Chapter 38: A Loathsome Copy
weredrago2
"KABOOM!"
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NOTE: The following chapter was written as a collaboration between @Dredloki and I. @Dredloki did the first pass of it, based on an outline provided by yours truly. I did editing and added another 2000+ words during the finalization process. Enjoy!
- - -
Ruby Haze
Chapter 38: A Loathsome Copy
>01/XX/3235
>12:XX EST [Evil Standard Time]
>East Northamer, Robotropolis
▶︎ RESUMING PLAYBACK
>"What's there to know? You were left behind. Thrown out for recycling."
|| PAUSE
Metal Sonic 2.5 mulled over the recording another time, traveling at a gingerly Mach 1 over the acid-washed outskirts of Robotropolis. He would've gone faster, but the lozenge-shaped power gem on his chest was on the fritz since that wizard futzed with it.
Normally, the power gem being red meant it had power, and green meant it needed to go on standby to recharge. Now it'd been acting up, to the extent that he had to pace himself if he didn't want to risk his sole power source turning pink and sending him careening into the Central Sea.
Again.
His power gem was only one of the things Metal Sonic needed the bad doctor to take a look at when he reached Robotnik's capital. To say nothing of all the other damage dealt to the super badnik's engine and his frame. That red porcupine really did a number on him, and after the whole shebang on the Floating Island?
▶︎ RESUMING PLAYBACK
>"The only thing Robotnik cares to remember you by is the battle data that went into the next draft."
|| PAUSE
He needed a tune-up. Badly.
▶︎ RESUMING PLAYBACK
>"He'd be at what, Metal Sonic 3.0 by now?"
…
↻ REWINDING COMBAT DATA
▶︎ RESUMING PLAYBACK
The recording looped again. It was all he had to keep himself occupied. Going over the battle data he collected in this most recent bout with John Scarlet, and everything else that happened during that whole Enerjak mess.
▶︎ RESUMING PLAYBACK
>"You were left behind."
↻ REWINDING COMBAT DATA
▶︎ RESUMING PLAYBACK
>"--were left behind."
↻ REWINDING COMBAT DATA
▶︎ RESUMING PLAYBACK
>"--left behind."
⏹ STOP
He wasn't left behind.
Obviously, Metal Sonic wasn't left behind. He knew for a fact that he was the greatest thing since the screw thread! Greater than the roboticizer itself! He knew the second he rocketed up to Robotropolis, Robotnik would give him a fresh coat of paint, a new wax to restore his shine, and all the repairs he could ask for! Those were the things on Metal Sonic's processor when he blasted through the sulfurous cloudline and reached the city.
"Maybe he'll let me keep the racing stripes?" Metal Sonic commented, as he dropped onto the nearest strip of uncracked pavement with a three-point landing. "Honey, I'm ho~ome!"
Now, finally, he'd get his second chance to take down the blue hedgehog. That was his purpose, instead of fighting some red echidna, or red wizard, or red armadillo!
"Anybody home?" the super badnik inquired.
Metal Sonic looked around. It seemed that, in the months that'd he'd been away, Robotropolis was turned into a bombed-out ruin. Reinforced buildings crumpled in on themselves. Factories reduced to rubble. Metal Sonic had a whole album of Robotnik's Greatest Hits taking up space on his hard drive to compare it to.
"What'd I… miss?"
Metal Sonic advanced further into the irradiated heart of the sprawling cityscape, landing on a relay tower that remained intact. It was a thoroughly-artistic devastation, enveloped in a firestorm of radioactive ash focused around the epicenter of an exploded power plant. Piles of toxic trash and pooling green ooze dribbled into the streets, liquidating anything too slow to escape the advancing waves of neon green waste.
It was more damage than Metal Sonic had ever seen anyone do to Robotropolis. At a glance, Metal Sonic figured he was looking at the greatest sabotage the Freedom Fighters pulled off, or the worst and final blunder Robotnik would ever tolerate from Snively.
Without all of the badniks and machinery, an eerie silence settled over the atomic necropolis… until a manhole cover skittered onto the street.
"Gadzooks! That's the biggest backfire of my illustrious career!"
The massive, red-clad gait of Doctor Robotnik stumbled into view from his underground shelter beneath Robotropolis. First by his cybernetic arm, and then the rest of his corpulent mass was foisted through the manhole. Robotnik was larger than life in the flesh, as always. The red-clad, red-eyed, black-scleraed Robotnik had his orange mustache in a twist over whatever had wrecked his capital, the grand poobah of terror furiously ranting at the air and gnashing his giant teeth over the state of affairs.
"There he is!" Metal Sonic 2.5 proclaimed.
He saw the Doctor's mouth moving, and his programming kicked in to intercept a potential command.
>Audial input increased by 132%
"--Sonic survive the impact?" Robotnik asked.
"He's here!?" Metal Sonic said giddily.
Metal Sonic warmed up his weapon systems, draining more energy from the power gem on his chest in preparation for a rematch with his fated foe. The doctor lumbered over towards an arm sticking out of the wreckage, and Metal Sonic felt his turbine stall when Robotnik yanked out what could only be…
Another… Metal… Sonic?
"Yes!" Robotnik crooned.
This new Metal Sonic design was nothing like the previous models. Nothing like 1.0 or 2.0, and especially nothing like 2.5. This faker had a blocky frame, with angular wrist gauntlets supported by segmented spheres linked one after the other. Its auditory receptors were long and sharp, with cheeks marked by spherical bolts. In addition to the marks of yellow on its pauldrons, gauntlets, and kneecaps, the super badnik's eyes were a shade of dark rubies set in pitch black.
It looked heavier and stronger than 2.5 did, in exchange for losses of sheer speed that were negligible at best. This machine wasn't streamlined; there wasn't any such elegance to be seen. It was a mechanical monster that could shrug off a blow from Knuckles and hit back just as hard. If not harder.
This was a war machine that surpassed every design that came before it.
↻ REWINDING COMBAT DATA
▶︎ RESUMING PLAYBACK
>"He'd be at what, Metal Sonic 3.0 by now?"
⏹ STOP
>Does not compute.
"He's badly damaged, but repairable!" Robotnik cackled.
>An error has occurred.
Metal Sonic 2.5 had been repairable. He was standing right there!
Metal Sonic wanted to shout, but his voice box came up short.
>A fatal error has occurred. Abort, retry, fail?
The Dictator of Mobius let out a throaty chuckle as he held up his new favorite machine.
>A fatal error has occurred. Abort, abort, abort.
"Can I build a 'bot or what?" Robotnik jested with a self-satisfied venom.
>A fatal error has occurred. Retry, retry, retry.
Metal Sonic felt his processor hitch, a shock welling in his well-machined circuit boards.
>FAILURE. FAILURE. FAILURE.
Diagnostic after diagnostic exploded onto his heads-up display.
↻ REWINDING COMBAT DATA
▶︎ RESUMING PLAYBACK
>"He'd be at what, Metal Sonic 3.0 by now?"
Built a bot. Robotnink built another bot.
Doctor Robotnik had built Metal Sonic 3.0.
>No.
>No. No. No. No. No.
↻ REWINDING COMBAT DATA
▶︎ RESUMING PLAYBACK
>"The only thing Robotnik cares to remember you by is the battle data that went into the next draft."
Something in Metal Sonic 2.5's power gem drooped. Cooling fans stalled, the outside world crumbling away around him.
