Speedy's note: I debated whether to post this as a chapter or make a spin-offish oneshot out of it, but it clearly belongs into this story's context, and to be honest the story has probably done worse meandering and getting side-tracked before than this. Um.
As the self-indulgent writer I am, I quite like this plot bunny, though. Hope you enjoy it as well, and I hope you'll stick around for the next chapter plus epilogue that'll tie this story up. Also, to answer IcyPinkFlower's question, yes, there will be a story after this one. Details later.
Balance in a Bottle
Knuckles had taken trains before, already on his first trip to the surface, if the entire madness following Chaos' escape from within the Master Emerald could be called something as ridiculously understating as a mere trip...
This train they took now, though its station was small and looking somewhat similar to the one near Tails' workshop, was a lot longer than the ones Knuckles had seen so far, and instead of screeching as it rumbled to a stop in front of the waiting group, it glided to a halt smoothly and almost without sound.
Knuckles followed his friends inside, secretly glad to be out of the wind. His fur was still rather damp, and the temperature of the wind betrayed the late season as obviously as the colour that had settled in the trees' leaves back on his island.
They strolled through the long aisle until they reached almost the end of the wagon. There were not many other travelers around.
Tails pointed at four seats, two and two facing each other. "How about here?"
Sonic nodded and looked at him for some sort of confirmation, too. Knuckles just dropped into one of the seats instead of a verbal answer. He still felt quite off balance, a terrible headache threatening to only get worse pulsed sharply behind his forehead, as a result of that his stomach felt decidedly queasy, he was tired and cold and he really didn't care if they happened to sit here or a few rows in any one direction.
The blue hedgehog raised a brow at him, but didn't say anything while he slipped into a seat next to Tails across of Knuckles.
The train started to move, as silently and gently as it had entered the station. Glad to be not madly jostled around as he had come to expect from the surface people's means of transportation, the guardian turned to the window, for a moment watching the coast rush by increasingly fast, then he closed his eyes.
It was hard to try and reach for the Master Emerald like this, to re-center himself. Part of it was probably the distance, the rest might as well have been his own lack of balance as it was right now. Though he had managed to wield the insanity of Metal Sonic's fake Emeralds, even if barely so, he felt like the mad energy had totally scrambled his mind and he was reeling to pull himself together enough to consider himself functional.
He deeply wished he could return to the island, reset and strengthen the torn and damaged link by touch, but he didn't want to ask Tails to fly him home when they got back to his house, it could still be hours until then, they would have to fly in the dark, and Tails looked beat as it was. Knuckles would not ask him for any more favours right now. It had been his oversight that had cost Tails another few awful days in Metal's hands, and he probably deserved to be uncomfortable for a while.
Maybe they could come by a few rings. Maybe that would be enough to balance himself a little, until he could return to the island.
If, given how widely the aftershocks of the blast still echoed in the fabric of chaos all around, rings would even spawn here right now...
Distantly he heard Tails yawn. "I am going to see if this thing comes with a bistro or something. I'm starving, and I think I will need some coke to stay awake. We got almost two hours to Soleanna, then we have to get back to the Tornado on foot, and it's another few hours of flying until we make it home. I'm not going to survive that long on empty."
"Me neither," Sonic agreed. "This trip takes forever. How do people manage? These things are all so slow! I wouldn't take half the time running."
"Well, I'm sick of running for today, so unless you want to run alone, you'll have to stick to the train."
"It's fine. This isn't so bad." Sonic shuffled in his seat from the sounds of it, annoying Knuckles by randomly bumping into his knee and somehow managing to cause a lot of noise just by the way his quills ruffled with the movement against the seat. The echidna longingly thought of the solitude of his island.
When Tails spoke again it was from the aisle, and Knuckles belatedly realised he had gotten up. "So, any wishes?"
"A bottle of good old Chaos Cola it is, and whatever we can get in terms of snacks."
"Okay. Do you want something, too? ... Knuckles?"
"Knux? You okay?" Sonic poked his arm.
