The Doctor was going to murder him. Quite literally. He'd had a precedent of getting violent when riled—and having his windpipe reduced to a stress ball clenched in a madman's hand until he squeaked like one was not how Starline would have preferred to go.
Starline tugged at his collar, suddenly thinking the room a bit too warm for his tastes. "Metal Sonic, for the last time, come on out. You're worrying your father and I a great deal… "
"He's a robot, Doctor. Not our baby."
The Doctor, bless him, had the nasty habit of materializing directly behind him. Whether he did it to have a chuckle at his expense, it had the approximate effect of clamping live jumper cables to his frayed nerves. Starline turned, gave a noiseless gasp and clutched his heart.
"What's the matter, boy? You look like you're about to call for your smelling salts." He stroked a thin patch of mustache with a grin. "If you're going to faint, I'd prefer you avoid my floors. They just waxed those."
"Have you seen Metal?"
"I don't know. Should I?"
His sheer nonchalance as he strode toward the throne, newspaper tucked under his arm, quickened Starline's pace alongside him, his heels clacking. "I consulted the Pawns. They didn't quite listen to me, though. They insisted they 'don't speak quack,' and that I ought to 'dial one for English'?" Of course, they'd told him so in perfect English and erupted into tinny, monotonous peals of laughter, to his growing agitation. "Not to insinuate anything, Doctor, but did you program them to tease me—?"
"What?" the Doctor asked, distracted. He dismissed Starline's question with a flap of the hand. "No, no, they just have nothing better to do. Nothing to worry your poor little head over."
"Um." Starline faltered as the Doctor seated himself on the throne, flicking out his morning paper while a serving Pawn poured coffee into the mug at his side. At least the virus had generated headline news, stamped in bold print across the pages. But he wasn't focused on that; he seemed more captivated by the Sunday cartoons. "All right, then."
"This is what Metal always does. Run away, lick his wounds, get mad, plot his revenge, come crawling back to me, swear on his undying oath that he won't do it again even though we both know what a crock that is, yadda, yadda. You know how it is." He yawned.
Starline tried standing on tip-toe to peer over the Doctor's newspaper, only to get his head used as an impromptu coffee stand. "Perhaps you should take extra precautions to ensure—"
"Oh, I've taken 'extra' precautions," the Doctor replied, rolling up his newspaper and giving his assistant a light swat with it. "Make no mistake, I've tried everything in the book and then some. I've dismantled him until he was nothing but a pile of scrap. I've threatened to sell him to GUN. I've sent him to bed without dinner. The problem isn't my build, Doctor. It's that by modeling him after Sonic, he's become a little too much like Sonic."
Starline gently took the cup off his head, feeling the question obvious. "Then why not start over, with a completely new model and a more obedient OS?"
The Doctor squinted at him as if he'd suggested dancing the macarena in the middle of the village square. "Where's the fun in that?"
Starline heaved a long-suffering sigh through his nostrils, massaging the bridge of his beak.