Memory wipe sequence initiated.
Erasing...
If you would have asked me at an earlier stage in my life about where I would be at this point, I wouldn't exactly be able to tell you. It doesn't really matter when you asked me, I would have been unsure about it regardless. I've kinda been running through life blindly, you could say.
But even if I could have given you an answer, it sure as fuck wouldn't have been anywhere close to this.
Hands tightly cuffed behind my back. Blood running down my face. On my knees, a bloody infected stump where my right foot used to be.
Damn.
I should have seen it coming from old Robotnik. Fucker was thorough. He looks down at me, smiling. I spit blood onto the cold floor in front of me.
"Are you ready, hedgehog?"
I don't say a word. I just turn my head to look at you.
Your face swollen and bruised. Bleeding. Tears running down your cheeks. I never wanted to see you like this. I hope you know that.
Mechanical whirring. The glass comes down around me.
I speak the words I am burdened by under my breath. It's not like you can hear me anyway.
I love you, Sal.
I love you so much. I really do.
Tails loads another shell into the shotgun. Hands trembling, he cocks the weapon and stuffs another shell in. In vain, he tries to steady his breathing.
"You don't have to do this," I tell him. "There's no shame in turning back now."
"I want to do this, Sonic. You know I do."
There's nothing I can say to him to change his mind. He's like me in a lot of ways. It's understandable. Despite my personal conflict with it, there isn't really anything I can say.
"I just don't want something bad happening to you, little bro."
"Sonic, you're way too overprotective of me. Nothing bad will happe-
Tails.
His beautiful cerulean eyes wide with fear.
That surprised look on his face.
I.. I can't look away.
"Come on, Sonic," Rotor says from somewhere behind me. "There's nothing we can do."
I don't respond. I can't.
"Sonic, come on! We have to get the fuck out of here! He's dead, man, I'm sorry, but we have to fucking go, or he will have died in vain."
My gaze drifts from the corpse of my best friend to my bloodstained gloves, then, finally to the other corpse in the room.
The anger was replaced with pain as soon as it was over.
Now I don't know what to do.
I scoop Tails up in my arms and I turn to Rotor, who's staring at me with a look of shock on his face.
"You have the plans?"
"Yes."
"Good. Let's get out of here."
Bunnie.
We did it for Bunnie. That's right. We did it for her.
She was sick, you see.
Real sick.
While her partial roboticization was once an asset to our team, now it was truly becoming a hindrance. It was starting to automatically finish itself off. And her organic parts weren't adapting too well to the synthetic ones. She couldn't eat. Every time she tried, it would result in a mess of bloody vomit. She began to get weak. Got to where she could barely move at all, much less get herself around. She was dying. That was certain. She didn't have long.
We needed the plans for the roboticizer, and we needed them fast.
The initial plan was to steal the roboticizer itself, but transportation would be impossible. Over the course of many years, we've managed to steal its components. We just needed to put it together. The best we could do was get the plans and assemble the fucker as quickly as possible.
But it was a fucked plan from the start. We just didn't know it yet. We were all still blindly clinging to hope back then. The simple idea that if we tried hard enough, no matter how impossible the task may have seemed, good would ultimately prevail.
We thought we could really pull it off.
All of us.
The tube around be begins to fill with the thick green vapor.
I hold my breath and think about all we had done to prevent this from happening.
All of this.
We wanted to save this city. Turn it into something peaceful and productive.
We wanted to save it, but thinking about it now, I don't know that we could have. I mean, once we had saved this place, what could we have possibly done with it?
Maybe this is for the better.
The air's getting thick, and it's getting hard to make anyone out on the outside of the roboticizer.
I exhale, and take in a deep breath, sucking the poison into my lungs.
Or is it freedom?
After buzzsawing through the last of the SWATbots, I fall to the ground in pain. A piece of shrapnel that could have only come from it embedded into my leg.
"Fuck," I say, wrenching the jagged piece of metal from my thigh.
I look up to Tails, offering his hand to help me up.
"Are you okay?" he asks.
And that's the last thing he says.
Gunshot.
His face twists from a concerned expression to that of pain as the first bullet rips its way through his back and out his stomach.
