Restoration HQ

Sonic noticed that Tails saw him walk out of the doorway that led to the cellblock, looking dazed. Sonic seemed to be holding several of the Sol Emeralds in his hands. Tails tried to wave him over, but to Tails's surprise, Sonic completely ignored him and made a beeline to Knuckles.

Knuckles noticed Sanic speeding over to him, and raised an eyeridge. He also seemed to notice the few Sol Emeralds in his hands, and wondered if Sonic was about to ask for advice on how the Sol Emeralds worked.

Knuckles didn't want to make Sonic feel worse, but Sol energy and chaos energy were entirely different, at least to Knuckle's senses. Knuckles sighed, mentally preparing himself to disappoint Sonic. Sonic walked up to Knuckles, still looking strangely dazed.

"Hey Knuckles? Random question, how does being guardian of the Master Emerald work?" He asked in a strange voice. Knuckles paused in confusion.

Wait what?

Knuckles shook off his confusion and decided to answer him as best he could. "Hm. I would give you the whole spiel about it being a sacred duty, but I'm fairly certain you've heard the whole speech at least a couple times, So i'll speed up the explanation a bit. In short, besides physically guarding the Master Emerald, I also have the ability to sense where it is at all times. That is how I was able to find all the Master Emerald shards after it broke during the ARK disaster. I can also innately sense when something is wrong with the Master Emerald. That could be anywhere from corruption, to physically using it for a twisted purpose, such as when Neo Metal Sonic hooked it up to all that machinery after the war." Knuckles explained, noting that Sonic was starting to look a bit green.

What was wrong with him?

Knuckles once again shook the thoughts away. "There are several other things being the guardian entails, such as sometimes the Master Emerald will send me visions in dire situations, or sometimes it sends me messages. Not messages in a recognizable way, but it makes me feel sensations that I will usually instinctively know what they mean. For instance, during the war, the Master Emerald gave me a sensation of defeat and hopelessness when you were defeated, which signaled to me that something was wrong before I was physically told of it. When I met the rookie for the first time, it gave me a sensation of trust and mystery. That would mean that despite any trust I would normally lack about the rookie, the Master Emerald trusted them, and so could I. Never figured out what the mystery part of the sensation was though." Knuckles continued.

Knuckles thought back to that sensation of mystery. The trust made complete sense. Hell, the rookie almost personally won the Resistance the whole war. The mystery sensation never made any sense however. What was so mysterious about them? Their origin maybe? How effective they were? Surely it wasn't their fearlessness, at least at first. They only looked frightened when Knuckles first met them. The poor kid was shaking in their boots when they first met! Ha, Knuckles remembered feeling bad for that…

That…?

Wait, what?

Why is it so hard to remember what they looked like…?

Knuckles knew that maybe he wasn't the most attentive person alive. And he could have sworn that the rookie kept changing what they wore nearly every other mission. But seriously, why couldn't Knuckles remember what species of islander they were…? He honestly couldn't remember even what gender they were.

No, you can't get distracted right now. That's a mystery for another time. Sonic needs you in the present right now. I swear I'll get back to this later though. Guess the Master Emerald was telling me something after all with the mysterious sensation. Knuckles thought quietly.

"Anyway, that's basically the gist of what I do. Why are you asking this Sonic?" Knuckles asked,a bit apprehensive. As nice as it was for Sonic to take his position seriously, this line of questioning came from nowhere.

Suddenly, a thought passed through Knuckles's head. "If you're about to ask me to use the Master Emerald for something selfish-" He started angrily, realizing that maybe Sonic was asking this to see how far he could push Knuckles before he had to get involved as guardian.

Sonic quickly held up his hands, shaking his head vigorously. "No, no! Nothing like that, it's just…" Sonic paused, the dazed look briefly reappearing on his face. "Um… well…"

Knuckles just rolled his eyes. "Spit it out, Sonic." Knuckles said bluntly.

Sonic swallowed. "Well, I was maybe hoping for some pointers…?" he said, a very fragile smile appearing on his face. Knuckle's just stared.

"What."

Suddenly, the Sol Emeralds in Sonic's hands started glowing, before they started to circle around Sonic, while the rest of the emeralds suddenly appeared, encircling Sonic thrice before dropping to the floor. Everyone in the room was staring at Sonic now.

"So… Um. I may be the, uh, temporary chosen guardian of the Sol Emeralds while Blaze is… uh, indisposed…" He muttered, the fragile smile breaking a bit.

Knuckles just stared for what felt like forever. Then, he burst out into laughter. Sonic gave him an indignant look. "Hey! I'm being serious here!" He said indignantly.

Knuckles paused his laughter, heaving. "No, no, I believe you it's just- HAHAHAHA!" He started, before once again breaking into gales of laughter. He had practically fallen to the floor at this point, his fist repeatedly banging it in laughter.

Sonic just glanced away at the floor, sulking. "Yeah yeah, laugh it up Knuc." He muttered.

It took a couple minutes, but eventually Knuckles was able to calm down his laughter, although there was still a giant smile on his face. "Man, I needed that. Best laugh I've had in ages Sonic." He said cheerfully. Sonic just rolled his eyes. "No problem Knuckles, I live to cheer you up." He said, in the most robotic voice he could pull off.

A small grin was breaking through Sonic's face though.

Knuckles cleared his throat, before schooling his face into something more neutral. "So, you're the Sol Emeralds' guardian now?" He asked curiously.

