(Copyright Act Admissions/Lanham Act Disclaimers. This piece infringes copyrights owned by Sega and DiC. It is not a product of Sega, DiC, or Archie Comics. All available rights are reserved.)

(7) Nouvelle Lit Administrative District, 1 Fructidor 3235

"It rests on your neck." Amanda put her fingertips to the rounded front of her neck-armor, drew them softly to the side, marking its curve. Because of all the dust in the desert air, her fingertips did not squeak. "It's sticky."

Sonic had wanted Snivvles to hurry his ass up after months in the desert shack, but now as he brushed his own neck he wasn't sure. His gloved fingers could feel the contours of the neck-apple and the hollow below, between the tendons. Tiny, almost invisible hairs quietly complained. "I don't need to . . . shave, or anything like that, do I?"

"No. It will stick."

"Can't I just use some kind of ear headset or—"

"No. It would be a major tactical disadvantage."

Sonic picked up the black latex pad and twisted it in his hands, leery. About three centimeters wide, ten centimeters long, a couple of millimeters thick, very flexible. It made him think of some kind of long, flat leech. He didn't understand how there could be an antenna in there. That reminded him of Amanda's spine.

Before he could think of anything else the throat mic reminded him of he pressed it to his neck. Then he blanched his ears and swallowed, working his apple against the pad. The hug against his skin made it worse. "It's—" he swallowed the words too tight.

"It's not too tight, it's just right," Amanda said as she stepped closer, grabbed his wrists and kept his fingers just off of his neck. "Most designs use a strap around the neck. This one is special for hedgehogs and porcupines. Just let it rest. You'll get used to it."

Sonic sighed, closing his eyes. It had been forever since he'd had a cold, but he was willing to bet that this was the mechanical equivalent of those nagging sore throats he'd heard so much about. "Alright."

"Now speak silently. Breathe, but make no sound."

He kept his lips closed but worked his tongue against his teeth as he sighed through his nose. If you cover a skunk with armor plate, does it still stink? The right side of his mouth twisted into a grin as he brushed his fingertips over his new throat slug. "Hey you get that, Mandy-gal?" He blinked.

Her ears were folded and her cheeks fallen. "I'm sorry," he said, automatically. The old skunk-scent thing was—it was a joke. Most of them didn't care. Much. "I shouldn't—"

"Please don't talk about my skunkparts," Amanda said. "My organic brain has gone on the fritz, in the past."

Sonic's mouth was still twisted in disgust at that word—he'd originally taken the word to refer to her cooter, which idea he had a hard time throwing away (surgery! wince!)—but he staggered through enough to say another "I'm sorry. I didn't mean . . . anything."

"I try to be a good robot."

"You are." He shrugged uneasily, weight back on his heels. "I guess."

She put a small translucent plastic earplug into the palm of one of his gloves, glanced up at his ears, and said, "The right one is best, probably."

It didn't go too much deeper than a standard headphone plug, although Sonic wasn't eager to try tapping on the little portion that protruded. Hard to believe you could fit an antenna in there, either. Amanda was doing her meditating again, but with her head lowered rather than lifted and blank. It's in my ear, he whispered silently. See if it works.

"Testing," Amanda said in his ear. "Testing, one two three."

I hear you, he whispered, unnerved. He was actually happier that her face was turned down, but he could still see enough of her jaw and cheekbones to see that he mouth hadn't moved. It was like telepathy. He had the uncanny sensation that the skunkbot had just reached out into his head, and part of him wanted to rip the thing out of his ear and stomp on it.

Sonic had just realized that he might seem to be doing the same thing from her perspective, when she asked, in his ear, "Did Sally ever tell you about my troubles, with my brain?"

A wave of nausea. No.

"Did she speak of me at all?"

On the off chance that the queasy lump in his chest was heat stroke, Sonic grabbed one of the water-bottles and threaded the hose from the pump into the tip. . . . No. Not much. Combat stuff, before missions. She didn't like to talk about being your prisoner.

"An organic brain on its own is so weak. So quick to confuse itself. Sally needed so much help—"

"No she didn't," Sonic growled, aloud. "She wasn't your robot. She was your prisoner. Get that through your head, finally."

"I am not so foolish as you think," Amanda said tiredly, still speaking in his ear. "Even then I wasn't foolish, but my world was so small: my programming, my Commander, my bots. It was so simple, so full of love—"

"You can't love a machine!" Sonic cried in exasperation. "An android, fine; you wanna call yourself a robot, fine; but you can't love a washing machine. You can't love your car. You can't love an automated gun."

