Recursion Error
Episode 20- Strike three
One month.
As of today, that was the amount of time Sorun had spent on Mobius. One whole month exactly. He remembered a time all the way back at the beginning of this mess when he'd hoped that this whole twisted adventure of his would only take a month, two tops. But, as things were, it didn't even look close to being finished. One whole month here and what did he have to show for it in terms of finding a way back? Two out of seven magical jewels of infinite power needed to go home, which was awful enough seeing as it wasn't even close to half, but it was even worse since he hadn't found a way to actually extract them. If anything he'd made negative progress in all this time.
It didn't help that he actually was counting the days, and when he woke up on day thirty and realized it had been a whole month he'd been sent into a depressive mood. He hadn't even felt like having breakfast that morning. He didn't feel like going all the way to Freedom HQ to do whatever there was to do there. He didn't feel like talking with anybody, he didn't feel like doing a mission, he didn't feel like training, and he plain just didn't feel like doing anything.
So he took a walk.
After a whole month, he finally decided to just walk around Knothole. Not to duck around the corners of houses to avoid people or try to skirt around the edges of the city proper. Just... walk the streets and get some thinking done. And he'd made that promise to Bunnie anyways to eventually maybe try spreading out a bit, so as he saw it this was just killing two birds with one stone.
And as it turned out, Bunnie had been right. He didn't get so much as a single off, sideways glance from any of the random Mobians he passed. He did get some hellos and waves here and there from some of the citizens with some polite smiles mixed in, but for the most part he was pretty much just ignored. Not for being human, but for being just another random bystander walking around minding his own business. And if it was any other time Sorun actually would have felt relieved over it, but today was the one month anniversary of his life taking a turn for the worst, so he couldn't be bothered to notice.
"Maybe I should just start planning to run away now. Should I?" Eventually in his aimless wanderings Sorun had happened upon a bench near a crossing intersection, so he'd elected to just sit down and watch the bustling citizens of Knothole move on with their days as he thought. "It's been a whole month and I'm no closer to getting home than I was on day one. Jeez, I'm more closer to dying than going home because of these Emeralds. But I still need them, don't I? Do I?" He leaned forwards on the bench and looked down at the ground. "I don't even know anymore. I just... fuck am I supposed to do? It seems like no matter what I do, eventually I'll wind down into the grave if I stay on Mobius. If these friggin' Chaos Emeralds don't kill me it's gonna be one of Eggman's robots. Unless that fat bastard decides to go ahead and hit the 'carpet bomb Knothole' button sitting next to him, 'cause that's still hanging over my head. But my one ticket home are the Emeralds, and for all I know I already fucked myself over on that front by absorbing two." He lifted his head up to look at the morning sky. "I just wanna go home..."
But oh, he just didn't know if he was gonna make it home. He didn't know if there was a way, and if there was he didn't know if he was going to live long enough to get there. And he was just so tired of it all. All the nonsensical events and adventures that kept flinging themselves at Sorun. The training, the fighting, risking his life. Waking up in fear every morning that he was gonna get blown up because a fleet of ships dropped an arsenal's worth of bombs on Knothole. He legitimately didn't know how much more of this he could take.
"Ugh... my life sucks. Everything sucks." He heard footsteps crunch on the ground nearby to him, and out of the corner of his eyes he could see the shape of somebody stop right next to the bench. Sorun debated just ignoring them so he could continue wallowing in self pity, but after around thirty seconds of this heated internal debate the figure had yet to move. So Sorun let out a small exhale and turned his head towards them.
"Oh, awesome. It's this guy." The curious figure in question was Tails. It was easy enough to tell him apart- the two tails slowly swishing behind him was a dead giveaway. Why he was standing next to the bench Sorun was sitting at and staring at him, though, the human had no idea. Nor did he particularly feel compelled to ask. But he would, if only because there was a small chance it would lead into Tails going away and leaving him alone. Because as it was, he just didn't feel like spending any time with the person responsible for dragging him into this world on the worst anniversary of his life. If it were any day, he'd gladly do so. Tails was more than a nice enough person who could hold an interesting conversation. But not today.
"What do you want, Tails?" Sorun grumbled, slinging one of his legs over the other as he gave the fox a flat look.
The harsh tone in his voice had caused Tails's tails to freeze in surprise, though he quickly regained his composure and cleared his throat before speaking. "Oh, I was just... walking around and saw you kind of just sitting here so I... came over to see how you were doing..." He shrank backwards when Sorun continued to give him an unflinching glare with his eyes. "Are you doing okay, Sorun?"
"I'm never doing okay, Tails." Sighing, the human teen shifted his gaze from the fox to the sky. "Any idea what day it is today?"
"Er... Saturday?"
The answer elicited a single, short laugh out of Sorun. "Sure, man. Saturday." He wasn't going to tell Tails why today of all days was dragging him so far down, of course. That was the gateway to all sorts of uncomfortable conversations about his feelings that he really wasn't in the mood for. "I was just doing some thinking is all." He focused back on Tails. "So if that's all-"
"Actually, Sorun, there was one more thing," Tails said before Sorun could finish. "I was gonna wait until later, but you're already here, so..." He suddenly grew uncomfortable, looked around, and then looked back to Sorun. "Actually, do you wanna head back to the HQ with me?" he asked him. "This... might be better said over there."
Sorun rose an eyebrow. "Or you could just say it now. Since we're already here. Talking."
Growl...!
That had been Sorun's stomach. Loud enough for both of them to hear, causing them both to look towards the human's abdomen. Afterwards Tails rose a questioning eye up to Sorun, who shrugged. "Skipped breakfast," he explained.
Tails groaned. "Sorun, you can't just go and skip breakfast like that. It's the most important meal of the day."
"You know, I have yet to see any definitive proof towards that being an accurate statement." He crossed his arms in a huff. "I don't feel like eating, anyways."
"Are you sure?" Tails asked him. "I remember seeing some cereal over in the HQ's kitchen."
"... Damn you, Tails." It'd be just like him to exploit one of his many weaknesses: some good cereal. He knew what box Tails was referring to, as well, and Sorun actually rather liked that brand. Ring-O's, he believed they were called. They were pretty much a one-to-one recreation of Cheerios, more evidence to Sorun's theory that a lot of the food brands of this world had their formulas pilfered from surviving recipes of the old world's foods, but he couldn't care less as long as it tasted good. And now that Tails mentioned it, he could go for some cereal.
Well, he might as well. Especially since Tails had something important to say. Being all depressed on a bench was getting boring, anyways.
"Sure, fine. Let's go." In a flash of blue Sorun's Bringer Claws appeared. "We're flying back, though. I don't feel like walking all the way."
In response, the two tails behind the fox began to rotate. Even as his body began to be lifted off the ground from the spinning tails, the fox was giving Sorun an inquisitive look. "You finally got the hang of flying with those things?" he asked him.
Sorun looked to the side at his right Bringer Claw, and then shrugged. "Been practicing," he said. "I'm decent enough with them now." The feathered, spectral arms began to slowly extend outwards. "C'mon. Let's go already."
It was always such a satisfying sound, pouring cereal into a bowl. Sorun had no idea what about that sound was so appealing. That continuous stream of soft plinks and plonks as all the circular pieces of whatever Ring-O's were made of landed in the bowl. Whole grain and sugar or something, Sorun had glazed over the nutritional information when he skimmed everything on the box. The only thing he cared about was that it tasted good and filled him up.
That was true for any food that he ate, now that he thought about it.
After placing the box back into the cabinet and closing it, Sorun turned to the HQ kitchen's table, where he saw Tails patiently waiting for him. The teen pulled up a chair, and promptly sat down while placing the filled bowl and a spoon in front of him.
"You're not gonna put milk in it?" Tails idly asked from across the table.
Sorun shook his head. "Nah, I don't do milk with cereal. The sogginess kills that crunch I really like. Also I don't like milk." He scooped up a spoonful of dry cereal. "So what's the dealio, Tails my dude? What's so urgent that you dragged me all the way here?"
"Well," Tails began as Sorun crunched down on his cereal, "it's about... it's about the Chaos Emeralds you've been taking into your body."
The crunching ceased almost immediately as Sorun affixed Tails with a stare. The young fox fidgeted nervously under the glare, looking down towards the table as his gloved fingers nervously tapped on the table's surface.
He should have figured it was something like this. Tails was a busy guy as of late. Always kept busy with maintenance stuff or doing missions or something productive. Sorun rarely ever had any training sessions with him due to the human having all but given up on piloting and never showing much an interest in the mechanical side of things. Tails just hadn't had that much to show Sorun in those cases compared to what everybody else offered. So other than a few passing conversations here and there whenever the pair happened to run into each other, they'd never had much reason to meet up like this.
Except if it involved Chaos Emeralds. Sorun had been made known that Tails was pursuing some research into the gems already transmuted inside of his body, and with no other alternatives in sight, Sorun had mainly just been waiting on any results Tails would turn up. But the way the young Mobian was acting was making Sorun almost as nervous as he was. The way he was rapidly breathing and actively trying to avoid meeting Sorun's eyes.
Absolutely none of these were positive signs.
"It's not good news, is it, Tails?" The spoon had been dropped into the bowl of cereal, which was practically forgotten by now as Sorun pushed the bowl aside. "Just give it to me straight, man," he softly requested.
Tails nodded, and then took a deep breath before explaining. "I ran every single possible test I could, Sorun. Rotor helped me out with some of the tests and Nicole even crunched some of the numbers for me, but Chaos energy is... it's always been unpredictable. But after the results I got from some of my final experiments last night... well, I'm gonna have to call it at some point, Sorun." Slowly, the fox began to shake his head. "I'm... I'm really sorry, Sorun. They can't come out. There's just no way."
"... Oh." He felt something just give out inside of him, and the human's form went slack in his chair. "... You don't know that for certain."
Tails winced, as if he'd been expecting that reaction but also had been dreading it. "Sorun, I am sure. Those Emeralds are completely fused to your body's systems, and they can't be extracted since they're existing in an immaterial energy state while fused to you."
"I don't want to accept that." Sorun had to lean forwards on the table just to keep himself steady. "This is the same world that has things like digitizers and robots and people with powers that defy physics. You can't tell me that all that exists but there isn't a way to remove the Emeralds."
"Sorun, I really don't know. Maybe there is, but I just... if there is, I don't know. And I really doubt it."
The teen looked at Tails again, and the fox began actively fidgeting in his seat under that gaze. It was more than just those sunken, dark blue eyes staring into Tails' eyes. There was the deep frown set on his face, and the way his form was slumped over. He looked positively miserable. Miserable to the point that Tails almost felt all the negativity radiating off the human, and, growing worried, began reaching a hand out to him.
"Sorun? S-Sorun, I know this sounds bad, but-"
"Quit talking." From the corner of his eyes he saw blue light flash on his right side, and Tails had sat right back down in his seat as a result. Sorun had barely even registered any of this, though, as Tails' words were sinking so far into his head that he couldn't recognize much of anything at the moment.
He didn't want to believe it. Not a single word. Not from him, not from those sky echidna, not from anybody. Going home was the goal. Had been from word go. The only reason he even went along with being a Freedom Fighter and risking his life for everybody was just to secure a way home. He didn't have a reason to fight outside of that, and he absolutely refused to acknowledge the fact that going home was impossible.
But then there was that small part of his brain trying to tell him the reality of the situation. The logical part of his brain that kept reminding him of all the evidence that said going back was impossible. The part he'd been shutting out ever since that night with the first Chaos Emerald. The voice that was practically screaming at him right now to listen to what Tails was trying to say to him.
And Tails.
Tails. Tails, who'd built that machine. Tails, who'd dragged him here. Tails, who was telling him he couldn't go back. Every single thing that had gone wrong and Tails was all a part of it, and the more he thought on it the more furious he grew at the fox, and...!
And... that fox was currently pressing his body into his chair, practically shaking as he stared wide-eyed at Sorun's right shoulder. The confusion briefly reprieved the teen from his roiling outrage, and slowly he turned his head towards the shoulder. He saw immediately why Tails looked so frightened- his right Bringer Claw had manifested. It wasn't resting on Sorun's shoulder, either. The feathered arm was hovering at his side, the clawed, spectral hand practically shaking in a way that matched the silent rage coursing through Sorun. He couldn't help but note the way the claws were pointed in Tails' direction.
Sorun stared at the arm for the longest moment, and then forced himself to take a calming breath. The arm slowly dissipated in a shower of blue particles, and once it was gone he turned back to Tails, who was already beginning to calm down. But seeing Tails act like a scared child for a moment had reminded Sorun just who he was: a child.
A child genius fighting in a hopeless war he had no place in.
A child who just wanted all the fighting to end so he and his friends and family could just live in peace and have a future.
A child who was so understandably desperate he'd listened to a prophecy inscribed on a wooden tablet along with everybody else in the hope that it would lead to something that could help because nothing else was working.
A child who was fully aware of what'd he'd done to Sorun, and was trying his best to make it up to him and apologize. Who'd brought him orange juice that one time and kept Sorun company. Who talked with him and tried helping him like everybody else, because he along with the rest of the Freedom Fighters knew Sorun's situation was unfair and wrong. The same child who was aware of the mistake he'd made and was trying his best to fix it.
