Chapter 8: Strong

Amy had been lying on her bed for some time. She was lying flat on her back, her arms and legs spread out, her eyes on the ceiling. If even Shadow was texting Tails about Metal, it was inevitable that Sonic would find out about him soon, she thought darkly. It was not so much that she was worried about the two meeting, it was more that she was worried about what Sonic would think of her housing and feeding his long-time nemesis. Although, she reasoned, for the sake of her pride, she would prefer that Sonic learned her guest was Metal Sonic rather than a stranger she had only recently met and brought into her home. If Rouge's reaction to that lie was anything to go by, it was unlikely Sonic would be receptive to the news. But, she thought to herself, after witnessing how Metal had reacted to just hearing Sonic's voice, the two were unlikely to take kindly to each other. In fact, Amy thought, given just how aggressively Metal had reacted to Sonic, and how he had looked almost as bad when confronted by Rouge and Shadow, she doubted he was going to get along with any of her friends: which made it all the more unusual that he was so comfortable around her and Tails. Just as she began speculating inside her mind why that might be, she heard Metal's heavy footsteps moving through her house. She assumed he was going to the bathroom, but when he bypassed it, she frowned.

When he then thumped his way into her bedroom, she sat bolt upright and glared at him. He glanced at her, but only briefly, before proceeding to walk around the side of her bed. She grabbed up a pillow and made to throw it at him, but stopped, the pillow poised above her head, as he picked something up from her bed and began studying it closely. Slowly, she lowered her arms.

"I'm not one of those girls who covers her bed with plushies," she said defensively.

When he tilted his head at the word "plushie" Amy's anxiousness eased. When Metal had picked up the one stuffed toy she had in her bedroom, she had been concerned that he was about to mock her about it, much the same way Sonic had when it had fallen out of a box when he was helping her move into her current house. But, of course, Metal had no concept of what toys were and whether or not it was normal for anyone to have any, and so no such anxiety was necessary.

"That's my one special thing," she said, replacing her pillow and moving over to sit on the edge of her bed.

She twitched a little when Metal lifted the stuffed brown hedgehog to his lips and touched it experimentally.

"It feels nice, right?" she asked him.

He turned to look at her, with what was fundamentally a blank expression, and yet she sensed he was asking her an unspoken question.

"It's my one special thing," she said again. "Everyone has one special thing. That's mine. I…"

She took a long, long look at Metal's blank face as she decided whether or not she ought to fully explain the significance of the infant's toy she kept with her.

"Well, I guess this could be a lesson for you," she reasoned aloud. "Everybody has something – some material thing – that reminds them of something special. I never knew my parents, I was left at an orphanage when I was a baby, but this baby toy was left with me. I've kept her ever since, even though I don't know anything about my parents, I like having her around. It's like she's family. Her name is–"

Amy stopped herself just in time. Metal was staring at her, but she supposed that was normal.

"It's Thistle," she said quietly. "Her name is Thistle."

Metal made a short sighing sound through his nose, which Amy took to mean he didn't appreciate the fact that the impromptu name she had given him earlier happened to be the same name she had given to a baby's toy.

"Well, anyway, I only told you because this is something we do," she said, trying not to sound too defensive. "I mean real – I mean living beings – we have little things like this. Things that don't really mean anything to anyone else, but have priceless sentimental value to us. Do you understand?"

Metal nodded his head.

"You do?"

He nodded again. Amy nodded once in reply, though she remained sceptical. Metal passed her the toy, which she numbly accepted, only refocusing her attention when he held up a finger.

"Hmm?" she responded.

He reached his left hand over to his right and took hold of the metal panel at the back of that hand.

"Oh!" Amy yelped, when his fingers stabbed into his hand. "Be careful! Tails just fixed those fingers for you!"