The echidna's eyes snapped open. He'd not meant for them to notice. It was his fault, and they shouldn't have to worry about it, least of all little Tails. It had been Knuckles' job to know something was wrong with the Master Emerald, it had also been his job to figure out what, had he done so more quickly Metal Sonic wouldn't have gotten as far, and in the end it had been his decision to try and use the unstable energy for something as critical as a transformation. It had been a foolhardy decision, the kind he would chide Sonic for, the kind he would call reckless and impulsive and idiotic, and if he paid the price for it now the blame was entirely his own to bear.
Opening his eyes resulted in a shooting pain to pierce through his skull at the sudden light. He couldn't quite hide the gasp that he needed to fight down the fresh wave of nausea. "'m good," he managed to get out, and was almost proud at the steadiness of his voice.
Tails was looking at him expectantly. "I'm getting snacks and drinks. Do you want something special?"
"No." He was very far from hungry right now. Drinks sounded good, but he couldn't find it in himself to think about it and choose something. "Just... Whatever you guys want."
"Okay." Tails smiled, though he did look at Knuckles for a moment too long, with a small, searching frown fighting off the smile, but then he disappeared towards the door separating this wagon from the next one.
Knuckles leaned back into his seat and closed his eyes again, desperate instinct reaching out for the familiarity of the Master Emerald's distant resonance, but he failed to get a hold of it. A chaos link was always two ways, he needed to extend something of himself in order to properly re-establish the connection, and he had nothing left to extend as it was.
"Liar."
He blinked at Sonic. "What?"
The blue hedgehog frowned, arms crossed and gaze leveled straight at Knuckles. "I said you're a liar, and you're actually not even a good one."
"I'm not -"
"Oh, then you feel great, yes?" Sonic's eyebrows rose up and the pointy ears tipped sideways. "Did you see yourself lately? You're white as a sheet." He leaned closer, continued before Knuckles had a chance to put a word in. "Dude, you almost drowned out there. If you're dizzy or have trouble breathing or something, you need to tell us because it could be quite bad."
Annoyed with the conversation as much as the attention, Knuckles wanted to point out that Sonic had also almost drowned today, that he had in fact been quite much closer to drowning than Knuckles, but the discussion didn't seem worth the effort. "'s not that," he said instead.
"What is it, then?" Finally he recognized the piercing look. Sonic was worried.
Knuckles looked back at him in silence for a moment, then figured he had neither the energy to come up with a smokescreen, nor was he motivated to explain it in detail. "I - there was, the fake Emeralds, and - my head's killing me, Sonic." It wasn't everything, it wasn't the full truth, it wasn't even an actual sentence, but it was close enough all things considered.
And it seemed to work, because Sonic sat back and nodded. "Okay. Makes sense, you know." Knuckles couldn't believe his ears; the hedgehog was actually talking quietly now for once, mindful of the guardian's frayed nerves and frazzled senses. "Take it easy then, and tell us if you feel much worse, 'kay?"
He could do that if it earned him some peace now. Knuckles nodded silently and closed his eyes again.
For a few minutes it was quiet and the echidna focused on breathing, slowly, in and out, and carefully a little deeper as the time passed.
Light footsteps returned from the end of the wagon. "Hey, look, I found -"
"Psht!" Sonic cut Tails off when he was barely within earshot, and Knuckles found himself irrationally and utterly, disbelievingly grateful. He'd never given Sonic credit for having a considerate side, but given his lifestyle, maybe Sonic had gotten his head smashed in by giant robot and the like often enough to know what it was like when your skull felt like it was going to blow up after all.
A pause, then Tails continued a lot more quietly. "Oh, he asleep? I thought he wasn't looking so cool. A little green about the gills."
"Killer headache," Sonic explained while Tails took a seat again from the sounds of it.
"Oh." Tails took another moment's pause. "Do you think -?"
"Yeah, it can only help, really."
Tails' hand lightly touched his arm. "Knuckles? Drink?"
"Thanks." He accepted a bottle from Tails, filled with a dark brown liquid that he recognized as a drink Sonic was fond of. Knuckles didn't care much for it, but his throat was dry and his stomach unsettled, so he could at least give it a shot.
