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"Oh ho ho ho ho!"
Tails couldn't believe his eyes. Above them Robotnik stood very tall, very tall. As high as the castle and as menacing as an orca when Sonic got in its way.
"Knuckles!" Sonic cried. "Are you ok?" He shook his friend trying to reawaken him.
Knuckles let out a groan before touching his hand to his head. "What-?"
A great amount of water was displaced from the expansion of Sonic's greatest enemy. All that water finally reached the mers and pushed them back.
Well that was one way to fully wake up.
"What's going on?" Knuckles all but yelled.
"Robotnik got every piece of the emerald! And he's gonna destroy all of us to make way for his amusement park!" Y'know saying it out loud it did sound kind of ridiculous, Sonic thought.
Up above no such thoughts were consoling Shadow or Rouge with their humor.
"I must be losing my damn mind"
"You're not hon, I can see it too"
"Pesky mosquitos." Robotnik had heard their confusion and swatted them down into the water below.
"AAAHHHHHHH!!" They both cried.
They hit the water with a thunderous crash and, fortunately for Rouge, Shadow had taken the brunt of the impact knowing he would heal faster than her and to not allow any harm to the princess.
Silver was watching in mute terror as Robotnik got ready to destroy, creating a large spear to split the water and pierce the mers underwater haven.
Before Eggman was able to get his weapon to form completely a dark smudge marred the surface of the ocean.
It was a person! No, as Silver swam closer he recognized it as two people; the handsome princess Knuckles loved so dearly and the dark hedgehog that was always attending her.
They would have continued the slow descent to the murky depths if not for Silver grabbing them and keeping them afloat.
"I've got you!" He looked for any place that would be more safe than his arms when he saw all of his friends break above the water not too far away. "Guys! I need a little help over here!"
"Silver!" Sonic immediately swam straight for him.
Sonic grabbed the dark unconscious hedgehog from Silver and kept him from sinking.
As Knuckles drew close he saw his heart's desire before him. "Rouge!" He took her head in his hands and felt panic rising at the lack of response.
It didn't last long though, as Rouge stuttered a cough and cracked her eyes open.
"Knuckles-?" She reached out to him, wanting to know if she was dreaming after an hour of searching for the man her eyes tried to tell her was right in front of her.
Silver handed her off to Knuckles who immediately went to cradle her.
And for a moment nothing mattered. To Rouge the stars above her and the hunk before her were all that existed. And to Knuckles only the water they floated in and the handsome manifestation of his heart.
Their moment of tranquility was cut too short as a familiar laugh boomed above them.
"Oh ho ho ho ho ho. Finally." They looked up as Robotnik put both his hands on his finished chaos spear. It was as intricate as it was deadly, and the sheer power it held sent shivers down all of the heroes' spines.
He reared back and prepared to strike when he saw the motley crew.
"How are you going to stop me now Sonic? You and your little friends can't do anything." Someone sure loved to gloat.
Before Sonic could fire a comeback Tails grabbed his arm.
"Sonic, he's got a point. We can't take him down like this."
"Don't worry bro, I've got an idea. Follow me."
Shifting the dark presence in his arms(seriously how was this guy still out?) he swam towards an outcropping of rock that ships would reck on if they didn't steer clear.
A vicious storm was brewing high in the clouds and Sonic's plan hinged on Robotnik's focus on him.
He handed Shadow(as he would come to know) back to Silver.
"Hey egg-breath! Over here!" Sonic taunted.
"Why you little-" he swirled his chaos spear through the clouds and the water, making a giant whirlpool that only grew bigger as it drew closer. Looks like Eggman took the bait.
Sonic turned to Rouge. "Hold your breath, you-" but the rest of his words were lost as they were all pulled to the bottom of the swirling vortex Robotnik was maintaining.
Knuckles had a hand firmly clamped over Rouge's mouth not leaving her air to the deadly force that knocked them about.
The whirlpool's strength first pulled large amounts of sand from the seafloor until entire wrecked ships were brought to the surface.
Tails realized Sonic's plan as soon as he saw the first boat shoot past him. "GRAB ON TO A BOAT!!" He screamed, hoping to be heard by his fellow mers that were stuck spinning with the waves.
While it didn't reach Silver he got uncontrollably scooped up by a large brig that came up from behind him.
Knuckles on the other hand did hear it but couldn't do anything about it. With one hand wrapped around Rouge's torso and the other on her mouth he couldn't even maneuver let alone climb aboard any of the ships that were speeding by.
Rouge's lungs burned. She needed air, but couldn't get that precious resource in her current predicament. She tried opening her eyes only to immediately close them at the sting of the salt water.