He ignored her and continued until he had pried open the back of his right hand. When his fingers came away intact, she relaxed a little. But, when she noticed that the inside of his right hand looked different to how the inside of his left hand had looked the day before when Tails had opened it up to fix his broken finger, she leaned a little closer. He sat down next to her, with his right hand nearest her, and she was better able to see why the interior of it looked so different to his other hand: there was something stored inside the hollow back part. It looked like weather-worn, shrivelled layers of dull plastic and purple card that had been soaked through and dried out several times over. Very, very tentatively, he reached the fingers of his left hand into the opening and pinched at the object. It sounded crispy against his metal fingers, and, as he carefully lifted it out, it appeared even more fragile than Amy had initially thought it to be. Once he had it free, he carefully held it in both hands and opened it, revealing it to be rectangular in shape.

It was an old, weathered, plastic-coated card.

On the outside, it was purple with broken specs of gold, hinting at a pattern that had long-since disintegrated. The inside, visible only when Metal unfolded it, was a still relatively clear image accompanied by some text. But, it was not the content of the card that caught Amy's attention: her eyes landed on the pink smudge-marks on the bottom right of the card, what had once been sharp marker pen marks had, with time and exposure, swollen as the ink bled outwards from the original shapes, and yet, miraculously, the original marks could still be deciphered as two – albeit bloated and blurry – hearts.

"Oh my goodness," Amy muttered under her breath. "I can't believe you still have it…"

The card in Metal's hand was the Page of Cups. And, until seeing it again in that moment, Amy had long since forgotten that she had given it to Metal Sonic.

Metal released the card into Amy's upturned hands, and, looking down at her faded penmanship on the bottom corner, she suddenly found her mind flooding with memories that were suddenly so clear it was as though they had happened literally the day before.

Amy was in a cage, in a dull, windowless room, illuminated only by the four monitors Eggman was sitting in front of. Amy had soothed her fear and sadness during her captivity by watching those monitors, watching as her hero, Sonic, the one she was destined to meet there, raced around Little Planet, breaking Eggman's robots and plans with a half-cocked smirk on his face. She had found it odd that the robot Eggman had assigned to watch her seemed to be as fascinated with watching Sonic as she was. During periods of inactivity on the monitors – when Sonic napped or temporarily went off-camera, the robot's glowing red eyes would dim to a dull grey, as though someone had switched it off. The first night, as Sonic settled down at the base of a tree to sleep in full view of one of the monitors, one of Eggman's less articulated robots rolled in with a tray of tea and triangular sandwiches. Eggman snatched up the contents and greedily ate most of the food, before suddenly seeming to remember that Amy was behind him. He got up out of his chair and thrust his hand between the bars of her cage, his fingers pinched around one of the less pleasant looking triangular sandwiches.

"Eat this, you," he instructed her. "Can't have you fainting away. Not before your big moment!"

Amy shuffled to the back of the cage and pressed her back to the bars, glaring up at him with a fearful defiance. He waited there for a moment before throwing the sandwich at her. She closed her eyes and brought up her arm, but it still managed to hit her in the face. Eggman then grunted something and left the room. The service robot wheeled around in an arc to follow him but stopped on point by the door, its wheels spinning wildly beneath it despite it remaining in place. The blue hedgehog-shaped robot that had been guarding Amy was holding onto the service robot, halting its exit. The blue hedgehog robot – which Amy had heard Eggman call "Metal Sonic" – took the tray of tea and sandwiches and then released the smaller bot, which peeled out of the room wildly, its wheels finally moving it forwards.