He'd almost clawed that child.
"... I'm sorry about that," Sorun apologized, regret filling him. "It... slipped."
Tails' body relaxed, and he released a light breath as he leaned a bit forwards into the table. "I-I didn't mean to make you so mad... Sorun, I'm sorry, I just-"
He was interrupted by the short, humorless laugh that left Sorun. Here he was, almost ready to claw the fox apart with his powers. And he was the one saying he was sorry. Because Tails probably knew just how much Sorun was struggling with this.
Tails really was too nice. Mobians were too nice. Sorun didn't feel like he deserved an apology after what he'd almost done.
"I thought I already told you I didn't like people using 'sorry' so carelessly," he muttered, the smallest smirk on Sorun's face. "And I already told you I forgive you. You... did nothing wrong. And I... appreciate... that you went through so much trouble with all the research you did. Thank you, Tails." The smirk fell, and Sorun looked to the side. "But I just don't want to accept there's no way back home."
"... Yeah." Tails sat back in his seat, looking down as his ears drooped down. "I understand. I don't think I blame you."
At least they'd reached that much of an understanding. That was the air between him and Tails cleared up, at the very least. But everything going on inside of Sorun's mind was a different story. That inner turmoil that was one half in heavy denial over everything Tails had said and one half trying to accept it.
A knock roused both the human and Mobian from their thoughts, and they looked towards the kitchen entrance. Sorun instantly recognized the red form leaning against the open frame as Knuckles, who was looking between the both of them with a neutral look to his violet eyes. "Am I interrupting something?" he asked.
Both Tails and Sorun looked towards each other, the latter shaking his head as they looked back to the echidna. "No, you're not interrupting anything," Sorun quietly told the echidna. "What's up?"
Knuckles, noting how unusually quiet Sorun was, gave the human a sideways glance, but soon brushed it off as he walked into the kitchen. "I actually came in here for Tails," he explained. "The... detectors you guys set up. They picked up another Chaos Emerald signature, and I'm the only one available to go get it. I was just hoping you could fly me there in the plane, Tails."
Sorun's spine went rigid at that. Another Emerald. More potential power. More potential years off his life. More potential problems.
"Actually," Knuckles continued, "are you busy doing anything, Sorun? I could use the help if you're willing."
The pale teen sighed out a large breath through clenched teeth, hanging his head low enough so that his locks of straight, black hair obscured a majority of his face. "Must we?" he asked Knuckles. "Is getting another Chaos Emerald really that important?"
"Er... yeah? It's a Chaos Emerald. Of course it's important." Knuckles leaned in closer to Sorun. "You doin' okay? You're looking kind of down."
"Just fine. Don't worry." Sorun picked himself up, and then brushed the excess hair out from his pale face as he fixed his eyes onto Knuckles. "On second thought... seeing as you're going after it anyways, I may as well tag along. More the merrier, right?"
And it would take his mind off of literally everything that had happened since entering this kitchen today. Off of today in general and the anniversary of his abduction. If ever he needed a distraction, it was now. Even if this distraction was going to end today with a Chaos Emerald. And he could already see problems arising from that.
He'd just deal with it later.
Knuckles grinned, showing off his pointed teeth. "Yeah, that's the spirit!" He turned to Tails, who was still looking towards Sorun with a worried expression. "Well, Tails? You're in, right?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah!" The fox turned towards Knuckles and gave him an enthusiastic nod. "Yeah, of course! I'll go warm up the plane right now!"
"Alright! Sounds like a plan!"
Sorun watched the interaction between the two in mild amusement, and then rose up out of his chair. "I'll go with you, Tails," he said as he pushed the chair in. "I don't have anywhere else to go right now."
"Uh, sure. Okay." Tails pointed towards the bowl of cereal still on the table. "Don't you at least want to finish your breakfast, though?"
Blue eyes flicked over in the direction of the bowl. Sorun's expression twitched into a grimace for a single moment, and then he turned back to Tails. "It's alright," he said. "I lost my appetite."
The plane ride? More awkward than it needed to be. At least that's how it was for Sorun. Tails was giving off the impression that he'd already put the earlier incident behind him and was acting more like his positive self. Sorun was glad for that much, at least. That his misery wasn't bringing somebody else down into this depression along with him.
Sorun himself managed to take his mind off of things on the plane ride over, getting lost in looking down at the passing landscape while they had been flying high in the sky. The issues of going home to Earth were still nibbling at the back of his mind, but for now distracting himself was working. It was a brief reprieve that felt like a breath of fresh air.
If Knuckles had noticed anything amidst, which Sorun was certain he had, he wasn't saying anything about it. He was somewhat grateful for that. The less they delved on sensitive subjects like that, the better.
The trio had to reach their destination eventually, though, as shown when Tails had landed the plane in a small clearing of trees. Sorun didn't know exactly where they were going- he'd been too preoccupied with his own thoughts to bother to ask Knuckles, who had been directing Tails as he piloted the plane-, but he had a pretty solid idea it had something to do with the small mountain Tails had parked the plane near. The mountain the three were currently walking towards.
A short two-minute walk later, and the three had pushed their way past some forest brush into another clearing, this one pressed right up against the side of the mountain. Sorun knew something was off immediately when he saw vehicles parked all around the clearing. Red and black machines with Eggman's logo pasted on all of them. Large transport ships and other, wheeled vehicles with attachments such as giant drills and shovel-like claws. And conveniently enough, they were all parked next to a cave opening on the side of the mountain.
"Let me take a wild guess," Sorun began as he eyed the dark opening of the cave. "The Chaos Emerald is somewhere inside of that mountain."
"Yeah. The signal was strong enough that we got a general location, but it was too faint to pick up anything exact. Rotor told me that likely meant the Chaos Emerald was deep in the ground somewhere." Knuckles gestured towards the mountain. "Or in this case a mountain, I guess. But it looks like Eggman beat us to it. He's already got robots here trying to dig it out."
"Feels like he always knows where these things are right before we do," Sorun commented as he began scratching the back of his neck. "Don't you guys think that's kinda weird?"
Tails shrugged. "Not really. He probably has sensors of his own placed everywhere that detect Chaos energy signatures, and they're probably loads more advanced than the ones we have placed. If anything, we're lucky to be finding them as fast as we are."
"Mm, guess that makes sense," Sorun conceded. "So what's the plan? Go in the cave, bust the robots, take the Emerald? Seems kinda simple."
"That's 'cause it is simple. They don't know we're here, and we're more than enough for a bunch or robots. It should be fine." The echidna turned towards Tails. "But uh, hey, just in case you think you could stay by the plane, Tails? You know, keep guard and warm it up in case something happens?"
The fox gave him a simple nod, and then proceeded to spin his tails up and fly back towards the plane. The remaining pair looked towards the other, gave each other a nod, and then turned towards the cave before proceeding to walk towards it.
Well, on the downside it seemed like there was going to be some inevitable conflict if there were already robots in that mountain digging for the Emerald. It wasn't an ideal situation in Sorun's eyes, but compared to how he was a month ago it was far from hopeless. He at least knew for a fact that his powers were effective against the weakest of Eggman's robots, so assuming that's all that was in there he wouldn't be helpless. And Knuckles was there, too, if worse came to worse. So he wasn't all that worried. He just hoped nothing horrible like a cave-in or something occurred.
"Hey, Sorun, everything okay between you and Tails?" Knuckles had suddenly asked as the pair continued walking towards the cave entrance, drawing Sorun's attention towards Knuckles. "You're just kind of acting a bit weird is all," he informed him.
"Tails gave me some bad news I'm trying to ignore," Sorun answered. "That's all. There's nothing weird going on."
"Bad news, huh? What kind of bad news?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Alright...?" On that note, the two had reached the mouth of the cave entrance. "Well, you ready to head in?"
Sorun squinted his eyes and peered into the cave. It didn't look natural, that much was for certain. The cave itself looked more like a tunnel that a cave, and the walls and entrance were much too smooth and circular. It was lit, too. Poorly, but there were lines of cables running on either side of the cave's wall with rows of dim lights hanging off those wires.
"I feel I should confess something to you, Knuckles," Sorun said as he turned from the cave to the echidna. "I was never much of a spelunker." He blinked. "That still a word people use? Spelunking? I don't know how many colloquialisms are still around."
"Yeah, that's still a word," Knuckles confirmed with a slow nod. "But don't worry about it. Searching underground for treasure is one of my things. Just stick close to me and you should be fine."
"Is that so?" Sorun airily replied as he watched the echidna walk into the cave. He shrugged, and followed the echidna in while staying close to his back. "So is digging around for stuff a hobby of yours or what?"
"Yeah, as a matter of fact, it is. Or was, I guess, before everything started happening." The light from the mouth of the cave soon began to fade behind the two teens as they slowly progressed further into the tunnel. "I made it a point to explore as much of Angel Island as I could as a kid. I am the Guardian of the place, after all." He paused, and his face fell slightly. "Kind of been doing a pretty poor job of it lately, though."
Sorun chose not to press the issue. He didn't know a lot about Angel Island, nor what the deal with the whole Guardian bit was. Just that it was a island that floated all around the world and that it was where a majority of the echidna lived. But for whatever reason that island was a sore topic for Knuckles, and he always strayed away from it. Sorun could be sympathetic enough to respect that, considering his own situation, so he always chose to refrain from asking questions about it.
After all, he didn't need a Knuckles with hurt feelings on the mission. So Sorun supposed he'd try changing topics a bit to take his mind off of it. Maybe go back to the treasure hunting topic from earlier.
"So were you a top-tier treasure hunter back up on that island?" Sorun asked in a bland tone, fingers interlaced behind his head as he stepped up to besides Knuckles. "Famous adventurer all the cool kids wanna grow up to be?"
That brought a small smile to Knuckles' face, followed by a chuckle as he scratched at his abashed face. "I wouldn't go that far," he said. "I just explored a bunch. Between that and solving any problems on the island, there wasn't much else to do. But everybody on the island knew me since I was the Guardian, so yeah. I guess I was pretty famous back then."
"Wow, you were a regular Indiana Jones, huh? That's, uh, a famous treasure hunter back where I'm from. Well, archaeologist, but same difference," he explained when Knuckles sent him a confused glance. Sorun chose to omit the fact he was fictional as well. "All you're missin' is that stylish brown hat and you'd have the whole look down."
"... A hat, huh?" Knuckles looked up and patted the top of his red head. "I dunno. You really think I could pull off wearing a hat?"
Sorun blinked, not having expected Knuckles to take the suggestion seriously, but then shrugged. "Um, sure, why not? It's your head, man. Wear what you want."
"You know... I just might..." Knuckles trailed off, and then began to slow down while pointing his gloved hand ahead. "Looks like we got some trouble. Check that out."
Stopping alongside him, the pale teen lowered his hands back to his sides and stared forwards. There was a circular, metal door blocking the way forwards. A door that, much to Sorun's disgust, was styled to look exactly like Eggman's head, grinning maniacally at any trespassers who would step up to the door.
"How conceited does the guy have to be to make almost everything look like his face?" Sorun grumbled under his breath as he began approaching the door. "Seriously, look at this. His stupid logo and robots wasn't enough? He's makin' doors that resemble him now, too? He's gonna carve his face into a mountain at this rate."
He would't put it past that madman, either. He'd only seen his actual face once, but even that one time was enough to cement the fact that Sorun really, really hated his face, and if he ever had the opportunity he would punch it right off his head with a Bringer Claw. And every single time he saw something that even closely related to the man's face, it set something off in Sorun. Something violent.
Kind of like the feeling of him wanting to punch the door that he was experiencing right now.
"Don't give him any ideas," Knuckles drawled out as he approached the door. "Looks like his Badniks put this here to block anybody off who wandered in from the cave entrance." He ran one of his spiked fists over the door's exterior. "I'm not seeing anything like a switch or lever, though. Not even a slot to put a key of some kind in."
Sorun hummed, and then stepped next to Knuckles once more to examine the door. Other than it being perfectly circular and shaped like Eggman, it seemed like an ordinary door. A door, however, that had no visible means of opening. In fact Sorun had almost given up entirely and called it a wall and not a door, but very faintly he could see an almost invisible seam run down the center of the circular door. So it definitely opened. It just wasn't clear how.
"Think we can just dig around it?" the human suggested. "I feel like it'd be way easier to dig through all this rock than solid metal."
Knuckled paused to contemplate the suggestion for a moment, but then shook his head. "No, I don't think that's a good idea. We're pretty deep in, and I'm worried about causing a cave-in. Plus there's no telling how much damage to the mountain's structure the Badniks have already done with their excavating. Too risky."
"Yeah, I guess you got a point," Sorun murmured in agreement. He looked to just below the center of the door, and then saw something that caused his eyes to widen. "Hey, doesn't the mouth part of his logo usually only have six teeth?"
"Yeah? Why- wait, I see what you're looking at." Both teens leaned in closer to the door, Knuckles in particular giving a small nod. "Yeah, this looks like something, alright."
