Ancient Secret, Inner Emerald

Inner Emerald

For a moment it felt like time had stopped.

"Now before you freak out! Let me explain." Tikal quickly blurted, interrupting his train of thought.

"It goes back thousands and thousands of years. In the beginning there weren't just seven chaos emeralds, there were eight. The ones you know," she then held up the iridescent emerald, "and this one."

"Instead of remaining as an emerald, this one took on a new form, the hedgehog you've grown to know as-"

"Sonic." Amy finished for her with a breathless gasp.

It felt like the entire world as he knew it was crashing down on top of him. He was wrong about Eggman's beam, so horribly wrong. His brother had been- he'd been- and he didn't even-

"Did he know?" Was all he managed to make out.

"Huh?"

"All this time, all these years, did Sonic keep this from us? Did he know? Did he know he wasn't really- that he wasn't actually-"

Tikal seemed startled once she picked up on what Tails was trying to say.

"No no no no no!" She frantically waved her hands, the emerald floating beside her.

"Look, the emerald may take this form but the person it becomes never actually knows. And their bodies still live, breath, die, and bleed the same way all of you would." She assured him.

"Sonic is just as real as any of you are."

"But he's an emerald." Knuckles stated flatly.

"Er- yes." She fumbled.

"...So technically-"

"Knuckles, I swear to Chaos. Don't you dare." Amy stared at him with intense eyes.

"So technically," he continued "we could have used him to chaos control?"

Amy slapped him in the back of the head so hard the echidna nearly lost his balance and faceplanted.

Tails chuckled half-heartedly but wasn't really in the moment, he was focused on what Tikal had just revealed to them.

Sonic was an emerald.

Sonic had always been an emerald.

Everything clicked into place all at once.

"It all makes sense." Tails muttered.

"Huh?" Amy questioned beside him.

"It all makes sense!" He repeated louder. "Think about it, if Sonic was an emerald, and he got shot by a machine that's meant to extract emeralds-"

"Then- it would try to extract the only one there!" Amy realized with him.

"Exactly! And think of all the other things, his speed, his durability, his resonance with chaos energy."

Tikal giggled at their realization. "Did it ever occur to you that the only time anyone goes super, is while in his presence?"

Tails' eyes went wide. "You're kidding."

Tikal shook her head.

"You do need all the emeralds present... Or at the very least their support."

"That's crazy! This- this was crazy. All this time?" He hummed for a second.

"So the reason Knuckles could control him-?"

Tikal smiled warmly with closed eyes. "I'm afraid the Chaos Emeralds really only listen to a few things, their holders, Master Emerald, and-"

"And it's keeper's, the echidnas." Tails finished for her with a smile. "That's why Knuckles was able to make him stop when we couldn't."

"Mhm. " She replied.

"Wait- wait- wait a minute." Amy suddenly stepped up, looking deep in concentration, as if something new just occurred to her.

"So... the reason Sonic can't swim?"

Tikal smiled sheepishly.

"No. Freaking. Way." A smile split her face.

"Swimming isn't exactly a rock's best skill." Tikal smiled wearily.

"AHHHH!" Amy cried stamping her feet "Oh Chaos that's hilarious! All this time!"

Tikal laughed with her until everyone grew silent again slowly.

"As funny, and frankly confusing, as this is, do you think you could...?" Knuckles gestured to the emerald.

Tikal smiled again but it was that sad one, the one that was hiding something buried deep down.

"Of course." She walked up to the podium and placed the smaller emerald above the larger one allowing it to float just above it.

It still felt like he was missing something though. And it wasn't just the fact Sonic wasn't here. Something wasn't right with Tikal's story. Like she'd left out a few details.

There was a huge hole in this whole thing that he couldn't quite put his finger on.

Glowing light began to rush between the Master Emerald and the Chaos Emerald. It flashed and in the same way Sonic had left, a body began to materialize from the emerald.

Shapes of light formed a chest and arms and legs. And then-

Two long quills that reached down the figure's back with another shorter one at the top of his head. Then shoes and gloves and a large scarf formed.

The form shifted and solidified before the figure dropped down. The light dissipated and revealed a Mobian who was very much not Sonic.

He had two long quills the way Silver did but without the fan of smaller ones on his forehead. He almost had more light purplish quills on top of that. Like a washed out blue, with grey and lavender mixed in.

His clothes were different too. He had shoes that looked like they came straight from science fiction. They almost looked like the shoes sonic had worn during their ARK days when they first met Shadow but more high tech. They were dark brown with lines of glowing blue shooting through them and a strange platform covering the divet that would've been used for rail grinding.

His gloves were the same brown. They were fingerless with little black and green plates covering each of his knuckles.

On top of all of that he wore a large brown scarf that had two cape-like trails coming off of it in the back.

A pin was also attached to one the side of the scarf. It was a shape that had no meaning to him, but one they all recognized well.

It was the same symbol they'd found everywhere throughout the Ancient's ruins. The same symbol that appeared in the sky whenever one of the koco passed on.

His eyelids flickered once, then twice, and then opened.

Once again, two opal irises met them.