The Golden Hour
The Master Emerald's energy was a nagging presence in the back of his mind. It knew he'd been hurt, but he'd have to actively reach for it, and he didn't trust his concussed head with the Emerald. He'd drawn on its power when injured much worse than this, much less in control of his own mind, too, but that had been emergency, when he'd had to fight to protect the Emerald or the island, or when his life had actually been in danger. Neither was the case now. There wasn't any real danger, back when "emergency" would have applied he didn't have the time to spend on trying to focus on the energy, and now the rings he'd promised the others would take care of it well enough, granted they didn't tally here much longer than they already had.
It took them longer than Knuckles had expected to stagger back up the way they'd come and then up another narrow round staircase, but the subdued mood lifted noticeably when he stepped into the room of rings as he liked to call them. There were several on the island, as well as areas with many rings outside in some places. There were enough that their soft glow lit up the room in a golden hue that sent an electric tingle down his spine and made the concerned throb of the Master Emerald pushing at him fall suddenly much more quiet. Knuckles felt lighter without having even touched a ring yet.
A step behind him, Sonic whistled through his teeth and Tails made a sound of surprise. Knuckles turned to his friends just in time to catch the fox all but shoving Sonic into the nearest cluster of rings. The hedgehog's yelp of complaint was drowned out by the rings' pling sounds and the yelp turned into laughter as Sonic continued further into the room, following the lines and lines of rings.
"Are you going to collect them yourself or do I need to push you too?" Knuckles started at Tails' voice so close to him, looked down to find the fox was all but glowering at him. It was a lot less threatening than he probably hoped for, but Knuckles also knew Tails was more dangerous than he looked when angered and took a step out of his reach and into the next best line of rings.
The first pling was near deafeningly loud in his throbbing skull. Knuckles gasped, stumbled forwards into the next ring and then another and another, the hot tingle of gold turning into a rush of relief now.
Stopping after he'd traveled the length of the room, Knuckles turned back for Tails, and now that his head was no longer pounding he found the fox also looked sort of worse for wear. He caught Tails' eyes and waved a hand around. "Enough for everyone. Get some."
"I wasn't hurt," Tails protested. "I don't want to waste – ah!"
A blur of blue all but smacked into the two-tailed fox. Knuckles couldn't keep from laughing as Sonic lifted Tails up, holding him out in front of him to unceremoniously drop him into a near round pattern of rings close to the center of the room. "Gotcha," the hedgehog cheered over the tings and plings of rings resolving. "Feel better?" He grinned at the little fox.
Tails shook himself as if he'd been dunked into water, not gold rings, but his fur was still wet enough to spray droplets of water all around the room anyway.
Sonic shrieked and ducked out of the way.
Tails smugly brushed his fur back down, grinning broadly. "I do now."
Sonic's face from across the room was so hilarious Knuckles laughed until it hurt and he had to go back to pick up another handful of rings to fix it.
When he recovered he made sure to check his friends over and found both of them doing the same.
"You lost all your feathers and glowing marks," Tails noticed, watching Knuckles ruefully, as if that was really something to be sad about when everything could've gone so much worse.
The echidna shrugged. "Yeah."
"I guess now all of us have to get properly dressed up again," Sonic said. The hedgehog's quills still hung lower than normal with the remaining wetness, but he was back to having that energetic bounce to his step that normally meant he was going to get on Knuckles' nerves by being hyperactive and having weird ideas. Now the echidna was insanely relieved to see it.
At Sonic's insistence they stopped to pick a snack of fruits once they were back topside and spent a while just sitting in the sun resting and drying off.
It was late afternoon when they arrived back at the furnished cave near the Temple of Chaos. He ducked inside just briefly to gather the bowl of paint and the box of bands and feathers. The light was better outside and right now probably all of them still felt better with the open sky above their heads.
Tails was holding out his hand for the supplies. "Let me, I remember what it looked like. Okay?" Tails' double namesakes were swishing excitedly behind his back.
Knuckles smiled. "Yeah, sure." It should have been a harder concession to make, painting someone else's face was quite an intimate, familiar thing to do, but it didn't seem odd to let them do it. In any case, he'd have to do their marks in turn.