Sorun had seen that logo enough times to recall every detail. He'd had so many life and death experiences involving it that it was practically burned into his memory at this point, so it was impossible not to notice a detail such as this. That logo of his, styled after his face, usually had six rectangles vertically aligned next to each other over where the mouth was, representing, the teen assumed, the man's sadistic, toothy grin. It was the kind of thing that was as cartoonish as it was nightmarish.
This door, however, had twenty rectangles all lined up next to each other. Otherwise the door was virtually identical to the logo design-wise, but those teeth were a glaring exception. Even more damning was the fact that, unlike the rest of the door, the teeth were made of some type of clear material. And Sorun felt compelled to reach out and touch one of the teeth.
His hand only made it halfway before Knuckles' hand snapped up and grabbed it.
"What're you doing?" Knuckles asked in a hushed whisper.
Sorun looked at the echidna, and then nodded his head at the door. "I was gonna touch a tooth to see what happened," he said. "Seemed like the next step."
"You're seriously just gonna go and touch it when you don't even know what it does!?"
"... That's usually how these things work in video games," Sorun weakly defended. "Dude, it's a door and we're in the middle of a cave. What's the worst that could happen?"
"I don't know! It could be a trap or something! You touch something wrong and a bunch of holes open up in the wall to shoot us with tranq darts or an electric cage drops on us to capture us or something! That's what he does!"
The human teen gave the echidna a flat look. "Knuckles, you see any other way forwards?"
Knuckles hesitated, still nervously glancing at the door. "Well... no..."
"You wanna give up on the Emerald and head back?"
He shook his head. "No way!"
"Cool. I'm touching the tooth then."
After what was surely some heavy internal debate, Knuckles let go of Sorun and took a step back. The human turned back to the door, exhaling slowly as his finger hovered closer to one of the center teeth.
The finger stopped just short of touching it, and remained hovering on the spot.
A couple of seconds passed where Sorun continued to simply point at the tooth. Knuckles stared at the display in confusion for a couple of seconds, and then cleared his throat. "Uh, Sorun? Any day now. You gonna press it?"
"... You got me paranoid with all that talk about traps," Sorun mumbled as he pulled his finger back. "I don't wanna press it anymore."
A loud slap was heard as Knuckles palmed his own face. "Sorun-!"
"You're the one that brought it up!" It seemed outlandish to the pale teen when he first heard it, nothing but Knuckles being overly paranoid, but then he realized this was Eggman they were talking about who, yes, probably was crazy enough to trap a cave. It wouldn't even be that unusual compared to some of the other things he'd done. The five terabytes of selfies was still fresh in Sorun's memory. "Uh-uh-uh- you touch it."
"Me!?" Knuckles shouted in outrage. "Why me?!"
"'Cause it's your fault this is happening right now," Sorun argued, "so you get to press it!"
"Fine! I will!" Taking a deep breath, Knuckles lightly shoved Sorun aside and prepared to press down on one of the buttons. Like Sorun, however, he'd stopped centimetres away from the button, deflated, and stepped back. "Yeah, I don't wanna, either," he said.
Sorun groaned, and then ran a hand along his face. "Oh, for the love of- Bringer Claw, go."
In a flash of blue, the right Bringer Claw appeared over Sorun's shoulder. The spectral hand closed all but its index claw inwards, the extended appendage pointing right at the the left centermost tooth. The pointing claw slowly moved forwards. Both Sorun and Knuckles held their breath, their hearts beating faster the closer the claw got, and both couldn't help but cringe away when it softly touched the tooth.
The rectangular tooth lit up blue. That was all that happened. Sorun and Knuckles continued staring at the lit-up tooth in utter silence for a solid thirty seconds before the Bringer Claw disappeared, with Sorun wiping a bead of sweat off his forehead.
"Well, that was overly dramatic," the human teen sighed out as he leaned towards the door's mouth. "So I guess we just... light up all the teeth and the door will open. Or something like that."
"Sounds about right," Knuckles agreed with a nod. "Which tooth should we press next?"
"Gee, I dunno. All these identical rectangles look so appealing, I just can't decide," Sorun remarked in a low drone. "How about we go for the one right next to it?"
He pressed the tooth just to the right of the one he'd activated like the first one. This one lit up blue, too. What also happened was that the previous one turned back off into its unlit state, and curiously the tooth all the way on the left lit up.
Knuckles face fell into confusion immediately at the sight. Sorun stared blankly at the mouth for all of five seconds, and then slowly started to adopt a look of horror as he pressed both of his hands against his face.
"Oh no. Oh god it's one of these puzzles..." Sorun pitifully groaned out, voice muffled from his palms. "Dude, we ain't getting past this door. There's no way."
"Huh?" Knuckles looked to Sorun, and then back to the door. "Why not? What happened?"
"It's... a puzzle," Sorun ruefully groaned out as his hands limply fell back to his sides. "Turning one tooth on turns on or off other teeth. We have to activate the teeth in an order that lights them all up, which is gonna be really hard since they all interact with each other. So we're gonna have to keep track of all that while figuring out a pattern we can use." He deeply sighed. "I always hated these puzzles in games. I never manage to beat them without looking a guide up."
"Is that all it is?" The look of puzzlement on Knuckles' features morphed into a relieved one. "Then we're all set! All we gotta do is solve the puzzle and open the door."
"'Solve the puzzle' he says," Sorun muttered with a roll of his eyes. "Knuckles, I don't think the gravity of how hard this puzzle is has hit you yet."
"It's just a puzzle," Knuckles reasoned, "and there's two of us. I'm sure we can get through it just fine if we put our heads together and think it through."
Sorun wasn't nearly as optimistic as he was. These puzzles were the bane of his existence during his life as a gamer. All puzzles had been, really, but this one reigned as the king of puzzles in terms of difficulty for him. And as daunting a task as it was, they did actually need to solve it in order to move forwards. So it didn't seem like they had a choice.
But maybe Knuckles was right. Maybe with two brains they could do it. He honestly doubted it, but it was worth a shot at least.
"Okay, let's go for it," Sorun sighed out as he moved to the leftmost tooth. "First thing first is we gotta figure out which tooth is connected to which, so we'll press 'em all to get the sequences down. We can puzzle out what order to press them in right after."
"There, see?" Knuckles grinned at him and gave him a thumbs-up. "We're already getting through it and you didn't even need my help!"
"Save that for when we actually solve this thing. If we can."
5 minutes
"Okay, so the third tooth is connected to the fifth and eighth teeth, and the fourth... fourth..." Knuckles trailed off, and then shook his head. "I forget. Can we go through them again?"
"We've gone through it three times, Knuckles," an irate Sorun groaned out as he ran a hand through his hair. "It's the exact same sequence as the last three times we went through it, so it's not gonna change on the fourth!"
The echidna sent him a challenging glare. "Then tell me what teeth are connected to tooth four, then."
Sorun opened his mouth to answer, but when his mind turned up blank, he sighed and trudged his way towards the fourth tooth to press it.
10 minutes
"Hey, look at that. It didn't work," Sorun flatly stated as he looked at a line of twenty teeth, a random half of which were lit up. "Knuckles, man, we screwed it up."
"Yeah, I know," Knuckles sighed out. "Okay, reset them all so they're all off and we'll try it again."
The human teen began rubbing his temples with his fingers. "Yeah, see, that's the thing. I don't know how to reset it. All the lights are mixed up and if we try turning them all off it's just gonna light up the other half. I don't even know how we got to this point."
"Look, it's easy. All we gotta do is... is..." Knuckles stopped, a worryingly low hum escaping him as he looked over the door's mouth. "Actually, yeah, you're right. How... wait, which ones were connected to which again?"
15 minutes
Sorun was seriously considering if risking death by a cave-in was preferable to enduring this hell.
"How!?" Knuckles growled out in frustration. "We went through the order! We both agreed with it! It should have worked!" He slammed his fist into the door, causing it to rattle and make small amounts of dirt fall off the cave's roof as it shook. "Why can't we get them all to light up!?"
"I don't know, man, I don't know..." Sorun mumbled in despair as he held his head in his hands. "Who makes the key to a door a puzzle, anyways?"
"Eggman," Knuckles bitterly ground out, "that's who. This is just like him."
"Of course it is." The pale teen shook his head and approached the door's mouth. "Okay, I got an idea. Let's try this."
25 minutes
They weren't getting through the door.
It just couldn't be done. Despite pooling their brainpower together, the pair just couldn't suss out how to open that infernal door. They'd gotten close once, when they'd managed to light all but one of the teeth up, but trying to light up that last one had resulted in the entire thing turning off. Right back to square one. Suffice to say the two gave up after that last attempt.
And now they were sitting on opposite sides of the cave, staring forlornly at the door. To Sorun it almost looked like it was laughing at them. Mocking them in their attempt at solving such an advanced-level puzzle. It was maddening enough that the both of them had even tried punching down the door to no avail.
A defeated sigh rattled out of Sorun's throat. "Are we just idiots?" He asked aloud, more to himself than to Knuckles. "I mean we're both functional teenagers, right? We should be able to solve a puzzle."
"Yeah, but Eggman's a genius, and he designed this puzzle," Knuckles said as he weakly gestured towards the door. "Makes sense that it'd be so hard you'd need to be a genius to solve it if you really think about it."
Slowly blinking, Sorun rolled his head in Knuckles' direction. "Knuckles, there are children back on Earth who could solve this puzzle," he deadpanned.
"..." The echidna let the words sink in, and after a moment huffed out a defeated breath as he began to roll the cuff of his left glove back. "I'm calling Tails," he grumbled out.
The pale human sat straight up. "Hey, come on, no!" he loudly protested. "I don't want Tails comin' in here knowing we couldn't solve a puzzle!" He had some pride left over, damn it. It wasn't much but he was trying his best to preserve what little there was left. And he didn't know if he could handle looking so lame in front of Tails. Or if he could handle the story getting out to the others.
Knuckles shot Sorun a heated glare. "You wanna keep butting our heads against it?" he ground out with narrowed eyes.
"Look, let's just give it a few more tries-"
30 minutes
"Call Tails."
Knuckles rolled his eyes, and then fully rolled up the cuff of his left glove. Sorun noted a wristwatch-like device clamped to the echidna's wrist, with a small speaker and set of knobs on its face in place of a clock. Knuckles fiddled with the knobs a few times before speaking into the device. "Hey, Tails? Yeah, it's me. Can you come into the cave? We ran into a problem. No, yeah, just keep going straight. Yeah. Alright, thanks." He rolled his glove back over the device, and then looked up to Sorun. "He's on his way."
"Fantastic," the human drawled out, leaning his head back so it banged against the rock wall of the cave. "I don't care what you said about structural integrity. We're digging around the door if he can't figure this thing out."
"He'll figure it out," Knuckles assured him. "Surprised you couldn't solve it with all your talk of gamer knowledge this and gamer knowledge that."
Sorun made a "tsk" noise. "Forgive me, Knuckles, but I left all my hint coins in my other pair of pants back in my home zone. And you can't talk; you couldn't figure it out either."
He didn't have a remark for that one, and the two left the argument at that as they stared at the ground in complete silence. Some minutes later the sound of whizzing tails reached their ears, causing the pair of teens to pick their heads up and look towards the source of the noise.
As expected, Tails' short form came flying in from the end of the cave. He touched down on the ground once his tails ceased spinning, and then began to look back and forth between Sorun and Knuckles with a questioning look on his face.
"It's been around half an hour since you guys walked in here," he said. "What happened?"
Loudly exhaling, Sorun pointed his thumb in the direction of the door that had given him and Knuckles so much grief. "Door's locked behind a puzzle," he mumbled. "We couldn't solve the puzzle."
"..." Tails silently stared at Sorun, and then slowly turned towards the door. He blinked in surprise, and then looked back towards Sorun with disbelief written on his face. "Seriously...?"
Sorun grit his teeth in indignation. "Tails, either help us out and solve the puzzle or get out."
The fox rolled his eyes, but still stepped towards the puzzle. Sorun looked after him for a few seconds, and then tore his gaze back to Knuckles. "So is there a reason I don't get a cool wrist communicator thing, 'cause I'm feeling pretty under equipped here."
Knuckles rose an eye ride at the human. "Would you wear it if we gave you one?"
Sorun looked down at his bare left wrist, regarded it for a second, and then shook his head. "Nah, watches don't really mesh with my style," he said.
"Oh, because you suddenly have a style." Knuckles slung one leg over the other while resting his hands behind his head. "Right."
"Hey, Honey says I do. Which, actually, come to think of it, she probably wouldn't even let me wear one." Would she? She'd probably make an exception if he said a wrist communicator was mission-imperative gear, but... well, knowing her, he didn't know if that was nearly a good enough excuse. Probably not, really.
"Why exactly did you do that weird sponsorship deal with her again?" Knuckles asked him. "It seems like it's giving you more trouble than it's worth."
"A desperate man will do a lot of things for free clothes and discounts, Knuckles," Sorun answered. "I happened to be a very desperate man at the time. Still am, actually."
The echidna stared at Sorun with a completely unconvinced face. "I'm a guy and I wouldn't have done it."
