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The sky could barely have been more clear. The Sun did not spare anything on its way to cast rays upon all of Mobius. With just a handful of white clouds, viewing this planet from any location was, at least that day, a sight to hold dear.
Same went for a strangely specific location a few kilometers up in the sky, which only a very select few even knew of the means of accessing.
The location in question was, of course, Angel Island, a place riddled with a long, troubling history, consisting mainly of several groups of beings - mostly echidnae - in countless, tireless attempts to garner even more power than whatever they already had throughout all of their existence. Needless to say, the vast majority of those attempts were tragically failed.
And now, there was exactly just one resident who was fated to breathe the air of this great place in the sky.
Knuckles.
Quite literally the only one of his kind left, this echidna's sole duty was to guard the enormous green gemstone which had survived all those centuries on that island. The Master Emerald.
An artifact so majestic, powerful, and dangerous, letting it fall into wrong hands would have been a major mistake. Which, unfortunately, had happened more than a few times. Luckily, all of those times were now past, and this emerald was back at its one rightful place.
Exactly beside it, Knuckles was sitting, and not exactly doing nothing.
That very day was the time of a meeting which the echidna had arranged with the extremely narrow group of people to whom he was ever willing to put his entire trust whenever something went deeply wrong.
But for a while after waking up, and surprisingly stressfully long period of waiting and looking around the clear blue sky - there still wasn't any one of them anywhere in sight.
"They can't have forgotten... can they?" Knuckles thought to himself. Sure thing, those very friends of his had, by then, plenty upon plenty of times, proven very much people of their words; so, at least on first thought, there was hardly anything to worry about.
And yet, losing your trust in just about anybody is not even closely as demanding a task as is earning said trust.
Knuckles could no longer do no more than sit just in front of the Master Emerald, no longer fill his thoughts with mere meaningless hopes.
Foolishly pretending such a movement would incite any change, he got up from said position, and headed downstairs from the shrine.
Fortunately, about three quarters of the way to the staircase's bottom, there was a sound he heard from afar on his right.
A sound of a biplane's propeller whirling in the air.
"That's gotta be them," the echidna confidently said, feeling a decent amount of relief.
Indeed, the biplane in the distance had no less than three people on board. Two of which were sitting on the designated seats, and the remaining one confidently standing on a wing of the plane.
Those three were just as fond of this breathtaking skyline as their echidna friend was. If not a little more.
"It's such a beautiful view..." Amy exclaimed. To her, seeing all those tiny people and trees and buildings on the ground, from her current position, was almost dream-like.
"I know," Tails said as a response, effortlessly managing to do so whilst piloting. "I think that every time I get in the Tornado."
Amy didn't say anything as a response to that, but she didn't have to. Tails knew she agreed with him.
And the same went for Sonic, who, as always, had made sure he got the perfect view of the direction they were going. Not only did Tails not mind such a decision - it was, in fact, the fox's idea.
"So long as the wind has somewhere to take me," is what the blue hedgehog decided to add to this scenery, "I will never stop doing this."
The moment he said, Amy's reaction simply couldn't have been more than a wistful sigh.
And Tails heard that too, but didn't say anything. He was well aware of the emotions she felt for who was positioned above and in front of him - all of their friends did, for that matter - but ever since finding about it, he kept wondering why this state of emotions between the two hedgehogs never came to traverse into something... greater.
But then again, in no way was Tails himself part of that whole charade. So maybe it was best to just leave those sort of thoughts aside.
Soon enough, the sight all three of them had sought for the past hour finally came to behold them.
The giant island in the middle of the sky was, at last, essentially right in front of them.
And Sonic, from his position, was even able to see Knuckles waving to all three of them. Of course, he - as well as Tails and Amy, in fact - waved back.
Shortly after a surprisingly safe landing, both of the hedgehogs and the fox made a heartful greeting with Knuckles, who had awaited them with a rare smile.
"Hey, Knuckles," Sonic spoke first, naturally confidently, as the echidna grabbed to hug him. "It's been a long while, hasn't it?"
"You bet," Knuckles laughed in response. Then, he became more serious, but still lightheartedly so: "Did you bring the chili dogs as promised?"
"Of course," Tails answered, pulling up a visibly full box from beside the place where he had been sitting. The chili dogs' warm smell could still be felt from a major distance. "Did you really think I would forget that?"
"I guess not," Knuckles simply answered.
Amy's very quick reaction upon landing on the grounds of Angel Island was to run up to Knuckles and hug him too, just like she always had done with Sonic. She had not seen the echidna in a fairly long time, after all.
"Nice to see you too, Amy," Knuckles just couldn't help but say, as the pink hedgehog came close to burying her head in his chest in excitement.
"Yes, I know," Amy responded sweetly. "Now we can finally make up for it!"
All four of them agreed with Amy's sentiment.
"Yeah," Sonic pointed out, "the air is so fresh. It's better for running that way," he winked at the rest of his group.
"And there's nobody to interrupt us," Tails added to those notions, albeit with minor lack of confidence in his voice. "Right?"
Sonic looked at his best friend way more confidently.
