CHAPTER 1: Reincarnation
Light flickered on for the first time in… well he had no idea how long he'd been like this. Trapped in a dark place where it was neither warm nor cold. Not soft but nor was it hard. It was a place without context no connection to the material world.
But now there was light. He found could turn his head and did so the light shifting to his left. He was in a work shop of some sort tools of all kinds -some simple, some complex- hung on the walls all in a designated place. He felt the air around him and if he had been capable of such a thing he would've cried.
Realization struck him like a bolt of lightning. "I've been repaired?" he questioned aloud . His creator wasn't the type to repair an older model without reason, and given that his creator already labeled him a failure there was there was little reason to believe he had done so. Besides the workshop was to primitive to be his makers lair.
Rising from the slab on which he had been laying his head bumped into the over head lamp that provided the room with what little light there was. He scanned the environs hoping for some cool as to where he was and what had occurred. This revealed a number of similar slabs around the room each with their own light source most of them hosting one incomplete project or another.
"A school?" he pondered as took a step forward to inspect one of the machines only to be jerked back by his head. Reaching back he could feel a thick cable, following it he found the other end hooked up to a computer. "what have we here?" he pondered as his silver digits taped the keys waking the dozing machine. An open window was displaying diagnostics of his body. "Class project: Thorndyke group. 'Fractal'. Is that me then? " A quick search of the group notes confirmed his suspicions. "Quite an ambitious design for their age." Fractal smiled as he ran down the list of features. The group had been tasked to create a defensive security unit and had gone a touch over board.
"These kids are nuts." he concluded everything about his new body was needlessly overpowered. The jets installed along his back and in his feet and legs would propel him nearly as fast as his old body. No small feat considering he had been designed as counter to a certain speed demon. The energy rating on the cannons had far to much power for non-lethals, at least for anything that didn't enjoy being bathed in plasma. His old body's cannon was at least half as powerful. The was an energy field generator installed that would probably crave a hole in the floor just as much as it would protect him. He shook his head. "The math adds up all the science is sound, So how did these kids get it so wrong? How they end up creating a robot with so much destructive power?" and then he found his answer. The power plant for his new body was a hybrid Power ring/Chaos drive battery. Thirty-six chaos drives and up to five power rings at a time. The math used was all wrong though. The kids had treated the chaos drives as simple adding to the power rings energy rather than multiplying it. Each additional chaos drive multiplied the rings power by a fact of of ten. The result was a generator with an out put was several thousand times more power than was needed being pumped through his system. "Good thing the kids only used one ring this body would've gone up like a bomb."
Taping a few keys he deactivated the computer link and removed the cord from the back of his head. "Now to get back to the mission of..." the sentence died on his vocalizer. He no longer had a mission he was free of his creators influence. There was not a trace of his original programming to be found. "How did I get here then?" Yes his new body was made from recycled parts but he even if they did come from his old body they would have been clean formatted before use. He had self-destructed. Turned his body into a bomb in one last desperate attempt to please his maker.
Turning bake to his blue prints he found an error in his own math. There was some change between the plans and his actual construction that had not been accounted for in the notes. In the screen he could just barely make out his own reflection something about the head seemed wrong.
"Mirror. I need a mirror." Stepping away from the computer he searched the room to no avail. Widening his search he found himself in what must've been a nurses office. Thankfully it possessed what he needed a full body mirror.
His new self wasn't to far from his old body. Point of fact he wouldn't be surprised if his new body was directly based on his old one. Thee conical spikes jutted out from his head one on either side and near the back that pointed up. His optics were covered by a black visor with blue rings that moved when ever he adjusted the cameras underneath. His mouth was a gun metal gray splotch just underneath his eyes. A small metal cone acted as his noes to help complete the image of a typical Mobian face. A pair of triangular dishes were mounted on his head so they lined up with the conical spikes. They served little purpose except to give the illusion of ears to him. His wrists and shins were more thickly armored because of the technology stored there. His torso was cylindrical with a ring design in his armor that would open up to let him refuel. His shoulder had oddly angular pads that gave him the look of wearing a robe of some kind. Turning to examine his back he found a number of needle shaped spikes that seemed to form part of the jets. His body was painted in black with gold striping at the joints. The only thing that truly bothered him about his new look was a slim blue-green crystal embedded at the center of his torso just in front of his generator.
Epiphany exploded through him. Suddenly it all made sense. How he had gotten into this body, where the extra power was coming from. It all came down to that crystal -no doubt mistaken for some mundane mineral- was the key to it all. It was a sliver of cosmic quartz. he'd used a large hunk of the mineral before, it had evolved him body and mind. When it had been taken both his body and mind had reverted, but he was aware of how much less he was with out it. That had influenced his decision to self destruct as well. Some how the tiny silver in this body was connected to the larger chunk that he had used and it had transferred his mind into a new vessel. The extra power was the quartz enriching the ring and drives. "All this because of a tiny little fractal." he laughed to himself. "The future looks bright." Fractal the metal sonic declared as he left the school behind. "I'll show you who's a failure, Dr. Robotnik!"