Snatchin' Rides

"Gah! Knuckles!"

A fresh and painfully acute pang of annoyance hit the red echidna, not actually caused by Sonic's slightly hysteric scream, but more by the fact the blue hedgehog was doing his absolute best at totally upsetting his balance.

"Hold still! I just can't glide like that!" From the sparkling sea below, a slight updraft registered in Knuckles' stomach, but the effect on his glide was close to non-existent. Not that it really surprised him… considering the 35 kilo of very unstable weight sitting on, well, more like clinging to his back.

"Sit still, Sonic," he repeated in a growl, trying to adjust his balance to match the turbulence that increased steadily the closer they got to the coast. The steady wind blowing from the sea met the rocks there, resulting in twirls, up-drafts and down-drafts and generally unpredictable winds. It was a challenge gliding in these conditions on his own… and that meant not even speaking of that idiot hedgehog on his back. He could feel Sonic sliding off to the right again.

Apparently the hedgehog had felt it too; he gave a small yelp and yanked hard at Knuckles' leftmost dreadlock-quill as the first best thing to hold on to in reach.

Unfortunately, it wasn't a very clever thing to hold on to; a several feet drop to the left followed as the angle of Knuckles' gliding quills suddenly changed. "Stop doing that! Hold on to my shoulders or something!" Probably Sonic was too startled to do anything else but comply and Knuckles was able to regain stability.

"You're gonna drop us into the water!", Sonic complained and he sounded unfamiliarly close to a panic.

"Ah, that's it," Knuckles gave back. "It's just a bit of water. Chill out, Sonic."

"I'll chill out when you stop trying to drop me!" Sonic's fingers dug into Knuckles' shoulder when a light downdraft hit the gliding echidna.

"I'm not trying to drop you, but if you don't hold still, I'll begin to consider it! Don't move around on my back and don't you ever pull on my quills! You're spoiling… the air!" Even as he finished the sentence Knuckles had an odd feeling that it would make no sense to anyone but himself.

As expected, the reply was quick to come. "I'm spoiling the AIR? Hello? This is about the dumbest thing you've ever said, and that's saying something!"

Knuckles felt his temper rising. "Just shut up and sit still…"

"You shut up and get us somewhere safe," Sonic insisted.

Knuckles grunted, at both the comeback and the hedgehog's tight hold on his back. At least he was keeping somewhat still from then on. Due to the extra weight and probably further adverse effects Sonic had on Knuckles' glide the descent still wasn't near as gentle and slow as the echidna was used to, it was more like a fall with a bit of horizontal distance being covered as a bonus.

Although he wouldn't have admitted it aloud, also the echidna was glad when they crossed over a cliff of the mainland. The air was even rougher here, stirred up by wind blowing over the rocks. It was rather gusty, too. Knuckles tried to countersteer when a sharp blow hit him from the side, but the thermals were against him and suddenly he was, along with his blue spiked load, dropping the last few meters onto the rocky ground.

"Ahh… oomph!" Of course, Sonic fell right on top of him, knocking the wind out of Knuckles.

"Getoff", he grunted.

Sonic scrambled off his back and got to his feet, brushing over a skinned knee. "Is that what you call a landing? I'm not flying with you again!"

Knuckles moved to stand up, too. "No, this is not what I call a landing! I don't usually glide with someone almost as heavy as myself on my back! And someone with such a terrible sense of balance even less!"

"My sense of balance is totally okay!", Sonic retorted, green eyes blazing. "You should see me grind on narrow rails! My balance rules!"

"I have seen you on rails, hedgehog, and your balance still sucks!" Knuckles clenched his fists.

"Oh yes?! And what about yours, heh?!" Sonic sounded furious now. "Tell me again, who was it dropping us outta the sky? You! It wasn't me making us fall!"

"Yes you were!" Knuckles bore his eyes into Sonic's, almost nose to nose now. "I'm also not flying with you again! Next time, I'll leave you up there and go for Tails on my own!"

For a short moment Sonic looked as if Knuckles had punched him in the face, then his green eyes shot daggers at the echidna and his quills stood erect on his back. "Oh yeah?! I'll tell you something, I also don't need you. If you don't want to come with me, fine, I'll find Tails myself!" He turned around, those sharp blue spikes almost hitting Knuckles' face.

Even the echidna, admittedly not quite firm in social interactions, could tell he'd totally said the wrong thing at the wrong time. He really hadn't meant for them to get into a fight and part ways over it… and suddenly he felt bad about it. Looking at Sonic's back right now almost came close to the feeling of looking at a broken Master Emerald. Just… different.