Metal Sonic took the tray over to Amy's cage and placed it down in front of the bars. It then stood up, just behind the tray, and watched her, with glowing red eyes. She watched it for a few moments, before fatigue and hunger overtook any other feeling, and she cautiously crawled to the front of the cage, warily reaching a hand through the bars to retrieve the most appetising sandwich. Once she had recovered it, she scurried to the back of the cage to devour it. Metal Sonic remained in place, watching her, and so she dared to move back to the front of the cage and remain there, eating up the last of the sandwiches. She turned to the plastic tumbler Eggman had given her earlier, making a small, sad, noise when she found it to be empty. Another glance at Metal Sonic gave her the confidence she needed to reach over to the tray and take hold of the teapot there in both hands. She drew it towards herself before realising that each of her arms was pushed through a different pair of bars and the teapot was far too bulbous to fit through any of the gaps regardless. Determined, she placed it back on the tray and instead put her tumbler outside the cage, reaching out and sticking out her tongue a little in concentration as she picked up the teapot and carefully filled her cup. She then replaced the teapot and recovered her drink.

As she knelt by the bars nursing her cup of tea, the service bot returned and Metal Sonic picked up the tray, placing it back onto the smaller robot's shelf. It wheeled out of the room and Eggman shortly returned, sitting down in his seat, where he spun back three of the monitors to replay the action from earlier in the day of Sonic charging around the doctor's would-be robotic empire.

At some point between Eggman's return and the three monitors commencing their replays, Metal Sonic had knelt down in front of Amy, almost exactly mimicking her position.

"Thank you," she whispered to it.

She took another drink of her tea, but it simply stared blankly back at her, its gleaming metallic face entirely devoid of emotion.

"I came here to meet Sonic," she told the robot. "Because it was my destiny to meet him here. And we're going to get married."

Metal Sonic still did not respond – but his flat silence was somehow more inviting and welcoming than Eggman's gruff loudness, and so she continued.

"The cards told me I would meet Sonic here, and he would fall in love with me, and we would have an exciting adventure together and live happily ever after!" she said cheerfully. "Do you understand?"

It was so dark, even if the robot had smiled or acknowledged her in any way at all, she never would have known.

"We're going to be sweethearts," she pressed on. "We're going to love each other forever. It's going to be the greatest love story ever!"

Eggman grunted and Amy was brought crashing back down out of her lush fantasy world and into her dim present reality. She looked at the robot before her, pausing to think about how it had apparently been built to look like Sonic: but it would never be anything more than a machine, controlled by Eggman.

"I pity you," she said sadly. "That mean old man didn't include love in your programming. You'll never understand what it means to love somebody or to be loved."

Through the darkness, two red oval rings glowed dimly, casting just enough light for her to see the highly polished, metallic blue and pewter face before her. And, for a moment, she almost thought she could see a hint of something there. Was it understanding? Sadness? Anger? She tilted her head and giggled a little when the robot hedgehog copied her action, jerking its head to one side.

"I'll show you my cards!" she offered, placing down her drink and rummaging in her pockets.

She recovered a pack of Tarot cards, the backs of the cards purple with gold lining and intricate gold painted flowers. Amy had lost the box she had acquired them in, and had resorted to wrapping a thin green scrunchie around them in order to hold them together. She removed the scrunchie and fanned out the cards, holding them out towards the bars of her cage. She smiled when the robot leaned a little closer, eyes shining a little brighter, focused onto the cards in her hand.

"The cards can tell you about your destiny!" she told Metal Sonic enthusiastically. "But I also think that each card represents a person."

Amy turned the deck over and splayed the cards out along the floor.

"If I had to pick a card for you..." she said as she scanned across her cards.

After struggling to find a card for Metal Sonic – it was somewhat harder to find a card for something rather than someone – she shifted her attention back to the robot. She watched it for a moment, thinking about how it had helped her get food and a drink, and she smiled.

"I think you could have a warm heart one day!" she concluded. "I know just the right card for you!"

She hurriedly spread the cards around again, beaming brightly when she recovered the one she sought.

"You are the Page of Cups!" she said, moving the card out between the bars to better show it to Metal Sonic. "This card comes from the suit of Cups. Cups are associated with water, and the water signs of the zodiac, and water is all about emotions and feeling. The Page represents someone new to something, and you are new to feelings, so this is the perfect card for you!"

