Difficulties
"You're kidding me, right?" Sonic craned his neck upwards, squinting through the rain up at where the vertical walls of rock seemed to directly melt into the cloudy sky.
Knuckles shook his head, immediately regretting it as it sent another wave of pain and dizziness through it. Bringing his hand up to his forehead, the guardian slowly turned to the hedgehog who was still supporting him. "No. It is one of the tunnels to leave the chamber in case of emergency. It ends up there on that small plateau to the left."
Sideways, Knuckles could watch Sonic's emerald eyes widen a little as he scanned the wall. The hedgehog snorted. "Just perfect, Knucklehead. Those ancient pals of you building that thing made some very stupid mistakes. How are you supposed to get away from there… or in our case - up there?"
Knuckles grunted. "It was not at all stupid. The position up there in the rocks avoids that any intruders can get into Hidden Palace that way."
"But no-one who did escape can get away from there either!"
"Of course." Knuckles sighed. "The only ones supposed to be in there were the priests and the guardians of the Emeralds. And all of them could get away from there... We're echidnas. We glide and we climb."
Sonic's jaw dropped at the matter-of-factly tone. "But… how do we get the Emerald down now?"
"I am the guardian, I will get it," Knuckles insisted, pulling away from Sonic's supporting grip. "I just gotta climb up there…"
'Just' was not quite the appropriate term as the echidna had to realize quickly. He had not walked more than two or three steps by the time the spinning feeling in his head had intensified enough to cause the pain to reach nauseous level and Knuckles found himself on his knees and hands.
"I see, it'll be a piece of cake for you," Sonic's sarcastic comment came from his side. "You can't walk, Red, you can't climb like that and you won't be good gliding with these winds anyway. Forget it."
Panting, Knuckles lifted his head to find the blue hedgehog crouched at his side. "I have to. We need the Emerald."
"You're gonna kill yourself. I'll get it." Sonic reached out to help pull Knuckles back to his feet.
"You?" Now it was Knuckles' turn to look bewildered. "How do you think you'll get up there? You don't climb, hedgehog."
Sonic smirked. "I don't? A week ago I didn't think I'd be handling Chaos Emeralds either. I learn fast."
"There is no time learning, hedgehog. You fail one grip and that was it." With some of Sonic's assistance Knuckles leaned against the opposite wall of the canyon.
"I'll manage. Thousands of people climb, why shouldn't I?" Sonic shushed him when Knuckles wanted to start over. "Shh... You were right, we need the Emerald. No Emeralds, no beating Robotnik and his fishy friends. I'll get it."
Knuckles frowned, the rain washing the blood from his head onto his face and slightly into his eye. Sonic stood in front of him, the look on his face almost challenging, utterly confident, but the echidna found there was a sense of rarely seen seriousness in the hedgehog's green eyes.
The guardian's eyes wandered from Sonic to the wall, the rock glazing with wetness and the storm hammering the rain against it. He looked up, tracking the small protruding piece that marked the exit of the escape tunnel. He'd never climbed up there himself. He'd left once using it, had jumped free and caught an up-draft to glide away.
More than one hundred meters round, as much as you could realistically discern a vertical distance by looking up into heavy rain and with your head pounding and concussed.
Knuckles looked back at Sonic, the hedgehog had crossed his arms again, tapping one foot onto the muddy ground. "You sure?"
Sonic shrugged, an all too easy, simple gesture. "Let me just try somethin'…"
Frowning, the red echidna watched as the hedgehog stepped the farthest away from the wall he could possibly go in the narrow gap, pressing his hand against the opposite rock, and pushed off running. A second later Sonic's feet met the rock, jolting the hedgehog upwards in a way Knuckles had never thought anyone could move up a wall. Running on it as if someone had installed treads for him.
But the movement slowed down too fast, inertia loosing out to the lack of friction for the sneaker soles and to the forces of gravity. Knuckles would have shouted a warning, but Sonic had already reacted as his feet started slipping downwards and the run stumbled into a fall. Curling up into a ball of quills, Sonic landed, bouncing off the ground a few times and rose to his feet, to Knuckles' big surprise unharmed.
