Chapter 7

It was just a brief hike downhill to find the biplane, but it left Knuckles achy and short of breath and overall grateful for the chance to get a look at things without having to run or walk all the way. But it wasn't even important if he felt tired and sore, when there were so many other things to consider. He would have time to rest and heal later. The echidna sat at the edge of his seat as the Tornado climbed up from its starting run on a field of grass and barely skimmed over the treetops of the forests. Part of this pose was down to the fact he wasn't yet fond of leaning against his still sore and tender back, the rest of it was plain anxiety.

He had no idea how much damage there was. His own memories were vague and fuzzy and with more gaps than coherent recall of the events, let alone the actual impact of these events on the environment. The Floating Island was a fragile system in many ways. How far down had the fires spread? The pine forests up high were capable of recovering from a fire within a few years. The jungles downhill were not. The giant jungle trees took centuries to grow this tall and strong, and the island wasn't particularly large as ecosystems went. A lot of the plants were unique to even just one zone, and if a fire or something else were to kill all of one type, it was lost and couldn't be recovered again. Like him, a lot of Angel Island's inhabitants were the last of their kinds.

Below them, the treetops were falling away as Tails climbed higher into the sunlit sky. The close-up gave way to a broader field of view. Ghostly shapes of mist clung to the island's slopes, crawling between the trees and into the rocky nooks and crevices. From all the way up the hill, Ice Caps glaciers sparkled blindingly white in the sunlight.

Finally, with a gentle curve that followed the island's shape, the site of the eruption appeared below the wings. Knuckles leaned over the side of the plane to get the best view.

It seemed devastating on first look.

What had been a colourful field of alpine flowers in full bloom was covered in a thick coat of dust. The formerly bright green, healthy patches of pine forest stood in pitch black tatters, bent under heat or the force of the initial blast. Some had been outright uprooted and thrown a long way downhill.

Heavy shapes of mist, reminders of the night's rain, clutched to the scorched trees, wreathing a coat of unreality around them.

"You were right, all the fires are out, and the crater almost stopped smoking, too." Tails' words, though obviously he'd spoken to Sonic up on the wings, still roused Knuckles out of the shocked trance.

Tails was right, it could potentially be a lot worse, all in all the fire had remained rather local instead of devastating larger areas of the entire island, but the echidna couldn't keep the cynical tone from his voice. "Yeah, right."

The short look Tails threw back at him over his shoulder in between controlling the plane was stricken and apologizing, and from the wings, facing back to them as he often did, Sonic's expression was one of sympathy and something else Knuckles couldn't really place. Something stubborn. Something Sonic. "Don't they say volcanic ash is really good for plants? Fertile ground?"

Unconsciously Knuckles' eyes wandered past the burned field, along the shape of the island to where some of his best vineyards sat in one of those black fields of volcanic dusts. "Yeah," he trailed.

"So probably the forest will grow back quickly." At another time, Knuckles would have wondered how Sonic had so spot on guessed his train of thought. Then again, the distraught look at the sight below was probably hard to miss on his face. Was it a far leap to guess what he was thinking about?

"I don't know," he mumbled. "A few years. The forest Eggman torched is recovering relatively well."

"I heard that sometimes a fire is good for a forest. Allows fresh little trees to grow." When Knuckles raised a brow at him, Sonic was shrugging. "What? I get around. I see things. People tell me things. Sometimes I even remember them, too."

Knuckles snorted. Impossible, that hedgehog. But did he have a point? He threw another distressed look down at the black slope.

"Is it common?", Tails suddenly asked. "I mean, eruptions?"

"I don't think so." The guardian studied the small crater, then followed the curve of the mountain uphill to where Lava Reef's large crater sat between the highest peaks of the island. "It has never happened in my lifetime. The lava flows and ash fields you can find in different areas of the island outside of Lava Reef are usually at least in parts overgrown. Several hundreds of years old at least." He turned back to his friends. "Chronicles from when the island was young mention more volcanic activity, but I think it's dormant most of the time." He went back to studying the young, new crater. "I don't know what brought this on."

"Tails suggested a pressure build-up," Sonic noticed.

The fox nodded. "It's possible for hot gases and the like to get stuck in the rocks somewhere and the pressure just builds and builds until it breaks free and explodes. Maybe that's what it was."

Knuckles just hummed in response and went back to looking down. Tails flew a couple of rounds across the eruption area and they observed it in silence.

Then Sonic apparently couldn't stand it anymore. He gestured vaguely down at the slope. "I'm afraid we'll have to pick out a new track for our Gear racing."

Knuckles stared. He'd forgotten all about that, but something about the change of topic was too compelling to resist. "I'm afraid I have no idea where my board even ended up," he noticed.

"Oh, we found that one," Sonic said, and there was a weird, shaky undertone to it. "I don't think it can saved, though. It's kinda molten into the ground."

Knuckles was kept from asking about what the heck that was supposed to mean by Tails' protest of "Sonic!"

Sonic's tone had been weird. Tails sounded – he didn't even have a fitting word for it, but it was something he was sure he never wanted to hear in his young friend's voice.

Apparently also Sonic had figured he'd said something he shouldn't have, for whatever reason. Knuckles felt like he missed a whole lot of context here, but it didn't seem the time to ask.

On the wings, Sonic had crouched down right in front of the windshield, the propeller downwash ripping at his quills, but Sonic didn't seem to mind, he was only looking at Tails. "Autopilot, buddy." It wasn't even a question. It wasn't directly a command either, but something close enough, and Tails just complied with it.

Sonic was still crouched low. "I'm sorry, kiddo. I didn't think."

"S'okay," Tails mumbled. "I'm being ridiculous. He's gonna be fine."

