QUEEN of PAIN

"Okay, let's take this to the office," I stated as I made sure that Tempo's torso cowling was fully secure. "Belle, you can go on break if you want, but if you stay on the clock, I expect you to either get back to working on your car or get a shipping crate ready for Shard's chassis."

"I'll get a crate ready, then get back to my car," Belle decided. "Princess."

Cheeky brat!

"I'm not officially recognized yet, Belle," I snarked back, waving her off.

In short order, Fiona, Tangle, Tempo, and I were in my workshop's office and I was getting the good writing supplies ready.

"So, uh, Tempo was it?" Tangle asked from where she sat on the corner of my desk, ignoring the perfectly good chair next to the one Fiona was sitting in.

"That's the name I chose, yes," Tempo acknowledged with a nod and an easy smile.

"Are you, like, brand new, or are you a lost prince or something like Rally is?" the lemur asked curiously, earning her a sharp look from Fiona.

"Or something," Tempo clarified with a smirk, not actually clarifying anything at all.

"His compressed data packet was in my head," I explained. Mostly to head off potential issues later on. "He's a fork off of Shard's compressed data packet inside of Nicole. That's how I ended up with him when I manifested."

"There was some speculation that you got at least some of your… current memories? From the others in the Sky Patrol," Fiona admitted, seeming to be finally calming down a bit from the panic attack she had in Bay 1 earlier.

"I got something from everyone on the Sky Patrol at the time, yes," I acknowledged the elephant she was trying to address with a nod without revealing who else contributed to my amalgamated mind. "I'm far more tied to their previous iterations though, with any data from the… revision… being more hazy and at a remove. And no further memories past my point of manifestation. I hope that this may alleviate some concerns?"

"So Shard was a hero in the Lost Timeline?" Tangle asked, looking between me and Tempo.

"I'd say so, yes," I smiled. "I think he's going to enjoy his new life once Nicole, Rotor, and Tails finish his new body."

"What's with the crossbow?" the lemur asked out of the blue, turning her head to look at Rose of the Thorn, the hand crossbow that I had purchased and trained with, before engraving it with a name and placing it on my office shelf behind a brass placard.

"It's to honor the memory of someone whose Zone was lost to the Collapse. I never met her in person, but I knew of her and her exploits. She was one of the bravest hedgehogs around, and a true hero of the Fleetway Zone."

"Who was she?" Tangle asked as she got off of my desk and moved to take a closer look. "...oh."

"She was Amy Rose," I answered for Fiona's benefit.


"You're not coming back to the Kingdom yet," Fiona noted as the Princ… as Rally… continued to look at the hand crossbow displayed on the shelf somberly for a moment or two more.

"Not yet, no," Rally agreed as she selected some paper and picked up a pen to write with. "While it's nice to know that Da… that King Nigel… is willing to accept me as family, I'm not ready to come home yet. As you've seen, I still have some anger issues to work through, and your prior iteration wasn't the only, nor even the worse, traitor."

"Anyone I should watch for?" Fiona asked, focusing sharply on this bit of intel.

"No," Rally denied. "Or at least not yet. If I tell you now, and their current iteration is as different from their prior one as you seem to be, I could end up ruining some lives for no good reason. You might want to keep an eye on anyone who picked up some Ixix taint though. Even if they turn out to mean well, the ones I knew of in Mobius-that-Was could be misled into trouble that they wouldn't necessarily mean to cause."

"Ixis taint?" Tangle asked as she finally moved away from the shelves.

"Naugus' other form of magic besides Crystalmancy," Rally explained as she wrote. "It's apparently a very ancient order that was once full of arrogant assholes. If their leader is still around, and he might be, he'd be thousands of years old and very dangerous. He makes a good pot of tea though. Naugus, the one I knew, had been his apprentice at some point in the past."

"I see…" Fiona stated as she took this information in. "Anything else I should know?"

"Yes. Tell Da… King Nigel… to stock up on Power Rings and be ready to distribute at least one each to every Robian, reformed Badnik, and any other technology-based ally," Rally instructed firmly as she looked Fiona straight in the eyes. "Power Rings disrupt the types of control spells that both Technomancy and Crystalmancy excel at."

"Good to know," Fiona nodded. She had known that certain individuals could be boosted by Power Rings (she wasn't one of them, sad to say), and it was suspected that Dr. Eggman knew how to use them as a power source as the villain certainly collected enough of them over the years. Fiona didn't know if the Power Ring housing that was attached to that collection of mini Chaos Drives in Tempo's torso counted as evidence of this or if that was just incidental that Rally intended to keep him defended against being controlled by magic.

"I'll probably end up asking to join my sister on the Sky Patrol though," Rally continued as she finished what was now obviously a letter and started writing another one. "I have some things to finish getting started in Northammer before then though."


The air at the Casino Park shuttle pad was thick with the smell of ozone and the distant, neon hum of the city. Belle had done a professional job with the crate; it was a sleek, matte-black container with "RALLY'S" embossed on the side, complete with my stylized face as the logo.