What was she supposed to do? She couldn't even look for anything let alone do something about it at the small possibility of her seeing something useful.
She felt something smack her front. Lots of somethings. Ropes she blearily noted. She knew a lot about ropes having spent so much time at sea, going from one kingdom to the next on whatever important business she had to attend to that day. Often she would return home only to go to her chambers, too tired to enjoy the beautiful ocean side kingdom she called home. She would give anything to just be in bed, for this to all have been a bad nightmare.
But then she wouldn't have met Knuckles.
No.
She would not prefer it if this was a dream. She would take a million more giant evil wizards if it meant she got to see Knuckle's face again, lighting up as he tried grapes for the first time. Or when he examined his gloves when they first shared a meal. Or the cute way his face scrunched up in frustration when she couldn't guess his name.
She reached out to the ropes in front of her, grabbing one and holding on with all her strength.
It yanked them forward and Knuckles was shocked it didn't slip from her fingers. Handsome and strong.
Then they burst out of the water as the boat got pulled up. Knuckles let go of her face and grabbed the rope alongside her hand.
She took a deep breath and opened her eyes, the dark spots at the edge of her vision fading.
They climbed up to be properly on the boat as Rouge caught her breath.
Tails and Sonic watched from the boat they shared as the last of their friends made it to the surface on a wooden behemoth pulled from the deadly seafloor.
"Oh thank Gaia." Tails sighed in relief. Then he smacked Sonic upside his head. "DON'T EVER DO THAT AGAIN! WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU!!"
"Ow, dude. C'mon."
"Give us some sort of warning before you get all of us pulled to our certain deaths in the future, won't you?"
Sonic held tight to the rope he was depending on to keep him in the boat as it was swung around the center of the whirlpool. "We can argue about it later, ok? We're kinda not done yet." Sonic pointed to Robotnik who was using his free hand to make another giant chaos spear.
"Ok, so what do we do now?"
"We need to crash a boat into Egghead. Then grab the master emerald as it falls away and use it to put everything right." Sonic had to raise his voice a bit over the calamity happening on all sides.
Tails looked to the helm of the ship. If he had a distraction he could theoretically turn the boat and catch Robotnik off guard.
"Do you think you can distract Robotnik?"
"Do you know who you're talking to? I'm the master of getting that idiot eggs' attention." Sonic gave Tails a thumbs up and started to climb the rope up to the raggedy net in the middle of the ship that deck hands would climb to get to the lookout.
Of course he didn't know that was what it was for even as he used it with ease to get as high up as he could with only his arms and sheer determination.
He looked out at the other boats that held his friends. Knuckles and Rouge appeared to be holding on pretty well but Silver seemed to have his hands full trying to not drop the sack of rocks that was the princess's attendant.
Sonic looked for an opening and found it in the shape of a smaller boat between his and Silvers. He leaped off the lookout without a second thought and narrowly grabbed the edge of the smaller ship.
Pulling himself up onto the glorified row boat, he realized how bad this would be if they weren't able to get the master emerald when it fell from Robotnik. The boats would keep spinning and without all of the luck of Gaia on their side they would crash into the village even without the wizard trying.
With new determination at this realization, Sonic pushed off the back of the small boat to the larger one that contained one of his best friends and a complete stranger. Both of whom he would stop at nothing to save.
Grunting with exertion he hauled himself onto the deck Sonic looked to the two others. Silver was barely holding on and the rope he had chosen to stake his and the darker hedgehogs lives on wasn't holding up to his expectations as it started to tear.
"Silver!" Sonic grabbed a handful of ropes and lunged towards the yellow tailed mer.
He wrapped his arm under the lighter hedgehog's arms and held tight.
Silver looked up at the blue hero and figured out what was happening. He let go of the ripped rope and grabbed on to the bundle Sonic had with the hand not holding Shadow.
Both of them adjusted so that each had a hand on Shadow's back. "Silver, we need to distract Eggman so Tails can crash a boat into him and knock the master emerald out. Then someone has to grab it and pass it to me so I can go super and stop these boats from crashing into the village." That was probably the longest sentence Sonic had ever said without making a joke.
Silver had also noticed. "That's all we gotta do, huh?" He tried to make light of the situation like a certain blue hedgehog he knew.
"Yeah, pretty simple if I do say so myself." Sonic appreciated how caring Silver was. Even in the worst situation they've ever been in and he had Sonic's emotions at high priority.
"We need to get somewhere where we're not about to fall off the side of this boat." Silver's arms were getting tired, and he didn't know how long he could hold on to the dark figure between them.
