A/N: I'm so so thrilled with the love this has been getting. I never expected to get anywhere near 16 faves/follows and someone even made fan art! I'm so blessed. Thank you guys so much. This chapter is a lot lighter than the others which may come as a relief after everything :')
The three sat in silence on the ship's deck.
One, completely black and silver, his elbow propped on his knee and his cheek plate resting in his palm. The second, navy blue with bright white arrows that reflected the moonlight almost poetically. The third, deep violet with a laser-precise visor that cast a warm glow on the metal floor.
Neo appreciated the silence, for once. Before, internal monologues had taunted him, pointing out every flaw and shortcoming he had. Now, things seemed a bit clearer, at least for now. It had been a long time since he had this kind of clarity.
In the quiet, Neo's auditory sensors shifted to his engine fan. He listened to how it gently drifted on and off, almost like breathing, in a way, as its energy consumption shifted ever so slightly to match the workload on his systems.
His attention shifted to the sensory input of the wind running across his armour plating and face. It felt good.
Perhaps feeling things was not just a curse. It could be good, too.
He glanced over to Mecha and felt a pang of regret. Mecha couldn't experience any of these sensations as he could.
Before his downfall, Neo's superiority complex would have taken this realization in an "I'm more advanced than you" way. Now, he could only feel a sense of regret for his brother's inability to feel. Or, was it better that he couldn't? He supposed that was relative... What sensations were worth feeling, and which were not?
Maybe he could help to change that lack of feeling someday, if Mecha so desired it.
Mecha couldn't appreciate this downtime the same way that his brothers did, but he definitely felt that he was fulfilling some kind of objective by watching over his younger siblings on the deck of the ship - still loyal to a fault.
Silver let out a fake yawn and leaned back, his arms now casually folded behind his head.
"This whole thing is kinda melodramatic, don't ya think? Just starin' into the night all somber like and not talking."
"I believe this is a concept known as "being quiet." Perhaps you have heard of it." Mecha simply replied.
Silver dramatically scoffed and held his hand to his chest, feigning pain. "Hey! You're not a very nice person, Mecha."
"Correct. I am not a person. Your observational skills are immaculate."
Silver leaned back again and shook his head with a smirk. "Sarcasm, big M?"
"Affirmative. I was actually inferring that your observational skills are poor." Mecha put it simply.
"Okay, less funny when ya say it like that." Silver reached over and playfully patted the bigger robot's head. "You guys act as if you hate me but you'd miss me if I fucked off back to my cryotube, really."
"How can we miss you. You never leave." Mecha flatly retorted, ducking his head away from Silver just a second too late.
Silver Sonic stuck his tongue out at him for a second, leaning slightly across Neo to do so.
Neo broke out of his silence and gave an angry beep, shoving his open palm hard against Silver's face to push him away.
Silver shuffled back slightly and wiped his cheek plate with the back of one hand, smirking to himself. "You know, you two haven't even asked how I got here in the first place to help you. It's very rude."
"Social constructs such as "rudeness" are a waste of processing time. In addition, I have access to the network database of this fleet and have already seen the footage of your arrival. I presume that this response causes you to... Feel disappointment."
Silver slowly nodded, unsure if that last part was sarcastic or not now. "I mean, yeah, it does actually. I was hoping to tell you the epic story myself."
Neo urgently shot looks at the two, silently demanding an explanation of the story. With his memory banks corrupted, Neo couldn't recall much about the incident and had no idea how Silver had come to find them. Silver caught this and grinned, pumping the air with a fist victoriously. He wasn't going to pass up an opportunity to talk about an adventure, especially not to Neo, who so far hadn't been so fond of him talking.
He leaned forward slightly.
"Let's start from the beginning."
The sound of shattering glass startled him awake.
Silver Sonic stared up at the space where his cryotube had been, dumbfounded for several moments.
Had that really just happened?
And was that fire?
The robot quickly looked around, taking in his surroundings with laser precision before jumping to his feet and making a run for it. As he ran, he drank in the feedback of all of his senses. He hadn't been in this outside world for so long, and his systems were almost shocked by the sudden influx of information.
"Shit. Shit. Shit." He whispered to himself as he considered his options. "I'm fucked."
