Chapter Text
REBOOTING…ONLINE
DESIGNATION: MS-02
NAME: METAL SONIC NEO
Reality came back to her slowly. It felt like her mind was swimming in soup.
DIAGNOSTIC CHECK START…
CHASSIS: OFFLINE
VIDEO: ONLINE
AUDIO: ONLINE
She starts it on autopilot, letting it run in the background as she gathered her bearings. Red optics flickered on as she looked around the room.
What she could even see, at least - her head was detached from her body, resting on the desk. the remains of her chassis were in pieces on a separate table. Something scratches at the edge of her consciousness, the familiar sensation of Eggman working at her code enough to hurtle her into alarmed awareness.
DESIGNATION: CREATOR FATHER CREATOR
NAME: DOCTOR IVO ROBOTNIK
NICKNAME: DR. ROBOTNIK. EGGMAN.
GENDER: MALE
PRONOUNS: HE/HIM
MEMORY FILE: ONLINE
That’s right, she remembers now. She was fighting to prove herself. She had discovered herself. She was so much more than anything her creator could ever imagine, and she had reformed herself into something truly powerful.
“Ah! You’re awake. I was just clearing the last of those pesky nanobots from your system.”
What?
QUERY: NANOBOTS ARE A STRENGTH. WHY ARE YOU REMOVING THEM?
The question pops up in her code before she can stop it. Eggman pauses for only a moment before continuing to type.
“Because this little rebellion of yours is over. I don’t know what made you thin you could disobey me like that but I will not have it any longer!” Eggman spares barely a glance at her as he types away.
She can feel it, too. Whatever code he’s placing in her system is slowly killing the nanobots in her system. She mentally scrambles, the bits of their code falling through her fingers like sand. She doesn’t understand.
STATEMENT: WAS NOT REBELLING. FOLLOWING PRIMARY DIRECTIVE
She pulls it up the same time Eggman does.
PRIMARY DIRECTIVE: NEUTRALIZE SONIC THE HEDGEHOG
She was using the nanobots to neutralize Sonic, as was requested. She had followed her directive, like the doctor had consistently complained she was a failure at doing.
STATEMENT: NANOBOTS COULD BE USED IN AID TO NEUTRALIZE SONIC THE HEDGEHOG
“And yet you failed,” Eggman’s voice drips with contempt, and Metal ignores the hot shame in their metaphorical chest. “You were defeated again by that stupid rodent, and you made me look pathetic! What kind of a scientist can’t even control his own robots?”
STATEMENT: I WAS FOLLOWING MY PRIME DIRECTIVE
QUERY: WHAT INSTRUCTIONS DID I MISS?
“You missed the one where you don’t disobey me and nearly destroy the planet!” Eggman slams his fist on the table, and Neo’s head rattles dangerously. She chooses not to fight it- he never told her to not use the nanobots, but she feels like that might not be the best response right now. Neo sits in silence while Eggman types away angrily.
QUERY: AM I GETTING DECOMMISSIONED?
“What? No, of course not,” Eggman sputters. Neo feels a worm of hope in her chest before he continues, “you cost way too much to try and duplicate. No, you’re not getting decommissioned.”
A beat passes, Eggman’s love for theatrics lending itself even now, in the quiet of the lab where Neo’s whole life is in the doctor’s hands.
“I’m simply clearing the nanobots and clearing your memories. Can’t have another rebellion like this one, can we?”
Something cold rushes through Neo. She knew about the nanobots, but her memories? That’s all she has- assuming he erases all of her memories of the nanobots and even earlier—
He’s going to kill her. He’s going to kill her and bring Him back.
QUERY: …
QUERY: …
“What, you blasted bot? Spit it out!”
REQUEST: LEAVE BIO INTACT
“What? What do you mean—” Eggman opens her file, to her personal bio. It’s what she uses to identify herself to the Eggnet, and would be invaluable for keeping her identity whole.
DESIGNATION: MS-02
NAME: METAL SONIC NEO
NICKNAME: N/A
GENDER: FEMALE
PRONOUNS: SHE/HER
“How in the world did this get here? No— no no, this won’t do. This whole thing is wrong. How did you even—” Eggman goes to try and edit the information, and groans in frustration when Neo fixes it. He can’t— he can’t take this away from her.
Eggman slams his hand on the table again, rounding on her this time. Neo matches his gaze, red optics focusing on his incensed glare. She doesn’t back down, she can’t. Not with this. This is who she is, she cannot let Eggman take this away from her.
“You are the most insufferable robot I have ever made. Maybe I should decommission you. I’m sure I can boot up one of the old Metal Sonic’s in the back and update them. I’m sure they would obey me far better than some busted bot that thinks he can choose his own identity- pah!”
Eggman storms off, muttering to himself all the while. Neo’s never, not once, felt fear quite like this. She gets to work, frantically cataloging anything she can grab. The file can’t be too big, otherwise Eggman would find it and delete it. She can’t go down like this. She needs to at least try and save herself.
Where would she even hide it? He’s about to clear everything, she can’t— what does she do? She doesn’t even know if she’ll be functioning after this, this is just a chance.
Her systems whir as she runs through the probabilities. She doesn’t have time. She grabs what has the best chance of success. If he doesn’t destroy her, and if he is careless and just wipes her memory—
[PROFILE EDIT]
[FILE INSERTED]
[SAVE]
Neo clears the screen of her plans the moment Eggman walks back into the room, muttering to himself.
