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neurodivergent-nicky2023 · 17 hours ago

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A Cluster of Burning Stars - Chapter Twenty-Five

in which Tails flies high (and Sonic falls again)

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Knuckles dove to the ground, barely avoiding a strike from the bat. He spared a quick glance for the Emerald, still shining brightly while it leaned against a pole, before throwing himself back at his attacker. While she spun away, he raced to the nearest post, jumping up atop and digging his spikes directly into the wall to keep him up, before dropping down atop the bat and trying to take a swing at her face. She kicked him off, darted her eyes to the gem propped up behind them, and then jumped to the side to avoid another punch.

“You just don’t give up, huh?” she hissed.

He managed to grab her wing, yanking her back and throwing her several feet across the platform. She managed to roll out of the way before he landed a hit on her face, but he could see her flinch a bit when her wing fluttered out, so he considered that a decent strike. He jumped for her legs, intended to knock off her balance, but she barely managed to avoid him and pounce onto his back. He reared up before she could pin him, falling backwards so that she landed hard against the metal floor, shocking her enough for him to shake himself loose. By the time he’d turned, though, she’d already sprung back up, and they ended up back in a whirlwind dance of aiming and dodging, ducking and leaping, spinning around the small platform surrounded by stars.

Rouge was clearly trained and practiced in the art of combat, which Knuckles could appreciate. He had, however, been preparing to fight for most of his life, and spent the last four years in what was basically a nonstop battle, so he was able to match her attacks so long as he kept putting in a genuine amount of effort. But at the same time, he had to keep an eye on the Emerald, and run some kind of plan in his head for getting out of there and back to his team. Which was just great. He was never one for multitasking, that was Tails’s job.

Yeah, Knuckles. So get it over with.

He faked a dive to the right, only to slip to the left and make a grab for the Emerald. The second his fingers gripped the cold surface, he pulled down into a roll, pushed himself into the nearest column, and then leapt up, stabbing into the metal with his knuckles for just a moment before throwing himself at the opposite column, soaring over her head and managing to land several feet upwards. He glanced over his shoulder to see her flaring her wings, definitely ready to fly after him, so he clutched the Emerald to his chest and swung himself off the platform entirely, landing with a thud on a yellow row of metal, a walkway between two other columns. A sudden burst of heat hit him, and he growled a little, ducking against the wall and glancing down the other side of the walkway.

He cursed under his breath, staring down at what seemed to be a pit of fire. Probably just an engine outlet or something, but in the brief look he got before rushing down the path to avoid his swinging opponent, it looked like the entrance to a volcano. Which was stupid. Because they were in space.

Focus. Focus. Focus.

As Knuckles started to run, he noticed a long, white platform suspended perpendicularly above their heads. With just a bit of pressure, he dropped to the ground and then pushed up, gliding just slightly in order to get high enough to grip onto the edge and hoist himself onto the cold metal walkway. He ducked over the Emerald, shielding it with his body for just a moment, before rolling forwards and back onto his feet. The second he saw the expected flash of white rise beside him, he swung a punch directly at the side of her face.

He caught her wing instead. She let out a screech, and only barely crashed on the platform before slipping towards the edge. Her hands scrambled out, only for her to drop over the side and towards the fire below.

Knuckles sometimes acted on instinct when he really, really should’ve thought things through instead. It was something Tails often complained about, but also something they knew would come in handy in specific circumstances. It turned out well when he picked up on an attack before Tails and managed to knock him out of the way, but sometimes he’d knock something or someone down who came at him too fast, or smash a robot that Tails needed to study, or break through a window and set off an alarm. His quick reactions were a skill in battle, but not really anywhere else. So him acting on instinct here, in the heat of the moment and pushed by adrenaline, wasn’t a surprise. What was a surprise was the fact he was suddenly gripping tight to the edge of the catwalk, his other hand clasped tightly around the woman who’d just been trying to kill him.

