Stalemate appeared to be the only progress made and that was certainly not Knuckles style. This woman was in his view for nearly fifteen minutes and yet he did not even catch anything of importance like a name. Surely there was something.
Enough time was wasted. All that was accomplished was gawking. From the way she stood so erect, she had the potential to be wickedly agile. Taking two more bold steps, his eyes narrowed as the words stuck out of his mouth, "Come here!"
The figure ducked his grab. Instead of her arm, his hand grasped a large leaf. She then performed a spin kick, and would have swept him off his feet had he not maneuvered away in time. Her fighting style was very unlike Rouge's. If he did not know any better, her martial art skills matched his.
She then leapt high in the air like a trained ninja and lifted her foot at him, ready to use his head as a landing pad. The danger was foreseen by him and dropped to the grass, he rolled away to safety.
The opportunity was presented to him. Within seconds, he leapt onto her back and knocked her over. Quickly standing on his feet, he took care to not lose grip. If a desire to interrogate someone existed in him, that desire would be immediately put to action. Intimidation added to his snarling, he demanded, "Alright, now that I have you here, let's get one thing straight. You are going to tell me everything like it or not. Had you told me who you were instead of using all that fancy footing, things might have gone a whole lot easier."
He reached for her hood to unveil her identity, but a high pitch squeal pierced the air. Both gloved hands released her on impulse to cover his sensitive hearing. Freed of his death like hold, she struck his side to force her full release.
Stumbling backwards, he watched as she performed more fancy moves away from his line of site. In her hand was black box decorated with several buttons. Her thumb was pressing down a bright red one, the source of the disturbing noise.
The echidna growled at that general direction, "Whoever you are, just you wait. I'll find you and when I do, questions will be answered." Rest seemed over rated and he decided to keep searching throughout the night. Pumped with adrenaline, he had no plans to pause.
While thoughts that he had seen enough for one night came, he saw two familiar friends. Tails and Sonic were walking, a strange site indeed. Sonic never leaves to go on strolls. The word slow was hardly in his vocabulary. Things were a bit clearer when his purple eyes wandered onto a flat tablet device in Tails' hands. Both friends were peering at it interestingly.
Curious, he wandered to them, "What are you doing?" Tearing their eyes from the thermometer, Sonic said, "Hey, Knux," he pointed at the doohickey, "We are hunting for what is causing the road to stay so cold." Eyes blinking unbelievingly, he said, "This whole time that you were out here, you did nothing to stop Eggman?" Sonic defended his reputation, "I would not say that I did nothing. I got Tails here to help look for the source of the problem."
Tails nodded, "It looks like we are close too."
Forgetting about his mysterious encounter, Knuckles approached Tails from behind to take a look at the monitor himself. Unable to understand machines because he was raised without them, he hoped Tails would explain everything.
The search continued through the uncharted woods until it had hit a single cave. Sonic glanced back. The road that they initially started at was quite far away and yet whatever resided in this cave was the key to their problem.