I do not own Longclaw, Tails, Knuckles, Sonic, or the Chaos Emeralds. I am inspired by the first Sonic live-action CGI movie and promotional materials for the second. I know, this is all way too late considering the third movie is on its way. Maybe this will wet your appetite despite taking place in my own AU. We have come to the scene I always had in mind since I began thinking of this story.

After Tails' offer, the elders of Judgement Island banished us from even "hearing" the ongoing discussions on what to do to annihilate the "threat" of my little hedgehog on earth. The head echidna elder came to Tails, when the rest of the council elders had finally ended the meeting that night to sleep. He told my Tails to look him in the eye. Once he had, he asked him to forswear any hope or desire to make peace with the threat of the blue hedgehog. He also asked Tails to instead swear from his heart to help them in any way necessary to end Sonic's threat to the universe.

Tails glared back, continuing to meet the elder's gaze and refused. My beak dropped open. The elder glared back without breaking eye-contact either. Then he banished my genius foxcub from the workshop where Bill and Tails had spent so much time together.

After the elder stomped away to his own hut. Tails brought his knees up to his chest, dropped his chin on them, curled his tails around himself, and wept. I could tell my foxcub did not want my wing around him to comfort him this time. I remained still and silent though I gazed at him with sadness and pride. He cried himself to sleep. The next morning he awoke with hard eyes and clenched jaw.

More and more ships came to our island. More and more elders met together. We were kept either at our hut or at the beach with guards eyeing us. Tails did not even bother to build sandcastles. He stared at the horizon of the sea and scowled. I admit, I did much the same, though I also kept glancing at him and behind us at the meeting. Days, weeks, months went by as we heard the arguing and the shouting from afar. I could tell an idea had been proposed many did not agree with. Anxiety built in my heart till I thought it would burst. Then, one dark night it happened.

Tails and I were near our hut, but it was hard to sleep. There were many torches lit, many voices heard, before a sudden silence reigned. Then … Red light, a flash of it that reminded me so much of one of the worst and perhaps best days of my life. For a blue flash like this had ripped me from my people, ripped every good thought, respectful thought of me from their hearts, but had also given me the first child I had been responsible for, who I had loved and loved me in return. Now, after the bright light faded I looked to my second child.

Tails stood jaw hanging open looking toward where the flash of red light had started from. I turned to look the same way. A figure, not too large, but impossible to miss, because it was "still" glowing strode toward us. I could tell by the hanging hair and quills it was an echidna, from the straightness in the spine, solidness of steps, and powerfully swinging arms it was a warrior. And he glowed red. Finally, he came close enough and the glow faded, and I saw it was the warrior guarding the blue gem when Sonic fell on it. I gazed at him for a moment open-beaked. "You … What have you done?"

Tails pointed at him and shouted. "You used a Chaos Emerald!"

The echidna warrior didn't glance at Tails as he answered, but continued staring at me. "Because 'you' forced me too."

I shut my beak and narrowed my eyes, but as rage filled me it spilled out of Tails. "You … you all executed my mother for having me while she guarded an emerald. You sent Sonic, my big brother, away for falling accidentally on one!"

The echidna's eyes grew large. He glanced at Tails, then looked back at me and bared and grit his teeth. I scowled back. "That' … is all true. Now, you all have purposefully used one. What, to go and fight him?"

The echidna raised one hand in a fist before his face and took a single step toward me "To 'defeat' him."

I glared back and answered. "What if you can't 'catch' him?"

The echidna warrior rocked back on his back heel and raised his head. "I'll be taking many rings. I will not fail again. This time, I redeem my honor."

The elders, I now saw, had followed him. I never saw them looking graver. Everyone of them had hard eyes, drooping mouths, and bowed heads. They leaned heavily on their walking sticks or each other. I shouted at them. "You approved of this?! You did this?"

The head elder answered in a low grim voice. "We had no choice."

I bobbed my head furiously in the now red-coated echidna's direction. "What about him?! Even if he destroys Sonic? He is what you fear?"

The echidna warrior again raised his head and voice. "I will face my 'whole' destiny."

I looked to him, now closed-beaked, straight-backed, and wide eyed. Tails gasped. "You'll get executed too!"

I looked to the head elder. The other much older echidna nodded. "It was the only way we could think of to return to the galaxy to one 'without' any creatures in it powered by chaos emeralds."

The red echidna spoke again, but I couldn't look away from the elder as he did, "I may die, facing the hedgehog or later our own people. But I will finally make up for my failure. 'This' is how you face your shame owl." He turned and threw a ring. Earth pine trees appeared on its other side. I once more saw their straight long trunks and dark needles. I smelled their sharp scent coming. I flung myself from my perch and toward them. Came to the end of my chain, which jerked me back. I couldn't follow the red echidna warrior through. Someone else could though.

As I picked myself up, I noticed Tails tails begin to move. I then looked toward him. He was holding both hands in fists up near it. His jaw was set, his eyes narrowed. And as I glanced at them, his tails were beginning to move faster moving. Dust and leaves lifted and spun nearby in the beginnings of a twister.

"Tails, no!" But even as I shouted the long fluffy yellow and white fur became a blur. He shot off, like the echidna warrior had just done, like Sonic used to do. His blur of motion was simply golden.

He timed it just right blowing by the older warriors as they moved back, their mouths dropping open, and their heads moved far too slow to follow his path. He squeezed through the narrowing ring and was gone almost right as it closed. No one moved, including me until it did. Then all the elders turned to me.

For a moment they stared in disbelief. Then mouths closed, eyes narrowed, and teeth were grit and bared in anger. They must have seen on my face that I wasn't as surprised as them.

The head elder came up and shook his staff at me. "You deserve to be executed 'twice' for hiding this from us."

I glared back at him. "You can only die once. But I would die twice for them."

What do you think now?

God bless

ScribeofHeroes