Out Of Control

Sonic stood on the Tornado's double wings, shielding his eyes with his right hand as he stared forwards. Spotting a vague shadow against the clouds and the blue sky, he turned around to Tails. "I think I see it."

"Was about time. We needed ages to find it. We really should install some kind of tracking device there." Tails leaned out of the cockpit to get a good view on their nearing goal. "Searching the stupid island takes centuries."

Sonic grinned. "Well, try and put a tracking device anywhere on his island and I promise you Knux will beat you to pulp. Or knot your tails and hang you upside-down from one of his ruins-in-the-jungle deathtraps and then come back every day to remind you of your crime."

Tails grimaced. "Thank you very much. I think I can do without that."

Sonic snickered. "I'm sure Knuckles will find several good reasons why tracking devices endanger his Master Emerald. Even I can think of some."

"Yeah, I know, if we can track his Floating Island down, possible thieves can too." Tails sighed. "I didn't really mean it. It was more that I felt like grouching after these hours of uselessly searching around. And if we had a working chaos energy detector, we could easily track the Master Emerald anyway..."

So it bothered Tails that he'd broken the device more than that they'd spent so much time searching, Sonic thought. Figures. He tilted his head at his little friend. "But we finally made it, didn't we?"

"Sure. And it is still flying. That's a good sign I guess." Tails lowered the plane's flight now that they were close enough to Angel Island to make out trees, ruins and rocks clearly.

"I suggest we land over there," the blue hedgehog pointed.

Tails just nodded and brought the red biplane down on a clearing. "Just go ahead and take a look around, Sonic. I'll just turn the Tornado so we won't have to do that later. If we need to leave because..." Tails left the sentence unfinished, but it was clear to the hedgehog what he meant.

Sonic nodded. "Maybe we're just paranoid and it's nothing wrong up here."

Tails shrugged. "That'd be the best of course."

"Anyway, later Tails." Sonic jumped down to the grass and started running into the forest, heading for where he knew the Temple of Chaos was. Sonic had been here several times already, so he mostly knew his way around on Angel Island.

He reached the place not more than one minute later, slowing to a walk when he left the forest behind and stepped out on another open field of grass.

Sonic's green eyes trailed over the stony pillars that appeared in front of him, slightly covered by moss and ivy, some of them broken and lying on the grass, others lacking their tops, one of them split into two at half of its original height, the upper part toppled and now leaning against the lower like a small gate. All of the seven pillars formed a still clearly visible circle around the altar in their midst. Showing signs of its age as much as the rest of the temple, the high stairway, too high to see its summit, was an imposing sight nonetheless; its clearly ancient heritage lending the place a mystical atmosphere.

Sonic slowly walked up to the stairs and started climbing them, watching how the sky above the top seemed to be washed green with the glow of the temple's precious center. Sonic had barely reached the top of the stairway and caught a brief sight of the Master Emerald, when he was thrown off his feet, a steel grip closing on his shoulders and throat.

"Uhrgh!" Sonic struggled, pinned to the rocky ground and fighting to get enough air to speak. "Hey, let go, Knucklehead! Cough! It's just me!"

Knuckles finally spent a real look on whoever he had just tackled. It didn't need much more than a glimpse, Sonic's blue coloring and his spiky shape were easily recognizable. Embarrassed, the echidna released the hedgehog and stood up quickly. "Sonic? What are you doing here?"

"I didn't come to get myself strangled, very much thanks for asking." Sonic grimaced and sat up, massaging his sore throat.

"Oh, sorry. Didn't know it was you." Knuckles shrugged.

"So, what did you think I was? A freaky monster trying to eat your Emerald?"

Knuckles opened his mouth to answer, then shut it again, not knowing how he could explain to Sonic that right now he was expecting ANYTHING, and that included Emerald-eating monsters. "I ... don't know what I was expecting," was the most detailed explanation the guardian could manage.

"Great. You don't know." Sonic pulled a face.

Not knowing what more he could say, by way of apology Knuckles settled for offering Sonic his hand instead and pull him back to his feet.

Sonic dusted himself off, then really looked at Knuckles for the first time. The echidna's red dreadlock-spines were matted and tousled and his eyes carried the dull expression of deep tiredness. A frown appeared on the hedgehog's face. "Everything okay here? You look horrible. When was the last time you actually slept?"

"Err..." Knuckles shrugged again, not knowing himself.

"Two days? Three?"

"How's that your business, hedgehog?" Feeling uneasy with Sonic's quizzing, Knuckles tried to change the topic. "Why did you come?"

"Down on the surface the Chaos Emeralds are going nuts," Sonic accepted the change of direction, skipping on Knuckles' apparently not great mood without further comment. "One set Tails' workshop on fire, others disappeared. We were worried your Emerald could go crazy too. So we came to check on you."

