Victory?

"No! This can't be happening!" Hurrying along a corridor bathed in crimson emergency lighting, Robotnik screamed out over the blaring and whining of a felt thousand of alarm sirens in disbelief. "Impossible!"

The shaking of his aircraft's floor told the scientist better as he was thrown off his feet another time. He reached the escape pot with his last power and literally dropped into it. "Retreat…", he gasped out, a hand in a glove slightly blackened by smoke falling onto the big red button to eject the capsule.

Two seconds after it came down, the last of Robotnik's battleships was eaten up by a dozen of fireballs radiating from the overpowered engines.

Ten second later even the fireballs were no more.

Panting hard, Sonic turned around to see Robotnik's flying fortress explode and the remaining wreckage being swallowed up by the collapsing dimension portal. If that had been finally enough to fill it up or if it had just reached its lifespan, Sonic would never know as it flared one last time before vanishing.

For a moment the hedgehog stared at the sudden emptiness in front of him before slowly starting to descend towards the thing he'd planned to check up on, but as he dived into the clouds, it was suddenly gone. Sonic tilted his head. "Seems someone solved his problems himself…", he mumbled.

Vague shapes of a landmass were showing between the clouds below him, when his steady glow started to flicker erratically. "Huh?..."

What had happened to all that energy that had filled him to the point of almost bursting? Sonic stared at his hands, at the glow becoming harder and harder to see until the blue fur became visible beneath the golden shine. He tried to reach for the energy that had been flowing through him like his very own blood for a short time that felt like a life span, but his nerves seemed suddenly numb for it. There was no chaos energy left for him to feel. And the sudden lack for a sense to feel what he had put so much efforts into learning to feel was for a moment as if he had never been even close to any Chaos Emeralds... As if it all had been just a dream.

And suddenly he was… just a tired little hedgehog… And then...

...falling…

A sharp pain tore through thick darkness, directly followed by a tiny noise. Sonic twitched, in no way really knowing if the whimper was his or not, and his hands barely found their way to his stomach from where now another cramp shot a wave of nausea through him.

Something sticky and utterly sweet was pushed between his teeth, reflex biting down on whatever it was. Sonic blinked slowly, the darkness was replaced by a blurry sea of colors, and another piece of almost too sweet stuff was shoved into his mouth. His ears winced weakly to the sounds around, but the words just washed over him without getting a sense of meaning.

Several more words and sticky pieces of food had followed until the hedgehog reached a grade of awareness that allowed a few more impressions to leak into his mind and he found himself sitting, not on his own but a strong hold around his shoulders. "Humpf…?", he choked out, remembered to swallow the food and tried again. "Knux?"

"Here, drink that."

Not really an answer, but certainly Knuckles. The left of the echidna's big, white-gloved hands swam into view, and Sonic reached for the big kind of thing between mug and bowl it held. In spite of feeling dry as if he'd been trying not quite successfully gurgling with sand Sonic didn't take more than one gulp of the liquid; if the stuff before had been almost too sweet, this drink was clearly far beyond 'almost'.

"What the hell is that?", he mumbled wearily, but his small voice already carried his disapproval. "Tastes like sugared water!"

"It might be because that's what it is," Knuckles commented neutrally. "Now drink up already, Sonic, we have to get some energy back into you. See how you're shivering?" His hand shoved under the mug to force the stuff down his throat, but Sonic was still not near less dazed enough to truly protest anyway. The blue hedgehog just shook himself in distaste as Knuckles took the mug from his grip, and numbly watched the echidna reach behind himself and pick up a big, flat piece of wood with several staples of dried and fresh fruits on it. "Can you sit by yourself?"

Sonic managed a distracted nod without looking at Knuckles when the echidna let go of him; his eyes mysteriously locked to the food and his stomach giving a demanding, painful growl.

It was not before half of the plate's content had found its way down into Sonic's belly that he was able to really think. Forcing at least his eyes away from the fruits while his hands still busily stuffed them one by one into his mouth, the blue hedgehog cast a look around.

The room was small and of a triangular shape; two of the walls natural rock, the third made from branches, the roof seemed to consist of huge leaves. There wasn't much worth being called furniture; the corner across of him hosted a small fireplace, then there was the heap of plaids and blankets he was sitting on, and the stump-like thing Knuckles sat on.