By the time the events caught up to him, he was already staring down at her shocked face, his left arm hoisting the two of them back onto the walkway. He still settled in front of the Master Emerald, but he also found himself making sure the bat was balanced before he had the shocking realization that he was still gripping her hand.

She seemed to realize at the same time, as she suddenly yanked her arm away, scooting herself about a foot backwards. “Hey! Keep your hands to yourself!”

Knuckles huffed, rolling his eyes. “Is that how you say thanks to someone who just saved your life?”

“Saving my life.” she scoffed. “Don’t think I owe you one! You’re the one who punched me out of the sky.”

“You’re the one who started the fight!”

She looked him over, and then smirked slightly. “You just wanted to hold my hand, didn’t you? You’re such a creep.”

He gaped at her. “This isn’t a joke, you know!” She rolled her eyes, and Knuckles reached back, putting a hand on the Emerald. “What are you even doing working for Robotnik?”

“Who said I was working for him?”

“You handed a Chaos Emerald over to him.”

“Well,” she stood up, brushing off her tights and testily flapping her wing. “From your perspective.”

“From my… you’re insane.”

“Maybe I just don’t like having my business aired out for the whole world to see.”

“The world you’re trying to blow up?”

She made a pssh sound, flipping her hand. “We’re not blowing up the planet. Just threatening it a little, maybe break a few mountain ranges. Nothing too drastic. We’re not idiots, what would Robotnik have to rule over if–”

It took her a second to realize he wasn’t responding. When she turned back to him, his eyes were wide, his mouth slightly open.

“What?” she asked, and he thought he might’ve heard a tinge of fear in her voice.

“What…” he hesitated. “What did Shadow tell you the Eclipse Cannon could do at full power?”

Her eyes darted behind them, back to the edges of the ARK’s interior.

“You saw it hit the moon at just six outta seven emeralds, right? Both Sonic and Amy have said that thing is going to blow up the planet if you charge it up. Holy shit, you actually didn’t know?”

“Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck…” she whipped back around to Knuckles. “We need to get those emeralds out of the cannon.”

“Oh, no shit!”

“We’re at, like, the opposite end of the ARK.” she groaned. “And you just damaged my wing–”

“Again, you started it.”

“So you better pray your friends are good at keeping that hedgehog busy. Let’s roll.”

She moved over to Knuckles, holding out an arm for him. He hesitated, and then pulled the Emerald back to his chest. “So we’re done fighting?”

“For now. Once the cannon is shut down, we can kick the living daylights out of each other. Now let’s move.”

---

As Sonic kept trailing the bot, the pit in his chest grew deeper and deeper.

The floating badnik didn’t turn to look at him, didn’t even acknowledge he was following it, which just made his dread worse. What did it know? What was it bringing him towards? Why was he still following it? He was supposed to go to the cannon. That was his job. He had to save the entire planet. He shouldn’t be following a random robot up to the first floor just because it might know where Tails was.

And yet that’s exactly what he was doing.

It would’ve been nice if the badnik picked up some speed, though. Sonic didn’t like going slow. If these paths weren’t so winding and complicated, he’d grab the robot and run to the next bend in the road so the whole process would shorten, but there were so many bends and turns that he wouldn’t get more than a few feet.

At least he could figure out where it might be leading him. At the moment, it seemed to be vaguely heading towards the center window. What was past there? The kitchens, the greenhouse. Couldn’t imagine why the bot would take him there. Robots didn’t get hungry, right? Plus, their food had probably spoiled ages ago. And the plants… oh, those poor plants were probably dead. Just like everything else. His heart skipped a beat, and he glanced back to the badnik. It better be bringing him to Tails, and he better be alive.