Silver Sonic skidded to a stop and looked around again, scanning every possible route he could take. "Okay. Think, dude, think. You have an AI chip, use it..." As if struck by inspiration, he suddenly looked down at his hands and wiggled his fingers. He was built with Sonic-tracking missiles, which came with a small problem... They could only track Sonic.
Silver deflated for a second as he hurriedly scrambled through his registry, desperately looking for the code that restricted his use of the missiles. Doing so activated his scanners, which, for some reason, picked up the hedgehog outside the ship. Silver didn't dare question it - that "glitch" was his ticket out of here, no point messing with it now.
"Bingo!" Without hesitation, Silver Sonic pointed one finger at the farthest wall, braced his arm, and fired. The missile that came blew a hole clean through the side of the out-of-control ship, and he took that as his cue to get moving. With a running start, Silver leaped through the hole and prayed that his boosters were ready to go.
Luckily he didn't drop too far before his boosters caught him. He found himself mentally thanking them for doing their job with such short notice.
What he found on the other side was what he least expected.
As he steadied himself on his boosters, Silver rested one hand over his forehead and squinted through the heavy rain at the scene ahead. High above the Final Fortress, Metal Sonic had transformed into his Overlord form, and three golden organics battled against him through the storm.
One of them was Sonic. Well, that explained that.
There was no way he was getting close to the battle, though.
The lightning was a death trap to a robot, especially one that couldn't control it.
With nowhere else to land, Silver headed straight for the main ship and landed as far from the fight as he could.
"This is way too much to process..." Silver muttered to himself, undeniably confused by his awakening and this whole situation. He looked around apprehensively as he walked towards an entranceway, and as he scanned his surroundings, he noticed several Egg Pawns watching him pass by.
Lightning lit up the sky as the robot came to a stop.
It reflected off of his armour almost menacingly and made his sharp metal spines glint.
One of the robots ran and fell at his feet, then grabbed at his leg in terror, which made Silver recoil slightly in bewilderment. "What the-"
"Lord Neo hasn't sent you after us has he? Have mercy on us all, please!"
Silver gave a grim look, flicking his gaze up to the robotic dragon in the sky for a moment in thought.
"Uh, no, he didn't send me. I don't even know the guy yet, honestly."
"But you're a-" The pawn stopped and stared up at him, seemingly terrified to offend him. "Y-You're a..."
Silver cocked his head to one side as he looked back down at the smaller 'bots. "I'm a hedgehog-series, sure, but that doesn't mean we're all the same. Jeez, so judgemental... I only just woke up you know. You think I have any clue what's going on here either-"
A roar from high above sent the pawn back to their little group, which huddled together in fear.
A pang of sympathy came over the robot.
He sighed and knelt to their level.
"What the hell did he do to you?"
Silver tapped away at the computer beside him. Using technology was second nature to him, so his fingers swept effortlessly across the keyboard as he took in the information on the screen.
With a grimace, he scrolled through files upon files of ramblings about Neo hating "that cursed fake hedgehog", intensive training records that should have put him out of commission, and saved security footage of the ship. Some of the video files had strange names that caught Silver Sonic's attention - PROOF, HEWASHERE, IAMNOTREAL, I'MNOTCRAZY... Each file had been opened and edited several times before, clearly showing the Overlord's intense paranoia.
To Silver Sonic, it was clear as day what had happened. Some kind of error in Neo's programming was causing him to freak out, and nobody knew how to deal with it, or they were too scared to. Now it was out of control and couldn't be ignored anymore.
"So that's what's been going on, huh..." Silver sighed and spun the chair around about halfway to face the Pawns again.
The lead Egg Pawn nodded, still trembling nervously in the presence of the killing machine.
"Listen, I'm not even meant t'be here right now... But I'll have a look at the situation as best as I can. You 'bots need the help, and looks like those organics out there aren't gonna do anythin' useful apart from just standing there looking scared."
The Egg Pawn scrambled up onto a stool nearby, starting to feel more comfortable with Silver as he seemed more predictable than Neo was.
"Why are you different? The other two are... So angry. So scary."