"Damn stupid bloody water!" The hedgehog shook himself, the wetness of his spikes flying off, at least temporarily.
"Am I right if I say your 'trying something' has not worked?", Knuckles asked.
Sonic turned to him, glaring angrily. "What did it look like? Not enough run-up to gain any speed, too wet, too high… Not good at all."
"If you want up there you'll have to climb like normal people do," the echidna noticed, sliding down the rock in his back to sit against it when his knees felt they couldn't quite carry his weight any longer.
Sonic grimaced. "I guess so. Can't be too hard now, can it?"
Knuckles swallowed his comment when the hedgehog turned around walking towards the rock again. Just perfect. The echidna let his head slump against the stone in his back. Now he would watch the blue idiot committing suicide, and he could do nothing about it.
"Which one was it that triggered the alarm?" Tails leaned over Porker's shoulder curiously.
"Flickies Island, and to Mobius," the pig answered readily, eyes not leaving his screens.
"Means what?", Sol questioned impatiently.
"Means we got visitors from the nice Drakon Empire on Flickies Island," Tails explained before Porker had the chance.
The pig span around in his chair. "Right, Tails. The question is now… what do they want here? Our computers recorded a conversation between Robotnik in which the Drakon leader said they were ready for Robotnik to open the portal and enter our dimension in a week or so. What made them change their plans?"
Sol folded his arms. "They sent a small group of fighters without letting Robotnik know it."
"If I got everything right they teamed up to conquer our planet," Sab summarized. "Isn't it kinda logical both parties want to claim the whole prize?"
"You say… the Drakons are here to wait everything out and then get Mobius for themselves? Behind old Eggman's back?" Tails' namesakes twirled exitedly.
"If that's really the case… I'll bet my new dress Robotnik had the same idea already." Amy flicked her fingers.
Porker nodded slowly. "Neither of them has ever been a teamplayer really…"
"So, one enemy is trying to betray the other one!" Sab grinned. "This is the best that could happen to us…"
"If there is a quarrel within the enemy's troops that will greatly weaken them!" Sol smiled smugly.
"Ahem… I don't want to spoil everyone's fun now…" Tails frowned. "But I'm sure they didn't go and tell the other one 'Hey, we're planning on betraying you'."
"Tails has a point, without them knowing the other one is plotting behind their backs, this is of no use to us." Porker leaned heavily into his seat.
"Well… then we just gotta let them know it, don't we?" Amy shrugged.
"But how? If we're not being very careful, they'll notice our interference and think we're just playing tricks on them," Sab noticed with a sound of concern.
"Hm. In Robotnik's case it shouldn't be too hard. He's so surrounded by machines; he just has to trust his computers…" A small smirk grew on Porker's face.
"Just gotta make sure the right data gets through to him then…" Tails grinned.
Sol raised an eyebrow. "The Drakons are harder…"
"I've got an idea." Amy smiled when everyone's heads whirled to her.
Five minutes later, grins lay on all freedom fighters' faces.
"Well then, let's play the new, awesome game!", Tails shouted enthusiastically. "Capture the Badnik!"
Amy laughed. "And then we'll call some friends to join the party!"
The first meters let Knuckles' worst anxiety decrease a little. The hedgehog was showing more caution than he had expected, searching with one foot or hand for a new hold before shifting his weight a little higher. Knuckles could very well see the lack of experience in all of his movements, but so far Sonic was making up for it with the strength Knuckles had learned he possessed although he didn't look like it.
Slowly, carefully, Sonic's hand felt over the rock, testing thoroughly if the gaps, cracks or projections would be strong enough to hold his weight. Knuckles took a shaky breath. This was nothing to look at. He jerked everytime a stone loosened under Sonic's feet and tumbled downwards.
Fifty meters high above him the blue hedgehog was now clinging to the wall; the distance already making it hard to see clearly, the still not receding rain just aggravating the problem of Knuckles' poor sight.
The echidna would have never imagined how much he wished now to switch positions. Climbing up a dangerous wall was one thing, sitting doomed to helplessly watch someone else doing it was a completely different matter. Knuckles' palms were wet, the warmth of the dampness indicating it was not just rain water but his own sweat adding to it.