Shit, he was probably just being paranoid. This robot was probably defective, and Tails had probably just run down to locate the cannon. The only signs of struggle were skid marks, and those could’ve been from him and Shadow. It wasn’t like he’d seen blood or dents in the wall or floor or–

The CRASH that echoed through the halls stopped Sonic right in his tracks. Fortunately, the badnik also halted, glancing towards the direction of the noise and tilting a little, as if confused. As soon as he’d figured out it wasn’t going to move, another bang hit his ears, and he spun on his heel and took off running in the direction of the noise.

As he got closer, the sounds got louder and more frequent. The noises seemed to be metallic clangs, so he guessed it was someone fighting a badnik. Shadow had no reason to fight one of these things, so it was either Tails or another one of his team, and he wasn’t just going to leave them alone.

The good news was, when he finally slid around a corner and caught sight of the commotion, he could tell it most definitely was Tails. The blur of orange was atop one of those flying badniks, furiously clawing at its red eye. Sonic looked down towards the scattered metal bits on the ground beneath them, and figured pretty quick that the little kit had managed to take out the rest of the guard. He moved back a few feet, before leaping into a spin-dash, knocking straight into the orb with another crash, barely managing to grab onto Tails and straighten himself before hitting the ground.

“Shit! Are you okay?” Sonic asked.

When he looked down at his friend, that sinking feeling in his stomach came back. At first, he wasn’t sure why, until it clicked that Tails, instead of responding, was just kinda staring at him. At a spot just a little above his brow, like he was trying to make eye contact and failing.

“Tails?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” he said, before pushing himself out of Sonic’s arms and getting to his feet. He immediately began to wobble in place, and reached up a palm to his forehead. “Make the room stop spinning.”

“Oh no.” Sonic jumped up, gripping onto his shoulders to steady him. “What happened? What’d they do?”

“I’m fine, reaaaally.” he didn’t seem to notice how long he’d dragged out that last word. “Stupid things got the jump on me. Came up behind while I was…” he stared into the distance again, and then giggled slightly.

“Tails?”

“Trying to find you. I mean. Came up behind me. Then I was upstairs and theeeere were a lot of ‘em.”

The drowsy voice was suddenly starting to make sense. “Tails, did they knock you out?”

“They caaan’t have hit me that hard. I don’t have a concussion. I know what thooose feel like.”

“There’s so many sedatives up here, Tails. They stick anything in you? Chloroform over your mouth?”

“‘s not a sedaaaative. I’ve been building up an immunity siiiince the Labyrinth incident.”

“That’s not a thing.”

“Sure is!”

Sonic hesitantly pushed Tails to lean against the wall, before running back to the remains of the badniks. He began kicking through metal, searching, until he found a small syringe-like appendage.

“Whaaaat’re you doin’?”

Sonic popped the syringe open, holding it up to his nose to sniff, and then instantly recoiling and dropping it back to the ground. “Okay, this doesn’t make sense. That’s from the surgery ward. But it’s supposed to last a couple hours, you can’t have been out longer than ten minutes.”

“Told ya! Immunity!” Tails shot him a thumbs up, before falling back against the wall. “Shit.”

“Right. I guess this could’ve diluted in the fifty years it’s been unattended. Or it wasn’t a full dose. That mixed with… whatever you’ve been doing to yourself?” Sonic sighed. “Okay, so if we break down your unconsciousness to just a few minutes, you shouldn’t be loopy for long, either. I’ll find you somewhere to wait it out–”

“Noooooo.”

“It’s only for a few minutes, and you’re not in any state to fight. Trust me, the last time Amy was like this–”

Tails suddenly leapt up, flying directly above Sonic’s head and smashing into a robot just a few inches away. Sonic spun, swiftly jumping and barely managing to catch the falling fox before he hit the ground, rolling them away from the scattering meta. He ignored Tails’s huff, as his ears pricked at the sound of whirring motors rising up behind them. He cursed, before hoisting himself back up and picking up speed. “We gotta go, we gotta go, we gotta go!”

“Booo. Throw me at em!” Tails said, lifting a wobbly hand up in an attempt to gesture at the badniks approaching them.