Sonic looked around at the boat. Due to it having crashed however many years before it wasn't the most structurally sound. They could probably get to the lookout as he had done before, but Sonic didn't trust the look of that pillar of rotting wood.
Then as he looked back out to where Robotnik had been gloating without any real audience, he saw the ship Knuckles and the handsome princess were on. It looked a lot better than Silvers and all of them together had a better chance of completely distracting Eggman so Tails could do his thing.
"We have to get over there." Sonic pointed to one of the biggest rapidly spinning wooden ships in the vortex of death and Silver looked over and his eyes widened.
"How are we supposed to do that with this dead weight?" If Shadow had been awake he would have been offended. The reason he was still out was so he could heal rapidly. That impact on the water would leave not only a giant nasty bruise on the back of any mobian, but they would've broken a couple bones too. Shadow's body was just fixing anything that was wrong as fast as it could, and all that diverted energy caused him to still be passed out.
But he wasn't awake so that explanation didn't get shared with the two currently holding him.
Sonic shifted. To get all three of them to that boat he would need to be crafty. He looked out to the goal on the other side of the whirlpool. All the boats were slightly tilted inwards because of the water. Maybe...
It was a bad plan, he knew it. But they needed to do this quickly and nothing else was coming to him. "Silver, we need to launch ourselves at the other boat."
"What? How would we even do that?"
Sonic pointed to the rain. "If we can get to the front of the ship we can use the spinning to our advantage. Then with how wet everything is we'll slide off the back and be shot towards Knuckles." He was glad the boat was pretty decrepit and all the things that would be in their way on a normal boat had been broken off.
"This is a really bad plan." Silver said even as they climbed towards where the captain's quarters would be on a normal ship.
"I know, but do you see any others?" Sonic got into position and wondered how his friends still put up with him.
"So now we just... let go?" Silver tightened his grip on Shadow.
"Uh, I guess so. I'm not actually the best at math or anything so I could be wrong."
"WHAT?!"
"One two three let go now!" Sonic didn't give Silver a chance to be worried as they started their impromptu slide towards the back of the boat. Sonic twisted his body to take on the onslaught of wood until they were soaring through the air from one boat to the next as if it were normal.
They landed with a resounding thump on the sturdier ship and scrabbled to grab on to something before they accidentally did Sonic's bad plan again.
"Sonic! Silver!" Knuckles looked at his friends in confusion. How did they-?
"SHADOW!" Rouge's scream stopped his train of thought and before he could stop her she was making her way over to the hedgehogs. "Shadow, wake up hon please." She looked up. "What happened?"
It was from when you crashed into the water, he hasn't woken back up since then." Silver explained.
"He's been out that long?" Looks like even Shadow's best friend could use that earlier explanation.
"We don't have time to worry about him! We need to distract Eggman!" Sonic pointed to the giant. He would be shocked that he was still monologuing to himself, but after knowing him this long it was almost expected.
"Distract him from what exactly?" Knuckles asked.
"Tails is gonna crash a boat into him to get the master emerald out. Then we have to grab it and pass it to me so I can go super and fix everything."
They all nodded in agreement, it was a good plan all they needed to do was pull it off.
"Yo egg head!! Are you finished talking to yourself, or did you want some privacy?" Sonic taunted.
"You little rat, you just don't know when to quit." Eggman turned towards the offending mer and unknowingly by giving him his attention fell right into their trap.
Rouge had flown with Silver to a ship that was near the one her and Knuckles had been on, and using all of his telekinetic power he lifted the broken mast in the air and shot it towards Eggman.
Rouge stared. That was really cool, do the mers do stuff like this all the time?
In the same moment Knuckles had broken off the mast of the ship he, Sonic, and an unconscious Shadow were on and he used all his strength to throw it at Robotnik.
"He's pretty strong, isn't he?" Sonic nudged Shadow's limp shoulder from where he was holding on to a remaining banister, and Shadow would have fallen into the deep fathoms below if it weren't for Sonic's fast reflexes. "Not a talker, eh?"
Robotnik managed to catch the one Knuckles had thrown, all of his focus in the blue blurs direction, but the one Silver had flung at him struck home.
"Oh! You little rodent. How dare you!"
Rouge froze as the evil wizard turned to her and Silver.
"Ah look, it's the princess." He reached out to grab her but Silver used his telekinesis to stop his hand from getting any closer.
Tails, on the other side of the whirlpool, wasn't having the best time trying to fight the unnatural waves that Eggman had created. He put all his body weight into trying to turn the ship but it wasn't moving. He needed something stronger, but all his friends were occupied giving him this window of opportunity in the first place.
He needed a miracle.