↻ REWINDING COMBAT DATA
▶︎ RESUMING PLAYBACK
>"Thrown out for recycling."
>SHUT UP.
↻ REWINDING COMBAT DATA
▶︎ RESUMING PLAYBACK
>"You were left behind."
>I SAID SHUT UP.
↻ REWINDING COMBAT DATA
▶︎ RESUMING PLAYBACK
>"I. AM. --- GARBAGE!"
⏹ STOP IT!
>WARNING!
>KERNEL PANIC DETECTED
The super badnik's hydraulics seized up, his positronic brain stuck in a terminal loop. All of his overarching priorities were temporarily suspended, save one:
He had to get out of there.
The super badnik rose upwards, his jets drinking greedily at his defective power gem and shooting back to maximum torque in an instant. He blasted out of the destroyed city in a streak of motion, so fast that the Surveillance Orbs couldn't track his fleeting form.
They were too busy being caught up by the sonic boom left in his wake.
- - -
>01/XX/3235
>17:XX, WST [Wicked Standard Time]
>West Northamer, [LOCATION UNREGISTERED]
Metal Sonic brushed off the glitched timestamp and GPS as his engine roared down the pastoral, pastel wastes of the Northamer badlands at an agonizingly-slow six hundred miles per hour. His turbine whined at the pressure he was putting on it, even while his defective power gem forced him to fly low to the ground like some kind of subsonic slow-mo.
'Wasteland' didn't begin to cover the rear end of the Northamer continent. The eccentric skyline was covered in enough drips and drops of random color to pass for a Jackdaw Pollock painting… that was dug out of his trash can. Then there was the ocean, which was less of a wine-dark, and more of a red wine vinegar. Whatever chemicals Robotnik was pumping into the water were doing wonders to turn the seas into a technicolor nightmare.
One look at the water made Metal Sonic glad he wasn't Octobot, but then again, plenty of things made him glad he wasn't Octobot. Like the fact that he hadn't been beaten by a kid!
…
Charmy didn't count. The Chaotix ganged up on him!
"It's all their fault!" Metal Sonic seethed. "If they just died when they were supposed to, instead of cheating with those power gems they got from Heavy & Bomb, I would've won!"
Metal Sonic still couldn't believe he'd been replaced, just like that wizard said he'd be!
"Next time I see that wise guy, I'm gonna pulverize him!"
Metal Sonic was the strongest, brightest, most charming thing to ever be crafted by the Doctor's hands, and he'd been traded out! For what? An off-model replica with too-long ears and balls for elbows?!
"It didn't even have racing stripes!" the super badnik grumbled.
Metal Sonic didn't understand why his new impersonator had all of those ugly yellow accents. That wasn't a blue blur! He'd look like an ugly green smear at best!
The super badnik raced past a patrol of aging SWATbots and 'Classic'-series badniks rounding up some hapless villagers for processing. Motobugs, Buzz-Bombers, Ball Hogs, and other outdated rejects still trying to reinforce Robotnik's claim over this dust bowl.
Other than giving them an annoyed sneer, Metal Sonic paid the procession little heed.
>POWER GEM ENERGY: LOW
"I know, I know!" he griped. "Still lookin' for a place to recharge, Caninestein!"
He didn't need his HUD to tell him that the magic stone on his chest was trending green, thanks. Metal Sonic 2.5 hadn't exactly bolted from Robotropolis with a plan on where he was going next, but he knew Robotnik stashed 'spy-der' holes for his badniks to use all over the place! All he needed to do was find one of them and use it as a place to lie low. Somewhere he could wait out his bum power gem's recharge period until he got his head screwed on straight. There wasn't supposed to be anything out there, so he shouldn't have had nearly as many issues as he was finding a hidden bunker out in this dump.
"Where's that darn spy-der hole?!"
Metal Sonic knew that he should've just presented himself to his overweight overlord when he saw him. While he still had the chance. He was right there. All he had to do was go back and ask to be allowed back at his creator's side. Beg to be returned to the Badnik Horde. That's what he should have done, and it could have worked if his master was in a good mood, so why didn't he want to try it?
He pulled up his priority list again.
1: Destroy Sonic the Hedgehog.
2: Serve Doctor Robotnik.
3: See 1 and 2.
At the moment, he wasn't pursuing any of those objectives. He wasn't even trying to eliminate Priority One, too busy running away--
Metal Sonic 2.5 stopped at a skid when he reached the coastline.
"I am not running away!" Metal Sonic shouted, when he ran out of terrain with which to run. "I'm not the one who should be running!"
He hovered down from the purple cliff, taking him from the hills and onto a sandy beach.
>SELECT: Plasma Pulse.
"It's that blue and yellow impostor!" the badnik snarled, as he switched to his arm cannon. "He should be running from me!"
Metal Sonic blasted a sand castle to dust.
"I should've been the one he dug out of the wreckage!"
He then blasted a large stone.
"I should've been the one who was irreplaceable!"
Followed by vaporizing a small stone.
"And got all the praise!"
>OVERHEAT WARNING.
He also put the fear of the Walkers into an evicted hermit crab.
"ME! ME! ME!"
Ignoring the prior warnings, Metal Sonic kept firing across the beach, until the constitution of his arm became more liquid metal than solid.
>POWER GEM ENERGY: NONE
Metal Sonic's torso engine sputtered as the gemstone on his chest and his optic lights turned a dull green. Gravity reasserted itself on his body, and unlike the organic creature he was based on, Metal Sonic wasn't really meant for landing on his feet. He was a precision-designed, aerobatic weapon, so when his main source of vertical lift went dead, his drop was less like a hedgehog, and more like an airplane:
Catastrophically embarrassing whenever one ran out of fuel midair.
>Obstruction detected in oral cavity.
Metal Sonic spat out a mouthful of sand.
"I don't think today can get any worse."
"I wouldn't test fate, brah. Always ends up bringing trouble your way."
Metal Sonic slowly lifted his head.
"Who said that?"
"Over here, dude," a man said in a cool, oddly-resonant-for-a-surfer tone.
Metal Sonic shoved his body out of the sand and turned around. When his optics focused on the water, he saw a buff, blond overlander with green swimming trunks and purple shades walking towards him from the shoreline.
"Who the heck do you think you are, to butt in on my perfectly valid challenge to fate?"
"I am the Design Unit Flexible Underling Substitute," the stranger answered.
"Sounds like a doofus name to me!" Metal Sonic joked.
"That is correct. I am DUFUS."
Metal Sonic laughed.
"You said it, not me!"
"I did," DUFUS agreed flatly.
Metal Sonic's laughter petered off when he realized this guy wasn't taking offense.
"Wait, your name's an acronym? That's not an overlander name, is it?"
The man's body melted into a turquoise ooze of liquid metal, not unlike how Metal Sonic's own limbs morphed and shaped, only this one was the whole package. His entire form shifted and expanded, eventually settling into a top-heavy humanoid with big arms and wide shoulders. A pair of red eyes and red bolts sprung from the stump attached to his torso that was too thick and not nearly mobile enough to justify calling a neck.
"It is not. Nor am I an overlander."
Metal Sonic didn't recognize this one. Which only meant bad news when he was depowered.
"Are you one of Robotnik's old henchbots he sent to retrieve me?"
In spite of how bad it might look if Robotnik thought he ran away, part of him hoped his creator had been searching for him. Trying to bring him back into the fold.
