Questions

Tails whistled the melody of the song playing in the radio and spun his twin tails to lift himself up. He hovered in front of his cupboard, his hands digging in a box that contained almost every kind of thing that remotely fitted the term 'tool'. The cupboard was huge, and considering that Tails wasn't more than 80 centimeters tall, he would have needed a ladder to reach the things in it, but his unique ability to fly like a little furred helicopter meant his short height was no trouble.

Finally discovering the thing he'd been searching for, the orange fox dropped down to the floor and returned to where he had been working on his plane, trying to tickle some extra juice out of the engines. He was installing a Chaos Emerald as a second power source after he had found one yesterday.

But for some reason, it didn't work at all. The Emerald didn't give any power to the engine, although Tails was sure his installation was correct; it wasn't the first one of its kind after all. From an examination of the Emerald, it did look normal. As normal as a red, brilliant-shaped piece of crystallized Chaos Energy could possibly look…

Tails sighed as he once again plugged the wires that led from the small red stone to the biplane's interior. He was about to switch on the power and start his tenth attempt or so, when the sounds of slight metallic scraping caught his attention.

He turned around over his shoulder to see the door slide open and from the current rain shower outside, an entirely drenched and seemingly slightly beat blue hedgehog stepped in. Tails grinned. "Hiya Sonic! You brought a terrible weather along, you know?"

Sonic shook himself like a dog, drops of water flying from wet quills. "Uhh…. You can really say that!" He gave a small grin. "Was an ugly day."

Tails was about to nod when Sonic made a step forwards. "Stop right there!"

Sonic froze. "What's up?"

"You are bringing half of a lake inside, that's what's up. I'll get you a towel before my whole house turns into a swimming pool." Tails grinned and whirled to run upstairs.

Sonic smiled, standing perfectly still until the fox came back. The hedgehog towelled himself dry, glad to finally get rid of all this cold dampness. He looked up at Tails again when he heard the fox giggling. "Hey, what's so funny?"

"You should see yourself!" Tails' two namesakes twirled in amusement.

Sonic looked himself down and quickly stroked a hand over his frizzy fur. He wanted to complain about Tails making fun of poor wet hedgehogs, but the word was eaten away by a sudden yawn.

Tails was still beaming. "Long day?"

Sonic nodded. "Yeah, I had a nice meeting with Eggman and a few dozen robots. Wanted me to give him a Chaos Emerald. Firstly, I didn't have any, and secondly, does that weirdo really think I'd give him an Emerald?"

Tails shrugged. "He's Eggman." The tone of his words made it a clear explanation instead of a comment. Changing the topic, Tails pointed over at the plane. "If you can wait a few minutes, we can have some dinner together; I just want to finish with this."

"Okay," Sonic agreed without asking what Tails was working on; he just strolled over to the worn-out sofa standing on the other side of the workshop and flopped into it with a tired groan.

Tails grinned and walked back to his current piece of work, taking out some of the wires, checking them over and plugging everything back together without having found anything that could have caused the problems. When he shot a glance back to Sonic, the hedgehog was snoring quietly. Tails shrugged and switched on the power.

The next thing he knew was that there was a bang, a sudden bright red light, and his table erupted into flames. Startled, Tails tumbled back with a yelp. He was caught and saved from falling backwards over a box on the floor behind him by a pair of hands on his shoulders and the fox looked up to stare into Sonic's sleepily confused, but alarmed green eyes.

"What the hell is going on, Tails?!"

"Don't know!" Tails pulled himself loose and rushed over to pull the circuit breakers on the wall. The lights in the hangar went out... If you ignored the fire still shining bright on the workbench.

"Tails?" Sonic was staring at the flames, struggling to get his sleepy senses to grasp what was going on. Failing, the hedgehog turned to Tails. "What the hell happened?!"

The fox grabbed a fire extinguisher and hurried back to the burning table, trying to get the extinguisher to work while he answered. "I was just testing out a new device to make use of a Chaos Emerald as power source in the Tornado."

The fire finally died out as white foam showered the table.

"Testing out? What exactly? You sure that it wasn't a flame thrower instead of a power source? You burned half of the room!" Sonic exaggerated, pointing at the table, starting to get fully awake now as a slightly belated shock pushed a not small amount of adrenaline into his bloodstream. He searched around for a flashlight, finally found one and let the light cast over the remains of the just dead fire. The hedgehog frowned. "Which Emerald was it that set your stuff on fire you said?"

Tails' gaze followed the shine of Sonic's small torch when he returned to the table. Everything that remained on it was a scorched black heap of charred metal and plastic that probably had been his newest invention a few minutes ago. The red Chaos Emerald was gone.