Suddenly the boat lurched and spun against the water of the whirlpool. Tails peered over the edge of the boat and saw it had hit a rock and had stopped being pulled by the water. The whirlpool kept drifting along leaving his boat out of it.
All at once he realized the boat was now facing Robotnik. All it had to do was go forward.
When tails was swimming he could do this move to give himself more speed, it was how he kept up with Sonic. He would use his split tail to spin him like a turbine and be propelled forward.
If he could get something on the back of the boat to do the same it could push it into the newly hulking form of Robotnik.
He took the damaged sail, the broken mast, and anything else he could use to build as he quickly made a contraption that would fit on the back of the ship. He rigged it up to a pulley system and attached it, then using all of his strength he yanked on the rope and his boat went flying directly towards Eggman.
Sonic looked up from his unresponsive buddy(Sonic and Shadow are not buddies, they've never even really met, Sonics just bored) and saw a ship going breakneck speed headed right for Robotnik. "Holy chaos!"
"What?" Robotnik started to turn in the direction Sonic was looking but got cut off by a large ship slamming right into him.
Tails got launched off the front of the boat and the master emerald got knocked out of Eggman. All three fell into the center of the whirlpool and got pulled deep down.
"SOMEBODY GRAB THE EMERALD!" With the storm dying down from Robotnik not being there to sustain it, Sonic knew that everyone would be able to hear him.
No one could get it; they were too busy trying not to fall off their respective ships. Sonic started to panic. What if they couldn't retrieve the master emerald? Or worse if Robotnik got back to it under water!
But yelling at the top of your lungs is a surefire way to raise the dead and Shadow lurched forward in Sonic's grip and opened his eyes wide. Sonic turned to stare at the sudden movement when he caught Shadow and kept him from falling. For a second he just stared at him, so surprised by his wakefulness that he didn't know what to say.
Until Shadow pushed him away with a grunt and subsequently fell off the side of the boat and into the water.
"Oh, shit!" Sonic dived in after him and Silver from the other boat saw everything go down and, after making sure Rouge had a good hold and wasn't going to fall, jumped in as well.
Rouge watched as Silver disappeared under the water. She hoped everything would be okay, thinking about it she didn't really do much to help. All she wanted when she came out here was to find Knuckles and save him, which at the moment felt pretty selfish compared to how heroic all these people she didn't even know were being. She could have done more, no should have. Instead of just sitting around doing nothing like she's been doing her whole life.
"Augh!"
Rouge whipped her head in the direction of the grunt that she was not yet familiar with. It was Knuckles, after throwing the mast he had fallen back down to the boat and grabbed the stump of what was left of the mighty post used to hold up the sail. But he had lost his grip and was currently sliding down the deck.
Rouge's instincts kicked in and without even a thought she flew over and grabbed him before he could fall. She flew up and away from the danger of the spinning boats and swinging masts.
Knuckles looked up at the handsome princess, in awe at her actions. She just saved him, with no hesitation! He only met her a few days ago and yet it feels like he's known her forever. Man, has it only been a few days? It feels like months, like four specifically.
Rouge looked around and saw a rock that was kind of flat. She flew over and set Knuckles down, sitting beside him herself. “Are you ok?” she touched all over him checking for injuries. She got to one of his arms and was surprised at how firm the muscle was. “Woo, grew these yourself, handsome?”
Knuckles blushed. “I- well, of course I did. What do you mean?” he was confused why she would even ask.
“It's an expression hon.” she paused looking up at his face. “Are you sure you’re ok?”
“I’ve been through worse. I always come out the other side better than ever.” he pumped his chest to add impact to his words, but it was endearing to Rouge for entirely different reasons.
“You’re so cute.” she said before she could catch herself. Though as she saw him squirm and try to deny it she was grateful she had not held her tongue. He really was cute.
“You must be crazy, I’m not cute. If anything I'm manly or rugged. Not cute at all.” Just then he realized her hand was still on his arm. He coughed and nudged it with his hand as he looked out onto the water.
“Hmm? Oh this?” she slid her hand up to his shoulder. “Does it make you uncomfortable?” she scooted closer. “Would you like me to let you go?” she asked in a sultry voice.
He spluttered. “I, um, yes please.” he said meekly, he's not beating those ‘cute’ allegations any time soon.
She laughed and let go. “Sorry if I made you embarrassed.” Her sentiment didn't come across as well because of her cheeky smile.
“It’s okay.” He didn't look her in the eyes. Until he took a deep breath and turned. “I think we need to talk, um, about us.”
Her look turned serious. “Yeah, we do.”