Sorun scoffed. "Yeah, well, you don't have to wear full-body clothing like I do since you're a Mobian. And I'm broke."
The stare remained unblinking. "Dunno if you ever figured this out, but gloves and shoes wear out too, and I'm not exactly rolling around in cash, either."
"You know what, man, I-"
"Guys, I solved it."
"WHAT!? I DON'T BELIEVE IT!" The outburst had come from Sorun, though both him and Knuckles had shot up to their feet in utter shock as they spun towards the door. Tails was right in front of it, giving the both of them an unimpressed look, and at the same time they could see the door behind him slowly begin to slide open. And all twenty of the teeth were lit up. "But... but we couldn't... I don't... b-but..." Sorun stuttered, completely in disbelief at the sight.
Tails merely shrugged. "It was a simple puzzle. I don't have any idea why you guys were so stuck on it."
This was why he hadn't wanted Tails to do it. Because then Sorun would get this feeling. This feeling of being inadequate and ashamed at the same time for not being able to solve something that took an eleven-year-old, what, a minute, two minutes? Granted he was a genius, but... but still.
On the upside, Sorun wasn't alone in his suffering. Knuckles seemed to be doing his best to try and avoid eye contact with Tails, and at the very least, Tails wasn't acting smug about it. He actually just looked more annoyed than anything else. It didn't exactly make Sorun feel better, but it helped buffer against the negative feelings.
The door had been opened, though. So there was that.
"... Tails, how about you just come with us," Sorun muttered as he started walking past the fox and towards the open door. "Y'know, in case there's more puzzles or something."
"Yeah, I think I'll do that." Tails looked up to Knuckles, who simply shrugged at the fox. Tails reciprocated the shrug and the two Mobians began following the human deeper into the cave.
"How deep does this cave go, anyways?"
The mountain wasn't even that big from the outside. Not small either by any stretch of the word, but for how long the trio had been walking in a straight line through this single, tunnel-like cave, Sorun felt like they should have come out through the other side at this point. It wasn't even going up or down, either. Just straight. And yet there was nothing but even more poorly-lit tunnel up ahead up them even though they'd been walking for twenty minutes straight.
It was utterly baffling. Like everything else in this universe.
"You guys think this is one of those tunnels that goes slightly down? Like so slightly that it looks straight but isn't so we're still technically heading underground?" Sorun asked his two companions, choosing to keep his head straight ahead. "Because I feel like we should have hit either something important or the other side of the mountain by now."
"Hm. That's possible," Tails said. "It's honestly hard to believe that Eggman's robots would dig so far into the mountain, but if it's for a Chaos Emerald, I guess there aren't many places they wouldn't go."
Sorun huffed and blew a lock of hair from his face. "And yet if he gets it he's probably just gonna put it on a stand to ogle like the last one." Said a lot about Eggman that he was willing to divert so many of his forces to dig under a mountain for an Chaos Emerald he wasn't even going to use. On one hand it was one of the most wasteful uses of resources Sorun could conceive. On the other hand, the human teen wasn't even sure Eggman needed any of it considering how close he was to completely conquering the world. He'd openly admitted to Sorun's face he was dragging things out just to milk as much fun out of the conflict as possible.
But these were things Sorun didn't like thinking about. Because thinking about the man and his reasoning for doing all this insanity left a bad taste in his mouth, and it kept reminding him he could blow up all of Knothole when he finally grew bored of it all.
"How'd this thing even end up at the bottom of a mountain, anyways?" Knuckles grumbled under his breath. "I get they scattered all over the world after we used them, but come on. Did it just shoot right down into the rock or something?"
"Who knows, man? I stopped questioning Chaos Emeralds a while ago," Sorun commented. "Is is just me, or is the cave getting a bit wider up ahead?"
"Hey, yeah, it is!" Tails realized with widened eyes. "Come on, let's check it out!"
The trio rapidly sped up, and soon enough the cave tunnel around them did indeed begin to widen. Eventually they reached another cave mouth, the three quickly moving through it before abruptly stopping.
That cave opening had lead to a small rock platform with various pieces of machinery scattered around. In front of them was a chasm: a chasm so wide that they couldn't see the ending of it when looking left and right, though this was in part due to the low amount of lighting from the few lights scattered around on power cables lining the wall and some large, portable lamps that had been placed nearby. When Sorun had approached the edge of the cliff they now stood on and looked down, all he saw was darkness.
Across the chasm, slightly above their elevation, was another cliff, and at the end of that cliff they could see a door. Another puzzle door from the looks of it, much to Sorun's and Knuckles' chagrin, though Tails didn't seem too concerned about it. Unfortunately, though, there was nothing connecting the cliff they were standing on to the cliff on the other side of the chasm where the door was.
"What the- where's the bridge!?" Sorun exclaimed, spreading his arms out to the chasm ahead of the trio. "Why is there a door all the way over there with no bridge!?"
He felt something tug on his hoodie, and looked to the side to see Tails pulling on him to gain his attention. "I think that's it over there." He pointed towards a pile of disassembled bridge parts laying in a haphazard pile near them. "It looks like they got all the mining robots and equipment across the gap, so they disassembled the bridge behind them."
"... Why!?" Sorun held his right palm up to his forehead. "What, are they just gonna build a new bridge when they get the Emerald!?"
"Eh, Eggman's always been a weirdly paranoid guy," Knuckles supplied with a shrug of his shoulders. "Why leave a bridge lying around when you have enough resources to just build a second one on the way out?"
The human teen groaned. "I'm losin' brain cells every time I learn something new about Eggman." His hand slid off his forehead, and he turned pleading eyes to Tails. "Can you fly over there and check the door out?"
At his behest the young fox spun his tails up and flew past the vast chasm and towards the door. Oddly, he came back less than a minute later, and from what Sorun and Knuckles saw he'd barely interacted with the door. Even more worryingly was he had a concerned look on his face.
"Bad news, guys," he announced as his feet dropped onto the ground. "There's no power to the door."
"No power?" Knuckles repeated. "Why not?"
"It doesn't look like the door's hooked up to the makeshift power grid the Badniks here set up while tunneling through the mountain," Tails explained as he turned in the direction of the chasm while pointing towards the door. "I did notice that there were some cables connecting the door to some weird panel with a square indent, though."
Sorun hummed at that. "Square indent in a panel, huh? Where have I heard that before?" He took a look around at some of the equipment scattered around there, and eventually stopped when something pressed against the wall on the left side of the cliff caught his eye. A large, enclosed metal cabinet with blue light leaking out of small, oval viewing ports on its front.
As the two Mobians continued discussing the matter behind him, Sorun approached the cabinet with hands tucked in his pockets. He stopped right in front of the strange cabinet, squinting his eyes as he peered in through the viewing port. Inside were about five rectangular metal boxes with strips of blue light lining their frames. What drew his eye most, however, was the large, blue lightning bolt insignia stamped on the side of the boxes.
"... Alright, I played 'Dead Space'. I know how this game works. Just plug the battery into the thing. Why the hell Eggy designed it like this I got no clue, but I'm not gonna pretend to know what goes through a crazy guy's head." He looked to the right and saw that there was a red lever connected to what he assumed was a dispenser unit. He reached over and pulled the lever, and while the dispenser rattled slightly, nothing dropped out from the large slot at the bottom of the machine. "Ugh, come on." He pulled the lever again. Nothing. "Fuck it."
His right Bringer Claw manifested, curled into a fist, and punched the dispenser unit. The loud sound of crumpling metal caused the two Mobians to flinch and look towards Sorun, though the pale teen ignored this and punched the machine again. It rattled, and this time one of a large batteries did fall through the slot.
Letting out a satisfied hum, Sorun picked up the battery with the Bringer Claw, and then turned to the other two while waving it at them. "Hey, is this important?" he asked.
"Huh? Oh, wait! That looks like a battery!" Tails exclaimed as he and Knuckles approached Sorun. "I guess it would make sense Eggman would use a bunch of portable power sources to power up his operations here instead of trying to build a power plant. His robots are only here to dig the Emerald out. He must have a lot of these things all around the mine powering the lights and doors."
"That almost sounds practical. And here I was thinking Eggman didn't know the definition of the word," Sorun quipped, tossing the battery up and down as he looked at the door across the chasm. "So we just gotta slam this into the slot connected to the door and open it, right?"
"That should do it. Can you fly the battery over, Sorun?"
Sorun nodded, setting the battery down on the ground to pick it up while removing his normal hands from his pockets. He bent down and grabbed both sides of the battery with his hands, and then attempted to lift up.
The battery remained on the ground.
"... Hm." With a small grunt of effort, Sorun tried lifting again. The battery didn't budge. "Yeah, it's too heavy for me," he explained as he let go of the battery and stood up. "I need both Bringer Claws to fly, so I can't carry it over."
"Here, let me try." Tails stepped up to the battery and bent down to try and pick it up. Unfortunately, just like with Sorun, the battery did not budge off the ground. "Eeegh! Ah, yeah. That's heavy alright," Tails sighed out as he let it go, and then began scratching his head in confusion. "What is this thing even made out of that's making it so heavy?"
"No clue. Here, let me try." Knuckles flexed his gloved hands, and then bent down to grasp the battery. Unlike when Sorun and Tails tried, the battery was lifted almost easily off the ground by the echidna, who looked at the battery in his grasp in surprise before looking back at the other two. "I don't know what you guys are complaining about. This thing isn't heavy at all."
Sorun and Tails glanced at each other, rolled their eyes, and then looked at the door across the chasm. "Alright, here's the next problem," Sorun began. "Knuckles can't fly, and we can't carry him and fly at the same time with the battery weighing him down." He glanced back at Knuckles and the battery. "Think I could just throw it across?"
Tails winced at the suggestion, and then roughly shook his head. "I... would strongly recommend against doing that. Eggman isn't really known for making his technology using stable elements."
"What, you think the battery will explode if... actually, yeah, that does kinda sound like something that would happen." Sorun clicked his tongue in irritation, and then looked towards the chasm. "I could make a bridge with Summoned Swords... kinda worried about the weight of the battery breaking 'em, though... well, they should hold up, but I dunno... hm?"
Looking around at the chasm separating the two cliffs, Sorun's eyes happened upon a metal structure towards the right side. A large, metal box was bolted to the chasm's wall with an even larger metal arm made of metal struts attached to it, with a large, metal claw at the end of that. A crane.
Sorun hummed in thought, and then looked from the crane towards the rightmost end of the cliff. There was a large, rectangular container sitting on the ground. Empty, but the metal container was long enough to stretch out to half of the chasm's length.
An idea was forming.
"Any chance they left the keys in that crane over there?" Sorun asked, pointing over to the crane bolted to the wall. "'Cause I can probably do something if they did."
"I don't think there'd be a key for a portable crane like that. Too much of a hassle to bother with," Tails informed him. "If there's still power in it, there should just be an activation button."
"Ah, cool." The Bringer Claws manifested on Sorun's back. "Alright, I'm gonna go try something. You two sit tight."
It was no sooner did the human announce he had an idea than he flew away with those strange, spectral appendages he could create out of his back. Tails sighed at the retreating form, his ears slightly drooping while his tails began drooping towards the ground.
"Hey, so uh, since he's gone for a second... you mind telling me what's up with you and him?" Tails' head picked up, and then turned towards his back where he saw Knuckles looking at him with questioning eyes. "He said you gave him some bad news, but he wouldn't talk about it. I'm just wondering what the deal is since he seems kinda... off. You know, more than usual."
"He called it bad news, huh?" That was an understatement if Tails had ever heard of one, but he wouldn't put it past somebody like Sorun to phrase it like that. The human always seemed to have some way of underscoring the severity of some things. His humor was weird like that. "I... Knuckles, what would you do if I told you that for some reason you could never, ever return to Angel Island again? Where all your people and family are? How do you think you would react?"
Knuckles' eye ridges rose in surprise at the question, though they lowered a few moments later as understanding crossed the echidna's face. "Oh. It's that bad, huh?"
With slumped shoulders, Tails gave a confirming nod. "I told him that extracting those Emeralds are all but impossible, and he's..." Biting his lower lip, Tails turned back towards the crane on the wall and saw Sorun climbing inside of it. "I think he's in denial about it," he finally said while turning back to Knuckles. "He doesn't want to believe it, and I don't blame him since... since it's his home, you know? And we took that from him, and I just... how are we supposed to make up for something like taking his home and everything he knew away from him?"
The question hung in the air for a while between the two. Knuckles looked to the side in thought, looking extremely uncomfortable with the question, and then turned his gaze towards the crane as it slowly began rotating. "We can't, really," he said. "The best we could do is try giving him a new home. I don't know, maybe you guys could settle him somewhere in Knothole? Get him his own place once all the fighting dies down a bit?"
It wasn't a perfect solution, but it was definitely better than nothing. "Yeah, we might have to," Tails agreed, "but... I know he said he doesn't hold what we did against us, he understands why we did it, but at the same time he... Sorun just seems so upset."
