Ancient Secret, Inner Emerald

Walkabout

"Goooood morning everyone!" A cheery voice greeted above him. Tails sluggishly opened his eyes to the form of "Sonic" leaning over the top him.

Tails groaned and rolled over. Amy and Knuckles were up and stretching out their sore muscles with a chorus of pops and cracks.

"Everybody ready? We've got a pretty long trip to get to the shrine." The hedgehog said looking out on the skyline.

"Long trip? We could've just flown closer if you'd told us where it was." Knuckles grumbled.

Despite the echidna's rigid schedule he wasn't a morning person. Even Sonic went out of his way to not deal with him until at least nine.

"Well, yeah, but I wanna show you guys all the amazing things about the island that you don't know about!" He said excitedly.

Tails felt to bad to argue with him on that. Not to mention Amy would probably be more than happy to sit and listen to him talk about the island's history for hours.

"Alright then, what's up first? We aren't that far into the island." He said pointing out toward the path to more of the mainland.

"Oh just you wait, once we're past the main entrance it'll be so incredible you'll never wanna leave." He smiled and twirled.

He felt skeptical. Were the islands incredible? Yes. Were the islands what he was describing? Not really.

They walked for a while, "Sonic" eventually leading them to a bridge he was overly excited about.

"This was actually built for the echidnas" he explained. "In case we needed to meet with them." The blue lines running along the bridge seemed to glow brighter as he passed over them.

Getting over the hill was much easier than expected. "Sonic" floated easily to the top. Tails just picked Amy up and flew her over and Knuckles was used to climbing mountains.

The top of the hill gave them an incredible view of everything, he could see out into the rolling fields from up here.

"Sonic" had yet to turn around though, admiring the machinery that was sitting at the top of their hill. Next to them was one of the emerald vault. It seemed much easier to reach than any that were on his island but the design was the same.

The hedgehog seemed nostalgic looking at the first containment vault, brushing his hand down the side of the machine.

"Well everyone, welcome to-Woah" He started then stopped himself abruptly.

"What?" Amy asked "what is it?"

Tails quickly shuffled up to his side. The ancient had a strange mix of shock, sadness, and pain all wrapped together in one on his face.

"It's- It's-" he stuttered "what happened?" He choked out painfully.

His eyes scanned the horizon again for a moment, "A-Asura?"

The Echidna beside him squinted out at the horizon towards what the other was looking at.

"The big robot?" Knuckles asked.

"No-! Yes- she- She was one of the guardians of our island but-" there was a rising panic in his voice, a growing fear.

"why- why is she still out? And-" the ancient stopped half way through speaking and broke down in a coughing fit.

Amy put a hand on his shoulder in an attempt to help but the hedgehog hardly seemed to notice.

Eventually he took a few ragged breaths and managed to stand back up.