Amy pulled the card back and retrieved her pink marker pen.

"I'll add these hearts for good luck," she said as she drew two small hearts in the corner of the card. "One is to give you a heart of your own, and the other is the pink heart of friendship!"

She offered the card through the bars again, and this time, Metal Sonic reached up a hand to accept it.

"Keep that with you, now!" Amy said, waggling a finger at him. "Hold it close to your heart – I mean, hold it close to where your heart should be – and one day it will bring you luck. I believe you are the Page of Cups now Metal Sonic, but maybe, with time, one day, you could be the King of Cups!"

Amy pressed her right hand to her chest, over the area where she felt her own heartbeat strongest. She giggled when Metal Sonic, the card in its right hand, copied her actions, pressing the card to its chest. In place of a heart, it of course had a jet engine, but Amy felt pleased that maybe this meant it did actually have sense of humanity about it.

Amy awoke from her reverie, her eyes refocusing onto the aged tarot card in her hands.

"I can't believe you still have this," she said again.

She turned her head to Metal, who was still sitting next to her on her bed, watching her plainly.

"I picked this card for you," she said to him. "I remember it. And then... I asked you to pick a card for me..."

What had been seeming like a sweet moment suddenly turned sour in Amy's mind.

"Do you remember which card you picked?" she asked coldly.

He nodded once, his expression unchanged.

"You picked The Fool, Metal!" she snapped.

She sighed, turning back to the beaten old card in her hands.

"Still, it's nice that you have your own special something," she admitted. "It's not quite the same as my special something, because I've had my special something since I was born."

Amy turned to Metal, who was finally showing some sort of expression, his eyebrows lowered slightly into a frown.

"You-you were built by Eggman on Little Planet... You were born there..." she said slowly as she looked into his eyes. "I gave this to you not long after you'd been born... This is exactly like my special something..."

She turned back to the card, smiling at the thought that she had managed to reach his heart, even back then, when he had owned no literal heart, and primarily been a weapon programmed by Eggman for evil.

"I have a fun idea!" she said, returning the card to him.

He very meticulously replaced it into the storage compartment on the back of his right hand, and, as Amy stood up and stretched to retrieve the item she sought from a shelf on her wall, Metal closed the panel on the back of his right hand and then touched his hand to his chest. She hesitated, tilting her head as she realised that his gesture seemed familiar, and not just because she had shown that gesture to him when talking to him about the card for the first time. He copied her action of tilting his head, and she balked at the realisation that his head-tilting habit was one she had taught him.

"Um, look at this!" she said awkwardly, suddenly feeling the need to change the subject.

She recovered a box from the shelf and sat back down next to Metal on the edge of her bed.

"I lost all my tarot cards on Little Planet," she admitted. "Well, all of them except the seven that I drew for my reading about Sonic. I kept those."

Amy opened the box, which contained an almost mint deck of higher quality tarot cards, along with seven dog-eared ones.

"Here they are," she said, picking up the seven cards and holding them to her heart. "The cards that told me about me destiny with Sonic!"

Metal looked a little bored, and so Amy placed the seven cards down onto her bedside table and turned her attention to the deck of new cards.

"I gave you that card a long time ago," she said as she fanned the cards out in front of herself, face-up. "And you picked The Fool out for me a long time ago. If you had to pick a card for yourself now, one card that best represents you, which one would you pick?"

Metal, without hesitating, reached over and delicately slid a card from the splayed selection.

"The King of Cups?" Amy asked quietly. "You-you think you've advanced from the Page to the King?"

Metal tapped a finger against the king depicted on the card, the sharp, slender tip of his finger coming to rest on the king's crown.

"Oh, I see," Amy said, smiling in spite of herself. "Prince Metal Sonic doesn't like being called a Page. He wants to be King Metal Sonic now!"

Metal made to take the card away, but Amy took it back from him, returning it to the pile and spreading them out again.

"Now which one would you pick for me?" she asked.

