Chapter Text
It was ridiculously easy to find the lost path, the overgrowth of new plants and the passing of time not being able to hide the rusty metal *street*. It was even easier to find the forgotten base that laid at the forest’s edge. Streaks of dirty yellows and faded reds poked out from under bushy moss, a defiant stand against the wild life that continued to grow around it. The only thing that was saved from nature’s takeover was the small keypad next to the door. Wiping off some of the dust, Sonic tapped in the combination and stood back. The wall in front of him shifted and groaned as part of the metal panel slid up.
Still works. He smiled to himself as he made his way through the old doorway. His path was lit lowly by the fleeting light from the forest outside, the further he strayed the darker it got. Eventually, he placed a hand on one of the rusted walls to keep himself from stumbling on any old parts strewn about his path. As soon as it connected with the dull metal, a shiver went down his spine as the entire hallway lit up. He gasped, snatching his hand off the wall as if it burned him. Instantly the hall darkened, but he paid it no mind.
I..I thought he only realized my chaos could be used like this months ago… His breathing picked up as he ran a shaking hand through his quills in an attempt to calm himself. How…how long had he known?
..how long had he been using me..?
He shook his head, as is trying to clear up his scattered mind. He shouldn’t- couldn’t be dwelling on this. It wouldn’t change anything, not really. The Doctor had discovered his ‘potential’ and found a way to incorporate that into every single one of his labs. The ‘when’ didn’t matter. Not when the man was still dead and he had a job to do.
Placing his hand back on the grimy wall, Sonic made his way to the center of the laboratory. Typing in the same combo he used for the outer door, the Doctor was a lot lazier back then, he winced as the doors swung open with a terrible creak. Lights brighter than the ones that’d been in the hall greeted him as he entered the room, making him blink twice as fast to adjust to the difference. Soft whirrings and beeps filled the area as ancient machines began to turn on for the first time in a decade. A black out screen save for Eggman’s signature logo stared at him from the center of the room as a large monitor finally turned on. For a moment, he allowed himself to take it all in. The lab had looked just like he remembered, if a bit dustier. It felt like, if he focused hard enough, he could still hear the Doctor muttering quietly to himself as a younger version of him zipped around the facility.
He shook the thought away as he walked toward a desk tucked away in the corner of the room. Briefly, he wondered why the lights still worked even though he wasn’t directly touching the wall. While he made his trek through the hall, his glove would shift slightly and move the small holes that’d formed from wrecking Shadow’s apartment off his finger tips. In those moments, the walkway would be plunged back into darkness as he fumbled with the fabric. At some point, he’d ditched the stained things entirely and vowed to give his hands the most thorough wash of his life when he was done here. The same thing should’ve happened to the lab as soon as he entered. His eyes flickered over to the giant hamster wheel attached to the wall across the room. They lowered to the small, almost unnoticeable, generator attached to it. He remembered, distantly, that after a while of running on the metal platform, it would buzz lowly. He also remembered that the Doctor used one incredibly similar to it whenever they went exploring. It’d tick as the power faded from the battery within. Just in the same way the room seemed to be ticking now.
He ignored it.
His eyes swept over the desk as he numbly began looking for his prize. He ignored the framed picture that sat next to an outdated laptop, his focus shifting to the locked cabinet in the desk’s side. While the Doctor had used machines like he needed them to breathe, honestly who needs ten variations of the same computer in one room, he’d always left some things out of his digital footprint. Ever the paranoid man, he believed that someone could bypass his firewalls and steal his ideas. he held back a smile as a certain fox kit came to mind. Even now, there were still a couple of his plans completely undigitalized. He and his friends had found that out the hard way when what they thought had been air raid on Clock Town turned out to be a bombing a couple of cities over. That’s not even mentioning the whole ‘Were-hog’ thing. He shuddered at the memory of too big claws and sharp fangs before getting back to work.