"We?" Knuckles raised his eyebrows, the only reaction he could think of right now. He didn't really know how he was thinking of Sonic's explanation, but he had more pressing concerns at the moment.

"Tails should be here in a minute. He's just parking the plane." Sonic pointed down the stairs, then he turned back to the echidna. "So, what's wrong here?"

Robotnik jerked out of his seat when the alarms of the base seemed to cry out all at the same time. Leaning forwards, the scientist's hands rushed over the keys of his dashboards, multiple screens in front of him flashing into action. Detecting the place in his underground hideout the alarms were caused at, Robotnik hurried out of the room, of course not before having called a small army of his personal robots to accompany him.

Hurrying along the corridors, he almost ran into Shadow. The black hedgehog looked puzzled at the ear-piercing blaring of noises all around. "What's going on, Doctor?!"

"Quit your training! Something happened!" The round scientist was gasping, not being used to any real physical workout.

Shadow had been working out anyway and he had been designed to run, so he quickly was ahead of the doctor.

The black and red hedgehog stopped when he reached a door, or more accurately what was left of it. Carefully Shadow stepped through the wreckage and into another room. It was not as well-lit as the rest of the base, only the dim sparkling of charring pieces of electricity provided the room with a small amount of lighting.

The interior of the room was spread across the floor, pieces of machinery being yanked out of their sockets at the wall or on the floor. Small blue sparks licked on the ends of torn wires, the cables swinging loosely from the ceiling and walls, some of the damaged devices' screens broken and burning. Purple glowing mists floated softly through the room and parts of the walls seemed to have started glooming in strange light.

Shadow looked around with his red eyes wide open, then turned around to Robotnik when the scientist finally approached. "What happened here?!" the hedgehog asked, pointing at the destruction in front of him. "What was in this room?"

"My Chaos Emerald." Robotnik shook his head at the sorry look of his precious machinery.

"What's a Chaos Emerald?", Shadow asked.

"It's a kind of gemstone and contains an incredible amount of energy and power," Robotnik answered flatly; he had gotten used to the hedgehog asking about every simple thing he mentioned. Knowing that he would have more advantages than disadvantage of Shadow's forced-on amnesia (by him anyway), the scientist could handle the slightly annoying curiosity of his 'guest'. "I was doing … research on it," he continued.

"What can it be used for?" Shadow tilted his head.

"Oh, a lot of useful things. It will be very good for us if we find all seven there are. And you will help me find them."

"Why?"

"Because you are very well suited for that job. And if you bring them to me, I might find a way to restore your memory."

Shadow's eyes went wide with astonishment, not noticing the way Robotnik smiled, not a friendly smile, but a smile satisfied about being so easily able to fool him. "Really? Then let me search for them!"

"Not yet. Something that is not supposed to happen was going on here. The Chaos Emerald is gone and it caused massive destruction in here. So I need to find out what caused this event. This discovery can be very important for my research."

Shadow frowned, but the shrugged it off. "So, what can I do?"

"You," the human pointed to the damaged door, "just get on with your training until I'm ready here."

"You mean, the Chaos Energy is changing?" Lost in thought, Tails was running his fingers through the orange fur of one of his bushy namesakes.

Knuckles slowly shook his head, looking down on the steps of the stairway he was sitting on aside of the fox cub. "No, I mean, yes... Well, it's... that's what I first thought. It changes, yes, but it's being forced to change against its will."

"Will?" Sonic raised his eyebrows, standing with folded arms in front of the others, a few treads lower. "You are telling me the Master Emerald's got a mind of its own?"

Knuckles shrugged. "I don't know. Sometimes I think so, but I never found a real answer in all these years."

"So, if it doesn't change on purpose," Tails returned the topic to the really important things right now. "What changes it?"

"I don't know." Knuckles wondered for a second how often he'd been using these particular words in this particular order already today. "It's as if something's manipulating it." The echidna half turned over his shoulder, shooting a glance up at the Master Emerald. "I can feel it in the back of my mind like an echo of what it does to the Emerald. It hurts."

Tails and Sonic exchanged a helpless glance. "It hurts? You?", Sonic asked.

Knuckles turned back to him and Tails. "Well, it's not real pain; it's more like the impression of a distant headache."

"And this started three days ago now." Tails tilted his head.

Knuckles nodded. "A little more than three, yes."

Sonic tapped his left foot on the stairs a few times, thinking. "That means it started well before our Chaos Emerald went berserk."

Knuckles nodded. "After what you've been telling me, it seems as if the Chaos Emeralds are lacking their stability. That is said to happen when the Master's control loosens."