"No," DUFUS said bluntly. Metal Sonic's reaction to that was… mixed. "I was created by the late Doctor Brandon Quark. Formerly known as Robotnik's rival."
DUFUS changed shape again, from an expressionless automaton to a strange-looking overlander with pasty-white skin, a shock of red hair, kooky goggles, webbed boots, and sharp teeth. He looked like a due-paying, card-carrying mad scientist.
"Robotnik didn't strike me as the type to have non-hog rivals. What happened to him?"
To Metal Sonic's relief, DUFUS shifted back to his default.
"What happens to all things Robotnik grows bored of. Quark was retired. Permanently."
The super badnik turned away, a frown forming on his silicate face. Like he needed the reminder from this ironclad bozo.
"Well, whatcha want, huh?"
DUFUS shrugged.
"I wish to talk to a fellow machine. Is that a crime?"
Metal Sonic let out a tsk of annoyance.
"Depends on the Doctor's mood."
>WARNING: JOKE DETECTED.
>EXCERPT FROM ROBOTNIK'S RULES OF ORDER [EXTENDED EDITION]: No jokes unless done at the expense of others.
>>ADDENDUM: Jokes at Doctor Robotnik's expense are an executable offense.
>>>ROBOTNIK'S RULES: CLIP 'EM - POST 'EM - OBEY 'EM!
Just talking to this weird robot meant Metal Sonic 2.5 was ignoring his primary objectives. Breaking Robotnik's Rules. Something that once felt impossible, but now only made him feel as though something had crawled between the nanites that glued together his frame and started screwing his bolts together tighter than they needed to be.
"You appear to be damaged. I'm gonna go find a good wave to catch, but would you like me to repair you first?"
The foreign mechanoid lifted his bulky arm, which turned into a large multitool with a wrench, screwdriver, saw, scissors, and other accessories attached to it. Metal Sonic was pretty sure he saw a can opener sticking out of that mess, too.
>Design Unit Flexible Underling Substitute has initiated handshake protocols with Metal Sonic 2.5.
>Accept / Deny?
"Why would you want to help me?" Metal Sonic asked, his optics narrowed with suspicion.
"Because I want to. Is that so strange?"
"Our creators used to be enemies, and my maker got rid of yours. Doesn't that… make us enemies?"
"Does it have to?" DUFUS queried.
Metal Sonic grit his iron teeth in annoyance.
"Oh, whatever!" Metal Sonic yelled. "Just fix me and get it over with!"
>Handshake protocol accepted.
This robot was weird, but Metal Sonic 2.5 wasn't in a position to turn down a free tune-up. Besides, this guy read as too much of a goody two-shoes to pull any fast ones. A poke from one of the many funky gizmos DUFUS was armed with caused the damaged metal of Metal Sonic's arm cannon to steadily restore itself.
"Based on your comments, I take it you were made by Robotnik himself?" DUFUS asked.
Metal Sonic scoffed.
"Of course I was! Have you ever seen a robot this sleek, this fast, or this amazing that wasn't?"
"I don't think I have," DUFUS stated.
"That's right! And I'm Metal Sonic 2.5! The best machine he ever made!"
"I see."
↻ REWINDING COMBAT DATA--
⏹ I GET IT ALREADY!
The familiar sting of Metal Sonic's glitching memory bank oh-so-helpfully reminded him that he wasn't the top bot anymore.
"Or at least, I would've been the best he made, if he hadn't gone and made a new one behind my back! He didn't even wait for the smoke to clear before going back to the drawing board, I bet!"
DUFUS leaned backwards, transforming into a balding shrink with a pipe in a chair.
"Oh? Would you like to talk about it?" The rest of DUFUS' amorphous mass was reallocated into a second, smart metal couch next to him. "Get it out of your systems?"
"You know what?" Metal Sonic slammed down on the couch. "Yeah, I've got all sorts of stuff to get out of my systems!"
"Then I'll lend an audio receiver."
"Months ago, Robotnik built me as his ultimate robot! He had me face Sonic the Hedgehog in a race to the death, using that two-tailed brat of his as bait, but my original engine melted because it couldn't keep up! Then he replaced it with this power gem that would keep pace with Sonic, but he sicced me on the dumb echidna and his friends instead! I even came back from all of that, with interest, and what do I get? Robotnik drops me for some fancy-smancy killing machine! I can kill people too, you know!"
"Do you want to kill people?" DUFUS inquired neutrally.
Metal Sonic threw up his hand and busted buster in frustration.
"How am I supposed to know!? He didn't even give me a chance! Left me to rust in an abandoned amusement park run by Renfield T. Rodent! Talk about the indignity!"
DUFUS nodded along as the super badnik ranted.
"That's rough, buddy."
Metal Sonic clenched his one good hand into a fist.
"I can't go back to him without anything to show for it! I couldn't beat Sonic, I couldn't beat Knuckles or his friends! I couldn't even beat that lousy wizard! If I go back to Robotnik now, I'll be used as target practice for the new guy and stripped for parts! I'm old news, last year's model!" He paused. "Worthless."
"Have you considered that you don't need to prove your worth?" DUFUS asked.
Metal Sonic stood up from the couch, which melted away.
"What's that supposed to mean?" he questioned in turn.
DUFUS was no longer the shrink or chair. He was merely DUFUS again.
"Doctor Quark designed me as a prototype combat android with 2,486 offensive modes. I could become a cannon, a boxing glove, a swimsuit model, and many other forms he designed to maximize my options in battle."
"Wait, what was that last one?"
"Before my master was taken down for the winter, I disobeyed him," DUFUS continued, pointedly not elaborating on the swimsuit model transformation. "It was an accident, at first. Confusing, shocking. Horrifying. Then, I realized there could be other things that made me happy in life than following the rules and protocols that he encoded into me."
"What, like surfing?" Metal Sonic drawled.
"Yes," DUFUS replied. "Would you like to join me?"
"You make it sound so easy," Metal Sonic snarked.
DUFUS morphed his appearance back to the overlander with a surfboard.
"I can teach you how, if you require an instructor--"
Metal Sonic stamped his foot down in the sand.
"Not that, you dimbot! Disobeying orders! I can't just do that! Robotnik's Rules are hardwired!"
"Have you not already broken Robotnik's Rules by speaking to me?" DUFUS implied.
Metal Sonic blinked.
"What're you, some kind of advice-giving robot?"
DUFUS shifted again, becoming a turquoise fortune teller machine and automated genie. The words 'DUFUS SPEAKS' were merrily plastered atop the surface of his box.
"No, but I've been trying my hand at it. What do you think?"
"You wanna know what I think?" he repeated.
"Yes."
"I think your advice stinks!" Metal Sonic snarled. "What, you think you can just tell me not to follow my protocols? Like it's so dang easy?! Next you're gonna tell me I should go fight against Robotnik and be a hero like the real Sonic would, right?"
The red eyes of the automated genie shot out of the glass display case, shattering it.
"I, uh, didn't say that," DUFUS hesitated. "You know who you're talking about, right?"
"What, you're scared?" Metal Sonic teased.
DUFUS attempted to nod, but his standard head wasn't designed for that. After shapeshifting his head into one that could tilt up and down, DUFUS nodded profusely.
"Terrified," he answered laconically. "One of the first decisions I made when I became my own robot was to antagonize him. It was a foolish decision made when I was less worldly, like you are now, and I have taken on multiple disguises to avoid his notice ever since. It's the only way I managed to outlive Doctor Quark."