The lock on the cabinet was an old, rusty thing. Unfortunately, that didn’t make it any easier to remove. Sighing to himself, he pulled out the lock picking kit Vector had gotten him for his birthday a few years back. Something about constantly pulling his quills out whenever he needed to unlock things the ‘street way’ being unhealthy and/or concerning. Ha! Almost everything Sonic did was unhealthy and/or concerning. Shows what he knew.
Unable to deal with his unparalleled lock picking skills, the lock unlocked with a satisfying click and he yanked it off the hook keeping the cabinet shut. Pulling open its door and sliding out the tray, he began to rifle through several files. While most were just failed plans or robot WIPs, he kept a few of the more…concerning ones on hand for Tails to look into later. After all, he wasn’t the only one with access to these labs and he was sure the Doctor’s following hadn’t died along with him. Burying that wayward thought, he pulled out a dark red folder with a small smile. Finally, he’d found what he’d been looking for.
Flipping it open, he started reading over the contents for a quick refresher on his mission. Or at least, he would’ve if it weren’t for the bright yellow flash drive dropping out of the folder and onto the ground. He stared at it for a while, mind reeling. This place had been abandoned for years, yet the drive looked almost brand new. It was also the most up to date piece of equipment the entire facility had to offer. No matter how skilled he may have been, the Doctor wouldn’t have been able to make something like it back then and still have it look completely fine after such a long time. Either the man had somehow invented space travel and used it for this one instance, or he’d come back recently to plant it there. If he were being honest, he was kind of leaning toward the time-travel theory because the scientist would’ve rather di- gotten run over by his own egg mobile than step foot in one of his old labs without any intention of fixing it to some degree.
If he did come back here… Sonic thought as his gaze traveled back to the hall. That would make a hell out a lot more sense.
Slowly, he reached down with a trembling hand and picked the seemingly innocent flash drive up. It didn’t matter how it ended up here, he’d decided. If the Doctor left it for him to find, then it must’ve been important. Closing the folder and tucking it into his quills for safe keeping, Sonic walked it up to the large monitor in the center of the room. He knew it shouldn’t have a port for the thing, it was made 12 years before it became popularized, but it also shouldn’t have been displaying that version of the Eggman Logo. Since it was basically impossible for the man to do something without tagging his work, he knew he’d at least messed around with the screen so it would be able to take the drive. Sure enough, after a couple of minutes scrutinizing the monitor, he found a black adaptor (with his logo, of course) plugged into its back. Slotting the flash drive into its rightful place, he watched with bated breath as it loaded it up on the screen.
Several files popped up in the document, most he’d have to sift through more thoroughly when he wasn’t on borrowed time. By now, the ticking of the rapidly decaying battery had sped up to a 1/8th beat. His eyes flitted over the screen, taking in information as he quickly opened and closed the pages in rapid succession. He hadn’t expected the man to give him the access codes to most of his labs, nor control over all his creations. Though, if he were being honest, he knew it was because the other had probably expected him to carry out his plans of world domination. He snorted, as if he’d actually stoop to that. No amount of promises and guilt tripping would ever make him go down that murderous rabbit hole. Besides, Eggman had practically raised him; he should’ve known that he’d twist their deal to suit his own convenience. He learned from the best after all.
Just as he was about to eject the drive, something caught his eye. A video file titled, “Worst Case Scenario” lay innocently in front of him on the screen. He stared at it for a moment, the numbness he’d been fighting all day coming back full force as he did so. Knowing the Doctor, it was probably just a basic run down of what to do should his plans get thwarted mixed with the heaviest layer of guilt tripping possible. Nothing that should’ve stolen his breath, or make his eyes burn as he quickly tried to catch it. At this point, he didn’t even know if his apprehension was from his grief or the new trauma he’d gotten from the war. There was a reason he didn’t stick around when he’d hidden the man away.
The sound of Eggman clearing his throat startled him from his thoughts, his quills flexing as he unconsciously slipped into a defensive stance. His claws dug into his unprotected paw pads as he forced himself to breathe, eyes blinking rapidly to keep the tears at bay. He’d cried enough this year to fit the rest of his life.