He raised his hand towards the deck but halted instantly when Amy spoke firmly to him.

"And don't you dare pick The Fool again, Mister!" she warned him.

Once she had finished speaking he continued, in the same direction he had been heading before her interruption, and slid a card from the deck. The cards in Amy's hands slowly lowered to her lap, where she almost lost her grip on them entirely.

"Really?" she asked, meeting Metal's eyes. "That's the card you'd pick for me?"

She carefully closed her hands around the deck of cards, bringing them neatly together again and placing them back into the box on the bed at her side. She then turned herself towards Metal, drawing her leg nearest him up onto the bed so that she could face him directly.

"That's "Strength"," she said, her eyes locked on the card he had chosen.

The card depicted a tall and beautiful bold red female echidna, a crown of white and pink carnations around her head. She was wearing a light, long and flowing white dress, her feet in sandals and her hands bare. At her side was an enormous lion-like beast, lying facing her, its jaws open wide and one giant clawed paw raised slightly as though to swipe at her. Her arm nearest the beast was bent at the elbow, the lower half rested on the beast's head, her long, elegant red and white fingers dangling in front of the beast's mouth. Her other hand was turned away from the beast, her palm pushing down on the beast's lower teeth.

"This card can be about literal strength – physical, mental or emotional strength – it can be a sign that strength exists even if you don't think it does, or that it will come to you when you need it," Amy explained, her eyes still on the card. "But it can also mean you must have the strength to master your own monsters – just like the lady on this card is doing. The monster could kill her, and she has the strength of will to not fear it, but she also has the strength to contain its power, to stop it hurting her or anyone else."

Amy smiled and lifted her eyes to Metal.

"Just like me and you!" she said with a small giggle. "I have to be strong to stop you from killing Sonic or Shadow or any of my other friends you behave like a beast around!"

Amy took the card from Metal and smiled at it.

"I like this card," she said. "And it's certainly a big improvement from The Fool..."

She smiled at the card again, before looking up at Metal again. He was looking back at her, not exactly staring as he often did, but there was still some degree of intent behind his eyes. Amy wished she knew what he was thinking, wished she could communicate with him more openly. He seemed close, she thought to herself. She was not really sure when his face had gotten so close to her own, but, oddly, she felt no need to pull back at all. From the corner of her eyes, she saw his fingers twitch, light reflecting off his shifting, gleaming knuckles. His hands, however, stayed where they were. It was a strange moment, peaceful yet frustrating as no question she asked him right then about his thoughts or intentions would give her any sort of meaningful answer.

"Hey, Ames?"

Amy froze.

"Ames, where are you?"

"Oh no!" Amy hissed, standing abruptly.

"Amy, come on!" Sonic called out, his voice moving as he moved further into the house.

Amy crept to her bedroom door her heart racing. What was he doing in her house? She paused as it occurred to her that she had never thought she would ever question Sonic visiting her unannounced, but, looking back over her shoulder, the sight that greeted her sent a jolt of panic through her spine.

Metal was standing a short way behind her, his eyes glowing bright, his hands formed into claws at his shoulders.

"No!" Amy quietly scolded him. "You stay here – stay right here – don't make a sound, don't move – just wait here!"

Feeling a lot like the beautiful echidna on the Strength card, Amy stepped out of her bedroom and closed the door on the beast behind her, hurriedly tip-toeing her way through her house until she almost bumped into Sonic on his way out of the living room.

"Oh, there you are!" he said with a smile. "Let's go, Eggman's attacking West Village."

Amy froze.

"You alright, Ames?" Sonic asked her, frowning at her.

"Fine, yes, let's go!" she hurriedly recovered. "Let's do this!"

"Alright!"

Sonic tore out of her house, and, after checking that her bedroom door was still closed, Amy hurried after him, closing her front door and running in the direction Sonic had gone. She shortly joined him by the hanger at the beach where Tails stored the Tornado.

