A/N: Hyper update speed! Also, this is the limit of normality as far as the story goes. Things get logarithmically weirder from here on in.

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Chapter 9

As they approached the light source, it faded away.

"What happened to it?" Tails asked to anyone who would listen.

"Hey look over there!" Knuckles pointed into a cave.

"And there!" Tails pointed down into a small valley clearing.

"Okay, I'll look in the cave, you check out down there."

He poked his nose into the cave. He could hear the faint sounds of struggling.

"Hello?"

"Help!" He heard from the cave.

"Wait there!" He called down. He ran as fast as he could.

Tails pursued the faint light into a grassy clearing between two hills. The light dissipated.

"What the… what the hell?" As he looked around, the light started gathering again. Tails stepped back. It grew steadily brighter until it was brighter than the sunlight. He shielded his eyes. A rushing noise grew. Wind started to blow. He was pushed back to one of the hills by the wind. He was knocked over after a few minutes. He looked up and saw three silhouettes.

Shadow called out:

"Over here!" Rouge ran over, flying over a small bunch of rocks. "There's a pile of pieces here."

"And the trail leads down into that cave…" She pointed down at a steeply descending cavern. She immediately glided down into it. Shadow rolled his eyes and reluctantly followed.

Knuckles jumped over a couple of rocks. Sliding to a stop in a small cavern, he saw someone stuck with their leg caught between a boulder and the cave wall. She was an echidna with a slightly orange hue, wearing a green & white dress that appeared to be tribal and had a broken gold headband with a blue gemstone in it. She was a bit roughed up.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, except my leg…"

"Let me get that…" He pushed the boulder out of the way. It took all his strength, but it moved easy enough.

"Thanks," She got up and hugged him. He was a little surprised, but she was understandably grateful. "I'm Tikal," Knuckles was surprised by the young girl's openness, but he took it in his stride.

"Hmm. I'm Knuckles." She held his hand. He looked at her, not in disgust, but in a friendly way. He didn't know why, but he felt a warmth in her that he had not felt for a while.

Rouge followed down the cave. Shadow tried desperately to keep up, but to no avail. He gave up and rested before climbing back up to wait for Rouge. Fucking emerald. Why couldn't Knuckles have done a better job protecting it?

Tails got up to see the three figures. The middle one was a light grey hedgehog. To his left was a cat, and to his right, a squirrel. The hedgehog approached him.

"I am Silver. I am from the future. I seek the one known as 'Naugus'."

"Who? Oh, him… nobody knows where he is." Tails replied, without stress.

"I see…" Silver turned around and thought. "Blaze…" He looked back at Tails with a malevolent stare. "Find out what we need to know." The cat tore up to Tails, brandishing a dripping flamethrower.

"All right you little punk…" She got right up into Tails' face and whispered angrily to him. The flamethrower was but an inch from his face. "You're gonna tell us what we need to know or you can kiss goodbye to one of those tails of yours!" A burning drop of fuel fell from the flamethrower on to Tails' cheek. He screamed in pain. "You want a little more of that?"

"Fine, fine… he should be in Robotropolis, but I don't know for sure. Nobody does!"

"Which way?"

Tails pointed in the general direction of the city.

"Diesel! Let's roll!" The three figures hopped into a floating land speeder and flew away with speed.

"So, how did you end up in that cave?" Knuckles and Tikal sat outside the cave, talking away. The sun shone through the green trees, illuminating the grassy patch where they sat.

"I originally came from an ancient time,"

"Huh?" Knuckles was thoroughly confused.

"I was the daughter of chief Pachahamac, thousands of years ago. I befriended the Chaos…"

"Oh yeah, the little creatures that hang around the master emerald,"

"…and I was always around the master emerald. But my father tried to take the master emerald for his own selfish needs. He struck it, and it broke. The rest is a blur, but my soul became trapped in the master emerald and I was stuck in there for thousands of years. When the emerald was shattered, I was released, and because most of the emerald was in that cave, I lived down in that cave."

"For how long?"

"Well… let's see, I was trapped in the emerald when I was twelve, I'm twenty now, eight years. Or, about that. You're the first person I've seen since I was freed from the emerald."

"The emerald is down there?" Knuckles got up and rushed back to the cave entrance.

"Why should it concern you? Are you a treasure hunter?"

"No! Until it was shattered, I was the guardian of the emerald on Angel Island. Since it was stolen and shattered, the island fell into the sea and I've been working with the freedom fighters ever since."

"You mean… my home… it's… gone?" Knuckles sat down next to Tikal and put his arm around her to try and comfort her.

"There, there… it was my home too…"

Tails trudged back to Sonic and Amy, still bandaging the wound. The burn was very visible.

"Ouch, Tails! What happened to you?"

"Well, it's a long story…"