Constructions And Plans

The biting winds whirled small clouds of snow around his feet and seemed to attempt to pull even the last remaining warmth out of his body. Knuckles shivered and wrapped his arms around himself.

Still, his eyes remained on the crater in front of him. The hole in the icy ground was almost three meters deep and about ten broad. In the middle of it, on a tablet of glazing ice that had been formed when the snow melted by the heat of the impact had frozen again lay the erratically shaped, orange stone. Its dim glow painted the whiteness of the surroundings in a faint light. A constant pulsing was coming from the weird-shaped crystal and Knuckles shivered again, but this time not of cold.

The echidna turned to his two friends. Sonic had folded his arms and was looking down on the Anti-Chaos stone as if it was an enemy he could challenge. Tails' blue eyes were fixed on the alien object with a weird mixture of fear and curiosity.

Sonic turned to the fox. "I guess we gotta go and bring your stuff here."

Tails nodded. "Yeah, we better get working."

"But before we get to that…" The blue hedgehog pointed at the orange gemstone. "We should try out if we can move it."

Knuckles blinked. "You… don't intent just trying to lift it and carry it around, do you? Already forgotten what the rings did to Tails back there?"

Seriously, Sonic shook his head. "No, of course not. But it doesn't mean the same thing will happen again."

Before Knuckles got a chance to stop him, the hedgehog vaulted down into the crater and was moving towards the glowing stone – though more slowly and cautiously than Knuckles had expected. Still... "Sonic!"

The hedgehog turned over his shoulder. "What?! In case it hasn't occurred to you yet: We need to get this thing outta here to get it into Tails' rocket once it's ready. We'll have to move it anyway. If it turns out we can't touch it, we'll have to think of something, so we gotta know. Someone has to do the guinea pig, so I decided I'd do it this time; Tails somewhat did the last, huh?"

"You're one careless idiot, hedgehog," Knuckles grumbled, trying only half successfully to mask the mixture of concern and annoyance that played in his voice, but the rest of what he'd planned to become a longer complaint was cut off already when Sonic slowly stretched out a hand and once touched the very tip of his index finger to the Anti-Chaos' surface.

"Hey, at least I'm still alive," he joked, looking briefly at his hand before making a second contact by placing his complete palm on the stone. A visibly shiver ran through the hedgehog's body. "Whoa… It's cold."

"Great news, hedgehog, it's snowing." Knuckles nervously shifted his weight from one foot to the other. That thing was giving him the creeps.

"No, I mean different cold," Sonic noticed, preoccupied enough to completely ignore Knuckles' comment. "It's only there when I touch this… thing. Strangely, it's not my hand that feels cold; it's more like… yeah, as if I'd swallowed a whole lot of ice cubes and now my guts are all frozen." The hedgehog pulled his hand away and scratched behind his ear in confusion. "It's gone as soon as I let go, and it didn't make me do strange things, right?"

"No, not stranger than usually," the echidna remarked dryly.

Sonic snapped his fingers. "So, the question is: Why did the rings get to Tails that way and this thing here, being the real cause of all that mess, doesn't?"

Tails hopped down into the crater to join his brother. "Well, so far we only know it doesn't do the same thing to you." A quick touch of Tails' hand to the stone revealed it also didn't do it to him. "Then I'd say… We cannot interact with it directly, what influences us is only the effects it has on the chaos energy we can interact with anyway."

"Well, that makes this bit easier." Sonic turned to the stone again and grabbed it with both hands now, heaving and pulling. The giant gem didn't move a single bit. "Okay, two ideas. First, it's a lot heavier than it looks. Second idea: it's frozen in place." He turned around to the red echidna still standing at the crater's rim. "How about you get your butt down here and help us out a little?"

Reluctantly Knuckles followed Sonic's request, suspiciously eying the big glowing crystal. His senses were screaming at him from all quarters, but nothing of it was understandable, nothing was clear; it was unfamiliar, strange and very close to scaring him.

Sonic tilted his head. "You okay?"