The hedgehog was walking away and Knuckles jogged after him without really understanding why. "Sonic, wait!"

"Why?" Sonic had folded his arms and shot just a brief glare at him when Knuckles reached his side.

"I…" The red echidna squirmed inwardly. "I… didn't mean what I said."

Sonic didn't turn to look at him. "Is that so?" It sounded much less like a reply of any sort than a downright insult given the tone.

Knuckles was feeling angry again. Or maybe he hadn't even stopped being angry. He didn't know. "Yes, it is! Tails is my friend and if he's in trouble I'm gonna help him and you're not going to stop me!"

Sonic's head whirled to him and Knuckles wasn't quite sure what to make of his look. "Oh yes? You know what?! I didn't want to stop you! I wanted us to go together, two friends helping the third! But you're… you're always so… such a Knucklehead!"

Knuckles hated being called that. "It wasn't me starting this!", he shouted, although he wasn't so sure who had started this stupid argument.

"Sure was! All I wanted was getting off your island and to Tails' house quickly, without drowning somewhere and without running around shouting at you like we're idiots!" Sonic gestured with both hands, his pointed ears laid back and down.

Knuckles growled. "Then I totally don't see your point, hedgehog! You are off my island, it's not far to Tails' house and since you're standing here before me you obviously didn't drown!"

Sonic's hands dropped to his sides and suddenly he looked downright silly for a second or two and when the expression faded some of the anger had gone with it. He stared at Knuckles for another moment before turning away and continuing to walk down the gentle slope towards a green meadow further inland.

Knuckles stood and stared after him. Sonic's blue quills had almost fallen back into the usual position, just his ears staid down. Again, Knuckles had to jog a few meters to catch up with him. When he did he just walked at his side, throwing looks at the hedgehog because he totally didn't understand what was going on anymore. Had they stopped arguing? Sometimes Sonic just made no sense at all to him… No, wait, scratch that. He rarely ever made sense to him.

A minute passed in awkward silence before Sonic spoke up rather quietly. "Knuckles?"

"Huh?" The echidna was almost startled by the word. He hadn't exactly expected Sonic would talk to him again right now.

A short glance darted over to him out of eyes that had lost the angry fire but were not yet back to the shining, open look they usually held most of the time. Knuckles was still trying to make something of Sonic's expression when the hedgehog spoke again.

"Look, Knuckles… I'm sorry."

Knuckles blinked. "Uh… okay, I guess. But…" He wanted to say something about how all of this didn't make any sense, but Sonic interrupted him.

"I mean it, I… really didn't want to shout at you like that. And I also didn't want to leave you and go alone. I just…" He shrugged vaguely.

"… didn't like gliding with me much?", Knuckles suggested into a silence he found strangely uncomfortable. He normally tended to like silence.

Sonic's gaze flicked over to him again. "It… wasn't the gliding," he said after a second. "I would have probably found it a laugh if it wasn't over…" He broke off there, looking away again, the pointy ears twitching uncomfortably.

Knuckles looked at him for a second and then realized what had been below for most of the ride. "Oh," he said. He didn't know what else to say to this; he didn't want to make fun of Sonic and his water problem… not right now and not like this. He'd tease him about it when things were… more relaxed than they were right now.

"I'm… just sorry I kinda lost it there," Sonic continued, running a hand through his head spines, but he was looking at Knuckles again.

"It's okay," the echidna said. It seemed the thing to say to him right now. From observation, it was what people seemed to say in this sort of situation… "I wasn't exactly Mister Relaxed myself, was I?"

"Heh." Sonic smirked weakly. "I guess we're both a little stressed out or something. How about we forget about the last minutes and stick together to find Tails?"

Knuckles didn't know if he wanted to forget about the last minutes. Suddenly he felt kinda comfortable about at least the outcome of this weird conversation. It felt okay to him, almost like peace. He nodded anyway. He didn't want to risk this strange, but kind of welcome drop in tension. "Sounds a plan."

Sonic smiled. "Awesome. Let's juice then, we don't have all day, right?"

Knuckles nodded again. "Right. Let's hurry." A second later he realized Sonic was the wrong person to tell to hurry.


From afar, the house Tails and Sonic shared whenever the hedgehog felt like keeping in one place for a while looked small and peaceful. The morning sunlight poured brightly over the hills and cliffs of Mystic Ruins, turning the grass a shining deep green and spotting the sea below with flashing sparkles.

By now a good deal ahead of Knuckles, Sonic bounded up the stairs to the top of the hill the house stood on, ears perked in alert. He didn't know what to expect. A bunch of robots suddenly jumping him and starting to attack? Tails opening the door and asking if he wanted breakfast? From the looks and atmosphere Sonic almost thought it could be the latter, but he knew he was just letting the appearance lull him into a false security.