"You're not being ridiculous." Sonic firmly shook his head. "It's quite alright."

Tails was silent for a few seconds. "I don't even know – It's over, Sonic. Done. We're okay… But… but, I was so scared when we found it! When I first saw the red, I thought it was Knuckles for a second, then I realized it was not, but it was so broken, bent and molten and just – I thought-" He sniffed.

"Yeah, I know. I know. Me too." A detached part of Knuckles that was stuck just watching noticed there was a thoughtful and caring side of Sonic that was reserved for Tails. "It's okay to be rattled, little bro."

"You just do a much better job about stopping being rattled," the fox mumbled.

Sonic smiled softly. "No. We're better at hiding it."

Knuckles wondered if he should have an opinion on being included so readily in the statement, but he didn't. Not while Tails was so obviously distressed. "I'm sorry, Tails." He didn't even know what he was apologizing for to the little guy.

Apparently Sonic knew that, because he looked away from Tails long enough to shoot a quite exasperated glare at Knuckles. "Will you stop apologizing for being blown up, please? It's ridiculous. Did you go, hey, volcano, please blow me up?"

"Of course not!" That was ridiculous. As was Sonic's casual wording to frame the events.

But maybe the hedgehog knew exactly what he was doing anyway, because Tails' ears were picking back up. It was the only sign of emotion Knuckles could easily see given the seating arrangement. "Leave him alone, Sonic," the fox said, and he sounded more like himself again.

"Why? Someone clearly needs to set his head straight." Sonic was grinning now. "I mean, I get the whole Guardian Master of this Magical Island thing, but I think the lines need to be drawn at making volcanoes erupt." He paused, green eyes suddenly piercing as he studied Knuckles. "Can you make volcanoes erupt here?"

"No. Don't be silly."

Sonic shrugged and stood back upright on his spot atop the wings. "Well, you can do the whole making the island float thing, it seemed a fair question."

"Even if he could, why would he ever do that?" Tails finally seemed relatively relaxed again, and he was back to asking questions and thinking sensibly. His fingers flicked a few switches again, then he pulled at the stick and the Tornado leaned into a gentle curve back towards the island after having moved away from it while on autopilot.

"What do I know? Think of how effective a death trap that would make for Emerald thieves. Screw jigged bridges dropping you into pits, now it's eruptions blowing the intruders away!" Sonic seemed to have found an unreasonable amount of sudden vigor and motivation for this idea.

Tails was laughing. "Stop, you'll just give him ideas! He'll go and try that!"

"I can hear you," Knuckles grumbled.

In front of him, Tails turned over his shoulder, a genuine smile on his face. "I'm glad you're okay."

Knuckles smiled back. "Yeah, me too. Thank you, Tails."

"Hey, what about me?", Sonic complained.

"You apparently just give me dumb ideas and I shouldn't socialize with you." He was rewarded with both of his friends' laughter.

Slowly, the Tornado circled the island. Tails threw a look down at the black scar on its side. "I'm still glad it's over," he said.

"I guess that goes for all of us," Knuckles allowed.

Atop the wings, Sonic seemed to have taken on the job to kill any low mood as soon as he saw it. "Probably, but what important and amazing life lessons do we learn from this experience?" He was grinning, obviously jesting. "Apparently you can learn something from everything that happens. So?"

From his position behind him, Knuckles could watch Tails' head tip aside, apparently actually giving it some thought, or at least intending to pretend to. "I dunno," the little fox trailed. "That volcanoes are dangerous?"

Sonic grinned. "Come on, you'll have to do better than that."

"You do better than that," Tails challenged, sending Sonic into a fumbling of "umm"s" and trying to change the topic, even though it had been him to bring it up in the first place.

Tails was laughing through Sonic's excuses, but Knuckles turned back down to the scorched valley. Their antics were familiar and didn't need his attention.

That aside, they were wrong. For his part, he'd learned several things he wouldn't forget anytime soon. Yes, he'd been hurt bad. They'd all been terrified. This slope down there would be a barren stretch of dust and charred trees for years to come.

But he'd indeed learned several things that really called for further consideration.

He tended to think of Angel Island as this sanctuary, this utterly safe place.

It had almost killed him yesterday.

It would be untrue to say he wasn't aware that a lot of things on the island were dangerous. As a natural glider, the countless drops down cliffs and into ravines didn't pose much of a threat, but it was true that theoretically, he could drown in Hydrocity or get caught up in an avalanche at Ice Cap. The storms that hit the island occasionally were dangerous, you could get struck by lightning, or the winds could drop a falling tree on your head, or the rains could cause a landslide. Then of course there was Lava Reef, where the lava flowed in lakes and rivers and what looked like walkable ground would just drop away under your weight towards the liquid fire below.

But all of those were known dangers, something he could predict, something manageable. He'd learned his way around. He'd lived on the island his entire life, he knew which paths were save in Hydrocity, he knew where to set foot in Lava Reef and what to look out for, he knew how to tell a storm was going to hit long before it did. If you knew what to look for, you could see a lot of the potentially dangerous things coming.

It was probably true what he'd said to his friends. Something like this didn't happen for hundreds of years. The youngest discernable eruption areas outside Lava Reef were overgrown with vegetation hundreds of years old. This was the first event in a very long time. Could he expect it to be the last in his lifetime? There was no way to tell if or when something like this would happen again, and there wasn't anything he could do about it, either.

Knuckles tore his eyes away from studying the black slope.

He'd learned something else, too, something he should have probably known in theory, but seeing it for real was something else entirely.

Knuckles' gaze flicked back up to Sonic and Tails, still obliviously jesting with one another.

Those two, all jokes and grins now again, had gone through the fire down there not to stop Eggman or to retrieve Chaos Emeralds, no, just to find him.

.

Fin