Chaos Uncontrolled

Chapter 2

Sonic tried to enjoy the wind in his quills like he normally would on a run, but the feeling of unease that had been following him dampened that enjoyment considerably. Sonic stopped to drag a hand down his face. Why couldn't he even enjoy a run? One of life's greatest pleasures? Sighing he shook his head to try and clear it; it sort of worked. Though he supposed he was just happy to be out right now.

Progress on figuring out what was going on with Sonic had been... well mostly nonexistent. Thankfully the spike in his chaos energy hadn't happened again, but he still felt uneasy around the emerald. Tails had experimentally brought it out at one point and Sonic had reacted on pure instinct by dashing across the workshop in order to get away from it. Needless to say it was rather embarrassing, but at least only Tails saw it and the fox wasn't one to judge.

Still, the reaction he had worried him, and he could tell it worried Tails too. There really should be no reason to act like that. He'd used the emeralds plenty of times before, so it was frustrating that he felt like he couldn't even get near them willingly right now. What had changed? Sonic tapped his foot impatiently. Tails had finally let him out of the workshop, likely because the fox wasn't making any more progress with Sonic being there then he would without. Honestly he'd probably been let out due to the fact he was driving his brother a little crazy. Mostly due to the fact that Sonic had started to feel rather stir crazy himself. Not being able to run for that long? Yeah that was bound to mess with him. He'd tried to be patient really, but had royally failed at that. Tails had all but shoved him out and told him to go for a run. Making some excuse along the lines of it being something he could collect data from.

Sonic tapped the device on his wrist. It was sending data back to Tails to see if anything weird happened. Something to do with his bio data and chaos levels or something. Sonic had really hung onto the 'go out for a run' part of what Tails had said and subsequently missed a lot of the other things his brother said. Welp now wasn't the time to dwell on that; now was the time to run.

His run took him all over. Though he wasn't really taking in the sights as he ran; he was focused on running. It was... a nice distraction from the near constant unease he'd been under for the past several days even if he couldn't fully enjoy it. Eventually though he did decide to take a quick break before taking off again.

Something caught his attention as he stopped to stretch. Out of curiosity he walked towards it and tripped as he stumbled back. How? How had he randomly stumbled into one? The yellow chaos emerald sat there, peacefully. Yet Sonic was stuck staring at it as pure terror flooded through his system. He felt like he couldn't move because part of him wanted to scoop up the emerald while the other part of him wanted to run back to the dubious safety of Tails' workshop.

Slowly he managed to pick himself up off the ground. Pinning his ears against his head he glared at the emerald. Some stupid rock shouldn't be scaring him like this, super powerful or not. He was Sonic the freaking hedgehog; he'd been through things far scarier than whatever this was. Taking a deep breath he gathered his confidence and strode towards the emerald and picked it up in one fluid motion. Tensing, he waited for something to happen. Slowly the tension left his body as the emerald sat calmly in his hand, and he didn't hear anything. Ok so, maybe there was something wrong with the other emerald? Sonic inspected the yellow gem carefully. Yeah it looked the same as always. Why had he even been worried? What happened with the other emerald must have been a fluke. Yeah, that was all it was. Weird things happened to him all the time, so this was nothing to worry about.

Sonic tossed the emerald in the air and caught it. "You know..." Sonic's head whipped around at the sound of a voice that seemed eerily similar to his own. Maybe a bit... higher pitch? More gravelly? His frantic search yielded no results. There was no one there with him. Just like....