Chapter 9: Broken

"What was that about?" Knuckles asked.

"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 with a smile. "Can you believe that? He's finally lost it! He said Metal Sonic has been betraying him to us all this time, and he thinks Metal's joined us to fight against him!"

Sonic laughed, but neither Amy nor Tails could force themselves to join in, and Knuckles looked confused.

"Now you mention it, I don't actually remember the last time I even saw Metal Sonic," the echidna said thoughtfully.

"Ah, he's always around somewhere," Sonic dismissively replied. "Eggman probably forgot to plug him in one night, he's probably lying in a corner somewhere needing new batteries! Right, Tails?"

Tails forced out a horribly fake, awkward laugh.

"Y-yeah right, Sonic!" he said in a voice that was almost as ridiculous as his attempt at laugher had been.

"Heh, we really made a mess here, huh?" Sonic commented, looking about himself.

Along with the broken statue, two flowerbeds had been churned up into a muddy mess, there were rubber tyre tracks over the footpaths and there were chunks of metal, screws and bolts scattered everywhere. Amy crouched down and picked up a plain silver, triangular metal panel. She turned it over in her hands and frowned, wondering why looking at it gave her a strange sense of deja vu – a strange, foreboding, sense of deja vu.

"We'll have to clean this up," Tails commented.

"Let's do it tomorrow, I'm hungry," Sonic replied.

"Yeah, let's go to Charlie's!" Knuckles said.

"Again?" Tails responded.

"Last one there pays!" Sonic said.

Amy's quills ruffled at her shoulders and Sonic and Knuckles took off running.

"That was weird, huh?" Tails asked her.

"Hmm?" she mumbled, her eyes still on the metal panel in her hands.

"Eggman," Tails said.

"What about him?" Amy asked, finally tearing her attention from the metal panel she was holding.

"How does he know Metal is with us?" Tails asked her.

"I mean, he said he knew Metal was leaking information to us," she replied with a shrug. "I guess he just assumed after Metal left his place, he joined our side."

"Why would he think that?"

"Because Metal was helping us?"

"Amy... Has Eggman seen you hanging out with Metal?"

Amy dropped the metal panel and gasped indignantly.

"No, he has not!" she argued.

"Are you sure?" Tails asked.

"Yes?"

Amy's face scrunched up as the idea occurred to her that, at any given moment, one of Eggman's small drones could have been watching her with Metal.

"Hey Tails?" she asked quietly.

"Yeah?" Tails responded.

"What do you think Eggman would do to Metal if he did get him back?"

Tails looked thoughtful for a moment.

"I really don't know," he concluded. "He's too far... I mean, it would be pretty complicated and pretty pointless to turn him back."

"Turn him back?" Amy echoed.

"Well, given that he managed to change Metal the way he has, I guess he also knows how to change him back the way, too," Tails explained.

"Back the way? Like, back into a robot?"

Tails nodded.

"And what then? What would he do then?"

"Probably give Metal a hard factory reboot. Though, when I think about it like that, it would make more sense for Eggman to just build another Metal Sonic from scrap."

"Metal isn't made of scrap!"

The startled look on Tails's face should have been enough to quell Amy's ire, but somehow, it was not.

"He's not made of scrap, Tails," she said firmly. "And we should... We should just remember that."

Tails nodded. Amy sighed, softening a little as she looked about herself again. It was getting late, the sun was starting to set.

"Meet you here tomorrow morning for a long day of tidying up?" she asked Tails.

"Long day because Sonic and Knuckles most likely won't come and help us?" he responded, smiling sympathetically.

"Exactly," Amy said, returning his smile.

Together they walked back to the Tornado and Tails duly flew them back home. Tails walked Amy to her front door and they agreed a time to meet the following morning to commence clean-up: a necessary chore after their battles with Eggman, one that Sonic and Knuckles rarely participated in. Inside the house, Amy found Metal sprawled out very ungraciously on her couch, asleep and snoring. She took his lead and, after having a shower and patching up a small cut on her leg, she went to bed. It took her a long time to fall asleep, her mind needled by something just beyond her reach.

Something about fighting Eggman that night had triggered something in her mind; much the same way as Metal showing her the Tarot card she had given him had reminded her of something she had forgotten, seeing broken robot remains that night was drawing something out, from deep within a pile of buried old memories.

Unfortunately for Amy, the memory only awoke when she fell asleep.

After being held in a cage in a dark, dingy room for the best part of three days, Eggman moved Amy. He opened a hatch in the roof of the cage suddenly, reaching in to grab her. One of his minion robots held her arms pinned to her sides as Eggman wound rope around her. In the corner of the room, Metal Sonic stood, eyes dull, watching on. Once she was suitably incapacitated, Eggman hoisting her up and carried her to his Eggmobile, throwing her into it a little roughly before climbing in alongside her. He took off, and they flew over a strange place, with Metal Sonic soaring at their side. Eggman eventually stopped at the end of a long, winding, looping track. He landed there and hung Amy from a post by the ropes around her torso, and then stepped out of what looked like an open gateway of some sorts onto the road beyond.