Knuckles forced himself to nod, taking another step closer to the Anti-Chaos jewel, stretching out a shaking hand in spite of everything his instincts told him to do at the moment. He wasn't sure if he'd made contact at all; all he knew was that suddenly a cold he'd never thought he could feel rushed though him, freezing every nerve, every bone, every cell in his body, and the second he was nothing but a frozen piece of flesh, a loud cry that clearly wasn't his own pierced right through his soul, a desperate cry of sorrow, of inexplicable pain… and loneliness...

...

...

A stinging smell penetrated his nose, an uncomfortable tickling being his only warning before his entire body jerked with a series of hard sneezes. Knuckles gasped, rapidly blinking tears out of his eyes. "What…?"

"Did you just say something?! Knuckles?!"

The echidna looked up at the sound of Sonic's voice, something in the back of his mind noticed they were inside a room with wooden walls, the air was warm and smelled of a fireplace and a lot of other things he couldn't place, he sat curled up against a couple pillows on a sofa, his head was pounding angrily, and a familiar blue hedgehog was leaning over him with a worried look on his face. "Sonic?"

"Phew." The hedgehog let out a sigh of relief. "It really worked. I didn't believe in it, but it worked." The look of his green eyes dropped down onto a small bowl he held. "I guess this stuff's good."

Knuckles blinked again, his eyes still feeling as if he had some sort of irritant in them. "What's that?"

"Oh, you want to try again?" Sonic held the bowl closer to Knuckles' face. "I thought you'd had enough…"

Carefully sniffling, Knuckles noticed a weird mixture of stinging smells coming from the brownish-green liquid in the bowl. "Get that stuff outta my face, whatever it is!"

Sonic frowned, but did take the bowl away. "I'm not too sure what it is, either. I just read somewhere this could work and then I threw all kind of strong smelling stuff I could find in there." He brought his own nose closer to the bowl and grimaced in disgust. "You're right, it's terrible. I guess I'll get us something nicer, right?"

Knuckles wasn't quite sure if he'd have managed an answer, but Sonic was already gone in a flash of blue. The wind he'd stirred up had not settled yet when the hedgehog returned the same way he'd left, but this time holding two big mugs with something steamy in his hands. With a small smile, he held one out at Knuckles. "Here."

"So, and what's THIS now?" The echidna looked at his blue friend in suspicion.

"Hot chocolate," Sonic replied, sitting down on the sofa aside of him. "Really, it's good. It's tasty. I can't have too much of it, but it's nice and makes you warm. I thought you could use it."

Cautiously Knuckles smelled the steaming liquid. It had to be something sweet. "Why can't you have too much of it?", he wondered distractedly.

"I'm a hedgehog, y'know? Most of us don't do overly well with too much of milk stuff, but a bit is fine." Sonic smiled and took a sip of his own chocolate.

Knuckles blinked again, this time more out of confusion than physical need. Deciding whatever Sonic was getting at wasn't important, the echidna tried a mouthful of the stuff. It really was sweet, and it was nicely warm in his stomach.

"Am I right if I think you don't have a clue what happened back there?"

Looking up at Sonic again, Knuckles shook his head. "No. Everything I remember is cold. And… other strange things."

Sonic raised an eye ridge, but for some reason seemed to have decided to not press any further. "But you're okay now?"

"My head hurts," Knuckles admitted, "but I guess I'll be fine."

Sonic nodded. "Good." He finished his own hot drink and stood up. "I'll go see if Tails needs me."

"What's he doing?"

"Getting started tinkering. We figured we're kinda in a rush to get everything ready and this thing off our planet. Since I'm better carrying you and he's the better mechanic, much better I guess really, I brought you here to have you out of the cold and see if I could snap you out of it." Sonic looked down on Knuckles seriously. "Now that we got that covered… You don't go nearer than two meters to that thing, got it?"

"If I remember correctly, it was your bright idea I should get down there, hedgehog," Knuckles remarked acidly.

