somewhere topside, with sunlight, rings and food, at best." Sonic wore a hopeful but kinda fake looking grin again.

Knuckles frowned. A lot of their options had proven no good idea. The best was probably going back most of their way and shortcut to the top then. "We could make it to a staircase that goes straight up to Mushroom Hill. We'd come by one of the rooms that always spawn lots of rings on the way there, but we'll have to go back this way, and it has some water now, obviously."

"I hate the part of "has some water"," Sonic said. "Lead the way."

That seemed a contradictory statement, but then again, this was Sonic, so Knuckles shrugged it off. He could contemplate the hedgehog's insanity once his head was no longer pounding in sync with his pulse.

There were no really other options of way until they came past the broken wall with the picture. Tails carried Sonic whenever the water in the tunnels got more than knee deep. Thankfully the levels had dropped some more from when Tails and Knuckles had come through here, and Knuckles could easily walk without danger now, leaving Tails free to airlift Sonic around. Nobody commented on the wide as possible curves Sonic took around any smaller streams and ponds they came by.

Sonic gaped at the hole in the wall and the few ragged edges that still held some broken jewels left of the corners of what had been the waterfalls picture. "Wait, you broke this?"

"Yes." Knuckles shrugged.

"Wow. Sorry."

The echidna blinked. "What are you sorry for? It's not like you told me to break it and –"

Sonic waved an impatient hand. "Yeahyeah. You get to idiotically apologize for the ceiling falling down; I reserve the right to be sorry that you had to break a really pretty picture to save me. Shall we say even?"

Knuckles wanted to say how anything like "even" didn't work like that, but what point was there discussing with Sonic? Some instinctive part of Knuckles was angry at Sonic not taking this seriously, another part of him knew it was an act because he'd felt him tremble with the shock of it just a few minutes ago and if Sonic wanted to play pretend, he probably had every right to do so, the rest of him was sore and sort of light-headed and didn't have the nerve left to deal with Sonic being like that. "Fine," he grumbled, just to say something. "Come on, this way."