Hello! Welcome to chapter 3 of my Sonic the Hedgehog fanfiction! I'm still confused about why you people keep coming back to this, but never mind. Also, I have changed the characters to include an OC; I didn't realise that one of the main characters was an OC because I'm a moron, but now I have fixed my mistake!
And now to respond to reviews with an unoriginal method:
2000Aerobars - Thank you for your feedback, I was going to do that for chapter 1 but it looked a bit weird, but looking back on the previous chapters, I guess it does look a bit cramped.
Elfo8792 - Am I falling into some kind of trope with this? Or is that a reference that I don't get? 'I'M CONFUSED WRAAH!'
Also, this chapter contains a lot of back story explanation; it's not canon in any way, I just thought of it for the purposes of this story.
Anyway, time for the disclaimer:
This is a work of fan-fiction using characters, locations, entities, items and events from the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. Sonic the Hedgehog is owned and trademarked by SEGA Japan and all other respective countries. I do not claim ownership of any characters, locations, entities, items or events in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. The story has been created by me and is not purported or believed to be a part of SEGA's story canon. The story is for entertainment purposes only. Any resemblance to any character, object, event, location or entity that is owned by anyone other than SEGA is purely coincidental. I am not profiting financially from the creation of and publication of this story. I am grateful to SEGA for their amazing video games about Sonic the Hedgehog, without them my story would not exist.
The two hedgehogs ran to Tails' workshop, any attempt from Sonic to make conversation would result in a glare from Shadow full of frustration and annoyance, Shadow was usually in bad mood but this was beyond what Sonic expected of Shadow in this situation. They made it to the workshop and waited in an awkward and socially painful silence, before the Tornado-1 landed on Tails' private runway and Tails, Knuckles and Amy brought the Sonic Soldier out of the biplane and into the workshop. Knuckles placed the bloodthirsty machine on the floor while Tails brought out his Miles Electric with some kind of cable for an unfamiliar port in the back of the Sonic Soldier's head, probably standard for Eggman units.
"So how is this going to work Tails?" asked Shadow, breaking the silence that he himself created.
"Well, I'm going to emulate a *nix terminal for-" explained Tails before getting cut off.
"I know how to hack! I mean what are you going to do to it by hacking it?!" screamed Shadow in an intensely frustrated and intimidating voice.
"W-Well, I was g-going to scan through its motherboard t-to find a hidden plan. A-And then I was going to r-read through its base c-coding to find anything to explain h-how it did the things that it d-did." explained Tails, trembling in fear from Shadow's tone of voice.
"Hey! Knock it off, Shadow! You don't have to be so mean you know!" yelled Amy.
Shadow grinded his teeth in vexation, before breathing slowly and returning to a relaxed state as he looked at Tails and said,
"Just… Get on with it…"
From then on, Sonic knew how serious this must be if Shadow would be this furious. He looked at the Sonic Soldier in wonder of what mysteries this robot held, blind to the secret that he would resurface to his mind.
"That's odd…" said Tails in confusion of something on his Miles Electric.
"What is it?" asked Knuckles.
"There's nothing about any plan. Not one trace to any plot or scheme of Eggman, no data of any such thing." explained Tails.
Tails had checked for this sort-of thing with his first experience with the original Eggman/Robotnik Badniks, and the same result occurred. But those were pawns, not considered necessary to contain any plans of any sort. But after later salvaging surviving wreckage of the robots that were a big part of his plan, Tails tried the same thing and found results of Eggman's master plan which lead him to the blueprints of the Death Egg. He tried the same thing with later machines, but they all contained a locatable but unbreakable security system that Tails could never hack. This Sonic Soldier had no such security system, but this was supposed to be the big part of Eggman's plan from their knowledge.
"Well, see if there's anything suspicious in his programming stuff!" said Knuckles.
"Doing that now." said Tails.
