11. Mission Accomplished . . .

Sonic stood in the center of the raft, wishing that the waves didn't keep splashing up between two of the boards in front of him. Actually he wished he was anywhere else but here, even up in space battling the Death Egg again. He fidgeted, shuffling his feet on the rough wood. Shadow sat in the back by the tiller, as inhumanly (indokanly?) calm as he usually was, scanning the water with his crimson eyes. The equally crimson form of the echidna was down there, somewhere, scouring the bottom of the bay for the stone that Sonic had lost. This made him feel guilty, and guilt and nerves were an uncomfortable combination, even without the embarrassment of having Shadow present to witness them. At least Shadow has the tact to pretend to ignore me. For once, I do want to be ignored. The blue hedgehog tried to look around for Knuckles, but that just hammered home the fact that he was in the middle of a whole lot of water, without enough room for a running start that would let him race across the top to safety if needed.

"Sonic?" Shadow's voice nearly made him jump out of his skin. He glanced over at the red-striped hedgehog. "Rouge said that Amy told her that this stone had some sort of power. Did you notice anything like that when you had it?"

"I'd hardly have thrown it away if I had," Sonic snapped. He shook his head. "Sorry, Shadow. I just . . . ." He let his voice trail off. He was NOT going to say he was scar– nervous. He didn't dare look at the other hedgehog, though.

"Don't worry about Tails," said Shadow. "He's a smart kid."

Sonic blinked, then snuck a peek at the black dokan, wondering if he was being made fun of. But Shadow was still scanning the water, one hand shading his eyes, the other on the tiller. Surely he knew why Sonic was on edge! Of course he does, stupid. He just doesn't want to pick a fight out here since he can't swim any better than I can. Either that or he's being nice. Sonic regarded the latter thought doubtfully, then discarded it. 'Nice' and 'Shadow' don't go together. Although . . . had he ever, since the ARK was destroyed, been given the chance? Sonic ran the calculations in his head. Fifty years, give or take a few, in suspended animation in the Prison Island base; a week between when Eggman woke him up and we stopped the ARK's attempted plummet; that time while everyone thought he was dead when he was really healing in another suspension capsule in Eggman's lair, then what - two days, maybe three for the Metal Sonic ego-trip, followed right after by Black Doom' abortive invasion. And then the Gizoid. Sheesh, the poor guy's had less than two months to himself that he's actually been awake since Maria died!

Sonic considered the total with surprise, and a bit of shame. Certainly two months wasn't nearly enough time to be done mourning someone as close to you as Maria had apparently been to Shadow. He made a mental note to be more thoughtful in the future. But there was something he'd been wondering about. "Shadow?"

"Hmm?"

"Why are you helping me? I mean, I got Tails into this mess, and he pulled Amy in by accident, but you - and Rouge - aren't really involved. So, why are you out here?"

"Well, for starters, Rouge isn't helping. She–" Shadow gave Sonic a faintly amused look. "She's ostensibly on a mission from G.U.N. to find out what Dr. Eggman's up to with this hoverboard race, but," he glanced quickly around the raft to see if Knuckles had resurfaced, then lowered his voice, "I suspect she's hoping no one will notice if the Chaos Emerald she's retrieving just disappears afterward." He forestalled Sonic's startled reply by continuing, "She asked me to help you get Knuckles involved in this so he couldn't object to her hunting for one. Although that's not why I'm out here."

"Knuckles doesn't really care about the Chaos Emeralds, unless she's hunting one on Angel Island itself," Sonic pointed out. "He gave up guarding them after the Death Egg crashed. So why are you here, then?"

Shadow became very interested in the scuffed toes of his hover shoes. "Actually, it's because of this jester you mentioned. And . . . Maria," he mumbled.

Maria? Sonic knew that Shadow's 'big sister' was frequently the root cause of his actions, but he failed to see the connection. "How does - Maria - tie in with a casino mascot? I don't think Casinopolis is fifty years old."