"Better now?", the echidna asked when the hedgehog's eyes stopped on him.

Sonic nodded distractedly. "Where are we?"

"One of the many safe places I got to go to all over the island," Knuckles replied willingly.

Sonic blinked, strained his memory, failed, and looked at the echidna again. "What happened? How did I get here?"

"Um.. I.. carried you? It wasn't that you could have went by yourself... You were pretty much old cold… You overestimated yourself, you didn't notice when you had used up the chaos energy the Emeralds could give to you and used too much of your own. I guess it's you're lacking the experience. No big surprise here…" There was no reproach in Knuckles' voice, it was calm and quiet and Sonic found he was just stating facts. "I couldn't just let you lie there, could I?" Knuckles shrugged.

Sonic smiled a little and swallowed his pride. "Thank you… And… I'm sorry."

The echidna's eyebrows went up. "Huh?"

"I'm… sorry," Sonic repeated quietly.

"I got you," Knuckles noticed, frowning, "but what for?"

"For… being such a burden to you, keeping you from doing… whatever you might do normally… and a lot of other stuff." Sonic looked up at the echidna and shook his head at him when the guardian opened his mouth to say something. "Let me finish, I'm nothing like good with things like that." He received a nod and took that as his cue to continue. "It's just that you always were pretty clear on saying this is our war and you want nothing to do with it. Still, you helped me out a lot this time, and I think I didn't say thank you yet. I'm doing it now. Thank you, Knuckles."

Now the echidna looked pretty much as embarrassed as Sonic felt and there was a moment of awkward silence before the guardian broke it. "It… it became my war long ago. I think I failed to notice, that's all…" For one of the rare times Sonic had seen in the past weeks, a smile appeared on Knuckles' face and wasn't washed off by stoic seriousness again. It genuinely stayed there on his lips. "So, you're welcome, I suppose."

Sonic felt a smile tug on his own lips as well. "Heh…" He didn't know what else to say anymore, but he didn't seem the only one.

Knuckles just inclined his head at him, still smiling, and abruptly changed the topic. "Do you remember what happened to the Emeralds?"

For a moment Sonic just stared at him, the change of subjects a tad too fast for him, then when he got Knuckles' question down he briefly closed his eyes in thought, but shook his head. All he could recall were the fights, the energy suddenly fading and then blurrily waking up here. "No, nothing. Sorry." He shrugged in what he thought would go by as an apologizing gesture.

"Then they probably warped to the Special Zone, that weird – what did Porker say once? Alternated part of our world… a pocket-dimension within our normal one?" The echidna shrugged as well, to Sonic's surprise he didn't really seem anything like angry because Sonic lost the magic gems.

Sonic grinned. "At least this really sounds like something Porker would say. Talking of him: Can we call the rest of the gang from here? We need a victory party!"

Knuckles groaned. "We need to find the Emeralds back…"

Head tilted aside, Sonic studied him for a moment. "Do you really always think about work and stuff? Someone ever told you you need to chill?"

Cocking a brow in what looked almost like exasperation, Knuckles looked at the hedgehog. "You did," he noticed matter-of-factly, tone dry like a desert wind.

Sonic grinned. "Heh. So, after I've been a good kid and listened to all the stuff about Chaos Emeralds you told me, now you be a good kid and listen to what I say for once."

To Sonic's surprise, the guardian suddenly chuckled. "I'll give it a thought."

Shrugging, Sonic took a last bite of the little remaining food and spoke through a mouthful of fruit. "Maybe that's all I can ask for." He fell silent, chewing on the fruit, then swallowed and looked at Knuckles again. "What'd you do while I was up there trashing battleships?"

A small frown slipped onto the echidna's brow. "Uh... Protecting this island?"

For a few seconds Sonic just returned his look. "You used the Master Emerald," he said then, making clear it wasn't meant as a question.

Knuckles nodded, in spite of Sonic's expectations he'd deny everything. "Yes. You noticed?"

"The Emeralds did." Sonic shrugged. "Call me crazy, but they were… worried. …And I was worried too, I guess." Knuckles' expression didn't change and Sonic assumed he wouldn't call him crazy just now. He looked at the other a little longer, feeling his ears perk upright and when he spoke up again curiosity was evident. "Can you do what I could do? I mean, fly around, glow and all that?"