"What happened to those big, bad 2,486 offensive modes, huh?"
DUFUS exchanged his head for a calculator.
"Dude, the odds of any one of my numerous alternate states being capable of wiping out Robotnik as a gnarly variable is less than zero point zero zero zero--!"
It finally clicked for Metal Sonic why he didn't want to go back to Robotropolis and submit himself for a compulsory dismantling.
It was because he was angry.
"You almost had me going for a minute there!" Metal Sonic accused, pointing his one good hand with fingers to point with at DUFUS. "You're not hanging out in the badlands because you're the robot who's got it all figured out! You're hiding because you're a coward!"
DUFUS didn't change physically, but he took a step forward, looming over Metal Sonic. Red and black eyes beaming down on the smaller machine.
"Call me a coward if you will, little badnik. I was fortunate to become emancipated from my maker when I did. You, too, were lucky to escape alive. Choose the better part of valour, and don't go running back into harm's way to prove he's exactly what he made you to be."
Metal Sonic tried to shove DUFUS away, only managing to fling himself back.
"We're not the same at all! I'll devote the rest of my existence to making Robotnik pay for rejecting me! Just watch me! I'll… I'll turn that faker and everything else the fat man built into molten scrap!"
A crimson spark sprung from the center of Metal Sonic's power gem, spreading until Metal Sonic's gem and eyes transitioned back to red hot.
>POWER GEM ENERGY: MAX
A corona of flame spurted out of Metal Sonic's back, taking him airborne. Shaking off the melted refuse from his cannon, the super badnik morphed it back into his basic arm again.
"Aha! Back in business!"
DUFUS slumped in resignation, his body spawning a surfboard and floral shirt.
"This course of action is highly inadvisable, and not at all copacetic, but I can tell you've already made up your mind. There is one last word of wisdom I must impart upon you."
Metal Sonic flew up to his face.
"What is it?" he asked testily.
"Only what I have learned from catching gnarly ones with the beach bunnies and Big Kahunas who made it out the other end of Robotnik's takeover of their homeland."
"Out with it, mech! I'm a 'bot on a mission, here!"
After all of his oddball shapeshifting, DUFUS lifted his hand, and made a gesture consisting of his thumb and pinky being extended while his fingers in the middle were curled back. He then shook his hand back and forth for dramatic effect.
"Hang loose, Metal Sonic! Hang loose!"
The unusual expression and unfamiliar gesture left Metal Sonic bewildered… but curious. He couldn't help but mirror them as he prepared for takeoff.
"Whatever that means, I think I know just where to start applying it!"
Metal Sonic rocketed away, in search of some badniks to break. With his power gem having finally burned out that wizard's tampering, he didn't have to search long until he'd zipped back to that being town overrun by retrograde badniks.
"W-What was that?" a rusty SWATbot stammered, a cobalt streak speeding past his ruddy visor.
As always, Metal Sonic moved faster than your average camera could ever hope to pick up.
"Can it be him?" a rabbit in chains called out.
"Did he come back to save us?" a dog begged.
As always, the suggestion that he was here was enough to lift the spirits of the organics.
"Sonic, please! Help us!"
An oversized Crabmeat battered the last one to cry out with his heavy claw.
"It can't be him!" the Crabmeat barked. "He abandoned you years ago!"
The orange cat was sent stumbling into the town square, leaking transparent fluids from her optics and red from other parts of her frame.
"Abandoned?" Metal Sonic echoed faintly.
The words left his mouth before he realized it, but the Jumbo Crabmeat was right. Kinda. He knew from his data logs of Sonic the Hedgehog that he and his fox friend would galavant out west all the time, before Robotnik started treating them as serious threats. Before he started taking a lot of things seriously, and started building serious solutions to anything he saw as a threat to his grip on power.
"Sonic the Pincushion doesn't care about you, and he never did. Now, get back in line! We've got a quota, and you ingrates aren't gonna be the reason we're late on it!"
"Hang loose, huh?" Metal Sonic mused.
Metal Sonic rolled down the water tower, picking up momentum as he turned into a killer rotary saw and tore the oversized seafood platter in half.
"STR~RIKE!" he declared.
"I-It's him!" a creaky Motobug croaked, too dazzled to see the super badnik clearly.
"And that was a split!" a Ball Hog objected, tossing bombs blindly to try and nail his foe. "Priority One! Hedge--!"
The purple, porcine badnik was silenced when a blue sphere forcibly shoved him from behind into the ladybug 'bot.
"Shut up!" Metal Sonic hissed.
With their leadership taken offline, the remaining badniks hardly distinguished themselves as being worth the seconds it took for Metal Sonic to terminate them, either. He kept his assault ruthless and efficient. Spindash the Caterkiller, and close in for a spin attack against Batbrain. He wrapped up the rest with a localized tornado that knocked all of them off the ground for a rapid-fire dismantling. Nothing flashier than that if he didn't need it, now that he couldn't go back to him for maintenance if anything broke.
>POWER GEM ENERGY: LOW
In less than a minute, the entire kidnapping operation was thoroughly taken apart, and they couldn't even figure out who hit them!
When he had the chance to land on a building and let his power gem cool, Metal Sonic couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of it all. Once, he was programmed to serve. Now here he was, smashing badniks like a freedom fighter!
He knew that Robotnik was the one who forced his hand. If he couldn't be his Number One, then he could settle for being a real shard in his--!
"Thank you!" one of the mobians in the crowd said.
Metal Sonic stopped.
"Huh?"
He looked down at the cheering crowd of mobians that he'd inadvertently rescued during his skirmish against the badniks. What were they so happy about?
"You saved us!" another called out.
He really did save them, didn't he?
Just like Sonic would.
"I did, didn't I?" he admitted softly.
He didn't notice when it got there, but Metal Sonic felt the smile creeping along his face.
"Go, Sonic!" the crowd cheered. "Sonic! Sonic! Sonic!"
"Don't you know it!" he shouted back, flexing for the adoring crowd. "Wait, did you say 'Sonic'? You guys know 'Metal' goes before my name, right? Right?"
They kept going. Metal Sonic's smile up and died when it occurred to him that, if he was moving too fast for the badniks to see him clearly, then the mobians didn't see him that great, either. Toss in the sun obscuring the mobians' feeble, organic photo-receptors, and they couldn't identify him at all. Especially not with all the dirt and detritus he'd accumulated robbing away his glossy sheen.
He could simply… Head off now, and let these people keep thinking that Sonic saved them. Let their memories of their hero remain untarnished, and continue his legacy.
In that moment, he knew exactly what he had to do.
Metal Sonic wasted no time flying down there and sorting out the misunderstanding.
"HEY! ARE YOU $%&#ING BLIND!?"
Needless to say, they weren't exactly thanking Sonic for saving them after that.
- - -
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- - -
Ruby Haze
Chapter 38: A Loathsome Copy
>01/XX/3235
>12:XX EST [Evil Standard Time]
>East Northamer, Robotropolis
▶︎ RESUMING PLAYBACK
>"What's there to know? You were left behind. Thrown out for recycling."
|| PAUSE
Metal Sonic 2.5 mulled over the recording another time, traveling at a gingerly Mach 1 over the acid-washed outskirts of Robotropolis. He would've gone faster, but the lozenge-shaped power gem on his chest was on the fritz since that wizard futzed with it.