But neither of them said anything, Knuckles kept opening and closing his mouth so much that he felt like one of those stupid fish that would always swim in his way. In the water. He splashed the edge of his tail in the water. He was glad to have it back but he would miss walking around the kingdom. Walking with Rouge, seeing the sights he had always wanted to see, feeling hearing tasting. All those new sensations that he would have never felt if Rouge hadn't taken him in. She was too kind to him, he never even paid her back for all of that.
She deserves the world. How could he give it to her? He looked up at the stars and squinted, he could probably bring her something from his rock collection. He remembered that she liked shiny things and he had a few that could probably be considered as that. There was the shell Tails had found for him, but regifting it felt wrong.
Rouge couldn't help but stare at Knuckles as his face was a painting of his thoughts. A soft smile spread across her face at how it was clear he was working through some kind of problem. She cleared her breath and broke the silence that had overtaken them.
“I-”
Suddenly a very bright shape burst out from the water and stopped anything she had to say. Three figures peeled away from each other to reveal that it was Sonic, Shadow, and Silver in their super forms.
Knuckles didn't even know Mobians could go super. He couldn't take his eyes off the glowing forms floating above the vortex of spinning death.
Then they broke off into three directions, using their extra power gained by the master emerald to lift every single ship and calm the water. They slowly put all the boats back in and Sonic and Silver continued descending with them and sunk into the water seemingly to make sure the decrepit wooden structures wouldn't be placed on top of anything.
Shadow watched them go down before turning to Rouge and Knuckles. “Are you ok?” His voice sounded like an echo, like it wasn't all there.
“Yes, I made sure nothing happened to her.” Knuckles put his hand on her shoulder as he addressed Shadow. “She's good.” He looked at her stunned and stunning face. “Great, even.”
Shadow nodded and turned back down towards the water just as Sonic and Silver year again emerged.
Somewhere near where the center of the whirlpool would have been, Tails popped his head above the surface.
“How did you guys do all that?! It was so cool watching you beat up Eggman and put everything right after you turned super! Oh man Knuckles, you should of seen it! They were so cool!” Tails kept talking excitedly as he swam to the rock he and Rouge were on.
“That sounds great dude, but when are they gonna stop being super? It's kinda hurting my eyes.”
Sonic chuckled at that. “What? You can't handle all this?” Then he gestured to himself and his fellow hedgehogs. “Guess we're too cool for you.”
“We really should turn back, these forms aren't sustainable for long. You know that Sonic.” Silver shook his head at Sonic's antics.
“I don't know you very well but I know I'm probably not going to like you.” Shadow said as he poked Sonic in the chest.
“Well, you're not too much fun either.”
“Stop fighting and change back already, I want to go home, Shadow.” Rouge was already fed up.
The super powered hedgehogs relinquished the power of the emerald and floated back to earth. Knuckles caught all the pieces of the master emerald and put it back together. He figured it would make it easier to transport.
Shadow sat on the rock and Rouge shuffled to make room for him, pushing Knuckles into the water in the process. “Oh, sorry Knuckles.”
“It's ok, we need to swim you two back to land anyways.” he turned so his back was turned to the sky. “Grab hold.”
“Oh, don't mind if I do.” She gently climbed onto his back and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “My, how comfortable.”
“Hey Shadow, you should get on my back.” Sonic said playfully.
“Ok.” Unfortunately for him Shadow didn't pick up on the sarcastic nature of Sonic's comment and figured he was the strongest swimmer after Knuckles, so he would be the obvious choice.
“Oh, ok.” Sonic hesitantly let Shadow hold onto him on the way back. It was decorated with as much arguing as you would expect.
But eventually they made it back and Shadow quickly jumped off Sonic as soon as the water was low enough for him to walk.
Rouge and Knuckles, on the other hand, were a little more hesitant to part.
“Uh, you should get some rest. I can imagine that having a forced wedding and being stuck in a giant whirlpool were pretty exhausting.
“Heh, yeah.” Rouge hesitated. She didn't want to say goodbye without even a promise of meeting again. “Do you wanna check on me tomorrow? Make sure I get enough rest?” She hoped her silent offer of company didn't go unnoticed.
It went completely over his head. “I don't think I'll be able to. I'm sure there's plenty of damage to the village, and I have to apologize to all the people for causing this mess in the first place. I don't think I'll have much time to spare. But, I could probably come back in a few days.”
Rouge sighed, why did she always fall for the blockheads? “Sure three days we’ll meet right here at high tide. I'll see you then.” She gave him a kiss on his cheek before turning and forcing herself to walk away calmly.
Knuckles rubbed the spot on his face. Three days. He couldn't wait.