"The Emerald that vanished in a flame blowing up my equipment," Tails said quietly.

Sonic rubbed his nose, slowly regaining his casual pose. "Weird."

Coming to think of it, the soft and warm surroundings were really comfortable. It took him a long while to get from a state of simply enjoying the conditions around to wondering about them. What was this place? Why was he here? How did he get here? … He grunted as seemingly unanswerable questions flashed through his mind, then finally got the idea to make use of his senses and opened his eyes, sitting up in an almost hasty manner.

There was only a very dim light around him and it didn't show him much. The room was small, containing the bed he found himself sitting on, a table and a door.

Bringing his feet down to the floor, he found somehow that touching the ground felt utterly… he couldn't place it, but it was... odd. As if something was wrong about the way it happened. He looked down on his feet and wriggled his toes, but found himself unable to define what exactly bothered him.

He shrugged it off and padded over to the door, quickly discovering that it confronted him with yet another problem. It was closed and he didn't have the slightest idea how to change that. But apparently there was no need to find out, because just in that moment, the metallic door slid aside almost soundlessly.

Directly in front of him stood a person almost two times taller than he was. The strange creature grinned down on him from behind a huge mustache. "I see you're awake."

"Who are you?"

Rouge turned to the door when her sharp ears noticed the metallic footsteps on the floor outside. "It's open! Just wait a sec, I'm in the bathroom!"

From downstairs came the sounds of Omega's entry. Rouge finished dressing and went downstairs to her living room. The red robot was standing in the middle of it, seeming completely out of place in Rouge's apartment, between the long cabinet that displayed the bat's collection of all sorts of gemstones, her big, comfortable sofa and the small, low table that stood in front of it and now looked even smaller directly compared to the massive form of the combat robot. Usually Rouge gave a lot for things fitting to her decoration, but in Omega's case she'd always made an exception, especially now that the right of his grasp claws held a fist-sized, brilliant form.

"Oh, you found a beautiful jewel!" With a delighted smile the white bat looked at the twinking light blue stone, but rather quickly - by her standards when it came to jewels - pulled her eyes away from it again, her attention returning to the main reason of Omega's visit. "Anything heard about Shadow?"

"No available sources of information could provide any hint on subject Shadow's current location." Omega shook his robotic head, a gesture he had adapted a while ago; Rouge wasn't quite sure why he had. "Complete search of all of my own databanks did not detect any comment Shadow has given on planned operations at the current time."

Rouge sighed. "Simply disappearing for weeks without saying a word is hard even for Shadow."

"You are experiencing the emotional condition called 'worry'." Omega's neutral tone made it sound like a statement, not a question. Maybe it was also meant as one.

The white bat nodded.

"Do you want to plan a mission to relocate him?", Omega continued.

"Okay, we'll do that," Rouge agreed. "I'll just get myself a coffee." She turned and went over to her kitchen.

She poured some milk into her coffee and was already on her way back, when she was blinded by a bright light from the doorway. "Omega? You okay?!" The bat almost splashed the coffee out of the mug when she rushed to the living room.

"All systems functional," Omega replied before Rouge could reach him. "There was an interesting phenomenon here. So far this unit is not able to find an explanation."

Rouge finally made it through the door. She stopped short in confusion. The room was empty. Well, it LOOKED empty. She couldn't see a person in here, but her sharp ears told her that Omega was still there, standing right where she'd left him and - he'd been talking to her.

"Omega? What happened?"

"It appears the Chaos Emerald disappeared."

"No, what happened to YOU?" Rouge stepped closer, her big ears turning and twitching, catching the sounds that told her the robot stood right in front of her. Had to stand there. The bat stretched her hand out and touched the armor of Omega's robot body, knocking her fingertips on solid metal. TONK. TONK. He was very certainly there.

"Rouge? Is there a problem?"

"Look at yourself!" Rouge took a few steps back again.

There was a moment of silence before the robot spoke. "Optical sensors seem to have been damaged," he stated.

"No, they are working just great." Rouge looked up at where she knew the robot's head. "You are invisible."

You could say many things about Ivo Robotnik, but not that he was impatient. He could wait, wait very well for the important things to happen, for the things that would hopefully bring him finally closer than ever to his one aim in life. Power. The power to be the controller of a world designed in the way he wanted it, he dreamed it.

But now that his monitors told him that a two days wait had finally come to an end, Robotnik's face was crossed by an almost delighted smile. He had planned and plotted the capture very thoroughly, trapped him in an energetic force field he couldn't escape from and used a specially designed ray to drain him of his powers. The process had been much more forceful than he'd calculated; it had destroyed nearly both the captured creature and the machine. Robotnik had needed long to find a Chaos Emerald to repair the structural damage he'd done; rings had proven to be too weak.