"Get ready, Metal Sonic," he told his robot companion. "We're going to kill Sonic the Hedgehog!"

Amy screamed and struggled to break free, but Eggman continued into his Eggmobile and took off, back along the long runway, with Metal Sonic once more flying at his side. They disappeared from her sight, and for a long time, she was alone, in a cold and quiet place. She cried a little bit, but steeled herself by reminding herself that Sonic was still fighting his way there, and, when he arrived, just like the tarot cards had foretold, he would be her Knight of Swords, and save her. After some time has passed, Amy realised that she could see Eggman and Metal Sonic, far below her. They were lingering there, by a gate much like the one next to where she was tied up. The gate was closed, and Eggman was hovering in the air above it, with Metal Sonic standing in wait behind it. Her heart alighted when she saw Sonic – the real Sonic, her hero – arrive and join Metal Sonic by the gate.

"Get ready, it's a race to the end of the track," Eggman said, his booming voice just barely audible from Amy's distance. "Winner gets it all, loser will be fried by my laser – that's if you don't lose your head first!"

Amy had always thought that Eggman's last words were purely metaphorical: alluding to the idea that the looping and winding runway would confuse Sonic.

She never thought it might have a literal meaning.

The gate lifted and Sonic and Metal Sonic began their race, followed by Eggman, a thick beam of light emanating from the base of his Eggmobile, destroying everything it passed over. He stayed some way back from the contestants, but every time they arrived at an obstacle that slowed their progress, he very quickly caught up to them. Several times, Sonic barely missed being fried by Eggman's deadly laser, but, eventually, he reached the last stretch of the racetrack, and Amy could finally see him, running directly towards her on the last stretch of road.

Metal Sonic was right at his side.

Sonic skidded through the gate Amy was held behind and she squealed with joy.

She remembered that he untied and freed her and they left Eggman cursing the failure of his plan.

But that wasn't all that had happened.

Sonic skidded through the gate and it slammed shut behind him. Metal Sonic, who had been very close behind Sonic, soaring along, fell foul of the closing gate. It slammed down onto the top of his head, that being the furthest forward part of his body. The gate tore the metal plate off the top of his head, exposing a terrifying core of disembodied robotic eyes, wires, gears and a chunky battery. The blow caused Metal Sonic to roll over and ultimately fall off the edge of the road. He narrowly escaped being fried by Eggman's laser, but the he had a long way to fall. He fell face-up, spindly arms and legs flailing in the air above his weighted jet engine torso. Amy never saw where he landed.

But, watching his skeletonized face fade from sight as he fell past even the starting point of the race, Amy realised something else.

After his prophetic remark about the loser losing their head, Eggman had said something else.

"Good luck, Metal Sonic!"

When Eggman had said the word "luck", Metal had brought his right hand up across his chest the same way he had done when he had watched Amy do it. She never saw what he did with the tarot card she gave him, but she didn't need to to know that it was already stored in his right hand when he touched to where his heart ought to be. She had told him the card would bring him luck, and he had believed her, held onto it, and held it to his heart just as she had told him to.

And he had been horrifically mutilated and left to fall.

His limbs were so frail, they surely would have shattered on impact after such an extensive fall.

Amy awoke in a sweat, sitting up and fighting her way out of her bedsheets. She got out of her bed and padded her way through the house in her bare feet, squinting through the darkness. She stopped in the living room, looking over at her couch, where Metal was still sprawled out and sleeping in the same position she had left him in. She crept into the room – though in the back of her mind, she already knew she would not wake him, regardless of how much of a ruckus she may make – and she picked up the blanket that had fallen to the floor, carefully laying it over him and tucking it around his spread-eagled form as best she could.

She wondered if he dreamed: now or if he ever had, even back when he was still fully robotic.

She sighed and made her way back to bed, and, even though she did fall asleep again without too much difficulty, she continued to dream and her mind continued to fill with questions.

The next morning, after making an enormous breakfast for Metal and almost entirely forgetting to eat anything herself, Amy set out to meet Tails, and together they flew back to the site of their battle the night before. They worked in silence at first, which suited Amy, as picking up pieces of broken robots was making her feel a little nauseous, reminding her of Metal's fall in his race against Sonic on Little Planet. However, after some time, they finished their work and found themselves standing together facing the one last task they had to complete.

"Maybe I could tie a rope around it and lift it with the Tornado?" Tails said, sounding so unsure of his words, Amy assumed he was just thinking aloud.