“Hello Sonic.” Despite his mental preparations, he still flinched hard when he heard the man call his name. It didn’t sound anything like how he did when he was still alive, his tone losing its mocking edge with a softness he hadn’t heard in years taking its place. Slowly, he gazed up at the monitor. His heart clenched as his vision blurred even more at what he saw. He’d expecting sneering, an exaggeratingly depressed face before Eggman started a long tirade about how he’d failed him and how it was now up to him to finish his final work. A soft smile and equally misty eyes hadn’t even begun to cross the realm of possibility for him.
“I’ve missed you.”
Chapter Text
Three months. That’s how long he’d been there, going over coding and extensive blueprint files until his head spun. So much time away from his friends, his family, and yet… it was like no time had passed at all. Sonic buried his head in his hands, pressing them gently into his eyes as if to help relieve the pressure. Things weren’t going the way he needed them to. Yes, he knew when he came up with his ‘foolproof’ plan that there might be some set backs, some major hurdles he’d need to get over, and he wasn’t dumb enough to think he could finish the whole thing in a year, but… three months? Without any progress towards his goal whatsoever? Yeah, that wasn’t in the schedule.
He lifted his face momentarily and looked over at his abandoned work desk before shoving it back down with a loud groan. If he could travel back in time, he would’ve if only so he could punch Eggman for even thinking about making his all of his robots sentient. Had he not seen the Terminator, or did he just think he was smart enough to have worked out the kinks the scientists in the movie couldn’t? Either way, it was that small, insignificant fact that was making this whole project of his take longer than it should’ve. Each and every one of the robots he’d gotten his hands on refused to let him get anything done. They’d either run away from him (a pointless, but annoying endeavor), attack him, or take themselves out before he could stop them. Only the doctor would encrypt them all with self destruction buttons that only he and they could access. If it wasn’t just that, the mad man even made his LABS were sentient! His fucking labs! Despite the very real access and override drive Sonic now had in his possession, the AI in the computers refused to let him use anything important. Some of them even started releasing robots to attack him! He’d been forced to go back to the older station back on Christmas Island just to work in peace, and even then he had to deal with migraines and constant fatigue that came from being the things damned battery. He pressed down harder on his eyes.
He wasn’t… Sonic wasn’t an engineer, much less a programmer. Sure, he’d practically made the tornado with Eggman’s help, and he did sit through literal hours of decoding sessions with Tails, but that didn’t mean anything. Not when he was trying to change the main directives of the very willful creations of a mad scientist. It was like the man centered their entire beings around violence and mass genocide. Though, taking a look at OMEGA and Metal, he didn’t think he was too far off. Didn’t mean that he couldn’t want to curse at the man for doing so. It wasn’t even just the fact that he couldn’t rewire them on his own. He knew that even if that was in the realm of possibilities, he’d still be three months in with no real progress. Eggman’s old machines… they were alive. They all had their own thoughts and feelings. How could he just strip them of a core part of their personality?
In the long run, he knew this shouldn’t matter. That if he wanted to be able to fulfill his end of a decade long deal without having to take over the world, he would have to suck it up and tell his morals to deal with it. The changes he’d be making wouldn’t be turning them into lifeless husks, just less murder-y when it came to any living creature that wasn’t Eggman. Even if they did, it wasn’t like the robots didn’t deserve it. They helped try to takeover and/or destroy Mobius countless times, aiding in more wars than most veterans. Why should he care if their rights were revoked when they knowingly helped Eggman do the same to so many people time and time again? They could’ve fought back, they were more of them than the Doctor, but they didn’t. It was their choice to help him, so why? Why did he still care? Why was this his line in the sand with them? He hadn’t cared when he destroyed them on a near weekly basis, so why now?
Maybe it was because Sonic knew that they didn’t really have a choice to be something different than they were before. Maybe it was because he knew that disobedience meant scrap when it came to Eggman. Maybe it was because OMEGA was living proof that, when given the chance, they could turn into something good. Either way, with the way things were going, it looked like he’d be stuck with nothing for a very long time. At the very least, he was glad that the drones were able to be talked into doing something without murdering someone.