Tails pulled him to sit down so he could reach his brow properly without having to fly, dabbed a finger into the bowl of paint, already faintly aglow in the light of the late afternoon. Knuckles squinted up at him, but Tails was only looking at his brow, his finger tracing a curve above his left eyebrow, then right, then connecting them with a fresh dab of colour. The sensation was familiar from when he'd drawn the pattern himself earlier today, but it was made all new and strange by the touch not being by his own hand. But, Tails' fingers were swift and sure of their work, his touch light and then lighter still when he drew a line across the still slightly, weirdly tender spot where Knuckles had banged his head earlier.
The Guardian almost jumped and messed up Tails' careful work when Sonic lightly pulled at one of his dreads from behind. The echidna protested, but then he realised what the hedgehog was doing. Drawing the circles back around each dreadlock and putting the bright highlight of paint back on the tips of his spines. That was weird, too, but Knuckles forced himself to relax and sit still so he wouldn't disrupt their work, and suddenly it was kind of soothing, Tails' light fingers ghosting across his brow, drawing patterns never drawn by any hand but Knuckles' own, and the light pull on his spines where Sonic tugged at them as he worked.
He didn't realize he'd closed his eyes until Sonic tugged sharper at his quills to get his attention. "Do you want us to try with the feathers and bands, or do you think we'll mess that up?"
Knuckles opened his eyes to find Tails critically studying the results of his work and Sonic holding the box of feathers. "It takes a bit of practice. I can manage."
"Can we get paint now, too?" Tails practically thrust the bowl into Knuckles' hands and at the Guardian's nod eagerly dropped to sit in front of him.
Knuckles pulled off his gloves. He knew exactly what pattern to use for either of his friends. He gathered up a fingertip of paint to trace a circle on Tails' brow, then added short zig zag lines extending out from it and a larger dot in the middle.
Tails was squinting up at him in concentration. "This isn't the same pattern you have," he noticed.
"No, it's a circle with... stuff," Sonic threw in from where he was leaning over Knuckles' shoulder. "Kinda like a sun?"
It wasn't a bad approximation of the image, so Knuckles nodded.
"What's it mean? It has to mean something." Tails' twin tails were wagging lightly behind his back, as always when he was thinking about something.
"The patterns of paint are symbolic for the wearer's role. Their job, you would maybe say. What they are and do. Mine means Guardian."
"Of course it does," Sonic interrupted.
Knuckles threw him a brief Look, but focused back on finishing the last addition to Tails' marking. "This pattern means someone who's... a sage?" That sounded wrong. "A... Keeper of Knowledge?" That was closer to a direct translation of the old word, but it too sounded strange when put into his friends' language. "A very learned and knowledgeable person?" He was doing a bad job of explaining this.
But Tails smiled with a touch of flattered embarrassment. "Thank you. I'm honoured."
Sonic was grinning. "I think it fits. You totally are our clever guy with the encyclopedia knowledge. Now do I get a cool glowy picture?"
Knuckles grinned back at him. "If you sit down and hold still long enough."
The hedgehog frowned. "You know, that's a challenge." He plopped himself down next to Tails in front of Knuckles and grinned. "But, I give you twenty seconds."
Knuckles reached back for the bowl. "You know, I can make you hold still for longer."
Sonic raised a brow. "Try."
Tails leaped to his feet and stood behind his brother, hands on his shoulders. "Quick, I'll hold him down!"
Knuckles would have almost laughed, but it seemed disrespectful of Tails, who was so much stronger than you thought at first. Sonic was grinning, but not protesting, and Knuckles made sure to thank Tails for his support while he drew a triangle shape, point down, on Sonic's brow, and a couple of arrow shapes to trail across the top of his head and along the sides to where he let them fade into the hedgehog's quills.
"Okay, what am I to be today?" Sonic was, surprisingly, still sitting still when Knuckles finished.
"This is the traditional mark of a warrior. A "defender of the realm"?" It seemed an obvious fit, because no matter what else Sonic was or wasn't, a warrior he was for sure.
"That sounds sufficiently cool, thanks." Sonic was grinning again, a broad and genuine Sonic grin that no longer had even a trace of the cover-up it had been just half an hour ago.
"I would've marked you "reckless idiot", but that isn't a title."
Sonic frowned, and for a second Knuckles thought he'd overstepped, miscalculated, but then the grin was back full force. "We should have marked you our designated gullible knucklehead, but, I hear this is a day for being polite and all."
Knuckles snorted. It was his own fault, he'd started it.
"Can I draw on Sonic's quills, like you have?" Tails was apparently of the opinion that shenanigans would be ignored. "Or am I going to mess up the theme?"