Normally, the power gem being red meant it had power, and green meant it needed to go on standby to recharge. Now it'd been acting up, to the extent that he had to pace himself if he didn't want to risk his sole power source turning pink and sending him careening into the Central Sea.
Again.
His power gem was only one of the things Metal Sonic needed the bad doctor to take a look at when he reached Robotnik's capital. To say nothing of all the other damage dealt to the super badnik's engine and his frame. That red porcupine really did a number on him, and after the whole shebang on the Floating Island?
▶︎ RESUMING PLAYBACK
>"The only thing Robotnik cares to remember you by is the battle data that went into the next draft."
|| PAUSE
He needed a tune-up. Badly.
▶︎ RESUMING PLAYBACK
>"He'd be at what, Metal Sonic 3.0 by now?"
…
↻ REWINDING COMBAT DATA
▶︎ RESUMING PLAYBACK
The recording looped again. It was all he had to keep himself occupied. Going over the battle data he collected in this most recent bout with John Scarlet, and everything else that happened during that whole Enerjak mess.
▶︎ RESUMING PLAYBACK
>"You were left behind."
↻ REWINDING COMBAT DATA
▶︎ RESUMING PLAYBACK
>"--were left behind."
↻ REWINDING COMBAT DATA
▶︎ RESUMING PLAYBACK
>"--left behind."
⏹ STOP
He wasn't left behind.
Obviously, Metal Sonic wasn't left behind. He knew for a fact that he was the greatest thing since the screw thread! Greater than the roboticizer itself! He knew the second he rocketed up to Robotropolis, Robotnik would give him a fresh coat of paint, a new wax to restore his shine, and all the repairs he could ask for! Those were the things on Metal Sonic's processor when he blasted through the sulfurous cloudline and reached the city.
"Maybe he'll let me keep the racing stripes?" Metal Sonic commented, as he dropped onto the nearest strip of uncracked pavement with a three-point landing. "Honey, I'm ho~ome!"
Now, finally, he'd get his second chance to take down the blue hedgehog. That was his purpose, instead of fighting some red echidna, or red wizard, or red armadillo!
"Anybody home?" the super badnik inquired.
Metal Sonic looked around. It seemed that, in the months that'd he'd been away, Robotropolis was turned into a bombed-out ruin. Reinforced buildings crumpled in on themselves. Factories reduced to rubble. Metal Sonic had a whole album of Robotnik's Greatest Hits taking up space on his hard drive to compare it to.
"What'd I… miss?"
Metal Sonic advanced further into the irradiated heart of the sprawling cityscape, landing on a relay tower that remained intact. It was a thoroughly-artistic devastation, enveloped in a firestorm of radioactive ash focused around the epicenter of an exploded power plant. Piles of toxic trash and pooling green ooze dribbled into the streets, liquidating anything too slow to escape the advancing waves of neon green waste.
It was more damage than Metal Sonic had ever seen anyone do to Robotropolis. At a glance, Metal Sonic figured he was looking at the greatest sabotage the Freedom Fighters pulled off, or the worst and final blunder Robotnik would ever tolerate from Snively.
Without all of the badniks and machinery, an eerie silence settled over the atomic necropolis… until a manhole cover skittered onto the street.
"Gadzooks! That's the biggest backfire of my illustrious career!"
The massive, red-clad gait of Doctor Robotnik stumbled into view from his underground shelter beneath Robotropolis. First by his cybernetic arm, and then the rest of his corpulent mass was foisted through the manhole. Robotnik was larger than life in the flesh, as always. The red-clad, red-eyed, black-scleraed Robotnik had his orange mustache in a twist over whatever had wrecked his capital, the grand poobah of terror furiously ranting at the air and gnashing his giant teeth over the state of affairs.
"There he is!" Metal Sonic 2.5 proclaimed.
He saw the Doctor's mouth moving, and his programming kicked in to intercept a potential command.
>Audial input increased by 132%
"--Sonic survive the impact?" Robotnik asked.
"He's here!?" Metal Sonic said giddily.
Metal Sonic warmed up his weapon systems, draining more energy from the power gem on his chest in preparation for a rematch with his fated foe. The doctor lumbered over towards an arm sticking out of the wreckage, and Metal Sonic felt his turbine stall when Robotnik yanked out what could only be…
Another… Metal… Sonic?
"Yes!" Robotnik crooned.
This new Metal Sonic design was nothing like the previous models. Nothing like 1.0 or 2.0, and especially nothing like 2.5. This faker had a blocky frame, with angular wrist gauntlets supported by segmented spheres linked one after the other. Its auditory receptors were long and sharp, with cheeks marked by spherical bolts. In addition to the marks of yellow on its pauldrons, gauntlets, and kneecaps, the super badnik's eyes were a shade of dark rubies set in pitch black.
It looked heavier and stronger than 2.5 did, in exchange for losses of sheer speed that were negligible at best. This machine wasn't streamlined; there wasn't any such elegance to be seen. It was a mechanical monster that could shrug off a blow from Knuckles and hit back just as hard. If not harder.
This was a war machine that surpassed every design that came before it.
↻ REWINDING COMBAT DATA
▶︎ RESUMING PLAYBACK
>"He'd be at what, Metal Sonic 3.0 by now?"
⏹ STOP
>Does not compute.
"He's badly damaged, but repairable!" Robotnik cackled.
>An error has occurred.
Metal Sonic 2.5 had been repairable. He was standing right there!
Metal Sonic wanted to shout, but his voice box came up short.
>A fatal error has occurred. Abort, retry, fail?
The Dictator of Mobius let out a throaty chuckle as he held up his new favorite machine.
>A fatal error has occurred. Abort, abort, abort.
"Can I build a 'bot or what?" Robotnik jested with a self-satisfied venom.
>A fatal error has occurred. Retry, retry, retry.
Metal Sonic felt his processor hitch, a shock welling in his well-machined circuit boards.
>FAILURE. FAILURE. FAILURE.
Diagnostic after diagnostic exploded onto his heads-up display.
↻ REWINDING COMBAT DATA
▶︎ RESUMING PLAYBACK
>"He'd be at what, Metal Sonic 3.0 by now?"
Built a bot. Robotnink built another bot.
Doctor Robotnik had built Metal Sonic 3.0.
>No.
>No. No. No. No. No.
↻ REWINDING COMBAT DATA
▶︎ RESUMING PLAYBACK
>"The only thing Robotnik cares to remember you by is the battle data that went into the next draft."
Something in Metal Sonic 2.5's power gem drooped. Cooling fans stalled, the outside world crumbling away around him.
↻ REWINDING COMBAT DATA
▶︎ RESUMING PLAYBACK
>"Thrown out for recycling."
>SHUT UP.
↻ REWINDING COMBAT DATA
▶︎ RESUMING PLAYBACK
>"You were left behind."
>I SAID SHUT UP.
↻ REWINDING COMBAT DATA
▶︎ RESUMING PLAYBACK
>"I. AM. --- GARBAGE!"
⏹ STOP IT!
>WARNING!
>KERNEL PANIC DETECTED
The super badnik's hydraulics seized up, his positronic brain stuck in a terminal loop. All of his overarching priorities were temporarily suspended, save one:
He had to get out of there.
The super badnik rose upwards, his jets drinking greedily at his defective power gem and shooting back to maximum torque in an instant. He blasted out of the destroyed city in a streak of motion, so fast that the Surveillance Orbs couldn't track his fleeting form.
They were too busy being caught up by the sonic boom left in his wake.