It was Shadow's turn to avoid Sonic's eyes. "No, it's not. But I did a little research, and NiGHTS is supposed to be based off a character that the owner 'met' in a dream when he was a boy. He claims the dream changed his life, and that's why he adopted the character as the mascot for his casino and hotel. I hadn't really made the connection before, although I thought, when I first saw the billboards downtown, that there was something familiar about that mascot." There was a long pause, during which Knuckles popped his head up and then dove back under again. Shadow was staring through the boards of the raft at something that was fifty years gone. Finally he spoke again, just before Sonic's patience gave out. "I'd never actually seen her, but I'd had her described to me. Maria had a dream about NiGHTS once, one day when she was feeling rather bleak about her future. This was right before I was created, I think, but she told me about it about a year after I was awakened. She talked about this jester, in a pretty pink and purple outfit who took her flying through her dreams and helped her fight off some nightmarish version of her illness and sort of representations of doctors who only saw her as a case, as her NIDS, not as a person; she said that after she woke up she realized that she'd been forgetting that there was more to 'Maria' than just the disease." He caught Sonic's expression and shrugged slightly. "It made sense to her. Anyway, I don't think this jester is really a threat to Tails, but those nightmare things could be a threat to this world - and they'll certainly make people unhappy."

"So since you promised Maria to make people happy, you're going to help us send the lot home," Sonic finished for him. Tails had said that Amy had thought this NiGHTS was female at first, and apparently Maria had made the same mistake. "Huh. Maybe we'll turn you into a good guy yet." Shadow raised a scarlet eyebrow but didn't reply. Clearly, he felt he'd said all that needed saying.

A few moments later, Knuckles erupted from the water. Shaking spray from his dreadlock spines, he hauled himself onto the raft. "No luck," he scowled. "Nothing but scads of salmon heading for the underpasses to the jungle."

Sonic grimaced. He'd really been counting on Knuckles being able to find the thing. Maybe we'd be better off getting a Chaos Emerald first, to try and recharge it with? Or collecting some of those dream chips; Knuckles said they're on Angel Island now. Maybe one of these Nightopians could help look for the Dreamcaster? Although, from Knuckles' description they didn't sound very useful, even their King. Dunno, locating a Chaos Emerald might be best– Sonic looked up. "Shadow," he said suddenly, as that thought connected to something the black hedgehog had said earlier, "why does Rouge need a Chaos Emerald to look into a hoverboard race?"

"Because that's the entrance fee."

Knuckles frowned at the change of topic, but the mention of a Chaos Emerald had his full attention. "Not going to have too many competitors then, are they? There are only seven Chaos Emeralds out there."

"It's a team fee," said Shadow. "You can enter a team of four with each Emerald, and I suppose there's an alternative entry as well; there are five or six qualifying races and then the World Cup. Rouge says there's some hawk who calls himself the 'Legendary Wind Master' or some such, who says he's going to win. Says he's the fastest thing on the planet."

"Oh really?" said Sonic mildly. "So Rouge is entering herself, and who else?"

"Me. And a couple of G.U.N. agents that are fond of the sport."

"Can you ride a hoverboard?" asked Sonic. He'd ridden snowboards before but never tried a hoverboard.

"I can ride most things," said Shadow simply. "My flash training covered an amazing number of motorized and non-motorized vehicles, but since the original hoverboards were produced by the Professor's son, I actually learned to ride them back on the ARK with Maria. That's where my hover shoes came from too, you know."

"Can we get back now?" interjected Knuckles, standing up and stripping the water out of his fur with his hands. "I told you about those things on my island, and I need to get back there with the fish."

"What's the difference between the flash training and learning?" asked Sonic. The echidna scowled again as Sonic ignored him, and leaned past Shadow to start the raft's little motor.

"Probably the same as Knuckles finds between what he's learned in his dreams and things he's actually done." Shadow nodded at the echidna, who merely grunted. The black hedgehog stepped away from the tiller so the echidna could steer and continued, "The flash training is just there. No memories of learning it, no little tricks picked up along the way, just - I know it or I don't. I could take this engine apart and put it back together again, but I couldn't adjust it like Tails does; I don't know how to tighten this and loosen that and improve the result.

"Which reminds me, do you think he'd be able to take a look at my hoverboard before the race? Rouge bought me one, but my understanding is that modified boards tend to do better than straight-off-the-shelf ones."

"Oh, sure," said Sonic. "Since you're helping us look for the Dreamcaster, I'm sure he'd be delighted to look at your board for you. But you say Eggman's involved?"

"Worry about Eggman later," said Knuckles, as they docked the raft below the train station. "I want to get those Nightopians off Angel Island before I have a war to deal with. Some of them are rubbing some of the chao the wrong way, and both groups tend to gang up in support of their own."