Knuckles shook his head. "No, painted quill tips are for everyone. Go ahead."
And really, if Sonic ended up looking funny, what was the harm? It wasn't that anyone was going to judge, and they were adapting to different species, anyway.
Knuckles ended up braiding feathers into not only his own spines but Sonic's as well, and Tails insisted on wearing a head band so he could tuck a handful of feathers behind each ear. It looked sort of ridiculous, and then Sonic made it worse by deciding that Tails' ear tips and the ends of his tails would serve as substitute for the lack of spines and get painted, too. But none of that mattered, because Tails was laughing, Sonic was still grinning, and sitting and watching the traditional dress-up escalate into something colourful and glowing and stangely alive, Knuckles realised he'd not felt alone and abandoned for a long while now.
Sonic stopped next to where Knuckles was piling up the first wood to start their fire, placing his own armful of branches and sticks on the ground. "So," he trailed conversationally, "I think you said there was singing?"
Knuckles looked up at him without stopping his efforts to stir up a first flame. "There used to be. But as I said, I only know some of the words, and none of the music. It's not like anyone ever sang them to me." Or if they did, he didn't remember. It felt like a loss, again, a sharp pang in his heart, and he was for a moment mad at Sonic for bringing it up again. Surely he'd heard his first time of mentioning it... and Knuckles had been doing nicely without the reminder,
Sudden heat sparked under his fingers and reflexively he tore his hands away with a hiss of pain, now glaring at the small fire instead of at Sonic.
"Sorry," the hedgehog spoke up at his side again. "Shouldn't have distracted you."
Knuckles grumbled, shaking his hand to cool it down. An anew throb of Chaos pulsed at him from the nearby temple, and unconcussed and not in any danger of messing this up, Knuckles let it. Gradually a light tingle of Chaos washed over the sting of the burn as he accepted the Master Emerald's help to work on starting to heal it, trivial though it was, and it was soothing not only his nerves, but also his mood.
Sonic had not moved, and now he spoke up again. "It's your celebration, if you don't want singing, that's fine, but I brought the guitar, so if it's okay, we can sing some."
The echidna, still crouched next to the fire, stared up at Sonic. How had he known there would be music, theoretically, if they'd come knowing nothing about the Alignment in the first place?
From the edge of the clearing sounded Tails' light laughter and Knuckles turned his head towards him. The little fox was stumbling a bit, the pile of wood in his arms so high he could hardly look over it. "It wasn't hard to guess," he said at Knuckles' puzzled look. "Really, Sonic and I have been to lots of festivals and parties and -" He stumbled over a root in his way he couldn't see, tripped forward.
Next to Knuckles, a swoosh of wind and a blur of blue were the only indicators Sonic had moved, then the hedgehog was suddenly with Tails, and somehow they managed to catch both the fox's weight and his pile of firewood between them.
"Wow, oops!" Tails' eyes were wide now, reflecting the flickering light.
Sonic laughed, pulling some of the wood into his arms and walking back towards the fire. "Nobody told you to bring back the whole forest, little bro," he said, glancing back to the fox and putting down his wood with the rest of their stock.
Tails grinned sheepishly. "Yeah..." He turned back on Knuckles then. "But as I was saying, we've been to plenty of celebrations, and there's always music in some form. Singing, playing instruments, or dancing, too."
"It's one of the things that are the same wherever you go," Sonic nodded. "And it's always fun. So, do you want music?"
Knuckles blinked. While it was true that he knew Sonic played an instrument, it was also a fact that a lot of what Sonic seemed to enjoy in terms of music was more like obnoxious noise to Knuckles' ears... Then again, Tails was smiling, so he was probably looking forward to it, Sonic thought it was fun, and they'd invested thought and effort into actually bringing along things to celebrate an event with him that meant nothing to their culture. It seemed downright discourteous of him to tell them no.
Realising his friends were waiting for an answer, Knuckles forced himself to nod. "Yes. Thank you."
Sonic grinned. "No thing! Be right back!" In another sharp gust of wind, he was gone.
Knuckles stared after him, another time today feeling like this whole celebration was getting away from him entirely.
"Knuckles?"
He shook himself out of the thought and turned to Tails, who had plopped down on one of the logs Knuckles had carried here to sit on around the fire. The two-tailed fox was digging into the baskets of food. "You said some of these are good for roasting?"
Knuckles nodded and went to sit with Tails, explaining the fruits and how to prepare them, secretly glad to have something to do.