Then another, directly to the spine.
He falls.
I'm already on my feet. The wound in my leg already forgotten.
Charge.
Before he can react, my elbow meets the side of his neck. He struggles to breathe, hands clutching his throat. Fingers wrapping around his firearm, it's retracted from his grip, and the handle is used to break his nose. Gun cracks against his face one, two, three times, and he goes down.
Blood squirting from his mangled face, he still tries in vain to breathe. Even in his current condition, he manages to flash a bloody smile at me.
Just to add insult to injury.
Gun transitions to other hand, I point the barrel right at his face and unload the weapon. In what's left of his face, there's not a fucking smile, that's for sure.
A knock at the door.
I ignore it, like all the rest. Only, this time, the door opens.
"Are you okay, Sonic?" I hear Sally ask from behind me.
I don't answer. I just kinda stare at the wall in front of me.
"Sonic?"
She makes her way around me, leaning into my line of sight.
"Do you think I'm okay?" I ask.
"I don't know," she says, sitting on the floor, propping her back up against the wall in front of me. "I know I'm not."
"He was my best friend. I feel like I've lost a part of myself."
She looks up at me for a second before looking back down at the floor. I look away and try not to cry. I can't cry, especially not in front of anyone.
A moment of silence passes before I realize she's standing once again, before me. Just as I look up, she straddles me in my chair. For once, I'm so taken aback, someone is actually faster than I am. Before I can react, Sally's lips connect with mine. My heart begins to race and I feel like I'm floating. When we disconnect, I'm not the same.
All those times, it almost happened.
I would always chicken out.
The countless times I had wanted to kiss her, I never thought it would actually happen this way.
And for a second?
Heh.
For a second, I thought it would last.
She pulls back.
Disconnection.
She stands up.
Isolation.
"This was a mistake," she says. "I should go."
It was over just as fast as it had started.
And I'm not strong enough to do anything about it.
Why can't I be a fucking robot?
This emotion shit is overrated.
The vapors sting my lungs intensely, and my body's first reaction is to vomit blood all down my chest and stomach. Another deep breath and it happens again. Light headed. Dizzy. I feel the blood pouring steadily from my nostrils. I taste it. Smell it. Feel it. Sharp pain, digging into my skin in various places. My insides. My mind.
I can feel myself changing.
I can actually feel it happening.
Agony.
I can't help but feel as though I've made the right choice.
Close my eyes, as I am accepted into the cold, white light.
Blinding. But even blind, I find contentment here.
It was Bunnie who got us into this.
Yes.
It was Bunnie who got us into this, and it was Bunnie who gave me the idea.
"Can you build it?"
"Yeah. I think so."
"Think? We don't have much time, Rotor. She's dying in there."
"I know, I know," he says, readjusting his hat. "Give me twelve hours. I'll have it operational for the morning."
"And how long after that will it take to convert it into a deroboticizer?"
"I don't know. I've gotta figure out how it works, if it even works at all."
"No, Rotor. We do."
His body wrapped in sheets. Placed in a shabby coffin constructed of spare wood. Thrown together in under an hour.
Every minute wasted.
He wanted his coffin to be lined with lead.
I can see him down there.
He was afraid of the bugs.
Rotting.
The maggots.
Rotting.
He's all I ever really had.
Rotting.
I'm in love with a mistake.
"I'm sorry, Sonic," you say. "This was a mistake. I was confused and... this is wrong. There's just no way it could ever work out."
And then you leave.
Hurry, Rotor.
He's decomposing down there.
While she dies.
Bunnie.
Bunnie Rabbot.
"You want to WHAT?"
"It can be done, Rotor. And it would be the perfect experiment to test it for Bunnie."
"This somehow seems unethical."
"Look, we don't want to have to use a live test subject only for something to go wrong. This is perfect. And.."
"And what?"
"It just might bring him back."
"You realize he's gone forever, right?"
"It worked for Uncle Chuck. We could bring him back, Rotor."
"Uncle Chuck went fucking insane and we had to destroy him. Is that something you want to go through with Tails?"
