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Tangle blinked her eyes open, not realising the difference due to how dark her surroundings were.
“Oof… what happened?” The lemur asked herself. Indeed, she checked her memory only to find a bit of a blank spot regarding the events of what happened.
Getting up, Tangle’s eyes adjusted to the darkness surprisingly quickly, and she found herself in a ruined temple of some kind.
“Spooky…” Tangle whispered to herself as she observed the faded patterns on the walls. They looked oddly cybernetic, and was that rust on the walls?
Getting on her feet was a challenge, since Tangle discovered that she was inside a pod of some kind. It was cylindrical and connected to a glowing console, which was attached to another pod, but the whole assembly had been knocked down on the floor. The fact that it worked at all was a miracle, but more importantly than that it reminded Tangle of something…
With a gasp, Tangle remembered what happened. She’d caught wind of these spooky abandoned ruins and wanted to check them out, maybe surprise Jewel with some rare gemstone she might find in there. Instead, Tangle remembered falling into some kind of pod that suddenly snapped shut, and when her claustrophobia kicked in she must have passed out from the panic.
“Oh, boy, the others must be worried about me… of all the times to leave my phone at home!” Tangle lamented as she rushed out of the ruins. Her footsteps echoed across the metallic chambers, each clang deafening. At one point her tail snagged on a large piece of shrapnel, but miraculously she wasn’t injured. Finally, the light of the exit shone before the lemur, and she was so relieved that she failed to notice the rays of light reflecting off her face.
Thankfully these ruins weren’t too far away from Spiral Village, which meant the journey home wasn’t too taxing. In fact, Tangle felt like she didn’t actually exert any effort at all!
“Either that pod supercharged my body, or my new morning routine is really paying off!” Tangle remarked in high spirits. Walking merrily down the road, the young lemur made sure to wave at everyone like she always did, but oddly they didn’t wave back. Now, Tangle was used to the occasional strange or even dirty look from a few people, but everyone looked almost afraid of her for some reason.
“Strange… Do I have something on my face?” Tangle wondered out loud. She’d have to check the mirror when she got home.
Speaking of home, Tangle finally made it to her, Whisper, Bean and Bark’s shared house and she bombastically threw the door open.
“Call off the search parties, everyone, cause Tangle is in da house!”
It was a pretty mundane scene. Whisper had just finished reassembling her wispon after cleaning it, Bark was watching something on the TV and Bean was polishing his bombs.
Naturally her housemates were surprised by her entrance, but they shouldn’t look this surprised, right? It’s far from the first time Tangle burst into the house like this.
“Uh, guys? You alright? Seriously, everyone in town was also acting weird, if there’s something wrong can you just tell me?”
Whisper pointed her wispon directly at Tangle.
“WOAH WOAH WOAH?! Whisper, what are you doing?! It’s me, Tangle!”
A snorting laugh could suddenly be heard along with footsteps descending the stairs.
“Hehehehaahahha!!! Oh, man, Bark, you gotta see this meme! It’s so-” The person coming down the stairs stopped in her tracks, her eyes being opened the widest.
It was another Tangle.
“WAAHHHH!” Bean screamed, leaping on the coffee table, holding a bomb in one hand and a lit match in the other.
“Which one do I blow up first?!”
“The impostor, obviously!” Both Tangles shouted at the same time.
“Me impostor?! You impostor! Stop copying me! I’m an idiot! HA!” Both Tangles continued speaking in sync, even mirroring each other’s body language.
“C’mon guys, she’s OBVIOUSLY the fake!” Tangle gestured at her doppelgänger.
“What do you mean obviously?! I’m not the one made of metal!” The other Tangle shot back.
“Uh, yeah you are! You just can’t tell ‘cause you have like, fake skin on or something! Or maybe you’re Neo Metal Sonic copying my bio-data! Or, or, or maybe you’re Mimic! You really thought you could pull a fast one on us, you walking takoyaki?!”
“Seriously, who do you think you’re fooling? Your face is literally a hologram!”
“If you’re so sure that I’m a robot, why don’tcha prove it?!”
“Alright, I will!” The other Tangle stretched her tail while maintaining eye contact with the real Tangle. Her tail opened the bathroom door, reached in, and withdrew a mirror from the room which the lemur placed in front of her.
“Bam!”