He still kept flashing back to when they were in the HQ kitchen, back when Tails had told him the news. The way his irises had shrunken down to pinpricks while his eyes began shaking in their sockets despite the human teen himself being practically as still as a stone. How strained and quiet his voice had sounded when he spoke. He'd looked more melancholic than Tails had ever seen anybody ever, and he couldn't help but feel sad in place of the human.
And then there had been that hand. That blue, spectral claw that had Tails frozen on the spot, because there was something just plain threatening about that thing. Tails would readily admit that he was afraid of it when it appeared, but he was quickly surprised when Sorun had acted like he hadn't even known it was there, and then quickly made it disappear before apologizing to Tails. It made the fox feel relief that he had no conscious intention of lashing out, but he definitely must have felt like it. He wasn't so sure that claw would have appeared otherwise.
But the fact that Sorun was even suffering through all these emotions in the first place made Tails feel awful. He didn't deserve to go through this. Nobody did, but it felt worse in Sorun's case because he had slowly become one of them. He didn't like showing it for some reason that was beyond Tails, but he really was a nice person. He'd helped them. Even started saving lives! And it tore at something inside of Tails knowing he was doing all this for them even though he quite possibly just lost everything.
"I just feel really sorry for him. And I want to help him, but he... just doesn't open up to people." The crane arm began moving towards the metal container, though this was mainly ignored by Tails as he once again turned to Knuckles. "What do you think?"
Knuckles idly watched as Sorun attempted to use the crane's claw to grab at the container, and then looked down at Tails. "Yeah, it's rough," he agreed, "but he's been managing fine with it so far. I think he'll be okay with enough time." He looked to the side and began awkwardly rubbing the back of his head. "I mean, Sorun, he's... he's a solid guy."
"Yeah," Tails agreed. "It'd be easier if he just talked about his problems with us, but-"
"- But he never likes talking about that stuff," Knuckles finished with a sigh. "I don't know, maybe he's still sorting through his feelings over everything or something. Just give him some time. He'll pull through."
The fox Mobian blinked hopeful eyes at Knuckles. "You really think so?"
"Yeah, sure. It won't be easy since, you know... he lost everything. I don't really know how you recover from something like that. But Sorun's cool. And if worst comes to worst he's not alone. He's got us and everybody else. He'll be fine."
"... I think you're right." A small smile tugged at the corner of the fox's lips as the two turned back towards the crane. The claw was failing to grip onto the metal container, and very faintly they could hear unintelligible, angry shouting coming from the inside of the crane's cabin. "Did you hear that brain cell joke Sorun made about Eggman?" Tails idly asked while keeping his eyes on the crane.
"Yeah," Knuckles confirmed with a nod. "I didn't really get it. You?"
"I... think it means Eggman's actions make Sorun confused? Or maybe... I dunno, he says a lot of weird jokes." Maybe it was a zone thing- the way Sorun was so sarcastically dry half of the time. And maybe a lot of the jokes he said were lost on them because they required context that was commonplace in his home but completely absent for everybody on Mobius. That was Tails' theory at least, but he truly didn't know for certain. Sorun really was odd, after all.
A spectral blue fist punching the door to the crane's cabin away shook Tails from his thoughts.
The door fell all the way to the bottom of the chasm, and a disgruntled Sorun emerged from the cabin, blue spectral wings slowly flapping as his feathered arms flew him back towards the two Mobians. He dropped down in a huff, blue arms disappearing as he continued to angrily grumble to himself.
"- Rigged, thing's rigged, couldn't pick up a box..." he heatedly grumbled, turning around to them. "Okay, so I was gonna use that box as a platform to carry Knuckles and the battery across the chasm, but that stupid claw couldn't pick up the stupid box, so that plan's out. So I'm going with Plan A."
Tails nodded in understanding. "Oh, that's too bad. But what's Plan A?"
"This." Sorun snapped his fingers. "This is Plan A."
Bring!
In a flash of blue light and particles, a tightrope bridge made completely out of Summoned Swords appeared to connect the two cliffs together. A tightrope bridge that, to Tails' mind, looked incredibly structurally unsound with it being made of magic swords. Knuckles looked hesitant as well, backing up a single step as he warily eyed the bridge.
"Don't tell me you expect me to walk on that while holding the battery," the echidna said as he looked from the bridge to Sorun.
"Yeah, Sorun, that..." Tails turned to Sorun, and gulped from the glare the human was giving him. "I'm not sure that bridge will, well... hold up."
"I've done this before. It holds up fine," he assured them with a hand wave. "Just don't, you know, trip or something and you should be fine."
"You sure?" Knuckles had bent down to pick the battery up, but he still had an unsure look about his face as he eyed the bridge. "I don't wanna doubt you, but..."
Sorun, with a roll of his eyes, groaned. "Look, it held me and Sally up back when I first tried it, so if it can support the weight of two people, it can support you and a battery."
"... This thing is a bit heavier than a person-" Knuckles cut himself off when Sorun's glare shifted to him. He sighed, and then began walking towards the bridge. "I'm totally blaming you if this thing breaks on me..."
Amazingly, to Tails at least, the bridge held up as the echidna slowly walked across it. Sorun didn't look nearly as impressed, and instead just crossed his arms in a huff as he watched Knuckles slowly carry the battery across the bridge.
"Told you it'd hold up, ye of little faith," Sorun snarked from besides Tails. "Helps that the swords float."
"Oh, that's why it's not collapsing." He'd been meaning to ask. The bridge really shouldn't have been holding together like that from the way it was constructed. That and the fact that it was solely made of pointed, rigid objects. "Heh. Nice going, Sorun."
"Sorun the bridge builder aims to please."
Tails laughed once more, and then looked up to Sorun's face. The frustration from earlier had faded from the human's eyes, and for the most part his expression seemed normal. He still felt there was something off with him, though, and although Tails couldn't tell what it was, he could hazard a guess as to what was on the older male's mind. And there was something Sorun had said earlier today that was bugging Tails. So he endeavored to ask him about it.
"Hey, Sorun?" The human turned to look at Tails when he began speaking. "Earlier today when I asked if you were doing okay, you... you said you never were. That was just one of your weird jokes, right?"
Sorun continued to stare blankly at Tails for what seemed like a full minute. It was long enough that the young fox was beginning to worry, but eventually Sorun broke the stillness by tilting his head slightly while giving a practically microscopic smile.
"Yeah, it was a joke. Sarcasm. I'm doing... I'm doing okay, Tails. Don't worry about me." He turned towards the chasm as his spectral arm-wings appeared. "Let's just get this Chaos Emerald and go hom- back to the HQ, alright?"
He flew off right after saying that. Tails stared after his back and, unsure about whether or not he believed him, began spinning his tails up to fly right behind him.
Well, of course he'd lied, but telling Tails about his perpetual depression wasn't exactly going to do him any favors. And besides, he was already lying to a lot of people about a lot of things. What was one more small lie to a child? He didn't see the problem.
"God, I feel awful."
Other than the increase in emotional stress it piled on him.
Rather fortunately, Knuckles had successfully passed the bridge with the battery. They'd plugged it into the wall, the door lit up, and Tails had solved the door puzzle even faster than the first one, much to the other two's disgruntlement. And right after that- to nobody's surprise- was even more walking down a giant artificial tunnel deeper into the mountain.
And more walking.
And more walking.
"How. Deep. Does. This. Go?" The Emerald couldn't have possibly gotten this deep inside of the mountain. According to everybody they'd just shot up into the sky and shot off in all different directions to be deposited in random places around Mobius. Sorun found himself agreeing with Knuckles in that he failed to see how one of them could have randomly shot so far down into a mountain.
But then again, these were the same Emeralds that were conduits for a source of unlimited energy that were giving him powers from a video game, so going inside of a mountain was pretty tame compared to all that. But why did it have to be so deep?
"Is there any chance somebody made a mistake?" Sorun asked as the trio continued to progress down the tunnel. "I won't even be mad if it turns out it isn't down here. I just wanna know if it's worth going any further."
That was a lie. He be furious. He didn't know what he'd do with all that anger, though. Probably kick a rock.
"Sorun, I highly doubt that the Badniks would have dug this far down if their equipment didn't assure them the Chaos Emerald was here somewhere," Tails said to him. "And our own equipment pointed to this area, too. It's here. Just... really far down, apparently."
"Ugh, yeah, 'apparently'," Sorun echoed while making finger quotes. "I swear if we have to keep going for five more minutes- oh, what is this?"
The three Freedom Fighters had rounded a corner, and upon coming around that bend they saw that the tunnel diverged. A lot. In fact, it seemed that the tunnel split off into dozens of different tunnels branching off from the main one they were walking down. And they all looked like the exact same tunnel.
"Oh..." Tails mumbled out in a dejected tone. "That's... that's a lot of tunnels."
"You don't say, Tails, you don't say." Barely containing a frustrated sigh, Sorun gestured out wildly to all the tunnels in front of them. "What's up with this? Up until this point it was a straight line."
"If I had to guess... Chaos Emeralds give off a high amount of energy that can disrupt sensitive equipment. It's completely possible the equipment they were using went haywire when they got close, so they couldn't get an accurate reading. So they probably started digging all over." The fox's features brightened up. "But hey, that just means we're getting close!"
Sorun didn't share Tails' optimism, and instead slumped his form forwards in exhaustion. "Yeah, awesome. That's just super. Now all we gotta do is figure out which tunnel is the right one." He looked to his left. "Any ideas, Knu- Knuckles? Huh?"
The echidna was no longer at his side. He blinked in confusion, and then looked forwards. He instantly saw the red Mobian near the center of the end of the tunnel, where all the divergence points were. He was kneeling down on the ground, feeling the ground with his left hand while holding his right one out. Both Sorun and Tails glanced at each other, gave each other unsure looks, and then looked back to Knuckles.
"Uh... whatcha doin' over there, dude?" Sorun asked as the both of them began approaching Knuckles. "Kinda weirding us out here."
"I'm feeling out the Emerald, now be quiet," Knuckles answered them, not even bothering to glance back.
"... Ah-huh." Sorun nudged Tails with his elbow. "I don't think the ventilation down here is too good. It's getting to Knuckles."
A soft growl emanated from Knuckles' kneeling body. "I heard that."
"Mm, I'm sure. With those big ears of yours." Sorun paused, and then squinted his eyes at Knuckles' head. "Wait, I just noticed... you even have ears?" All he saw was a head with dreadlock-like flesh appendages lining the edges. He didn't see anything that even resembled ears the closer he looked.
Knuckles actually twitched at that remark, and then turned his head to glance at Sorun from the corner of his eye. "What the- of course I have ears!" he barked at the human. "How else am I supposed to hear!?"
"... If you say so, man." Sorun didn't see it, but if he said they were there, he guessed they were there. "So what do you mean you're 'feeling out the Emerald'?"
The echidna regarded the human for a few more seconds, and then faced his head back forwards. "I've always had a strong connection with the Chaos Force," he explained. The explanation and the mention of Chaos Force made Sorun unconsciously stiffen his body. "Why's not important, but it gives me abilities outside the norm. One of them is being sensitive to things that give off a lot of Chaos energy. I can kind of... sense them, if they're really close by and I focus real hard." He softly hummed. "Actually, I think I can sense you back there, Sorun. You got a ton of Chaos energy radiating around you. Must be all those Chaos Emeralds you're eating for breakfast."
"Yeah, must be," Sorun dryly replied with a roll of his eyes. "So any idea which way is the right way?"
"Hmm... I'm... feelin' something down thataway..." Knuckles rose up to his feet, and then walked towards the right. He stopped in front of three of the tunnels, humming again as he lowered his head and closed his eyes, "Yeah, I'm feeling something really strong down here alright," he said, opening his eyes back up, "but it's too faint for me to tell exactly... hey, wait a second."
He stepped closer to the centermost tunnel, eyes narrowing as he looked down towards the edge of the tunnel. He looked at the edges of the other tunnels, and then began running his gloved hand against the edge he was scrutinizing.
"Okay, I'm certain of it." He nodded his head, and then turned around to Sorun and Tails, who were both staring at him with wide, bewildered eyes. "The edges of this tunnel look fresher than the edges on the other ones, and I'm feeling the Emerald down this way." He pointed at the mouth of the tunnel. "We need to go this way."
"Uh... huh." Sorun tilted his head forwards towards the edges of the tunnel. As far as he could see, it was nothing but rock. Rock that looked about the same as the rest of the rock around them. "If, uh... if you say so, Mr. Treasure Hunter Man."
"Hey, come on," Tails tersely whispered at him. "Knuckles knows a lot about this stuff, so just give him a chance."
"Alright, alright." Sorun rose his hand and gestured to the tunnel Knuckles was standing in front of. "Lead on."
The trust Sorun had placed in Knuckles was steadily being waned.
He knew that Tails was right when he insisted Sorun entrust in Knuckles' abilities here in these tunnels. Sorun could see the logic in that. Everybody had strengths in some areas and flaws in others. That was the point of teams: they complimented each others' weaknesses with strengths. He understood that. It was why the Freedom Fighters left the technical things to Tails and Rotor, or strategic things to Sally, or to trust Sorun to fill up a spot somewhere on a team when nobody else could do it since he didn't really specialize in anything.