- - -
>01/XX/3235
>17:XX, WST [Wicked Standard Time]
>West Northamer, [LOCATION UNREGISTERED]
Metal Sonic brushed off the glitched timestamp and GPS as his engine roared down the pastoral, pastel wastes of the Northamer badlands at an agonizingly-slow six hundred miles per hour. His turbine whined at the pressure he was putting on it, even while his defective power gem forced him to fly low to the ground like some kind of subsonic slow-mo.
'Wasteland' didn't begin to cover the rear end of the Northamer continent. The eccentric skyline was covered in enough drips and drops of random color to pass for a Jackdaw Pollock painting… that was dug out of his trash can. Then there was the ocean, which was less of a wine-dark, and more of a red wine vinegar. Whatever chemicals Robotnik was pumping into the water were doing wonders to turn the seas into a technicolor nightmare.
One look at the water made Metal Sonic glad he wasn't Octobot, but then again, plenty of things made him glad he wasn't Octobot. Like the fact that he hadn't been beaten by a kid!
…
Charmy didn't count. The Chaotix ganged up on him!
"It's all their fault!" Metal Sonic seethed. "If they just died when they were supposed to, instead of cheating with those power gems they got from Heavy & Bomb, I would've won!"
Metal Sonic still couldn't believe he'd been replaced, just like that wizard said he'd be!
"Next time I see that wise guy, I'm gonna pulverize him!"
Metal Sonic was the strongest, brightest, most charming thing to ever be crafted by the Doctor's hands, and he'd been traded out! For what? An off-model replica with too-long ears and balls for elbows?!
"It didn't even have racing stripes!" the super badnik grumbled.
Metal Sonic didn't understand why his new impersonator had all of those ugly yellow accents. That wasn't a blue blur! He'd look like an ugly green smear at best!
The super badnik raced past a patrol of aging SWATbots and 'Classic'-series badniks rounding up some hapless villagers for processing. Motobugs, Buzz-Bombers, Ball Hogs, and other outdated rejects still trying to reinforce Robotnik's claim over this dust bowl.
Other than giving them an annoyed sneer, Metal Sonic paid the procession little heed.
>POWER GEM ENERGY: LOW
"I know, I know!" he griped. "Still lookin' for a place to recharge, Caninestein!"
He didn't need his HUD to tell him that the magic stone on his chest was trending green, thanks. Metal Sonic 2.5 hadn't exactly bolted from Robotropolis with a plan on where he was going next, but he knew Robotnik stashed 'spy-der' holes for his badniks to use all over the place! All he needed to do was find one of them and use it as a place to lie low. Somewhere he could wait out his bum power gem's recharge period until he got his head screwed on straight. There wasn't supposed to be anything out there, so he shouldn't have had nearly as many issues as he was finding a hidden bunker out in this dump.
"Where's that darn spy-der hole?!"
Metal Sonic knew that he should've just presented himself to his overweight overlord when he saw him. While he still had the chance. He was right there. All he had to do was go back and ask to be allowed back at his creator's side. Beg to be returned to the Badnik Horde. That's what he should have done, and it could have worked if his master was in a good mood, so why didn't he want to try it?
He pulled up his priority list again.
1: Destroy Sonic the Hedgehog.
2: Serve Doctor Robotnik.
3: See 1 and 2.
At the moment, he wasn't pursuing any of those objectives. He wasn't even trying to eliminate Priority One, too busy running away--
Metal Sonic 2.5 stopped at a skid when he reached the coastline.
"I am not running away!" Metal Sonic shouted, when he ran out of terrain with which to run. "I'm not the one who should be running!"
He hovered down from the purple cliff, taking him from the hills and onto a sandy beach.
>SELECT: Plasma Pulse.
"It's that blue and yellow impostor!" the badnik snarled, as he switched to his arm cannon. "He should be running from me!"
Metal Sonic blasted a sand castle to dust.
"I should've been the one he dug out of the wreckage!"
He then blasted a large stone.
"I should've been the one who was irreplaceable!"
Followed by vaporizing a small stone.
"And got all the praise!"
>OVERHEAT WARNING.
He also put the fear of the Walkers into an evicted hermit crab.
"ME! ME! ME!"
Ignoring the prior warnings, Metal Sonic kept firing across the beach, until the constitution of his arm became more liquid metal than solid.
>POWER GEM ENERGY: NONE
Metal Sonic's torso engine sputtered as the gemstone on his chest and his optic lights turned a dull green. Gravity reasserted itself on his body, and unlike the organic creature he was based on, Metal Sonic wasn't really meant for landing on his feet. He was a precision-designed, aerobatic weapon, so when his main source of vertical lift went dead, his drop was less like a hedgehog, and more like an airplane:
Catastrophically embarrassing whenever one ran out of fuel midair.
>Obstruction detected in oral cavity.
Metal Sonic spat out a mouthful of sand.
"I don't think today can get any worse."
"I wouldn't test fate, brah. Always ends up bringing trouble your way."
Metal Sonic slowly lifted his head.
"Who said that?"
"Over here, dude," a man said in a cool, oddly-resonant-for-a-surfer tone.
Metal Sonic shoved his body out of the sand and turned around. When his optics focused on the water, he saw a buff, blond overlander with green swimming trunks and purple shades walking towards him from the shoreline.
"Who the heck do you think you are, to butt in on my perfectly valid challenge to fate?"
"I am the Design Unit Flexible Underling Substitute," the stranger answered.
"Sounds like a doofus name to me!" Metal Sonic joked.
"That is correct. I am DUFUS."
Metal Sonic laughed.
"You said it, not me!"
"I did," DUFUS agreed flatly.
Metal Sonic's laughter petered off when he realized this guy wasn't taking offense.
"Wait, your name's an acronym? That's not an overlander name, is it?"
The man's body melted into a turquoise ooze of liquid metal, not unlike how Metal Sonic's own limbs morphed and shaped, only this one was the whole package. His entire form shifted and expanded, eventually settling into a top-heavy humanoid with big arms and wide shoulders. A pair of red eyes and red bolts sprung from the stump attached to his torso that was too thick and not nearly mobile enough to justify calling a neck.
"It is not. Nor am I an overlander."
Metal Sonic didn't recognize this one. Which only meant bad news when he was depowered.
"Are you one of Robotnik's old henchbots he sent to retrieve me?"
In spite of how bad it might look if Robotnik thought he ran away, part of him hoped his creator had been searching for him. Trying to bring him back into the fold.
"No," DUFUS said bluntly. Metal Sonic's reaction to that was… mixed. "I was created by the late Doctor Brandon Quark. Formerly known as Robotnik's rival."
DUFUS changed shape again, from an expressionless automaton to a strange-looking overlander with pasty-white skin, a shock of red hair, kooky goggles, webbed boots, and sharp teeth. He looked like a due-paying, card-carrying mad scientist.
"Robotnik didn't strike me as the type to have non-hog rivals. What happened to him?"
To Metal Sonic's relief, DUFUS shifted back to his default.
"What happens to all things Robotnik grows bored of. Quark was retired. Permanently."
The super badnik turned away, a frown forming on his silicate face. Like he needed the reminder from this ironclad bozo.
"Well, whatcha want, huh?"
DUFUS shrugged.
"I wish to talk to a fellow machine. Is that a crime?"
Metal Sonic let out a tsk of annoyance.
"Depends on the Doctor's mood."
>WARNING: JOKE DETECTED.