"Here," I said, handing two envelopes to Fiona. One was thick, addressed to King Nigel in a formal, elegant script that felt like it belonged in a different century. The other was smaller, addressed simply to Sally. "The King's letter contains the technical data and the warnings I mentioned, as well as other important information that may or may not be valid since the change. The one for my... for the Princess... is more personal."

Fiona tucked them into a secure pocket of her new Honey the Cat jacket—a reinforced, high-collared piece that made her look less like a student and more like the professional agent she was becoming. "I'll see that they're delivered personally. No digital copies, no prying eyes."

"I appreciate that," I nodded.

Tangle was busy helping the automated loaders guide Shard's crate into the RIS shuttle's cargo bay. As the door hissed shut, she hopped down and gave me a quick, impulsive salute. "Don't be a stranger, Ral! If you ever need a tail in a fight, you know where the Kingdom is!"

"I'll remember," I replied, a genuine, albeit small, smile touching my face.

As the shuttle's engines began to whine for takeoff, Tempo stepped up beside me. The way the black and gold plating caught the city lights made him look incredibly regal in his own right. He looked at the departing ship, then back at me.

"You really think they're ready for Shard?" he asked quietly. "He's a lot to handle even on a good day."

"Nicole will handle him," I said, watching the shuttle bank toward the horizon. "She needs someone who remembers the world as it was. Who she was. While also being accepting of who she is now. They can be ghosts together for a while."

I turned back toward the city, the "Tech Mogul" mask sliding back into place. "But we have a different job. Northammer is waiting, and I have a feeling that Beauregard and Clove are going to have questions about those ALMs sooner rather than later."

Tempo's eyes flared with a confident teal glow as he tested his internal servos, the seven Chaos Drives purring in a perfect, synchronized harmony. "Then let's go give them some answers. I've been itching to see what this body can do. Who first?"

"Beauregard Rabbot," I replied. "He's the one the majority of my aspects knew, and the Bunnie part of me misses him. I need to know how similar or different he is from the uncle I knew before…"

Wow, muse is coming on strong for this fic today. Granted, I'm currently snowed in and unable to go anywhere...


Breezie got up from her desk in anticipation of her visitors.

She had, of course, gotten word of a flurry of unusual activity at Rally's. Honey the Cat, the founder and CEO of the Honey's Boutique franchise had gone there in a rush earlier, spent an hour or so there, and then left.

Which, honestly, could be anything from Honey wanting a custom vehicle made (very likely) to Rally suddenly deciding that she actually needed clothing and not wanting to walk down the street just to get her measurements taken (plausible, as Rally could get very focussed on whatever she was working on, but unlikely).

Rally coming out of her workshop and heading towards the edge of town in the company of two unknowns and a never before seen Metal Sonic variant while hauling a branded cargo crate?

The red flags were back, and Breezie was really hoping that Rally and her new Metal Sonic friend weren't coming to tell her that Rally had changed her mind about not taking over Casino Park. Or that Rally had gone back to working for Dr. Eggman despite her earlier disdain for the man. Or that Neo Metal Sonic had decided on a new look and had subborned Rally for his own forces.

Not that Breezie couldn't adapt to any of those outcomes, but each of them were… less than ideal.

Breezie watched as the doors to her office suite opened. Rally walked in with the gait of someone who owned the air she breathed, but it was the machine at her side that made Breezie's eyes widen.

The new Metal wasn't blue. He was a sleek, aggressive black with gold trim, and his eyes weren't the harsh, flat red that was almost traditional for a Metal Sonic by this point. They were a bright, intelligent teal. He moved with a fluidity that suggested a high-end kinetic processor, one that likely didn't have to throttle itself to save on power.

Breezie felt a familiar, low-level thrum in her processing core. It was the same magnetic pull she'd felt during her recent, charged encounters with Neo. She had always had a weakness for powerful bots, and this newcomer was radiating it in spades.

She found herself wondering if the Doctor had finally lost his mind completely. Had he sent this magnificent unit to "retrieve" his wayward Metal Sally, only to have the machine decide that Rally was the better employer? It was a staggering thought. If Rally had managed to flip a high-spec Metal unit in the short time she'd been in Casino Park, then she wasn't just a "Tech Mogul"—she was a digital siren. To Breezie, it looked like the Doctor's most expensive assets were no longer safe within a five-mile radius of Rally's orbit.

Honestly, if this was the case, Breezie could relate. If she wasn't already exploring her tentative relationship with Neo Metal Sonic, she might have started flirting with Rally herself.

"Rally," Breezie greeted, leaning back against her desk. "I see you've been busy. I was starting to think you'd spent the afternoon playing dress-up with Honey, but this is significantly more interesting than a new wardrobe."

"This is Tempo," Rally said, skipping the pleasantries. She didn't have time to dance around the point, and Breezie appreciated that efficiency. "He's my partner. And before you ask, no, he's not a puppet, and he doesn't work for Darth Lardass either."

Tempo offered a sharp, two-finger salute and a grin that looked entirely too organic to be a stock animation. "Nice to meet the lady in charge. I've heard you have an eye for quality. Hope I live up to the specs."

