Sonic yawned as Tails chatted at him. While Sonic was happy for the companionship since it had been a while, the fox really did need to take more breaks, he wasn't getting much out of the exchange. Idly he nodded to give the illusion he was paying attention, but he found it hard to follow what the fox was on about. He felt kinda bad, but it wasn't the first and probably wouldn't be the last time this happened. It was pretty hard to pay attention to much of anything when he felt so tired. His sense of optimism had been slowly wearing thin over the past several days. That mostly came with the knowledge that whatever the voice was he was the only thing stopping them from doing… whatever it was they wanted to do. Frankly it was getting exhausting.

There was a light tap on his arm. His gaze fell on Tails who was shooting him a concerned look. "Are you listening Sonic?"

"Huh?" He shot Tails a tired smile. "Of course I am bud."

"I'm not particularly inclined to believe you right now." Tails frowned. "Have you been getting enough sleep? I don't know if I've ever seen you this tired. Not even during all the stuff with dark gaia."

Sonic made a 'so so' motion with his hand. "Eh, yeah I've been getting enough." He stretched out and put his hands behind his head. "Just not as much as usual I guess."

"Is there… any particular reason why?" Tails asked, ear flicking as he looked Sonic over.

Yikes. Looks like his brother was onto him. While he didn't really wanna continue to lie to the fox, at this point he felt like he didn't really have a choice. He didn't wanna see the inevitable disappointment on Tails' face. Not yet. He didn't think he could handle that right now. He squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath giving the fox what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "No reason in particular. Just this whole situation I guess." Well that wasn't a total lie at least. Though it didn't get into everything. Especially not the nightmares he'd been having recently. There wasn't much he remembered about them, basically just being chased and flashes of gold, but they always left him unsettled and unable to get back to sleep. That wasn't doing wonders for his sleep schedule.

"Right…" Tails trailed off. An awkward silence stretched between the two. It lasted long enough that Sonic started to feel pretty uncomfortable. "You know." Tails finally said, breaking the silence. Sonic opened his eyes to look at this brother; the fox wasn't looking at him. A heavy feeling settled into his chest. "If something's wrong you can talk to me about it. That's what you always tell me. We're supposed to be there for each other and I wanna help. I know we haven't made much progress recently in figuring things out, but I'm still here to listen if you need it. Ok?" Tails looked at him hopefully. His ears perked up, a slight smile tugging at his lips.

Sonic resisted the urge to break down then and there. The look of genuine concern and hope on the fox's face was nearly enough to do it. He couldn't though; it was close but Sonic won the battle to hold himself together. For now. Despite the fact Sonic was bearing the brunt of the consequences from whatever this was he knew Tails was scared about the whole thing. He was super proud of his brother for being able to push past that to do his best to help. Sonic knew he had to stay strong just like his little bro because he needed Sonic to stay strong. Needed him to be there to support him. As smart as Tails was, he was still just a kid. Sonic also knew that he didn't wanna burden him anymore. No information he gave him at the moment was likely to help, so even as much as Sonic hated it he had to keep it from Tails.

He would deal with the consequences of all this later. Once he was feeling better and could take it. "I know bud." He ruffled his brother's head affectionately. "I'll make sure to talk to you when I need to. For now don't worry about me. I'm fine."

The fox looked like he wanted to say something before deciding against it and simply saying. "If you say so."

Sonic wasn't really happy about the look on his brother's face, but things would be fine. Once the whole ordeal was sorted he could work it out with Tails. He'd just have to deal with it in the meantime.

"Sonic." Sonic turned around to see Knuckles looking at him with crossed arms. "Care to tell me what's been going on?"

Sonic looked at him questioningly. "What's been going on?" He repeated. What was Knuckles getting at?

Huffing, Knuckles fixed Sonic with a glare. "You've been acting off. Clearly something is wrong that you aren't telling us."

Shuffling uncomfortably, Sonic tried to think of the best way to deflect the questioning from the echidna. Annoyance sparked in him and he didn't try to push it away immediately like he normally would. Though once he caught himself glaring back at the guardian he made sure to bury it as deep as it would go. "Things have just been stressful lately Knux. With all this going on." He gestured first to himself and then the general area.

"It's stressful for all of us." Knuckles commented. "If we don't work with each other we won't figure this out though. If you have any other information that might help I don't understand why you'd withhold that."

Unintentionally Sonic's quills raised defensively. He got shot an unimpressed look at that. Knuckles' bluntness was not something he needed right now. Plus the information he had would only serve to confuse things more. It wasn't anything that could help. "I don't have any information that would help." Sonic crossed his arms and folded his ears down. Taking deep breath he got his quills to settle back down. "I want this figured out more than anyone, if I had any useful information you and Tails would have it."

