Mystic Ruins: Unanswered Questions

On a cliff overlooking the sea near the Mystic Ruins, one could find a house with about two floors. A decent-sized building, it actually only houses one individual.



"And this goes here..." And this individual is none other than Miles Prower, commonly known as Tails by his friends, because of his two tails. At the moment, he was sketching on a sheet of paper for designs on a improved Tornado aircraft, one that could out-preform both Tornadoes II and III. "But, if I do that..." Sighing, he scratched his temples with the edge of the ruler, when he noticed something approach his house... or rather, someone. "Is that... Sonic!" Brightening up rather quickly, he hurried to his front door, before opening it, knowing that Sonic would hate to wait for the door to open.

"Problems?" Tails questioned, as he closed the door when Sonic had gotten inside. "Probably something about Eggman attacking Emerald Town; it's been all over the news!" he added, as he turned on a small TV that played a news broadcast, showing Eggman's robots thrashing the city. "But that's usually something you can handle without any trouble, Sonic... so what's wrong?" he asked, as he got a worried look on his face; when Sonic proclaimed trouble, it was grave trouble.

"Y-yeah..." Tails replied, as he remembered just how they first encountered Knuckles; under the assumption that he and Sonic were trying to steal the Master Emerald, Knuckles attacked Sonic with an uppercut that actually knocked Sonic out of his Super-state, something Tails never fully understood how Knuckles was able to do it, merely guessing that the Master Emerald had something to do with it. "But... what does that have to do with anything?" he asked, as he looked worriedly at his best friend.

"An... evil ego?" Tails asked, scratching his head with the ruler again. "But... how, and... why... Sonic, just how did you get to know this?" he asked in a seriously worried tone, though something told him that he was not going to like the answer.

"Scourge..." Tails muttered, as he looked at the TV-screen with fascination; apart from the color scheme like so many fan-made characters, Scourge was a perfect clone of Sonic, right down to his confident smirk. However, his expression suddenly turned from fascinated to horrified, as he suddenly noticed the hedgehog battling Metal Sonic on quite uneven terms. "Eeh?! He's fighting toe-to-toe with Metal! But... I thought only you could do that!"

"Sonic..." Tails began, before quickly shaking his head. "No, that can't be right, Sonic! I mean, we're talking about Eggman here! He might have been trying to demoralize you!" As he spoke, he remembered how Super Sonic had brought the Death Egg down from the sky when he first turned Super (to Tails' knowledge, that is). "But you can't just say something like that so soon!" Now, he remembered how Sonic had vanquished the evil within Perfect Chaos in Station Square. "Would you have done what you did if the devil had been helping you out?" Now, he remembered how Sonic and Shadow had moved the Space Colony ARK away from colliding with Earth using Chaos Control. "Besides, who says that the devil had anything to do with it?" Now, he remembered how they, along with Knuckles, had brought Metal Sonic's Overlord form down from the skies. "You do remember that Chaos absorbed only the negative energies of the emeralds, so this Scourge could be a by-product of that negative energy!"

"I..." Tails slowly looked into the ground; he hadn't thought too much of it, but the Chaos Emeralds did have a quite devestating power, as Chaos perfectly showed them nearly two years ago, and if the negative energy had inflicted everyone who had used their power... "Well... we could always try collecting the Emeralds, and see what would happen then, right?" he asked, as he quickly looked up again. "After all, its possible that the reason that Eggman invaded Emerald Town was to find traces after them, so we might as well get them before he does, right?"

Tails glanced over at the screen, looking worriedly at Scourge. True, if Scourge acted like he was Sonic gone horribly bad, there would be a chance that people would call him a fraud, but then again, nearly the entire world was under the assumption that Shadow was Sonic... "I... don't think we should worry too much about that." he finally said, before looking back at Sonic. "I don't think people will buy it like they did with Shadow, so we should rather focus on beating Eggman to the punch!"

"Experiments with evil energy..." Tails muttered, scratching his head with the ruler once more. "Maybe he was studying the negative energies of the emeralds?" he then added.

Tails tapped his chin a little, not knowing wether to agree with Sonic on that statement or not. Deciding not to bother too much with it, Tails eventually clapped his hands together. "Well, Sonic, should we go look for those emeralds?" he asked. "I could even take out Tornado for a spin!"

"Great!" Tails exclaimed, as he went towards a cupboard, when he pulled a drawer on it, opening a door in the wall. "Just wait outside, and I'll have the Tornado ready to go." he said, as he prepared to go into the new door, when he froze. "Wait... maybe we'll need a radar to locate the emeralds, first..." Sighing, he started to rub his temples. "But where could we find a Chaos Emerald Radar?"

"Well..." Tails began, as he was aware that Knuckles, while still their friend, wasn't all that fond of visitors. But still, his ability to sense the emeralds would come in handy... "It's worth a shot, at least. Just wait outside, and I'll get the Tornado fired up!" he said, before he finally went into the door, as it closed itself behind him.