EPILOGUE: Everyone I Love Is Dead

0.

Things probably wouldn't have happened if Amy hadn't led the monster in a particular direction.

She might've, when she thought about it, led it towards Headquarters, where she'd've gotten backup, or down a back alley, where….okay, she probably would have died, then. But things would have happened differently, that was the point. It took going down a particular road, and stopping in front of a particular building, to get the attention of the mechanic and end up with an anvil dropped on the monster's head via a rather clever pulley system and some brute strength.

Which kind of said something about reality, probably, and the thin and changeable nature of everything; but Amy couldn't be bothered to think of what it was, because one second she was being menaced by a shadow creature that wouldn't go down when she hit it, and the next second there was an anvil on the thing's head and it was on the pavement.

"Huh," she said, a vast understatement by all accounts. "Anvil trumps everything, I guess. Who did that?"

She wasn't expecting a response, much less a coordinated point from three oily men and an even more oily woman to the top of a nearby building, where the tiny figure of a hedgehog stood on the edge, holding his arms out like he had just dropped an anvil.

"…Stay right there!" Amy called. "I'll be right up!"

He didn't stay right there.

By the time Tails came around with the backup, Amy had realized that it was not the weight of the anvil (which had been more than matched by her hammer swings) but rather the material that took down the monster, being cold iron. A new weakness for their latest menace discovered, so all in all it should have been a success. It would have been a success, if not for the sudden disappearance of Amy's savior.

She tried talking to the other mechanics, but they were decidedly unhelpful.

"He keeps to himself," said the woman when she asked, her voice rough and scratchy. "Doesn't talk much. I don't even know his name."

The boss knew his name—Morph—but not where he lived. Morph was, apparently, a ghost. A ghost who knew how to discern the various weaknesses of shadow monsters terrorizing the populace, and who had enough ingenuity to rig up a pulley system to get an anvil out far enough over the monster's head, quickly enough to stop it, which he had apparently started doing when Amy was three blocks over, just in case.

The more Amy heard the more she really wanted to meet this guy. If only to thank him for saving her life, and see if maybe they could recruit him, if he turned out to be good enough.

But he'd disappeared into the city. So Amy left her card with the boss of the mechanic's shop, told him to call her when he came back into work—but to do it quietly, so that he didn't run off again—and went home for the evening, to research cold iron and ancient legends of what could kill the same things cold iron could.

(The answer, generally speaking: salt, sage, and wooden stakes. Amy put the last one on the backburner and bought a five-pound bag of rock salt from the hardware store just in case, then she went to bed, because it had been a very long day.)

She was in the middle of her exercise routine at the Headquarters gym the next morning when her phone rang. Unsurprisingly, it was the manager of the place, telling her that Morph had shown up for work as usual, and that he was scheduled until eight that evening.

Amy wiped off her forehead with a towel, and, without bothering to change out of her sweats (they were nonthreatening and probably wouldn't scare the weird man with a fear of government and knowledge of what killed shadow things), went to catch the bus.

And that was when things really began. Because again; changeable nature of reality. She could have let it go. She should have let it go. The Commander had already told her that if Morph hadn't wanted to talk to them, he wasn't going to press because the man had been undoubtedly a help, if a help from high up and a long way off, and if he wanted his privacy then he had earned it by giving them their first real insight into what made up the shadow monsters. She should have let it go, let Morph go about his life and her go about hers. She shouldn't have pressed.

She pressed anyway, took the 45 bus down to City Center, and made her way down to the back alley with the mechanics.

I.

Amy Rose, clad in matchy-matchy sweats and carrying her hammer, her short hair pushed back by a headband, entered the mechanics shop at eleven-thirty with a little ding of a bell. It seemed weird to have that kind of bell. It was dainty, almost; it didn't match the tone of the shop, which was covered in oil and grease and filled with overall-wearing humans and Mobians yelling things at each other that Tails would probably understand and Amy did not.

She made her way to the back, where a sign proclaimed that it was the manager's office, and knocked quietly.

"Come in."

She did so. "You said Morph showed up?"

The boss, a tall thin man (more than twice Amy's height) with greying hair and spindly fingers, stood. "I did. Follow me, he's in the back—I thought he'd be less likely to see you come in there."

"Good plan." Amy trailed behind him, quickly tossing her hammer into the pocket dimension she kept it in—she didn't want to scare him away, after all. "So what's he like?"

The boss shrugged. "Doesn't talk much. When he does, it's…rough. He hasn't got much tact to him. Has a lot of clever ideas, though, and he's been places—Hannah says. She's the only one he really talks to, mostly cause she doesn't tell us what he says. He values his secrets, to be sure."

"I can get behind that." Amy nodded. "I won't keep him long, I promise, I just want to chat a bit."

The boss waved. "No worries. City hero and everything, call it my civic duty for the day to let you take one of my employees aside."

Amy gave a smile of thanks and headed into the back room.

The hedgehog she presumed was Morph was stacking shelves, with his back to her, and Amy took a minute to study him. He wore the same stained overalls as the rest, over a shirt in a really weird shade of greyish purple, and his fur was messy and brown, his quills short and badly cut—or, more like, they'd been cut badly and left to grow out even worse. When he turned around, she noticed glasses perched on his muzzle, but she also noticed a distinct lack of lenses in the glasses.

That was weird. That was probably weird, right?

He froze up at the sight of her, staring warily from the top of the stepladder. Amy waved. "Hey there. Morph, right? I'm Amy Rose. I wanted to talk to you."

"About what?" His voice was rough, and vaguely familiar, like she'd heard it in a dream before. It also conspicuously lacked an accent, from the city or anywhere else. That was definitely weird. Amy was calling it.