Sonic's pointy ears tipped backwards in embarrassment. "Yes, but you didn't say anything against it, did you?"

Hadn't he said he didn't want there? Had he? Knuckles cocked his head, suddenly speechless. Deciding he didn't need to tell Sonic he didn't quite remember what he'd done or said back there, he just shook his head.

The blue hedgehog shrugged. "Thought so. Anyway, don't do anything stupid while uncle Sonic is out, okay?" Knuckles grumbled and Sonic stuck out his tongue before zipping out of sight. Unprepared for it, Knuckles winced at the crashing sound when the hedgehog noisily closed the door behind himself.

It was a disaster, a complete disaster. Now that his plans for making use of Shadow's incredible powers just seemed to be brilliantly succeeding, an energetic interference from outer space ruined everything.

The first effects this object had had on the interaction of all kinds of chaos energy on Mobius had been scientifically very interesting and offered new make-ups for new brilliant machines.

Even all the unexpected effects on the weather conditions and the environment in general would have been mildly acceptable, but now it was restraining the Chaos Emeralds from giving away their power. Getting a robot-controlled being to access chaos powers was close to impossible anyway, but after Shadow's loss to Sonic and his friends he'd spent a complete sleepless night to fix that. It was a struggle, a struggle between keeping control and not restraining Shadow's unique talents too much; solely robotic beings couldn't use chaos powers, it needed a soul, but too much of a free mind spoiled his plans… Though it had taken hours, now he was finally more or less sure his final goal was in reach through the compromise he'd made, now he could get back to the really important bits.

Research on the changed Chaos Emeralds appeared highly difficult because their natural tendency to warp between places seemed even intensified and absolutely unpredictable. In spite of the name and a behaviour that justified the common terminology, the chaos energy had always followed, at least in certain restrictions, its own physical laws. Laws that greatly differed from all the rules usual matter followed, but its behaviour had never been completely unpredictable. Now, the generally given high entropy of all forms of chaos objects was rising to a point where every law seemed to expire. Now even the usually much more simple structured rings had gotten uncontrollable. A great deal of his machinery was about to lose its energy to run on.

Robotnik sighed. He had decided it was time to change strategies. He'd wanted that new power source the comet offered for himself; it was the reason he had sent Shadow to stop the blue hedgehog and his furry friends after the drone he'd left in the laboratory had told him their plan to launch the mysterious stone back into space.

But even great plans for world domination needed to be thought over sometimes. He would let them do their work. Robotnik smiled and his eyes fixed on one of his numerous screens. It showed eight blinking dots, seven of them forming a big circle around the eighth.

The patterns were unmistakable.

Chaos was the concept the universe was based on. This universe at least. Chaos was its stable condition. Every sort of order automatically was unstable and dissolved itself into chaos once more after a short period of time. As soon as the Emeralds would reach the Anti-Chaos, as the little fox had so fittingly named the object, the problem would be solved anyway. It was still unclear to Robotnik if the resulting effects would leave anything of the world how it was now. Considering the massive power all engaged objects contained… the outcome was likely to blast its way down to sub-atomaric layers.

So maybe better not find out.

Robotnik chuckled. The little fox had made a mistake. The technical skill behind his rocket-machine still was remarkable, but the fox had made a mistake. He had missed on a certain little property of the Anti-Chaos structure and it's interaction with space-time itself. It was not a part of this world. Nothing about it fit properly to this universe's structures. When reaching a certain value of kinetic energy, it would tear a rift into the universe's structure. Robotnik was absolutely sure. Interdimensional teleportation. Uncontrolled, to be accurate. Of course, the fox would never find out. Neither would his friends. They would just think the rocket got too far away.

Of course it was of no matter neither to them nor to him where the asteroid went. It might as well have come from another dimension with an entirely different physical make-up than this one, as all of its attitudes varied so much from Mobius' laws of nature. Compared with every other phenomenon he had experienced before, Robotnik considered it might have its origin in the parallel dimension he had visited some time ago and effortlessly tried getting the Sol Emeralds under his power. The chaos energy's balancing pole was the Master Emerald; the Sol Emeralds were likely to be linked to something comparable. During the time he had spent there, no-one had ever mentioned the existence of such an object. Maybe the connection between the two worlds had been existing much longer than he had thought.