When the blue hedgehog stopped in front of the house, no robot came out to attack him. But no Tails came out either and the front door was locked and wouldn't open to Sonic entering the correct password into the small panel near it on the wall. For a moment the hedgehog stood, scratching behind his ear and pondering whether or not he had remembered the password for the security system correctly, then he shrugged it off and rounded the corner of the building, approaching the wide doors of the hangar. Most of the time when Tails was home they stood open, letting the sunlight in while the young fox tinkered with his machines in the workshop or overhauled the biplane. This time however the doors were shut and didn't move when Sonic tried pulling them open. Someone had put the lock from inside.

Frowning, arms folded on his chest, Sonic glared at the closed entrance for a moment, then he took a few steps back and began walking around the house, gazing up at the windows, roof and balcony. From the very edge of the cliff, he could see his bedroom window in the roof. It was closed, but the bathroom window at the far away corner stood slightly open. He still wondered how to get up there, as it was too high to jump, he'd tried that earlier, when he heard footsteps behind and turned over his shoulder to find Knuckles jog up to him, looking stern.

"When I said 'let's hurry', I didn't mean 'run away as fast as you can'," he huffed out, leaning his hands on his knees and gasping.

Sonic chuckled lightly, the tension of not knowing what was up with Tails momentarily melting at the sight of the echidna trying to recover his breath. "You know, I didn't run away, I hurried to our destination, and I didn't do it as fast as I could. I could go a lot faster… but then you'd never catch up."

Knuckles shot him a glare. "Fine, you're faster, I know that, okay?" He stood upright again, his left hand massaging stitches out of his side, but he was beginning to look mockingly smug again. "And as far as I can see, your oh so awesome speed didn't help you much. Forgot the keys?"

Sonic shook his head, a smirk on his face in spite of himself. "No, there aren't keys for the door. Tails installed some fancy security system, no idea how it works and what exactly it does, but instead of a lock with keys we have a panel near the door to enter a password to open it if it was locked. It is locked now and it won't open even if I enter the password."

Knuckles shrugged. "Maybe you got the wrong password?"

Sonic shook his head. "He never changes it without letting me know."

"Well… maybe the fake you that stole the Emerald made him change it?", Knuckles mused. "So we can't get in?"

Worry flooded Sonic again at the mention of the doppelganger and he felt his stomach constrict in a way not unlike the feeling of clinging to a gliding Knuckles' back and feeling yourself slowly sliding off when there was only water below. Suddenly Sonic didn't regret he hadn't had much for breakfast. "Yeah…" Unsurely he looked between Knuckles and the hangar portal. "Or maybe he found out I'm not me, I mean, that fake Sonic is not me and he locked himself in?"

Knuckles nodded slowly. "That'd be good. It'd mean he locked the bag guy out, right?"

Sonic nodded, too. "Yeah. If we're lucky, Tails managed to lock him out and is just hiding inside somewhere. If we're not…" He trailed off and shook his head strongly enough for his quills to rattle against one another.

Not bothering to complete Sonic's sentence and phrase out what they both thought, that it probably wouldn't be so easy, Knuckles looked at the house again. "Any ideas how we're gonna get in then?"

Sonic walked back a little and pointed his friend towards the roof. "The bathroom window is open. If I use the runway for a run-up, maybe I can make the jump."

The echidna raised a brow at him. "You can save your breath." Violet eyes briefly took in the walls of the house, then Knuckles walked up to the nearest wall, dug his knuckle-spikes into it and began climbing up, leaving tiny traces in the wall. Within seconds he was at the window, pulled it open and vanished inside.

Sonic stood waiting, tapping his foot on the floor. His imagination blessed him with images of a scared Tails hiding after having seen him outside, then he thought Tails was way too old to hide from stuff by now, but he couldn't help but come up with more unwelcome concepts of what it was like inside the house.

The uncomfortable moment ended when the loud clanking noises of Knuckles removing the bolt from the portal rang in Sonic's ears and the red echidna pushed the doors wide open. At once sunlight gushed into a hangar and workshop that looked reassuringly normal, with the Tornado right in its place and a few odd pieces of machinery standing around like usual.

Knuckles looked not very reassured. "I don't think anyone's here, Sonic," he said.

Sonic didn't comment, he just dashed past his red friend and bolted up the stairs to the living quarters. "Tails? Tails, if you're here, it's okay, it's us!"