Unscrewing the bottle, he took a careful sip. It was sweet, almost sticky on his teeth. There was a deeper, bitter taste that followed it, barely traceable under the sweetness. Like many of the surface people's drinks, it bubbled and frizzed lightly on his tongue.
In spite of the rather unfamiliar taste and texture, his stomach didn't seem to have anything against the drink, and he settled back and continued taking measured sips of it.
After a minute, he became aware of the warmth that was pooling in his stomach, even though the drink was cool. It wasn't unpleasant, just unexpected and nothing like the effect of a hot tea or other drink.
Another couple minutes later, he was down about a third of the bottle, he started to feel strange. A little bit like nervous, but not quite. A little bit more awake, and as if something was tingling against his currently overly sensitive nerves. Something... chaos?
There was not even a ring in sight.
"Sonic?" He threw the hedgehog a look.
Having apparently already finished half of his own drink and currently busy eating some piece of cake or pastry, Sonic looked up. "Huh?"
"I think something is wrong with this drink."
"Oh?" He threw a look at Knuckles' bottle as if that would give him any clues, then held out his hand. "May I?
Knuckles didn't resist when Sonic reached for the bottle. The blue hedgehog took a sniff at it, then tested the drink. He swallowed with a frown, looking between Knuckles and the bottle as he put it back down. "I have no idea what you mean. Tastes normal to me."
"What do you think is wrong with it?" Resting the large paper bag that had been in his lap on the empty seat next to Knuckles, Tails leaned forward a bit, curious, ears perked.
"I..." Knuckles wasn't quite sure what he thought was weird about it. "It... It tastes bitter and sweet at the same time, it's cold but after a moment it feels warm, and it makes me... tingly."
Tails was watching him intently. "That's what it normally tastes like. The warmth and what you describe as 'tingly' might just be the caffeine. That's a mild stimulant, a natural substance that makes people feel more awake. If you drink caffeinated beverages often, you get a lot less sensitive to the effect, but since I assume you don't normally drink coke or coffee, you could be much more sensitive than the average consumer."
Knuckles groaned. Trying to follow a Tails speech was not improving his headache. In fact, it was sometimes sufficient to give him one…
Sonic was looking at him in what Knuckles thought was actual sympathy after enduring Tails' monologue. "It's harmless, I swear. It's also known to help with headaches and stuff." He held up the bottle. "You want it back?"
He really did want it back. He was still a little thirsty, his stomach was starting to feel less like it would revolt, and his hand, still stuck in the damp glove, had felt less cold while holding the bottle. It made no sense but he couldn't think and yes, he wanted it back, even if something was very odd about this beverage.
Sonic handed the bottle over when he nodded, and Knuckles, feeling unable to further deal with his friends right now, cradled it in his hand like something of great value and went back to drinking slowly.
Another couple minutes passed in silence. Knuckles closed his eyes again. He had finished more than half of his coke, and maybe Sonic was right, because the roaring pain that had before send piercing jolts all through his skull and down his spine from there was down to a dull throb. The sense of nervousness had gone from the unspecific strange sense of disturbance to a milder feeling of alertness that was no longer uncomfortable.
The tingle was still there, it had spread from the initial disorienting sense of it to a sensation like pins and needles, to the illusion of a low vibration under his fingertips and in his gut, along with a hair-raising prickling in his neck, to finally a vague sense that returned him to his initial illusionary perception of grabbing golden rings when there were none.
It was so persistent that he opened his eyes several times to check for larger amounts of rings suddenly spawning around them, only to never find anything.
Something was quite wrong with his perception. Maybe it was even worse than he had thought?
Had he been not so obviously out of it, he would have said there was a chaotic disturbance around here, but they were moving quickly in the train, the feeling travelled with them without changing much, and it just had to be him, and not the environment.
But concentrating on the sensation brought along another discovery, and it was finally a good one. Still distant and faint, he could feel the Master Emerald brushing against his mind. It was not strong or steady enough to grasp, but it was a milestone from the blinded scrambling he'd done for it before.
When he opened his eyes the next time, he found Sonic studying him and ground out an instinctive, irritated "What?" that earned him a brief flash of a familiar smile across the hedgehog's face.