“You can throw me later, promise. Let me just find somewhere to stash you–”

Sonic slid into a forked hall, nearly running directly into another swarm of badniks. His heels skidding against the ground, he shouted, “Shit, shit, shit!” and immediately turned and ran back the other way. “Shit, shit!”

“Lemme at ‘em.” Tails mumbled, half-heartedly kicking out his legs. He wagged a singular tail as Sonic turned another bend, saying, “I thiiink I still have a gun in here somewhere.”

“Do not try to fire a gun in your current state.”

“You’re not my daaad.”

“I’m trying to keep us alive!”

Sonic clutched Tails to his chest and did a brief spin to gain a few feet on the robots that were still giving chase. Instantly knowing what this would result in, he then held Tails out over his shoulder as the fox retched. Thankfully, he didn’t actually puke, because Sonic would not have been down to clean that up.

Another round of badniks swung from hall on the left, so Sonic spun to the right, vaguely aware that they were headed towards the center of the ship. He kept his focus on keeping the squirming, grumbling fox in his arms and dodging the occasional laser blast. Come to think of it, though, they weren’t firing as often as he would’ve expected… or maybe he was just faster than them. He was faster than everything, of course. But still… he spared a glance over his shoulder, just for a second, before putting on an extra burst of speed at the amount of robots that were now on their tails. He just needed somewhere to stash Tails until the sedative wore off, and he could take those out without worrying about him getting caught in–

“Maria! Stay behind me!”

“We can stop this! We don’t need to–”

“Stay behind me! Stay–”

Sonic nearly ran into a wall, barely swiveling so that only the tips of Tails’s tails brushed against the metal. The fox huffed at that, saying something about his head spinning, but the robots had gained a bit in the time it took to correct their course, so Sonic focused more on keeping the two of them alive.

Come on. Just an unlocked closet, a table I can shove him under, something, anything. Please. Please.

Whipping around, he saw the doorway to the big window’s room was still open. Thank God, he could probably stash Tails against the wall or under the platforms… sure, Tails would fall a bit if he didn’t use his tails right, but it wouldn’t hurt. He’d fallen off that platform all the time at his age. Though he did also have advanced healing… ugh, okay, against the wall. Maybe tie his tail to a railing so he couldn’t wander off. Were the railings still up? And then what if he had to run from the badniks? Fuck, fuck…

Sonic slipped past the doorframe, immediately widening his eyes and skidding his heels against the cold metal. He stopped right before reaching the connection between platforms, at the edge of the metal grated path, instantly curling Tails closer to his chest and flaring his quills up protectively.

Tails, for this part, said, “Ooooh, hiii! It’sthebitch!”

Standing just a few feet away from them, blocking the peak of the window with his giant robotic mech, was Robotnik himself. Two guns, one from the left and one peaking up from behind the seat on the right, were aimed directly at them, the shining red glasses of the doctor just as locked on. Sonic immediately took inventory of the room– generally empty, but he could probably make a few jumps to dodge if it came to it. If he could just get Tails to a safe place, he could slide under the robot and attack from below…

“Badniks, position.” the man said, into a button on his wrist.

Sonic briefly heard the robots fly in behind him, but they didn’t attack. Just stayed at the ready, probably preparing to strike. Of course, this is where they were being led the entire time. Right to Robotnik… and away from the cannon.

He was so stupid.

“Alright, hedgehog,” the doctor said, very slowly. “Let’s take care of our little problem. Figure out a common ground.”

Sonic wanted to look back, to figure out the positions of the badniks, how many there were. He could take them out, once Tails was safe, if he knew what he was up against. But looking behind him might show weakness, and he couldn’t do that.

And yet looking right at him? He looked just like his grandfather.

“I know you have a Chaos Emerald.” the man said. “Why don’t you just put the fox down, and we can talk business.”