Sonic sighed, partly in relief as he was able to scramble up the ladder (and therefore away from the water), and partly in irritation. Knuckles had filled the two hedgehogs in on these Nightopians and their dream-speech, and the odd blue spheres - which were apparently the dream chips that had been mentioned to Tails and Amy, but the echidna had admitted that the creatures weren't actually fighting the chao, so Sonic didn't see the problem. Surely nightmare creatures that were on the loose and attacking people were the more urgent problem. Besides, he wasn't convinced that Eggman wasn't behind this somehow; the human had recently developed a habit of unleashing things he then couldn't control.

But as Sonic reached the station platform, movement out over the water caught his eye. For an instant he thought it was some sort of plane, the he saw that whatever it was was as flat as the raft they'd left below. Shadow and Knuckles joined him at the guardrail, staring at the strange thing gliding back and forth in what appeared to be a search pattern. Suddenly Knuckles gasped and, grabbing the hedgehogs, dove through the unglazed window into the station. His massive hand landed on top of Sonic's head and shoved him down below the sill level, and his other forced Shadow down as well, while he dropped into a crouch along with them. "That's one of those hand things I saw in the Master Emerald," he whispered. "I'll bet it's looking for that Dreamcaster stone too." Startled out of his reflexive annoyance, Sonic peered through a crack in the rough board wall, and saw that the object out there was indeed a giant hand, a good ten or fifteen feet long from fingertip to heel. As the thing suddenly reared up perpendicular to the water and rotated, he saw an eye embedded in the center of the palm.

"Wizeman," he breathed. The other two glanced at him. "In the casino game, the one with NiGHTS in it, Reala is the main evil henchman, and Wizeman is the ruler of Nightmare, the one who actually controls and sends the bad dreams. He's got about a dozen hands with eyes in them, that float around so he can see what's going on."

"Yeah I saw him in the Master Emerald as well, I think. And then those silly fish . . . ." Knuckles' voice trailed off as he gazed blankly at the wall in front of him. "No," he said under his breath, shaking his head. With a muttered curse, he jumped to his feet. "Come on! I know where this thing is!"

Gliding off the station balcony, he led the way back to the mine tunnel, and then through the jungle to a treehouse Sonic immediately recognized as Big's. It wasn't the sort where the house was built up in the branches, but a house built around and into a massive hollow stump. A branch of the stream ran beside it. Big himself was kneeling at the edge of a pit and leaning into it, with a pile of gutted fish lying on some massive leaves beside him. Froggy perched on a stub of branch remaining on the ancient stump, tossing a small object in his mouth and catching it with his tongue.

As they approached Big sat back up, with smoke now rising from the pit in front of him. He looked around and spotted the approaching dokan. "Hello!" He waved cheerfully. "You're too early; I haven't started cooking them yet."

Sonic grinned. "We didn't come to eat, but thanks. We're looking for a little striped stone, called the Dreamcaster. Have you seen it?"

Big considered this at length. "No," he answered finally, "I wasn't looking for stones today, I was looking for fish. I got enough stones last time." He looked into the pit. Sonic followed his gaze and saw that the pit was lined with large stones, with a fire built in the middle of it. "They're big and they don't have stripes," the purple tabby added.

"You're right," Sonic agreed, "they don't." He looked at Knuckles. "I thought you said Big had it?"

Knuckles was looking up the thirty-foot stump at the frog doing his catch act on the sheared-off branch. "No, I didn't say Big had it, I said I knew where it was." He pointed. "Up there. Froggy has it."

"Hmmmm?" Big looked up. "Oh, that. Froggy found that while I was fishing. He said it fell out of one of the pretty salmon." He held up his arms. "Come down, Froggy."

The yellow-speckled frog obediently dropped off the branch, but landed on the cat's head, rather than his outstretched hands.. Sensing what was coming, Sonic tensed, then leaped to intercept the frog as it tried to flee. "Gotcha!" The hedgehog remembered too well the frog's propensity for playing hide and seek. The beautiful gold-flecked eyes glared at him, then, with the amphibian equivalent of a shrug, Froggy spit his prize into Sonic's hand. Sonic handed the frog back to Big and displayed the small, tooth-shaped stone with a flourish. "Ta-da!" Big started lecturing Froggy, but Knuckles and Shadow crowded around to look. "The Dreamcaster!" The stripes gleamed brightly in the sun, but there was still no inner glow, no feel of life, no unusual warmth to indicate that the object was anything more than what it looked like.