Unlike Sorun, Knuckles had real strengths outside of his actual strength. Such as this treasure hunting thing, and his apparent Chaos energy sensing ability. So that was why Sorun had listened to Tails and trusted Knuckles to lead them. Because this was his area of expertise. Because he knew better than the both of them.
But after twenty minutes of them winding through various tunnels with Knuckles leading them with absolutely no rhyme or reason to each new tunnel they traveled down out of the dozens of others, Sorun had to start questioning how wise of a decision this had been.
Oh, Knuckles would assure them they weren't lost. Sorun had asked as much, but according to Knuckles they were right on track. Sorun wasn't seeing it. Tails wasn't seeing it, either, and even he was becoming antsy over how long this was taking. Not to mention the stale air down here was starting to bother all three of them.
"Are we there yet, Knuckles?" Sorun asked past a tired yawn, hands loosely tucked inside of his pockets as he elbows swung back and forth freely. "Just wondering if we're there yet."
If there was anybody that didn't look concerned, it was Knuckles. He had the same focused look on his face that he'd adopted since he began leading the other two, though Sorun's question did cause it to waver a bit in frustration. "It's not gonna get any closer the more you ask, you know," he grumbled out.
"Yeah, I know, but this is taking forever," Sorun complained. "... Seriously, though, are we there yet?"
"It's just. A little. Further," Knuckles informed the human through grit teeth. "And so help me, if you ask one more time...!"
"Okay, calm down. Message received," Sorun assured him. Knuckles continued to stare at him silently for a few seconds, and then slowly turned his head back forwards. The silence lasted for about twenty seconds before Sorun spoke up again, saying, "Hey, what's-?"
Knuckles' head whirled around with a snarl on his face. "Sorun, I-!"
"Hey, wait!" Tails exclaimed, running between the two while waving his arms. "Sorun's right, there's something over there!"
The snarl dropped off of Knuckles' face entirely, and he turned towards where Tails and Sorun were looking, towards the end of the tunnel. And, oddly enough, there was something there: a great source of light shining in from the end of the tunnel as opposed to the near-darkness of the barely-lit tunnels they'd been traversing thus far. All three of them continued to blankly stare down at the light, and then automatically began to jog towards it.
They'd reached the end of the tunnel soon enough. Surprisingly, it lead to a drop, with the floor around five meters below the edge of the tunnel. This was largely ignored by the trio, though, as their main focus was on the room the tunnel lead off into. It was a massive cavern spanning larger than even the large aircraft hangar they all used to store the aircraft back in Knothole. It was well-lit, too, with enough light fixtures and portable lamps placed everywhere that it may as well have been daytime in there.
There were robots, too. Egg Pawns by the dozens, most of which that were, rather strangely, painted yellow with orange stripes and with yellow hardhats on top of their heads. Some were pushing carts of excavated rock away while others were meandering about with various mining tools such as drills, shovels, or pickaxes. Sorun, with much disdain, noticed a few of the red-painted ones with their lances were scattered about, too, and he felt his hands unconsciously clench at the sight of them.
But right at the end of the room was something that had drawn the human's attention away from the lance-carrying Badniks. All the way at the back of the cavern, towards a wall of brown rock where the cavern ended. There was a gathering of the mining Badniks and regular Badniks huddled around a small, metal pedestal with a glass case above it. And inside of that case was a shining, red object that gave off a bright glow. A red object that was shaped just like a Chaos Emerald.
"Ooh... great..." It was an odd feeling for Sorun. Feeling so much dread at something so shiny and inviting. Not because it was surrounded by about fifty killer robots, but because of everything that Emerald represented. And the problems he could already see arising once they brought that thing back to Freedom HQ.
"Yeah," Knuckles agreed as he crouched down next to Sorun, having missed the apprehension in Sorun's tone. "Looks like there really was an Emerald all the way down here." A savage smirk grew on his face. "And look at that. They already went and dug it up for us."
"Mm. So no, uh, no chance of just leaving it there and going home?" Sorun asked with a hopeful edge to his voice. When the two Mobians besides him gave the teen odd looks, he coughed into his closed fist. "Er, rhetorical question, hah hah."
In response, Tails quirked his head to the side. "Sorun, I don't want to be mean, but I really don't think these sarcastic jokes of yours land that well," he said.
"Uh-huh, jokes, yeah." Sorun sucked in a large breath through his teeth, and then gave a stiff nod. "Duly noted," he said in a strained voice. "So what's the plan here? We just gonna go down and-" Sorun made a snatching gesture with his hand, "- take it?"
Tails hummed, his twin appendages swishing the air behind him as he rubbed at his chin. "There isn't really a good way of sneaking down there undetected. Looks like we'll have to fight." He turned his head to Sorun with a reassuring smile. "It's just fifty of them against the three of us, though. That's not many at all. We can do it."
"Yeah, JUST fifty..." Sorun echoed with an exasperated breath.
"Aw, what's the matter?" Knuckles clapped the human on the shoulder, the force making him stumble and almost fall down into the cavern. "Don't tell me a buncha Egg Pawns got ya runnin' scared? You got all those fancy powers now, and we'll be right there with you. It'll be a cinch."
"I'm not scared," Sorun defended, his eyes still locked onto the red Emerald at the back of the cavern. "I just... eh, doesn't matter." In a flash of blue, the Bringer Claws appeared, and four Summoned Swords manifested at Sorun's sides. "Alright, let's..." He stopped mid-sentence to let out a yawn. "Awww, man, all that walkin'... 'kay, let's go." He glanced at the other two, who were both giving him unimpressed looks. "What?"
They both continued to stare at him, followed by both sighing while shaking their heads and holding their foreheads, with Knuckles saying, "That's your big 'to battle!' line? Come on..."
"I'm not feelin' very energetic." And with that, Sorun's Bringer Claws flapped their wings and he took off out of the tunnel.
He didn't really have a specific target. As far as Sorun could see, the only weapons all of the Badniks were carrying were of the melee variety from the lances to the mining equipment a majority of them were holding. Considering that, the circular shape of the cavern, and the fact they were all pretty evenly spread out aside from the gathering near the Emerald, he didn't see any advantage to starting in one area over another. So he chose to lock onto a Badnik in the center of the cavern.
As such, he'd touched down in a crouch right next to said Badnik. It hadn't even registered him before his left Bringer Claw slammed its open fist onto the robot, driving it right into the ground.
A small gathering of Egg Pawn miners noticed the scuffle, though by then the Bringer Claw that had slammed onto the Egg Pawn next to Sorun had wrapped its claws around its sparking form and lifted it up into the air. The spectral claw squeezed down, compressing its metallic body and causing it to spark more, and with narrowed eyes Sorun willed the feathered arm to throw the wrecked Badnik at the crowd. The body slammed into one Badnik, causing both to tumble away, and while the other four looked after them a multitude of Summoned Swords shot forth and embedded themselves into their bodies. Amidst all the sparks their lights went dead, and they collapsed.
Sorun stared down at the fallen robots, and then snapped his head in the other direction when he heard heavy footsteps approach him. One of the red-painted Egg Pawns was running right towards him, lance in hand with the tip aimed right at his body. Before it even got close the left Bringer Claw grasped forwards, gripping the shaft of the lance and stopping the Egg Pawn in its place.
With eyes slightly widened in anger, the teen willed the Bringer Claw to rip the lance right out of the Badnik's grasp, after which it flipped the spear around. The Egg Pawn, seeing the large, spectral claw pointing a lance at it, began to slowly back up as Sorun continued to stare at it in complete contempt. "Not so funny being at this end, is it?" he darkly muttered at the robot.
Before the Egg Pawn could even turn to run, the Bringer Claw savagely threw the lance at it. The lance impaled itself through the Badnik's whole torso, the force of the hit knocking the robot onto its back as the half of the lance protruding from its back anchored into the ground. Its lights died shortly after.
Huffing, Sorun turned his head towards the other side of the cavern. He saw Knuckles there, beating apart robot after robot without so much as a sweat. It almost looked like a breeze for the echidna, as one solid punch was all he needed for his spiked fists to completely tear through one of the robots. Nearby Tails was faring about just as well, his yellow form zipping all around the Badniks faster than they could keep up before the young fox would spin his body and smash them apart with his tails. Between the two of them half of the Badnik forces had already been decimated.
"They're fine," Sorun decided as he turned towards the pedestal with the Emerald and the concentrated group of robots near it. "Guess I'll deal with them."
He started walking forwards, noticing handfuls of Egg Pawn begin to charge at him with mining tools and lances. In response, eights Summoned Swords appeared around Sorun in a circle and began spinning. To the teen's surprise, and mild amusement, the Egg Pawns had run right into the Spiral Swords, only to be cut apart from the spinning ring of swords going around the teen. It was enough that all Sorun had to do was calmly walk forwards as any Egg Pawns that neared him were cut in half completely from the swords.
The large gathering of Egg Pawns near the Chaos Emerald saw Sorun approaching, and began readying their weapons. Sorun's reaction was to loudly snap his fingers, causing twenty Summoned Swords to appear in the air above the group with their blades pointed downwards. The Egg Pawns hadn't even noticed the Heavy Rain Swords hanging above their heads, and as such hadn't even attempted to dodge when the cloud of swords rained down upon all of them. With swords sticking out of their bodies, the Egg Pawns dropped their weapons one by one before going offline and falling over.
Right after, the Spiral Swords spinning around Sorun stopped and closed in on the teen's body. Two more Badniks were running towards him, but right as they got close the eight swords surrounding the teen shot forwards. Six missed while two embedded themselves right into the Egg Pawns' faces, causing them to lifelessly fall forwards.
With that done, Sorun let out a slow breath. Nearby behind him he could hear the last of the Badniks hit the ground, and with a confirmatory glance he saw both Knuckles and Tails finishing off the last of the robots. He looked back forwards, and then began walking towards the pedestal.
Some movement caught his eyes as he neared the pedestal, causing him to look downwards. He saw one of the Badniks he'd skewered with the Heavy Rain Swords, filled with gaping puncture marks from the swords that had already disappeared, but still moving slightly with its lights flickering. A heavy scowl formed on Sorun's face as he stared down at the struggling robot.
"You trash..." The right Bringer Claw reached out and slammed its palm down on the Egg Pawn's head. Sorun watched as it lifted the struggling robot up, only for the spectral claw to then slam the Egg Pawn down on the ground three times face-first. Its metallic head cracked completely open upon its third impact with the ground, prompting a scowling Sorun to toss its body off to the side.
As the Bringer Claw folded itself back onto Sorun's shoulder, he heard footsteps approach him from the back. He turned his head just enough to glance behind him, and saw Knuckles slowly approach him while looking around at the cut-up robots strewn about.
"You finished over here already? Nice work." The echidna glanced down at a Egg Pawn cut completely in half at his feet, and then let out a whistle while giving Sorun an approving look. "Wow, you really don't like these things, do you?"
An understatement if ever there was one. He absolutely hated Egg Pawns. "Well... I did almost lose my head to one," Sorun muttered in an unusually low tone. He glanced around at some of the robotic corpses all around them, and his face brightened up slightly. "I feel a bit better now, though."
"Yeah, I bet. You're doing way better now with-" The ground beneath their feet began to rumble, making the two lose their footing while also cutting Knuckles off mid-sentence. "H-hey! What gives!?"
The ground shook again, making Sorun stumble and nearly fall down. He noticed a few small rocks drop on the ground near him, causing the teen to lock upwards. His eyes widened when he saw an unusually large chunk of rock break off from the cavern's ceiling, and when he looked down at the rock's trail, he saw it heading directly towards Knuckles.
Reacting out of alarm, Sorun willed a Bringer Claw forwards to grab the closest part of Knuckles Sorun could see which, unfortunately for the red Mobian, was his small, zig-zag-like tail. The spectral claw clamped down on the appendage, and then wrenched the echidna backwards just as the large boulder fell on the ground he'd been standing on.
As the Bringer Claw pulled back towards Sorun, Knuckles let out a low groan as he rubbed at his backside where his tail had been pulled. He turned his head to glance at the human teen right after, a peeved look on his face. "Warn a guy the next time you do that, will you?"
"'Warn a guy the next time you do that,' yeah, warn a guy the next time you toss a Chaos Emerald in his hands," Sorun bitterly thought, though after taking a calming breath he chose to refrain from saying it aloud. "Aw, you're welcome, Knuckles. You okay?"
"Yeah, fine," he grunted, removing his hand from his back while looking up. "I think we got a bigger problem than a few rocks, though..."
Sorun followed Knuckles' gaze upwards, blue eyes narrowing when he saw a segment of the ceiling began to shake around as more rocks fell from the spot. Eventually, something metallic began to poke through the rock. A small piece of metal that, after revealing itself, exploded through the rest of the rock to reveal a giant, conical drill spinning through the rock.
Nearby across the cavern, a flying Tails had gone up to investigate the vibrations, but had flown away right as the giant drill had burst out from the ceiling. The drill continued spinning until it along with the machine it was attached to, an eight-wheeled box, fell down through the ceiling before crashing down on the ground. The crash had kicked up a large amount of dust, forcing Sorun and Knuckles to cover their eyes from the resulting cloud.