Sonic gripped tighter against Tails’s fur, just as the cub jostled himself, trying to get free. “I’m goooonna bite youuuu!” he said, waving a hand towards the Robo-Walker’s leg, rather than Robotnik himself.

Robotnik glanced briefly down at him. “Isn’t he supposed to be sedated?”

“I’m immunity, bitch!”

Sonic shushed him, still trying to keep a tight hold as the fox, once again, tried to squirm out of his reach. There had to be some place to stash him. Some place to hide him. Some place to keep him safe…

He tried to drag her to the hallway. “We’ll find a closet, lock the door, come get you when it’s over.”

“I’m not leaving you!”

“We can handle it. You–”

She pushed past him, and he had to zip to block her path. “We need to get you out of here! We need to protect you!”

“And I need to protect you.”

“Why are you doing this?”

His voice came out small, tepid. It sounded weak. It sounded childish. He was sure the doctor noticed. He didn’t comment on it, though, instead just adjusting the aim of the guns on his walker. “Hand over the emerald.”

“You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to destroy everything.”

“The emerald, hedgehog.”

He should just hand it over. It was a fake. It would eventually get to the cannon, do what they’d intended for it to do. But something was nagging at him, clawing at his stomach, some kind of primal fear. And the worst part was, he didn’t know if it was intuition, or just a memory. A memory of holding her to his chest just like this.

They had been at this window. Talking about something stupid. He didn’t even remember, despite it being just a few days ago for him. They’d heard a commotion in the hallway. Wondered if something had escaped. It sounded like gunshots, but it could also be a machine breaking down. Amy stood first to investigate. Normally he would, but he still was holding a grudge. It was stupid. Maybe he could’ve helped if he hadn’t been angry and scared. She stood and stretched, looked at him, wordlessly asking if he was coming. He was about to get up when the doors opened.

Doctors Thompson, Garrett and Jezek. Running. They didn’t even look their way until the first few shots rang out. A few missed, but Thompson and Garrett fell. Garrett was dead on impact, but Thompson kept screaming. Dr Jezek stalled her own running, looking back at him, her instinct to always provide assistance kicking in at the wrong time. She looked up, seeing the stunned hedgehogs, just as the next shots hit directly on her chest.

Amy had screamed. He hadn’t. His mind wasn’t processing. Wasn’t putting the pieces together. He couldn’t quite figure out what was going on. Why there was blood on the floor, why they weren’t standing back up. He’d been trained for this his whole life, and when it happened right in front of him, he couldn’t figure out what was going on. Not until after the soldiers came in. Just as they started to swivel their guns towards them, Amy had summoned her hammer and started to run. And he was just sitting there. Useless. Staring at Dr Jezek on the ground.

Tails struggled against him again. Sonic snapped back to reality, stepping back just a little bit. Protect him. He forced a smirk onto his face, shrugging back at the badniks he could still hear behind him. “You’re a big-time villain, huh? Wouldn’t have expected that from the Eggman over here.”

“For the last time, you blue pest, my name is Dr Ivo Robotnik and you will–”

“Eggman, Eggman, Eggman.” Sonic tried to plug the name from reaching his ears by talking as loud as he could. He caught a glimpse of something shining off the metal against the window, and noticed a large computer that had been carted out and placed behind the doctor. Or had that been there the last fifty years? Sometimes the Professor had moved that out to show them lessons on the planet, while they were in vision of it. Pointing down to Adabat as it passed beneath them. Over to the moon, which his grandson was to shatter so many years later. “Was this your plan all along? Lure us over, corner us, swipe from us like a petty thief?”

“I work with what I’m given. Now give me what you have.” the man leaned over the windshield of his walker, smiling eerily and pointing at the off-white circle in the center of the room. “Just put the emerald down right there, and we’ll talk.”

The fake emerald was pressing against his quills, cold. Still with that strange feeling of something amiss. Maybe it was messing with his head. Making him think about things he shouldn’t be thinking about.