No reply came, other than a muttered "So much about being cautious" from the echidna who'd followed him upstairs.

When the flat remained silent, the two split up and began searching the rooms. The living room, first room to the right, was tidy, with no dishes, bottles of Chaos Cola or anything of the sort lying around on the spacious sofa. The low couch table in front of it sat empty and when Sonic ran a finger over its smooth surface he drew a line in a fine coat of dust that lay over the entire table. Nobody had moved through this room, let alone put any plates, glasses, feet or toys on this table during the past two or three days at least.

Just where could Tails have gone… without the Tornado? The sickening knot of worry in Sonic's stomach tightened and he left the living room to take a look into his little brother's bedroom. It was a small room, with a tiny cupboard pushed into one corner, and a window that was a little too high up to look through properly unless you were the size of Eggman, and in that case you'd probably bang your head in the ceiling. Tails' bed took up most of the room. Usually Sonic knew his little bro to be rather orderly about it, but today the bed was unmade as if he'd just gotten out of it in a hurry.

"Hey, Sonic!"

Knuckles' call pulled the blue hedgehog out of his ponderings about the first trace of Tails he'd found and he went to search the echidna, finding him in his room. He stood in front of the cupboard and in spite of Sonic's expectations he didn't mention the mess that as usually occupied the entire floor with a single word. His eyes flicked over to the door just briefly when Sonic entered before returning to stare at the cupboard front. "Look at this."

Sonic needed a second to discover what Knuckles meant, but then he too spotted the deep black burn mark on one of the photos, right where his own face used to be between Tails and Knuckles'. "What the –"

The echidna nodded gravely. "That was my first reaction. Any chance Tails did this?"

Sonic shook his head. "No way. He has one of those pictures himself. You remember when we made them, after we won the Gran Priix? He loved them as much as I do… did." He reached out and ran a fingertip over the burn mark. "Looks like someone really didn't like that picture. But why?"

Knuckles shrugged, looking lost. "No idea. I don't see what made this one worse than the rest… other than that your ugly face was on it."

Sonic felt a short grin at the joke and was strangely grateful that Knuckles had said that. His finger trailed over the black spot, then he shook his head. "I wonder what did this. I mean, it burned right through the photo and into the wood of the door."

"Laser? Eggman's latest photo-burning creation of doom?"

The hedgehog shot Knuckles a look from under a raised eyebrow. Where had that odd moment of humor come from? But truth be told, Sonic appreciated it more than he could have said, thinking how it distracted him somewhat from the dreadful idea what a laser like that would do to Tails. "We have to find him," he mumbled.

Knuckles nodded, serious again and not bothering to ask if Sonic meant Tails or Eggman. The hedgehog guessed it was clear anyway and he cast a last look at the mutilated photo before walking out of the room again. Knuckles followed silently and they searched the rest of the top floor, even the small loft, but without finding a clue to what had happened.

In a much less than cheerful mood, the two friends returned downstairs. Sonic briefly checked the Tornado for damage, but it looked fine, the propeller pointing towards the open portal as if beckoning to leave for a flight.

The workshop itself was in the semi-messed up state it used to be in most of the time; Tails usually left tools and machinery lying around in it. The large working table was full of devices Sonic wasn't too sure on what they were and did and nothing he could see really helped giving him any clue what had happened here.

Probably hoping to find something of use there, Knuckles had dived under the table. To Sonic's surprise he came up quickly again, having a tight hold of a dark silvery object about the size of a football. "Look, it was stuck under the table!" He held it out at Sonic and let go of it, leaving the ball to float gently between them.

"Hey, isn't that…" Sonic poked a finger against the ball, bounding it to Knuckles again who waved it off and sent it floating back to the hedgehog who caught it in his hands. "One of funny floating balls from that base where we searched for your Emerald?"

Knuckles nodded. "Yeah. Tails brought it back with him, he wanted to examine it to see how it works… and he said…" The echidna looked at Sonic. "He said you could have it then because you liked them so much and he wanted to bring one home for you to have."

Clutching the ball more tightly, Sonic felt an anew rush of affection for Tails pour through him and he stared at the silvery ball. "That kid…"

Knuckles sighed. "But it doesn't help us that we have the ball, we don't even know what Tails did with it after he came here."

"Yeah…" Sonic nodded, but kept the ball in his hands as he slowly walked through the large room.

Knuckles leaned against the table, waving a hand at the surroundings. "The whole place looks like he's gone for days, but we don't even know when he left and why and –"

Sonic stopped dead in his pacing and stared up at the wall. His eyes had caught a red slowly blinking light in a corner. For a moment he stood and stared the camera right into its glassy eye. "I'm so stupid…"

A sharp, brief chuckle sounded from his red friend. "I've been telling you… What about the sudden enlightenment?"