"You're getting back a little colour," Sonic noticed, unruffled as usually by his tempers. "Feeling better?"
He nodded carefully. It was true.
"Do you want a snack now?" Tails smiled as he reached for the paper bag and held it out at him. "We saved a few things. You can pick what you like."
Well, maybe he could try something. With the composition of the coke, he was fairly sure he wasn't lacking sugar, but maybe something real to fill his stomach would be better than the artificial sweetness of this surface dweller drink, as well as it had served him so far.
He placed his bottle on a small table that folded out of the wall under the window and reached for the bag Tails was offering. It contained several pieces of pastry, some chocolate covered, some in a powdery sugar coat. He reached for one of the sugared ones that had the shape of a ring.
Tails was watching him dig into the bag. "You want the donut?"
"That's what it's called?"
"Yep." Tails nodded.
Sonic smiled, giving him a rather comically overeager thumbs up. "They're good!"
Knuckles picked up the donut and tried it. It was soft and sweet. Tasty, too. He wondered if it would go well with grape juice.
Or with coke. The fine powdery sugar was kind of cough-inducing...
He picked up his bottle again for a quick drink between bites, and promptly almost dropped it. Something like chaos tingled under his fingers as they closed around the glass. "Whoa!"
Both of his friends were staring at him in alarm. "What's up?!"
Knuckles was staring too, but at the bottle. "It's -" He blinked, carefully brushing fingertips over the glass again, testing the feel of it. "I think there's energy in my drink."
It sounded idiotic. He realized that as soon as the words left his mouth. There couldn't be energy in his drink. His damaged nerves were playing tricks on him, and by blurting this out now without thinking first, he had informed his friends that he really wasn't quite up to his game.
But when he quickly looked up at the others, Sonic was kicked back in his seat looking rather relaxed again, not like he was doubting Knuckles' sanity, and Tails' face held a small, curious frown.
"Well, it's not called 'Chaos Cola' for nothing," Sonic trailed.
Knuckles blinked. He'd thought it was a weird brand name, like Soap Shoes. They could not really have shoes made of soap. But then again... "You... You have chaos energy, in a beverage?" That couldn't be true.
"Yes. It's not much, probably translates to less than a handful of rings per bottle, and that would be the largest size, not these little ones." Tails shrugged lightly, not looking the least bit bothered. "The company started with Chaos Soda; I think they use water from a spring that's at a place where always a lot of rings appear, and some of their energy sort of bleeds into the water."
"I've seen a documentary on that once," Sonic added. "They use the water for the soda and the coke."
Tails shrugged. "But it's widely accepted it's a marketing gag and the amount of energy in that drink is so small it's not going to have any effect. I don't know anyone who feels anything special after drinking it. The tons of sugar and the caffeine, sure, but drinking it can't keep you from even suffering a paper cut for all I know." The little fox leaned forward. "Are you saying you can sense the tiny, tiny amount of chaos energy in the coke? Then you're even more sensitive than I thought."
"I -" Knuckles shook his head, weighing the bottle in hand. He was starting to feel less muddled, and in turn less disoriented overall. What didn't mean the perception made sense, or that he trusted his memory of the last couple of minutes. He couldn't feel a handful of rings, he shouldn't be feeling this if that's what was in the drink, but he was so frazzled right now, and- "I'm not sure. I felt… something, already when I started drinking it, but nothing of it makes sense and it's - I'm not sure," he finished lamely.
Sonic had folded his arms across his chest. "How's the head?", he asked casually.
"Better," Knuckles admitted guardedly.
The hedgehog shrugged. "Well, apparently something is helping."
Rubbing his chin, Tails was downright scrutinizing Knuckles now. "You do look better. If it's enough energy for you to feel, maybe we're safe to assume it's enough to have an effect?" He frowned. "Then again, you usually live in direct proximity of the Master Emerald, and you say you're somehow connected to it. If something so small sets you off, the interference of the Emerald should wreck havoc on you."
"That's not the same," Knuckles found himself saying before he'd properly thought through if and how much information he wanted to share. "It's not the same sort of energy, and - and I'm not, as you put it, connected."