“Why are you showing me, I’m not- not… not…” Tangle’s heart sank. Her reflection was not one of a bright, bubbly, furry lemur. Just a metal casing shaped like one, her only facial features being holograms for eyes and a mouth. She tapped one of her eyes, and the finger simply phased through the projection. Even worse, it made a metallic clink when it made contact with her head. Her tail was segmented with a three-tipped claw at the end instead of a long, fluffy thing.
“I’m not… real?” Her voice now tiny, Tangle staggered back and fell to the floor, curling up into the fetal position in the nearest corner. The other Tangle’s- the real Tangle’s smug expression dropped at this, evidently not expecting this reaction.
“Hey! You… you ok?” The lemur tried approaching her robotic double.
“NO! STAY-STAY BACK! I-I’m real! I-I AM REAL! I SWEAR! I SWEAR I’M REAL!” The robot screamed as she began hyperventilating, despite not even needing air. Bean dropped his bomb, Bark turned off the TV and Whisper leapt towards her lemurs.
“Whisper…? Whisper, please tell me I’m real? Please- please tell me that- that I’m your girlfriend and not- and not just something that’s pretending to be her!” The robot sobbed harder, her holographic purple tears looking shockingly real in the moment. Whisper didn’t answer.
She couldn’t answer.
Her silence was enough, however, and the robot screamed into her knees. The emotion became simply too much to handle, and soon her face hologram vanished and her body went limp.
“Aaaaand… she should be waking up now.”
“Nng… Tails?”
The robot Tangle woke up in Tails’ workshop. She had a bunch of wires plugging her into the fox’s computer while her counterpart looked up from Tails’ shoulder and looked at her.
“Hey, robo-me! You, um… are you ok?” Tangle tried asking again, this time giving the robot space.
“So… it’s true then? I’m… I’m not real?” Robo-Tangle asked as she ran a cool, metallic finger across the wires plugged into her.
“Well, I mean, yeah, you’re a robot, but that doesn’t mean you’re not real!”
“How? As far as I’m concerned, I’ve always been the real Tangle, then I wake up and suddenly I’m a robot! I mean, I-” Robo-Tangle began stressing again, so Tangle grabbed her arms and forced her robot duplicate to look her in the eyes. She breathed in through her mouth, held it for five seconds, and breathed out through her nose. Robo-Tangle copied the action despite her lack of lungs and eventually calmed down.
“Thanks…”
“Don’t thank me, thank-”
“Whisper, yeah, I know…” The two tangles shared another quiet moment before separating.
“Where is Whisper, anyway?” Robo-Tangle asked while Tails unplugged her from his computer. She got up on her feet and looked around the workshop, trying to spot her wolf.
“She’s with the Chaotix trying to find out where exactly you came from.” Tangle responded, silently admiring her other self’s tail.
“Wait, so I’m not an Eggman robot then?” Robo-Tangle simply assumed Eggman built and dumped her after she malfunctioned or something.
“No. I’ve studied Eggman tech and you’re nothing like his handiwork! What’s more, your internals are incredibly dense and layered, almost mimicking organs. Whatever you are, you’re a marvel of engineering! I didn’t even think something like you could physically exist!” Tails explained, showing a diagram of Robo-Tangle that neither lemur really understood.
“Huh. I feel kinda special now…”
“That’s what I’m sayin’! OOH! OOH! TAILS!” Tangle suddenly exploded with energy, like always.
“Yes, I’m right here. What is it?” Tails rubbed his ears in annoyance. Before Tangle could speak Robo-Tangle seemed to come to the same conclusion that Tangle did.
“DO I HAVE COOL ROBOT POWERS?!” Both Tangles now hopped in place together. It was actually a bit unsettling how synced they could be.
“Well, I did find jet thrusters installed in your feet…”
“Oh my gosh, YOU CAN FLY!” Tangle’s hands flapped wildly, “Do it! Do it! Do it!”
“I’m trying!” Robo-Tangle strained as she tried to activate her thrusters.
“Wait, not inside!” It was too late, however. Robo-Tangle’s feet suddenly burst into flames and lifted her into the air, the robotic lemur flailing out of control all over Tails’ workshop. She bounced off the walls, ceiling and even the workbench, leaving some sizable dents in her wake before crash landing into a pile of spare parts.
“You ok, robo-me?”
“I FLEW! I FLEW!”
“WAHOO!”
