Sonic Upgrade
Alternate Title: You Can't Stop Now, Lock and Load
Sequel to "Carnival of Rust"; read that first. Two blasts from the past behind a presumed assassination – who wouldn't love the challenge? But beware, for Sonic's pseudo-new adversaries are now more competent, more world-conquest-oriented, and incredibly pissed off.

Warnings: This is a sequel to a one-shot of mine, "Carnival of Rust", so please to be reading that first. The update to badassery of robot lackeys naturally brings about some mild language and limited violence. Also character death here and there. Also, I plan for there to be no pairings right now, but if I do bring a pairing in it'll likely be Sonamy, and very mild Sonamy at that.

Disclaimer: Whatever way you look at it, characters from both canons belong to Sega, plus DIC Entertainment in the case of the TV show canon. I will try my best to avoid most of the cliches most Sonicfic succumbs to, meaning the following are guaranteed: no OOC Sonadow, no pingases, no truth or dare games, no appearances from the Tails Doll, and 0% original characters. It's a claim wild and fantastical, but I'll try to stick to it, so smack me with a herring if I ever feel inclined to put a little Tails Doll in there.

"One day, perhaps, they would be found by someone who cared about their plight. They would be fixed. Oil would caress their joints once more."

It was funny. They had dreamt about that very day for so long. The day they escaped from their brick-red iron prison, released on bail lent to them by a kindly stranger or an old friend.
Now that it was here, it didn't seem real to them. In the last coherent moments they had before that day, it was dismissed as a fleeting fancy, a hope for the future which they would never get. Now that hope had come and they felt unreal – dreaming with their eyes rusted open.
Only the feel of a gentle breeze on their faces – so long since they had felt the simple summer wind – convinced them that this was really happening.

The day they were resurrected from their for-all-intents-and-purposes-coma was a calm one. Not sunny, nor yet raining. Clouds of silver and grey covered the sky, giving a grey-scale tone to the scrap-heap and its surroundings.
For the first time in what was probably years but felt like centuries, they could see the sky in its entirety.
How had they gotten out here? Who had set them free? They couldn't remember. One minute it was just another set of several nights under the Mustang blurred into each other, the next eagle-spread under an honest-to-goodness daytime sky with restored vision and collective consciousness.
Consciousness. They could think again. Think and move and breathe and speak and see the world in radial vision as it was MEANT to be seen.
They finally had back the things they had missed; life not as they used to know it, but life as they would now know it.

"They would stand up, slowly, hardly believing what was happening."

Still, one problem persisted. Now they were out, what would they do? A new life was in their grasp; they just couldn't remember what they had to do with it. So long trapped behind metal bars had made their purpose, their reason for wanting to break free, almost forgotten.
As if in response to their question, a small blue blur flickered under their scope of vision. A familiar-looking small blue blur.
One of the two, the taller, sat up – a motion which hurt him, still a little stiff from years of inactivity – in order to see the blur properly; but it had already disappeared, leaving a torrent of leaves dancing in his wake.
Only one thing, in their minds, could disappear as fast at that.
Sonic.
From there, dominoes toppled in their train of thought. Capturing Sonic, imprisoning him, bulldozing their way to world domination in the name of leader Robotnik, then ...
Robotnik.
No. Not Robotnik. Robotnik had disappeared as they did, a new name and new robots in their respective places.
Eggman.

"Once they had their composure, they'd go find the only other place they knew. They'd give Eggman a piece of their mind. They'd show him they amounted to something…

Amounted to something."

Yes.
That was it.
As one, they remembered their purpose. As one, they stood up, slowly taking in every motion and movement of freshly-oiled pistons. As one, even now as one, they regained their bearings and left behind their home of what felt like fifteen years (but, as the smaller found out later, was only seven), heading, still a little unsteadily, in the general direction of Eggman's lair.

Eggman had forced them into a life of non-existence, and now they would do the same to him.
Revenge. Sweet long-deprived revenge. That was the watchword for today.

Life for Eggman wasn't fair at the minute.

No, that wasn't true. Compared to most other times in his attempted world conquest, life was fair, very fair. No irritating hedgehogs had arrived to disrupt and break his latest mechanical triumph; those around him still lived in fear of his spontaneous genius; no irritating hedgehogs; no carefully constructed rumours dogging him; no irritating hedgehogs; the Chaos Emeralds still within reach if he looked closely enough; no irritating hedgehogs; no irritating hedgehogs; no irritating hedgehogs. It was a high point of his life.
But the fact still remained that he couldn't find that crucial cog needed to make his Egg Mobile go. And it is always the little things that are the biggest bugbears.

Bushy moustache twitched in irritation as he continued searching for the elusive cog. He had had it in his hands a few minutes prior, and now it had disappeared. Where could such a small thing have gotten to in such a short space of time?
Briefly he feared that he had stepped on it, but he shooed that thought away quickly. He would have heard had he done such a thing.
Ironic then, that just seconds later he heard a sickening crunch of metal cracking under pressure. Perfect – he couldn't fly a vehicle with a broken cog.
A broken cog broken under far too loud and long a crunch for it to be under his own small shoes.
In a simple turn of the body towards the sound, in that very instant, his priorities changed, polarized. True, he had found the cog. But the cog was under the feet – or rather, the tracks – of one half of the last duo he had expected to find in the room.

No.
Impossible.
Them? The badniks built in a fit of delirium and bad fever? The badniks he had long since forgotten about until now? And looking so... new? New and angry?
They couldn't be here. They couldn't have fended this long for themselves since they had been banished. It was merely a fancy of the mind, a fit of nostalgia.
Wasn't it?

He cleared his throat, tried to calm down. He was their superior in every way; he couldn't afford to let them see his composure broken by their presence.
"I see you've come crawling back," he began. "You've managed to infiltrate my inventing room for the first and last time." Yes, so far, so good.
He only received nods in response. Sharp and crisp, stifled slightly by stiffness in the necks.
"This is certainly an unexpected visit. It isn't every day two incompetent souls show up at my front door. Well, not every day those incompetent souls are - were - on my side anyway." A morbid chuckle here. In the robots' minds, he hadn't changed a bit in this manner, always getting a dig in at the enemy.
"I see that neither of us have changed a bit," continued the egg-belly, having almost read their minds. "I'm still just as much as a genius if not more so, and you're still just as bedraggled and poorly designed as when we last met. It sickens me to look at you two. But at the same time, it delights me to know that you will not be a match for me and that I can kick you out just as easily as the other times. You've probably learned nothing from all the time spent decaying in the outside world. I don't know how you've survived all of this time, but you're still far weaker than me. You're... you're..."
Damn, what was the best insult to finish the blow? All the ones he could think of were better directed at Sonic and company.
Ah-ha. He'd got it. The classic barb, the one that had always hurt them in the past.
"You're dumb-bots. Always have been, always will be."

There. That was them put in their place. He turned away, casting them from his memory, in a mind to find a replacement cog for --

"No we're not."

Before he could react to this contradiction, Eggman felt a sharp stab in his stomach. A harpoon – a piercing – how...?
A plasma shot, blinding him. Then a punch from the other, lower uppercut. A push, more stabbing pains from the one. Dual attacks disguised as singular attacks.
Then mostly pain.
Then nothing but pain.
Then Eggman felt nothing.

"No we're not," repeated Grounder, retracting his harpoon.
Another nod from Scratch as he wiped the blood from his hands. "Not anymore."