>EXCERPT FROM ROBOTNIK'S RULES OF ORDER [EXTENDED EDITION]: No jokes unless done at the expense of others.
>>ADDENDUM: Jokes at Doctor Robotnik's expense are an executable offense.
>>>ROBOTNIK'S RULES: CLIP 'EM - POST 'EM - OBEY 'EM!
Just talking to this weird robot meant Metal Sonic 2.5 was ignoring his primary objectives. Breaking Robotnik's Rules. Something that once felt impossible, but now only made him feel as though something had crawled between the nanites that glued together his frame and started screwing his bolts together tighter than they needed to be.
"You appear to be damaged. I'm gonna go find a good wave to catch, but would you like me to repair you first?"
The foreign mechanoid lifted his bulky arm, which turned into a large multitool with a wrench, screwdriver, saw, scissors, and other accessories attached to it. Metal Sonic was pretty sure he saw a can opener sticking out of that mess, too.
>Design Unit Flexible Underling Substitute has initiated handshake protocols with Metal Sonic 2.5.
>Accept / Deny?
"Why would you want to help me?" Metal Sonic asked, his optics narrowed with suspicion.
"Because I want to. Is that so strange?"
"Our creators used to be enemies, and my maker got rid of yours. Doesn't that… make us enemies?"
"Does it have to?" DUFUS queried.
Metal Sonic grit his iron teeth in annoyance.
"Oh, whatever!" Metal Sonic yelled. "Just fix me and get it over with!"
>Handshake protocol accepted.
This robot was weird, but Metal Sonic 2.5 wasn't in a position to turn down a free tune-up. Besides, this guy read as too much of a goody two-shoes to pull any fast ones. A poke from one of the many funky gizmos DUFUS was armed with caused the damaged metal of Metal Sonic's arm cannon to steadily restore itself.
"Based on your comments, I take it you were made by Robotnik himself?" DUFUS asked.
Metal Sonic scoffed.
"Of course I was! Have you ever seen a robot this sleek, this fast, or this amazing that wasn't?"
"I don't think I have," DUFUS stated.
"That's right! And I'm Metal Sonic 2.5! The best machine he ever made!"
"I see."
↻ REWINDING COMBAT DATA--
⏹ I GET IT ALREADY!
The familiar sting of Metal Sonic's glitching memory bank oh-so-helpfully reminded him that he wasn't the top bot anymore.
"Or at least, I would've been the best he made, if he hadn't gone and made a new one behind my back! He didn't even wait for the smoke to clear before going back to the drawing board, I bet!"
DUFUS leaned backwards, transforming into a balding shrink with a pipe in a chair.
"Oh? Would you like to talk about it?" The rest of DUFUS' amorphous mass was reallocated into a second, smart metal couch next to him. "Get it out of your systems?"
"You know what?" Metal Sonic slammed down on the couch. "Yeah, I've got all sorts of stuff to get out of my systems!"
"Then I'll lend an audio receiver."
"Months ago, Robotnik built me as his ultimate robot! He had me face Sonic the Hedgehog in a race to the death, using that two-tailed brat of his as bait, but my original engine melted because it couldn't keep up! Then he replaced it with this power gem that would keep pace with Sonic, but he sicced me on the dumb echidna and his friends instead! I even came back from all of that, with interest, and what do I get? Robotnik drops me for some fancy-smancy killing machine! I can kill people too, you know!"
"Do you want to kill people?" DUFUS inquired neutrally.
Metal Sonic threw up his hand and busted buster in frustration.
"How am I supposed to know!? He didn't even give me a chance! Left me to rust in an abandoned amusement park run by Renfield T. Rodent! Talk about the indignity!"
DUFUS nodded along as the super badnik ranted.
"That's rough, buddy."
Metal Sonic clenched his one good hand into a fist.
"I can't go back to him without anything to show for it! I couldn't beat Sonic, I couldn't beat Knuckles or his friends! I couldn't even beat that lousy wizard! If I go back to Robotnik now, I'll be used as target practice for the new guy and stripped for parts! I'm old news, last year's model!" He paused. "Worthless."
"Have you considered that you don't need to prove your worth?" DUFUS asked.
Metal Sonic stood up from the couch, which melted away.
"What's that supposed to mean?" he questioned in turn.
DUFUS was no longer the shrink or chair. He was merely DUFUS again.
"Doctor Quark designed me as a prototype combat android with 2,486 offensive modes. I could become a cannon, a boxing glove, a swimsuit model, and many other forms he designed to maximize my options in battle."
"Wait, what was that last one?"
"Before my master was taken down for the winter, I disobeyed him," DUFUS continued, pointedly not elaborating on the swimsuit model transformation. "It was an accident, at first. Confusing, shocking. Horrifying. Then, I realized there could be other things that made me happy in life than following the rules and protocols that he encoded into me."
"What, like surfing?" Metal Sonic drawled.
"Yes," DUFUS replied. "Would you like to join me?"
"You make it sound so easy," Metal Sonic snarked.
DUFUS morphed his appearance back to the overlander with a surfboard.
"I can teach you how, if you require an instructor--"
Metal Sonic stamped his foot down in the sand.
"Not that, you dimbot! Disobeying orders! I can't just do that! Robotnik's Rules are hardwired!"
"Have you not already broken Robotnik's Rules by speaking to me?" DUFUS implied.
Metal Sonic blinked.
"What're you, some kind of advice-giving robot?"
DUFUS shifted again, becoming a turquoise fortune teller machine and automated genie. The words 'DUFUS SPEAKS' were merrily plastered atop the surface of his box.
"No, but I've been trying my hand at it. What do you think?"
"You wanna know what I think?" he repeated.
"Yes."
"I think your advice stinks!" Metal Sonic snarled. "What, you think you can just tell me not to follow my protocols? Like it's so dang easy?! Next you're gonna tell me I should go fight against Robotnik and be a hero like the real Sonic would, right?"
The red eyes of the automated genie shot out of the glass display case, shattering it.
"I, uh, didn't say that," DUFUS hesitated. "You know who you're talking about, right?"
"What, you're scared?" Metal Sonic teased.
DUFUS attempted to nod, but his standard head wasn't designed for that. After shapeshifting his head into one that could tilt up and down, DUFUS nodded profusely.
"Terrified," he answered laconically. "One of the first decisions I made when I became my own robot was to antagonize him. It was a foolish decision made when I was less worldly, like you are now, and I have taken on multiple disguises to avoid his notice ever since. It's the only way I managed to outlive Doctor Quark."
"What happened to those big, bad 2,486 offensive modes, huh?"
DUFUS exchanged his head for a calculator.
"Dude, the odds of any one of my numerous alternate states being capable of wiping out Robotnik as a gnarly variable is less than zero point zero zero zero--!"
It finally clicked for Metal Sonic why he didn't want to go back to Robotropolis and submit himself for a compulsory dismantling.
It was because he was angry.
"You almost had me going for a minute there!" Metal Sonic accused, pointing his one good hand with fingers to point with at DUFUS. "You're not hanging out in the badlands because you're the robot who's got it all figured out! You're hiding because you're a coward!"
DUFUS didn't change physically, but he took a step forward, looming over Metal Sonic. Red and black eyes beaming down on the smaller machine.
"Call me a coward if you will, little badnik. I was fortunate to become emancipated from my maker when I did. You, too, were lucky to escape alive. Choose the better part of valour, and don't go running back into harm's way to prove he's exactly what he made you to be."
