Chaos narrowed its eyes at Sonic, and Sonic did the same but with a smile of confidence and excitement. Then Sonic rolled up into a fast-spinning ball and then charged toward Chaos, which stretched forth its arm and whacked him like baseball, sending Sonic flying over Knuckles' head into a brick wall.
"Wow, you're tougher than I thought," Sonic laughed, getting up again.
Chaos then started coming closer to Sonic and waved its arms about, trying to get one hit at him, but Sonic dodged each attack and jumped over its head, landing a few feet behind it. Chaos didn't seem to want to fight Sonic, though; it had its eye on the bag Knuckles was holding tightly in his hands.
"Hey! What are you doing! Get back or you'll be sorry!" Knuckles yelled at Chaos, but it only came closer and closer at a slow pace as if it were an old man walking to his car.
Knuckles wanted to protect the chaos emerald so he just turned around and ran away, but Chaos stretched its arm out and slapped him on the shoulder, flipping Knuckles over and sending the bag up in the air. The yellow chaos emerald fell out and landed right in the middle of the road, where a large garbage truck could be seen speeding into view from the distance.
"Knuckles!" Sonic yelled.
As the truck got closer to the scene, the lights became brighter, and the chaos emerald was still lying there in the road.
"NO!" Knuckles cried as Chaos held him as far back from the road as possible in order to prevent him from being able to rescue the emerald.
Knuckles managed to get one arm free as he strained himself to get close enough to grab it, yet still not close enough. He stretched his arm out as far as it would go, but he just couldn't get his glove to reach it. Chaos pulled him back again and bound him with both arms. Then Sonic took action and sprang into the road, but just as he got halfway, Chaos grabbed a hold of his legs by stretching one of its arms out while holding Knuckles back with the other.
The truck was here, speeding up to the chaos emerald, which was still lying in the road. And just before it was able to crush it, Knuckles bashed Chaos on the head with his spiked knuckles, freeing himself, and then dashed into the road and rolled over to the other side just as the giant speeding truck drove past him.
Soon enough, Chaos was outnumbered and finally decided to give up, turning itself into a gooey glob of watery substance and washing away through a drain under the sidewalk to roam the city elsewhere. Sonic clapped for Knuckles and gave him a thumbs-up as Knuckles walked up to him with the emerald in his glove.
"Here," he said exhaustedly and proudly, "it's yours to keep."
"Thanks Knuckles, not like it was yours to begin with or anything," Sonic replied, rolling his eyes as Knuckles tossed him the emerald.
It was around 2100 hrs by now, and Knuckles was ready to take a rest for a while before they continued on their search.
"Wait, stop?" Sonic protested in disappointment.
"Yea, why not? We've worked hard enough, so I think now we deserve a little break for once," Knuckles said with a smile of contentment on his face.
They had just reached the outskirts of South City District by 2120 hrs and found themselves sitting outside an ice cream shop.
"SO the great guardian of the master emerald, huh?" Sonic asked, putting the bag over his shoulder. "That bomb will go off over the entire city, and Alexa will be nothing but a pile of ashes if we don't get our butts moving soon, ya know."
"Hey, we've got plenty of time . . ." Knuckles sighed as a waitress brought him a fudge sundae with a cherry on top.
"Yeah, only two and a half hours remaining until the city is blown up. No biggy," Sonic said sarcastically.
"See, my point exactly," Knuckles said before popping the cherry in his mouth.
"Oh well, then I guess I'll get to take all the credit for saving the world again," Sonic shrugged as he turned around to leave Knuckles behind at the ice cream shop.
But when Knuckles saw Sonic leaving with his bag and chaos emerald, he threw the sundae down and jumped off the table to catch up with him.
"Don't you dare walk away from me," he scolded him.
"Or else what? Stone me to death? Ha, fat chance," Sonic laughed, handing Knuckles the bag with the emerald inside.
Soon they left South City District and headed into Central South City Park, which reminded Sonic of Alexa and the time they had together just earlier that afternoon.
"What are we doing here?" Knuckles sighed, becoming impatient and a bit homesick now.
"This is where I left her before she was taken," Sonic said, falling to his knees. "It's all my fault. If I hadn't left her alone, I could've probably stopped Eggman from capturing her in the first place."
"Don't worry, Sonic. You don't have to feel that bad about yourself even though it was technically your fault that we were all sent here by chaos control and that Eggman ended up locking this Alexa person up in a giant hourglass at the top of a twenty-foot clock tower, just waiting to blow up the entire city with his time-bomb," Knuckles said.
"Gee, thanks pal," Sonic said with a sigh. "Well, we'd better get on the move if we wanna find some more chaos emeralds. Of course, maybe Shadow's already got some, and we can get them from him if we ever find him.
"SHADOW'S HELPING YOU?" Knuckles yelled at Sonic in disbelief.