The guardian's eyes scanned the rock above and around Sonic, searching for the way best to proceed for him. An utterly useless activity. So high up and surrounded by the rain and howling winds there was no chance the hedgehog would hear any advice, even if Knuckles shouted at the top of his lungs.
About five meters above Sonic and slightly to the right, Knuckles' gaze was caught by a crippled, apparently dead little tree that clung in a broader gap of the rock. If Sonic saw it… it would be a good place for a safe, short rest. Just a few of his pounding heartbeats later, the echidna knew the hedgehog had actually spotted the thing.
Carefully reaching out for it with one arm, Sonic pulled on the small stem, trying if it would break or fall, then obviously considered it safe and pulled himself up onto it to sit astride on the wood and lean back against the rock. For almost a minute he didn't move, catching his breath and recovering some of his stamina.
Then he slowly stood upright on the tree, hands feeling over the wall again to find a hold and keep climbing. Come on, Knuckles thought, you got almost half of the way… No wait, wrong, half of the way is the top.
Amethyst eyes by now completely tied to the small form of the blue hedgehog, Knuckles suddenly found the rain - before having been so hard the splashing of drops onto the stony ground, the meadows and the leaves of the forest a little away had formed an almost deafening staccato - seemed to have silenced during the past minutes, as if the very sky was holding its breath, avoiding any noise that could have disturbed the climbing hedgehog's concentration. Or it was just the guardian's senses playing tricks on him.
The echidna had not quite finished the thought when his breath caught cold in his throat. Sonic had just reached out for another protruding piece of the wall and leaned towards it, but the hedgehog's weight was too much for the stone. With a yelp of shock, he lost his fragile balance and fell.
Helplessly watching, Knuckles saw the hedgehog's body tumble a few meters down before crashing onto the crippled tree's stem. Although Sonic's howl of pain was audible even down at the bottom of the wall where Knuckles sat, the blue hedgehog's reflexes matched his running speed. Both arms and one leg wrapping around the old tree, Sonic caught his fall, the small stem whipping alarmingly, but in spite of Knuckles' expectation it would break any second it didn't.
Slowly the shaking receded and the so far motionless shape of blue Sonic looked like from below twitched, and Knuckles watched him pulling himself fully up again, once more leaning against the wall in the relative safety of the spot.
Sonic didn't move at all for a long time now, hours in Knuckles' feelings, minutes in reality maybe. Worriedly the guardian stared up to him, the pain of his own wounds almost forgotten by now. If Sonic had been gravely injured by the fall – how was he gonna get him down from there?
But after an endless eternity of waiting, Sonic turned towards the wall again, climbing now a little more to the left, slower than before, every movement less smooth than before. Knuckles didn't know how much it had taken to gradually tone down the panic after falling free, and if he was being honest, he wasn't too fond of knowing.
In a slight zig-zaggy pattern Sonic climbed higher and Knuckles found his own breathing calming a little when the hedgehog finally neared the protruding small platform. But Sonic had slowed down such much in the last minutes… Two more meters, Sonic, the echidna thought. Then it became one, and half a minute later, Sonic pulled himself over the edge and disappeared from Knuckles' view.
It felt like another daytime to the echidna until Sonic's head reappeared looking briefly over the edge before the hedgehog slowly started descending feet first. One slow footstep after the other, one careful grip at a time. It had completely stopped raining now and Knuckles spotted the small yellow glow where Sonic had tucked the Chaos Emerald between his spikes to keep his hands free.
Climbing down was always harder than climbing up, Knuckles knew that very well. Even for him - being a natural climber and much better equipped for it than Sonic - it was. Your own feet blocked your view down and hindered you finding good holds. Then of course, looking down at all could be somewhat a problem, even if you were not afraid of heights. The ground would always seem kilometres away from you and it wouldn't much improve while you got lower. It was some kind of struggle your brain had getting along with your eyes' information.
Managing the most dangerous part of the descent, Sonic reached the tree again, but although Knuckles had expected him to need another break, the hedgehog immediately kept climbing. As it seemed, the urge to get down to safe ground had grown bigger than common sense that would have considered a short rest.