"If Sonic and Knuckles were here, between the four of us, we could probably lift it back into place," Amy concluded aloud.

Tails had a bucket of mixed cement in one hand and a trowel in the other, but neither of them had the means to lift the fallen stone statue to place it back into its base.

"I tried messaging them," Tails commented.

"They didn't answer?" Amy asked.

Tails shook his head.

"I'll prep it if you think you can lift it with the Tornado?" Amy offered.

"Okay…"

Tails handed his bucket and trowel to Amy and set off to retrieve some rope from his plane. Amy got to work smearing wet cement over the base of the statue, realising as she worked that she was not entirely sure how much to use. Erring on the side of caution, she used all of it, creating a thick, wet layer. When it started to spill over the edges, she set about trying to keep in place with the trowel, only stopping when Tails called out to her.

"Amy, get out of the way!"

She looked up at the shadow that had fallen over her, yelping and leaping back as the statue landed on its base with a thud that made the ground shake. The wet cement sprayed out from the base, and she narrowly missed any of the stray globules splatting onto her. A moment later, she noticed Tails, standing to one side of her, staring at the statue with eyes and mouth wide, stray splats of concrete littering his legs as he had apparently not taken the same precautions Amy had.

"Uh…" he said in a shaky tone. "Nice work, buddy?"

Amy frowned at him, but, when a figure stepped back from the statue, her jaw dropped too. She watched, in breathless awe, as Metal walked around the statue, apparently checking that it was properly aligned to its base, before he then used his blade-like fingers to scrape away any excess concrete that had leaked out between the join. Once he was done, he held up his hands, a distinct look of irritation on his face as he then began wiping his fingers other each other, trying to clear the concrete there. When he noticed there was a wet patch of concrete on his thigh, he began swiping at it angrily.

"That was uh, some really nice work, Metal," Tails said in the same wavering voice.

Metal paused his efforts to look over at Tails.

"A-and I have a solution at home that can get that out," the fox added, his tone steadying a little.

Metal nodded once and put his leather gloves back on as Tails turned to Amy.

"I didn't bring him here," she immediately said.

"Uh, no, but I guess it's lucky for us he did follow you this time," Tails replied.

Amy nodded.

"How heavy do you reckon that was?" she asked.

"That giant lump of stone?" Tails asked. "How heavy do I think the giant lump of stone was?"

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Amy said quietly. "I don't even know how he has that much strength."

"Well, I mean, his spine isn't made of bone, I guess that helps."

"It's not?"

Metal was again walking around the statue, apparently still not entirely happy with his handiwork. As he rounded it, his back turning to Amy, she noticed something she never had before – something she supposed she really ought to have noticed before, but reasoned that, when his back was turned to her, she was usually distracted by the state of his injuries there.

"He doesn't have a tail," she said aloud.

"Well your tail is an extension of your spine, and he doesn't have an organic spine, it's part metal, part plastic. Kinda like the replacement hips people get when they get old, only he has a replacement spine," Tails explained. "No need for a tail, other than aesthetics, and since he never had one when he was a robot, I guess he didn't care to get one added on. I think a few of his joints are still reinforced with metal and PVC and other compounds. I guess because he's not as fast any more, Eggman decided to just focus on making him physically stronger than Sonic instead."

"That's… So strange," Amy muttered.

"Hey, buddy, how's your wound looking?" Tails called over to Metal. "That dressing looks kinda gross, we should probably get it changed for you."

Metal paused beside the repaired statue, giving Tails a long, silent look. His eyes then shifted to Amy for a moment, before moving back to Tails. He signed something to Tails and Amy sighed in irritation when Tails signed back to him.

"Ha ha, that's hilarious, you guys!"

Amy's head whipped around, her eyes growing large, her pupils shrinking as she found herself looking at Knuckles.

"That's the same reason I pretend to be injured sometimes too!" the echidna said cheerfully, his eyes on Metal as he spoke.

"Uh, Knuckles?" Tails said, staring at him fearfully. "When did you get here?"

"Oh, I figured you guys would be coming back here to clean up, and I remembered the statue broke," Knuckles replied. "And I figured you'd need someone strong to help you get it back in place, so I came down here to help you out."

"Where's Sonic?" Tails asked him.

"It's eleven-thirty in the morning," Knuckles said with a shrug. "He's probably still asleep."

Ordinarily, Knuckles's last remark would have made Tails laugh and Amy groan, but, under the circumstances, both remained tense. After a short silence, Metal signed something to Tails.

"We're friends," Knuckles said with a frown. "That's a weird question. Who is this guy anyway, Tails? He kinda looks like Sonic."

Tails looked like he might faint, but Amy had regained some of her confidence as a bizarre realisation dawned on her.

"Knuckles, you know sign language?" she asked her friend.