Breezie's eyebrows shot up. "Charismatic. That's a dangerous trait in a Metal, Rally. I have to wonder if the Doctor is throwing a tantrum back at the Final Egg, or if he even realized he lost you his newest enforcer the moment you two met."

"Oh, Doc lost control of me a long time ago," Tempo stated casually. "I've had some upgrades since then. My gal, Rally, is responsible for my latest one."

Breezie's cooling fans spiked for a microsecond. A long time ago? She mentally scrolled through her encrypted archives of the Doctor's experimental logs, looking for any mention of a black-and-gold "Special Project" or a discarded prototype that could have survived in the wild for years. There was absolutely nothing in the records she had in her head—no mention of this specific kinetic profile or a unit with this level of social autonomy. There might be some in the eggnet archives that she still had backdoor access to, but she'd have to check later.

Still, if Tempo had been rogue for as long as he just implied, that meant one of two things: either the Doctor had a "Black Site" project so sensitive he'd kept it off the main network even from his own inner circle, or this bot was a master of staying under the radar. Either way, the sheer fluidity with which Tempo moved suggested a power-to-weight ratio that made standard Enforcer units look like clunky industrial loaders. The fact that Rally had been the one to finally find this ghost and "tune him up" made Breezie's core hum with a mix of professional envy and strategic interest.

"A ghost in the machine brought back to peak performance," Breezie murmured, her gaze lingering on the seamless, high-end finish of Tempo's plating. "The Doctor's loss is quite clearly your gain, Rally. I imagine he'd have a stroke if he knew one of his secret 'children' had surfaced looking this... refined."

She straightened up, her professional mask sliding back into place. To her, this wasn't about a lost past; it was about a hidden present. "But we aren't here to discuss engineering triumphs," Breezie continued, shifting her weight.

"I'm here for a consultation, Breezie," Rally stated, cutting to the chase and leaving the other woman's assumptions about Tempo's origin unchallenged. "You've been the one moving my ALM modules into the field. You have the logistics and the back-channels. I want you to arrange a meeting between me and General Beauregard Rabbot. Discreetly."

Breezie let out a soft, melodic hum of amusement, moving back to her chair, leaning back, and folding her hands over her lap. Both Rally and Tempo followed suit, taking seats on the other side of her desk. Good, they were here to deal, not demand. That was good to know. "Direct as always. I suppose it shouldn't surprise you that you've set your sights on Sourn. The General is a heavy hitter."

She tapped a manicured finger against her chin, a playful glint in her optics. "In fact, Rally, you're a little late to the party. You aren't the only one looking for an introduction. Both the General and Clove the Pronghorn have been quite... persistent... in asking about their benefactor. They've been practically banging on my digital door for a discreet meeting with the mind behind the technology."

Rally cocked a brow at that news. She hadn't expected either Egg Boss to be that proactive this soon—or that Breezie would already have them on the hook. "And?"

"And I told them I'd take it under advisement," Breezie replied with a sharp, predatory smile. "I don't give away my best connections for free, Rally. Not to them, and not even to the girl who's reinventing the Doctor's wheel. But now that you're here—and clearly expanding your 'assets'—I think we can talk about a formal introduction."

Breezie leaned forward, her eyes locking onto Rally's. "The General is cautious, and Clove is... protective of her sister. They aren't sure if you're a savior or just a more sophisticated brand of leash. They want to see the face behind the tech before they commit to a full 'contractual' shift away from the Empire."

"I can set up the secure channel," Breezie continued, her tone shifting to business. "I can even arrange a face-to-face in a neutral zone. But if I'm going to facilitate suborning two of Eggman's most effective Bosses, I need the Rally's Workshop team—and your new 'partner'—headlining my Grand Prix. I'm selling 'The Future' to the masses, Rally. And a Tech Mogul who can tame the Doctor's best machines is exactly the kind of spectacle I need."

Rally didn't blink. She knew the risks of stepping into the spotlight, especially with the Doctor's eyes constantly scanning for anomalies. But she was already basically exposed anyway, and the chance to sit across from the General—to see if the man she remembered survived the "Revision"—was worth the price of a few headlines.

"You'll get your spectacle, Breezie," Rally said, her voice leveled and firm. "But I want the meeting with Rabbot scheduled before the first heat. I'm not racing for promises."

Breezie's smile widened, sharp and satisfied. "Business before pleasure. I wouldn't have it any other way. My people will send over the technical requirements for the Grand Prix entry. I expect something that makes the Doctor's standard Badniks look like scrap metal."

"They already do," Tempo chimed in, leaning back in his chair with a confidence that made Breezie's processors skip a cycle. "Trust me, lady, we're going to give them a show they'll never forget."

As Rally and Tempo stood to leave, their casual movements complimenting each other with an ease that suggested comfortable familiarity. There was a history there that Breezie didn't know about, but she was honestly fine with that. The balance of power in the world was changing, and those two were at the epicenter of it all. Breezie watched them go, her gaze lingering on the door long after it closed.

She had the engineer. She had the "ghost" machine. And soon, she'd have the two most powerful commanders in the Empire sitting at her table. For the first time in a long time, Breezie felt like the house wasn't just winning—it was taking over the whole game.