Knuckles tried standing up again to get over to the hedgehog when he was to reach the ground, but his knees gave in half of the way, the last minutes' constant alarm clearly not having been what his concussed head had needed at all. So he just sat, watched, waited.
Sol hurried through the forest, along a narrow path between big tree, throwing hasty glances back over his shoulder. The robot was right behind him, several heads taller than he was and a lot broader. Passing over a small clearing, the sheep dived for cover into a thick, wildly grown piece of Mobian shrubbery.
"Okay… Everybody… get ready," Sab whispered.
Tails nodded silently, fastening his grip on the metal net, flexing his tails and waiting for the exact moment to lift himself off.
"There it comes!", Amy called lightly, jumping out behind the bush she'd been hiding in and immediately starting to hop up and down wildly waving her arms at the victim of the operation. "Hello there! Little Badnik! Heeeeere!"
The moment Sol's persecutor located the pink hedgehog and turned to her, Sab dropped out of the tree she'd waited in, now also hopping and shouting.
Confused and trying to make a decision which one of the suddenly grown number of targets to get first, the robot stopped, its head rotating around.
"Now Tails!", Amy shouted.
The little fox reacted fast, twin tails spinning rapidly as they lifted both the weight of their owner and the net he carried. Advancing across the clearing, Tails let go of his freight, dropping it onto the still confused machine. "Porker!", the fox shouted as soon as he'd let go.
A few meters away, sitting behind a large tree's stem, Porker Lewis turned the switch of his battery, sending a jolt of high voltage along a long wire connected to the net Tails had dropped onto the robot. The machine jerked erratically as the strong current was sent through it, then the glow of its eyes dimmed out as it shut down.
Landing aside of Amy, Tails smiled. "Capture complete."
Porker nodded, walking out of his hideout. "Now lets see we load it with some nice little data, repair the charred wires-"
"-and call our nice pals the Sky Pirates to deliver the package," Amy finished for him.
Sonic dropped down the last bit of the climb, landing on his knees and hands panting. Every single fiber his muscles consisted of shivered rapidly with overstrain. This was not like anything he was used to. Sonic was built for high speeds in not quite constant bursts; that was what he was good at, and it was what he was trained at. Slowly pulling himself up and down a wall of rock was a thing for Knuckles, not him.
The fall at half of the way had left deep gashes in his flesh where the sharp edged rocks had torn through fur and skin, and now that his concentration was no longer focussed entirely on where to put a hand or foot and how to safely shift his weight, Sonic felt the warm blood ooze into fur and the stinging of sweat dropping into the wounds.
For a moment he just hunkered, feeling his heart beat against his ribs, then he pulled himself up using the wall for support. Unsure of his own steps, the blue hedgehog turned around and slowly stumbled on wobbly knees over to where Knuckles sat against the rock, distractedly noticing the echidna was still bleeding from the bump on his head.
Sonic slipped down aside of Knuckles, adrenaline slowly ebbing away. "Knux?"
"What?" The guardian sounded as groggy as Sonic felt, and for a second the hedgehog wondered if it was their both not near good condition that he had completely ignored Sonic shortening his name again.
"I… just… realized… you… climb…. better… than me," Sonic gasped, but a small grin made it to his face.
Knuckles turned his head to him, seeming to drop even more against the rock in his back. "I could have told you that before."
"But… at least… I… run better… than you do," Sonic continued.
Knuckles' gaze slowly wandered up and down the beaten form at his side. "You sure about it right now?"
Sonic snickered. "Yeah. You can't even look straight…" The hedgehog paused a second, casting a glance over the desolate look they both gave now. "A fine party to defend the world we are… Any ideas how we'll kick Eggman's butt like this?"
Knuckles gave a tiny nod, but lifted his hand to support his head as it seemed to have been not a good thing to do. "One. You are aware you got the Chaos Emerald capable of healing stuck in those spines of yours?"
Sonic stared at him, then reached into his quills and pulled out the yellow gemstone. "You mean I should try using it?"
"No," came the guardian's sarcastic reply, "I mean you should sit here some longer and stain the ground of my island with big puddles of your blood, hedgehog."