While his sister(s) celebrated, Tails could only sigh in resignation at the damage his workshop suffered.
Well, at least Robo-Tangle was happy now, right?
Her nose buried in a huge book, Whisper’s focus was sharper than Pink. Robo-Tangle had a strange symbol tampographed inside one of her panels, so she and the Chaotix attempted to find answers with that one small clue.
“Hey fellas, I think I found something!” Vector called out, attracting his colleagues’ attention. In the crocodile’s hands was a somewhat creased book about conspiracy theories.
“Um, Vector… are you sure that book is the most reliable?” Espio looked sceptically at the cover of the book depicting aliens and pyramids.
“Not exactly, but a bad lead is better than none at all.”
“What’s it say, Vector? Is Robo-Tangle an alien?” Charmy tried to peek at the book, but Vector simply shoved the little bee away.
“Well, apparently there used to be a floating city called Robotropolis, inhabited entirely by robots. One day they were saved from some great danger by a band of travelling heroes, but the robots didn’t want the heroes to leave. They built a machine that would create enhanced robotic replicas of the heroes, that way Robotropolis would be protected forever.” Vector summarised.
“That’s… really, really vague.” Espio remarked, Whisper silently agreeing.
“Yeah… but they have a flag here for Robotropolis with the same symbol as Robo-Tangle, so there’s probably a hint of truth to this story.”
“Tangle explored some old ruins before coming home. Shortly after, Robo-Tangle showed up. She said the place looked rusty and metallic. I think this story might have validity.” Whisper spoke up for the first time since the investigation started.
“Hey Vector, this book says that the floating city was called Morris Town!” Charmy read from a book while flying upside down.
“Like Whisper said, there’s SOME validity, Charmy.”
“Whisper, where are you going?” Espio’s question made the other Chaotix notice that Whisper was leaving the library. She stopped and turned her head slightly.
“We don’t know exactly where Robo-Tangle came from, but we have an idea. And I can’t leave her all alone.” And with that, Whisper simply took off, leaving the Chaotix to ponder what the wolf was planning exactly.
Another stone but the dust, reduced to gravel by a huge flying fist. The projectile quickly returned to its owner, and Robo-Tangle did a silly victory dance after earning a perfect score.
The two Tangles decided to practice the android lemur’s new skills far away from Tails’ workshop. Currently they were in an open clearing of the forest, where collateral damage could be kept to a minimum.
“Rocket tail fist! Is there anything you can’t do?!” Tangle embraced her robo-twin, who had cheered up considerably after discovering all of her new abilities.
“Um… take off my shoes?”
“Heh, yeah, guess they’re part of you. Looks like hand feet are still mine!” Just as Tangle bragged, one of Robo-Tangle’s feet unfolded and five digits extended in the shape of a hand.
“Nevermind! You really can do everything!” Tangle cheered once more as Robo-Tangle marvelled at yet another ability.
“Maybe being a robot isn’t so bad! Hehehe!” Robo-Tangle laughed, but it sounded a bit hollow. At least, it did to Tangle.
“Wanna talk some more?” Tangle offered. Robo-Tangle simply nodded, and began.
“Now that I’ve nearly accepted what I am… how am I gonna figure out who I am? I mean, my memory tells me I’ve been Tangle my whole life, but that can’t be possible since I’m a robot and you’re right here. If I’m not Tangle the Lemur… who am I?”
“You sound like Shadow.” Tangle remarked without thinking. She immediately clamped her hands over her mouth, realising how poorly timed that was, but thankfully her robo-self just laughed. Perhaps she should have predicted such a reaction.
“I do, don’t I? ‘I’m Shadow, I eat coffee beans with a spoon and I don’t want people to know I can smile!’” Robo-Tangle did an awful impression of Shadow, making her fleshy counterpart laugh as well and reliving a lot of the tension. Eventually, Tangle stopped laughing and regained her composure.
“But, being serious for a sec, I guess it’s up to you to decide! If you wanna be Tangle the Lemur, I don’t mind at all!”
“Yeah, but we can’t exactly live the same life at the same time! Sure, being in two places at once sounds super cool, but where would I sleep? And you know how Whisper is about sharing…”
“True. Unless…? Do you think Whisper would mind sharing me with myself?”
Both Tangles seriously pondered the question for a full minute, until Robo-Tangle shook her head and rerailed her original train of thought.