"What?" Sonic shrugged, "I thought I might need the extra help."
"Ugghh!" Knuckles broke out in a fit. "Are you insane! He's not helping you! He's working for Eggman!"
"WHAT?" Sonic exclaimed confusedly. "But . . . I thought . . ."
"That's exactly your problem!" Knuckles told him. "You think too much! You need to know before you make a decision like that!"
"Like what?" Sonic asked sheepishly.
"Like who you go around giving chaos emeralds to!"
"Oh, like you?" Sonic teased.
"Very funny," Knuckles sighed, face-palming himself.
"Ha ha ha. You know I'm just kidding," Sonic teased him, jumping up into a tree to get a better view of the park.
Knuckles then took a deep breath and paused for a moment before clearing his throat.
"Ugh, let's get going already. We need to find the emeralds before Shadow does. He's probably found some already and given them over to Eggman by now," Knuckles said calmly, trying to control his temper.
"Hey, good idea," Sonic said, jumping down from the tree and speeding around the entire park in a flash.
When he returned within five seconds, Knuckles rolled his eyes and then asked simply, "WHAT WAS THAT?"
"Oh nothing. Just calms my nerves," Sonic replied with a smile.
"Stop wasting time already!" Knuckles huffed in annoyance.
"But don't you wanna see what I've collected?" Sonic asked with a sad face.
"No! I don't care if you . . . A CHAOS EMERALD!" Knuckles exclaimed, swiping the large shining violet emerald from Sonic's hand.
"Hey!"
"Nice work," Knuckles said, slipping it into the green bag and zipping it up to keep the glowing out of sight for any predators.
"Sure, if I wasn't the only one doing it all," Sonic sighed before noticing something lying on the grass a few feet away from him.
He rushed over to see what the object was, and it turned out to be a watch.
"Hey! Look, now I can tell what time it is," Sonic said fascinatingly while strapping it onto his wrist.
"Great, now will ya shut up already and let's get going," Knuckles said as he walked up to him with the bag hanging over his shoulder.
They decided to leave the park and head to the capital of South City, Metrocity [met-raw'-city], to see if they could find any more emeralds. So currently, Shadow had one red and one turquoise emerald; Sonic had one yellow and one purple emerald so far, which meant there were only three more emeralds left to find in total—five for each team to collect.
It was 2150 hrs when Sonic and Knuckles arrived at the large, busy capital of Metrocity:
And when they finished the awkward bus trip to the city (awkward as in everybody in the bus stared at them the whole time as if they were frozen still), Sonic and Knuckles hopped off, and they were finally able to use the map given them at the first bus stop.
"So . . . we're right here, and the capitol building is . . ." Sonic began, moving his finger across the map to a certain point and then tapping it, ". . . right here."
"Wait? The capitol?" asked Knuckles curiously. "But that's where the governor is."
"Exactly," Sonic said with a wink, folding the map up and then sticking it inside the dark green bag.
"This bag can come in real handy," Sonic said, secretly taking out the yellow emerald then zipping the bag back up again.
"HEY! YOU BRING THAT BACK, SONIC THE HEDGEHOG!" Knuckles yelled after him as he took off in a blink of an eye.
Sonic speedily made his way up to a zooming police car and then hitched a ride to see where it would take him. Unfortunately, it ended up leading him to a fire, and so the car quickly pulled up behind the barricades in front of a burning building. Fire trucks and ambulances screeched to a halt beside the three-story building, all sirens and everything.
Sonic happened to hear one of the firefighters shout to another through the boisterous sirens of police cars, fire truck, and ambulances (it was nearly deafening), "There's four left! I'll try to get them out as fast as possible!"
Even though there was only two hours and ten minutes remaining before the bomb over in South City District was to go off, Sonic knew what he had to do right now. So he immediately came out from hiding behind the police car and rushed into the bright hot building to rescue whoever was in there.
"Hey! You're not allowed in there! Get back here!" one of the guarding officers shouted at Sonic, who refused to listen because he really wasn't ever good at taking advice from humans, especially adults.
Instead, when he got inside the flaming building, he called out to whoever was still inside. He quickly went form door to door trying to find anyone who might still be here, and fortunately he managed to find two little girls hiding in a closet. Sonic opened it, grabbed the two children, and then rushed out of the building to return them to safety. When the officer saw that the blue hedgehog had rescued the two children, he strictly ordered one of his men to give him an oxygen mask in order to carry out the mission without choking or suffocating to death.
"Thanks but no thanks. I've got my own set of tanks," Sonic said with a thumbs-up before jumping up onto a nearby police car and then up onto a fire truck in order to get closer to one of the windows on the third floor, but the height of the ladder only reached up to the second floor. So he whistled and shouted down to some of the men to get a ladder higher than that one.
"Raise the ladder!" the captain of the police ordered two of his men, and they obeyed immediately.