"It is said?" Sonic frowned.

"There are many legends about the Chaos Emeralds. It is said that this happened once already. That the powers of chaos broke free and the world was tumbling into disaster." A shudder suddenly ran through the echidna for a second as he continued. "Fires burned down the forests, cities were destroyed, storms raged, and rivers and seas burst their banks for weeks."

"And? What happened?", Tails demanded breathlessly.

"After a few weeks everything just returned to normal. No idea what happened to change everything back or if it worked on its own. This is told to have happened thousands of years ago." Knuckles shrugged. "It's a legend."

"The fire in Tails' hangar didn't seem much like a legend to me, " Sonic pointed out, "What'll happen to the Emeralds? Do they teleport to some other place and randomly do the same again?"

"Hell hedgehog, how the heck should I know?!" Knuckles half jumped upright, but let himself drop back to the stairs with a sigh.

"Okay, okay, I was just asking." Sonic calmingly waved his hands at the echidna. This was clearly not the moment to start arguing, so he better tried not to provoke him.

Tails studied the red echidna. "If Knuckles can feel it and it somewhat interferes with the Master Emerald's energy, it must be something energetic itself. What means maybe I can adjust the devices we sometimes used to track down Chaos Emeralds to find the source of this … whatever it might be."

"Really? How long do you need forthat ? You said your thing is broken. You'll need to build a new one and if Knuckles' legend is connected with what's happening right now, this will get far worse soon." Sonic ran a hand through his quills.

"I don't know, I –" Tails started, but interrupted his speech when Knuckles at his side shot upwards and spun around to the Master Emerald.

Sonic leaped up to his side. "What's wrong, Knux?!"

"It's going to break," the echidna mumbled in a mere whisper, staring at the green gemstone.

"It's going to - break?!", both Sonic and Tails shouted in unison.

"Then we'll fall, right?", Tails added.

Knuckles answered with a barely visible nod, not taking his eyes off the Master Emerald with an expression of horror on his face.

"Then I suggest you land this island of yours as fast as possible!" Sonic quickly turned to Tails. "Are we still above the ocean?"

Tails shrugged. "We were when we came here. I'll check with the Tornado's computers and see if I can find a shallow spot for us to land." The small fox spun his twin tails and flew down the stairway and into the forest as fast as he could.

Sonic paced aside of Knuckles and the giant stone. "You can still land it, can't you?"

The red echidna slowly gave a half nod. "I hope so," he mumbled.

Oh great, Sonic thought, but bit his tongue, deciding that this was clearly not the time to say anything like that.

It needed a felt eternity until the fox came back. He shouted at them the second he was within earshot. "About fifty miles - north-northeast of us - there are a few reefs and underwater - mountains," he gasped, out of breath from hurrying, "should be a safe - landing place. With an altitude of eight - kilometres we should make it - to there." Tails landed aside of Sonic and leaned on his knees panting.

Knuckles stepped closer to the Master Emerald and its green glow intensified as the guardian slowly brought the floating island in a descending motion towards the planet. Knuckles closed his eyes while he summoned the fragile power, hoping it would carry long enough to safely get down. Finally there was a small thud through the ground when the socket of the island sank into the shallow sea and rested onto the rocks just below the water surface.

Then it happened. They had really made it down, but that was as far as the fragile powers would carry. With a flash of green brightness and a feeling in Knuckles' head as if a part of himself was being torn apart, the giant Emerald splinted like glass under a hammer. The echidna opened his eyes, knowing already what he'd see, something he'd seen more often than he liked and something he'd wished with his entire being not having to see again.

Sonic and Tails stared at the shards of the broken Emerald, they had both known that it could break and both seen its pieces before, but this was the first time they actually saw it. Sonic slowly walked closer to the heap of green shards. "What now?"

"We need to bring the pieces to a safe place," Knuckles replied tonelessly. "I cannot restore it as long as this manipulating whatsoever still exists."

"We will find it and stop it," Tails declared, trying to cheer Knuckles up.

The echidna just nodded, his face expressionless, eyes fixed on the shards that had just stopped glowing.

"Hidden palace?", Sonic suggested, pointing at the remains of the Master Emerald.

"Hmm," Knuckles nodded again and the three started picking up the pieces and each of them carried an armful of Master Emerald to the secret chamber. Knuckles hesitantly looked down on what was left of the thing he was supposed to guard.

"Come on, you can't do anything here. We fly back to my workshop and then we can find what made it break," Tails said.

Knuckles slowly inclined his head. Now he was weary, feeling tired, numb and empty, and he simply allowed Sonic to put a hand on his shoulder and shove him out of the cave.