"Come on, buddy," he answered to the fox, "you made sure there would be no one else to bother us. Just this today, we're all on our own!"
Tails sighed in relief. Amy almost jumped in excitement. And Knuckles smiled in great agreement.
"Well..." Sonic then continued, taking a handful of chili dogs from that box, "shall we?"
After several long hours consisting of eating the entire box's worth of chili dogs, resting after such a meal, playing tag with each other, getting invested in a series of card tricks using a pack that Tails had also brought with him, playing a few card games immediately afterwards, and a handful of other similar small, but comfortable activities, it was almost as though all four had made an agreement to lie down on the grass and stare at the clear blue right above them at the exact same time.
Amy sighed in relaxing pleasure.
"I just can't get over how amazing a day this is," she felt like mentioning once again. "I have watched the sky from the ground, but never from the sky itself. I'm kinda jealous that you get to see that every day," she pointed out to Knuckles, whose natural reaction was to laugh.
"Well," the echidna said back, "if you ever again wish for this experience, you know how to get here."
The pink hedgehog sighed. "I guess that's true too," she responded.
"I, on the other hand," Sonic jumped in, feeling like this was the right time to share his current thoughts, "don't understand how you don't get bored from doing nothing on this island but sitting around that emerald."
But Knuckles had an already prepared answer to that very question.
"Same way you don't get bored from running all day."
Sonic understood such an answer.
But Tails didn't.
"That's not really the convincing answer you think it is," the fox insisted to the echidna. "That kind of answer just sounds like Sonic's lifestyle is an explanation for your own lifestyle. And... is it?"
This unexpectedly caused Knuckles to ponder his own answer to the blue hedgehog's question. This alone was enough to make him realize the very answer he had provided was rather nonsensical.
"I guess not..." he answered Tails' latest question. Of course, he went on to justify himself: "But I can't just abandon the Master Emerald any time I feel like it!"
"When was the last time anybody stole it?" Sonic inquired.
To which the truthful answer had been, by that point, several years.
That was when Knuckles realized just how long it had been since any sort of danger, minor or major, had bestowed itself upon Angel Island. An amazingly long time. For just that long had the echidna been able to go about whatever business he wanted to go about, but had convinced himself he'd have to wander around this shiny emerald all day every day. Such rut had started to become stale and somewhat mind-numbing, after all.
But still:
"Doesn't matter," he began, but immediately:
"Come on, Knuckles," Amy suddenly insisted. "Do you seriously have nothing more productive to do?"
Knuckles did not answer. Creating a supposedly uncomfortable silence.
Strangely enough, after just a few dozen seconds, that silence became comfortable. Really, no one else said anything to change the mood from Amy's most recent words.
And nobody had to.
The mood changed itself.
Tails sighed too, in a way similar to Amy previously.
"I went to the beach today," Sonic spouted, out of nowhere.
Amy and Knuckles were genuinely positively surprised by what the blue hedgehog had to say. This statement of his had usurped hope inside them that Sonic had finally succeeded at what had always actually made him tremble, no matter the circumstances.
But Tails knew that would never become the case. He just waited until Sonic said his very next sentence:
"Well... I tried to go to the beach today... Still nothing."
Amy's and Knuckles' reaction to this revelation was, of course, grunting.
"Come on, Sonic," Knuckles insisted, "it's just... water! How can you still be scared of it?"
"Yeah, Sonic," Amy continued, "you can at least get your feet in the shallow waters, right?"
"Nope, not even that," was Sonic's swift response. After waiting for any of them to say at least something - despite having sensed he wouldn't have to for knowing they wouldn't - he also added: "I just... can't! How do you guys do it?!"
Everyone else thought about how to construct the answer, in a way that Sonic would not only perfectly understand it, but also maybe become willing to finally try swimming.
"You're not supposed to think that you're going swimming," Knuckles tried something. "You're supposed to just... go and swim."
Sonic spent the following few seconds staying silent - not saying anything good or bad, or even neutral, about the echidna's answer. This reaction, or lack thereof, made Knuckles think his explanation was not very precise. So he tried to add:
"Simply just start swimming!" But somehow, even he himself was aware that this kind of remark would likely not be as encouraging as he had hoped it would be. Sonic's reaction to it didn't help, either.
"Knuckles is right, you know," Amy added barely a few seconds later, much to Sonic's surprise that she'd found herself agreeing with the echidna's tip. "You just... become one with the water. Let yourself flow through it."
But no matter the amount of ways that a same piece of advice could've been rephrased, Sonic was not convinced.
"Easy for you guys to say," was all he had to say.
Amy and Knuckles sighed.
For the majority of that entire conversation, Tails had remained silent, refusing to interrupt unless absolutely necessary. For the most part, he just kept listening.
It wasn't the actual topic of the discussion going on between three of his very best friends - it wasn't that what he had paid his attention to.
It was the fact that this conversation was actually happening.
And, even more specifically, that something so trivial was, after a profoundly long time, the biggest of any of their worries.
Thus, the fox decided that this very moment was just the perfect time to state exactly how he felt about this very gathering of theirs.
"I miss this."