Sonic pointed up, finally releasing the ball. "It's all on tape! Or a data crystal. Or something, but that hardly matters, right?" He whirled around to the echidna and dashed past him, dropping into the seat in front of the computer in a corner of the workshop.

Knuckles merely blinked, struggling to catch up. "What?"

On the screen, a loading symbol started spinning slowly. "Tails' security system," Sonic said, turning around in the chair. "He's got a camera up there, you know, in case someone breaks in and, dunno, steals something. It's still on, so it probably was on all the time."

Knuckles stared, a mixture of disbelief and annoyance on his face. "And you come up with that now? After we wasted… half an hour crawling behind cupboards and under tables?"

Sonic shrugged. "Hey, I'm sorry, okay?" In all seriousness, Sonic didn't know how the camera had gone past him. Back when Tails had installed it, Sonic had said it was a little overdone and that they'd probably never need it. Now he made a note to take it back.


"Now were is it?", Knuckles asked impatiently, standing next to Sonic and gazing at the screen. The hedgehog supposed he was still mad he'd forgotten about the camera.

"I wish I knew…" Sonic scrolled through a long list of symbols and text. He never bothered much with Tails' computer, let alone how the fox organized stuff in it and right now he regretted he'd never paid more attention.

"Great," Knuckles deadpanned. "Can't you, I dunno, search for it? Isn't there a glossary, like in a book?"

Sonic snapped his fingers. "You're a genius, Knux, no matter what people say." He clicked on a symbol resembling a question mark and a new screen popped up.

Knuckles still frowned, looking at Sonic instead of the screen. "I hate to remind you, but 'people' usually is you in that case."

Sonic shot him a brief grin. "Never mind that." The feeling of desperation he'd felt earlier had lifted considerably now that a chance to go on had appeared to them and Sonic felt more like himself again. They'd do this, someway.

"I'll make sure to remind you," Knuckles remarked dryly while Sonic typed 'security camera' into a box on the screen, causing another spinning symbol to appear.

A second later, a new file opened up. "That's it." Sonic smiled at the still picture. It showed him, staring up into the camera. Knuckles was standing at the table behind him and even the stairway was visible and the Tornado and the grass outside through the open doors.

"You look like an idiot," Knuckles said.

Sonic grinned and started a fast backwards play of the video. It looked pretty comical seeing himself and Knuckles walk around backwards. "You look like an idiot, too," Sonic noticed when the Knuckles in the video crawled under the table and stuffed the floaty ball down there.

The real Knuckles next to him grunted. "Do we have to watch ourselves walk around backwards until we find something or is there a quicker way?"

For a second Sonic frowned at the screen in thought. While he was undoubtedly better at computers than Knuckles, what wasn't so hard admittedly, he was nowhere near as good with them as Tails. He just never really bothered with them. But after a moment of staring at the screen, the hedgehog located a bar at the bottom of it with a small indication slowly running back on it. He clicked at a random other spot on the bar, near to the left end of it. The images of Knuckles and himself walking backwards through the workshop froze, then the display jumped and it was apparently night.

"When is that?", Knuckles asked.

Sonic shook his head. "No idea." He clicked at another place on the bar. "Hey, that's you and Tails!"

Knuckles leaned in closer. "That was the day I came here because… I thought you'd stolen the Master."

For once, Sonic decided to skip on the chance for teasing. "That's after we had that ace fight. Tails is patching you up."

The echidna nodded. "Yes. Can you go forwards?"

Sonic activated a fast forward play again and the two friends watched the following events until they saw themselves and Tails leave on the Tornado to track down the Master Emerald. For a while nothing showed but the empty workshop, and then they could finally watch what had happened to Tails after his return home.


In the room that had become the main laboratory in Aquatic Base, Tails was tied to a chair. The bonds cut into his wrists, elbows and ankles and his entire body was stiff and hurting from sitting in this forced position for so long. On top of that, an angry growling was pestering him from his stomach that hadn't seen food for a whole day. Metal Sonic was very mad about Tails' attempt at taking flight. He'd not given him any food, in the night his cell had been so cold Tails was sure the robot had turned off the heating just to torture him by making him spent the night with hardly any sleep not only due to fright but also due to the freezing cold, and first thing in the morning he'd brought Tails here, tied him to that chair, making sure he the bonds were tight and forced the young fox to tell him how to handle the last stage of their Emerald production.

