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Moment of Happiness
Crabmeat-01 was frustrated.
Yes, Crabmeant-01, thank you very much. As in, the very first crabmeat badnik ever created. As in, only given a number because Robotnik (or Eggman as he now called himself) didn't think his quest for conquest would last long enough to justify a more complex system of designation. As in, a crabmeat that had been in the Green Hills for twenty bloody years. And while being a robot had prevented him from losing his artificial mind, it didn't mean that no damage had been done whatsoever.
"My finest creation, he said. A worthy badnik, he said. The one who would stop the hedgehog, he said."
Suffice to say, talking to himself was part of the damage that had been inflicted.
Flexing his claws, Crabmeat gazed over the Green Hills, still looking as green and sunny as they'd always been over the last two decades. He could appreciate their beauty to an extent…perhaps a residual trait from the organic battery within him (if the animal was even still alive). Yet staring at the same thing for twenty years meant it would inevitably lose its appeal, especially as fewer and fewer badniks were around to share it with you. Once, he was part of an army. Once, he could count on buzzbombers, choppers and even Robotnik himself to be his allies in the field. But now they were gone. The buzzbombers had taken to the sky, choppers to the sea (apparently some had even taken part in a movie called Piranha) and he'd…been left alone. For all his firepower, he couldn't move fast. Certainly not fast enough to hit the hedgehog twenty years ago, said hedgehog simply jumping over him without sparing a second glance.
Arsehole.
Maybe it would have been better to be destroyed, Crabmeat reflected. It would save him boredom and the animal inside him wouldn't have missed twenty birthdays.
Still, things were afoot in the Green Hills, and while few badniks remained, Crabmeat had heard certain stories from them that piqued his interest. Stories that involved time portals (and no princesses…they stressed that for some reason) and, more enthrallingly, the presence of not one, but two Sonics. A possibility that instilled dread in most of them, but joy in Crabmeat. Two Sonics meant double the chance of doing what he should have done twenty years ago.
But he actually has to show up…the badnik reflected bitterly. And even if he does show up, he has to move slow enough for me to hit him…
Well, as a blue blur on the hills above demonstrated, at least the hedgehog had the showing up part right. Heck, he was even slowing down, jogging as he talked with someone named Tails about space-time rips, reversing the polarity of the neutron flow, and something called Doctor Who. Crabmeat didn't care though. His eyes were focused entirely on Sonic…or what he thought was Sonic.
"Sure Tails. Way past cool."
Yeah, he was Sonic.
Yet he'd…changed, Crabmeat reflected. Organics grew, and that was to be expected. Yet even so, the badnik was ill prepared to see how different his foe was. He was taller for starters, and more…lanky. Or less dumpy, depending on how you saw it. His shoes had buckles, though admittedly they could have been there all along. His eyes however…well, last time Crabmeat checked, they were a simple black, not bright green. They looked…almost…
Focus! You're meant to be shooting at him, not-…
"Son of a…!"
…letting him run into you.
Crabmeat had been distracted. So distracted that Sonic might have run past him and forced him to wait another twenty years. But as distracted as he'd been, his foe had been more so. Enough for him to run into the badnik and fall back on his rump with the sound of a thump and golden rings flying everywhere.
"Yes!" Crabmeat exclaimed, falling on his own backside and laughing as maniacally as his creator. "Twenty years! Twenty bloody years I've been waiting for this! At last! I got you! I've fulfilled my purpose! I'm urk!"
Crabmeat was many things.
And as Sonic got to his feet and spun through him, he was destroyed as well.
A/N
Somewhat obviously (hopefully) this is based on Sonic Generations. Specifically however, the idea popped into my head from a modern Sonic Greenhill Zone demo of the game, where the player/commenter purposely walked Sonic into a Crabmeat into a badnik, showing its jubilant reaction as part of the game mechanics, also joking that the Crabmeat had been waiting twenty years for this moment. I can't remember in the demo whether the Crabmeat was subsequently destroyed or not, but came up with this as a result.