Sonic held up a finger. "Temporary guardian. Blaze told me that the emeralds would probably go back to her if she was brought back to normal." He said, wanting to clear the air.

Knuckles looked at him curiously. "Blaze actually helped you out?" He asked. Last Knuckles heard, Blaze was always banging on her glass box with flaming fists, screaming about melting Eggman.

Sonic shrugged. "She can be surprisingly not crazy when she wants to be. She just usually doesn't want to be. However, I guess the shock of the guardianship transferring to me put a hold on her craziness." Sonic said, wincing at having to describe Blaze that way out of everyone.

"Besides, when she wasn't laughing at me, she said it was her duty as the 'last guardian' to at least kinda describe what I needed to do." He said, making it very clear that Blaze was mocking him.

Knuckles just looked at him. "Well? I can give you pointers, but the Sol Emeralds are different from the Master Emerald." He said, gesturing to Sonic.

Sonic sighed, before recounting what Blaze said. "Blaze said that as the guardian of the Sol Emeralds, I needed to keep them safe, obviously, and listen to their advice. She also said that I probably can access their power now, whatever that means. Yeah that was it." He said, rolling his eyes.

Knuckles looked interested. "Access their power? Could you do that before being gifted with guardianship?" He asked.

Sonic just shook his head. "No. I mean, I never properly tried to transform into 'Burning Sonic' or something, that was more Blaze's thing. But unlike the Chaos Emeralds, I never felt any connection to the Sol Emeralds at all. With the Chaos Emeralds, whenever I'm near them I feel this kind of draw, like the emeralds want to fill me with their energy. I've never experienced that with the Sol Emeralds." He muttered, his hand rubbing his chin in thought.

"And now?" Knuckles asked.

Sonic looked back at the Sol Emeralds on the floor. "And now… I dunno how to describe it. Whenever I'm around the Sol Emeralds, I feel a kind of warmth, like standing next to a cozy campfire. And I think I'm literally sensing them. Like, I left several Sol Emeralds back in the cell block when I walked over here, and I just knew they were still in there… somehow?" Sonic said, a confused look on his face.

Knuckles closed his eyes, before nodding. "Well, that is certainly something I have in common with the Master Emerald. Even if I'm not exactly sure where it is at all times, or shards of it when the need arises, I usually intuitively know where it or its shards are at all times. It's how I was able to know when an area didn't have any more Master Emerald Shards back when the Master Emerald was broken before." He said knowledgeably.

Sonic just shrugged hopelessly. "I guess that makes sense. Knuc, I don't know what to do. I'm not cut out to be a guardian of something as powerful as the Sol Emeralds." he said miserably.

Knuckles looked at him, before a large grin spread across his face. "Not so funny anymore, is it? Gonna continue teasing me about my boring job, Sonic?" He said with a wicked grin.

Sonic huffed a laugh. "Alright, fine. You got me. This is much more stressful than it looks from the outside. I promise I'll cut back on the teasing in the future." He said, a smile appearing on his face.

Knuckles just laughed at him. "Hey, think about the upsides. Just like I can tap into the Master Emerald to give me a comparable super form to you, you can probably also tap into the Sol Emeralds to become that Burning Sonic now, just like you said earlier." He said cheerfully. It was immediately replaced with a serious face. "Don't do that a lot, by the way." He said, completely serious.

Sonic looked at him curiously. "I mean, I wasn't exactly planning on using the form to warm myself up, but why?" he asked. A dark look passed through Knuckles' face. "Reliance, basically." He started.

"Your chaos energy inside of you is naturally very high. That means that your super form can be used by you almost in quick succession if you really pushed it. It's naturally compatible. That isn't the case with the Sol Emeralds. I was actually planning to tell you that chaos energy and Sol energy are completely different from each other. And you, Sonic, have almost no Sol energy inside of you." He said ominously.

Sonic warily glanced at the Sol Emeralds.

"I mean, you have at least a smidgen of Sol energy inside of you, probably because of your exposure to Blaze and more specifically Burning Blaze, but it really isn't enough to make much of a difference." Knuckles looked up contemplatively. "You being the guardian of the Sol Emeralds changes that. It's like training wheels. You can access the powers of the Sol Emeralds, because being the guardian is like a buffer. However, push it too much and that buffer will break, and chances are you will with it. It's the same for me and the Master Emerald. I don't have naturally high chaos energy, at least not enough to go true super like you, Shadow, or Silver do. However, because I'm its guardian, the Master Emerald does allow me to tap into that much power with a buffer. But if I tried to go Super Knuckles, say, every other week, the buffer would break and I would be overloaded with too much chaos energy. I surmise the same is true for you, except with Sol energy. Use it too much or rely on it just a bit more than you should, and the Sol buffer will break, and you'll be overloaded with incompatible Sol energy in your naturally chaos fueled body." he warned. Sonic just nodded gravely. There were risks, got it.

Suddenly, Tails rushed to Sonic. "Sonic, you're not gonna believe who showed up to talk to you!" He said, a bit out of breath. Sonic just grinned. He gave a respectful nod to Knuckles, before following Tails.

Tails brought them to the entrance of Restoration HQ. There, standing in the grass, was Team Dark.

Shadow was holding the Purple Chaos Emerald and the Cyan Chaos Emerald.

Rouge just smiled, before mockingly blowing Sonic a kiss. "Hey Blue. Anything new happen while we were busy saving the day?"