By now, the liquid had completely crystallized and most of the machines had been turned off. Working robots had removed the tanks and instead seven brightly green glowing Master Emeralds sat on metal sockets, surrounded by a heavy force field that maintained their energies. The radiation was immense, and their fields fluctuated in a way Tails didn't even think he knew from Chaos Emeralds.

Metal Sonic was very pleased with himself. For more than an hour already he was walking around the collection of artificial gems, boasting aloud to Tails and any other potential listener how he'd rule the world, how every inferiors would have to kneel before him… To Tails he sounded like an audio player stuck on track repeat.

… What didn't make him any less scary.

Still, Tails was beginning to be more scared of the seven huge gems behind the force field than Metal Sonic. A mad robot was one thing… Mad forces of nature were something completely different. And with chaos objects, it was debatable if they even were nature… or something a lot more threatening.

Tails didn't know. He didn't care right now. He repeatedly glanced worriedly at the monitors, at the magnetic and chaos fields, at the temperature, the random chaos fluxes. Those things were unstable if he'd ever seen something unstable. The system of Chaos was based on having one Master and seven Chaos Emeralds it balanced out. Even the Sol Emeralds, which could be seen as a parallel universe's equivalent to the Chaos Emeralds, probably had a Master of sorts.

But seven Masters? If their balance worked anything like common scales, now there was way too much weight on one side of the whole thing. It couldn't hold out. Tails knew. He wished he could talk to Knuckles, he was sure the guardian would understand more of it. But Knuckles was not there, and for now all Tails could do was hope the force field held them nice and safe and that Metal Sonic wouldn't make anything worse once he became tired of declaring himself ruler of the universe in advance and got the idea to actually use those mad powers the fake gemstones held within.


Tails stared back at the hedgehog person. "What… do you want from me?", he stammered.

"You will help me harness the seven powers of chaos." The reply came back in the tone of an almost everyday statement… if it wasn't for the underlying threat and the mechanical sound of the voice.

"Who are you?", Tails pressed out, his voice trembling as much as his body.

Another, harder shudder ran through the young fox as in the stranger's face a pair of deep red eyes lit up, sending a piercing glow through the dark workshop. "You may have one guess, organic."

Sonic hit the pause key, halting the recording. "Metal Sonic," he repeated dully. It was the third time they watched the video already. Sonic slowly shook his head, green eyes drilling into the picture of his robotic nemesis. After the disguise had fallen, he looked like Sonic remembered him looking. Sharp, deadly metal blades for spikes… and those red eyes. Those staring out of the darkness were one of the most dreadful things Sonic had ever seen in his life. He sometimes still had nightmares from the first time he'd seen those eyes, stabbing into his soul, the crimson glow of hatred and evil. Sonic had never really understood why Metal hated him so much. Probably it was his primary programming, hard-wired in before anything else.

Metal Sonic was also the enemy that had come closest to defeating him, the one closest to match his speed. Eggman had built him to mirror Sonic's own attacks and fighting style, and yet he had created something totally different. Yes, if he was honest with himself, Sonic knew he was scared of Metal, and he was even more scared now. Scared for Tails. "Just what does he want from Tails?"

Sonic realized only that he'd actually voiced his thoughts aloud when Knuckles replied to the question. "Apparently, he wants to 'harness the seven powers of chaos'," the echidna quoted. "And he thinks Tails can help him with that."

Sonic shook his head. "Why Tails? I mean, why not me? Or Shadow? Or you, being the guardian and big chaos guru? Why Tails?"

To the hedgehog's surprise, Knuckles didn't rise to being titled a 'big chaos guru'. If he really didn't mind it or was able to skip on it silently due to the situation was beyond Sonic, though. "I don't know, Sonic," the guardian sighed instead. "We don't even know where Metal could have taken Tails,"

Sonic shrugged. "We'll have to rely on a bit of luck then. Apparently he needs Tails for… something. He'll keep him prisoner somewhere. Can you imagine many places more suited for something like that than this freaky underwater base we got the Master Emerald from?"

Knuckles blinked, then shook his head. "Hate to break it to you, but it was across the ocean last time I checked. No running there. How do we get there quickly?"

Sonic's eyes flicked over to the Tornado.

"You want to take the plane?" Knuckles eyed the blue hedgehog suspiciously.

Sonic nodded. "Yeah. Maybe you're not aware of it, but the Tornado is originally my plane. I just let Tails have her and fly her. He loves it, and if I'm to be honest he's better a pilot than me. What doesn't mean I'm bad myself."

"Uh-huh…" Knuckles tilted his head, not looking very convinced.

