Chapter Five: Weary and Wary

May 2nd, 2006

Dear

I wanted to write "dear diary" but this is just a scrap piece of paper, not a diary at all. I don't know who I'm writing to, if I'm writing to anyone at all. All I know is that if I don't find some way to express the thoughts on my mind, I will actually explode.

It's been two days—three days?—my sense of time is destroyed at this point. I don't know how old I am. I'm not sure who I am anymore. All I know is that I'm exhausted.

Eggman left. Rouge went with him for whatever reason, but we've still got the Chaotix with us. I almost never see Chris or Tails unless I'm trying to help them with repairs. I'm not convinced either of them have slept since we went back in time.

Though to be fair, not many of us have. At least not enough. It's hard to think that every time you close your eyes, it might be for the last time.

I'm shaking. Is it lack of sleep? Is it fear? Is it the fact that I used fake Chaos Emeralds?

I want to be done. I'm so tired of fighting. This fighting the Metarex…it must have been going on ten years now. But I'm still just…twelve?

I don't understand how any of this is possible. Or the why. What do the Metarex want at the end of this? I know it's the question we're all asking, even though we don't talk about it. We're too busy just trying to survive.

Love,

Amy Rose

Amy's head fell back against the metal control panel behind her. She sat on the floor of the Blue Typhoon's backup bridge. While both Tails and Chris were off desperately working on repairs, Amy had been tasked with watching their cameras for any sign of Metarex. Many of their early warning sensors were offline in disrepair, so they had to handle the effort manually. In the three hours she had been trapped here alone, Amy had gone from the captain's seat, to pacing the room, to sitting on the floor.

Her eyes ached with tiredness but adrenaline rushed through her veins, as if she had drunk more than her fair share of coffee. Her body didn't feel like her own because it hardly was anymore. The difference between the eighteen she had once been and the twelve she was now could be felt in her bones.

If she took a moment to be trivial, she wished she could stop repeating puberty with all these time changes.

But this was not a time to worry about trivial things. Lives were at stake and right now, they had no means to protect them. Honestly, they really didn't have so much as a plan.

The door to the bridge slid open to Amy's left and she rolled her head against the control panel until she looked that direction. Sonic crossed the threshold walking—not running. He jabbed his thumb at the door behind him. "Shift change," he said. "Time for you to try to catch some shut-eye."

Amy pushed herself to her feet, stretching her arms over her head as she stood. "You should have done the same," she said, frowning at him. Even with the distance between them, Amy could see the dark circles ringing the bottoms of Sonic's eyes.

He shrugged. "Tried. Mostly failed, but tried."

Amy pressed her lips together. She headed toward the door but as she went to step past Sonic, he threw up his arm to stop her. She turned her head toward him to find his eyes already on her. He offered her a sideways smirk that almost looked at home on his face. But it looked a touch sad and faded after an instant. "We've done this three times already, right? What's one more?" His words might have comforted her more if he'd been successful in his smile.

Amy shook her head. She took Sonic's hand and lowered his arm away from her chest. "It's different this time," she said softly. "You know it. I know it. There's no point in pretending this is just another fight. This is 'apocalypse is nigh.'"

Amy could see the movement beneath Sonic's skin as he swallowed. Before he could say anything, a sarcastic laugh rose in Amy's throat. "I mean, really, Sonic, our plan for escape before was the fake Chaos Emeralds. Do we really even stand a chance if we're pulling such desperate stunts?"

Her voice fell flat. It didn't so much as crack. Because no longer did trepidation swell in her chest. Something inside her was dead with the certainty that there was no hope. Not even a flicker. All they could do was delay the inevitable.

Sonic shut his eyes. "I know," he admitted in a low voice.

When he opened his eyes again, he and Amy spent what felt like minutes simply staring at one another, chests falling lower with each heavy exhale. Until Amy finally whispered, "What do we do then?"

Despite Sonic's heavy resignation in his words, he still wore a narrow-eyed, determined expression. "Tails still believes there's hope. Cosmo and Cream and Cheese and Chris too. We've got to at least try. We have to at least fight. We're heroes, right? The Metarex might take our lives but we can't let them take us."

Amy's hand drifted towards Sonic. She reached out so her fingertips brushed against his. Her heart ached. She wanted this. Her and him. So bad it actually physically hurt.

Wasn't that a future she had to at least fight for?

"So we find the seven Chaos Emeralds again?" she asked. She tried to straighten, to put some strength behind those words. But the way she said them…it made the Chaos Emeralds sound like nothing.

But Sonic just said, "It worked three times already, right? And if we can get to Majyk, we can grab Shadow and Nova. It's the best chance we've got."

At first, Amy's heart began to rise in her chest in response to Sonic's words. But then she noticed the tension built up wrinkles at the corners of Sonic's eyes. "I thought we agreed," Amy whispered, "no more lies."

Sonic shrugged. "I'm not lying. It's really the best chance we've got."

"But it's not a good one, is it?"

Sonic's silence in response was answer enough.

-X-X-X-

Tails's View

He shouldn't be closing his eyes. With the way exhaustion racked Tails's muscles, his eyes, his brain, he knew better than to do something like closing his eyes. But he had hoped it would allow his sliding thoughts to focus in on the Chaos Energy buried within him.