Sonic raised a puzzled brow. "We were sure you were and -"
"No, I mean not now."
Tails blinked. "What do you mean, not now?"
Knuckles realized too late that he would now have to explain himself, and he had no idea how. "I - there was, the copies you made, I used their energy. It was a lot of energy, a lot of unbalanced energy, something snapped, and now I'm -"
"It hurt you," Tails interrupted him. "Knuckles, I'm sorry. I never meant for anything like this to happen and -"
Knuckles stared. "But I'm not mad at you! Nothing of this is your fault. I made an error of judgement. Several, really, and-"
"Is it bad?", Tails interrupted him again, wide-eyed.
Actually, Knuckles had no idea. Nothing quite like this had ever happened to him before. It had probably never happened to another guardian before him, either. He didn't, couldn't know what to expect. "I - I think I'll be okay." It was the only thing he could say to Tails, really.
The fox nodded quietly, obviously not taking Knuckles' words at face value right now.
"Maybe you should finish the miracle drink?" Sonic gestured at the half full bottle of coke, thankfully looking a lot less as if he'd expect him to fall over dead than Tails. "If it's an energy problem, maybe you gotta refill the reserves."
It was nothing like this. Yes, maybe it did have to do with exhaustion, chaotic and otherwise, but the core of the problem, Knuckles was sure, was primarily a balance thing.
But if it was real, natural chaos energy in this odd drink, it was certainly a lot more balanced than he was right now, and it did indeed seem to help somewhat.
Experimentally, Knuckles went back to drinking. He finished the donut in between, and he had to admit that he was feeling better, less off kilter, less like something was gonna snap. The backlash of something already having snapped still stung sharply enough, but it had gotten quite bearable by now if he compared it to what it'd been like a few minutes ago.
Seeing him put away the empty bottle, Sonic held up his own. "Want the rest?"
Knuckles found he couldn't say no to that. He drank down the remainder of Sonic's Chaos Cola rather quickly, although he didn't even feel thirsty anymore. But there was something there and -
From the back of his mind came a sudden nudge of energy, and it wasn't a ring or whatever exactly the surface people managed to put into their drinks. Knuckles gasped, eyes squeezing shut as he desperately tried to get hold of it. The lack of synchronousness was still obvious, a painful grating along his nerves, but something had settled, too, and the ripple of Emerald power didn't slip through his hold this time. Instead, the familiar link snapped back into place with a sudden rush of warmth that burned along his senses with a vibrant thrum and resonated through his entire body and mind.
The echidna released a breath he didn't know he'd been holding, melting into the cushioning of the seat with the utter relief of it.
"Knux?! Knuckles!" Sonic was shouting. Why was Sonic shouting?
"Knuckles, say something!" Tails was shouting, too. Couldn't he relax for just a second here?
Knuckles opened his eyes, finding the others staring at him, Sonic's hand stretched out as if to reach for him.
He withdrew it when he met Knuckles' gaze. "Hey, um, you alright there?"
Knuckles nodded, a smile spreading over his face without any of his even trying. "I'm good," he said. He glanced down on the second empty bottle. If they'd told him yesterday the surface dwellers had filled chaos energy into bottles for drinking, it would have seemed like utter blasphemy to him. It still kind of did, but considering what else he'd seen today, it was so harmless in comparison, and it had fixed the total lack of balance he wouldn't have been able to control by himself. Funny how much your view on something could be swayed in so short a time.
"You sure?" Tails still looked worried.
Knuckles smiled again. He was still tired and sore, but he was good. They'd stopped what he'd been sure was a total catastrophe with virtually no long term harm done, Tails was safe, the Island and Master Emerald were safe, he could feel that now, distant but clear feedback, Sonic was free from within the gem, and his head was still in one piece and attached to his neck. "I'm fine, Tails."
Also Tails finally, properly smiled. Unfortunately the smile didn't last all that long however. "And you're really not mad that I made those fake Emeralds? You got hurt because of them!"
Knuckles shook his head. "I'm okay, Tails," he repeated, "and I decided for myself what I was going to do. None of it is your fault, really."
"But the fake Emeralds were my fault!" Tails' large ears were drooping again.