Sonic returned just a minute later, carrying the bright red guitar and a small kind of box. He connected the box and guitar with a cable of sorts, then propped the instrument up against one of the logs and joined them in sticking fruits on sticks to roast over the fire first.
By the time they had eaten, the sunlight was the warm orange of the evening. Knuckles shot a glance out towards the horizon, but it would still an hour until sunset, and then some until it would be dark enough to see all the stars.
A soft string of sounds tore him away from looking at the sky and he turned back around to find Sonic sitting on the grass, back against one of the logs, one leg stretched out and the other knee propped up to support the guitar. He was looking down at it, brushing the strings with his fingertips, and the sounds it made were soft, gentle, nothing like the noise and screaming Knuckles had been secretly prepared for. "It's... quiet," he noticed carefully, moving back to sit at the fire, too, adding some fresh wood.
Across of him, Tails settled down next to Sonic, double tails twirling lazily as he watched the hedgehog.
Sonic drew his fingers over the strings in a quicker motion, drawing a chord out of the instrument that floated across the clearing for a moment before he pressed the flat hand down over the strings and silenced them. He looked up at Knuckles and grinned. "We're playing clean, you see, no distortion, and with just a small amp. Fits the campfire mood better, you know."
Knuckles didn't, half of the words meant nothing to him, but Tails was smiling in agreement and so he nodded, too, just so he was doing something.
It seemed enough, because Sonic smiled and turned back to his instrument, pulling softly at the chords again before he started to actually play something, and it, too, was much more quiet than the Guardian would have expected, musing, almost wistful. Knuckles of course didn't know the tune, but Tails obviously did, because he brightened upon hearing it, and after a moment when Sonic started to sing, Tails fell right in with it.
It turned out to be a song about tales of old being retold at a campfire, about stories bringing to live creatures of myth. By the time the second refrain came around, Knuckles found he could recall the melody well enough he was humming along with it without having decided to do so, by the third time he felt like he could quietly sing along with the words, and then Sonic was repeating it again, and Knuckles wasn't sure if it was part of the way it was supposed to be played, but Sonic and Tails were looking at him now, all smiles and shining eyes in the firelight, and he tried to sing along with them.
Sonic did another repetition of the chorus and by now Knuckles was fairly sure he was doing it just so he could sing with them, but when the hedgehog ended the music with a flourishing swipe across the chords, Tails and him were still smiling, and Knuckles caught the pull of a smile on his own face.
"Hey, you learn quick!" Sonic grinned.
"Did you like it?" Tails' twin tails still wagged behind his back, as if in reaction to music that was no longer there.
Knuckles nodded carefully. He'd not imagined he would like Sonic's music, but he did.
Tails smiled brightly. "Wanna do another one?"
Knuckles allowed another nod, and Sonic launched right back into playing, something quicker and more upbeat than the last one that had Tails clapping his hands with the beat.
The echidna sat and listened to his friends singing, songs of travels, of friendship, of funny mishaps or entertaining events, and found himself forgetting the time.
Eventually, Tails had slipped down from the log to lean somewhat into Sonic's side, growing tired with the eventful day perhaps, and the hedgehog was doing the singing alone, a slow, long, musing song again, about the passage of time and the changing of the world that came with it. It was a theme Knuckles would've never put down as something Sonic would think about, but it was beautiful, sometimes melancholy, sometimes hopeful, and it fit the mood of the old songs for an Alignment Knuckles knew only in word and not in tune so strikingly well that he couldn't keep himself from getting caught in the mood of it, gaze getting lost in the flicker of flames in front of him as the hedgehog's chords stirred up a shiver to crawl down his back.
Sonic ended the song in a few gentle notes that seemed to float around them for another moment before gradually fading into the night around.
Knuckles blinked, struggling to pull his mind back to the present. Sonic looked up from his guitar just in time to meet his eyes on accident and the hedgehog flashed a light smile. Even Sonic looked musing now. "Good?"
The Guardian nodded. "Yes," he said quietly, a louder word feeling like it would disrupt the mood. "It's very... fitting, for the occasion..."
Sonic smiled, drawing an arm around an increasingly sleepy looking Tails. "I was hoping it would be."
Knuckles inclined his head, looked down at the fire, back to his friends again. "Thank you."
"Welcome." Sonic smiled, placing his guitar to the side and stretching both legs out in front of him.