"Yeah, sure," he casually replied.

Amy looked over at Metal, who was looking back at her with just a hint of apprehension.

"What are they talking about?" she asked, turning to Knuckles expectantly.

"Oh, well, that guy over there said his wound has totally healed but he wants to keep that bandage on so he can carry on eating food at your house," Knuckles freely replied, oblivious to the effect his words had on anyone around him. "And then Tails told him that was probably a good idea since it's easier if he stays at your house. Then that guy said to Tails he can't keep track of when me and Sonic are friends or rivals, so I told him we're friends."

Amy swallowed carefully and Tails grinned at her nervously.

"Why would he ask me that?" Knuckles asked with a frown. "I don't know this guy! Is he like Sonic's brother, or something? He does really look like Sonic, it's kinda weird."

"He's not Sonic's brother," Tails quickly replied. "His name is… Thistle."

Amy narrowed her eyes at Tails and he laughed nervously.

"Right, so where did he come from?" Knuckles asked.

"He's… Amy's new boyfriend," Tails replied.

Amy took a long, loud breath in through her flared nostrils, her green eyes blazing and fixed onto Tails.

"That's hilarious!" Knuckles said, laughing a little. "Thistle looks just like Sonic! So Amy, if you like this guy, do you like Sonic too?"

Amy felt her face burn, but she was beyond understanding whether it was from anger or embarrassment.

"Knuckles, are you kidding me?" Tails asked.

Amy's glare faltered a little.

"Amy's always had a thing for Sonic, you didn't notice?" Tails asked Knuckles.

"Oh, yeah, but I didn't know she still had a thing for Sonic," Knuckles replied, putting far too much emphasis on the word "still" for Amy's liking. "I mean, he made it pretty clear he didn't like her back in that kinda way–"

"Okay, do you know what? We're done here!" Amy interrupted.

"What does Sonic think about you dating this guy, Amy?"

"I don't care what Sonic thinks about it."

"That's a bit harsh…"

Amy sighed.

"Well, Knuckles, maybe Amy just didn't say anything to Sonic because she thought it might be awkward," Tails said suddenly.

"Yeah, can you imagine these two together?" Knuckles replied. "It'd be a like Sonic was meeting his clone, or something."

Amy's eye twitched involuntarily as her brain reminded her that, in his current form, Metal almost was a clone of Sonic. He had been programmed to be like Sonic and his biological body had been grown in a lab from Sonic's DNA – which basically was cloning.

"Yeah, that's really funny Knuckles, let's go," she said, moving towards Metal.

Metal looked around the others, as though unsure what was expected of him. Amy marched past Knuckles and Tails, stopping in front of Metal.

"Now!" she told him sternly.

His fingers – thankfully still covered by his gloves – flicked in the air in that way she was learning they did when he was unsure about something.

"Just carry me, I just want to get home quickly," Amy grumbled, holding out her arms.

Metal's hands steadied and he nodded his head before scooping her up in his arms and running off. On the way home, she was glad of the fresh air blasting against her face, as it was welcomingly cooling, and bracing herself against it helped her concentrate on trying to formulate a way to keep Sonic from finding out about Metal. She trusted that Tails would work on keeping Knuckles quiet. When they finally arrived home – Amy's front door was wide open again, she noticed darkly – Metal made a point of carrying her into the living room and placing her down on her feet before releasing her. She made to tell him off, but hesitated as she considered the restless night she had endured and why it had been so.

"Thanks," she said to him instead. "We couldn't have fixed that statue without you."

He gave another single nod of his head and she smiled.

"I think that's probably been more than enough excitement for one day," she said. "I'm going to work on some of my projects, you can join me if you like?"

Amy was hoping that he agreed, primarily because it meant she could offload the majority of her work onto him – which she justified in her mind as being his way of earning his keep while he was living in her house and eating her food. When he nodded her smile brightened.

"Alright then, let's–"

Amy stopped abruptly, her heart suddenly in her throat. The sound of someone knocking on her door had never been such a terrifying prospect. Her first thought was that it might be Eggman, coming to take Metal away. Her second thought was that it might be Sonic, and Metal's cover would be blown.

But, when she reminder herself that neither Eggman nor Sonic were known for knocking on anyone's door, she relaxed a little.

"Stay here," she told Metal. "I'm going to see who that is – you just stay here, okay?"

Metal didn't nod or otherwise acknowledge her request, but she trusted that he would do as she had asked, and she continued to her front door, opening it to find the last person she had expected looking back at her.

Next Chapter: Amy's visitor has arrived to meet Metal, and has even come with a gift for him. With a little translation, Metal is able to speak to Amy, and while she finds some of his words less than surprising, some of what he has to say reminds her that really can't ever go back to Eggman. Chapter 10: New