"So you do have some sort of information you aren't telling us then." Knuckles stated, frowning. Sonic flinched. Guess he slipped a bit with his wording there. "Is there a particular reason you aren't telling us?"

"Because it doesn't matter. Like I said, if it was anything important I would have told you two." Sonic shot the echidna a challenging look. Honestly he was fairly certain the… thing was influencing him slightly, since he wasn't usually aggressive with Knuckles like this, but him pushing Sonic like this wasn't the way to go about getting information.

Knuckles shot him a look right back, rising to the unspoken challenge. Though eventually the guardian did something Sonic didn't expect, backed down. "Look, we're just worried. Tails has been a mess lately trying to figure out what's going on with you and you acting like this isn't helping. " He let his arms drop to his sides. "People care about you. Think on that."

Knuckles left the hedgehog to stew in silence and consider if this was the right thing to do.

"Hey Sonic!" Sonic jumped at the unexpected female voice. A pang of annoyance flooded through him but a few deep breaths buried it under his own chaotic emotions.

The blue hedgehog turned and gave Amy a smile. "Hey Ames. Fancy seeing you here." He turned around to properly greet her. "What are you doing here anyway? And… how did you even get here?"

"Tails got in contact with me and picked me up in the Tornado." She explained, returning Sonic's smile. "It's been a while so I figured I'd come and see how you were doing. Give you some company while Tails and Knuckles are working."

"Oh, so he told you what's going on then?" Sonic asked, rubbing the back of his head.

"Yeah." She put her hands together. "He also said you weren't holding up too well."

Well, that made sense he supposed. If he hadn't been sure of just how worried Tails was, he knew now. Sicking Amy on him? That was a low blow, but one Sonic could understand. "Yeah, I guess the whole thing is stressful. Not knowing what's going on and all that."

"Right." Amy nodded. "It must be hard."

Sonic shrugged. "Eh nothing I can't handle. I trust Tails and Knuckles to figure this thing out." He sighed. "I'm just glad Eggman isn't around right now. Don't need more problems on top of this" Shaking his head he smiled. "Anyway, how've you been?"

"I've been pretty good. Can't really complain." She gave him some sort of look he couldn't decipher. Probably because of his less than subtle topic change. There probably wasn't much he could do to get Amy to let it lie, but he might be able to delay her. Which was all he could really hope for. Just hold her off till he felt better and could properly… navigate things. He was pulled out of his thoughts as Amy placed a hand on his shoulder. "Are you sure you're ok?"

Well, seems like his masterful attempt at distracting her had failed. Ok, think fast. How could he get out of this? He felt, something stir inside him and yeah no he wasn't doing that. He quickly buried the unwelcome thought below his own racing ones. Amy was still staring at him, waiting for an answer. Her face was growing more and more concerned the longer he didn't answer.

Now, Sonic wasn't proud of what he did next but in his defense he panicked. He just… ran. Didn't say anything else to Amy or even attempt a flimsy excuse as to why he couldn't stick around. Well, that wasn't going to improve things. That was only going to make everyone more worried about him, and they were already pretty worried. Sonic stopped running when he'd made it to practically the other side of the island. It would probably be a bit before anyone tracked him down. Hopefully it would be long enough to clear his head.

Ok so maybe it was time to admit to himself that he was not in control of this situation. Rubbing the heels of his hands into his eyes he took deep breaths. Maybe he needed to come clean. At this point he was pretty sure he couldn't handle this since things had pretty much just been getting worse. Pulling his hands away from his eyes he frowned. That thing clawed inside of him, closer to the surface than it had ever been. No. He couldn't tell them. Couldn't risk them getting hurt.

What could he do though? They'd come looking for him; he knew that. He could run sure, but the island was only so big. Eventually they'd catch him and that wasn't really the circumstances he wanted to explain to them under. What could he do? All he knew is that he needed to keep them safe. No matter what. All he had to do was figure out how to do that and things would be fine.

Sonic paused. How did he do that? How could he make sure they were safe? He started pacing as he brought a hand up to his chin. A thought that felt suspiciously like 'give up' came into his head but he quickly pushed it aside. He couldn't afford to give up. That wouldn't keep his friends safe. In fact Sonic strongly felt that if he gave up he'd be actively putting them into danger.

He gripped at his quills in an attempt to ground himself. What could he do? Ideally keep it from coming out, but he doubted his ability to do that indefinitely. They seemed fixated on his friends if the increase in random thoughts and emotions when he was near them was any indication. There might be only one solution right now. Slowly he pulled his hands away from his head.

Maybe he should… Standing up straight he took a deep breath. That might be the best way to keep them safe for now. Just until he got things under control. Gripping the communicator around his wrist, which he idly noticed had several missed messages, he took it off and gently hooked it around a tree. Tails wouldn't be too happy if he broke the tech. He looked back in the general direction of where he thought his friends were. He'd protect them for sure.