For a few minutes, it was quiet, but a pleasant sort of it. Between them, the fire slowly burned down, and overhead, the sky was gradually turning properly orange. Knuckles moved to stand up, and Sonic gently jostled the little fox.
Tails still looked sleepy as he disentangled himself from being curled into Sonic's side and the log of wood, but then he seemed to remember the events. "Oh, is it starting?"
"Not quite yet." Knuckles smiled. "Now we're going to watch the sun set." Part of Knuckles had looked forward to that since the morning.
Tails smiled, stretching. "That's nice! Is it tradition, too?"
"Sort of. I'll show you, come on."
The little fox fell right in step with him, and also Sonic didn't take long to follow. "I like sunsets," he noticed conversationally. "It's cool how different they are in different places, too."
Knuckles turned to his blue friend. "I didn't picture you the sitting and watching the sun set type?"
Sonic shrugged, raising a semi-complaining brow. "I don't only run around seeking thrills all the time," he claimed, then his arms folded at Tails' giggle and the green eyes sought the fox. "You know I don't!"
Tails grinned, waving an appeasing hand at his brother. "Yeah, I know."
Pacified, Sonic turned back to Knuckles. "You know, I like seeing awesome places and cool sights. There's so many beautiful spots all over the world, and I get to see them, and they're really different depending on weather and time of year or of day. And in some places, I can run fast enough to see a sunset for a very long time." He smiled, almost wistfully so, maybe as close as Sonic would come to it.
Knuckles smiled back, suddenly aware not only he was sharing things private to him today. This quieter side of Sonic was one he didn't carry around for the world to see. It was obvious Tails got to see it, and Knuckles thought he should value the privilege to be included perhaps.
It didn't take his friends long to catch up to the direction Knuckles had taken through the forest, and Tails poked at his arm. "The secret! Do you now tell us what you did this morning?"
Admittedly it had been closer to noon than proper morning, but Knuckles could let that pass. "I suppose." He grinned at Tails.
Also Sonic had perked up and didn't come up with any shiny rock comments this time.
Knuckles led the others into the temple and to the top of the stairs, then he turned back around. He smiled. The direction he'd set was proving quite accurate.
Tails was the first to follow Knuckles' gaze to where the low sun was sitting in direct line from the stairs and he gasped. "It's gonna set right there! Is this a sun temple then?"
Knuckles moved to sit on the topmost tread. "Not exactly. My people used to have sun temples in the past, down on the surface, even before the Floating Island floated."
"Oh, history lesson!" Sonic dropped to sit next to Knuckles, but he didn't sound like he was making fun of him. More like when he was going to indulge Tails and listen to an explanation of how some device worked.
Tails wasn't sitting down, instead he was almost excitedly pointing out the pillars ahead of the stairway. "I know that! Some Echidna temples are constructed kind of like observatories, lined up astronomically, so that the sun would set in the middle at the solstices, and behind specific points to the sides at spring and autumn equinoxes." He turned to Knuckles for confirmation.
The Guardian nodded. "True. How do you know that?"
"I did research!" Tails grinned, and beside Knuckles, Sonic laughed.
"He did. You should've seen the graphs and flow charts!"
"Flow charts." Knuckles stared. He thought he knew what a flow chart was, at least he had a vague idea, but he couldn't imagine how to apply it to this topic.
"Sure! They're useful," Tails insisted.
Sonic somehow managed to wink at Knuckles and pull a grimace at the same time. "Very," he said, and it was clear he meant the opposite.
Knuckles laughed, watched Tails' frown form at it, and pointed back down towards the pillars. "It's not actually a sun temple. The pillars are too far apart to match." He stretched out his legs in front of himself. "This is a Floating Island. It moves around all the time."
"And the distance between the pillars would be different everywhere." Tails at least had caught on.
"The island also turns apparently," Sonic added casually from the sidelines, lazily soaking up the light of the slowly setting sun, but proving he was and had been listening all along, and more attentively than you'd give him credit for.
Knuckles nodded. "It was tradition on the surface to celebrate the beginnings of the seasons as the sun would indicate them at the temples. That became impossible on a floating island. Unless you'd bring it to the same place every time and properly turned it into position, you cannot have a temple like this on a constantly moving island."
Tails was studying the Emerald shrine and the circle of pillars around it, meant for the Chaos Emeralds. "So, your people improvised by using another temple that was there anyway?"
