Ancient Secret, Inner Emerald

Goodbye, My Friends

Sonic was acting strangely.

That isn't to say he's not weird, he's definitely got his quirks, but after being by his side for so long Tails could pick up when something was off.

His brother was gone by the time he woke up. That wasn't anything new, sometimes he just did that. But there wasn't even anything set out, Sonic always took time to cook something for him.

He could do it himself, he wasn't gonna complain, but... he thought he'd at least stay for the morning of his last day here...

He'd be lying if he said he wasn't a little hurt.

Not to mention he was being dodgy about what happened yesterday.

Tails still doesn't understand that whole conundrum.

Whatever Sonic had been hit with must've caused something to change with his chaos signature. That was the only answer he could think of.

But the weirdest part was the way his readings were reacting.

Normally a disturbance with chaos energy meant less of it, or a change in the frequency and wavelength of it.

It didn't mean more.

Once Sonic was hit it was like his chaos energy had been supercharged. His levels were on par with a chaos emerald itself.

That was the most confusing part of this whole thing.

Why would his chaos energy skyrocket? There's no way that Eggman meant for that to happen, furthermore why didn't Sonic seem affected?

He should feel better with more chaos energy, not tired or indifferent.

And yet, he managed to fall asleep that night, and even before that he seemed fine.

There was a new pop-up on his computer. He made his way over to his desk avoiding bags and boxes of things he'd been sorting through and organizing. The results came in for the scan he did of Sonic yesterday.

Except... They couldn't possibly be right.

He scanned through the results over and over again but they still didn't make any sense.

By all accounts, according to the bioscan, Sonic was completely and totally fine.

As if he hadn't even been hit in the first place.

If they could just figure out what kind of robot Eggman had used maybe it'd all click into place. He'd been scrolling through the database he'd collect on angel island for hours now.

It wasn't any of the titans, that was for sure. He was also pretty confident that it wasn't any of the bigger boss ones either though. Unfortunately that left all the mini robots and there were a lot of them.

Something about that beam seemed familiar though. Like he could almost remember what bot it was from...

. . .

"WOOOOOO!" he yelled as he ran straight off a cliff.

The wind rushed through his quills as he fell.

The sun was out, it was the perfect temperature, honestly there's nothing more he could've asked for.

He tucked into a dive sailing faster and faster towards the ground.

He'd never get over this feeling he swears it. Heart racing and wind battering against him.

It wasn't like Starfall Islands, sure it was cool to have new terrain to run around but it was all business while he was there.

And... y'know the whole "dying" thing but that was whatever.