Ignoring him, Sonic jumped up and into the cockpit. He reached blindly for the dashboard, but where he expected to find the keys ready, his fingers just went through an empty space. The blue hedgehog leaned down to look past the control stick at where the ignition keys should be. "Damnit!"

"What?" Knuckles looked up at him, clearly predicting another load of bad news. They'd had enough of those today already. "Something broken?"

"No." Sonic shook his head. "The keys are missing."

The echidna frowned. "Maybe they're just lying around here somewhere?"

Sonic looked down on his friend. "I'm afraid not. We've been looking everywhere; if they'd lie around, we'd have found them."

Knuckles folded his arms. "You usually miss on stuff if you're looking for something else," he pointed out.

Sighing, Sonic threw up his arms. He hated the idea of wasting more time with searching around when they should be up in the air as fast as possible to get to Tails. "Fine. Let's look around again."

The next ten minutes passed with the two of them rummaging through the entire workshop again. In the end, no tool remained where it belonged, half of a shelf's contents had come down on Knuckles' head when the echidna pulled on something and set off a chain reaction, and Sonic was sure Tails would be really mad at them when he came back. But neither of the two had found a thing just remotely resembling a key.

Sonic shook his head. "I told you they're not here. Metal must have taken them. Or blew them up. Or threw them into the sea. Or…" He tailed off, huffed a breath and finished with a little motivated "Or something."

Knuckles looked at him for a moment as if he'd wanted to throw out a comment, then apparently decided to drop it and just glanced around in the hangar for a few seconds before focusing on the biplane. "But without keys, we're stuck without a ride."

"We could…" Sonic scratched behind his ear. "…y'know, hot-wire it or something."

"Hot -?" Knuckles blinked. "You know how to do that?"

"In theory, yes." Sonic shrugged. "I've seen it done in movies."

The guardian groaned. "Great, we're depending on knowledge you obtained from watching movies…"

"Hey, it can't be that tough." Sonic walked up to the plane, studying it. "You start a motor with a strong electric current that comes from… the battery or something."

"Or something…", Knuckles echoed quietly.

Sonic however was starting to feel confident about his idea. "You need this ignition current to start the engine, and it doesn't matter what kind of engine. The Tornado for long doesn't run on fuels anymore, but has a ring energy engine. All we have to do is get a spark to start it so it begins turning and stuff."

"And stuff," the echidna repeated again, sounding a little hoarse.

Sonic shot him a wink. "You're enthusiastic as ever, Knux."

The echidna grimaced. "Since when do I ever like plans you come up with?"

"You never liked any of them," the hedgehog pointed out with a wide grin.

"Indeed." Knuckles' lips twitched a little as he fought off a smirk. "So, you were saying?"

Sonic snapped his fingers. "I was saying we hot-wire this plane now."

"Ah, yes." The red echidna shook his head, watching Sonic climb back into the cockpit.

Crawling half under the pilot seat to be able to access the bottom of the dashboard in spite of that damn control stick being really in the way, Sonic was still grinning. "I need a screwdriver or… something I can break this here open with."

"Break it open?" Knuckles stared up the side of the biplane. "Isn't there a way to open… whatever you're opening there without breaking our ride?"

Sonic sighed. "Look. This isn't exactly the way this thing is supposed to be started, okay? It's the brutal method. Now give me a tool I can use."

Knuckles let out a dismissive groan, looking around the messed-up workshop. He located something he thought was what Sonic wanted in a heap of random objects on the floor, picked it up and climbed up the double wings to hand it to Sonic and look at what the hedgehog was doing. "Here, will that work?"

Sonic gave it just a short look. "I guess." He reached under the dashboard again. The tip of the screwdriver caused a scraping noise until the hedgehog managed to wretch it into a gap between two pieces of cover. Sonic hit the end of the tool a few times, forcing the tip deeper into the gap, then he jerked it upwards. The panel cover gave out a very unhealthy, cracking noise and came down a bit.

"Is it… supposed to sound that way?" Knuckles glanced down into the cockpit uneasily.

Sonic gave him a board grin. "You bet!", he claimed and as if to prove it yanked on the screwdriver again, harder this time. "I'm just persuading it to cooperate with us!"

Knuckles covered his eyes with one of his large hands. "Chaos beware…"

It needed three more of what Sonic called persuasion attempts until a part of the mutilated cover came falling down. Carelessly Sonic dropped it into the seat behind the one he was in, then he reached into the new opening hole and pulled out a handful of cables. "Now we just have to find out which of these are the ones we need…"

Knuckles shot a look out between his thumb and fingers. "What happens if you get the wrong ones?"