Silver frowned slightly and shrugged one shoulder. "I was made to emulate Sonic's personality, but I was not made with his life data. That gives me more free will, I guess. I can be what I wanna be, just in... Moderation? I guess? And with a Sonic-like template of a personality? If that makes any sense at all." He rested his chin on his hand as he pondered the question deeper, looking into his reflection on the computer monitor. "But that's not good enough for the Doc, apparently."
The Pawn tilted their head to one side.
Silver looked back over and gave a half-smile. This time, sadness was distinct on his face. "This situation right now? The whole thing with Metal Sonic going haywire? That's been a long time coming. The Doc realized Metal was getting more unstable and rebellious thanks to his own free will. That meant that my own free will and emotional processing abilities were... A threat, I guess? So... That meant I was just a side project until he could figure all of this out. Thing is, I've been conscious this whole time. Alone."
"I-I'm sorry." The Pawn murmured, wringing their hands anxiously.
"It's cool. Not your fault after all." Silver grinned reassuringly. "Just glad to be out, even if it's in strange, strange circumstances."
"Do you blame... Him?"
"Who, Metal? Nah, I don't blame Metal Sonic. He's clearly got issues that he's gotta deal with and he's not the one who had me put away like that. Let's just say... The Doc has some things to answer for. He programs us to do things, but then he doesn't know how to handle it when we do those things. For Metal, it's wanting to kill Sonic but never getting to do it. For me, I guess, it's feeling a lot even though he made me that way. It's confusing."
"What about the other one? The tall scary one that never talks?" Another Pawn added, waving their hand quickly to grab Silver's attention in his peripheral.
"Who, Mecha Sonic? He's alright, I think. I mean, we've not met face-to-face yet but I know of him. He's Metal's right-hand man in all this, right? He doesn't seem like the angry killer type, though."
"Mecha Sonic is the only one who can talk to him without being scrapped. He stands up for us sometimes too... Well... Kind of anyway!" Another Pawn piped up.
Silver quickly downloaded a file to his own storage and finally shut off the computer, finally spinning the chair back around to face his newly-found friends. It almost turned back around again with the force of the push, but he slapped a hand against the desk to stop it before it could.
"Physically, there's not much I can do here. As I am, my missiles only target Sonic, Metal Sonic's episode isn't gonna stop with just words, and I can't get anywhere near him with all that lightning. But... What I can do is, try to stop this from happening again when he's defeated... And make sure he's not taken offline for good."
The hedge-bot paused to listen out for any change outside, but then looked down at the Egg Pawns again.
"Listen... Don't trust organics. They don't want to help robots like us. They'd sooner see us rust like trash. And right now, every single one of us is a bad guy according to them. Once Metal is down, or Mecha for that matter, Chaos knows what will happen to them. Organics are so unpredictable and they don't get the whole picture of what's happened here. It's not fair."
With that said, things suddenly seemed to take a turn in the battle outside. Metal Overlord had fallen.
The silver robot jumped to his feet and stalked out of the room with a new sense of urgency, finally seeming to get serious.
"Basically what I'm saying is... Us 'bots have to stick together."
He paused to look back at the Egg Pawns with a half-smile and a thumbs-up that strangely mirrored Sonic. "Stay safe."
The Pawns watched him leave, a little unnerved by the Sonic-like mannerisms at first - but they seemed to quickly remember that he was just made that way, and accepted it.
Keeping to the shadows as best as he could, Silver Sonic edged closer to the scene, keeping his amber gaze fixed solely on Sonic with one hand bracing his other arm. He kept a sharp eye on the organic hedgehog as he approached the fallen robot, and with every step that the hedgehog took, Silver raised his arm slightly higher.
"Don't you dare, hedgehog..."
Sonic crouched down to speak to Neo.
Silver flexed his fingers in a silent warning and engaged his targeting system.
One wrong move and he would shoot.
But, much to his surprise, Sonic turned and ran away as Neo begged for mercy. Silver faltered at first, the unexpected reaction causing his CPU to need a split second to recalculate what actions to take. Maybe it was some kind of trick... He kept his targeting system trained on Sonic as he ran, only disengaging once he was out of range.
"Hah. Coward..."
He finally looked back to Neo and was met by another surprise.
Mecha, stood protectively over his brother, stared intently after Sonic to make sure he didn't come back. Once he was satisfied, Mecha turned and knelt down to Neo to pick him up and leave.