Sonic looked down onto the Chaos Emerald for a moment. "How do I use it?"
"Like the other ones, focus on it and tap into the healing power." The statement sounded like 'go around the next corner and you'll find a chilli dog stand there' out of Knuckles' mouth.
"Wonderful."
"You'll recognize it. I can only tell how the Master Emerald's bit of healing energy feels when I used it to heal myself before, not the Chaos Emeralds'," Knuckles continued calmly, still holding his injured head with one hand. "It feels…. like… easing the pain even before it starts going away..."
Sonic frowned. "That sounds not very logical. What means it sounds very Emerald-like." His eyes retuned to the shining stone in his hands. "Okay, shut up, I'll give it a try."
Unlike Sonic's expectations Knuckles didn't say anything at all, and after a moment the hedgehog concentrated his attention on the yellow stone. Green eyes slowly slid shut as the small, deeply hidden sense Sonic had trained so much during the past time dug itself into the pulse of energy resting on his palm.
But all Sonic felt at first was the waves of pain slowly creeping through his body and he was already close to give up when he caught a faint, mental glimpse of a soothing tingle from within the crystal. He reached out for it, but found it slipping away as another cringe of pain tore at his senses; the discomfort breaking the fragile link before it could truly develop.
Sonic tensed up, as a result finding himself being pulled astray just further, and drew a deep breath, trying to relax again. Slowly the small impression came back and now Sonic held onto it as good as he could, feeling a dam inside of him break and a warm flow of chaos energy formed within him.
Although Knuckles had told him once they did use the same principle and the same sort of power, Emerald healing differed greatly from ring healing. A ring was a golden round construct of chaos power that immediately transformed into free energy flowing into your body as soon as you came into contact with it. There was no need to think about it at all, just for a split-second there was that 'ting' sound and the injury would be gone as if it had never existed.
The Emerald, as Sonic found out, was different. Ring healing went unconscious, what happened right now wasn't close to it. The blue hedgehog could feel every tiny single bit of chaos energy concentrate at the wounded parts; he could feel his very cells repairing and rebuilding, and the gaps torn into his flesh growing shut again. The burning at his nerves stopped and instead, for the weirdest of moments, all of them seemed to vibrate, but it wasn't uncomfortable, and as it stopped the pain had eased out of him.
Not quite sure if it was over or not Sonic sat still for some longer, caught in the wonderful moment of relief, but found there was nothing more to happen and his lids slowly lifted again; emerald eyes disbelievingly taking in his look. Parts of his fur were still painted with about-to-dry blood, but the injuries it had bled from had vanished without leaving a trace on his body. Carefully feeling inside himself, Sonic found it had not taken away the exhaustion, but everything else, even the stiffness of his muscles.
"You see now? It wasn't too hard, was it?" The comment from his side reminded him of Knuckles and the hedgehog turned to look at the echidna. The red furred guardian leaned groggily against the rock, blood still dripping slightly from his brow, face pale and strained eyes focussed on Sonic.
"It was easier than I'd thought. Maybe you're not such a bad teacher after all," Sonic replied, trying a smile. Once again his eyes cast over Knuckles. "How do I use it to heal you?"
For a second there was a total lack of understanding on the echidna's features, then his expression softened. "I don't know. I am capable of using the Master Emerald to heal myself, but this is an ability unique to its guardians. It happens even if I don't try myself; in a slighter and much slower way though. I don't know about the Chaos Emeralds. It might be you can only heal yourself."
"I could try…", Sonic started, but stopped when Knuckles moved his head in the smallest shake he had ever seen.
"No. Don't exhaust the power. It needs time to rebuild and you will need it soon. I can handle it... But I will need your help."
Sonic inclined his head. It was the first time Knuckles had ever asked for something like that. "You have my help," he replied, playfully attempting a formal look.
A tiny smirk darted over the echidna's face for a second as Sonic pulled him to his feet, once again slinging his arm around his shoulder and getting a firm grip around his back.
"So... Where do you want, Knux?", Sonic asked, again smiling as no protest about being nicknamed came any more. One point for the hedgehog, he thought.
Knuckles' answer was simple and somewhat expected. "Hidden Palace."