“Still, I dunno if it’s such a good idea. Gaia, I wish I had someone I could talk to who would understand this whole thing…”
Tangle snapped her fingers, realisation dawning on her face.
“Mecha Sonic and Mecha Knuckles! They know what it’s like being robot doppelgängers! Even if their situations aren’t exactly like yours, it’s still better than nothing, right?”
“Right! That’s a really good idea!”
“Yes, yes, thank me.” Tangle joked, bowing for emphasis.
“Hehe! I’m welcome!” Robo-Tangle joined in, the two lemurs giggling together.
Unfortunately, the moment was interrupted by a talking egg and his sycofriend.
“Looks like you were right, doctor. That energy surge was something after all!”
“Of course I was right, Stone! When have I ever been wrong?” As the two men bantered on their shared Eggmobile, both Tangles got ready for battle.
“Ohoho, you’re going down, Omelette-Man!”
“Yeah, you’re going double down!”
Eggman took a particular interest in Robo-Tangle, his fascination with the android written plainly on his face.
“My, aren’t you quite an intriguing little piece of hardware? Taking you apart will be quite the exciting learning experience!” Eggman taunted while he clicked a few buttons on his console. A swarm of Badniks surrounded the lemurs, but neither of them were scared.
With a silent nod, the two burst into action.
Tangle grabbed a Motobug with her tail and used the appendage as a flail while Robo-Tangle fired her tail fist at an approaching Buzz Bomber. Before the projectile returned, the android then fired a few bursts of energy from the hole of her tail, and when her fist did return the entire appendage became electrified. She swung it and sent a huge EMP wave that disabled more than half of the Badniks.
“WOO! That was awesome, robo-twin!” Tangle congratulated while she pummeled some Crabmeats.
“Awesome indeed!” Eggman, who was apparently not at all upset by his robots being destroyed, pressed another button on his console. From the sky dropped a huge, white, disk-shaped robot with four legs and several tentacles. Its flailing arms quickly snared both Tangles and shocked them before they could try to fight back.
“Meet my latest invention, the Robosmasher! Not only is it a great instrument of destruction, but it has a double purpose of reprogramming any robot into serving the Eggman Empire! Originally I was going to use it on Omega and Gemerl, but you’ll make for an excellent first test.”
“Brilliant as always, doctor. Victory latte?”
“What do I look like, an imbecile? Of course I want a victory latte, I LOVE THE WAY YOU MAKE THEM!”
While Eggman and Stone laughed together, the Tangles struggled against their restraints. Despite the repeated shocks, the lemurs were able to delay the tentacles from cracking Robo-Tangle open and reprogramming her, but they could only keep this up for so long…
Descending further into the ruins, Whisper was starting to believe that what little she and the Chaotix discovered in the library was true. Whatever this structure was, it couldn’t have been reduced to its current state from simply being abandoned. Walls and ceilings were collapsed, yes, but the floor was hardly flat if at all. Too many surfaces were at odd angles and bent out of shape, which lent credence to the whole ‘city falling out of the sky’ theory.
Being careful to avoid sharp, rusty shrapnel, Whisper put on her mask as the light became dimmer and dimmer. It illuminated the wolf’s way, and she dropped down one last distorted, rusted hallway before finally coming across something promising. Two pods connected by a console, still open and awaiting input.
“Do you really think this is it?” Cyan asked, the other wisps following them out.
“Yes. Tangle mentioned falling into a pod before deciding to come home.”
“Looks kinda spooky…” Blue floated closer to Whisper, and the wolf gently stroked his head.
“We’ve made it this far. No turning back now.” Her mind made up, Whisper stepped towards the toppled machine. Her wisps returned to their capsules, and the wolf carefully lowered herself into the left pod. Detecting her, the ancient machine sputtered to life and the door slammed shut. A green light scanned Whisper from head to toe, and she felt a strange tingle in the back of her head when a helmet momentarily clamped over her head. She figured it must be scanning her memories.
Just as soon as the procedure started, the door to Whisper’s pod opened back up and she was able to crawl out. It was difficult to make out what was happening in the other pod, but the noises of clanging, screwing and welding left little to the imagination. A few short moments later, the second pod door opened up, and an android replica of Whisper sat up, dazed. Whisper offered her hand to her newly built double, who silently took it.
She was looking intently at both her own and Whisper’s hands.