As Tails appeared to be reading through the Sonic Soldier's coding, Sonic noticed something about Shadow. If he didn't know Shadow better, he would've mistaken his facial expression for one of nervousness. But what could possibly make Shadow nervous?
"What? How is this here?" questioned Tails.
"Yeah, Tails we can't really see, so… What is it?" said Sonic.
"I've seen this before, Eggman has managed to… convert DNA bases into binary and use this in the programming…" said Tails.
An unwanted situation then confirmed itself in Shadow's mind, and a forgotten memory was remembered in Sonic's mind.
Before Shadow could say anything, Sonic said, "I- I think I know what this means…" in a suspiciously sad tone.
Sonic was rarely sad, he was always kind or cocky or ferocious. It was difficult to imagine a time when Sonic was sad.
"When I fought this thing, it matched my speed, and Eggman described him as my brother… And what Tails just said about that whole DNA thing fits into what I think."
"Wait, what's that?" asked Tails.
"When I was just 9 years old, I remember being taken by Eggman. It was my first experience with him and an experience that was difficult to forget." said Sonic.
Sonic's friends didn't actually know much about Sonic's back story, as they never thought that it needed explanation. But it did now occur to Tails and Shadow that the only people who could keep up with Sonic were artificial; Metal Sonic was a robot, Shadow was man-made on the Space Colony ARK, and now here's Eggman's latest creation the Sonic Soldier that could do the same.
Sonic continued, "Anyway, what he did was he brought me to a lab and injected something into my veins. After that I felt faster, stronger and more resilient than ever, but at the same time it was one of the worst pains that I ever felt. If I recall correctly, he said that it was an experiment for something and that I was to perform tests for him or else; what he injected me with altered my genes and gave me the speed that I have today, and the ability to endure it. But one day, I used these abilities to escape his imprisonment; and I ran, I ran as fast as I could, it took me years to control it but I managed to run away from Eggman… But then I ran back at him, I knew that he would continue with things like that and we've fought ever since…" said Sonic.
As Tails and the others let that sink in, Shadow said, "I believe that I know how the doctor got these genes, I believe that these are the same genes that Black Doom provided with Gerald on the ARK so that I could have the abilities that Sonic now possesses. The doctor must have hacked into unrelated GUN files to retrieve this information, and apparently used it for Metal Sonic and now this Sonic Soldier."
This explanation was followed by a terrible silence that lasted for what seemed like eternity, now everyone knew how Sonic could run at such speeds but hedgehogs like Amy could not, and how Eggman made this Sonic Soldier. But there were still unanswered questions.
"But how did it talk the way it did?" asked Sonic.
"What do you mean?" responded Tails.
"Well, it said that its primary objective was to 'Break the hedgehog', that sounds suspiciously like something that I would say if I was being sarcastic." said Sonic.
"I think that apart from your abilities, it also has some-kind-of in-built personality that is the same as yours, possibly even in-built memories from your past encounters with Eggman." explained Tails.
'The same personality…' thought Sonic.
"But why would Egghead do that?" asked Sonic.
Then, just at that moment, the Sonic Soldier sat up. Knuckles and Shadow got into fighting stances, but the Sonic Soldier didn't react to that; instead, he said, "He wanted to make the ultimate copy, so that people would be unsuspecting when I was intended to attack."
"Tails, did you do something to it?" asked Sonic.
"I-I didn't think that it would do anything, but- I-I changed the part of the code that states that Eggman is the only one to command it, and I think I may have given it…" said Tails.
"… Free will." said the Sonic Soldier, finishing Tails' sentence.
The Sonic Soldier must have activated himself and his audio receptors must have been active while he was being hacked, possibly in case of emergencies.
"What? But how does that work?!" asked Amy.
"Eggman wanted a robot that would have the capabilities to think and work on its own in order to fully get into Sonic's mindset… Or at least that's what my databanks say…" said the Sonic Soldier.