He fully moved his hands from his face, his eyes finding the tablet he’d haphazardly tossed on the matted futon he’d been using as another storage space rather than a bed. It was still open to the article he’d been reading during his last break; “Air Raid At GUN?!”. Last week, GUN headquarters had been swarmed by Eggman droids that were supposed to be deactivated. They carried away any to all of the agents found within the building before the structure was bombed. No major casualties, just a few injured parties. The biggest loss was all of the weapons, tech, and whatever else the agency was hiding in the building at the time of the strike. While it didn’t make him feel better, it soothed the part of him calling for vengeance. That was all he needed. A certain mechanical double of his hadn’t shared his sentiments.
He looked away from the tablet and over to the robot that’d been ‘guarding’ the door for the last four hours. Metal had been a rather helpful, but annoying assistant in all of this. He’d helped dig through computers that refused to work for him and was the only reason the bots had begrudgingly agreed not to turn the GUN agents into paste. That being said, the constant glaring and questioning of his every action was giving him vivid flashbacks of working with Shadow. He really couldn’t deal with that right now, so forgive him if he was snappier at the copycat than usual. Gaia knows Metal won’t. While the other can’t necessarily do anything to harm him, having written down that his final command was to obey whatever orders Sonic gave without harming him (how the Doctor did it for only them and no one else had to be done on purpose), he couldn’t help but notice every time the other tensed or fired up their air cannon anytime Sonic got too annoyed. Or talkative. Or was just breathing and being alive in general. Even now, Metal was glaring at him like he was the scum of the earth for having the AUDACITY to look at him. Instead of rising to the challenge, he took in a deep breath and forced himself to smile.
“You know you don’t have to stand there all day, right? You can sit down or something. Relax for once in your life.” He joked. As if to spite him, the robot began to march along the edge of the room without breaking eye contact. Loudly. He felt his smile twitch as his ears flattened against the sides of his head.
You can’t deactivate them just because they’re annoying you, Sonic. You still need them. Just remember the breathing lessons Amy taught you. In for 4, hold 7, out 10. In for-
Loud screeching from sharp claws lightly pressing into to the metallic walls had him getting to his feet with a start, his smile looking more like a grimace. Smugness clung around them as they watched him lose his composure, and he was forced to fight down the desire to punch the shit out of them. He’d been doing that a lot lately.
“If you want something to do, why don’t you help me figure out how to program the agressiveness out of the Eggbeaters?”
Just like that, the stomping came to a halt and Metal was no where to be found. He sighed, falling back into his chair in relief. That was the one thing his double refused to help him with. He’d get him files from servers that refused to work for him, help him repair the older robots to working order, give him detailed instructions on how to tweak old blueprints to suit his purposes, and so much more. Going against his creators main objective, however, was a step too far. Him talking the other droids into helping him was clearly a one time, and they both knew it. Any real advancements in his project would be up to him, and the past three months showed him that he wasn’t up to the task. No, not alone.
He brought up a hand to his neck a gently fiddled with old goggles resting there. He hadn’t wanted to involve them, but it was starting to look like he didn’t have a choice. Sighing to himself, he got up from his rolllie chair and walked over to his cluttered work desk. Shoving a few notebooks out of the way, he picked up the communicator that laid there since he’d first come back. After a moment, he turned it on.
Notes:
Just realized the note at the end of the last chapter made it sound like the series was over... IT'S NOT BY THE WAY \(TvT)/
Thank y'all for bearing with me on this for so long, you are very much appreciated. Things have been crazy, and I've been busy with some things, so yeah. Now that my schedules cleared up, things should be getting back to their usual pace of 1-2 fic/fic chapters a month... Sorry T^T
Have wonderful day, afternoons, and nights! My prayers go out to those living in places that are getting ruined by the storms. Stay safe everyone.
Until next time~