Or the stone came from a completely different place. However the stone had made its way through the gap between the worlds was impossible to tell now. And it didn't matter much. The only thing that slightly bothered the scientist in Robotnik was that he would never know if it returned to its origin, where it had really come from or how it had come here in the first place.

But such a little thing should not be his worry. As long as the chaos energy restored and balanced, the way was free for his plans…

He would wait a few more days. Until those fools had done the dirty work for him and cleaned the stage. And then he would make his move. It would be like going to a banquet and just needing to take all the goodies for your own pleasure...

Maybe... it wasn't a disaster after all.

The early morning hours found Sonic looking skeptically between the big orange rock and the small gas bottle in his hands and at the blue flame that came out of it. "Are you sure this won't do any bad damage, Tails?"

Knuckles standing on the edge of the crater looked down on the hedgehog and frowned. "Would it be a big loss if it burned up?", he muttered.

Sonic shot him a stern look, but addressed the fox instead. "Tails? Can't it catch fire or something?"

Tails sighed and put his pliers down into the snow. He walked over to the impact crater and looked down on the hedgehog and the big Anti-Chaos in the middle of it. "I don't want you to burn the stone, Sonic, I want you to melt the ice it is stuck in so we can get it out once the rocket is ready to be loaded. Try not to leave too many burn marks on it. Generally, this thing," he pointed at the orange rock, "is as durable as a Chaos Emerald. It didn't take the least bit of damage during entering the atmosphere or on impact. No, Sonic, you can't destroy it. And now could you get working?" Tails turned around and strolled back to the heap of half finished machinery he had been working on, shaking his head.

Knuckles looked down on Sonic. "What's wrong with the guy?"

Sonic shrugged. "If you want me to hazard a guess based on long-years-Tails experience: he's tired or he's hungry and whatever he is exactly building there, it doesn't work the way he wants it to." The hedgehog knelt down on the glazing ice and brought the small flame into contact with it.

Knuckles watched him for a moment, then turned around when Tails called his name. "Knuckles?"

"Yes?"

"Can you," Tails balanced a far too big, convex piece of metal back and forth, "help me hold this?"

"Sure." Knuckles grabbed the thing with both hands and Tails quickly seized one tool for each of his own hands and started an attack on the now defenseless metal. Knuckles watched him for a moment. "What will this become when it's ready, Tails?"

"Energy nozzles. The thrusters." The fox attached another weird looking thing to the piece Knuckles already held.

"The – what?" The echidna stared at Tails fixing the new installation with a few screws.

Tails looked up at him and smiled. "That's what makes the rocket fly forwards."

"Then you better make sure it works."

"Oompf! Phew! That thing's heavy," Sonic pressed out, holding the ropes they had tied around the big stone with both hands. He pressed his feet into the snow and pulled, even as the rope cut into his shoulder.

"Why doesn't it come out?" Knuckles yanked on his rope a few times and the resistance of the rock stuck in the melted ice suddenly gave out, the jolt sending all three of them flying to the white powdered ground.

Sonic cursed and knocked the snow out of his blue fur. "This thing really doesn't want to get out, huh?"

"What are you complaining about? It did finally," Tails remarked and stood back up. "Let's see that we get it up here so we can finish for today."

Sonic and Knuckles nodded and all three pulled the still protesting stone out of the crater. Once it lay aside of them, Sonic looked over at the lower half of the rocket that stood upright in the snow, almost ready. It still lacked a top though, and many other things, and of course the power source. "Now we put it inside and then take break for the night?"

Tails nodded. "We can't work all in the dark here. Let's get it in."