“Nuh-uh!” Tails said, kicking at Sonic’s chest and almost scrambling out of his arms. “Bad Eggman!”

A badnik behind them moved. It was probably just spreading out, increasing the area of fire. But it was where Sonic slipped up. He finally glanced behind him, trying to take inventory as quickly as physically possible. But it turned out that even while coming off a high, Tails was still crafty as shit, and as soon as Sonic’s attention was diverted, Tails shoved an elbow right into his stomach and kicked his shin, finally breaking his grip. As soon as the fox’s weight fell from his arms, Sonic whipped back around, just in time to see Tails roll out onto the ground, raising his hackles like a critter and hissing.

“Amy, we have to go. We gotta go, we gotta go, we gotta go-”

She was staring down at the mess on the ground, her eyes wide and unblinking. He didn’t even look, he just grabbed her hand and tugged.

“Ames! Amy we have to go!”

Sonic dove for the fox, barely missing his feet as he spun his tails in a violently-fast circle, rocketing him up several feet in just a few seconds. With a smash, he slammed his head against the ceiling… quite the feat, considering how large the domed room had been made. “Son of a–” he let out a loud string of curses, tried to push himself forwards, and instead rammed himself right into the ceiling again. It would’ve been funny if one of the floating bots had not decided to try and take a shot at the moment, the laser barely grazing past his shoulder as he managed to ram himself into a far wall.

The hedgehog whipped around, immediately spin-dashing into the offending badnik. With that, he immediately had to turn his body and slam against another, as they all directed their fire at him. He kept his spines angled, leaning forwards and trying to ricochet off of one badnik in order to hit the next, his ears desperately pricked for any sign of Tails being in danger, only for the clashing and crashing of the metal around him to overwhelm all other senses.

Her hammer smashed against the ground, the crash of metal somehow piercing his ears less than the squish above it. But he couldn’t risk throwing his hands over his ears, not when anything could come up behind him. Not when…

“Shadow!”

He heard the sound of a chaos blast, and whipped around to see Shadow nearly knocking Amy over in his rush to grab onto her. Maria was right behind him, and when Shadow ran for Sonic, she began checking Amy over to see if there was anything he missed. She flinched at the blood under her hands, but Sonic didn’t see much else as Shadow suddenly clung to him.

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, I don’t… duck!”

A shot fired over his head. Shadow leapt over him and kicked out. Sonic whipped around so he didn’t see him make contact, but he only caught sight of Maria’s horrified face.

He slid across the floor, head whipping around for any robots he may have missed. He caught sight of Tails wrestling with one, both of them spinning over each other too fast for Sonic to even hope to intervene. He launched himself at one of the straggling badniks, trying to keep it as far from the fox as possible, smashing it into the wall and immediately going for the last one.

Something’s wrong something’s wrong something’s wrong.

Something in the fight was wrong, but he was moving too fast to stop and think about it. He shouldn’t have to, he’d done more fighting than anything else in his life. He should be able to think on his feet, he should–

“I don’t know what’s wrong! I don’t know what’s happening!” he pressed against the wall, shutting his eyes to try and block out the flaring alarm lights. “We- we need to find Grandfather. He’s gonna know what to do.”

Fuck. That was it. Robotnik, he wasn’t fighting with them. He was just watching. Why was he just watching? Shouldn’t he be…

Tails rammed his bot into the ceiling, and the resulting explosion sent him flying backwards. Sonic, sliding onto one of the pathways, felt his mind race, swiftly judging the descent. He raced to down the metal, his feet flying out from under him, and he leapt forwards, grabbing the falling fox and spinning them midair. He landed hard on his back, letting go of Tails, who he briefly heard roll down, thudding against the far wall.

A rush of air, a clunk that surrounded him on all sides. A slight feeling of being pushed upwards, the floor rising a few feet in the air. A sudden, pressing feeling of claustrophobia.