Omega and Shadow started towards him as if to challenge him, but he spun around and met their glares with his unfeeling stare. Shadow held his ground and balled up his fists threateningly.
Mecha's gaze shifted to Omega and he said something in code that Silver couldn't pick up. Omega seemed to understand, begrudgingly, and left with Shadow.
The violet robot gave a warning look to the other heroes on the scene, giving Omega and Shadow a particularly long look as they left.
As beings who struggled with the idea of being robotic in any way... They should have known better. They were traitors to what could have been the robotic empire.
And all of them should have known better than to lay a hand on his brother.
Silver half-smiled to himself and finally disengaged all of his weapons. He was right in his analysis of Mecha... He wasn't the same killing-murdering type after all. This was good. He intended to have a conversation with him after this. So, with this in mind, Silver noted that approaching Mecha should be easy, as long as Neo wasn't around.
As Mecha disappeared wordlessly into the ship, Silver silently followed behind him, guarding his back without him ever knowing. The heavy doors closed behind Mecha, and Silver hopped up to sit on the roof above them. He intently watched the heroes as they left one by one, and as the last people left, he finally relaxed with a sigh.
Eggman was the last to disappear. Silver noticed his apparent regret and sadness as he slowly walked back inside, picking up debris and pieces of metal as he went.
Then, Eggman looked up to survey the damage. He suddenly spotted the escaped robot with a flinch of surprise.
Silver Sonic waved with a half-smile. "Yo. Long time no see."
"So yeah! That's how I ended up here and-"
The sound of a heavy metal door opening behind the trio startled them out of the storytelling session.
Neo sharply turned around as if ready to fight, Silver looked over his shoulder with a warning glare, and Mecha didn't react outwardly.
One by one, though, the robots settled as they realized who it was.
Out of the shadow of the doorway, Eggman walked over to the robots with his hands behind his back.
The Doctor's eyes wandered over the fresh paint and repairs of Neo and couldn't stop himself from smiling. With a few tweaks here and there, he looked as new as he was when Eggman first built him - the memory paired with the sight made his heart swell with pride and relief.
Neo hesitated, meeting the warm gaze of his creator with his own hesitant one.
Eggman held his arms out to Neo with a grin.
Neo hesitated. But, slowly, he found himself clambering up and shifting one foot, then the other, and suddenly he was back in his creator's arms as he had been before.
Eggman pulled him close and rubbed the spot where the open hole had once been in his back.
"I'm so sorry, Metal. I'm glad you're home safe."
Home... What a strange word for a robot to process. Neo wasn't sure what to do with it or the emotions it stirred within him, but he knew it felt... nice.
Silver looked up at the two and patted the deck floor with one hand.
"So... You going to sit, or what, pops?" Silver asked, half-expecting him to leave.
Eggman sat down in the middle of the three boys, who shuffled aside slightly to make room.
Silver was a little puzzled and unsure of what to do with himself now. He avoided looking at the Doctor, instead wringing his hands and pretending to look at something else. The perceptive Doctor noticed this and carefully slung one arm around the robot, pulling him a little closer to him. His other arm went around Neo, who took a second to register the affection, but eventually accepted it.
Mecha watched over all of them with a dutiful look. Once he was satisfied that they were all safe, he looked up to the sky and quietly took its vastness in.
With the pressure on his armour, Neo felt very grounded. Grounded enough to check in with his systems properly. Curiously, he flipped through the abilities currently in his programming - abilities like shapeshifting and electricity manipulation still seemed to be in his registry, but he wasn't sure if they would still work in his new state.
As Mecha looked at the sky, Neo turned his attention to a particular spot far away and focused. It took several moments of focus, but much to his surprise, a tiny bolt of heat lightning flashed in the distance. Neo felt pride swell within him at the realization that he still wielded some of this power, but could actually control much easier it this time. Silver nudged Neo and grinned at him to show that he had noticed.
"Things are going to get better, I promise," Eggman said, looking over to Mecha to get his attention in particular.
"What is the probability of that promise being fulfilled."
"100%."
"Have you have taken into account the inconsistency of human nature to come to that percentage."
"Don't forget, I have an IQ of 300 Mecha. Of course I have."
"Affirmative."