As he had expected, the primary reaction that this statement of his instilled in Sonic, Knuckles, and Amy was mild confusion. "This" was already happening right now; what exactly was there to "miss" about something that was underway?
With that in mind:
"Um... what?" Amy murmured.
"This is currently going on," Knuckles insisted. "I'm not sure what you meant by that..."
"Oh, not like that," Tails quickly responded to them, with an honest smile on his face. And this was finally his time for the fox to explain his thoughts. "These few hours here today have reminded me of the time before everything happened. When it was just the four of us. Yes, you guys knew Sally or the Chaotix or Cream before you met me, and you had a life of your own. But there was a period of time, right after I met you three, when you guys were my whole company. And when just us four had all the time of this world to do almost anything we wanted. And yes, I know, we've got ourselves a great community that we've built since then. Silver, Shadow, Rouge, Blaze, Babylon Rogues, Tangle, Whisper, Big, everybody else; they are all amazing people... But just sometimes, getting to keep in touch with all of them every single day feels... more like an obligation than something that comes to me naturally. And I keep thinking about how it was before I got to know them all. And... it was simpler. All I had to worry about was whether you three were doing fine. Nothing else... Nobody else. And this hangout today reminded me of those days... Sometimes I wish I could go back to that."
After this vivid monologue that the fox provided, the meaning behind Tails' initial statement was one all three of Sonic, Knuckles, and Amy found much, much clearer than they had barely a minute prior.
And, strangely enough:
"Oh, now I understand," Amy suddenly spoke. "When was the last time we just hung out like this?" she proceeded to ask Sonic and Knuckles.
Both of them tried to remember the correct answer; only for the echidna to say:
"I think... never?"
After the one and a half second following Knuckles' answer, all four burst into light laughter, Tails included.
"So," Sonic then said to his best friend, "what you're basically saying is, we should do this more often?"
Tails' first thought was that the blue hedgehog might have entirely missed the point of his monologue. But on the other hand, that very idea of Sonic's seemed quite neat. In fact:
"Because I'm in," Sonic finished.
"Yes! That sounds so amazing!" Amy agreed, her eyes looking like they were on the verge of starting sparkling.
And Knuckles' reaction wasn't much different, as well.
"In complete honesty," he said, "this does feel like a new habit I could get myself into."
All of these responses made it turn out that an idea which it wasn't even Tails who had, but of whose premise he nevertheless was fond, sat seamlessly right with the entire rest of his closest friends' group.
"Also, Tails," Sonic felt like responding, "I completely get what you're saying. The times when we were younger really seem easier sometimes."
This was, at first, enough to make the fox sigh with relief, as well as with knowledge that at least someone of them truly understood his sentiment. That is, until the blue hedgehog also remarked:
"But, you know... life goes on."
To which the smile on Tails' face, but not the feeling of ease in his mind, slowly vanished. At the very least, his closest buddy understood the train of thoughts the fox was having, if nobody else did. But the blue hedgehog's very last remark was all too true.
"Yeah... I guess you're right," Tails just said.
A handful more minutes passed after those words were said, with all four of them just lying on the grass, in that same comfortable silence.
A breathtaking sunset started to overwhelm the clear blue sky, as the day had been coming closer and closer, quite literally second by second, to starting its end.
This, surely, didn't go unnoticed by any of the four beings who had occupied Angel Island that day.
"Well, guys," Amy chose to remark, as she made her way back to her seat on the Tornado, "this has been an amazing day. We have to do days like this so many more times!"
"I agree," Knuckles responded. "This was something I wasn't even aware I yearned for, and yet I enjoyed this very much."
Tails was the one most glad that this was his friends' view of that day's hangout of theirs. "Awesome! So when do you guys want to do this again?"
But that was when they all looked at each other, without saying anything for a few moments. For that particular question was one to which none of them had a definitive answer.
This seemed awkward, at first.
Luckily:
"Tell you what, Tails," Sonic jumped in to answer, as he climbed back up on the biplane's wing, "we're gonna let Knuckles know when we all feel like that'd be right. Is that good?"
Without hesitation, everybody else realized that was a perfect idea.
"I'm up for it," Amy cheerfully answered. Knuckles also nodded.
"Great, then," Tails then said, pressing the right buttons to turn the Tornado's propeller on. "We'll see you around, Knuckles," he said to the echidna.
"It will be a tremendous pleasure," Knuckles said.
With that conversation completed, Tails pulled the Tornado up to make it fly. Once the biplane achieved a fairly high altitude - at least from the perspective any of them had been assuming during the previous hours - Sonic, Tails, and Amy waved to Knuckles, who was already becoming smaller from their point of view.
Knuckles, of course, waved back, knowing his friends would notice his movement anyway.
As the biplane's occupants kept heading further away, in the direction of the sunset, eventually becoming just a tiny dot in the sky, which too disappeared shortly afterwards - this meant that the usually solitary echidna was left fully alone once again.
It wouldn't take much longer until he sighed, knowing that the one thing he had been destined to commit to was all he could have come back to doing.
Sitting in front of the always-glowing Master Emerald, making all too sure it never got stolen...
And waiting for a next day exactly like this one.