"Yes, the Guardian can steer the Island, so it would be lined up properly for solstices or equinoxes, no matter where it is at the time." Knuckles leaned back slightly, feeling the Emerald's light warmly cascade down his back. "I find it helps track the seasons. Remember the time. It's not a new season now, but, I thought it kinda is, so."
"Huh. Makes sense." Sonic smiled. "And it's a nice view like that."
On Knuckles' other side, Tails hummed his agreement. They were right, too. It was a good view from up here. The sun had turned into a ball of deep orange, a disc of fiery amber sinking into the forest beyond the temple, painting the tips of the clouds visible faintly in the distance a bright yellow, while the sky around was turning purple and pink.
Knuckles watched the last colours of daylight spread across the sky and flow over the forest and buildings. He'd pictured himself sitting here, it was actually one of the few items on his list of plans that had worked out, even if not entirely as he'd expected. Nothing truly had, but it seemed for the better. It was a time for change, for new beginnings, was it an omen he wasn't spending it alone as he would have? Sonic and Tails and other friends they had weren't new in Knuckles' life, but nothing common, either. Nothing he should take for granted. Something to give more value to, perhaps.
He thought of Tails, who'd pulled him out of the wild current, and the sharp fear for Sonic's life that had pushed him and Tails through the tunnels. Definitely not something to take for granted indeed. Easily lost, and well worth guarding.
Tails dropped to sit at Knuckles' other side, the movement in his peripheral vision enough to distract him from his thoughts. The echidna threw a look aside, but Tails wasn't looking back. He'd leaned his elbows on his knees and was watching the sun set, near perfectly ahead of them.
Knuckles followed his friend's gaze. The altar wasn't high enough to see all the way to the island's edge and from here, the sun was sinking into the forest instead of into the clouds or behind the surface's horizon far below. Knuckles liked the far view, but he liked to sit on the stairs even better. Here, the sun was warm on his face and the Emerald's green glow was just as warm on his back. It had settled after the commotion of earlier and was more calm and at ease now than it had been in days.
Sitting between the orange and blue-green light, with his friends at either side, Knuckles breathed in the calm and warmth and wondered if this really was the first time in days he'd felt truly relaxed. Surely it couldn't be.
Even Sonic was quiet, for minutes, after the sun had disappeared from sight, and when he made sound then, it wasn't a wisecrack comment, but an angry stomach growl again. Hadn't they just eaten?
Tails laughed, and pointed out the same thing.
Sonic shrugged, his stomach giving another rumble. "It's been an exciting day, and I have a fast metabolism. I'll just grab a snack. We still have snacks, right Knuckles? Can we quickly go and snatch something by way of dessert?"
Knuckles found a grin back on his face even as he turned to the hedgehog. "I was having a moment here," he complained.
Sonic actually managed to look abashed for a second or two. "Sorry, I'll try starving more quietly from now on."
"You can do anything quietly?" Knuckles tried for a disbelieving frown. He knew Sonic could, rarely, do quiet, and he just had been quiet for minutes, but what fun was in admitting that?
Sonic grinned. "I sleep sometimes."
"You sleep all the time, at any time of day." The red echidna leaned further backwards, closer to the Emerald's warmth, now that the warmth of daylight was gone.
Next to him, Sonic shrugged. "I guess. But I'm quiet then."
Tails was climbing to his feet. "You snore," he said.
Sonic blinked, ears twitching. "Well, you talk technobabble in your sleep."
"He does that when awake, too. I don't see a difference." Somewhat reluctantly, Knuckles followed Tails' example and pulled himself up. Sonic was kind of right; they could indulge in something for dessert, and he'd picked a place to stay the night already, but they'd have a more comfortable way through the forest while there was still a little bit of light.
Tails was pretending to grumble. It really wasn't very convincing, because he was struggling not to smile through it. "It's not babbling, you undereducated freaks, you."
Sonic pointed at Knuckles. "Three languages! Weird symbols!"
Tails grinned. "So, what do you have to say in your own defense then?"
"Um." Sonic frowned. "I can, uh, multitask! I can run and eat chili dogs and annoy Knux at the same time."
There really was no contesting that. Knuckles laughed. "I concur, he totally can." He started down the stairs. "Come on, we need to feed our genius here so he doesn't starve before the end of this cycle."
"That would suck, so close to the goal." Sonic laughed, following behind, bouncing on the stairs.
Speedy's note: I did a kind of concept picture of the gang all dressed up fancy. You can see it on my Deviantart.
deviantart dot c-o-m speedy1236 /art /Dressed-Up-858281337