"I just wanted to thank you for saving my life yesterday." She hovered around the door, not stepping forward for fear of spooking the man, just shifting her weight from foot to foot. "And probably the lives of several others. That was the first time we saw one of them show weakness, the first time we got one to go down for good—not just run off."

"…You're welcome, I guess." He rubbed the back of his head with his hand and removed the glasses, tucking them into the pocket of his overalls. "Look, this is—this is really awkward. I just wanted to see if it would work, okay? So, you can go, it wasn't a big deal."

Amy narrowed her eyes slightly, clasping her hands behind her back. "I also wanted to ask if you might be at all amiable to talking with G.U.N. about the incident. I know they'd love to get more information on—"

"No!" The interjection was panicked, and for a second his voice changed. In the split second she couldn't quite tell what, but there was something even more familiar about it. He cleared his throat, and it was back. "No. That's—that's fine. I don't love talking to people."

"That's…fair." Amy eyeballed him. "Look, at least let me take you to lunch or something. I probably would have died if you hadn't dropped the anvil on that thing. I mean, it seems cartoony, but it worked."

He looked suspicious, one hand tugging at the strap of his overalls. "…Just lunch."

"Just lunch."

"No secret government spies?"

"None but me. Are you a conspiracy theorist or something?"

He didn't answer the question. "And you won't bother me again after that?"

"Cross my heart."

"Fine. Where are we going?"

Amy grinned.

II.

Amy was one for local secrets. She'd discovered the best place to eat in the city shortly after moving in, when she sampled everywhere she could during lunch for a few weeks and finally chosen. Every day since she'd eaten a meal at Mephisto's Café, which had good sandwiches and hand-crafted beer from a local brewery.

This was, of course, where she took Morph, ordering for both of them while he fidgeted uncomfortably in the wooden chair. When she returned with two cream-cheese sandwiches, he took his and didn't eat it, instead drumming his fingers on the table.

Amy was starting to feel bad about that. "Look," she said when she'd finished half her sandwich and he'd pulled about twenty little crumbs off the crust of his, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't've bothered you so much, I just….kind of felt a little indebted." She scowled. "I hate feeling indebted. Don't intend to do it again."

He laughed shortly, poking at the sandwich with an unusually long fingernail. There were traces of paint around the edges, but Amy couldn't tell if it was leftover nail polish or paint from the shop. "Yeah. I can understand that. It's not your fault I'm not fond of the government." A pause. "Well, it kinda is, but…okay, shutting up now." He tore off a chunk of the sandwich and shoved it into his mouth.

"No, keep going." She tilted her head. "Got something against G.U.N? Or…the Freedom Fighters?" The first of those was probably the more likely. G.U.N didn't have a great P.R department, to say the least. There was a reason she insisted on proper payment from them. No volunteering for that particular hole of moral ambiguity and edgy immortals.

"You could say that." He shrugged, seeming to relax slightly and taking another bite of his sandwich. "Haven't had great experiences with law in the past."

She snorted. "Got a criminal record?"

His tone was light. "Something like that."

She paused. "Oh. Well. Still, can't hold you to that. You saved my life."

"Yeah, you might not be harping on that so much if you knew more about me."

"I wouldn't be harping on anything if I knew anyone, but I don't. Guess I'll have to get to know you."

He slowly set the sandwich down. "I don't think that that's the best idea."

"Whyever not? You looked like you were finally loosening up a bit." She hesitated, then laughed. "Wait, do you think I'm asking you out? No! No. Just to be friends. I…could use a few friends that aren't also coworkers."

Morph gave a lopsided little smile to his plate. "Now, what's wrong with coworkers? I happen to be kinda fond of a few of mine."

"My coworkers are great, there's nothing wrong with them! But…" She sighed. "I probably shouldn't be telling this to a civilian, much less one I just met, but it's always work with them. No matter how much we try to just have a normal night, somehow it always comes back to the job we just worked, or what so-and-so thinks will be the next mission, or how much I got paid."

"What, like your coworkers don't get paid?"

She shrugged. "Not many of them do. They think G.U.N's doing the right thing, and they volunteer."

"And you don't."

"And I don't. I mean, I think they usually have good intentions, but….if I'm going to be doing things that have the kind of consequences I've seen later on, I'm gonna need sufficient remuneration."

"How much is sufficient?" The question was mostly joking, but with an underlying curiosity. Amy studied Morph again, but couldn't for the life of her find anything in his expression other than the curiosity, and, of course, the ever-present nervousness.

So she laughed and took a bite of her sandwich, and through the bread and cream cheese and cucumber mumbled "Kissing a million, for some of the longer jobs."

Morph sat back heavily in his chair, looking at her with evident awe. "Didn't think you had it in you, Rosie. Goody-two-shoes like you, I saw you on the news all the time…"

"When I say a longer job, I mean a year or so." She shrugs. "Fate-of-the-world stuff. And I like the finer things in life—sue me."

"I would, but I feel that you could hire better lawyers than I could."

"You're not wrong." She finished off her sandwich and pushed the plate to the side of the table. "Thank you for having lunch with me, even if you were reluctant."

He hesitated, then put his own plate aside and dug a leaky pen out of his pocket. He grabbed her hand—bare now, bare for a few years, she'd given up the gloves—and scrawled something on the back of it before standing, shoving his hands in the pockets of his overalls, and hurrying out the door.

Amy stared after him, then at her hand, where he had written a phone number and a large M. She grinned a little and paid the tab before heading out, whistling as she strolled down the street to her apartment building.

"Mr. Morph," she said to the wind, "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

She got it mostly right. But you can't fault a girl a few mistakes.