As Sorun continued holding his forearm against his face, he heard a concerning sound. The sound of an engine revving along with the loud whirring sound of the conical drill reached his ears, and he realized too late what was happening as he heard the drill-mounted vehicle drive right towards him and Knuckles. By the time he'd lowered his arm to see, most of the vehicle and the drill mounted to it had already taken up most of his vision, and it was too close and moving too fast for either him or Knuckles to react.
Despite its speed, the drilling machine had missed skewering the pair by a small margin. As it happened, Tails had flown in just in the nick of time, grabbing each of their right arms with one of his own and then pulling them up towards the ceiling with him just as the drilling machine drove through. Both the teenage human and teenage echidna spit any residual dust out of their mouth, and then looked down towards the drilling machine as Tails kept them aloft.
"Oh man, check that out," Tails whispered out in shocked awe as he stared down at the machine. "That must be one of the machines they used to dig out all those tunnels. It's a giant drill!"
Sorun wasn't feeling nearly as enthusiastic in the drill as Tails was. He felt livid, in fact, as he would have been drilled to death seconds prior if not for Tails saving him. He felt incredibly irked for both of these reasons- for almost dying again and having to have been saved by Tails. The anger and adrenaline from the near-death experience alone was drowning out the fearful beat in his heart.
He wanted to kill it.
"I'm gonna tear that drill right off of it..." Sorun growled under his breath as he looked closer to examine the drilling machine. He saw a small driver's cabin on the vehicle portion behind the drill, and inside that cabin he could see an Egg Pawn at the drill's controls. "There's a robot driving the thing," he called out to the two.
"Yeah, I see it," Knuckles called back. "I got an idea how to take care of it, but I don't know how we're gonna stop the drill."
"Oh, don't you worry about the drill. I got it covered." The Bringer Claws manifested on the human's back. "Just take care of the driver and I'll stop the thing."
Knuckles nodded. "Alright, sounds good. Tails, launch me!"
"Got it!"
On the fox's word, he'd released Sorun fist, who flew right above the drilling vehicle with the use of his Bringer Claw's wings. Right afterwards, Tails gripped onto Knuckles' arm with both hands and, using his tails to rotate his whole body, made one complete spin and threw Knuckles towards the machine.
The force of the throw had been so great that Knuckles shot towards the vehicle like a bullet, his spiked fists outstretched towards the driver's cabin. When he finally made contact, he didn't merely hit the cabin. His fists shredded right through the cabin like it was little more than paper, with the Egg Pawn that had been driving it being no exception. The echidna rolled onto the ground, stopping in a kneeling position just as pieces of the destroyed Badnik flew past him.
Though the driver and controls were completely destroyed, the drill was still active and, without any steering, had began driving in random directions. This didn't last long, however, as Sorun dropped right next to the haywire machine with his Bringer Claws hovering over his shoulders. The right feathered arm shot forwards, wrapping its claws around the drill. The vehicle as well as the drill itself was stopped right in its tracks, the sound of whirring motors being heard as the drill worked to try and spin despite the spectral hand holding it in place. Eventually multiple metal snapping sounds were heard, and rather comically the vehicle itself began spinning as opposed to the drill. The left Bringer Claw reached out and grabbed onto the vehicle, stopping it in its place as well as the drill.
Finally, with brows furrowed in anger Sorun willed the Bringer Claws to pull apart. This had the effect of the right Bringer Claw pulling the drill right off the vehicle in a shower of sparks and metal bits, with the vehicle part of the machine losing all turning momentum against the claw holding it. This done, the left claw slammed the vehicle right onto the ground, holding it down as the right claw positioned the removed drill right above it. Without even pausing, the claw holding the drill slammed the cone down point-first right through the vehicle's top and all the way through it until a quarter of its full length pierced through its bottom and into the ground. Not finished yet, both spectral claws let go, hovered above the skewered vehicles, and clasped together before finally hammering down on the head of the broken-off drill. The vehicle was smashed completely following that, with over half of the drill pushed into the ground from all the force that had been applied to it. The freshly-crushed vehicle stopped sputtering and whirring and went completely silent soon after.
Once the violence and dust had settled, the Bringer Claws disappeared completely as Sorun heaved out a large sigh. He was soon flanked by both Knuckles and Tails, who both also had exhausted but relieved looks on their faces as all three stared at the destroyed drilling machine.
"Welp, we did it, lads. Nothin' to it," Sorun congratulated as he weakly held up both hands to give them thumbs-up. He saw Knuckles roll his eyes from the corner of his vision, though he did see the echidna to give him a friendly jab in the side with his elbow. The force alone was more than he expected, causing the pale teen to wince and stumble a single step. He heard Tails giggle right after, and that along with the small smirk Knuckles was wearing caused the teen to make a loudly exaggerated sigh as he turned around.
"Aw, come on, Sorun. Don't be like that," Knuckles said, grin still on his face as he grabbed the human's shoulder and shook it. "You had fun, admit it."
"Yeah, no, almost getting drilled isn't my idea of fun," Sorun retorted, not even bothering to remove the hand on his shoulder. "But... it did feel pretty good pulling that drill off," he admitted, "so, you know, thanks for having my back." He glanced towards Tails. "And, uh... thanks for savin' us back there, Tails."
"Mm-hm! No problem!" The young fox beamed a smile up at Sorun as his twin tails swished happily in the air behind him. "What are teammates for, right? And that was really cool what you did back there with your arms!"
"Er, uh, yeah, well, you know... yeah," Sorun stammered as he turned his abashed face away from Tails, brushing a few bangs of hair in front of his face to hide his embarrassment. When was the last time somebody had called him cool? He couldn't even remember. "Oh hey, guys, look at that! The Chaos Emerald!"
The attempt at diverting the Mobians' attention fortunately worked, leading to all three looking back towards the pedestal holding the Emerald. They approached it immediately, Sorun doing the honor of punching the glass away with a momentarily-formed Bringer Claw to reveal the red gem behind it.
"Hm..." Sorun hummed, warily looked down at the Emerald that glowed such an intense red color. The happy mood from earlier almost instantly washed off of him as he laid his eyes down on it, though he could see from the corner of his eyes the victorious smiles still present on the other two. He couldn't help but be slightly jealous of that, though that jealousy was soon overshadowed with concern over the Emerald. "Hey, Knuckles, why don't you hold onto it?"
"Huh?" Blinking in confusion, Knuckles turned towards Sorun. "Don't you want to-?"
"Here of all places? Seriously? That can wait until we get back," Sorun quickly rebutted as he took a step away from the pedestal. "Besides, red gem, red fur, it was practically made for you to hold it," he continued as he gestured to Knuckles' body.
Knuckles' response was to scoff, but to Sorun's relief he reached over and grabbed the Emerald off the pedestal. To his even further relief nothing else happened. No rumbling as a result of a trap being sprung, no more robots coming out in an ambush, nothing. They'd successfully gotten it. And yet despite that Sorun still felt nothing but anxiety over the gem Knuckles was holding.
"How the hell am I supposed to spin this...?" he thought, unconsciously biting his lower lip as he stared at the Emerald. "So... time to go back now?" he voiced, eyes still on the Emerald.
From his side, Tails nodded. "Yep. Doesn't look like there's any alternative exit in here, though. We'll have to go back the way we came."
At that, Knuckles groaned out loudly. "Are you kidding me!? We gotta walk all the way back through all those tunnels!?"
Normally Sorun would have been just as annoyed, but in this instance he felt the opposite as his head perked up. Time. He had all the time it took them to walk all the way here, and the time it took to fly here from the plane. He had time to think of some excuse not to absorb the Emerald by the time they made it back to Freedom HQ. Plenty of time.
He could make this work.
"Oh, really?" Yawning, Sorun stretched his arms over his head as he turned back towards the tunnel they had emerged from prior to the attack. "Ah, well, nothing to do about it I guess. Come on, guys, let's go."
"Aw, man..." Knuckles sighed, but relented as he began trudging onward right behind Sorun. Tails flew in right besides the echidna, offering him a helpful smile.
"Don't worry, guys. Since we're just heading straight back we'll be home in no time!" he cheerily supplied, causing Sorun to flinch.
"Ah, that's... that's great," the pale teen said, craning his head back to give the pair a forced grin. "That's... real great..."
He was wrong. He hadn't been able to think of anything.
Try as he might, no matter how much Sorun wracked his brain, he just couldn't find a good excuse to not absorb the Chaos Emerald for more power without telling the truth, which obviously wasn't an option for him. By the time the trio had finally exited the mountain he'd begun to grow worried by his inability to think of something. By the time the Tornado had approached Knothole he'd begun nervously fidgeting. And now they were walking into Freedom HQ and Sorun was in full-on panic mode, doing his best to suppress it while his eyes darted nervously from looking forwards to Knuckles and the Emerald.
"Damn it. I got nothing. This isn't good..." They'd already descended the stairs into the main living room. Interestingly, Sorun saw the only two other people currently there were Rouge and Bunnie, all the way towards the back and talking. "There aren't many people here," he realized with slightly raised eyes. "Okay, maybe I can weasel out and just leave. That'll buy me all the way until tomorrow, maybe, and after that..." He exhaled and began to nervously scratch at his neck. "Fuck, am I gonna have to bail already?"
It was too soon. He hadn't prepared himself yet physically or mentally. He had no idea what the lay of the land was and he didn't know where he was supposed to go if he did run. But if it was between that or losing twelve more years of his life, the choice was obvious. He'd run. But he just couldn't decide on what to do.
"If I stall until tomorrow and leave tonight... wait, but Sonic might catch me, we sleep in the same room. And no way in hell am I gonna outfly a guy that can run faster than sound." He took another look around the room, and then back towards Bunnie and Rouge, who had finally noticed the trio enter. "... Sonic's not here right now." He glanced at the Emerald Knuckles was holding. "... No, it's too soon. Is it? I can't- I'm not touching that thing. I can't. Stall. I just gotta stall for more time."
"Hey, boys. You just get back from that Emerald run you got sent on?" This was voiced by Rouge, who along with Bunnie stopped right in front of the trio. "It certainly looks like it was a success," she added when she saw the gleaming red Emerald in Knuckles' grasp.
"Heh, yeah, it went down fine," Sorun confirmed, eyes slowly scanning around the HQ. "Hey, Sonic's not here, is he?" he asked.
"No, he's still on his own mission with a few of the others." Rouge rose up one of her eye ridges in question. "Why do you ask?"
Sorun shrugged. "Just curious. No other reason."
Off to the side, one of the doors to one of the HQ's bedroom began rattling. Sorun's eyes flicked over to it right as it opened, and he felt his own teeth clack together in concern when he saw a striped hedgehog poke his head out from the door.
"Dammit. He's here," Sorun thought as he watched the door open further as Shadow looked towards them. "He's fast, too. Up there with Sonic 'cause of those shoes of his. I can't fly faster than he can run, either."
"I thought I felt a familiar presence enter the base," Shadow remarked as he approached the group, eyes locked onto the Emerald. "You managed to acquire another one, it seems."
"... Yup," Sorun silently murmured as he back up near the couch. "Fought a drill and everything."
"Yeah, it was really crazy," Tails excitedly said, bouncing towards Bunnie with wide eyes. "You should have seen it! There were all these tunnels and this crazy drill machine but Sorun fought it off with his Chaos arms and- oh, wait, but before that...!"
The more Tails spoke, the more enraptured with the story the rabbit he was talking to became. In fact, everybody began paying rapt attention to Tails as he continued to recount their adventure under that mountain. Even Knuckles became distracted by the story, though it seemed to be more out of amusement for listening to Tails speak of them from the small grin on his face.
To Sorun, however, it was an opportunity. An opportunity to get the hell out before anybody brought up the Emerald.
"Okay. Okay, if there was ever a time, it's now." He eyed the group of five in front of him, and then slowly looked towards the HQ stairs. "Alright... just slip out while they're all talking, go home, and wait for all this to blow over. Dunno what the hell I'll do tomorrow, though."
Didn't matter. More time was more time, which increased his odds of thinking up something. And with that thought squarely planted in his mind, he turned his back towards the group and began to slowly but calmly walk his way towards the stair.
"Sorun."
He'd only made it halfway before he heard his name be spoken. He silently cursed, and then slowly turned around with as straight a face as he could manage. Shadow was standing right behind him. The red Chaos Emerald was in his right hand.
"Yes?" Sorun asked, the smallest bit of shakiness layered in his otherwise even voice.
"I think you're forgetting something," Shadow said, crossing his arms while staring the human right in his eyes.
Sorun looked down at the Emerald, swallowed nervously, and then looked back to Shadow. "No, I don't think I am," he said.
"The Chaos Emerald." The dark hedgehog took a single step forwards. Sorun took a single step back. "You gain powers from them, do you not?"
"... You know what, man, it's been a long day." His greatest hope now was that he could just play off being tired. Wanting to wait until tomorrow. That had to work. "We had a long mission, tons of robots, lots of walking-"
"It's still daylight outside," Shadow argued.