"You two take the Tornado, we'll go ahead and meet you there," Sonic said to Tails.

"Right," Tails said.

Amy glanced over her shoulder as Sonic and Knuckles ran off.

"Come on, Amy!" Tails urged.

She nodded and turned back to see him already in the cockpit of his plane. He reached down a hand to help her up into the seat behind him, and before she had even settled herself in, they were already out of the hanger and accelerating forcefully. West Village was close to Seaside Village, and they arrived at their destination in minutes. Tails landed cautiously, and, as he and Amy disembarked the plane, they exchanged confused looks: Sonic and Knuckles were simply standing in front of an array of Eggman's typical cannon fodder robots, and Eggman himself, was hovering several feet above them in his Eggmobile.

"What are you taking about, Egghead?" Sonic yelled as Tails and Amy joined him and Knuckles.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about!" Eggman barked back, leaning an arm onto the console of his Eggmobile and leering down at them. "Give it back!"

"Give what back?" Knuckles asked him. "We don't have anything of yours! Unless you're talking about the master emerald, but that's not yours!"

"I know one of you has it, give it back!" Eggman replied. "And the reason I know one of you has it is because you little rodents had access to intelligence you shouldn't have had – and since it left, you've lost that link – I know it was helping you, now give it back, it's not yours!"

"He's not yours either, Eggman!"

Amy had roared out her response before she could stop herself, and she suddenly found herself standing two steps ahead of her friends, her hammer in her hands, poised at her shoulder, ready to swing.

"So you admit you're hiding it!" Eggman answered her, sitting back and thrusting out his arm to point at her.

"We're not hiding anything!" Tails yelled, his voice cracking a little through his lie.

"Yeah, Egghead," Sonic added. "We don't know what you're talking about!"

"If you won't give it back, I'll take it back by force!"

Amy faltered, her hammer lowering slightly. The first row of robots charged at them and Amy took a moment to respond. Knuckles punched out a beebot as it dived at her and she snapped back to attention, smashing away enemies with her hammer, but mostly looking about herself until she located Tails. Once she had found him, she ran over to him.

"Can he do that?" she asked him as quietly as she could. "Can he take Metal back by force?"

"Amy!" Tails hissed, glaring at her before glancing about himself nervously.

"He used to have a homing beacon or something in him, right?" Amy asked, ignoring Tails's concern about them being overheard. "There's no way Eggman can just press a button and Metal will be forced to back to him, right?"

Tails looked about himself, before shaking his head.

"Are you sure?" Amy asked.

Tails nodded, and they returned to their battle. As a second wave of robots launched at them, Knuckles wrestled with a larger robot, eventually toppling it. In the moment that the large robot collided with a stone statue in the village centre, Sonic landed on Eggman's Eggmobile, and they began a heated argument. Although Amy could hear their voices, she could not quite make out what was being said, and the cold dread of panic spread over her in a sickly sweat. Knuckles leapt away from the mess he had created and Sonic dropped to the ground, at which point Knuckles leapt up and punched Eggman's Eggmobile, sending him spinning away. Once he had righted himself, Eggman retreated with his remaining, functioning, robots, calling out to them that he would be back soon.

"What was that about?" Knuckles asked as all four regrouped.

"Who knows?" Tails responded, his attempt at sounding casual failing terribly, his strained tone hardly helped by the over-exaggerated shrug he gave in his attempt to feign ignorance.

"Old Baldy McNosehair reckons we've got Metal Sonic!" Sonic said.

Next Chapter: After the battle, Amy has a restless night as she remembers more details of her time on Little Planet. The day after their battle, Amy and Tails return to the scene to clean up the mess – something they often have to do alone. Metal yet again has followed Amy there, but his help is welcome – until Knuckles shows up. Tails employs Amy's tactics to smooth the situation over, and in the confusion, Amy learns something unexpected about Metal. Chapter 9: Broken