Sonic and Tails tried grabbing the monstrous stone and lift it between them. Due to the weird form they succeeded only at the third attempt and then dropped it once on their staggering way over at the makeshift rocket-construction-set. But finally it rested more or less gracefully where Tails wanted it to.

Knuckles took a few steps further back and massaged his temples. Sonic raised his eyebrows at him. "You okay?"

"Hmm… I guess." Knuckles shot the orange glooming crystal a glare like daggers. He hated watching the others work without helping almost as much as he hated this stupid stone.

Sonic shook himself. "I'm not fond of it either, just so you know. It gives me the creeps." He looked over to Tails. "What now?"

"We just pull the awning over it and see that we get out of the cold for once," Tails replied. He was looking forward to the warm fireplace and some nice snacks...

Knuckles awoke to harsh shaking. "Knuckles, Knuckles! Wake up, you gotta see this!"

The echidna grunted. It had taken him felt centuries to fall asleep and now he felt as if he'd just dropped off. "What do you want…", he mumbled, sleepily struggling to get his eyes open.

"There's an Emerald out there!", Sonic shouted, but at least finally stopped shaking him.

Knuckles groaned. As if he'd never seen any Emeralds before… He squinted up at the exited blue hedgehog that stood aside of his bed, already wearing scarf and warm gloves and having small ice crystals in the blue fur on his head.

"What Emerald…?" Knuckles slowly crawled out from underneath his covers.

"Chaos Emerald of course," Sonic explained, "if you choose to get technical, the dark blue one."

Knuckles fumbled with his shoes and hid a yawn. "You care to tell me what happened? In a way I can understand?"

"Telling's crap. Get your stuff on, I'll show ya!"

About five minutes later, Sonic pointed forwards. "See? I discovered it when I went on my morning run."

Knuckles stopped at Sonic's side and couldn't help but stare at the blue Chaos Emerald a few meters away from them. It was hovering in mid-air, as if gravity had stopped to exist for it. Which was almost a normal thing, given Chaos Emeralds. But where had it come from? "What the…"

Sonic shrugged. "I don't know. It wasn't here yesterday when I got up and it clearly wasn't here when we came here two days ago. It must have teleported here last night or something."

Knuckles nodded distractedly, walking around the slowly spinning fist-sized gem. "I wonder why it did…"

Sonic shrugged again. "No idea. I asked Tails but he said he doesn't know; he thought it could be possible that it is somehow coming closer to the Anti-Chaos stone, like a magnet. This was why I woke you up, I thought you could know."

Knuckles shook his head. "I have no idea." He finally turned away from the Chaos Emerald to face Sonic. "Did you touch it or something?"

"No, I thought after Tails' great attempt at collecting rings I didn't need to have my brains sucked out by that thing or anything else…"

Knuckles nodded. "How is Tails doing with his stuff?"

"It looked good half an hour ago," Sonic noticed.

"Let's see if we can help him," Knuckles suggested and turned around.

Sonic looked after the echidna, back at the Chaos Emerald. "Shouldn't we be doing something about this?"

Knuckles rolled his eyes. "And what do you suggest we do?", he snapped.

"Oh we could," Sonic started, then stopped, looked at Knuckles, and sighed. "I don't know. Let's go help Tails."

It was early in the afternoon when Tails and his two more or less talented aids stopped hammering and looked at their piece of work. The metallic surface of the rocket glazed silver in the sunlight and stuck its shiny tip into the blue sky. It was the first day they could see something besides clouds and snowflakes, as if the very sky wanted to look upon Tails' newest invention.

Sonic knocked his knuckles on the surface of the rocket. It was about four times taller than he was and from the outside nothing betrayed the big object it held. "Are we ready for take-off, guys?"

Tails checked a small handheld computer and nodded. "I guess. Come on." He waved at the others to follow him and they took cover behind a small snowy hill.

Tails pressed a few buttons on his computer and looking over the hill's top, Sonic watched how the rocket's boosters started glowing. "I'm starting countdown," Tails declared. "Ten... nine... eight... seven... six... five... four... three... two... one..."