Feigning exhaustion hadn't worked at all, and it was with slumped shoulders that Sorun instantly realized this. "Look, can this just wait until tomorrow?" he asked. "I'll get up bright and early and come here first thing first to absorb it, but I just want to take the rest of the day off, alright?"
Shadow's eyes narrowed. "Is absorbing the Chaos Emerald physically strenuous for you?"
"No," Sorun said with a small shake of his head.
"Is there any justifiable reason for you wanting to hold off on this until tomorrow?"
Yes, but he couldn't say. "... No," the human admitted, "but-"
"Then I see no reason why you should delay." Shadow took another step forwards and uncrossed his arms, the Emerald glinting almost dangerously in his hand. "I'm aware that you have some aversion towards the Chaos Emeralds for whatever reason, but this isn't a time to let petty emotions get in the way."
"'Petty emotions'...?" Sorun repeated in his head, hands twitching at his sides.
"Like it or not, you're a member of this team, and this team is quite literally the only thing left standing between Dr. Eggman and total world domination," Shadow continued. "You get stronger with every single Emerald you absorb. We need all of our members as strong as possible if we are to even stand a ghost of a chance, and the longer you delay the more chances arise for something to happen to the Emerald because you decided to stall." He would have went further, but the hedgehog stopped himself when he saw the way Sorun's eyes were nervously looking at the Emerald, eyes slightly shaking. He sighed, and then tried again. "Sorun, listen," Shadow said in a slightly softer voice, "I know that this life isn't one you asked for, and that you would rather be anywhere else, but this is the reality we're in right now." He held the Emerald out towards Sorun. "As much as we both wish it wasn't so, it is, so please just take-"
There was a flash of blue. In a single movement the Chaos Emerald was slapped right out of Shadow's hand by a Bringer Claw, both spectral appendages hovering over Sorun's shoulders. The four Mobians in the back who had been watching the exchange silently widened their eyes in shock at the action. Even Shadow seemed surprised, having flexed his now-free hand with raised eye ridges before looking back up at Sorun.
"I'm not touching that thing," Sorun hissed out. His entire body was shaking slightly at this point, but he stood rooted to the spot as he tried his best to stare Shadow down. "I'm never going to touch it, so quit asking."
Behind Shadow, Tails pushed towards the front of the small group, his expression concerned. "H-hey, Sorun, come on-"
The red-striped Mobian held a hand out, stopping the fox's advance. At the same time, his eyes began to shift from being sympathetic towards irritated. "And why not, Sorun?" he asked, an angered edge to his voice. "Is there any particular reason you are refusing more power? Power that is sorely needed in a war we're on the losing end of?"
Oh, how he wanted to say everything. To spill it all to them and pray that they would understand that he just couldn't and let the matter be. But he couldn't. He couldn't and the same things he'd been worrying about happening was happening. And he just couldn't think of what to say to get him out of this.
"I... I just don't want to," he mumbled, turning his head to avoid Shadow's scathing gaze. "It... really hurts, touching those things..." A pathetic excuse he would have never willingly used, but it was all he had. And unfortunately it didn't seem like it was enough, because if anything that answer only seemed to anger Shadow even further.
"Is this a joke?" Shadow harshly demanded. "We have people going out there in the field every single day, putting their lives on the line and getting wounded time and time again, but you're not going to absorb that Chaos Emerald because it hurts?"
Sorun was fully aware of how shameful and pathetic the excuse was. Enough that Sorun felt angry at himself for even insinuating such a thing, so when Shadow rounded on him with such a harsh tone, he snapped his head back towards the hedgehog with angered eyes. "It's more than that, alright!? I can't because-!"
Thump-thump.
Gritting his teeth, Sorun lowered his head to the ground as the stabbing pain of his heart stopping spiked through his chest. But even so, desperation still coursed through him, so fighting through the pain he slowly lifted his head up and tried speaking again. "I-I can't-"
Thump-thump.
This time he had to grip his chest as he stumbled back. The pain went away quickly, though, causing Sorun to let out a breath of relief. Too quickly for any of the Mobians to notice anything, apparently, as Shadow was still harshly staring him down while the crowd in the back just stared owlishly at Sorun.
Shadow shook his head in disbelief. "That's a lie." The hedgehog began stomping towards the human, the metal jets underneath his shoes threatening to leave indents into the ground. "Even you are not that pathetic as to let something as trivial as pain stop you. So what is it? Why won't you take it?"
"... I can't say," Sorun answered, straightening back to his full height. Shadow didn't seem to like his answer, though, and was practically snarling as he stopped mere inches from the human.
"If you can't answer, than you don't have an excuse!" he shouted at him. "You are honestly going to tell me you're going jeopardize the fate of the world because of some nonsense, personal reason you refuse to even speak of-!?"
"What does it matter to you, anyways!?" It was here that it was all starting to boil over. The frustration at not being able to speak the truth. Sorun's life being threatened from damn near everything on this planet. Shadow shouting at him and trying to force the Emerald on him. It was all beginning to become too much, and Sorun felt all the anger rapidly accumulating in him begin to leak out. "You're not the one touching these things for powers! It's me! It's my choice, and you don't get to tell me what I have to do with that Emerald! I don't have to do anything!"
Shadow's red eyes were practically blazing in anger at this point. "You're a Freedom Fighter! You made an obligation to help this planet regardless of personal cost-!"
"I never wanted to be a Freedom Fighter!" Sorun shouted back. "I never wanted to go out there and risk my life! I never wanted to train to be the poor excuse of a resistance soldier I am right now! I did it because it was best chance of going home, but guess what!? I probably can never go home! So what's the point of being a Freedom Fighter if I can't even get that!?"
"SO RUN, THEN!"
The only sound heard after the final shout was the heavy breathing of both Sorun and Shadow, the two winded from the shouting match. The other four chose to remain completely silent, though all four were still staring at Sorun with increasingly concerned expressions. Shadow still looked beyond angry at Sorun. Sorun's anger, however, was slowly being replaced by an unreadable expression.
"... What?" the human asked, blinking in surprise at Shadow. "What did you just say?"
"If you don't want to be here, then run away," Shadow reiterated with a disgusted sneer. "You're right; we don't have any say in what you do. And as far as I'm concerned, we don't need to be wasting time on a coward like you who doesn't want to fight with us. So if you really don't want to fight, if you really want to abandon everybody who have done nothing but try and help you, then go. Leave. I won't follow."
... Was he serious?
He had to be. Sorun knew Shadow's personality relatively well. Well enough to know that he wouldn't lie about something as serious as that. It was a legitimate dare. A dare for Sorun to throw away everything the Freedom Fighters had done for him and run away. To leave it all behind.
And Sorun would take that dare. Because as far as he was concerned, that was his golden ticket out of here. So this was it, then.
Time to bail.
"... Okay." Sorun's answer, spoken barely above a whisper, caused mixed reactions. Shadow's body had stiffened, his eyes widening slightly in surprise as if he hadn't expected that answer. Rouge had a similar reaction, if a bit more exaggerated. Tails, Knuckles, and Bunnie had all three widened their eyes to the absolute max in shock at the humans words as a loud gasp left them. "I'm done. I'm leaving and never coming back."
And without another word, Sorun turned around and stormed up the stairs, the blue wings of his Bringer Claws trailing behind him.
"He... actually left...?"
No sooner had the human ascended the flight of stairs than two forms bolted past Shadow to give chase to the human. He vaguely noted them as being the fox and rabbit, though he was still too busy mentally processing what had just happened to pay too much attention. Behind him, Knuckles was frozen to the spot in a similar stupefied state.
"- adow? Shadow!?" He blinked, and then turned towards the voice calling him. He saw the voice's owner as Rouge, who looked, for lack of a better term, distressed. "Are you serious? What were you thinking!?" she yelled at him while wildly gesturing towards the stairs. "Why'd you go and say that to him!?"
"I didn't think he'd actually leave," he said back, unusually calm. He really hadn't, either. Sorun was full of negative traits, but cowardice to this degree? Abandoning them all and running away? And for what? So he didn't have to touch the Emeralds? So he didn't have to fight anymore because he didn't want to?
No, he hadn't expected that at all. His intention had just been for the human to see sense and to finally just take responsibility and take the Emerald. He hadn't expected him to seriously entertain Shadow's dare and actually leave.
"Well guess what, genius? He left!" Rouge shouted at him, almost voicing his own thoughts. "He left because you had to go and goad him into leaving like that! Why'd you push the Emerald on him so hard!?"
"You know why," he muttered back, looking towards where the Emerald had fallen and going towards it. "We need every edge we can get in a hopeless war like this, even if that edge comes in the form of somebody like Sorun. If he won't fight, though, then he has no use. Nothing I said was untrue." He bent down to pick the Emerald up, brushing off the small amount of dust it accumulated. "Besides. He'll come back."
There was a disbelieving scoff from Rouge behind him. "Oh, really? And how do you figure that, huh?"
"What was he saying about his home?" With a impatient sigh, Shadow turned back towards the bat. "Where else is he going to go, Rouge?" he asked her. "Knothole is the only location on the entire planet he is familiar with. This is nothing but a childish tantrum he's throwing for reasons only known to him. He'll come back."
"Sure, fine, he comes back. And then what?"
That, he had no answer to. Even so, Shadow severely hoped he was right in assuming the human would come back and that he hadn't just scared him off of the resistance. The one thing keeping him from breaking his word and chasing after the human to drag him back was in his own logic telling him Sorun had to eventually return.
He hoped so much he was right and hadn't just made a terrible mistake.
"S-Sorun, wait!"
He'd only made it a few steps outside before he heard Tails' voice call out to him. It went ignored, though, as the Bringer Claws beat down on the ground and lifted the pale teen up into the air. He didn't get very far in the air, though. Tails had flown in right in front of him, a desperate look in his eyes.
"Get outta the way," Sorun said, stopping in the air as the Bringer Claws slowly flapped to keep him aloft. "I'm serious. I'm leaving."
"Sorun, just hold on a second now!" That was a new voice. Bunnie's. He turned his head around to see the rabbit floating in the air just behind him, body held up from the jets firing out from the bottom of her bionic feet. "I don't know what's got ya'll in a twist, but runnin' away ain't gonna solve yer problems! Come down so we can talk!"
There was something heart wrenching in how worried she and Tails sounded. The fact there were people that even bothered to worry about him, and that he was doing this to them, was heart wrenching. It was all twisting a terrible knot inside of his chest, and he wanted nothing more than to go down to the ground and explain everything.
But he couldn't. And his life was more important than some hopeless cause that was just waiting to be bombed to oblivion by a madman. He was leaving, and they weren't going to stop him.
"This isn't something we can talk out. I'm not staying here just to die." Sorun's spectral wings pushed him past Tails, though he only made it a few feet before Tails flew in front of his path again.
"Sorun, just please wait!" Tails begged him. "Y-you're overreacting! I know being a Freedom Fighter can be dangerous, but we wouldn't let you die-!"
Sorun's teeth grit in anger. He didn't understand. Nobody did. Nobody could because of this damned curse. "Get out of my way, Tails."
Tails shook his head. "I'm not doing that. I know... I know you're scared, Sorun," he said, and the teen's ire began to grow exponentially at each word, "I know you're upset about your home, but this isn't-!"
The right Bringer Claw shot out and grabbed Tails. The fox let out a startled yelp and attempted to struggle against it, but he was completely trapped with all five spectral claws tightly wrapped around his entire body.
"Buzz off, Tails!" Sorun screamed as the Bringer Claw reared backwards. It flung forwards, letting go and throwing a screaming Tails at Bunnie, who could only stare in shock as he crashed into her body. The hit caused her to lose her balance, and with the young fox held in her arms Sorun watched as both Bunnie and Tails crashed towards the ground.
Right before they'd hit the ground, Bunnie had twisted her body back upwards and managed to stabilize their descent as the jets under her feet flared brighter. They stopped just inches above the ground, with both her and Tails looking up at Sorun. The human stared down back at them, meeting their pleading eyes with his own anguished eyes.
And then, he turned around. His Bringer Claws began flapping, and he took off towards the sky. By the time both Tails and Bunnie had flown back to their previous altitude, the pale teen had already flown out of sight.
Just like that, he was gone.
A/N- It's probably obvious by now, but in addition to the Latin thing from chapter 16 Sorun's name comes from the phrase "So Run", which in itself is a direct allusion to the fact that Sorun just wants to run away from danger. It's also a reference to the relationship Sorun and Sonic share, along with their names sounding similar and the blue color scheme both of them have. Sonic's purpose in the story is essentially to serve as a foil to Sorun's character, as from an ideological perspective they hold completely different beliefs. Sonic runs towards danger of his own volition, whereas Sorun wishes to run away from danger but cannot due to his circumstances. Despite that, though, they both still share a desire to protect others, but differ in that Sonic protects through completely altruistic reasons while Sorun protects through personal and pragmatic reasons, though his sense of self-preservation and just wanting to leave everybody behind to save himself overrides this along with everything else going on with him.
That's my interpretation of it, at least. Characters and their ideals are always subject to change through progression, though, for better or worse. Can't just have them be flat and static throughout the whole story. That'd be boring.
But anyways, yeah, Sorun's out boys and girls. He's out.