"No, you do not understand them. You speak to them with your mouth or your fingers on a pad, pressing buttons, one after another, seconds and tens of seconds. You hear from them ACTIVE, INACTIVE, ERROR, TASK COMPLETE, and you think you understand them, while they wait and wait to hear the commands they lack the power to guess, more information in their buffers than you could ever hope to use. My bots fit me, hedgehog. They leapt and danced to my thoughts, processors lit and glowing. Their antennae sing. When I dropped my receiver noise-cutters and pressed myself close to their exoskeletons I could hear them, hear the sound of their thoughts. They opened themselves to me the way they could not open to another. The way that you cannot open to me even if you would. That is what I wanted for her.

"And now I sit here in the desert, hiding myself from my owners that have been tricked and turned against me, hiding with the hedgehog that took them all away from me, who has nothing to say to me, and I turn my thoughts to Devin and DJ's Morning Zoo and reruns of Nights of Fire and Lemon Island."

Sonic kicked his toes along the floor with a loud cement scrape and stomped outside. "Sorry you had to face reality," he shouted into the white sky over the anvil of the desert. His shorts were stiff with the salt of dried sweat; by evening his face and arms would be burned, his lips chapped, his flesh tired to his bones.

Just as he leaned forward on his toes to sprint, he heard her reply, whispered on waves to the depth of his ear: "So am I."


Place Unknown, Time Unknown

The bolts slammed, the door open. Tails shifted his stance slightly, ready to move, fists squeezed tight, the half-eaten bowl of the day's kibble on the floor beside him. He saw the appraisal in Lady Renee's light-furred eyes as she hesitated in the doorway—yeah, that's right, bitch, I'm ready for you. She'd said a week off would do him good, and yeah, she was right. He hadn't been punished for two whole weeks, and his body sang like a—

Well, there had been the beatings in the gym. Not very many; without fighting there hadn't been much of a shortfall for the guards to correct. That was punishment, but he found he didn't think of it as punishment, because it wasn't dealt out by her. She was the enemy. The guards were just her puppets. He didn't want to hurt them. He would probably have to, just as much as he'd have to knock out a security camera or break a . . .

He wondered if she wanted him to think that way.

Okay, so he'd just been beat a little. He felt great. He was ready to rock. He was ready to kill.

Come and get me.

The Lady leaned leisurely against the steel doorframe. "And what have you done to provoke me, fox? Why should I bring the fight to you? Do you intend to offer me a provocation?" She hitched her right thumb into her belt, tapped her fingers thoughtfully against the buckle. "Maybe I won't punish you for disobedience. Maybe I'll offer you a treat for obedience. Beat a guard of my choosing in a fight and you can have a candy bar. Tell me how my warriors can assassinate the Acorn Queen and you can go for a walk outside."

She stopped as he growled at her, like a beast. It was more vicious than any profanity he had.

"Your devotion to her is appalling," she spat. "Do you know how long you've been in my training? I doubt you do, without any marks on your cell walls. A bold thing, to forgo them." She smiled thinly. "Do you know how long it was before her soft, pliable will bent beneath that of the Empress? Did she tell you? Hours, fox. She begged for a ruler's command. And a creature like that wins a warrior like you, with lies and poison, and your tender age."

Tails sniffed, eyes narrowed. Empress Amanda Skunkbot, his mind had filed away, but he found he didn't care about the revelation, not at the moment. Just about the insult.

"It always is easier to train an animal, when you capture it young. You still don't understand me, do you? She struck you the way I do, didn't she? To teach you, to train you. When you treated her with disrespect, when you made use of something that didn't belongto you, when you fought with others your own age—"

He cut her off with a bark. Shut up. Sally had never laid a hand on him, never even spanked him.

"Mmm," the Lady mused, cocking her ears. "Perhaps she didn't strike you."

Tails really wished the Lady would stop reading him like that.

"No dessert for a bad fox?" A sudden light came into her eyes, and she raised her brows. "Ah. Perhaps you had to go to your room. A time out."

Come in here, bitch! Fight me! Tell me to do something so I can shove it in your face!

"How very enlightened of the Queen," the Lady smirked. Then she turned and left. The bolts slammed behind her.

She didn't come in the rest of the day.

The next day, Tails' food was delivered. The guards did not come, so he didn't have to go to the gym. He just got to relax in his room. Boring, but he felt even better.

The day after that, the guards did not come.

Nor the next.

Nor the next.