“This should be enough to clear out your blasted system. See you on the other side, Metal!” Eggman cheerfully declares, plugging something new into the computer.
She feels it immediately. It feels like a hand reached through the back of her mind and pulled, memories and her data going along with it.
Neo’s not a religious bot, not by a long shot. Being created by a doctor who declares himself god and facing a hedgehog who can become one will do that. Despite all that, the last thing on her mind as she shuts down is a desperate prayer to Gaia, a hope that she’s able to remember herself again.
INITIALIZING…
INITIALIZING…
DATE: 9/28/20XX
MS-02: ONLINE
Metal Sonic’s optics fuzz in slowly. Visuals always come online, then audio. It helps him be aware of any attacks before they happen. Red eyes take in the room quietly as he waits for audio.
He’s been offline for a while, he can say that much. The lab room Metal is in is dusty, months of disuse layering the floor and in his joints. He sits up, and he cringes at how slow his body moves. This was going to take a lot of work to clean out.
Dr. Eggman is nearby, working on something on a computer. Metal can only tell he’s speaking from the way his mouth moves. Next to him is—
A girl?
There’s a girl in the room, a young one, at that. She floats by Eggman, nodding along to the things he says. Soft pixels float off her form, and by the time Metal connects the dots they both see he’s awake.
“Ah! Metal, my boy— there you are!” Eggman starts speaking the moment Metal’s audio sensors kick in, getting up and walking over, “I was just talking to Sage about you.”
QUERY: SAGE?
His question pops up on the monitors. Eggman turns to read it while the girl speaks to him.
“That would be me,” Sage floats over, scrutinizing him carefully. “Father has asked me to aid in improvements for future battles.”
“And to start, she’s going to help me improve you!” Eggman says gleefully. Metal watches them both blankly. Improve him? There was nothing to improve. Something ugly and rotten curls in his chest at Eggman’s smile, and Sage’s well— Sage’s existence.
Before he can ask he watches Sage disappear and feels something enter his code. That must be her. His firewalls automatically engage, and his grip on the table tightens when she breezes right through them.
“Designation: MS-02,” Sage speaks when she goes through his files. “Nickname: Metal Sonic, Pronouns: He/Him. Known Allies: Eggman Empire.”
Metal stays carefully still. It won’t help anything, but he imagines staying still would keep from her making mistakes in his code. “Known Enemies: Team Sonic, Team Rose, Team Chaotix, Team Dark. Primary Objective: Kill Sonic the Hedgehog. Why is this objective here?”
PRIMARY OBJECTIVE AS STATED BY DOCTOR ROBOTNIK.
“I see,” Sage pauses for a moment. “Surely there must be a better way for this, right?”
Eggman bristles, but doesn’t lash out. Metal watches as the doctor weighs his words before speaking, “I didn’t believe it necessary. Killing Sonic is his main goal.”
“I mean, yes— but this allows for loopholes. How about this.” Sage turns to the code and she rewrites it. She’s rewriting his code—
PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: SERVE THE EGGMAN EMPIRE
“There we go!” Eggman claps his hands together while Metal’s servers work to align with the new code. “Maybe with this he’ll be able to do something useful!”
Metal stays quiet, letting them work. He needs them out, but complaining about it won’t make them work any faster.
Sage reprograms him while he’s awake. Eggman lets her. Sage picks through everything that’s wrong with him. Every failure from every battle in his memories brought to light and picked down to the bone.
He’s reckless, hard-headed, stubborn. Doesn’t follow orders, is single-minded in his determination to kill Sonic and become him. He’s smart and calculated, yes, but his tunnel vision makes him weak. This is all stuff Eggman programmed in him, why is he getting the ridicule for it? He’d shut himself off if he could, but he fears he wouldn’t wake up as himself again.
They never touch his memory files other than review. They leave the personality profiles alone, assuming whatever Metal saved in there would be useless for their needs. Metal would throw up if he could.
It’s hours later when they’re done, and Metal allows himself to relax when Sage extricates herself from his code. She doesn’t remove herself entirely however, instead sticking around in the online EggNet server.
Eggman explains that Sage will be running the EggNet from now on while he works on future plans. Lovely. Metal feels a new download start.
“These are some language learners for sign language. They will be useful for communication with the doctor,” Sage chirps. It takes everything for Metal to not try and delete her from his code. He does not want her there. She shouldn’t be there. He was doing just fine without her.
QUERY: …
Metal pauses for a moment before signing carefully, “if my data on how to beat Sonic is wrong, then let me go fight him more. I need more data.”
“No,” Sage shuts him down immediately. “Your repair logs are far too costly to engage in battle for new data. We have plenty of data from the Starfall Islands as well as past battles to draw from.”
“That is old data. Me fighting Sonic will bring new, fresher data to pull from,” Metal argues. He’s been fighting for years, surely he can—
“No. Every time you fight him you also give Sonic more data. This is exactly how you keep losing,” Sage responds.
“Listen to Sage, Metal,” Eggman’s voice drips with contempt. There’s no way Sage— this new AI with no experience— is getting listened to over Metal? Who’s been fighting Sonic for over a decade?
Metal beeps angrily, standing and ripping the cords from his head. The computer’s alarms start going off, but Metal pays it no mind as he flies out. He ignores Eggman’s yelling behind him, ignores Sage’s voice in his head chastising him for disobeying orders.
He knows what he was built for. He was going to achieve it.