But it seemed as if his plan was going to be a complete success, a brilliant success. One worthy of the most intelligent scientist in the world. Now he needed to be careful playing this game, not risking too much at once; there was too much to lose.

Robotnik stood up and walked out into the corridor, picking up the pair of shoes, and opened the door to the small resting room. He wasn't the least bit surprised to find the small, black and red spiked creature standing directly in front of him. "I see you're awake," Robotnik said.

Instead of answering to this comment, the black hedgehog stared up at him; his red eyes confused, questioning. "Who are you?"

A small grin crept onto Robotnik's lips. He didn't know. That was what he'd been planning. Although being an all-in-all very successful biological experiment, his memory had always failed easily, being erased after too much stress. Such as he had created. What of course was why he had created it, as a matter of fact. "My name is Ivo Robotnik and I'm your only friend."

The hedgehog frowned, but still seeming more confused than suspicious. Then the crimson eyes lit on the things Robotnik carried and he pointed. "What's that?"

"They're yours. They're hoverskates." The scientist held the shoes out at him, bending down a little. He needed to gain his trust before anything else.

The black hedgehog reached out and grabbed his shoes, for a moment turning them around in his hands, examining them with curious interest, then pulled them over his feet. A small smirk crossed his face when he skated a few feet forwards. Then he looked back up at Robotnik, his face now an entire collection of question marks. "Why do you have these? Why didn't I? … Do we … Do we know each other?"

"Of course we know each other." That, for once, wasn't a lie at all. "Shadow."

"Huh?" A handful of more question marks was added to his puzzled face and one of his ears twitched backwards.

"That's your name. Shadow." Robotnik forced himself to smile as the black hedgehog looked himself down.

'Why don't I know?', his eyes seemed to ask, but he only managed to repeat the name. "Shadow…"

Robotnik put a hand on his shoulder and shoved him along the corridor. "I will explain it to you." Well. Explain to him what he wanted to explain to him anyway… "But not everything now, we got a lot of important things to do and you need to do training."

Shadow frowned. "What for?"

Sonic stretched on the couch and turned off the TV. He stood up and walked down to the workshop where Tails was still trying to make some sense of the vanishing Chaos Emerald last evening. "And?", Sonic asked as he neared his brother, "Anything came out yet? Did you find it back or something?"

Tails looked up and shook his head. "No. Nothing. Not the tiniest trace that the Emerald was here in the first place. It's as if it never existed."

"Hm." Sonic folded his arms. "On the news there was a report that a Chaos Emerald disappeared from a university, but they are quite sure that it was a robbery. And one just vanished from a lab in a hospital." He shrugged. "But no one seems to find that interesting. Everyone is on about some kind of medical miracle."

Tails raised an eyebrow. "Medical miracle?"

Sonic nodded and gestured vaguely. "Some kind of miracle healing that suddenly happened to a few deadly ill people in that hospital."

Tails' second eyebrow went up to join the first. "Ah yes. Do you think the Emerald they were holding there did that?"

"No idea. They can heal, but they never did that randomly before, did they?" Sonic tilted his head.

"No, not before. They didn't set themselves on fire before either," Tails stated.

"Point," Sonic nodded. "So, what do we do? It doesn't look as if our Emerald would come back here, does it?"

"No. We could go and search for others. They might endanger people around them. Just think what would happen if one exploded and set free all the energy it contains!" Tails' namesakes twirled hastily, almost knotting themselves up.

"Can we track down the other Emeralds? Or do we know where they are?"

"No, I'm afraid we have no idea where else we can find any Chaos Emeralds. I once had a tracking device. But it fell out of the cupboard and broke. I could try build a new one, but without an Emerald, that'd be difficult. It'd be easier if we knew who has got Chaos Emeralds and therefore might be endangered. But we don't know anybody." Tails shrugged.

Sonic slowly turned fully to him, pointy ears twitching. "That isn't entirely correct. We know one person who's got one thing of an Emerald."

Tails stared back at Sonic. "Knuckles!"

Sonic nodded. "I see we think the same."

The little fox clapped his hand on his mouth. "Oh dear... What'd happen if the Master Emerald went nuts? It could blow up the floating island or something!"

"We don't want to find out, do we?" Sonic pointed across the hangar. "Did the Tornado get badly damaged yesterday?"

"No, not at all. A few cables charred, but I already replaced them." Tails lifted himself up with spinning tails. "Come on!"

Speedy's note: The general idea of the different Chaos Emeralds' variating powers was inspired by JudasFM and is used with her permission.