The guardian nodded, not quite as hesitant as Sonic would have guessed. "Yes. That, and a lot of things you probably wouldn't believe. The Chaos Emeralds are powerful, but the Master has the power to control them. It is a lot more powerful than all seven servers together…"

Sonic blinked a few times, trying to get used to the idea and imagine what you could do with something more powerful than the Chaos Emeralds. Already their energy and the possibilities you had when controlling them were beyond what he could grasp… "Wow. What can you do? And… why didn't you tell me?"

"You didn't ask. And I have to keep something up my sleeve, don't I?" Knuckles smirked, cutting his answer at that, falling silent and just looking at the hedgehog.

"I get it; you're not going to tell me anything…" For a moment Sonic considered if he should try pouting, but it seemed ridiculous and he smirked back instead. "Did you at least rock?"

Smirk growing to a genuine smile, Knuckles nodded. "You bet."

Sonic nodded back, grinning. "Then I guess I can live with it."

"There's not really anything else you can do, hedgehog," Knuckles noticed.

"You're pretty intend on having the last word at the moment, aren't you?" Sonic was still grinning.

Knuckles folded his arms, in relaxation leaning backwards against the wall behind his seat. "Yes."

Sonic chuckled, and left it at that.

An unfamiliarly bright grin lay on Porker Lewis' face when he entered the kitchen. "I've got good news and bad news," he exclaimed. "Which do you want first?"

Tails looked up from his toast and Amy turned around from where she was pouring coffee into a couple of mugs.

"The bad news," Amy decided, "seeing that look on your face they can't be too bad."

Porker inclined his head. "We still have no traces of Robotnik. Wreckage of all sorts over half of Mobius, but no clue if he managed to escape or not. Nobody has seen his slimy green assistant either..."

Tails shrugged. "If he escaped, we'll get him again. All his robot ship things were smashed again, so he'll be out of commission for a long while I guess." Showing just how little the not quite new 'news' disturbed him, the young fox relaxedly took a huge bite of his food.

"Tails is right," Amy agreed, turning back to the cups, "we've always dealt with him; if he comes back we'll deal with that too." The pink girl paused a moment. "So, now that we rated the bad news as not too bad, can we get the good news?"

Porker smiled. "I've just talked to Knuckles."

"And? What did he say?", Tails curiously demanded to know through half a mouthful of breakfast.

"He's found Sonic," Porker replied, taking a seat aside of the fox.

Amy almost dropped the coffee pot as she spun all the way to the others. "Is he alright?"

Porker nodded. "Knuckles says Sonic's really exhausted after all of this, but he's sure he'll have him coddled up when we get up there."

"Sonic wants us to get him home?", Amy asked. "Aww, this must have been very stressful for him. I'm sure he wants some quality time now… maybe go on a date with me…" A dreamy smile grew on her face.

Tails groaned and shook his head. "Somehow I don't think so…"

Porker shrugged. "I somewhat doubt that and really… Knuckles didn't sound like that. He said Sonic wants us to come up for a 'victory party'."

Amy didn't reply, still caught in her daydream.

Instead, Tails did. "Hey! A party! That's awesome! Can we have a barbeque? Can we? !"

Porker grinned at the small fox excitedly looking at him, cerulean eyes shining and twin tails wagging quickly. "I don't think Sonic or Knuckles got the party planned. I don't see any reason against your idea."

"Yay! Did you hear that Amy?" Tails reached to shake her. "We're gonna have a party!"

Being shaken suddenly, Amy snapped out of her fantasies. She blinked. "What did you say?"

"Party!", Tails shouted, almost into her ear.

Lost, Amy turned to Porker. "What?"

The pig smiled. "Never mind."

Speedy's note: Time's a weird thing, isn't it? Didn't I just start writing this story? What happened to the few pages full of random fragments in my Word script? What happened to all that time it took making those few pages 42000 words? O_o
Uh... Yeah. So, we're almost at the end. Next time you'll get to see in which way the 'Victory?' of this chapter's title deserves the question mark behind it. Don't miss it! :)