With the addition of Knuckles' help things had been progressing slowly but surely. They had managed to confirm that the strangeness with the emeralds was connected to the strangeness with the master emerald. It was a mild relief to find out that the master emerald was more or less normal now, even when exposed to the emeralds. Knuckles had done some "talking" with the master emerald and managed to find out that it seemed to have been the chaos emeralds themselves that had tapped into the master emerald. Which, well, shouldn't be possible. The chaos emeralds weren't sentient things. Honestly the master emerald wasn't really either despite how Knuckles would talk to it and such.

The working theory at the moment was that Sonic had maybe unintentionally done it when he was trying to get rid of the emeralds, but none of them were particularly convinced that was the case. It's not like Sonic even knew how to do that, emeralds or not. Him managing to do it subconsciously? Yeah unlikely. An interesting thing they did figure out was that the emeralds seemed to have overwhelmingly positive energy at the moment rather than their normal balance between positive and negative. I mean, none of them knew what that meant. But hey! It was something right? It seemed likely that it was related to what was going on somehow anyway.

Sonic sighed heavily as he put his face into his hands. Alright it was official, he felt pretty useless right now. Robot smashing? He could do that. Stopping ancient, vengeful gods? Sure, regular Tuesday for him. Figuring out why some super powerful rocks were on the fritz? Yeah that wasn't his thing. At this point he was only really useful when they wanted to test how he reacted to the emeralds. It wasn't the greatest feeling in the world to essentially be a glorified lab rat, but at least he was being helpful that way.

Thankfully nothing too strange had happened since his "chat" with whatever it was. It was likely connected to the emeralds in some way but none of them had any idea as to how or why. Whatever they were, it bothered Sonic that he knew practically nothing about them. Yet he'd just known they were dangerous. It didn't make sense, Sonic felt confident about some things regarding the mysterious voice, generally vague feelings, and had no clue on others. The information would often feel like it was there but just slip through his fingers like sand whenever he tried to reach for it. It was frustrating and entirely unhelpful. It was already pretty clear that Sonic was somehow related to them. Whether it was by chance or not wasn't something any of them were sure about though.

Releasing another frustrated sigh Sonic stood up. Moping like this wasn't gonna do him or anyone else any good. His communicator beeped, helping to pull him further out of his thoughts. "Hey Tails, whatcha need?" Sonic asked, answering.

"Hey if you want to come back to the shrine we might have something. Nothing… solid, but it's something." Tails' voice came over the communicator.

Well that sounded like progress to him, and any progress was welcome at this point. "Sure thing bud. I'll be right over. Still by the shrine right?" Sonic asked, preparing to dash over.

"Yep! See you in a sec." Tails confirmed.

Sonic was skidding to a halt beside his brother not long after the confirmation. "Alright, what do you have for me?"

Tails chuckled. "Someone's excited."

"I feel like I have a right to be excited in this situation." Sonic huffed, smirking.

"Just come over here." Knuckles grumbled as he arranged the two chaos emeralds in front of the master emerald.

"Sooo what are we doing this time?" Sonic asked as he walked over and watched Knuckles adjust the emeralds.

Grumbling, Knuckles gently pulled Sonic to the ground and sat him in front of the emeralds. "If we can figure out how the emeralds managed to tap into the master emerald on their own we'll be closer to figuring out what caused this."

"Didn't you two think it was me who did it? Not the emeralds on their own?" Sonic asked, raising a brow.

"We're covering all our bases." Knuckles crossed his arms.

Excitedly Tails bounded over to join them, ignoring whatever was going on between the two, and placed the device that measured biodata and chaos levels around Sonic's wrist. "If we can recreate the circumstances, albeit on a small scale, we might be able to understand what happened."

"And that gets us one step closer to figuring this all out." Sonic concluded. "Well just tell me what I need to do."

"All you need to do is relax." Knuckles said. "Is that something you can handle?"

Shooting the echidna a look Sonic made a show of taking a deep breath and visibly relaxing. Rolling his eyes, Knuckles went over to the master emerald and started doing… well whatever it was he was doing. Things were quiet except for the soft muttering from Knuckles; probably something to do with whatever this was. Honestly Sonic felt the most relaxed he had in a while, so of course that had to swiftly change.

A jolt ran through Sonic's body; just like when he'd touched the red emerald. Forcing a deep breath from his lungs he mentally prepared for what was going to happen. "..." Nothing was happening. No laughing, no fog settling over his mind, and no voice. Though he did feel… angry? No that wasn't it. He wanted to… Sonic shook his head violently to shake the very much unwelcomed thoughts from his head. He very much did not want to harm his friends or anyone else, thank you very much.

A hand fell gently on his shoulder. "Are you ok?" Tails asked. If Sonic opened his eyes (when had he closed them?) he would likely see worry on his brother's face.

Forcing himself to take another deep breath he nodded. "Yeah, just uh felt the weird jolt thing again." He explained.

"Alright I'm stopping it." Knuckles put his hands down and Sonic felt the intrusive thoughts fade.

"You can go ahead and get back to whatever you were doing now Sonic. I'll look over this data and see if I can figure out something." Tails tugged Sonic up. Finally the hedgehog opened his eyes to look at Tails. Shooting the fox a tired but grateful look he nodded. "When I find something I'll let you know right away, ok?" His tails swished nervously behind him.