"At least we'll know if it works. And if the worst should happen, I'm prepared to take him down."
Was I lying? I can't really remember.
I can't remember if I really thought I could do it or not.
It doesn't matter now.
What happened, happened. What's done is done.
Shit can't change that now.
I remember trying to smile, looking Rotor in the eye. He just bit his lip and went back to work.
I don't know if he really trusted me or not.
He did what he did.
What happened, happened.
What's done is done.
"Why should I trust you?" He asks, puffing his cigar.
"Because," I say, leaning in. "I'm Sonic the fucking hedgehog."
Pieces of metal cutting through what's left of her real skin.
Coughing up blood all over herself.
Her face, a grotesque mess of wires and flesh. Blood leaking, drying, crusting in her yellow fur.
"You," I say. "You did this."
Her eyes widen.
"You were a fucking trap all along, weren't you?"
She shakes her head and tries to speak.
But she doesn't.
She just coughs and violently rasps.
I take my arm out of the shotgun strap, transitioning the weapon's handle into my right hand.
I cock the weapon.
She struggles in vain to call out. To get away. Anything.
"We all fear death, Bunnie," I say, thumbing the safety off and wrapping my finger around the cold trigger. "You're no different."
The weapon is fired.
What's left of her head sprays across the gurney she lays on.
Blood and oil.
Flesh and steel.
I drop the weapon and turn away.
I dismiss what I've just done pretty much immediately. None of this even feels real anymore. I don't know what's happening to me. My head hurts, and the light, fuck the bright light is blinding me. I feel like throwing up. It's so cold, so very fucking cold.
I leave.
I run.
"You really have lost your fucking mind, haven't you, Sonic?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I suppose you have. That's why it's all yours, doctor."
I look at Rotor.
He nods and looks away.
I look back at Tails.
Pick up his lifeless remains, and set them in Rotor's makeshift roboticizer.
"Why does it look so different?" I ask, looking at the large metallic pod.
"These were the plans for an earlier model," Rotor replies. "We couldn't find his most recent version's plans on file."
The door closes, and you can still barely make him out through the tiny window.
Rotor presses the button.
My heart is racing.
There was nothing left.
He was dead.
"You really are gorgeous, Sally."
"Oh, stop."
"I mean it."
"I do, too, Sonic. I'm sorry. Please just let it go."
I try to kiss her one last time..
...and she slaps me in the face.
"I think you should leave, Sonic."
"What are you doing here, hedgehog?"
"I love you, Sal."
"What kind of game are we playing, here?"
CRASH!
His eyes glow red.
CRASH!
The glass shatters.
CRASH!
He emerges from the broken chamber, green vapor rising all around him.
I hold my breath.
His eyes are red.
I ready the shotgun, aiming it right at his head.
"Tails?" I call out.
His fists clenching and unclenching. He begins twitching violently.
My heart explodes, and I try to scream.
There is no sound.
Only silence.
Rotor starts slowly backing away.
"Do it, man," he says. "That isn't Tails."
I don't respond. I just stare at him.
Cold. Metal.
"Tails is dead, man. Do the right thing."
"I can't..."
"Don't fucking give me that, Sonic!"
Tails takes his first step towards us. I panic and throw Rotor the shotgun.
Too fast. It lands on the floor next to him and goes off, sending a round into his ankle, disconnecting his right foot.
He falls to the floor, screaming. Blood everywhere.
"FUCK!" He screams, trying to sit up right. Fumbling with the shotgun.
He looks up to see Tails on top of him. Metallic claws tear at the sides of his face.
It's hard to see. I turn and run, grabbing the other shotgun off the table on my way out.
Behind me, I hear Rotor's gun cocks and goes off.
He screams.
And again.
I'm sorry.
The door opens, and the doctor is in.
I've been waiting for you.
For whatever that's worth.
"How did you get in here, hedgehog?"
"You'd be surprised what you can pull off when you completely disregard the consequences," I say, leaning forward in his seat.
"What are you doing here?"
I really am.
"Emotions are a curse. And you are a god. I'm just hoping you'll answer my prayers."
Memory successfully erased.
Awaiting signal...