Next to Tails, Sonic was watching them, now longer slouched into his seat, but he didn't say anything.
Knuckles focussed back on Tails. "They were Metal Sonic's fault."
"I knew what I was doing, or at least, I knew it was terrible," the fox argued. "I should have -"
"What, let him torture you or kill you or what?!" Knuckles cut himself off, shook his head again, trying to calm his temper. The kid didn't deserve being snapped at. "Look. Remember when we met? What did I do?"
"Appeared out of nowhere and punched the Chaos Emeralds out of Sonic while he was super?" Tails blinked, confused.
Knuckles nodded. "And what did I do then?"
"Kept appearing out of nowhere to make bridges drop away under us and stuff," Sonic threw in, apparently unable to be quiet for longer.
"But it wasn't your fault, Knuckles, Eggman had tricked you into thinking we were evil." Tails was frowning now, arms crossed tightly.
The echidna shook his head. "I meant to drop you into pits, Tails. Were you mad at me for it?"
"No! Well, at first I was, but then we found out what was happening and - I said that it wasn't -"
"I did it on purpose, Tails," Knuckles interrupted him, "I knew what I was doing and I meant to do it. You made the fake Emeralds because you were forced to; you said yourself you didn't mean to make them. If you forgave me that I was stupid and fell for Eggman, shouldn't I forgive you that you were smart and didn't let Metal Sonic hurt you?"
"I... Um." It must've been the first time ever that Knuckles had succeeded in rendering Tails speechless. At another time, he'd probably be amused.
Next to Tails, Sonic turned to the window, grin on his face. Well, one of them actually was amused.
Knuckles decided to ignore the hedgehog. There was something else he should say to Tails while was at it. "If anyone should be sorry, it's me. I was an idiot, I didn't get that you had to be with a fake Sonic if the real Sonic was in the Master Emerald all that time, and it's my fault we weren't faster to rescue you and stop Metal before... You know."
Tails still frowned, but his ears had picked up only to swivel backwards and he was almost glaring at Knuckles know. "But you were fast enough to save me, and you stopped the fake Master Emeralds, too!"
'Stopped' wasn't quite what Knuckles would've called it. Yes, he'd not blown up the planet, he'd not even blown up himself, and he should probably be satisfied with that. "The whole base is gone, I think," he said anyway.
Sonic turned back from his window. "And I'm glad, you know? Did I thank you yet? I should. Thank you for not sparing this horrible place and letting it meet its fate!"
Knuckles stared at the hedgehog. "You -" He couldn't really mean that, could he?
Before the guardian could decide if he thought Sonic was being serious or not, he realised Tails was laughing. Laughing. Actually laughing, so much he was hiccuping in between.
Knuckles felt a smile tug on his lips, shooting a look at the hedgehog again. "You -"
Sonic lifted innocent eyes from watching Tails, who had doubled over and was clutching his stomach. "I what?"
"Nothing." Knuckles shook his head. It looked like Sonic had, with a silly comment, achieved what he'd failed to properly do with earnest words, but in the end, it didn't really matter what cheered Tails up, did it? He smiled at the hedgehog, and Sonic actually understood, because he mouthed a "welcome" at him.
Tails was wiping at his eyes, struggling to regain composure. "I'm sorry, it wasn't even funny..."
Sonic drew an arm around the fox, pulling him closer and grinning. "Come on, what's wrong with a good, unreasonable laughing fit? Gets rid of some adrenaline even better than shouting obscenities at Knuckles." A wink was shot at the echidna.
For a second Knuckles wondered if he'd been just insulted, then he decided he didn't even care. Suddenly, he also thought it was funny. He grinned at his friends. "I don't think the other passengers will enjoy listening to the shouting. Or to the obscenities."
Sonic shrugged. "No? There's hardly anyone here, and doesn't everyone love listening to some good obscenities shouted on a train in the afternoon?"
For a moment, Knuckles wondered if it was maybe some surface thing to actually listen to other people's arguments on trains, then he thought Sonic was messing with him, and then he thought it was funny either way, and soon all of them were laughing, and Knuckles had no idea why anymore.