No, no, no, no, no…

His eyes flew open, and he slammed his hands on the ground, throwing himself backward. Just as he’d feared, he hit a glass wall rather than the ground. He stared up ahead at the now-distorted image of the smirking Robotnik, somehow looking more like his grandfather and nothing like him at the same time.

No, no, no, no, NO.

“Well, that works out.” he sighed. “Was hoping to jettison the fox, but clearly he’s not going to be much of an issue.”

NO, NO, NO, NO, NO–

“Stop! Let me out!” He got to his feet and pounded his fists forwards, trying to push the pod over, break through the glass, something, anything. “Let me out!”

“Oh, relax. You’re immortal, aren’t you? You can survive a little explosion in the middle of space. Especially with that shiny emerald. Oh! Assuming it’s real, though.”

He wasn’t sure how the man had figured it out, but that was far from his biggest worry at the moment. He shut his eyes tight, desperately holding his tears back, trying to shove his terror back and replace it with power. Get out. Get OUT.

He heard the shot before he felt Maria fall. At first, he didn’t realize it hit anything, he didn’t know why his brain had suddenly latched onto the sound, why her hand was starting to slip from his.

He tried to roll up, to spin-dash into the glass, but there wasn’t enough room. He heard Robotnik chuckle darkly, before saying, “Eh. What Shadow doesn’t know won’t kill him.”

Everything rocketed up past him, the floor falling out from beneath the pod and sending him down a dark, sharp tunnel. Only for a few seconds, and then he saw stars.

Shadow had exploded. Screaming in a way Sonic hadn’t thought possible. Chaos energy rocketing through the room. He’d thrown himself over Maria’s shaking body, pushing her against the wall and hoping she didn’t hear the screams as well as he did. And then Amy was pulling him up, an arm under Maria, scanning her body. Her face fell in a way he did not want to accept, and then Shadow was pushing them forwards.

The stars were spinning. Space was spinning. And he didn’t know if the pod was actually spinning or if it was just the panic getting to his head. Escape pods had plenty of air, but it already felt like it was gone. Like his throat was scratchy, and he couldn’t feel a single thing under his hands.

“It’s going to be okay,” Shadow promised, laying Maria against the large metal slab of a keyboard. He stood on his tip-toes, pressing buttons at a wild speed. He reached up to squeeze Sonic’s hand. Sonic hadn’t said anything in a long while. Part of him wondered if he was going to be able to say anything ever again.

And now he was crying. He was crying like a fucking baby, and he needed to stop it. He wildly shook his quills until the fake emerald clanged against the floor behind him. His fingers scrambled at its edge, and he had to try several times to actually get a grip on it before he could pull it in front of him.

“I’ll stay. I can get the rest of you out of here.” Shadow said.

That was when Sonic had found his voice, just in time to say, “Absolutely not.”

“We’re not splitting up!” Amy gasped.

“I’ll be fine. But it’s my job to make sure you all are safe.” Shadow said. “Someone needs to go with Maria. Once you land, find someone to help.” His voice was shaking. “Everything’s going go be okay. I will come find you when–”

Shadow was suddenly lifted into the air, tossed forwards. Sonic turned, gasping, and barely caught a glimpse of an escape pod closing around him before Maria picked him up, too.

Sonic grasped the emerald, holding it tight to his chest. It wasn’t real. But it had similar properties, right? That’s what Tails had said?

Get me out of here, he thought, hands tight over the gem. Get me out of here.

Get me OUT of HERE. Get me OUT.

Maria was saying something. He couldn’t hear it. Already, a burst of smoke was filling his vision. His eyes were heavy, his mind stalling. Somehow, he could still see her blood. He felt like he could hear Shadow and Amy shout.

He’s drowning.

Maria, get me out. Get me out.

“Chaos control.”

{ao3} {tumblr}

#sonic fanfiction #NOT MINE #a cluster of burning stars #NOT MY AU #fav #reblog

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