Sonic then slowly began to approach the Sonic Soldier, as the Sonic Soldier looked at him with a clear expression of confusion. It was confused as to why Sonic would approach a robot that tried to murder him in cold blood, and why he looked like he wanted to reason with it.
"What are you doing?" asked the Sonic Soldier.
"Yeah, what are you doing? Are you out of your mind or something?!" yelled Knuckles.
As Sonic looked into the eyes of the Sonic Soldier, and the Sonic Soldier did the same, both hedgehogs thought that they sensed something unfamiliar… Nevertheless, Sonic shrugged it off and did something that everyone in the room expected to have him killed. He held out his hand for the Sonic Soldier, gesturing for a handshake.
Sonic faintly heard Knuckles in the background quietly say, "That's it, he's finally lost it…"
Shadow tried to quickly walk to Sonic in order to save him from himself, but Sonic held out his other hand to signal Shadow not to.
"Sonic? What are you doing?" asked Tails.
"You said that it had the same personality as me; so if I know myself, which I'm pretty sure I do, as long as it has free will it won't stand for any plan of Eggman to happen!" responded Sonic.
The Sonic Soldier looked curiously at Sonic's extended arm, expecting to find himself trying to rip it off him like some sort of madman, but no such command, urge or prompt to do so occurred in his Artificial Intelligence. The Sonic Soldier processed Sonic's words and responded by grasping Sonic's hand, pulling himself up and shaking it.
"It's a good thing that you know yourself as well as you do." said the Sonic Soldier.
"Well, this has been nice… I guess; but we need to move on to serious matters. Do you or do you not know anything about the doctor's plans?" questioned Shadow.
This question took the Sonic Soldier by surprise, his databanks showed information that he was supposed to be Eggman's plan.
"Uh, yeah… it's me." stated the Sonic Soldier, pointing at himself to further prove the seemingly obvious point.
"No, that would be too simple. And besides, why would the doctor simply abandon the base of his plans?" asked Shadow.
The Sonic Soldier desperately searched his databanks for some kind of answer to Shadow's question in a vain effort, but as he processed Shadow's words clearer, he moved to a different point.
"What do you mean 'too simple'?" asked the Sonic Soldier, a hint of anger forming in his tone.
"Well, your security system is laughable and you were far too easy to take down if Sonic here managed to do it that fast." said Shadow.
The Sonic Soldier felt something new form in the list of emotions that he was capable of expressing, which was strange considering that was impossible. Eggman had programmed a set of emotions that the Sonic Soldier was capable of expressing in order to confuse and manipulate targets, emotions weren't supposed to add themselves into this set. However, the Sonic Soldier paid no attention to this anomaly and walked to Shadow with a clear expression of anger. But before the Sonic Soldier could get to Shadow, Sonic stopped his robotic counterpart.
"Whoa! Hold it; I know that its tempting buddy, but we can't afford to have you or Shadow beaten up right now. So-" said Sonic before being cut off.
"Are you implying that this piece of scrap metal could even lay a finger on me?!" asked Shadow, with anger powerful enough to shatter mountains with ease.
"No! It's not that! It's just-" said Sonic before being cut off again.
"Well what is it?!" yelled the Sonic Soldier.
As Shadow and the Sonic Soldier looked like they were about to have a fight that could accidentally destroy the solar system, they were brought back to their senses by none other than Tails.
"Be quiet! We can't afford to fight amongst ourselves, and I don't know about you two, but I've had a really stressful week!" yelled Tails.
Everyone was in shock that Tails had gone from cowering at the tone of Shadow's voice, to yelling at both Shadow and a deadly robot with genes that made it a very deadly weapon. Tails calmed down as Shadow and the Sonic Soldier lost their anger; another silence came after that.
"What is with these awkward silences?" asked Knuckles quietly.
There we go, chapter 3 is finished! I hope you enjoyed, because I really don't want to have to rewrite chapters! Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope you have a nice day!