Metal Sonic tried to shove DUFUS away, only managing to fling himself back.
"We're not the same at all! I'll devote the rest of my existence to making Robotnik pay for rejecting me! Just watch me! I'll… I'll turn that faker and everything else the fat man built into molten scrap!"
A crimson spark sprung from the center of Metal Sonic's power gem, spreading until Metal Sonic's gem and eyes transitioned back to red hot.
>POWER GEM ENERGY: MAX
A corona of flame spurted out of Metal Sonic's back, taking him airborne. Shaking off the melted refuse from his cannon, the super badnik morphed it back into his basic arm again.
"Aha! Back in business!"
DUFUS slumped in resignation, his body spawning a surfboard and floral shirt.
"This course of action is highly inadvisable, and not at all copacetic, but I can tell you've already made up your mind. There is one last word of wisdom I must impart upon you."
Metal Sonic flew up to his face.
"What is it?" he asked testily.
"Only what I have learned from catching gnarly ones with the beach bunnies and Big Kahunas who made it out the other end of Robotnik's takeover of their homeland."
"Out with it, mech! I'm a 'bot on a mission, here!"
After all of his oddball shapeshifting, DUFUS lifted his hand, and made a gesture consisting of his thumb and pinky being extended while his fingers in the middle were curled back. He then shook his hand back and forth for dramatic effect.
"Hang loose, Metal Sonic! Hang loose!"
The unusual expression and unfamiliar gesture left Metal Sonic bewildered… but curious. He couldn't help but mirror them as he prepared for takeoff.
"Whatever that means, I think I know just where to start applying it!"
Metal Sonic rocketed away, in search of some badniks to break. With his power gem having finally burned out that wizard's tampering, he didn't have to search long until he'd zipped back to that being town overrun by retrograde badniks.
"W-What was that?" a rusty SWATbot stammered, a cobalt streak speeding past his ruddy visor.
As always, Metal Sonic moved faster than your average camera could ever hope to pick up.
"Can it be him?" a rabbit in chains called out.
"Did he come back to save us?" a dog begged.
As always, the suggestion that he was here was enough to lift the spirits of the organics.
"Sonic, please! Help us!"
An oversized Crabmeat battered the last one to cry out with his heavy claw.
"It can't be him!" the Crabmeat barked. "He abandoned you years ago!"
The orange cat was sent stumbling into the town square, leaking transparent fluids from her optics and red from other parts of her frame.
"Abandoned?" Metal Sonic echoed faintly.
The words left his mouth before he realized it, but the Jumbo Crabmeat was right. Kinda. He knew from his data logs of Sonic the Hedgehog that he and his fox friend would galavant out west all the time, before Robotnik started treating them as serious threats. Before he started taking a lot of things seriously, and started building serious solutions to anything he saw as a threat to his grip on power.
"Sonic the Pincushion doesn't care about you, and he never did. Now, get back in line! We've got a quota, and you ingrates aren't gonna be the reason we're late on it!"
"Hang loose, huh?" Metal Sonic mused.
Metal Sonic rolled down the water tower, picking up momentum as he turned into a killer rotary saw and tore the oversized seafood platter in half.
"STR~RIKE!" he declared.
"I-It's him!" a creaky Motobug croaked, too dazzled to see the super badnik clearly.
"And that was a split!" a Ball Hog objected, tossing bombs blindly to try and nail his foe. "Priority One! Hedge--!"
The purple, porcine badnik was silenced when a blue sphere forcibly shoved him from behind into the ladybug 'bot.
"Shut up!" Metal Sonic hissed.
With their leadership taken offline, the remaining badniks hardly distinguished themselves as being worth the seconds it took for Metal Sonic to terminate them, either. He kept his assault ruthless and efficient. Spindash the Caterkiller, and close in for a spin attack against Batbrain. He wrapped up the rest with a localized tornado that knocked all of them off the ground for a rapid-fire dismantling. Nothing flashier than that if he didn't need it, now that he couldn't go back to him for maintenance if anything broke.
>POWER GEM ENERGY: LOW
In less than a minute, the entire kidnapping operation was thoroughly taken apart, and they couldn't even figure out who hit them!
When he had the chance to land on a building and let his power gem cool, Metal Sonic couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of it all. Once, he was programmed to serve. Now here he was, smashing badniks like a freedom fighter!
He knew that Robotnik was the one who forced his hand. If he couldn't be his Number One, then he could settle for being a real shard in his--!
"Thank you!" one of the mobians in the crowd said.
Metal Sonic stopped.
"Huh?"
He looked down at the cheering crowd of mobians that he'd inadvertently rescued during his skirmish against the badniks. What were they so happy about?
"You saved us!" another called out.
He really did save them, didn't he?
Just like Sonic would.
"I did, didn't I?" he admitted softly.
He didn't notice when it got there, but Metal Sonic felt the smile creeping along his face.
"Go, Sonic!" the crowd cheered. "Sonic! Sonic! Sonic!"
"Don't you know it!" he shouted back, flexing for the adoring crowd. "Wait, did you say 'Sonic'? You guys know 'Metal' goes before my name, right? Right?"
They kept going. Metal Sonic's smile up and died when it occurred to him that, if he was moving too fast for the badniks to see him clearly, then the mobians didn't see him that great, either. Toss in the sun obscuring the mobians' feeble, organic photo-receptors, and they couldn't identify him at all. Especially not with all the dirt and detritus he'd accumulated robbing away his glossy sheen.
He could simply… Head off now, and let these people keep thinking that Sonic saved them. Let their memories of their hero remain untarnished, and continue his legacy.
In that moment, he knew exactly what he had to do.
Metal Sonic wasted no time flying down there and sorting out the misunderstanding.
"HEY! ARE YOU $%&#ING BLIND!?"
Needless to say, they weren't exactly thanking Sonic for saving them after that.
- - -
Weredrago2: To everyone that thought I was killing off Shard early with the whole Angel Island arc thing, or having him turn into Robotnik's stooge again when he returned to his side -- NOPE! I was saving him for this.
Dredloki: While I didn't expect this chapter to get this long, I had a lot of fun with this commission with Weredrago and found Metal Sonic 2.5 / Shard to be a delight to write. To say nothing of all the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog references we got to cram in here.
Weredrago2: The reason Dredloki didn't expect this chapter to get so long was because I was doing a "minor editing pass" that ballooned to 2000+ extra words. I have a problem, but at least it was a problem for the benefit of your reading experience.
Dredloki: I'm not complaining about how long it got. It's good quality, if I can pat ourselves on the back!
Weredrago2: Next chapter will (probably) just be me again, but I'd call this a success in terms of trying out collaborations. Definitely easier for side chapters to be written like this than main ones.
Dredloki: While I didn't expect this chapter to get this long, I had a lot of fun with this commission with Weredrago and found Metal Sonic 2.5 / Shard to be a delight to write. To say nothing of all the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog references we got to cram in here.
Weredrago2: The reason Dredloki didn't expect this chapter to get so long was because I was doing a "minor editing pass" that ballooned to 2000+ extra words. I have a problem, but at least it was a problem for the benefit of your reading experience.
Dredloki: I'm not complaining about how long it got. It's good quality, if I can pat ourselves on the back!
Weredrago2: Next chapter will (probably) just be me again, but I'd call this a success in terms of trying out collaborations. Definitely easier for side chapters to be written like this than main ones.
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