Just barely he could feel the flicker of warmth at the center of himself, as Angel had once taught him to do. And with his focus on the Energy flickering gently within him, he opened his eyes to focus on the shattered remains of the Master Emerald scattered across Its pedestal in the Blue Typhoon's engine room.

He urged the Energy within him toward the shards of Emerald. Though he felt foolish doing so, he lifted his hands up to hold them palm-down above the Master Emerald. Maybe, just maybe, this would work and save them all…

"What do you think you're doing?"

Tails jumped, nearly tumbling to the ground in the process at the sound of Knuckles's shout behind him. His shaking legs barely caught him in time to remain upright.

"I don't exactly have a better plan!" Tails snapped back before he was even aware that he had made the choice to do so. And the look of shock on Knuckles's face only urged Tails, with his fraying synapses, to continue. He gestured wildly to the pieces of Master Emerald on the floor behind him. "Even if we make it to the waystation, it's not like I can just manufacture a power source. I designed the engine to run on the power of the Master Emerald. As long as it's broken, we won't have any hope of getting our shield or weapons back online!"

Knuckles continued to stare at Tails. After a beat of silence, he said, "You think just because you can use the Chaos Emeralds, the Master Emerald will heed your call? That's not how it works. I thought you were supposed to be smart."

"I don't know what else to do!" he shouted.

Knuckles didn't respond right away so both of them heard Tails's shout echoing off the walls and back at them. And in hearing his own cry, Tails realized how irrational he sounded. His arms fell heavily at his sides. And he repeated, this time muttering, "I don't know what else to do, Knuckles."

Knuckles's jaw twitched, like he gritted his teeth behind his close-lipped scowl. He started to stride toward Tails, who froze in place. "When was the last time you slept, Tails?"

Tails released a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding until that moment. He swept a hand against his tired eyes before pressing it against the back of his skull. "There hasn't exactly been time," he mumbled.

Knuckles stepped up to stand beside Tails before the remains of the Master Emerald. "Then maybe you should be sleeping instead of wasting your time here," Knuckles grunted. He nodded at the dull green shards. "The Master Emerald's got to heal in its own time; that's what it did the first two times we've had to go through this."

Tails twisted his head to Knuckles, and Tails blamed exhaustion alone for the tears rimming the bottoms of his eyes. "It took years, years we don't have. There has to be a way to get it back sooner or we don't stand a chance! I'd have to redesign the engine to take another power source and that could take months."

"Tails—"

"After all we've been through, this is why we're going to fail?" Tails continued as if Knuckles hadn't spoken at all. "Even though we've beaten them, they've manipulated time to a point to be impossibly in their favor. How is that fair?"

"Life isn't fair, Tails," Knuckles grunted.

Tails's fingers curled into fists that he pressed up against his temples. "You think I don't know that?" he shouted.

Tails's voice cut off, and Knuckles's didn't fill the space left behind for a moment. Tails just stood there, all too aware of his gasping breaths echoing through the space around them. Tails's shoulders curled forward. "I'm sorry," he mumbled.

"Don't be," Knuckles replied.

Another stillness started to extend between them. Until Tails admitted, "I don't know what to do. I keep trying to be the captain, to be strong, since Sonic looks so scared, but I'm not sure how to be that anymore."

"Then you're in good company."

Tails lifted his eyes to Knuckles. Knuckles's eyes remained on the broken Master Emerald before them. Knuckles continued, "Do you not think I'm constantly trying to figure out how to get the Master Emerald to heal? I'm not stupid; I know how important it is to surviving this. But I don't have any special powers over the Master Emerald. It's not like the Chaos Emeralds. It's more…" Knuckles groaned. "I don't know. But I don't use it. I ask it. So when it comes to healing, all I can do is wait. And hate every second because even though I don't have any power here, I still feel like I'm the reason we're all going to end up killed."

Tails winced at Knuckles's choice of words. His heart pulled and ached with the tension at the corners of Knuckles's eyes. Knuckles didn't lift his eyes but kept them locked on the shards. A whole new sort of exhaustion slowly lowered over Tails's shoulders.

Truly, no member of his crew was immune to the weight descending upon them.

Knuckles suddenly cleared his throat and shrugged his shoulders, like he was trying to shrug off that weight. "The Chaos Emeralds are always an option. Might even help the Master Emerald heal. And with you and Sonic and Amy all able to use them—plus Shadow and Nova, if we can get them to help us—that's probably all we can do to stand a chance."

Tails nodded. The same plan had lived in the back of his mind since they had arrived back in 2006 only to see a Metarex armada waiting for them. Though such a plan would only work if they survived long enough to enact it. And without the Master Emerald to power their weapons, their shields, the Chaos Emerald radar Chris had designed…

"Then our first step after making repairs at the waystation should be Majyk," Tails decided. "At the very least, Shadow and Nova are both powerful. Plus Majyk is well-defended against the Metarex, so it might give us a little time to prepare."

Knuckles looked Tails's way out of the corner of his eye. The smallest hint of a smile twitched at the corner of Knuckles's lip. "And here you said you didn't have a better plan."

With Knuckles's fraction of a smile, Tails's heart lifted ever so slightly. It was the most hope he had felt yet. Despite the weight of worry growing ever heavier on his shoulders and the weight of exhaustion growing ever heavier on his eyelids.

One more time, he told himself. Maybe we can pull this off just one more time.

Without power, hope was all they had left.