Before Sonic could say anything Knuckles cut in. "Go get some sleep. You look awful."

"Gee, thanks Knux." Sonic tried to chuckle, but it came out far more tired than he'd meant it to. Alright this was getting uncomfortable. Both of them were shooting him mildly concerned looks; Tails more so than Knuckles. "Alright alight." He held up his hands in defeat. "I'll go… take a nap or something." He conceded. He started walking away; guess he should go find some quiet place. A nap did sound kinda good right now.

"Make sure to let me know if you need anything, ok?" Tails called after him.

Sonic held up a thumbs up. "Will do bud."

Sonic ran a hand through the grass as he laid on his back and gazed up at the lightening sky. The colors of the rising sun were calming. Reds, oranges, and yellows all blended together smoothly. The morning was calm and the only sounds were the other animals that were up at the early hour. It felt like a sharp contrast to how Sonic felt.

Things had hit a wall and the lack of progress was wearing on him. It seemed like the more they learned the more questions they had. It was a repetitive cycle that honestly Sonic couldn't deal with at the moment. Why did he feel so… drained? It was both weird and concerning to feel so… slow. Sonic had been traveling around Angel Island on his own for several days. Tails had more or less told him to stay away from the emeralds for now. The fox was clearly getting concerned for him and how the emeralds were affecting him. Which was understandable based on how he had reacted the last time. He hadn't even told them about the weird, intrusive thoughts so he must have looked rough. Heck even Knuckles was showing concern, in his own way.

Maybe he should have told them about the thoughts, but honestly? It felt like telling them everything was just worrying them rather than contributing to getting answers. The whole situation was just frustrating and Sonic was lost as to how to navigate it properly. A spike of anger shot through him. Breath Sonic, breath. The anger faded as he focused on his breathing. That was another thing. He'd randomly been getting flashes of emotions that definitely weren't his own. It had been pretty easy to push them down so far, but Sonic worried that it might get more difficult as time passed. Since things in general seemed to have been getting worse.

Nothing had really happened, Sonic would admit, but it still felt like it was getting harder and harder to ignore that something was wrong with him. When he'd first gone to Tails it was easy to forget anything was wrong at all, now it was practically all he could think about. Slowly he pushed himself up into a sitting position; shaking off the moisture in his quills from the grass. Getting stuck in his thoughts always seemed to make things worse. What he needed was a distraction. If only Eggman was around. Messing with him was about the best distraction around. Sadly Sonic had no idea where the doctor was currently hiding. A shame really.

Sonic perked up. There might be someone who could provide a decent distraction. It would involve getting off the island probably, which was going to be rather hard at the moment, but Sonic could figure something out. Glancing down at his communicator he silenced it for the time being. He hadn't been contacted in days, it was unlikely that they'd need him any time soon. Now to find out a way to get off the island.

Sonic took a deep breath and enjoyed the change of scenery. Sure Angel Island was nice and he didn't get to explore it often, but it felt sort of confining after a while. There was so much more world out there to explore. He'd be heading back soon enough, didn't wanna give Tails or Knuckles any more reasons to worry about him, but for now he would enjoy being off the island for a few hours. He worked hard to get down here, so sue him if he wanted to enjoy it for a bit. Also… he didn't really wanna think about the problem of getting back up to the island. That was a… near future him problem.

His ear twitched as he heard loud footsteps approaching. "So, seems you got my invitation?" Metal Sonic gave his counterpart a look and then a quick nod. Him and Metal had an… interesting relationship. While they were still very much enemies they had started meeting up for races in their "off time". It had been by accident at first but eventually the two had started meeting up on purpose. It wasn't so much that they were friends, but more like they could appreciate a worthy opponent when they saw them. Kinda like him and Shadow except there was no way Sonic could ever invite Shadow for a casual race like this. The other hedgehog was just about as competitive as Sonic himself but it took a lot of riling up to get Shadow to actually race him. By that point the black hedgehog was more interested in fighting Sonic then racing him, so it kinda defeated the whole purpose.

Him and Metal had a sort of truce before and during the races where the two wouldn't attack each other. After their races were more ambiguous, but typically they kept it civil. There was also the fact that, as far as he knew, no one but the two of them knew about these. Sonic had always just sort of assumed that anything said or done during their races were kept between the hedgehog and his metallic counterpart. That had seemed to hold true so far at least. Not like Metal really, said anything to him though.

"I'm surprised you aren't holed up wherever Eggman's hiding. Not that I'm complaining." Metal beeped in response. Sonic still wasn't entirely sure what the robot was trying to convey in these calmer moments. "Well let's cut right to the chase then. Since I know there's no point in trying to grill you for info on the doc." Sonic smirked. Metal tilted his head confidently. "Same rules as usual. No sabotaging the opponent in any way, shape, or form." Metal gave a discontented beep at that, but otherwise didn't complain. It was their normal rules after all. "And no causing collateral damage that might hurt someone." Metal nodded, tapping his foot. Stretching, Sonic shot Metal a cocky grin. "Ready?" Metal braced to take off. "Seems so. Alright 3… 2… 1…GO!"