Robo-Whisper carefully studied her hand, observing how every panel shifted over the finger joints to simulate as smooth-looking a movement as possible.
It suddenly occurred to Whisper how Robo-Tangle reacted to finding out she’s a robot.
“…I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. We both knew this would happen. I just lost the coin flip.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, Robo-Whisper understood perfectly.
After all, this was all technically her idea as much as it was the original Whisper’s.
“Robo-Tangle can’t be left all alone. She needs someone who can relate to her. Someone she can spend her life with.” Robo-Whisper continued, the two wolves wasting little time in making their way back out of the ruins.
“Exactly. Still, I feel like I somehow cheated you out of your own life.”
“No going back now.”
The two wolves continued in silence right up until they reached the exit, when Cyan popped out again.
“Do we have robot usses too?” As if to answer the wisp’s question, a holographic duplicate of them was projected out of Robo-Whisper’s body, the hologram matching Cyan like a mirror.
“Cool!”
As the two wolves continued their walk home, some loud, mechanical noises caught their attention. Clearing away some bushes, the Whispers saw their lemurs being held hostage by a metallic monstrosity while Eggman and Stone watched on, sipping coffee.
Whisper readied her wispon and looked over at Robo-Whisper.
Robo-Whisper transformed her left hand into a wispon and looked back at Whisper. Plates on the back of her head sprung forward and formed a mask on the android’s face.
They had no time to lose.
“No, no, nononono!” Robo-Tangle despaired once more. One of the Robosmasher’s tentacles had forced her head panel open, and another one was coming dangerously close to her brain module-
A pink saw flew through the air and sliced off the tentacle, while another pink saw cut both Tangles loose.
“WHAT?!” Eggman spat his steaming hot latte all over Stone, causing the man great pain. The Whispers emerged from the bushes, switching their wispons from Pink to Orange and blowing Eggman and Stone away with two simultaneously fired rockets.
“Whisper!”
“And… Whisper?”
The Robosmasher diverted its attention on the wolves, its tentacles flailing to try and catch them. Whisper and Robo-Whisper scrambled to avoid the flailing arms, but they simultaneously switched to Blue to bat away some tentacles with spiked balls at the end, the Robosmasher momentarily paused.
This gave the wolves an idea.
Together, Whisper and Robo-Whisper began moving in perfect sync, jumping over and ducking under tentacles as one. Such synchronization confused the Robosmasher’s simple AI, and while it was stunned the Whispers switched to Cyan and fired two lasers at the giant robot. They pierced right through its armour and met in the middle, causing a mighty cyan explosion that left the Robosmasher as nothing but a few scattered parts on the dirt.
“Whisper, that was incredible! Thank you so much for the save!” Before Whisper could brush off her girlfriend’s praise and just doing her duty, Tangle kissed her wolf right on the mouth, making the sniper melt entirely.
Robo-Tangle only had eyes for Robo-Whisper, though.
The two androids didn’t say anything at first. They walked up to each other, and tentatively touched their hands together. Then, Robo-Whisper grabbed Robo-Tangle’s face, the android lemur grabbing the android wolf’s waist in return.
“Whisper, you- you didn’t have to-” Robo-Tangle tried choking out through holographic tears.
“I did. I was not going to let you wander alone.” Robo-Whisper asserted. Due to their lack of physical lips, the robots couldn’t kiss. Instead, they held their foreheads close together, a small spark forming between them from the contact.
“Aww, Whisper. You really are the best, you know that?” Tangle snuggled further into Whisper, her heart moved by their robot doubles’ display.
“Like robo-me said, I was not about to let her wander all alone. Same way I would never let you wander through life alone.”
“Hey, flesh-me? Remember what we were talking about earlier? About finding my own identity?” Robo-Tangle turned back to her flesh counterpart, who looked at her with hope in her eyes.
“Yeah?”
“I think it’s gonna be much easier now that I have company.” She and Robo-Whisper shared another spark-kiss together. Tangle simply couldn’t take it anymore.
“Aww, c’mere you guys! Bring it in!” Tangle wrapped everyone present in her tail, Robo-Tangle eagerly enhancing the lemur ball with her own tail. Despite usually being against hugs, both Whispers had to admit that they never wanted this moment to end.
“We can be whoever we want to be, Whisp. We’re… we’re real. Both of us.”
“That’s right. And whoever we choose to be from now on, we’ll be together. Forever.”