"Uh, I dunno…" Sonic pulled on a cable, trying to figure out where it came from.

"Great…" The echidna sighed. "You're gonna blow us both up…"

Nose stuck into the hole, Sonic replied without looking up. "I doubt this can blow us up."

"He says," Knuckles complained to no-one in particular. "And then we're all blown to bits anyway and –"

"Bingo!" Sonic's triumphant yelp interrupted Knuckles' bad forebodings. "These two cables come from the ignition key thing." He yanked them out of their sockets. "That means all we gotta do is – this!" Smiling like a winner, the hedgehog brought the two now loose ends together. A blue spark shot from one to the other, the engine gave out a sputter and the propeller twitched, but the motor didn't start up.

Knuckles had finally coaxed himself to put his hand down again. "Is it supposed to sound that way?", he asked again.

Sonic frowned thoughtfully. "I dunno." He tried again, getting the same choked noise out of the engine. "At least we got the right cables," the hedgehog noticed.

"Yeah, but it doesn't really get us anywhere, does it?" The red echidna lifted a mocking eyebrow.

For the moment Sonic was too concentrated trying to think like Tails and figuring out how this worked to react to his friend's teasing. "I think… we're not generating enough energy to really start the engine." He created another spark. "See? It starts and tries to turn over, but it can't…"

"Says our expert aircraft mechanic number one." Knuckles shook his head. "What are we gonna do, smart-ass?"

"We… I know!" Sonic jumped in his seat, startling the echidna to almost fall off the wing. "I'll do it again, and you spin the propeller when I do it."

"I… spin the propeller, of course," Knuckles repeated matter-of-factly. "What should that help us? You want me to spin it around all the time so we can fly?"

Sonic bit down a laugh. "No. I… I've seen people do that if motors don't start up. You have to help them, give them a push or something. The propeller maybe causes drag, or it's too heavy or whatever. I don't know. Shut up and just try it."

"I'm not the one talking lengthy statements about stuff he's got no idea of," Knuckles pointed out dryly, but he hopped down to get to the front of the plane and grabbed the propeller blades. "Just tell we when to do this and –"

Sonic started to bring the ends of the cables together, then realized something and dropped them again. "Wait!"

"What now?"

"You can't just stand there," the hedgehog realized. "If we do it and the engine lights up, the propeller will suck you in and chaff you to tiny pieces!"

Knuckles stared at him, then pulled his hands off the propeller as if it had electrocuted him. "Then what?"

Sonic shrugged. "I guess you do this kind of thing from behind the prop."

For a moment Knuckles looked up at the hedgehog as if he wanted to say something, then he dropped his hands to his sides with a submissive sigh and moved to climb back on top of the wings. Kneeling in the middle of the upper one, right behind the propeller, he could reach over and take a hold of one of its blades. "Okay now? I'm set."

Sonic nodded. "Good. I count to three. One. Two. Three!"

The blue hedgehog once more touched the cables together, and simultaneously Knuckles yanked with all his might on the propeller blade. Another sputtered noise sounded from the engine compartment, the whole biplane vibrated for a second, then the engine spun to life.

Knuckles quickly pulled his hand away to keep it from getting cut off when the strong wind of the propeller's downwash hit him in the face, blowing his dreadlocks behind his shoulders. Slowly the echidna turned around to Sonic. "I don't believe this actually worked."

Sonic was sitting in the pilot seat, in numb fascination listening to the steady sound of the idling engine and staring at the engine instruments that all slowly but steadily began to indicate normal operating conditions after a few seconds of warm-up.

"Sonic? Hello-ho?" Knuckles waved a hand in front of his face.

Pulling himself out of the awestruck daze, Sonic felt a grin forming on his face. "It worked! Aren't I the awesomest?!"

He received an indignant stare. Knuckles took a long breath, held it for a second, then let it out with a huff. "It was good," he allowed.

Still grinning like the idiot that just won the jackpot in Casinopolis' pinball machine, Sonic gestured behind himself. "What are you waiting for? Tails needs us. We wasted enough time already."

Knuckles nodded curtly and climbed into the passenger seat behind Sonic. "You're right. Get going."

"You bet I am." Sonic eased the throttle forwards gradually, taxing the biplane out of the hangar. "Don't worry, Tails, we're coming…"

Behind him, Knuckles shifted in his seat, reaching under his behind and pulling out the piece of broken cover. For a moment he looked at it, then dropped it into the space to his feet. "Sonic?"

The blue hedgehog was busy preparing the take-off and flicking various switches. "Yeah?"

Defeatedly Knuckles dropped against the back of the seat. "Tails is gonna kill us."